My stomach coiled into knots as Parker’s ship closed in on the Vicious. I crossed my arms to help keep me together in preparation for what we might find. The fabric of my fresh shirt—a loaner from Crispin—felt rough against my skin, especially the scales. My chains sighed against my damp hair, but it hardly registered.

After I’d washed away all the blood and gore with a shower, Poh and I had helped each other clean and dress our wounds in Parker’s infirmary. Most of mine had been teeth marks buried under several layers of bruises and gashes. Poh had been cut in several places and stabbed in the shoulder by me, but most of her injuries were dents to her metal parts. Both of her upper arms and shoulders were made of blue titanium, as well as one whole leg and half of the other.

“I’m literally what I eat,” she’d told me when she’d caught me looking. “Since I often did repairs in zero gravity, I decided the only upgrade I could afford when I got these parts was automatic magnetization. But I’ve been saving up because these limbs fit terribly, they hurt, and I would like to sit down someday.”

“Oh,” I’d said. She could’ve probably had enough credits if she’d turned me in, maybe even for extra upgrades or parts should she ever need three arms. But she hadn’t, and that meant a lot. She’d also thrown herself in the face of danger and saved me countless times. I trusted her more now because I was beginning to understand her, but mostly I was relieved she was on my side because the alternative was not good.

She’d turned away then and gathered her long white hair up high on her head in a ponytail. “I guess I thought I’d feel different after Don was dead, but…” She’d let that thought float adrift into space, much like the Vicious ship we both now watched on the bridge.

“The airlock is engaged.” Crispin turned to look at both of us, his lightning eyes drooping at the corners. “You can go now.”

“Not so fast, Crispy.” Poh took his elbow and dragged him out of the pilot’s chair. “You’re coming with us in case we need to barter your life.”

Crispin opened his mouth as if to argue but then thought better of it. He let out a resigned sigh, likely hoping to put this nightmare behind him, same as the rest of us.

With a basket of stolen food from Parker’s kitchen tucked underneath one arm, I strode out the door toward the airlock, Poh and Crispin at my heels. I patted my hands over my chest, squeezing my ice picks for comfort. When we rounded the corner into the plastic-lined airlock that led into the Vicious, frigid air tightened in my lungs.

A soothing female voice I’d never heard on the Vicious before said, “Warning. Warning.” Again and again.

“What’s happening?” I demanded, but I didn’t wait for an answer.

I sprinted back onto the ship and into a strobing red light that came from down the hallway in the cargo room. It was stupid, but I’d half expected everyone to be exactly where we’d left them. Right here, in a battle for their lives.

Poh and Crispin stepped up behind me, their breaths billowing in the dead stillness.

“Crispy, you’re with me.” Poh nodded toward the pulsing red light. “Help me find the source of this warning and shut it off.”

He shivered. “Why is it so cold in here?”

Poh herded him to the right but stopped. “Absidy?”

“I need to…” I stepped over splotches of blood on the grated floor and swallowed. “Use the Mind-I to find them.”

More blood had puddled along the opposite wall with a mess of handprints just above it. A long red trail led away and around a dark corner, toward the infirmary. I forced a swallow and followed, my mind flashing me images of what could’ve happened, all of them involving Mase, Ellison, and the captain battered and broken.

“Find a weapon,” Poh said. “Use a telecom if you need it. If I don’t like what I hear, I come running. Got it?”

“Warning,” the female robot said. “Eight minutes until self-destruct.”

Dread seeped into my bones and rushed a cold sweat down my body. Eight minutes. Self-destruct. What the hell had happened in the thirteen hours we’d been gone?

“Go now!” I dropped the basket of food, glimpsing the stark terror written in Poh and Crispin’s faces, and ran. “Ellison!”

Eight minutes. Could I find them in time to usher them onto Parker’s ship and get us away from here? Had Parker put them somewhere so they couldn’t escape? But then where had he gone since his ship had left without him?

“Mase! Captain!”

I rounded the corner, my feet slamming the titanium with steady doom, dooms laced between the lady robot’s warnings. Almost to the infirmary. Behind the glass circle in the door, it was dark, but I lunged for the lever and shoved it open anyway. Once I found the light and blinked into it, the trail of red drops leading to the gurney by the wall glittered like precious rubies. Except the gurney was empty.

