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“Not all There’s more I know more I can show you”
A tall wo her face led the guards I knew her as I knew all the Belter guards: as a force of nature ih for the familiarity of her face to let me read the curiosity in her I plucked Brown’s sleeveto draw him away, out of her earshot The conviction that the Belters would give the Martian the worst, not the best, of research see her hear est I knew the truth Brown didn’t move, so I leaned in closer to him
“It’s not an egg,” I hissed “It’s the support fra to pass inforical because it co-opted biological material”
For the first time, I saw doubt flicker in Brown’s eyes I hoped that truth would be enough to sway his certainty “Bullshit,” he said I’d done my work too well
“Do an implicit structure analysis,” I said “Look at the membranes as pathways, not walls See how the resonances reinforce The proto It’s not an alien, it’s a way for the aliens to talk to us Or to get here Don’t trust me Look at the data”
Brown looked deeply into my eyes, as if he could measure my sincerity froled cry, and I turned toward it
That is the last clear memory I have for a time
I had never been stabbed before It wasn’t at all what I would have guessed My recollection is of a sudden i, very far away as h to whounfire Lying on the deck, looking up at the empty row of observation s, convinced that I’d been hit or kicked hard enough to break one ofit bloody and reaching the conclusion that, no, I’d been shot Quintana, four meters away, his head and chestover his body with a pistol in her hand, but I’ine the Belter guards suffering us to be armed, even if we shared a common enemy
Other shards ofI can attach theuards pressing their bodies overThe sainst s and weave the sense
of a particularly surreal dream For nitive life holds no terror for me, or, I suspect, for anyone in research
Afterward, I heard the story told: Quintana’s battle cry, his rush toward us According to Navarro, he pushed Brown out of the way in order to reach uards shot Quintana to death, and afterward thein the inco into her radio Brown, they rushed away, out the door and into whatever rooms they used to protect and isolate him from us The medical team that treated me arrived quickly, but didn’t evacuate me I lay first on the floor and then one of the crash couches Quintana’s ith of steel pried froht, angling up toward my liver A few more centimeters and my chances of survival would have fallen drastically, but they didn’t I found it difficult to focus on things thatas I did that they hadn’t But that came later
At first I slept in a narcotic cloud like a physical memory of university When I woke, Alberto lay curled beside h in fact it was my fever that made it seem that way For twoboth with and between meals to switch out supply packs on the autodoc they had strapped towith him, they answered with evasions or pretended I hadn’t spoken The only inforleaned in those terrible days was once, when I deone, and one of the medics twitched her head in an almost subliminal no I told myself she’d meant that he was still on the station rather than the equally plausible negatives that she didn’t know or she wouldn’t answer or I shouldn’t ask Hope survives even stretched to a single molecule’s thickness
The roo all the time Brown remained absent, even—perhaps especially—when they spoke of soht, shouting at each other for the better part of an hour over whether Ma had taken too long a shower Bhalki, who usually kept to herself, approached Enz, talking tearfully for hours on end, and wound up in the hotel with loud and unpleasant-sounding intercourse Navarro and Fong put together patrols that, in a population now under three dozen, felt both ridiculous and threatening All of it was about the attack, though I didn’t understand the complexity of it until Alberto held forth on the subject
“Griefa container of white kibble that looked likeof a chicken and a mushroom
“Grief?” I ht, and in fairness, I was a little Alberto rolled his eyes and waved the heat of my reply away