Salvaged

by Madeleine Roux

  Checking ports . . . . . . . . . . . [OK]

  Allocating space . . . . . . . . . . [OK]

  Running . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [OK]

  [pe_BRIT0711007@ip-72-39-181-61 ~]$

  She scrolled and scrolled, then pinched her forehead, wishing she had something more interesting to report. “This is pretty basic stuff. It looks like common enough code he just wanted on hand for convenience’s sake.”

  “So it won’t hack Merchantia’s bank accounts? That’s a letdown.”

  “No, but this is important,” Misato said, pointing to his handle. “We can use this when we get to CDAS. If he modified anything in their code, he might have left this behind. The amount of Foxfire samples we took on board seemed odd to me. Too much. He could have modified the manifests on the station to make it look like we only took the correct number of samples.”

  “And it all does what?” Rosalyn let her keep the tablet, collapsing back into her chair. “He’s dead. Foxfire is loose. It doesn’t matter if we prove he took extra samples or didn’t.”

  “It does, Rosalyn, it does matter.” Misato set the tablet aside and reached for the young woman’s knee, putting her hand on it lightly. “Whatever happens to Edison and me—no, listen—whatever happens, you need to show all of this to HQ and then to the Global Alliance.”

  Rosalyn’s head drooped on her shoulders. “Merchantia had you guys take those samples, though. We have no idea who’s really to blame. Hell, it could be my dad. And anyway, Piero had some Beta Tech junk in his locker. Before I left for this assignment, this HR guy told me about several partnerships that were causing issues. Merchantia is linked to them, too. I don’t want to say vast corporate conspiracy but—”

  “Vast corporate conspiracy,” Misato breathed. “Sounds like something out of a Dome scenario.”

  “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I wish the asshole was still alive,” Rosalyn said. “I’d like to ask him a few pointed questions.”

  “Wouldn’t we all . . .”

  “Thanks for looking at it,” the salvager added, wheeling back toward the flight screen and staring at it blankly, one gloved knuckle tucked under her visor. “You can keep looking through the code if you want. Maybe there’s something juicy hidden in there.”

  “Or here,” Misato ventured, pointing to her forehead. “He was part of the cluster. There are . . . vestiges of Rayan left in there. I’ve seen it. Maybe if I go deep, I can find Piero, too.”

  That drew Rosalyn’s attention. “If you think you can handle it. I mean, I’m sorry, that sounded really condescending, but isn’t that dangerous? Isn’t that playing right into the Foxfire’s hands?”

  “I’ve practiced quite a lot,” Misato told her with a wink. “This old girl still has a few tricks up her sleeve.”

  38

  The starboard observation deck remained in complete disarray. When the ship ran smoothly, before Foxfire swept through it and the crew, Edison had found the area somewhat peaceful. A band of thick windows wound around the entire middle, and one could sit for hours and hours, just staring at the stars, marveling that they were right there, close enough to touch. The motorized cleaning drone worked alongside him, sweeping broken bins, benches and bits of signage into a pile. Edison worked on the dirty floor, the bottom of the wet mop stained with blackish blood. A web of blue filaments arched over them, a twinkling canopy as bright as the stars through the window.

  It wasn’t peace, exactly, but he found pleasure in the work. He captained the Brigantine, disastrous as it was, but this small act of cleaning and ordering seemed right.

  Other things felt right, too, but he wouldn’t let his mind touch those things yet. His mind wasn’t a safe place.

  The canopy above him lit up, brighter, and he closed his eyes. He felt her there, Mother, behind him, before she ever spoke, the ghostly presence prickling the hairs at his nape. Glancing over one shoulder, Edison found his mother, Diana, watching him, though she appeared covered in a fine, shimmering blue dust.

  “Is she good for you? Is she good to you?”

