Even after just a few minutes of study, Eliot could pin which crew member each room belonged to. Fitting then, that hers was so bare. The walls had the sterile feel of a science lab—all white in an effort to disguise the bunk’s tininess. Paint could only do so much. Her dress took up half the hexagon, making it nearly impossible to turn.
Good thing my luggage is so compact, she thought, after the acrobatics of sliding her door shut. When the lock lit, Eliot flopped onto the bed, unbuttoned her boots, and rested her head against the wall.
Too much running, too much death. Couldn’t she shut her eyes for just a moment?
When Eliot did, she could hear the crew just past her sliding door, bursting with questions: “Who is that girl, Farway?” “What’s she doing here?” “Where is the book bling?” None of which Subject Seven would be able to answer. Beyond and below, she heard the Titanic’s orchestra launch into the beginning notes of their lives’ final songs. She tried not to think of Charles, with his peach-fuzz face, and failed.
It was good that she remembered him, though it was exhausting to do so.
No rest for the weary. Or the dying. Or the dead.
Eliot’s eyes remained closed when she brought up her interface. A family snapshot was the first thing to appear: Mom, Strom, and Solara on a boat ride through the drowned city of Venice. Towers rose from the water behind them—half elegant, all eerie. Strom wrestled into scuba gear while Solara knotted her hair in a bun. Eliot’s mother was midconversation, words forever suspended. Eliot used to study these pixels for hours, trying to conjure the sights, sounds, scents of that day. Now it was a placeholder as the menu loaded.
Figures and charts and forecasts and six separate files of datastreams spackled the darkness. Eliot flicked past these to the newest file: SUBJECT SEVEN. It contained a comprehensive profile of Farway Gaius McCarthy… fudged DNA tests, school scores, palmdrive accounts, past residences, current address: Via Ventura Zone 3. It also held a spectacular datastream of the May 5, 2371 AD, Sim hack and the resulting expulsion.
The rest of the file’s space was waiting to be filled. Eliot transferred her past few hours into it. Her life had become a constant datastream—recorded, stored, labeled, rinse, repeat. This episode went down as Subject Seven Second Encounter. April 14, 1912 AD.
“Evening, Vera.” Eliot kept her voice soft when she addressed her interface, in case Subject Seven’s crew had taken to pressing ears to her door. “What’s the weather like on your end?”
I AM A COMPUTER, INCAPABLE OF EXPERIENCING PHYSICAL CLIMATES. Vera replied the way she always did—a dry voice-text combination. Programmers had given her a British accent from the olden years. Often Eliot took comfort in the sound, but this evening it reminded her of all the passengers she’d mingled with.
History could be such a betch.
“The climate here is terrible,” she whispered.
ACCORDING TO MY DATA, THE TEMPERATURES AT THIS DATE AND LOCATION ARE BELOW FREEZING. Vera wasn’t much of a shoulder to cry on. The interface’s range of support was strictly technical. WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU, ELIOT?
“Subject Seven should be within range.” The Invictus fit in a one-hundred-meter radius, which was all Eliot needed. “Lock on and start the countersignature scan.”
TARGET ACQUIRED. SCAN OF SUBJECT SEVEN FOR COUNTERSIGNATURE EMISSIONS WILL NOW COMMENCE. READINGS ARE 0% COMPLETE. WHAT ELSE CAN I DO FOR YOU, ELIOT?
That was all. The scan’s climb to 100 percent could take days, and there wasn’t much Eliot could do before the results accumulated. Positive or negative. Catalyst or casualty. Here was a chance to keep her eyes shut, to lure sleep to her like some wild beast for the trapping. It did not come gently. How could it, when the cold night cried out below, awash with violins no pillow could mute?
Eliot piled blankets over her gown. Her bones sagged into the mattress; her heart would not stop shivering.
12
CHORUS OF THE DAMNED
WHEN IN DOUBT, MAKE TEA. It was a rule Priya Parekh lived by, upheld by her mother and her mother’s mother before that. How many all-nighters spent studying for her Medic examinations had been made bearable by the constant supply of masala chai her mother brewed?
They were in for a long night. Or day. Or whatever time it was. Time traveling never failed to screw up the internal body clock, one of the reasons Priya kept her infirmary cabinets stocked with melatonin med-patches. She doubted even those would help Far now. He was wound up tighter than Saffron on a sugar high. Priya’s own movements were methodical as she put a pot of black tea leaves on to boil and gathered the spices—ginger, cardamom, star anise, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg—all stronger than the ones from her childhood, and fresher, too. The manufactured ingredients her mother was forced to use couldn’t hold a candle to past-procured karha mix.
The water came to a boil as Far paced. Priya added the spices, poured in fresh milk, and fought the urge to embrace her boyfriend every time he passed the kitchenette. After almost a year together, she’d learned that what calmed her only made Far antsier.
“What. Just. Happened?” Imogen flopped onto one of the common area couches. Only her bluish hair was visible over the armrest. Saffron was batting at it. “Who is that girl, Farway? What’s she doing here?”
All apt questions, though the mystery that piqued Priya’s interest the most was: “Marie Antoinette?”
“Freelancer, my tail! Liar’s trying to gaslight me,” Far said. “She showed up in my final exam Sim in the Hall of Mirrors dressed as Marie Antoinette. She was the one who made me fail. I knew I’d been framed!”
Imogen sat up, frowning. “Marie Antoinette had blue eyes, Farway. Not brown. Everyone knows that.”
“Your assessment of global knowledge is generous,” he told his cousin. “The computer said she was the queen of France and I had no reason to doubt it. Neither did the licensing board, apparently.”
Priya poured tea into four mugs and passed them along. Gram first—he looked like he needed a caffeine jolt the most, face lost inside his console screens. She set his drink by the green Rubik’s Cube, where it’d be least likely to spill. “That’s one Hades of a hacking job, though, fooling the Corps like that.”
Imogen’s eyes wavered behind steam as she accepted her mug. “Was she fooling the Corps? Maybe this Eliot character is with the Corps. Think about it. She’s got access to TM tech. She not only knew we were going to be here, but she also knew what Farway was looking for.”
Far stopped under a heinously bright three-piece flash-leather suit—the one he’d donned to snatch the Cat’s Eye Emerald from the Caponian Collective minutes before their headquarters were destroyed in the millennium’s biggest organized crime raid—and shook his head. “The Corps would’ve arrested us as soon as we landed. They wouldn’t remove the Rubaiyat out of its original time.”