The cook hadn’t moved a muscle the whole time. He was staring at the woman on the ground, my bloody self, like he’d seen a ghost, and the longer he stared, the more his perennially icy gaze melted. By the time he spoke, he looked almost human, and almost broken.

“Not this,” he whispered, voice shaking. “I did it for her, Brian. Don’t make me do this.”

The captain’s answer was cold and dry and terrible. “If you’d followed orders in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

“No,” the cook said, his breaths coming quicker and quicker. “I was careful. I combed her mind and took everything that could possibly lead back to us. She’s clean, I swear it.”

“She’s nothing of the kind,” Caldswell replied. “Come on, Charkov, don’t be a fool. You know scrubs don’t stick on strong emotions or traumatic memories.”

“They can if you get the victim out,” the cook hissed, looking at the captain for the first time since this began. “If you’d gotten her off the ship when I asked—”

He broke off as the Devi on the floor whispered, “Rupert…”

The cook winced like the name was a blow, and Caldswell’s eyes narrowed. “The mission comes first,” the captain said, pushing the gun at him. “Follow your orders, Eye Charkov.”

The next few moments seemed to take forever. The bunker was utterly silent except for the howl of the snow outside and the soft drip of blood on cement. And then, slowly, the cook’s hand reached out. The moment his shaking fingers curled around the pistol’s pearl grip, the Devi on the floor began to thrash.

“No!” she shrieked, and I winced at the sound. I cannot begin to describe how unsettling it is to hear your own voice screaming in desperate terror. The bloody Devi was throwing her weight around now, trying to wrench herself out of the other man’s hold. It was a good effort, but she was too badly injured, and the man was so much bigger. He held her down easily, and all her thrashing managed to do was lose her more blood. When it was clear she wasn’t getting out that way, she turned back to the cook. Her tanned face was nearly white from blood loss now. I wasn’t sure actually how she hadn’t passed out yet, but she was still up, and she was staring up at the cook with such desperate hope that my heart nearly broke.

“Rupert!” she cried. “Don’t do it! Get me out, we can take them!”

Her words were frantic, and they did no good. Above her, Rupert lifted the gun. His hand was shaking so badly the barrel trembled in the air, but it stilled as he pressed it against her bloody forehead.

“No!” she cried, or she tried to. The Devi on the floor was too weak to shout now, but her brown eyes were wide and bright with tears and pain. “I love you, Rupert, don’t do this. Please, Rupert!”

Her voice broke after that, collapsing into a pleading gibberish of Universal and King’s Tongue that made me want to weep. I didn’t know how the cook could bear it. Maybe he couldn’t, because though the pistol was pressed into Devi’s forehead, his finger still hadn’t moved on the trigger, and with each second that ticked by, Caldswell’s scowl deepened.

And then, just when the captain’s patience seemed to be running out, an explosion split the air.

Devi’s pleading, my pleading, cut off like a switch. For one breathless moment, she seemed to hang, and then her body toppled over. She hit the bloody cement with a dull thud, a thin line of smoke rising from the perfectly circular blackened hole the disrupter pistol’s blast had burned through her head. Through my head.

Then, like a mirage, the body flickered and vanished. The blood vanished as well, just disappeared like it had never been. In the blink of an eye, all signs of my other self were gone completely, leaving nothing but a fist-sized smoking crater in the bunker’s cement floor.

For one long moment, I thought Rupert was going to fall, too. He was staring at the place where my body had been like the world no longer made sense. Finally, his eyes went to the two Rens he could see, flicking between Caldswell’s and the one clutching Natalia’s hand. He swallowed once, then again, and in a small, throaty voice, he whispered, “An illusion?”

“Your punishment,” Caldswell replied, plucking the gun from Rupert’s limp fingers. “And your test. After your disobedience on Falcon Thirty-Four, we had to be sure we could count on you to do the right thing when the time came, and you did. You passed.” He put his hand on Rupert’s shoulder as he said this. The move was probably supposed to be congratulatory, but as the captain’s fingers tightened, all I could think was this was the closest to an apology Caldswell would ever come. “Welcome back to the fold, Eye Charkov.”

Natalia and her partner stepped forward to offer their congratulations as well. Rupert stood cold and straight, accepting their words with murmured thanks, but his blue eyes were still fixed on the crater his shot had blasted in the floor, and his jaw was clenching tighter and tighter, like he was about to shatter. I didn’t wait around to see if he would. I was already marching out of the building.

I fully expected Ren to stop me as she had every other time, but to my surprise, the girl followed meekly, her fingers soft on mine as we walked right through the bunker’s wall and into the snow outside. It was only when we’d gotten far enough away that the blizzard hid the mountain completely that I turned around. “Why did you show me this?”

I screamed the words so hard my throat ached, but even as they left my mouth, I knew it was pointless. This was a dream. Yelling at Ren was about as useful as yelling into the void, but I couldn’t help it. I was confused, scared, and terrifyingly angry. So angry my body would burst if something didn’t come out.

“Why did you do this?” I demanded, dragging up the hand Ren was still clutching until I was shaking it in her face. “Why am I here?”

“To see the truth,” Ren whispered.

