She nodded, but his words didn’t chase away the cold. “There’s something else,” she whispered, flustered. Rosalyn had to get away from him. The proximity was too intimate, too like real friendship, or . . . She had to get away. The whiskey capsules called to her so she found refuge there, struggling with the packaging to get another tube out.

“At the end, when he knew he was dying,” she said quietly. “His eyes . . . they were brown again. Human.”

“That doesn’t change anything. It could’ve been a trick of the light. You were in a panic, so was he . . .”

“I suppose,” Rosalyn agreed. “I just—”

Something on the packaging had caught her eye. The capsules were trapped in a vacuum-sealed white packet, which had clearly been peeled away from a duplicate, the perforations noticeable along the top edge. Small gray letters were stamped under the tiny puncture dots, an expiration date, serial number and distributer.

“What is it?” She had been so distracted she didn’t hear Edison come up behind her.

“Beta Tech,” Rosalyn read, showing him the packet and frowning. “Wouldn’t Merchantia provide all the rations for you guys? Why would Piero even have this?”

Her last conversation with Josh Girdy floated back to her through her hazy memories and the whiskey. He had mentioned Beta Tech. And Belrose. And ISS. The room spun a little. That pile of connections she had noticed adding up started to shake under the weight of another coincidence.

Edison took the biodegradable package and inspected it for himself. He didn’t seem alarmed, turning it over and then shrugging. “He’s new. Maybe it’s from an old gig. We know he’s been around, with ISS at least, maybe he had other secret jobs, too, other identities.”

“Maybe,” she echoed, but her skin prickled like it always did when her gut wanted her to follow a hunch. “It doesn’t make any sense, though. Beta Tech is earthbound; they don’t even run space missions. All of their experiments are done in Canada, they just contract out to get whatever samples they need.”

Rosalyn snatched the capsule packet back from him and turned, hurrying out of the storage area and into the corridor, finding her way quickly back to the labs. As expected, Edison followed, grabbing the whiskey bottle on the way.

“You said this was in his locker?” she called over her shoulder.

“Yeah, why? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know yet,” Rosalyn said grimly, remembering Josh Girdy’s smug face. His double finger guns. His favor-for-a-favor proposal. “Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s everything.”

35

So much for their nice, quiet evening.