I charged out of there for the dining room. As soon as I stepped under the light, it swung wildly and cast its flickers over the Vicious room door. I shouldered it open, my ragged breaths catching in the freezing air. Through the pitch black, my gaze connected with the even darker air vent hole in the opposite wall. A series of bumps sounded from within, and I knew I was no longer alone. I got out of there and sprinted to the dining room door.

“Warning. Seven minutes until self-destruct.”

The iced panic stabbing through my veins hissed out through my clenched teeth.

Inside the dining room, everything appeared as it should be. The kitchen too.

“Ellison?” I inched open the stasis pantry door.

Eerie blue light angled onto my boots. Shelves of inedible food were stacked throughout the room, and near the back by the wooden wine crates poked two left shoes. I jerked back, unable to process that crush of emotions right then, and backed out into the dining room again.

I stabbed my finger into the telecom unit on the wall. “Mase? Captain, where are you?” My voice filtered through the robot’s warnings.

Static shot through the unit and pierced my ears. “They’re not here,” Poh said, her voice wound up tighter than wire. “Only three lifeforms are on this ship.”

“What?” So many questions clogged my throat. If they weren’t here, then where were they? Did Parker have another ship? Or were they all—? I refused to finish that thought.

“Do we stay here or leave?” Poh demanded.

I didn’t know the answer, not when I had so many questions. Would we even make it a safe distance away in time if we left?

I growled in frustration and rushed into the hallway, closing the door behind me. The light at the end buzzed and crackled until it faded to a pinprick. The darkness swallowed the air from my lungs. I knew what was coming, but I had no time. No light to find out what had happened to my ship family. And no patience. I pulled the consumectalon cylinder from the pocket of Crispin’s pants I’d borrowed. From now on, the magnet would be on the ghost itself. Not me.

Something blasted into the inside of the dining room door. I jerked back with a yelp, then peeled back my lips in a scowl, refusing to budge. The door creaked open, and more darkness poured out even though I was sure I’d left the light on.

I thumbed the cap on the cylinder the tiniest amount. The cracks along the glass bit into my palm. I hoped it could contain at least one more ghost and keep from shattering.

“Go in,” I said to the gloom.

The door banged shut and opened again, as did every door up and down the hallway. Over and over, the noise drilled into my eardrums. It drowned out the robot voice’s repeated warnings and the bright red anger crashing through my veins.

I moved down the midnight hallway, pouring on speed. I dodged the doors clanging open and shut. Other than my clothes, an almost perfect replica of me stood at the end, strobing into existence under the humming pinprick of light. Teeth bared in a glower, exactly how I pictured my own. Chains and hair fanned over her bare shoulders with a metal-studded corset hugging her torso. Empty black eyes dared me to come closer.

So I damn well did.

She solidified into something real as I drew near, something that could tear me into pieces like the hundreds of times in my past.

“Go i—”

She caught the hand that held the cylinder and threw me back down the hallway. Corners of swinging doors clipped my side as I flew past. Then I dropped. Hard. Hitting the titanium ass first, then shoulders and skull. I lay there, stunned, blinking into two darknesses, real and subconscious, both of which threatened to pull me under.

“Warning. Four minutes to self-destruct.”

I must’ve blacked out because the doors were quiet now. A taste of tobacco dragged my eyes open. Red, always here with me to remind me why I didn’t smoke. I hauled myself into a sitting position, and with great effort, I pushed myself to my feet with the help of the wall. My knees wobbled under my weight, my head spun, but I headed back down the hallway.

“You failed,” I said. “The Ring Guild didn’t stop us. Neither did the Saelis. The truth will come out, and the Black War will end. You hear me?”

Silence except the buzzing light. Every door was open in the hallway except the Vicious room. I opened it and stumbled inside.

“Just go in.” I held the cylinder out, gazing around the room while its bleached copper smell sharpened my awareness. “I’ll be dead in four minutes anyway, so you might as well.”

I dragged my hand along the wall for the light switch behind me out of habit, but paused since it appeared I didn’t really need it. The room held a soft red glow that seemed to come from the scratch marks on the walls and floor. It reminded me of my blood sheeting my skin after I drank the consumectalons from the cylinder. Curious that the room hadn’t glowed before now.

Something dragged and thumped from inside the air vent. Behind me, the Vicious room door slammed shut. At the same time, the grating on the vent zipped free and rocketed across the room toward me. I sidestepped and waited.

“Warning. Three minutes to self-destruct.”

A segmented leg snaked out, followed by another, and another, until finally a horned head with empty black eyes pushed through. The doppelganger’s true shape in ghostly form landed across the room without a sound, and straightened to almost twice my height. Its body turned corporeal as it lunged. Its sharp horns speared toward me, followed closely by its jagged teeth.

