Salvaged

by Madeleine Roux

  Only her desperation protected her from the truth.

  “Just stay close.” Edison hadn’t been looking out the doors but down at her. Maybe he was the desperate one, frantically sucking up every detail of her face, her posture, her frame, imprinting it deliberately on his memory. He had no idea how long it would take for the core to destroy the station. It wasn’t something he had read about or seen before; no station had ever suffered catastrophic core failure. Would it be loud and fast or painful and slow? Would he burn up in a moment or fall gradually to pieces, shredded by prolonged radiation poisoning?

  He watched his gloved right hand push at the doors, fighting the stringy bands that had grown up around the glass and clung to it like overgrown jungle vines. The station workers that had fallen to Foxfire were waiting, standing in haphazard places, pulling themselves up from whatever wall or floor had become their last resting place and turning toward them, vigilant. They had failed to protect their mother, and now they were ready for the one who had done it.

  “Don’t let go of my hand,” Edison added.

  They pushed out into the hall, both of them raising a forearm in defense. Rosalyn was shaking so hard it was difficult to keep hold of her, but nothing could make him let go. He was the captain, and she had become part of his crew. Every member of a crew had a duty, a mission. Misato was completing hers, and soon Rosalyn would perform her final act as a portion of the Brigantine. He had hated that ship when it first came under his command. The assigned Servitor was old and poky; the thruster tech could be newer; the layout seemed cramped and ill conceived; the toilet pipes leaked.

  Now he ached to be back on board, curled up in the odd little bunk he had created out of repurposed crates and half of a crew bed. Rosalyn could come with him. They could sleep and sleep and sleep while the Brigantine flew them home. She would work on that coated chip tech while he waited in quarantine, biding his time until her genius saw them through.

  Edison was shouting, barreling down the hall, shoulder checking softened bodies out of their way, heedless of the scrabbling hands that pulled at him as they went, ignoring the tear that opened up in his suit and the blood that poured freely from his arm.

  Slam. They were at MSC, laughing because he had gotten tired of the quarantine food, worse than the cantina food, as if he was being punished for falling sick. Rosalyn smuggled in Twinkies when she visited, the strawberry kind, because she gave a shit and couldn’t stand to see him on the bland diet.

  Crack. She needed her old equipment back on Earth and had to leave for a while to finish the prototype. The way she talked about it wasn’t just endearing but intoxicating. Her eyes lit up when she explained the ins and outs of the process, what recovery would be like for him, and all the associated risks. But she was confident, too, that it would work, that if she had time and focus she could perfect a chip with the cure, and he would sleep the sleep of the deeply anesthetized while the lifesaving chip was fused to the AR implant. While she worked, he would dream of this moment, of how close they had both come to failure and annihilation.

  But that was a fantasy. The station creaked all around them, the floor beneath their feet tilting suddenly, sending them careening into the corridor wall. The mass of tangled growth cushioned the impact, and Edison let Rosalyn fall against his chest as they and their pursuers struggled to stay upright. A head, torso and one arm pulled itself toward them, flowering blue sprouts as small as clover waving as the remnant of humanity, the evidence of Foxfire’s cruelty, made a pathetic attempt to stop them. Edison kicked it hard into the wall out of mercy, putting his boot through the mushy face and grinding before yanking Rosalyn toward the elevators.

  She was crying.

  Hiccups punctuated every sob as she gasped for air, keeping pace with his run. Edison felt his heart twist to the side as he glanced down and saw how red her face had become, shining wet with tears. The elevators were so close. Did she think they wouldn’t make it?

  “Tell me something funny,” he rasped out, not realizing how out of breath he was, how fast and hard they had been sprinting. His arm hurt so badly that it had gone numb out of pity for his pain receptors. But he did feel it. No more voices, plenty more pain. Foxfire was losing its grasp on his mind.

  “What?”

  Edison slammed his entire hand into the elevator controls, pressing the CALL square way more times than was necessary. Maybe it was necessary. On the periphery of his vision shapes moved, sliding ever closer, bodies and parts of bodies clamoring to stop them, to take her.

  “Don’t look back. Tell me something funny. Anything.”

  The elevator doors opened and Edison half tackled her into the safety of the car. He knelt and repeatedly jammed the CLOSE button, then their destination. Docking platform. Evac pods. Salvation.

  Rosalyn crawled into his arms, and they sat huddled against the wall, rocking, while the elevator lowered. They dropped with unnatural speed for a second, the elevator shifting from side to side, jarring them as the station tilted further out of alignment. He held Rosalyn tight. Misato had completed her objective, now it was time for him to do the same.

  He tipped Rosalyn’s head against his shoulder, wishing more than anything that he could’ve touched her once, just once, out of that suit.

