She took the cup with both hands and padded quietly to the lockers, then opened hers and fetched a bottle of the good stuff. Not vodka, of course, that wasn’t his style. She remembered nights of cards with Edison sipping a few fingers of whiskey, his ring finger tapping rhythmically on the glass. That was his tell. Misato brought him the bottle and leaned against the drafting table.

Vodka was her drink of choice, but she opened the whiskey and took a swig herself before offering it to him.

“Does that answer your question?” she asked.

“I should’ve done more,” Edison said to the bottle, holding it close to his chest. “This thing . . . It eats away at what’s good until all that’s left is the deep dark shit you tried hard to forget.”

Misato put a hand on his shoulder, not knowing if it was appropriate or not, but sensing he needed it. He seemed to sag under her touch, or maybe relax. “Then make something else good; I don’t want to know what happens if it gets you. We owe it to Tuva. To Rayan. To whatever little part of Piero wasn’t monstrous. We’re all that’s left of the fight.”

“And Rosalyn,” Edison said with a sad smile.

“Yes, and her. You and me and her, that’s something good. Try not to forget that.”

34

There had been five little stones in the memorial garden for the crew; now three actually belonged there.

Rosalyn had spent as much time as she could stomach scrubbing out her old suit and blasting the new one in the decontam chamber. At some point, she told herself, she had to leave cold storage. The tedium kept her focused, kept her from listening over and over again to her father’s messages, old and new, and it saved her from sinking into her mother’s texts and Angela’s.

She ate, chewing and swallowing the food without tasting it, then pulled on the fresh and clean-smelling suit they had given her. God, she had to laugh. She could just imagine Edison and Misato carrying her to the room, trying not to breathe in the toxic-to-them diffused and decontaminated air while also making sure she was all the way inside with her new gear.

At first, it seemed like a no-brainer to just sit there and read old messages on her display. But the idleness of it, the quiet, made it easier for the demons to come for her. She couldn’t shake the feeling of Piero crawling on top of her, his slavering ghoulish face and silver eyes, the sense that history was repeating itself all over again. Music wasn’t doing much either, because she felt paranoid without full control of her senses. And there was a soothing quality to the sound of the thrusters churning away, the Brigantine leaving behind the coordinates and the Salvager 6 and her last chance at escape.