  Edison remembered that conversation well. Candace, his ex-wife, was never up to Diana’s standards. She didn’t have a job, and preferred staying home with her child. To a woman that had dedicated her entire life to dangerous terrestrial and extraterrestrial missions for the Global Alliance, stay-at-home mom just didn’t cut it.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Forty years old and he was still calling her ma’am. Edison leaned against the handle of the mop, then rubbed the bottom of it hard against the black plasticized floor. They hadn’t been on a ship then, but in his temporary office on Tokyo Bliss. He would transfer to Merchantia’s campus soon after, and he had just finished his own career with the military. It felt like the right time to marry Candace and help her with her kid. Diana saw it another way.

  “That boy is going to need discipline. A lot of it.”

  “Sure.” He shook his head. “That’s up to Candace.”

  “It should be up to you. I know what it’s like to raise a boy on your own. How much it takes out of you. That’s what your children do. Take and take and take.”

  Edison blinked, turning fully to face the apparition. This part of the conversation stung, unfamiliar, and the vision of his mother shifted, jangling out of tune. It hadn’t gone that way. She had wished him well, told him to message if he had any questions about being a parent, and then she made some joke about it being romantic to get married in the stars.

  “Selfish,” Mother said. “That’s what you are. All of you. But you? This is the worst betrayal. You were my favorite.”

  The blue woman floated closer, flickering between the face he knew to be his mother’s and a stranger’s. She reached toward him, fast, her hand lashing out before he could move and closing around his throat. Foxfire was in him, controlled him, wound seamlessly into his nervous system. He felt his throat closing, his chest suddenly tight. His forehead still ached from slamming it so hard against the lab barrier, and now his neck prickled with heat. Suffocating. He was suffocating himself. Edison clawed at his throat, trying to pry her hand away, but there was nothing there.

  “I can take this from you,” Mother said. “Baby. Baby. My baby. She eludes me, but I can take you from her. Children take, Mother can take, too.”

  He didn’t know how to plead with the monster in his own mind, but he tried, breathing deep, forcing himself away from the edge of panic. Foxfire controlled his pain receptors and now he felt it.

  What did it want? Why would it kill him? The Foxfire needed hosts, needed people to carry it forward. But darkness closed in. The prickling in his throat spread to his eyes. Gurgling, scratching, he tried to paw at his throat again, but there were no hands there to bat away.

  You killed me, baby. You killed your own mother.

  He had, it was true. He had told the nurses to end it. They had known for months she wasn’t coming back, but selfishly he let her hang on, sitting next to her each day, finding he didn’t have it in him to lose his mother and his wife at the same time. Candace had stopped coming to see him at the hospital. Too hard on Joey, her son. Edison held his mother’s hand while the machine quit living for her, and sang a quiet song, one she had showed him on his record player.

  You killed me.

  His mother’s voice, and an accusation he couldn’t deny, even if he knew deep inside it was a mercy. She was gone, and it was his responsibility, his need, to let her go.

  Something beyond the blue woman caught his blurring vision. Soon, without oxygen, he would lose his sight altogether, but a figure stepped through the archway into the observation deck. Then she was running, closer, closer, until she slid through the shimmery blue outline of his mother and grabbed him by the shoulders.

  “What’s happening? Edison. Edison. Are you choking?” Rosalyn pounded on his chest, a crude attempt at chest
compressions. Then she shook him a little, waving a hand in front of his face, and the turquoise glow she stood within vanished, dispersing around her, a halo that faded away into the twinkling ceiling.

  Edison bent double, gasping, slapping at his own cheeks to see if they had feeling.

  “I don’t,” he wheezed, “understand.”

  “Did Foxfire just try to kill you?” Her eyes were wide behind the visor, and she helped him kneel on the damp floor. “That doesn’t make any sense.” Rosalyn trailed off, glancing away from him, but then her mouth tumbled open, a squeak escaping. “Unless . . .”

  “Unless?”

  “Rayan’s notes . . . He was convinced Foxfire evolved. It keeps appearing as people you all know, right? Maybe you’re changing it as much as it’s changing you. You’re a connected system, and it could go two ways. That thing, Mother, is becoming more human, and humans are petty.”

