The crew at the mainframe. The crowd in the garden. The people throughout the ship who had escaped infection. They had remained at their posts or found secure places to cling together in hope. They had been waiting for rescue.

My mother and the captain had found a way to turn the ship’s own systems into a weapon against the parasite. But to use it they had to suffocate everybody on board.

“It’s done,” the captain said. She spoke quietly, as though the effort of expelling those final words defeated her. She looked at my mother, then reached out to take her hand. Their fingers twined together.

“I wish there was another way,” my mother said. “Please forgive us.”

The log entry ended. Once again her face was frozen in a still image. Eyes clear, mouth open, dark hair in wisps. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.

Ariana was the first to break the silence. “That’s what it was trying to make me do? Get right back to where they left off when they . . .”

“This ship is a kilometer long,” Xiomara said. “Even if it broke up in the atmosphere, no matter where it crashed, the impact would be catastrophic. Hundreds of thousands of people would die. There would be mass extinctions. It would be . . . it would be a second Collapse.”

It was too awful to contemplate, and too easy to imagine. It was part of the answer that had been missing for ten years—and the rest might also be within reach. The screen on the tablet had gone dark.

“We have to get this to SPEC. This and everything else from after the data transfers stopped. They need to know.” I looked at the others, hoping they understood. I knew I was asking a lot, stalling our escape. “Then we can leave.”

To my relief, nobody protested. They got to work instead.

“We can get a system dump of all the system commands and actions from that day,” Baqir said. “If the systems were still compiling summaries, it shouldn’t take too long.”

Xiomara turned to a console. “I can get the medical info.”

“Maybe that will help them get this fucking thing out of me.” Ariana offered a brave, trembling smile. “I like that idea. Let’s give them everything we can. I’ll find the personal logs and messages.”