They got close to the water recyclers, large, dormant vents. Maria dragged him farther from the shore, and his struggles got more desperate. She heard two splashes and looked up to see Hiro and Wolfgang swimming toward them.
Paul took advantage of her distraction and drove the knife in. Her grasp on him slipped and the knife went in above her left biceps. The water around them bloomed red, and Maria saw Wolfgang grab Paul from behind. Hiro’s hands were on hers, and then her lungs were burning and she couldn’t see because of all the red and then she was struggling to get to the surface, which was so far away.
“If you hadn’t gone in there after her, I wouldn’t have to be doing this again,” Joanna was saying.
Maria opened her eyes to see Joanna removing soaking-wet, red-tinged bandages from Hiro. “Dammit, Hiro, you are still sedated. You could have drowned.”
“I dove in after a guy with a knife,” he said, sounding very tired. “I knew there was a bigger risk than drowning.”
Maria raised her head. She lay on her back on a blanket in the gardens, and the “sun” was about to go down. Her arm was bandaged where Paul had cut her. Her sprained wrist was rebandaged. Wolfgang sat beside her, drinking whiskey from the bottle and passing it to Katrina. Behind them, Paul was gagged and trussed up like a chicken.
Hiro jerked his head toward her. “Doc, she’s awake.”
Joanna left him mid-wrap and came over to Maria. “How do you feel?”
“Stabbed,” she said.
“You’ll be all right,” Joanna said. Then she gave a furtive look to the dying light. “For a while anyway.”
“Are we stuck here?” Maria asked.
“For as long as he keeps us, yeah,” Joanna said. “He’s changed the lock combination on the door.”
Hiro got up, trailing a bandage from his shoulder. He got some candles and lit them, handing each out to the crewmembers without bound hands.
“How is he?” Maria asked.
“Well, he told us you’d been attacked,” Wolfgang said. “And he hasn’t spoken much since.”
“Hey, IAN—whatever your name is,” Maria called. “Why did you warn them?”
“I wanted to see what would happen,” he said.
“That’s…” Maria ran out of words.
“Human?” Hiro asked.
“Sure. That works.” She’d been searching for sociopathic but didn’t want to say it out loud. “Hiro, how are you doing?”
Hiro raised an eyebrow. “You mean am I scared of the homicidal AI, or the homicidal engineer, or am I feeling the bullet holes in my body? Or am I all wet, or am I disappointed that I’m not the biggest threat on the ship anymore?”
Maria waved her hand vaguely, wincing at the throb from her cuts. “All of it.”
He sighed.
“‘Get a degree in mechanical engineering, Hiro. Get a pilot’s license, Hiro. Learn meditation and hypnosis, Hiro. Slip your roommate out of prison, Hiro, drive thousands of clones and humans around in space, Hiro. Sit on your butt for four hundred years, Hiro.’ That’s what they told me. Not once did they say, Get shot and chased and stabbed by crazed crewmates, Hiro!”
“To be fair, you were one of the people doing the chasing, crazed at the time too,” Maria said.
“Semantics,” he said.
Wolfgang passed her the bottle and she took a swig. Joanna raised her eyebrows at them. “None of you should be drinking right now in your shape,” she said.
“IAN is going to kill us anyway,” Hiro said, reaching for the bottle. “At least this way we’ll go happy. And maybe singing.”
“You’re a strange fellow, Hiro,” Joanna said, finally taking a swig of whiskey herself. “Why did you come aboard the Dormire?”
Hiro shrugged. “Same as you. Fresh start.” He told them about his very strange past full of conspiracy and yadokari.
“Lunar clone hunters went after your duplicates and your hackers?” Wolfgang asked. He handed Hiro a container of leftover pork ramen. “Interesting.”
“It’s not paranoia,” Hiro protested. “One of my extra clones got killed on Luna by a clone hunter.”
“Did he?” Katrina asked, swiveling her head to focus on Wolfgang. “That’s so interesting. Don’t you think that’s interesting, Wolfgang?”
Wolfgang didn’t have a chance to answer. IAN spoke up, startling them all.
“Hiro,” IAN said, sounding thoughtful. “That bowl.”
Hiro paused, noodles halfway to his mouth. “Poison?”
“No. Well, probably not. But come here.”
“Where? You don’t have a body!” he asked, exasperated.
Wolfgang took the bowl from him and pointed Joanna’s tablet at it. “Is that what you want?”
“No, you fool, the air vent. I want to smell it.”
Wolfgang glanced at Maria, who shrugged. He carried the bowl back toward the door of the gardens.
“’Cause that would be something he would totally assume,” Hiro said. Maria put her hand on Hiro’s shoulder and whispered something, and he subsided, his eyes growing wide. “Well, shit.”
Wolfgang held the bowl high above his head below one of the intake vents.
IAN said, “Interesting. Go on with your story, Hiro.”
Hiro shrugged. “What else is there to say? I was a good boy in prison. I learned to control the bad guys in my head with hypnotism. I got the job with a lot of help from Detective Lo.” He looked at Joanna. “That’s another reason I know I didn’t do it. She’s below, having gotten a spot in cryo. She did so much for me I would never, ever, do anything to the ship that would harm her.”
“What about the other yadokari?” Wolfgang said. “Would they harm her?”
Hiro said nothing. He didn’t meet Wolfgang’s eyes.
“What did you say about a cellmate?” Joanna asked.
“Oh, before I got out of prison, I worked with Detective Lo to help her smuggle out my roommate. He was going to die for treason. She said he was destined for more. I would have done anything for her, so I created a distraction, started a fight, and she got Minoru out of there. I guess I’ve been thinking about that time a lot lately.”
“And who was the connection Detective Lo had to get you aboard the Dormire?” Maria asked.
“Sallie Mignon.”
They all perked up at the mention of the name.
Katrina smiled and rubbed at the edge of her bandage. “Sallie Mignon! I worked for her. I killed her once, and then she offered me a job, first as a consultant and later as captain here.” She laughed into the whiskey bottle before taking a swig.
“You knew Mignon personally? You killed her?” Maria asked.
“Yeah. I was a corporate assassin. Surprised Wolfgang didn’t tell you.” She shook the whiskey bottle at Hiro. “Different from what you did. You did real assassination. And you”—she pointed the bottle at Wolfgang—“the people you killed never came back. Did they, Hiro?”
Wolfgang glared at her.
“Wolfgang was also an assassin,” Joanna said. “He went from being that famous priest cloned against his will to rogue clone hunter. He spent a good part of his lives hunting the people who kidnapped him, and those like them.”
Katrina laughed. “I remember that. They wanted to make a TV show about him.”
“Kidnapped, and tortured, and killed, and cloned,” Wolfgang said.