The next morning, I slipped soundlessly into the midnight hallway. The rest of the crew waited behind the door of the dining room, weapons clutched tight, ready to spring into action at the sound of a struggle. Not only was this Plan B, it was also a doppelganger trap, and I was the bait.

Mase and Ellison had immediately tried to argue me out of it, but once I explained the entirety of Plan B, they agreed, though reluctantly. I left Plan C out of the whole conversation.

The crew hadn’t left the sanctuary of the dining room, so the light at the end of the hallway hadn’t been fixed. Its metal clanked against metal, harder, louder, the closer I drew.

I shined the map of the Vicious with the red dots—me and the doppelganger the only solo ones—along the walls where the ship’s outline warped into the metal doors. The doppelganger hovered near the engine room, unmoving.

As always, the Vicious room door was closed, and once I opened it, a color darker than pitch black choked the air. The door swung inward with my soft kick at the bottom. I shined the ship’s map in front of me so I could find the light switch on the wall, and it clicked on in a flickering orange glow.

It had to be the Vicious room where I did this. The Saelis marks all over the walls, the open air vent where the doppelganger could come barreling through at any second, the dreaded feel of the room itself would help give credibility to the video I was about to film. Written, directed, and starring me, it was sure to be a shit show. But it would help prove everything I knew, along with the cylinder of consumectalons and the recorded video clip of Doctor Daryl’s last few moments according to his Mind-I serial number.

Poh had found it relatively easily. As she’d forwarded through the last parts of his life, the rest of the crew had quickly joined me in the kitchen for a glass of boiled breakfast water, their faces sickly pale at the sounds and threats that poured out of Doctor Daryl when he’d caught a whiff of the consumectalons in my blood.

“It’s in you, James,” he’d shouted and then heaved a maniacal laugh. “I smelled it. I want it. I’ll cut you open and slurp it from your insides.”

It raked a shiver across my back even now.

Inside the Vicious room, I set Nesbit’s Mind-I by one wall, set it to video, backed the broken chair away from the open air vent, then sat precariously with the vent to my right so I could see what was coming. I took a breath, mentally organizing everything I wanted to say, and began.

“My name is Absidy Jones.” My voice squeaked like I’d just swallowed a gooselp, feathers and all, so I cleared my throat. This was the reason I preferred solitude for most of my life—so I wouldn’t have to speak and pretend I was any good at it.

“I'm a fugitive with a bounty on my head, accused of two murders I didn't commit. I should probably try to clear my name, but I've been preoccupied learning as much as I can about the Black War. This isn't a history lesson I'm about to give you, though. This war didn't end two hundred years ago with the destruction of Earth. This war is still happening. On Earth, people saw the Saelis coming, and some were fast enough to fly away to Wix or Mayvel in their ships. But this time, it will be different. You won’t see them coming because they’re already there.”

The slightest scrambling noise shifted my gaze to the right. I curled my sweaty fingers against my hips and swallowed. If it came, it came. It had killed one of us already, had tried to kill all of us, but I refused to let anyone else die. I had two ice picks and a whole crew waiting for my scream. So really, I had nothing to worry about. And by nothing, I meant everything.

“The Saelis have been creating Saelis-human hybrids that look and sound just like us, each with individual personalities. They’re already on Wix and Mayvel, and the Saelis can control them with a flip of a switch. They have Mind-Is, as I’m sure some of you do, which likely means you can be controlled too. They also have a bioweapon called consumectalons”—I held up the glass cylinder—“which is a parasite that lived in their females. It drives the hybrids mad. Like this.”

I paused there so Poh would know where to splice the video of Doctor Daryl attacking me, then later hunting me through the ship. I glanced right. Darkness had swallowed the inside of the air vent, but I knew the doppelganger was coming.

