Rosalyn snorted. God, that was idealistic. She let the text app idle on her AR display, staring through the blinking cursor to the door and the glowing corridor beyond. It was true, what she had told Walters; in the darkened ship the pulsing blue covering the halls was almost beautiful. Either the exhaustion was really taking hold now or the millions of scattered turquoise spores were flashing slowly in time to something, and if she concentrated, the rhythm of it seemed like a heartbeat.

Madness. The crew was mad and now it was gripping her, too. She knew their environmental suits were meant to withstand a vast array of contaminants, but she couldn’t imagine any salvager had run into something like Foxfire before. Rosalyn called up the factory warranty for her suit on the AR display, skimming the fine print for exactly what the suit protected against.

Contaminants deriving from molds, fungi . . .

That made her feel marginally better. The suit would keep her protected as long as it maintained integrity, and there was a chance that Rayan’s experimental injection might be developed into something truly useful. But how long would that work? The crew was not the least bit stable, and it would only take another outburst to compromise her suit and expose her to their horrible fate.

She laughed again, hoarse and fatigued, letting her body go limp against the wall as she drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them. Self-preservation was a stupid idea. Triage was probably the best bet. Solutions, solutions . . . She couldn’t let this stuff spread any further, she decided, it had to stop here, with them. With her. It was the shock or the fear, she also knew, that made hot tears gather behind her eyes and spill down her cheeks. She would have to die. They would all have to die. No Merchantia ships were equipped with self-destruct functions, but there were plenty of ways to destroy a vessel, and destroy it she would.

The finality of it, the simplicity of it, felt like comfort and resolution. When she woke up she would know what to do, but she would need strength and rest to do it. God, she didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to die. But what else could she do? She had seen the wild inhumanity in Edison’s eyes as he chased her through the ship. He would have killed her. Piero would have killed her. These weren’t men and women anymore, they were aliens, trapped and doomed, imprisoned in their own bodies.

Rosalyn let her eyes droop and then close, knowing what had to be done, tears still streaming out of her eyes as she fell fast asleep.

16