  Edison nodded slowly; it made a terrible sense. The cleaning drone bumped around them, then whirred away toward the edge of the room and the padded benches. “I wanted revenge on it, now it’s taking revenge on me.”

  For my own mother. No, he thought, it didn’t know him. It didn’t know how long he had waited before saying goodbye. A captain for years by then, and it was the hardest order he had ever given.

  “And here I was hoping to give you good news,” she muttered.

  “I could use some right now.” He felt safer with her there, more himself. Just her arrival had chased away the vision, and he hoped her presence would anchor him there, far from any tainted memories.

  “Here,” Rosalyn said, pulling a folded piece of paper from her pocket and showing him. It was covered in what looked like scribbles and tiny drawings, one of a fairly standard rectangle, another that was labeled as a close-up and a cutaway. Underneath were lists of chemicals and compounds, some crossed out, some with question marks next to them.

  “What am I looking at here?” he asked, adjusting his spectacles.

  She chuckled and started pointing to random elements. “It’s a modified version of the chip tech we used at Belrose. We were using a chemical coating to encourage protein production on a cellular level, which keeps your body from deteriorating. It’s meant to help with longer and longer space travel when Ionese ore can’t jump us quickly enough,” she explained.

  “That makes a little more sense,” Edison said softly, touching his bruised throat. “I think.”

  “Rayan tried to break down the fungus at a molecular level,” Rosalyn went on. “I’ll skip a lot of the technical stuff, but in theory we can find a chemical coating that will bond to those molecules. We’ve had success with other coated chips attracting unwanted pathogens. When the blood tests come back clean, the chip is removed. It’s like . . . it’s like if you stick a magnet into a bunch of metal filings and pull it out. Find the right coating, and the Foxfire molecules bond to it, then boop.” She mimicked pulling a magnet out of her palm. “No more Foxfire.”

  Edison stared down at the schematic, the corner of his lips twitching. “This is amazing.”

  “It isn’t amazing yet,” she said softly. “Not until I find the right coating and the right lab to run tests, but I’m hoping—if you’re right and CDAS is still functioning—that they’d have the proper equipment to work out a solution. If not, I know we have it back in Montreal. Time isn’t on our side, but it’s better than giving up.”

  “Look at you,” he said softly, handing her the tablet. “Suddenly Little Miss Optimistic.”

  He noticed a dark blush creep across her cheeks. “I want to help you. If my family’s company had anything to do with releasing Foxfire, then, God, it’s the least I could do.”

  “Not to ruin the moment, but don’t you think I’m probably too far gone for this?”

  Rosalyn stared at where he was still touching his neck. “I hoped you wouldn’t bring that up.”

  “It’s . . . Still. It’s still something. It’s hope. Thank you.”

  She grinned across at him and nodded. He wanted to lean over and kiss her, or the shield, but stopped himself, just enjoying her look of momentary satisfaction and shyness. Of course he had known she was smart and resilient, but to see it turned toward a cure to help them felt like an act of compassion. He looked down into her shining eyes and felt his heart clench; she had leaned a little closer and put her hand firmly over his.

  “You’re welcome.”

  39

  Station approach still made her jumpy and nervous, even after dozens of longer flights and casual interstation hops. From where they all stood, watching the flight screen intently, side by side, JAX’s small, square hard drive cradled in Misato’s hands, Coeur d’Alene Station appeared normal enough. Six concentric rings around a central powering core, with elevators running along the core exterior, a docking flat at the very bottom. Most modern stations were organized similarly, and Rosalyn felt an anxious itch at the back of her neck.

  They were getting closer, closer, and the silence in the cockpit made her ears pound.

  “Nothing,” Rosalyn whispered. “Christ. They aren’t hailing us. Why aren’t they hailing us? Customs should have—”

  “I know,” Edison interrupted sternly. “Look at the docking flat. There’s no movement. No shuttles. No ships.”

  Rosalyn covered her mouth with both hands, landing on her helmet visor. “Can you dock us manually?” she asked. Do you even want to?

