1
NOW
Verux Peace and Rehabilitation Tower, Earth, 2149
My head is throbbing again, a white-hot line of pain from the back of my skull down to the right side of my jaw, and a dead man is signaling me from across the common room. His hand waves frantically in a “come here” gesture, his eyes wild with panic.
Resolutely, I turn my gaze away from the hallucination and attempt to refocus my attention on the living visitors across the scarred and battered plastic table from me.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” My tongue feels thick, unwieldy. That’s the drugs. Both too many and not enough.
“I said, you lied to us.” Reed Darrow leans forward impatiently. An older, executive-type in a black suit and a vintage watch paces just behind him, supervising our conversation, with a thoughtful—and yet still disapproving—scowl.
“About what?” I’m confused. It’s not difficult to do these days, but with Reed, a junior investigator from Verux’s QA Department, I’m almost always clear. He’s been in here every few days since the Raleigh search and rescue team dropped me off into Verux’s care three weeks ago.
Max Donovan, my other visitor, clears his throat loudly. “Verux wants to help you. But we need you to help us help you.” He nods at me in encouragement, his familiar face wreathed in wrinkles I’m not yet used to. He was just an investigator for my employer the last time I saw him, but now he is apparently the head of the whole QA Department.
“I’ve told you everything I remember.” My skull fracture is, according to the Tower doctors, healed. And during the month-long return trip to Earth, the Raleigh’s MedBay staff tested me for every virus, bacteria, and parasite under this sun. Not to mention all the “exploratory” diagnostics and procedures over the last three weeks in the Tower. The results are always the same: the visions, pain, and memory loss are likely psychological, not physical in origin.
Reed ignores me. “You know, some people think you murdered your crew for a larger share of the find before taking that escape pod.”
I stiffen, hands clenching against the urge to hit him.
“Then you hitched a ride back here with the Raleigh team, gambling that we’d buy this whole amnesia and psychotic break story and you could hide in the Tower.” He waves his hand around, as though conjuring an image from thin air.
The Verux Peace and Rehabilitation Tower is a dumping ground for all the broken and damaged. Including me. Verux has more ships, more crews working in space than any other corporation. And sometimes docking clamps don’t disengage. Sometimes people can’t handle the isolation of years in space. Sometimes a coolant leak contaminates the oxygen, killing off brain cells before it can be corrected. Shit happens. Sometimes even to you. Sometimes even if you can’t remember it.
I swallow hard against my dry-as-dust throat. “My crew … they’re dead, but I didn’t kill them.”
“You sure you want to stick with that story?” Reed asks with a terse smile. He holds up a folded piece of paper—real paper, which means it came from the highest levels of Verux. “We’ve been monitoring K147,” he says.
Just the sector name makes me flinch. I lost everything there.
“So?” I ask.
“We’ve got movement, Claire,” Max says gently.
Not possible. My lips go numb, and a loud hum starts up in my ears. “The Aurora?” I whisper.
Max nods.
“Your ghost ship is on the move, Kovalik,” Reed injects with smug satisfaction.
Max leans forward in his chair to meet my eyes. “Maybe it’s time you tell us everything again. From the beginning.”
Copyright © 2021 by S. A. Barnes
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