I flipped the cap off the cylinder, just slightly, and jabbed the broken glass up into its mouth. Its teeth scraped along my scales, but it didn’t hurt.

“Go. In,” I ordered.

A terrible howl erupted out of it, and its features twisted into black smoke. It spiraled into the cylinder while patches of it turned corporeal again as if it were fighting with itself. Or maybe the cylinder was just packed full. It cracked in my hand as I thumbed the cap back on again, a long, black line down the center, but it held tight. For now.

I’d done it. But it didn’t matter because I only had three minutes to get off a self-destructing ship.

I took one step toward the door, but my entire body gave out underneath me. I toppled to the floor, my limbs shackled with exhaustion and my head a living hammer. The scratch marks on the glowing walls and floor waved something just beyond my understanding, and I stared down the length of my arm at them, beyond the cylinder gripped tight in my fist.

Two feet appeared underneath the doorway, framed in a swinging rectangle of light behind them. The door opened silently, washing the room with cold, and the light inside the Vicious room snapped on by itself.

I blinked into it, willing my brain to stop knocking against my skull so I could concentrate. “Poh?”

The two feet stepped into the room.

“Warning. Two minutes to self-destruct.”

A violent tremor ripped up my back. Another ghost. Someone else had died. Ellison? Mase? The captain? Darkness crowded my eyelids, but I forced it back so I could see.

“Don’t be dead,” I whispered. “Please don’t be dead.”

The two feet stopped in front of me. A light touch, frozen but gentle, grazed my scaled arm and flipped my hand over, palm up. Something trickled into it with metallic clanking noises, a comforting melody I’d heard so many times before. Saliva rushed at my tongue. Fingers folded mine closed around the iron, the cubes’ sharp corners digging into my skin. Someone was giving me iron cubes.

I focused on the shoes until my vision cleared. Beige and black. Two left ones.

Tears filled my eyes. A sob heaved from my mouth, and I finally found the strength to look up at Randolph’s ghost. His skin was tinged blue, and his neck appeared swollen, diminishing his double chins into one grotesque ball. His black eyes drooped, not a hint of malevolence inside them, but the sadness there drilled a hole straight to my heart.

“Randolph,” I choked. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

He smiled and glided his hand down the side of my face like a father’s caress. His touch froze my tears to my face. Pushing to his feet, he shook his head then crossed to the scratched wall behind me and faded through it.

I gripped his iron gift tight and fought to get my legs underneath me instead of collapsing into a puddle. Part of me wanted to do just that, to give up. There wasn’t enough time to save myself by boarding Parker’s ship again anyway. But the other part, the part that didn’t know when to quit, wanted to know why. And where. This ship’s crew and Parker’s minions couldn’t have just vanished, and I refused to even consider the alternative.

“Warning. One minute to self-destruct.”

I dragged myself off the Vicious room floor to the telecom in the corner and hit the green button. “Poh?”

A burst of static fizzed out, interrupting the robot’s warnings, followed by a string of curses.

“Tell her almost!” she snapped in the background.

“Almost,” Crispin whimpered.

One minute. I bit my tongue to keep from screaming. Almost wasn’t going to cut it.

“Are you in the cargo room?” I demanded.

“We’re in this…big room with a bunch of crates,” he said.

I hauled toward the cargo room as fast as I could. Not fast at all. I kept myself moving by my sheer need to survive.

Maybe the crates had been rigged somehow to explode, but who had the know-how to do that? And the supplies to do that? As far as I could tell, Parker and his crew had only been carrying weapons, not explosives. And that still didn’t explain where everyone went when there was no place to go.

“Thirty seconds to self-destruct.”

As soon as I opened the door, I zeroed in on Crispin next to Poh and the crates. When he turned to see me stalk toward him, I smashed my fist into his face. His head jerked to the side.

My fingers sang with pain, but I growled through it, “What are you not telling us?”

“Nothing. I don’t know anything.” He looked at me with his hand at his mouth, his lightning eyes hurt. His fingertips came away bloody.

“I already threatened him ass to eyeballs if he knew anything,” Poh snapped while she coiled two black wires together.

“Twenty seconds,” the robot said.

Crispin swallowed hard. “Maybe this ship was boarded by another ship. I don’t know.”

I heaved a choked sob. Behind Crispin, Poh yanked wires and twisted them together with shaky fingers inside a black box attached to one of the crates. A box that hadn’t been there before.

