He strode through the doorway without a word.

“What’s wrong?” Tamara asked, but I didn’t answer, hurrying after Indigo.

I found him standing in the middle of that room, surrounded by large cloudy tanks of some forgotten chemical, turning in a slow circle to look at the contents of the room. I turned my flashlight on the nearest tank, to see what he saw.

When my brain finally put together what I was seeing in that clouded water, my heart struck my ribs, a hard and painful beat.

In each of the tanks, suspended, preserved, there was a corpse.

And each of the corpses was a Minister.

CHAPTER FIFTY ONE:

Test Subjects

It was obvious even through the clouded water and clouded glass: the angle of their cheekbones, the narrowness of their feet, brushing cheek and ankle against the glass as they floated. Strangely fragile-looking for creatures that could survive the vacuum of space, massive blood loss, and most forms of blunt-force trauma that would cave my ribs in.

Indigo stood before the nearest tank, his collar-light clouding the liquid blue, and took step after step closer, until his nose was inches from the glass. The body inside revolved slightly with unseen currents, turning its cheek to Indigo, like his reflection was turning its face away.

“Successful specimens,” Tamara said.

Indigo didn’t flinch, but I did. “Is this really the time to be a dick about this?”

“I’m not being a dick.” But Lantern-Eyes did glance at Indigo as she spoke. “It’s what they are. Why else would they preserve the bodies?”

“I admire your emotional distance from the situation, Lieutenant Gupta,” Indigo said. He was still staring at the turned cheek and shut eyes of the body in the tank in front of him.

“I’m surprised you don’t have any,” Tamara said. “Isn’t that what Ministers are known for?”

Could she get any worse? The man was staring at his dead relative. I flashed my light into Tamara’s eyes, then put it under my chin to clearly illuminate me glaring at her.

I should’ve known she wouldn’t be cowed. “He massacred your city,” Tamara said to me. “You don’t think that implies some emotional distance? I’m not trying to tear you down, Indigo. I’m trying to understand.”

“Ministers change, if more slowly than humans,” Indigo said. “Some things that have been done should not have been done.”

That was cryptic. I turned to share a glance with Tamara and found her already looking at me, mouth parted in surprise, like she had taken something entirely different from Indigo’s words than I had.

Meanwhile, Indigo was still watching the corpse, both lit underwater-blue. He looked young for such an ancient creature, young and alone.

“Mara Zhu regretted it,” I said, and Indigo’s head twitched, just the slightest bit, like he had arrested a turn towards me. “She realized what she’d done in the end and tried to make it better. I mean, I don’t think she should’ve done it the way she did, hiding everything that happened—it should be known. It should be remembered, even though it was terrible. Then everything bad that happened here didn’t happen for nothing. But what I’m… what I’m trying to say is—the people who made you, they didn’t hate you. They were sorry for what they did.”