The cargo bay darkened as he returned to the airlock, leaving me alone with the corpse. I pulled myself along the wall, closer. Her head was twisted to the side. Her neck had been slashed several times in long gashes, tearing through her skin from beneath her chin to her clavicle. The ruined, ragged flesh allowed glimpses of white bone to show. Through the blood on the outside of her space suit I could see the emblem on the arm: the words Space and Exploration Commission around the circle, and in the center the single four-pointed star of House of Wisdom. One of the gashes had severed her jugular. She had bled out through the neck.

Her hands were bare—the skin shriveled, cold burned, and papery—and gripped in each was a long shard of blood-caked glass.

A deep grinding noise came from within the wall; Dag was depressurizing the airlock. The others were speaking, discussing the best way to move twelve hostages from the shuttle to the ship, but their voices faded beneath the thump of blood in my ears.

I pushed myself out from the wall to see the name on the suit. CHIN, M. There were streaks of dark blood on her name patch.

It had all been a lie. This woman had not died from Zeffir-1. The Councilors, the SPEC investigators, the forensic medical teams, the solemn-faced pathologists and immunologists dragged out of quiet labs to offer their expert opinions, the university colleagues who condemned my father without pause, every single one of them had lied. Padmavati Bhattacharya had lied every time she stood before the Councils and spoke of her sister’s death.

And her nephew, that spineless young man who had flinched from my gaze, he had lied too.

I had always known my father was incapable of doing what they said he had done. But it was little comfort in the face of the more immediate concern: We were not prepared for this. The vaccinations, the changes we planned to make to the ship’s systems, the tests we had come ready to perform, all of it was designed to protect us against the Zeffir-1 virus. We had no plan for an unknown pathogen that could force a woman to tear herself to shreds with pieces of glass.

Hand over hand, I pulled myself away from the corpse and back down to the airlock. There I hooked my feet into one of the cargo straps, drew my weapon, and waited.

•   •   •