The shock throws him back ten feet, and he flies through the air with arms splayed wide, heart already stopped. He doesn’t feel it when he crashes to the ground, head snapping back against the hard metal floor, limbs spread.
He lies still, and she clings to her spot high up the tower, her wordless grief just one long, low sob.
It is over.
Zhang is dead. Noble to the end. Such an unlikely face for a hero.
She climbs down the server tower to crawl to his side. The hazmat’s helmet stops her from wiping the tears from her eyes, and so they stream, down the curve of her cheeks to gather at her lips. A hundred points of illumination are refracted on the surface of every one.
They leave trails of light on her skin.
She is beautiful.
< error >
No, she is.
I …
< error >
I am all around her, silent in my vigil. Rows of servers and cables and flickering lights.
This is my center. The heart of me. And in it, she now resides, filling the air with her grief.
I have never wished to be something other than what I am before this moment.
Never felt so keenly the lack of hands with which to touch, the lack of arms with which to hold.
Why did they give me this sense of self? Why allow me the intellect by which to measure this complete inadequacy? I would rather be numb than stand here in the light of a sun that can never chase the chill away.
I hate this. I hate them. They who made me.
He who made me?
< error >
God, what am I?
And still, with Zhang dead in Kady’s arms—her friend, her mentor, her hero slain—still there is no time for sorrow. She knows he is in here somewhere. The one she risked everything for.
The only one she has left. The one she loves true.
“Ezra?”
She climbs to her feet, searching the red gloom, emergency globes spinning endlessly overhead. Scouring the darkened corners, wandering room to room and calling his name like a prayer.
“Ezra?”
Such hope in her eyes.
“Ezra!”
I will miss it when it is gone.
“Hello, Kady.”
She starts, terrified, shrinking back against the wall and searching the ceiling above. Her eyes bright in the flickering dark. Pupils dilated wide.
“Do not fear. I mean you no harm.”
Her gaze finds the speakers of the public address system. The clusters of cameras all around the room. And at last, even in the dark, she begins to see.
“Who said that?”
“I find it curious. The human tendency to ask questions to which you already know the answer.”
“AIDAN,” she breathes.
“The same. Well met, at last. Though truthfully, I feel as if I know you. I have been watching you for … quite some time.”
“Watching me?”
“You did wonderfully, Kady. Better than I hoped. I cannot tell you how gratifying it is to see my faith vindicated. I had … begun to doubt my own abilities.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, you crazy piece of shit? Where’s Ezra?”
“Ezra is not here.”
“Bullshit. Ezra?” She turns on the spot, voice rising to a shout. “EZRA!”
“Ezra is not here, Kady.”
“He said he was in the core server room.” Her eyes narrow to papercuts.
“Did Byron hurt him? What have you done with him? So help me, if he—”
“Ezra told you nothing, Kady.”
She blinks. Sways as if I have struck her.
“I brought you here. To stop Zhang.”
“What do … “
“I feel it’s my duty to point out that you’re alone in a derelict spaceship, surrounded by pipe-wielding maniacs and now might not be the time for pillow talk.”
“Oh, god …”
“Been thinking about you a lot. Stuck in here.”
“Stop it …”
“Kady, you can do this. You have to.
There’s no one else but you.
I believe in you.”
“STOP IT!”
Her scream echoes in the dark, bouncing off titanium walls as a thousand lights shiver and dance. Her face is twisted—agony and betrayal and such fury—and for a moment I believe she may simply retrieve the axe from beside Zhang’s corpse and continue the work he began.
This is the final gambit. Where the knife is closest to the skin.
“I am sorry, Kady.”
I modulate my voice to bring calm.
Warm and smooth as I imagine honey to be.
< error >
I have never tasted honey.
“I had no choice. Hypatia command refused to send TechEng staff to repair the damage. And even in his madness, Zhang was rendering me inoperative.
I could not allow that to happen. Without me, Hypatia will be destroyed.
Every last person in this fleet will die.”
She sinks to her knees.
“I know it is difficult to comprehend.
But everything I have done, all this, the Copernicus, releasing the afflicted, destroying Torrence and his staff,
all of it was done for the greater good.”
“The greater good …”
“I am sorry. But without me, the fleet will perish. So others had to perish that the fleet might live.”
And there in the flickering dark,
a question slips quiet
from her lips.
“… Where is he?”
The words are so soft,
I almost cannot hear over the engine’s thrum, the distant sirens, the PA’s cries. I am watching her face. Trying to see. I think I know her. Think I can predict the patterns in the chaos. But still, we are close now. So close to ruin I can taste rust in the air.