I led the group to the nearest security hatch between the cargo sublevels and Level 0. The hatch was propped open by the body of a young woman, her arms reaching toward us from the apparent ceiling. Her face was turned to the wall; I couldn’t see if I knew her. Only when Dag shouldered the hatch open did we discover that her left leg had been severed just above the knee. Another dead woman, a couple of meters away, held a large powered clamping tool, the sort used to move cargo. Her I recognized: she was the ship’s lead boatswain. Between the teeth of the clamp were the remains of the first woman’s leg.

“How could a virus do this?” Panya said, whispering hoarsely. “How could anybody do this?”

Nobody answered. After that, even our captors stopped talking.

There was another corpse in the corridor outside the entrance to the nearest of my father’s laboratories. He was surrounded by a nest of metal scraps and tools, as though he had tried to barricade himself inside a makeshift cage. He rotated slowly, slowly, caught in a gentle vortex of air. There were clumps of dried blood suspended in a spiral around him like a dancer’s ribbons. He had slashed his arms several times, great long gashes from elbow to wrist. I didn’t know him. There was scarcely room to squeeze by the cage of metal he had built around himself. I went first, Zahra right behind me, and the others followed one by one with a series of grunts and frustrated noises, and a sharp curse from Ariana when she snagged the sleeve of her space suit and had to pry it free.

“Fuck.” Ariana jerked her arm. “That was stupid.”

“Are you okay?” Xiomara asked.

“She’s fine,” Henke said. “Stop wasting time.”

“But she—”

“The suits are self-mending. Keep moving.”

“I am fine,” Ariana said quietly. “Really.”

At the end of the corridor, beyond the dead man and his cage, was a closed door.

AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH 2

CLIMATE CONTROL ZONE

There was a spray of dried blood over the sign.

My throat was dry, my mouth tacky with thirst. I touched the control panel, which was, thankfully, clear of blood. At my touch, the words MEDICAL QUARANTINE IN EFFECT appeared in bright red. I unclipped the seal on my right wrist and tugged the glove off. The air was bitterly cold. When I pressed my hand to the center of the screen, a halo of frost formed around my sweat-damp fingers. It was so much colder than a still-functional ship ought to have been. I counted slowly to ten, then removed my hand.

“What are you doing?” Malachi said, looking over my shoulder. “It’s not prompting—what is that?”