I’d been wrong. Without a change of expression, the Minister sliced their blade across the man’s neck and walked away, leaving him behind to expire in the dirt.

My hand and elbow were warm and damp. I realized it was Leah’s blood at the same time I realized the Minister hadn’t killed me.

I blinked, and the blackness receded from my gaze. The Minister had stopped his knife inches from my throat.

His collar-light was set to a dark, dark blue, almost indigo, and the cool light made his pallor even more corpse-grey. The Ministers had two circulatory systems, copper and iron. Copper was more efficient than iron in cold or low-oxygen environments, and the blood ran blue. This indigo Minister had been outside in the vacuum without a suit, and the copper circulatory system must have taken over from the iron. He was a haunting, with his corpse-knife at my neck.

I shut my eyes and swallowed. My neck touched the edge of his blade when I did, lightly enough to draw no blood. When I opened my eyes again he was still watching me, a dark and narrow stare, but some of that primed tension had faded. Without thinking, I tried to turn in the direction of his knife to see what had become of Leah.

The flat of his blade touched the plane of my cheek and turned my head to face forward again.

Quint and Benny were both unconscious, sprawled out across the floor. The indigo Minister left me sitting on the floor and went to Quint first, then Benny. He searched them briefly, disarming them, but leaving Benny’s handbrace on. Then he dragged their bodies like they weighed nothing and set them down in the corner beneath the window.

I sat perfectly still until his hand appeared in front of me. I went numbly with him to the corner where he sat me down. Then he reached out one hand and laid the palm over my eyes, blacking out the rest of the room.

I shut my eyes and kept them shut when he pulled his hand away. When I dared open them again, I found that where Leah should be there was nothing but a shadowy shape. The indigo Minister had pulled a blanket from one of our packs and laid it over her body.

Benny and Quint breathed alongside me, slow and even; drugged, not dead. I wrapped my arms around my knees and made myself as small as possible while the red light in the room dimmed. Was the star outside finally dying? No, if the star was in its death throes, this room would get brighter in the seconds before our atoms were annihilated. This was a darkness as if a cloud had come between us and the sun, a cloud that grew larger and larger. Soon there was no light in the airlock room except for the flashlights we’d dropped and the gleam of the indigo Minister’s collar light.

The shadow outside struck the hull softly, but the impact rattled my teeth. A moment later, the other Ministers appeared.