“I know,” Xiomara said. Her breath fogged the glass. “I fucking hate those things.”

Three strangers, and a gun. I looked down at the weapon in my hand. It was identical to the one I had used to kill the man on the shuttle. SPEC Security use only, highly restricted, these weapons and their ammunition had been difficult to acquire, in some ways harder than the false identities that got us aboard Civita Station and Pilgrim 3. SPEC wanted people to want to go to space; they did not want anybody to go armed. Before today I had never killed anybody. I could tell myself that I had never meant to, but I had no strength left for the kind of slithering lies that had carried me for so long. I had always known people might die. I had simply told myself they were less important than our dream. We had all repeated it, around and around all of our plans and plots, nodding at ever more vehement exhortations until every doubt was quashed.

They were all gone. Everybody I had chosen for this mission, everybody I had brought to this hateful place, they were all dead. We had failed to claim the ship, Homestead was still heading into danger, and I was alone with three strangers who had no reason to listen to anything I had to say, and every reason to hate me.

All I had were the words of Dr. Summers in the laboratory. Proof that my father had not done what the Councils claimed he had done. I could clear his name. I could restore the memory of who he had been to the world, and to Nadra and Anwar. But I could not do it alone. The world would not listen to me, not after all I had done.

I looked at Bhattacharya, trying to see the broken boy who had not cried at his parents’ funerals in this dirty and exhausted man. It was hard to remember why those images of him had once filled me with such rage.

I passed the gun from one hand to the other and flexed the fingers that had been gripping it so tightly. They noticed the motion, my former hostages, and all three reacted. Bhattacharya moved himself in front of his injured friend. Xiomara scowled deeply as she turned to face me.

“Oh, fuck you,” she said tiredly. “Haven’t you done enough?”

I turned the gun to grasp it by the muzzle, and I held it out to Bhattacharya. He didn’t move.

“The virus—parasite—it came from UC33-X.”

Bhattacharya said, “We know.” He was watching me closely.

“We found a log entry from Dr. Summers in the lab where it—where it was released. She tried to tell them. Everybody. She left a message.”

“Why do you care?” Xiomara said. “What do you want?”