Aurora's End (The Aurora Cycle #3)(49)

“Hey.” He shuts off the flashlight and, with a bit of effort, works his way down the ladder so we’re eye to eye. “Hey, none of that. You’re not useless.”

I roll my eyes. “I appreciate the vote of confidence, Legionnaire de Seel. But theoretical physics isn’t exactly my forte.”

“Maybe not.” He shrugs, his exo hissing. “But since Tyler got snagged by the GIA, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the person holding our whole squad together is you. We need you, Scar.”

He reaches out and brushes a tear away with a silver finger.

“I need you.”

I shake my head in wonder. “How have you been in front of my eyes this whole time, and I’m only just seeing you now?”

He smiles, shrugging. “I’m just glad you do.”

“I do,” I whisper.

And I move closer, and I feel his arm slip around my waist, and a slight shock as our lips meet, electricity and butterflies surging inside me as the station rocks around us and he presses up against me and Zila’s voice rings out over the wailing alarms.

“Are you two spending precious minutes in the middle of a heretofore unheard-of temporal paradox engaging in frivolous presexual activity?”

We look down the shaft, see Zila climbing up quickly with Lieutenant Kim right behind her.

“You’re such a hopeless romantic, Z,” I call.

“We do not have time to waste on trivialities, we may—”

“Relax, Legionnaire Madran,” Fin says, giving me a wink and slipping out of my arms. “By the time you’re up here, I’ll be done.”

“You ladies got the passkey?” I yell.

“We were successful,” Zila calls back. “Thanks to Nari’s quick thinking.”

“Nari?” Fin mutters. “She and Dirtgirl are on a first-name basis now?”

“Behave,” I mutter.

“What if I don’t wanna?” he asks, winking again.

The lock clunks, Fin extinguishes his cutter, and with a labored whine from his exosuit, our Gearhead wrenches the elevator doors wide just as Zila and Kim reach us. Like always, the silent alarm will be sounding somewhere as soon as we set foot in the corridor, but we have a little time left before the SecBoys intercept us.

Fast as we can, we dash down the smoke-filled corridors, arriving at Pinkerton’s office. Zila swipes the dead man’s passkey through the reader, an agonizing few seconds pass before the lock switches to green and we hustle inside to the tune of wailing sirens.

The office is plush—well, about as plush as you’re going to get on a space station, at least. There are dozens of glass cases around the room, dimly lit by emergency lighting. A bunch of strange objects float inside, suspended on cushions of zero grav. It reminds me a little of Casseldon Bianchi’s office on Sempiternity.

Looks like Pinkerton was some kind of collector.

I squint at one of the artifacts slowly revolving in a thin beam of light. It’s flat, rectangular, its surface old and cracked. There might have been writing on it, but it’s worn away with time. And there’s … paper inside?

“What’s that?” Fin asks, peering through the glass.

“No clue,” I murmur.

“Are you joking?”

We glance behind us, find Nari staring at us like we’re simple.

“Almost always,” Fin shrugs. “But in this case, I honestly have no idea what this is.”

“Don’t they have books in the future?”

“This is what books used to look like?” I ask, bewildered.

“A hundred or so years ago,” Nari nods. “Dr. Pinkerton collects antiques. First day I got posted to station, he gave me a lecture on preserving the treasures of the past.” She shrugs. “Then he never spoke to me again.”

“This is a book?” Fin blinks. “It’s wrapped in dead animal skin!”

“That’s the way we used to do it.”

Fin raises an eyebrow at me. “You dirtchildren, I swear …”

I smile, looking more around the room. I can see holopics of Pinkerton’s family. There’s a row of potted cacti that must have been lined up against the plexiglass window, but impacts to the station have knocked them all over, and they lie shattered on the ground.

“Who puts spiky plants somewhere they can— Never mind, don’t try and explain,” Fin mutters, carefully circumnavigating them.

A long glass desk sits against one wall, the glowing screen of a personal dataport lighting the gloom.

Zila has already slid into the chair, swiped the passkey through the terminal, and begun typing. Say what you will for humanity’s technological strides over the past two centuries, aside from being way slower, the computer seems to function basically the same. Zila is soon scrolling through menus, hands waving before the sensors, sweeping holographic displays aside in her search for information. Lieutenant Kim stands behind her, looking over her shoulder. Fin’s there too, murmuring advice.

“Attention, Glass Slipper personnel. Hull breach on Decks 13 through 17.”

I stand by the window, looking out at the chaos beyond.

Space is mind-bendingly big. Even the subspace pocket of the Fold is simply too massive for the human brain to wrap itself around. But that storm of dark matter out there is just colossal enough to be terrifying. As I stare out at the pulsing tempest, that same feeling returns—the impression that I’m tiny, insignificant, in too deep and all the way over my head. I think of Tyler. I think of Auri. I even think of Kal. Wondering where they are. Hoping they’re okay.