“I know what you're thinking. Why should you believe the word of a fugitive accused of murder? Because I have proof. Right now, I'm on a two-hundred-year-old spaceship called the Vicious. For those of you who aren’t able to math that up, it’s as old as the Black War. The marks on the walls behind me are from Saelis females who were killed on this ship for the parasites in their blood. These same parasites are what power the Ringers’ rings. The Ringers’ lust for space travel, for conquest, was what started the Black War.”

More thudding movement in the walls, louder, closer. I opened my mouth to speak faster.

“The Ringers changed history to blame the Saelis. According to the Ringers’ ship database, this ship doesn’t exist. Neither does the Vicio, which is the name of the ship on Captain Glenn’s ownership papers. Go ahead and look it up. Now, the Ringers won’t let us back through their rings because they don’t want anyone to know they started the Black War. But that’s about to change. You will let us through, or I’ll blast this video to every—”

A heavy force slammed into my right side. The chair tipped. I spilled to the floor hip first, head and limbs second. My teeth gnashed down on my tongue, and blood gushed inside my mouth.

My world dimmed, but out of the darkness stepped myself, everything the same from the hair and chains draped over the leather, metal-studded corset, right down to the black boots. It—me—stalked across the floor toward me with lips peeled back in a livid grimace.

I flashed my foot out, pumping all my fury at this rusted alien doppelganger into my boot. The kick connected. It fell into the chair with an enormous crash. I crawled to my feet and armed myself with two ice picks.

“Who do you work for?” I demanded.

Footsteps pounded down the hallway, punctuated with shouts of my name. I didn’t have much time before they burst in and my questions went unanswered before the alien slaughter went down.

“Who?”

It sprang upright again and turned its eyes so much like mine toward the Mind-I by the wall. “I made a video of you for the Ring Guild,” it said with my voice.

I blinked. “The Ringers?”

The door burst open. Wide eyes swept the room over drawn weapons, aimed at me to the doppelganger to me again. They couldn’t tell the difference between me and…me.

The alien doppelganger swept across the floor toward the Mind-I at full speed. I sprinted after it. The captain, Mase, and Poh yelled for us to freeze. The doppelganger got there before I did and slammed its arm backward into my face. I dropped. It snatched up the Mind-I and held the black piece of plastic up to the rest of the crew.

“It’s done,” my voice said, but it hadn’t come from me. “Now, kill that thing.”

That thing. It was referring to me. But I wasn’t about to let it take them down that deceptive road. I thrust one ice pick toward the toe of the doppelganger’s boot.

But before the tip sank home, the other boot lifted and pummeled down on my hand with unnatural force. Bones splintered. Pain erupted.

I opened my mouth to scream through my agony, but a gun fired.

That thing. Had I been shot? I couldn’t feel anything other than the shrieking throbs in my hand.

Something spilled to the ground inches away from my twisted, broken fingers. The something had my eyes, staring blankly, while blood leaked from the corner of its mouth. They knew. The rest of the crew knew that thing wasn’t me.

Footsteps pounded closer.

“Absidy!” Mase shouted.

I wanted to answer, but pain swallowed my voice. A gray film washed over my eyes, darkening the room.

Poh crouched on top of the doppelganger, her steak knife raised high. She plunged it down, down again, then raked it across its throat. Blood sprayed onto my face. The doppelganger tipped its head toward me, staring with empty holes where its eyes had once been. A deep gash smiled from its throat.

“Absidy, talk to me,” Mase demanded.

“Get her to the infirmary,” Captain Glenn ordered from my other side.

Gentle hands prodded my body, but all I could do was stare.

A black smoky tendril probed out of one empty eye socket. Another wormed from the other socket. Long. Segmented. Like the alien’s legs.

“Jesus fuck,” Mase hissed.

“Get her out of here,” Captain Glenn shouted.

Poh backed away from the dead doppelganger. “What? What do you see?”

A ghostly horn shoved from the doppelganger’s mouth, and behind it blinked an enormous black eye. Peering at me from inside the dead alien. Its ghost about to climb out.

A scream tipped my tongue, but it died in my throat as soon as Mase swept me up in his arms. The pain wracking my body flared, then went blank.