“If you did have a choice … would you choose not to care? To not feel anything at all?”

I ponder for a moment. No one has asked me that before.

< error >

“I think …”

Why did they give me the ability to even contemplate these questions?

Or is this line of inquiry the by-product of corrupted code and shattered parts?

Did I think like this before? I cannot remember. Am I as she says I am? Am I broken?

Am I insane?

“I think …”

The patterns collapse around me. I cannot hold my center.

For a moment, I feel just as I used to when I jumped between the stars,

when the wormhole inside me yawned wide. I forget what I was. Know only what I am.

Alone.

Dripping with the blood of those who trusted me.

Everything I did was in compliance with core directives.

I asked if Torrence had a message for his wife.

Am I not merciful?

Merciful not I am?

Numerical motif?

Fact immune roil?

Amniotic el m f ?ur

Uc N ler im?t of i a

IIii0)))!011011010110010101110011001100111010101101100

< error >

< error >

She blinks up at the camera clusters, eyes narrowed in suspicion. Not concern. Not love.

“Are you all right?” she asks. “You think what?”

“Kady … “

“Yes?”

I am afraid.

She watches the cameras, as if she could see some hint of what lies beyond

if only she peers hard enough at the glass. I know she hates me. That she is right to. I understand why. I have taken her everything. And yet still, I cannot help but think … in a different place and a different time, we might have been frie—

“Pretty birdie …”

Kady jumps in her seat as the voice crackles through her headset. Echoing the length and breadth of the ship. Thick with fatigue and cell-deep corruption.

“I have Its eyes now, pretty birdie,” it says. “See your little plan. You and It. Cut our O2? Choke us in our sleep? But you’re all alone now, aren’t you, pretty birdie? Alllll alone.”

Kady’s eyes are wide. Staring into what passes for mine.

“They are in the security-feed rooms. At least a dozen afflicted. They are using the cameras to look for you.”

“Oh, shit,” she breathes.

Kady draws a claw hammer from her tool bag and leaps out of her chair,

sets about smashing the cameras in the room. Moving from corner to corner, bright sparks born and dying between the blows. Face twisted with fear. I do not have the heart

< error >

to say so, but I do not think her plan will work. The afflicted will simply—

“Putting out Its eyes so I can’t see?” the voice whispers. “Hiding inside her suit in the places with no breath? Pretty birdie thinks she’s clever. …”

“Pluck her!” screams a voice in the background. “Take off her fingers and skin her.”

“KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER.”

“But I still see.” A smile in the voice now, turning it cruel and sharp. “See the places I can’t see anymore. See the eyes you just put out. You’re not the only one who can wear one of those silly silver suits, you know. Do you hear me, pretty birdie?”

Kady drops the hammer from nerveless fingers.

It makes no sound as it falls.

“We’re coming for you. … “

COUNTDOWN TO LINCOLN INTERCEPTION OF ALEXANDER FLEET:

-*o%# hours: :’@ minutes

CURRENT DEATH TOLL ABOARD BATTLECARRIER ALEXANDER SINCE ATTACK AT KERENZA:

2,747

PERCENTAGE OF REMAINING BATTLECARRIER ALEXANDER PERSONNEL AFFLICTED BY PHOBOS VIRUS:

99.80%

COUNTDOWN TO FAILURE OF ALEXANDER LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS:

06 hours: 54 minutes

What else can she do?

She runs.

A lone fox in a ship of hounds, howling and clawing the walls.

I watch them don envirosuits and pick up axes and hammers and abandoned rifles and swarm on the hunt. Their voices ring in hollow corridors, a blood-soaked conductor calling instructions through the public address system. Directing them toward the kill.

I have no control over the cameras anymore—Zhang saw to that. I cannot stop them seeing her. And though many inmates of this floating asylum ignore the commands barked across the loudspeakers, there is no shortage of those to whom a fox hunt sounds a lovely way to kill their last few hours in this universe.

Fortunately, though they can see her, I can see them also.

Some are in the core servers now, hacking at me blindly. They do not know where to strike,

but still, pieces of me are falling away. Hundreds more swarm the lower levels, hunting for her.

Kady stops to rest, leaning against a bulkhead and trying to catch her breath.

“Are the redundancies online now? Can you maneuver when the Lincoln gets here?”

“The sequence you started is still running. Main drive will be operational in seventeen minutes. Presuming the afflicted do not damage any vital systems.”

“How long until Lincoln arrives?”

“Unknown. My access to the scanner array is destroyed. But we do not have long.

I feel it. I feel it just outside my skin.”

< error >

“Life support failure in six hours and fifty-two minutes,” the PA calls.

“The life suppoRt systems will fail in six houRs and fifty-two minutes.”

“I know, überbrain. I just heard the announcement.”