ZAHRA

The impossible stench of death followed us through the ship. I had not yet taken a single breath from the interior of House of Wisdom; the space suit was sealed. But I could smell it nonetheless: the vegetable rot of the gardens, the septic stink of human decay, the acrid iron taint of blood. I could taste it on my tongue.

I had not suffered the explosion directly; the wall of the airlock and position of the shuttle meant I had absorbed only a fraction of the possible force. But my back and shoulders ached with a deep pain that spiked sharply when I moved the wrong way. My head throbbed, and when I turned I could feel the pressure of the helmet against the knots and bumps. The pain that threatened to turn to nausea with every careless move.

I had never liked Nico. He was brash and cruel and had spent his entire life in the desert. I had wanted to choose somebody steadier for the mission, somebody better able to masquerade as a Councils citizen; Adam had not let me. But Nico had not deserved to die like that, wreathed in flame that peeled the space suit from his skin, screaming. Bao, who only ever did what Nico did first. The frightened woman who could not bear to leave the shuttle. None of them deserved that. Boudicca, who had endured such tragedy before she left SPEC, who had never stopped dreaming of returning to space, she had not deserved to die like that.

I had thought I hated the Councils and SPEC as much as I could, but it was nothing compared to what I felt now. I had been naive. I knew they could murder their citizens to protect their secrets, as they had murdered my father, but I had not thought they would slaughter their own cherished young women and men.

I felt callous for letting a less tragic but more pressing concern push my anger and grief aside, but I could not ignore that all of our supplies had been lost as well. Our tools, our medical testing units, food and water, everything we had brought on the shuttle for our initial exploration of House of Wisdom, it was all destroyed. We had nothing but our weapons, our suits, and Malachi’s skeleton key.

“This is it,” Bhattacharya said. He stopped in front of a closed door: SYSTEMS CORE A-04. “But I can’t open this one.”

He had recovered from the panic that overtook him in the garden, but his cowardice had seeped into the others like a sickness. They spoke little. They had not once tried to get away, nor balked at our commands. Henke was frightened and trying to hide it; he wanted them to give him an excuse to lash out. I could hear it in the way he directed them, see it in the way he shoved a bit too hard, snarled a bit too loud, never holstered his weapon. I let him bully and bluster. I was afraid that if he stopped, the silence would overwhelm us.