My rage sputtered to a stop. Ren’s voice sounded just like before, but now the sound came from her lips. She was staring up at me, and for the first time ever, her face was not a blank mask. She was looking at me in earnest, her eyes fever bright and her cheeks wet with tears. “I know what you’ve become,” she said over the wind. “Maat is sending help. When you get it, come and find me.”

“Find you?” I snapped. “You’re Caldswell’s daughter, we live on the same ship.”

“I am Ren,” Ren said, shaking her head. “But Ren is not me. None of them are. You have to find me, Deviana Morris. It’s the only way to set us free.”

“Free from what?” I cried. “What does any of that even mean? And why me?”

Ren released my hand only to grab my face. She was a small girl, but she wrenched me down with no problem, putting us nose to nose. This close, I could see my face reflected in her wild too-bright eyes, and what I saw made me recoil in horror. There was something on my skin, crawling up my neck and over my cheeks.

Black soot. Black soot just like the stuff that had been on my fingers at Caldswell’s door was spreading over my face like an ink stain spreading through cloth. It was so horrible I couldn’t do anything but stare for several seconds, but when the scream finally rose in my throat, Ren’s hand covered my mouth, locking it in.

“It must be you,” she whispered as the black stuff started seeping from my skin into her fingers. “Because you are the only one who can.”

I screamed against her hand, a wordless demand for understanding, for answers. But as she finished speaking, Ren shoved me away, and I slammed back into my body so hard it knocked my breath out.

“Miss Morris!”

I blinked as the world spun and settled into a familiar setting. I was back in the cargo bay, standing in my suit with the mop still in my hands and Rashid and Hyrek in my face.

“Miss Morris!” Rashid shouted again, waving his hand back and forth in front of my face.

I dropped the mop and yanked my helmet off, making Rashid jump away with a startled yelp. I ignored him, turning my helmet around. But when I looked in my mirrored visor, all I saw was my own panicked reflection staring back at me.

If I hadn’t been wearing my suit, I would have collapsed. There was no black stuff on my skin, no spreading darkness. It had been a dream. My relief was so intense I actually started to laugh. I was trying to stifle my giggles when Hyrek shoved his handset into my face.

What is going on?

“A dream,” I panted.

I knew from Hyrek’s scowl that was not the right answer, but my brain was too scrambled to lie. The fear of the dream was still clinging to me, so much so that I still wasn’t sure if I was really awake yet. I looked away from the xith’cal doctor and bent over, resting my hands on my knees as I tried to clear my head. “What happened?”

I’d asked Hyrek, but Rashid answered. “I asked you a question over the com and you didn’t respond. After several tries, I came down and found you standing still as a statue. You didn’t react to words or touch, so I called for the doctor. He’d just arrived when you woke up.”

I blanched. It sounded pretty bad when he put it that way. Hyrek saw my reaction, and his claws flew over his handset. Medbay, it read when he turned it back to me. Now.

The order sparked a mini panic. Thanks to my earlier mistake, letting him know I could see the glowing bugs, Hyrek thought I was half insane already. If I wanted to finish out my tour on the Fool, I couldn’t give him more ammunition.

That thought was enough to kick the last of the dream away, and I straightened up immediately, snapping back into professional merc mode. “No need for that,” I said with a smile. “I’m perfectly…”

My voice trailed off as my eyes caught sight of the soft blue-white glow behind Hyrek’s head. I’d been so wrapped up in the dream and fending off my shipmates, I hadn’t even noticed the creatures.

The cargo bay was resplendent with tiny glowing bugs. They carpeted the floor and walls, dangled from the ceiling and floated in the air. There must have been thousands of them, and their combined blue-white radiance was so bright it hurt my eyes. But though the glowing creatures had crowded themselves into every nook and cranny in the cargo bay, the space around me was clear. The glowing carpet stopped three feet from my boots, and not a single one of the floating bugs was within arm’s reach. It was like I was standing in a bubble, surrounded by some kind of invisible boundary the creatures would not cross.

Before I could think better of it, I took a step to test the theory. The movement nearly caused a stampede as all the bugs skittered frantically to keep away from me. It was pretty funny to watch, actually. Grinning, I lifted my boot to send them scrambling again, but before I could take a step, I realized that Hyrek and Rashid were looking at me like I’d lost my mind.

For one long second, we stared at one another, and then Hyrek’s hand shot out, his claws hooking into the open neck of my suit. Medbay, his handset read. Or you’re relieved from duty.

There was no point in fighting after that little display. I let the lizard drag me away, calling for Rashid to take care of things until I got back. He promised he would, waving at me with the weak half smile used for appeasing crazy people. Behind him, the glowing bugs began to drift away, scattering like blown snow through the Fool’s hull and out into the blizzard beyond.

I had to do a lot more pleading to get Hyrek to let me out of the medbay this time.

“For the love of the Sacred King, Hyrek,” I moaned after the fifth round of inconclusive tests. “Just let me go.”

The doctor snapped his fangs at me and clicked his claws furiously across his handset. No. There’s something wrong with you, and until I figure out what that is, you go nowhere.

“You didn’t find anything the last four times you checked,” I pointed out. Again. “You’re not going to now. I just fell asleep.”