“I’m going to rip you apart,” Wolfgang said, starting to get to his feet. Joanna grabbed him by the wrist and shook her head.
“Well,” Katrina said, knocking over the whiskey bottle and recovering it before she lost too much. “I don’t know if you killed us all or not, but I bet if we space you right now, everyone will feel better.”
“I don’t remember doing this, again. It’s not something I would have done unless…forced.” She grimaced. “Then, of course, after I was arrested for several hacking crimes, Sallie helped me get a job on the Dormire. Just like the rest of you.” She smiled ruefully. “Back then I thought she and I had become friends again.”
“Friends with the queen of revenge? I thought you worked for her for over a century?” Katrina said, laughing. “You’re that gullible? The woman hired me to help her figure out how to get revenge on clones when death and financial ruin are just bumps in the road.”
“What did you tell her?” Joanna asked.
“I told her that about the only thing we value is hope, and if you can dash that, then you’ve really hurt someone.”
Joanna chewed on her lip. “She knew us all. She knew that a corporate assassin and a clone hunter would clash. The woman she hired to do her dirty work for over a hundred years, paired with several of her victims.”
“We were supposed to have had lots of psychological profiling to make sure we worked well together,” Katrina said. “I think that profiling was to make sure we would be terrible together.”
Maria laughed bitterly and looked at the palms of her hands. “I wish I had figured it out earlier. Sallie’s plans, I mean. I have no memory of any of my crimes.” She raised her chin and looked Wolfgang in the eye. “But I’m ready to take on any punishment you want to give me. You, Paul, or Hiro.”
Hiro looked away from her, his face stony. Wolfgang looked like he was going to explode.
“What about me? Can’t I punish you too?” IAN asked.
“You’re shutting down the ship,” Maria said bitterly. “What more can you do?”
“Hey, is she on the ship?” IAN asked. “I could get you Sallie Mignon’s mindmap from the clones in storage and you could alter it and talk to her the way you talk to me? You can ask her directly.”
Maria opened her mouth to object, but Hiro spoke first.
“You want her to ravage another mind like she did to you?” Hiro asked. He rounded on Maria, who put her hands up to fend off the verbal attack. “Is it that easy for you to do? God, Maria, you’re the worst of all of us. We all had reasons for our crimes, but you, you’re just sitting there ready to commit another one. Why? To prove your innocence as a sad tool?”
“IAN asked me to, but I didn’t agree,” she said coldly. “You jumped to conclusions.”
“Maria’s crimes were left behind, like all of ours,” Joanna said softly. “There’s no proof she’s guilty of the murders on the ship. All we’ve seen is that nearly all of us are capable of committing it. Hiro attacked Maria and the captain. Paul attacked Maria. Katrina killed her own clone. Sallie Mignon might be able to help us out. What do you think, Wolfgang?”
His cold blue eyes hadn’t left Maria’s face since her confession. “No. It’s barbaric.”
IAN chirped back up. “Never mind! Bad idea. Sallie Mignon isn’t in the database.”
“Was she erased?” Maria asked.
“No, all the other passengers are present and accounted for. The file for Salome Mignon is completely empty.”
“Did she ship a body instead?” Maria asked. “She was supposed to be on board.”
“Nope, she’s not in the cryo lab.”
“Shit. She set us up to fail,” Maria whispered. “So many secrets, so many crimes. If they come out then someone’s going to snap. She put a gasoline can into space and just waited for someone to strike a match.”
“But why? It’s so much work and expense—for what?” Joanna asked.
“Revenge,” Katrina said.
“That’s it,” Maria said. She pulled out her tablet from her pocket and frowned at its waterlogged state. “Joanna, can I borrow your tablet, please?”
She handed it over. “IAN, will you please give me the list of passengers?”
“Sure. It’s a list of thousands, though,” he said, filling the screen with names.
“I only need a few,” Maria said, scrolling impatiently through, her eyes scanning for names that could confirm her suspicion. Natalie Warren. Ben Seims. Manuel Drake. Jerome Davad. Sandra—“Oh. God.” She handed the tablet back. “The people and clones on board are Mignon’s enemies—personal or professional. She packed her enemies on a ship and launched it into space.”
Katrina whistled. “Filled them with hope. Made them spend money that they can’t pass down to themselves or descendants.” She polished off the whiskey. “She really took my advice to heart.”
“We still don’t know what happened,” Hiro said softly, not looking at Maria. “So Mignon set us up to die in space? Who cares? We need to know who snapped the first time and killed us, and if they’re going to do so again.”
Maria felt the triumphant surge of revelation die. He was right—it didn’t explain the murders of their clones.
Then everything fell into place. She looked around the circle, at Joanna, who took a drink from the whiskey bottle; at Hiro, who wouldn’t meet her gaze. At Wolfgang, who stared daggers at her, and then at the captain, who had fallen back in the grass to watch the impossibility of the water above their head.
And then at Paul, who stared at the ground and flexed occasionally against his bonds.
“I’ve got it,” she said softly. “Paul had a brain injury early on in the journey. Wolfgang is the one who hit him. We know Paul became violent for one reason or another. We watched him for the next twenty-four years, but figured we were relatively safe. And we were, because he forgot he was here for revenge against one of us.”
Paul remained quiet in the shadows behind Wolfgang.
Maria paced their circle again. “My logs said that old Captain de la Cruz became severely paranoid and was desperate to have everyone confess their crimes. It’s possible she got the confidential crew files from IAN, who likes to ‘see what happens.’”
“Quite possible,” IAN agreed. “I’m finding all sorts of things in little nooks and crannies in my memory. I squirreled away data like a fiend.” He sounded proud.
“And if Mignon put you here to mess with us, she probably helped hide some of those gems,” Maria said. She took a breath and continued. “Katrina approached Paul about his own crimes, which she may or may not have known were false, and wanted to know more about my history. She pushed him until he remembered. She got more than she wanted, though, since Paul finally remembered what he was here to do and attacked her.”
“Then what?” Joanna asked. She scooted closer to Katrina, who had opened a new bottle.