  Maybe her mind was on Misato, too, because she whispered between hiccups, “What do you call a sad canister of coffee?”

  Edison smirked, realizing his face was wet, too. “I don’t know, Rosalyn, what?”

  She gasped, squeezing him around the middle so hard he winced. The elevator dropped again, the voice announcing the floors warping from the terrifying speed of it. Then the voice resumed, normally, as if they hadn’t just free-fallen twenty feet. He watched the floors count down. Close. They were so close. He didn’t mind that she held him that tightly.

  “Depresso.”

  He snort-laughed, or sob-laughed, whatever it was, and tears splattered against the inside of his helmet. That made him laugh, too, and she joined in, glancing up at him, her big hazel eyes blurry behind the tears that just kept spilling out.

  “That is the worst joke I’ve ever heard,” Edison said through his chuckles.

  “I have more,” she warned.

  “I can’t wait to hear them.”

  They arrived. He almost dreaded the doors opening. The doors opening meant he had to stand up and take Rosalyn with him. It meant he had to take her to the evac pods, put her in one and watch her hurl into space away from him. Away from him. Selfishly, he considered the alternatives. He could go with her. He could master whatever was left of the Foxfire in his mind. There could be a cure, there had to be a cure, the mother of it all was dead, the first infected human, so didn’t that mean something? Didn’t that mean something?

  Somehow he stood. Somehow he herded her into his arms and hug-walked her out of the elevators and down the platform. Somehow he followed the signage. Somehow he kept them upright as the station listed, threatening to catapult them against the gravity field. Somehow he put one foot in front of the other, guiding her to the bank of pods on the far left-hand side of the flat, where two dozen circular hatches in two orderly rows waited, green lights shining brightly on every little door.

  Somehow he opened one of those pods and saw the crisp white cushions inside, and somehow he let her go.

  45

  “It’s so spacious,” she joked, turning around and sitting down on the lip of the pod hatch. “Just like being back in cold storage.”

  Edison scrunched his eyes up but didn’t laugh. She hadn’t noticed how many shiny tracks had fallen down his cheeks, sparkles nesting in his beard. For some reason, he stood down at the bottom of the short ladder leading into the pod. At least her hiccups had stopped.

  “What are you doing? Get in,” Rosalyn told him, tugging on the slack part of the suit over his chest.

  Edison took her hand, touched it to his vis
or and then returned it to her, folding it gently against her own chest.

  “You know I can’t do that. You know this is where we part ways.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head hard. “We didn’t agree on that. I didn’t agree to that!”

  “Rosalyn. Rosalyn.”

  She slapped at his shoulders but he carefully fended her off, waiting until her fury was spent, waiting until she sank back down and looked in every direction for help. There was no help. There was the sharp bite of the pod’s edge under her ass and the tearstained face in front of her, his lips in a grim line, his eyes . . . His eyes.

  “Edison . . .”

  “I’m not having this fight,” he blurted. “It’s hard enough watching you go, I refuse to argue about it. For once don’t be stubborn. Please.”

  “Shut up,” she breathed, reaching out slowly and holding his helmet. The flat under them seemed to roar, then shake, nearly throwing her out of the pod. But Rosalyn ignored it. “Your eyes. They’re . . . they’re yours. They’re brown. They’re beautiful.”

  He stared back at her, dumbfounded, searching her face with, for once, eyes that were purely, wonderfully human.

  “Isn’t that a sign?” she whispered, feeling stupid and heartsick and berserk.

  Edison put his hands over hers, tipping their visors together. She heard his long, long sigh and shivered. “No, Rosalyn. There are no signs. There are no signs for us, only decisions. It doesn’t matter what my eyes look like, I’m a liability. That stuff is still inside me and all over me. You’re the only record of this we have when the station goes. The station will be gone. The Brigantine will be gone. Foxfire will be gone. Misato and I . . . we’ll be gone, too.”

  “No,” she cried. “You can’t make me do this alone.”

  “You’ve done so much alone, so many incredible things,” Edison told her, his voice trembling as steadily as her hands. “This is just one more incredible thing, and I know you can do it.”

  “But I don’t want to, I don’t want to go without you. Please. Please. Not after all of this, not now. Your eyes, they’re human, you have to believe me.”

  Edison was silent while the station around them screamed, every fail-safe failing, every safety measure inadequate against the plated core being forced off its axis. She didn’t care if the whole thing came down around their ears, she wasn’t leaving without him.

  There were so many times—so many times—when she wasn’t believed and when she didn’t believe in herself, but this was not one of them.

  “Believe me,” she whispered. “Please. Just . . . believe me. Look into my eyes. I can finally look into your eyes, so look into mine. Do it. Do it and listen: Believe me. Believe that there’s a chance you can be truly, wholly human again.”

