Captain Chavannes turned away from the camera, speaking to a member of her bridge crew. I heard something about a diplomatic vessel, an emergency launch. When she faced me again, she said, “We have Councilor Bhattacharya now. She is aboard a diplomatic vessel headed to Armstrong.”

There was a blink on the screen, and there was Aunt Padmavati.

I had seen my aunt upset before. I had seen her exhausted, unwell, uneasy in ways she had hidden from the rest of the world. But I had never seen her look so old and weary as she did now. She wore a brilliant green and gold sari, one she reserved for when she wanted to be most intimidating, and all of her jewelry was in place, but her white-streaked black hair was escaping from its braids in wild wisps, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She reached toward the camera as though we could touch across the great distance. Her hand was trembling.

“You’re hurt,” she said.

“I’m fine,” I said. My voice was shaking, and I was too tired to hide it. “Aunt Padmavati, you have to listen to me. You can’t let them come here.”

“Captain Chavannes will prevent Homestead—”

“Not just Homestead. Pangong. SPEC. Anybody. You can’t let them come here. You have to stop them.”

“Jas,” said my aunt, and inside my chest my heart cracked. She never called me by my nickname. I had always assumed she thought it childish. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s not a virus. It’s not a disease at all. It’s a biomechanical parasite. It can self-replicate. It infected one of us from just a scratch. It took over her—made her do things she had no control over. Mum and Captain Ngahere knew. They left a message.”

“Amita left a message?” she said, her voice faint.

“She did.” But not for you, and not for me, I thought, unable to say the words aloud. Mum’s message, like her work, like her life, had been for a much greater purpose. “We’ll bring it to you. There’s data, too, the data that didn’t make it into the last burst. But the rescue teams and everybody else—you have to stop them. They don’t know what they’re coming into. It’s not safe.”

My aunt was quiet for a moment. “You know that what you’re telling me won’t dissuade SPEC. They have been wanting to return to House of Wisdom for years. There are a lot of people who have been waiting a long time for answers.”

“I know. I know.” They would want to return even more when they found out what Dr. Lago had learned from UC33-X. “But can’t you at least get them to wait? Until we can tell them what we’ve seen? We’ll bring them answers, but it’s too dangerous to come here.”