“Fuck that,” Edison spat, fighting for breath in a room that felt like all the oxygen had disappeared. The extinguisher powder felt like ice in his lungs, but he slithered through it, ignoring the spreading numbness in his forearms and knees. He tasted blood in his mouth and swallowed with a wince. It was no use. He was too slow.

Give up, baby, give up. Just lie down. Mother will take care of you. Go to sleep. Can I sing you a song?

It was agony, and the Foxfire did little to numb the pain. He climbed up onto his knees and then to his feet, ignoring the surge of needle pricks through his joints. All this carnage, all this chaos couldn’t be for nothing. This was his ship. He was the captain. In the hall, just before watching Rosalyn go to sleep, he had promised her he would do whatever he could to fight the Foxfire. Her AR marker blinked at the top of his vision and he followed, dragging his feet with every impossible step. Voices bled in from the corridor. He passed the broken Servitor, and Misato on the floor, and the blood-spattered cables hanging loose from the wall.

The corridor yawned before him, glittering blue, the voices getting louder and louder, Rosalyn’s AR indicator becoming a more solid triangle as he stumbled along.

Edison fell against the rounded wall, shoving along it, eyes trained forward, determination the only thing putting one foot in front of the other. Now the voices were audible, clear even, and he slid around the corner, sagging with exhaustion, both hands on his knees as he caught sight of Rosalyn, hands up in surrender, her back to the rover bay doors.

Two of them. One of him. But he couldn’t leave her like that, couldn’t give up now. Piero closed in on her, his shredded arm swinging loose, a macabre pendulum marking out the last seconds of her freedom. Rayan was at his side. They seemed to be waiting for some signal, or else Foxfire, in its growing hostility, was enjoying this sick chase.

Rosalyn flattened herself against the door. Edison saw her hand run up along the wall, her knuckles brushing the little LED touch panel at shoulder height. Her head turned and she saw him, eyes fuzzy behind the dirty visor of her suit. One knuckle tapped against the panel, then another, and Edison caught the faintest, saddest smile on her lips. He shook his head, but braced anyway, throwing himself across the hall and grabbing the handrail there.

He saw that strange smile one last time before the bay doors opened behind her with a force that shook the entire ship, the outer seal disengaging, sucking all three of them into the cold vacuum of space.

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