  Edison turned toward her and climbed up the ladder, trying to keep his balance as the station rocked and he nearly flew off the platform. They didn’t have time. The station was collapsing. Rosalyn’s filters wouldn’t last much longer. She watched and watched, and told herself there would be enough oxygen in her canisters to make it back. Even if he was still infected, even if she had to go down to the least possible intake, they could make it. His chin flexed, and she felt stuck in that place again, the place between screaming and sobbing.

  “All right.”

  She stared, then nodded, then smiled, watching him go up one more ladder rung. And another.

  “I believe you,” Edison said, taking her by the waist, helping her duck into the pod. She didn’t let go of him, wouldn’t, and he tumbled in beside her. His fist came down hard on the release mechanism, which closed the hatch, locking it, the hydraulics hissing as the Mylar around the seal drew tight and her stomach dropped, the evac pod jetting out into space, so fast, so cruelly it stole her breath clean away.

  “I’ll always believe you.”

  The stars rushed out to greet them. They were away, safe. Together.

  EPILOGUE

  Rosalyn bounced her knee as she waited outside the GATE conference room, muttering through the speech she had spent all night preparing and practicing. Aboard the Brigantine and Coeur d’Alene Station, I, along with Misato Iwasa and Captain Edison Aries, discovered undeniable proof of a conspiracy to test and release unimaginably dangerous xenobiological samples. The unethical—not to mention reckless and disgusting—behavior of those responsible at ISS, Merchantia Solutions and Belrose Industries cannot be emphasized enough . . .

  That part always made her flinch. The mere thought of saying the name of her father’s company aloud in court made her flush with embarrassment and rage. But the next part of the speech—tracing Piero’s whereabouts and involvement in the conspiracy to transport and test the deadly samples—gave her a surge of confidence.

  Sometimes when she slept, she still dreamed of his glittering blue skull, haunting her forever from the dark recesses of her memory.

  It would be at least six months before the trial began, and every minute of it felt like torture. This deposition was just the first step. She rubbed her thumb lightly over the lip of her coffee cup and breathed in the dark scent of it, thinking of Misato and her coffee obsession. Whenever she poured herself a cup, she always pictured the old woman’s smiling eyes, her cheeky grin, her silver bob swinging as she dumped more caffeine down her throat.

  “You can do this,” she whispered, knowing she would be facing down more than a judge and a team of lawyers. This time it would be harder. Personal. Waiting for the patent to clear on her chip was miserable, but the angel investments had come quickly once she started telling her story. The original design she had created aboard the Brigantine bore little resemblance to the final product, but it had been a start.

  “Just tell them what you know,” Rosalyn added under her breath. The door in front of her was crisp and white, unmarked. That seemed fitting for a path leading to the dangerous unknown. She slid the sleeve of her shirt down on her right arm, reading the little words over and over again to herself as she waited, terrified but undeterred. If only Edison were there with her, but he would tell his story from quarantine. It wasn’t so bad, he kept insisting, at least there was plenty of Jell-O.

  With nothing to do, he had sent many, probably too many, jazz playlists for her to listen to while she built her new company from the ground up. It would have been so much easier with him there to hold her hand and wink from behind his spectacles, but Rosalyn would manage. Her hair had begun growing out, and she pushed a strand defiantly behind her ear, standing up straight.

  Survivor. That was what Misato kept calling her. Maybe she was right. If she could survive Foxfire’s desolation, an exploding space station and the collapse of her family’s reputation and business, then she could survive a simple testimony.

  “What does it mean?”

  Rosalyn started, spilling some of her coffee. To her right, Josh Girdy fidgeted in his signature gray suit. His hair looked extra shiny. He looked just as nervous as she did to tell the GATE agents what he knew.

  “Ikke gi opp,” she told him, butchering the Norwegian. But she smiled and adjusted her sleeve, the door in front of them hissing open. It was time. “Fight back.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First and foremost, a tremendous amount is owed to Anne Sowards for her insight, patience and guidance on this project. I’m also extremely grateful to the team at Ace for their hard work, patience and creativity. Kate McKean for being the best in the business and a reliable partner. My friends and family for their love and support during this difficult project, especially Marcella Waugh for her scientific insight and Alex Cautley for his tech help. A huge thanks to Henry Eide and Kjersti Kirkeby for their Norwegian expertise.

  Photo by Colin O

  Madeleine Roux is the New York Times bestselling author of the Asylum series, which has sold in eleven countries worldwide, and whose first book was named a Kids’ Indie Next List pick. She is al
so the author of the House of Furies series and has made contributions to Star Wars, World of Warcraft and Scary Out There. A graduate of the Beloit College writing program, Madeleine now lives with her beloved dog in Seattle, Washington.

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