Misato took her time, measuring her steps, never peeling her eyes away from the flow controls. These would almost never be used, and probably hadn’t been touched since the station’s construction. But the maintenance hub would never allow her to attempt station-wide sabotage; in fact, the engineer had been forced to use a power hammer to wedge a gap in the safety railing separating the maintenance tower from the far-more-precarious walkway. The platform leading to the shielding and the controls was wide enough but shook from the massive, spinning core, juddering as if a bullet train were passing by. She approached the engineer, her skin hanging in red, irradiated clumps from her face. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slightly open, as if she could not believe she had come so far and failed.

The CDAS security badge hanging around her neck read DESHAWNA ADAMS.

“Good work,” Misato told her. “I’ll finish up here.”

The controls were already unlocked, a USB key dangling from the side of the LED screen. The core breach alert blared inside the station again, but so near to the core the sound was muffled, a distant warning, and not for them. This was not where someone went to escape unharmed. She closed her eyes, wishing she could summon her connection to Edison. Had they made it out okay? Regardless, she knew what had to be done, but she would feel a lot better knowing Rosalyn was safely away. And if she wasn’t? Well, there would be nothing left of their story to tell. This core was going to kill them all, and the Foxfire with it.

Misato froze, listening to a coughing wheeze from over her shoulder. She turned, Deshawna listing forward, sucking air with trouble through her drooping mouth and the holes torn through her neck by the radiation.

The Foxfire had kept her alive. It was monstrous, not Deshawna, but what the infestation had done to her. Slow radiation deterioration was enough; this was a second, worse punishment. Misato grabbed her, feeling the brittleness in her bones, the wet, sloughing slide of the woman’s skin as she touched it. But Misato had the strength of determination behind her, and hauled Deshawna forward, pushing her hand over the flow controls, the LED screen flashing, screaming warnings at them as their fingers moved across the display.

There was a sudden ping as the core shifted, scraping the metal plating that contained it, knocking loose a casing that zipped over their heads, lodging with a metallic clang in the maintenance tower behind them.

It was starting.