The barracks were threaded with the dark red mushrooms and mold that snaked their way up the black timber of the officers’ quarters. In the thin afternoon light cast between the clouds of the overcast sky, it looked like the building was bleeding.

Eris swallowed hard and turned the rusted handle of the door, pushing her way inside.

The interior was wet and colder. The automatic lights flickered on, lazily, casting the room in a hazy, yellow glow. It was a bare room, only consisting of a single desk with a small cot off to the side. Nothing appeared touched or rifled through. It was a small relic on this dead planet. It had the damp, musty scent of disuse, dust gathering across the surfaces of the few pieces of furniture. How long had Talley been down in the glass box?

Eris walked over to the desk, her eyes skimming the stacks of paperwork, the little trinkets of Talley’s life. She picked up the small digipad in the corner of the desk that had stuck on a single vid file of a woman, also in uniform, standing outside the barracks with her head tipped back and a smile on her face, her hair ruffling in the breeze.

The caption read: Octavia on our first Ismaran anniversary.

Eris’s chest tightened, eyes stinging with unexpected tears. It took her a few tries with her gloves, but she managed to load the digipad. They were built to keep power for hundreds of years, a digital library that would last for three generations at least. Maybe more.

A creak made her glance up. The others had come inside but hesitated at the doorway. Their features were all stricken. As much as Eris wanted to spare them knowledge of whatever awful information they would find in Talley’s logs, they all deserved to know the truth.

“Ariadne,” she said, voice low. “Project the logs so everyone can see them, please.”

The girl nodded and navigated the files. A miniature hologram of the man they had just watched die loaded. Hale and healthy, barely a trace of the shadow he would become.

Gods. He’d recorded this less than three Tholos moons before. Turned from a proud, loyal, muscled Tholosian officer to a desiccated husk of a man, who had just died choking on his own black blood.

Four logs, dated just before the mines were reported as shut down. Eris clicked on the first one. The miniature version of Talley-I-32, paced the desk and spoke, as if he had returned from the dead:

Data log: 89 days ago:

<Comm. Arctus Talley-I-32:> The miners are making good progress. Extraction is difficult. Toxin levels in the caves are increasing as drilling progresses. We have introduced new tools to assist with their work—larger drills that run hotter. The sparks have injured several workers. Request additional protective gear, including respirators.