He made a gesture she didn’t understand: something like a shrug and a cocking of his head. Fulbreech said, “It’s why I went looking for him. I figure we can save the rest of them, use them against Boone and the others—”

Despite herself, a sharp, painful, hysterical kind of laugh burst out of Park at that. The arctic bite of the freezer was still bracing her up, as if she needed to be braced—as if seeing him in the flesh again had made her go soft. As if she was sagging into herself, into the floor. But now a fierce, cold anger animated her, and she said, “You won’t use them for shit. They’re not your tools. They’re thinking, feeling beings—not pawns in your stupid, senseless, idiotic—schemes!”

She stopped talking; took in Sagara and Fulbreech’s shocked expressions, both. The color of Fulbreech’s eyes seemed to have changed, impossibly: now they were spangled with gold.

Sagara was still holding up the syringe like he was holding Fulbreech at gunpoint. He said, “So you’re trying to say you’re defecting back to our side?”

Something passed over Fulbreech’s usually open face; emotions shifted like tectonic plates. He said faintly, “I was always on your side.”

Liar, Park thought, even as the vision she’d had in the freezer plucked at her. Sagara said, “Not true. Our side is with the ISF. You don’t support them.”

“He doesn’t speak for me,” Park interrupted then. “I’m—” On my own, she wanted to say. Then she glanced at Jimex. Or on the androids’ side.

Fulbreech was shaking his head. “I’m on your side,” he said again. “Both of yours. I don’t support ISF, no, not when they’re forcing my brother to—” He stopped himself. “It doesn’t matter. I just want to make sure nothing happens to you.” His mouth tightened. “I know what we—what I—did was wrong. And I’m sorry. It was never meant to go that way. But I’m trying to make it right now.”

Neither of them said anything to that. Jimex looked between all three of them and said, “We do not have much time left.”

“Time until what?” Park asked, just as Sagara said, “He’s right. They’ll be taking off at any moment.” He turned to Park. “We need to get control of the ship before that happens. If we get into a firefight while the ship is in motion, we could all be killed. And we can’t let them pilot us to nowhere-space, where ISF can’t reach us. We need to end them and go back to Corvus.”

“About that—” Fulbreech began.

They both silenced him with a glare. Sagara said, “Now’s the time to prove yourself, Fulbreech. Will you come with us to get weapons?”