  “This is going to be bumpy,” he replied darkly, sitting down at the central cockpit chair. “I suggest you take a seat.”

  She moved wordlessly to his right and dropped like a stone, fumbling with numb fingers for the safety belts. The feed was mesmerizing in its horror. It looked fake, like a toy floating out there in the thin mist of space, light asteroid debris drifting by, oddly placid given what must have taken place within.

  From across Edison, she heard Misato’s belts click into place. “They could have evacuated,” Misato said. “We don’t know anything yet.”

  But Edison glanced Rosalyn’s way and she stared back, jaw set. She had been right; something terrible had happened on CDAS, and all his lofty optimism was crashing down around his ears. He looked stricken, a sick, green cast to his dark skin, as if he might be ill at any moment.

  “Can you feel that?” Misato whispered.

  Rosalyn stayed quiet, knowing the question wasn’t for her. All she felt was the cold dread in her body and the nauseating certainty that she needed to harden herself against what was to come, and fast.

  “Yes,” Edison said. “She’s excited. Mother is . . . happy.”

  “Do we have any weapons?” Rosalyn asked, determined not to give in to the tempting pit of hopelessness yawning before them. It wasn’t too late to turn back, but she knew nobody would allow that, including her. If nothing else, this confirmed that there were answers on the station. Being hailed and asked for corporation clearances would have meant that there was a small, small possibility of the Foxfire remaining innocuously on the docks. She hoped against hope that Misato was right, that the contamination had been detected early and evacuations had started immediately.

  But she couldn’t help but fixate on the ships motionless on the docking flat. Nobody going in or out. If there had been an evac, those ships would surely be gone.

  “As soon as everyone started hearing voices, I incinerated Piero’s security kit,” Edison said. “I didn’t know if we would turn on each other or ourselves. I’ve heard some dark stories about deep space mutinies.”

  “I can’t blame you,” she said. “I’ve cleaned up some of those deep space mutinies. I think you two should suit up,” Rosalyn added. “We don’t know what we’re going to find in there. It would at least offer a little protection, and the atmosphere could be nonexistent.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Misato agreed. “But you’re in my suit.”

  “How long
until we dock?” Rosalyn asked, unbuckling.

  “Not long. Like I said, it could get dicey.”

  “I’ll be fast,” she said, grabbing the top of her chair and hoisting herself out. She heard Misato shrug out of her safety belts and follow.

  “I won’t make you wear my old stuff; I have no idea what it smells like in there,” Rosalyn muttered.

  They were silent after that. It was a tense jog to cold storage. Rosalyn hadn’t even considered that this was likely the last time she would see that weird little haven. She wouldn’t miss sleeping on the floor or the constant decontam showers, but all the same, sadness pulled at her like an insistent child until she distracted herself with the business of changing out of the suit, decontaminating it and the old one just to be sure, and dressing again. Misato chewed her nails on the other side of the shield, eyeing the crack in it and the bloodstain there.

  “Rosalyn.”

  She worked at the toggles on her helmet and turned to face Misato, then crouched to gather up the other suit and fold it over her arm. “Yeah?”

  The Brigantine shook as they neared the station, and Rosalyn flailed, reaching for the kitchenette counter to steady herself. Misato braced in a wide stance, managing to stay upright.

  “Remember what we talked about.”

  It wasn’t a suggestion, but a command.

  Rosalyn avoided her gaze, dropping the barrier shield and handing over the cleaner suit. There was a detectable vomit scent clinging to the inside of her helmet.

  “I’m not making any promises until we get on that station,” Rosalyn said, marching past her.

  But Misato caught her by the wrist, making her spin. “Listen to me. Whatever is happening between you and Edison is none of my business. What happens between you and me, you and the future? That’s my business.” She held up the rectangular hard drive. JAX’s brain. “I’ll download whatever relevant data we find on CDAS, but then you’ll be taking it. You’re the only one of us healthy enough to go back to society. You have to . . . you have to tell our story.”