“Ten seconds.”

“Poh!” I yelled.

“Almost!” she growled.

Crispin dropped to his knees, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Five seconds.”

Pop. Ellison. Mase. Moon Dragon. Jezebel. I would never see them again. I released a slow breath and bowed my head with my hand to my stomach.

“Sorry, little one,” I whispered. “I tried.” I closed my eyes and let my tears fall.

“Initiating self—”

My eyes burned while I waited for my fate. Silence. I cracked open an eye.

Crispin had turned a lovely shade of green. Poh let out a whoop, her shoulders heaving, and wiped her hand across her pale forehead, I didn’t dare move in case I jinxed something.

“Are we dead? Is this hell?” Crispin asked. “It’s been so hard to tell today.”

Poh lifted her middle finger at the box. “Don’t all go thanking me at once.”

My body began to crumple with sweet relief, springing fresh tears to my eyes, but I lodged an iron pole into my backbone and swiped at my cheeks.

“We need to find out what happened,” I said.

Crispin stood on wobbly legs. “If you show me where your ship’s main telecom is, I can look at it.”

“Your ship is jamming our telecom,” Poh reminded him.

“Oh, that’s right.” He nodded. “Still, I can look at it. If you’ll let me.”

I led the way to the door, not wanting either of them to see the tears that wouldn’t stop coming, and muttered, “Follow me.”

Had the Saelis boarded the Vicious again and taken everyone to the Black as their worker bees? What if I never saw Mase again, laughed with him, and slid my naked skin against his while we whispered how much we loved each other? What if I no longer had my sister drive me crazy with how much she cared about me? Even if I did, I didn’t see how they could ever forgive me for leaving them when I did.

We quickly scoured the rest of the ship for everyone but came up empty. Thankfully. I didn’t want to find them if they were no longer lifeforms. My heart wouldn’t be able to take it.

Then we hurried up to the third floor and the cockpit where the ship’s main telecom was located. The small space was saturated with Mase’s scent, and I breathed it into my soul even though I’d already housed it there a long time ago.

Crispin sat in his chair, then looked over his shoulder at me, and that picture was all wrong. This was Mase’s area, not his.

“Should I steer our ships somewhere while I’m at it or…?” he asked.

Don had said that the Saelis had gone to the Ring Guild space station to force the ring open. They might already be at Mayvel and Wix and exacting their revenge on humanity. That was where we had to go, though it crushed my heart to leave this area in case everyone came back for some reason.

“Ring Guild Space Station 144,” I said. “Through the rings to Mayvel.”

Crispin flipped the controls to guide both his ship and ours forward. The he settled back in his seat to prod at the telecom while Poh pulled her Mind-I from her pants pocket.

“If someone took them, then maybe they made a computer log on a ship that isn’t five thousand years old and is hooked in to a Mind-I,” Poh said.

“Two hundred,” I corrected absently.

She lifted an eyebrow. “Whatever you say.” She directed the Mind-I’s screen to the star-filled expanse in front of us and began searching.

While they tinkered, I did what I do best and collapsed onto Mase’s mattress tucked into a corner. His musky scent billowed up when my head hit the pillow, as did our combined scents when I folded the blankets over me. My heart clenched at how much I worried about my ship family, and I cried myself softly to sleep.

I didn’t know how long I was out, but at one point I overheard Poh explaining how she’d rigged the Mind-I to work outside of someone’s brain, while Crispin babbled all sorts of technical questions while he ate through some of the food basket I’d stolen off his ship.

When I finally woke, feeling almost as fuzzy as when I’d fallen asleep, the enormous iron ring floated in front of us. No ships flew through it right then, and we were the only ones nearing it as far as I could tell.

“What’s happening?” I pushed myself into a sitting position and searched the stars. “Did you find something?”

Poh stood behind Crispin’s—Mase’s—chair with her arms crossed and ticked her yellow gaze over her shoulder at me. “It took a lot of combined hacking, but yes. Two ships boarded the Vicio on today’s date within hours of each other. The second’s name was Minrod, destination The Black.”

“Saelis,” I breathed.

She shook her head. “Human, judging from the captain’s name. Josh Erix. He certainly didn’t want anyone to know where he was going.”

Josh, ex-Ring Guild employee, deep space’s taxi service operator for those who turned their backs on humanity, and the father of Ellison’s unborn baby. He was heading to the Black when we’d already come from there. Parker and his crew too? But why? Josh must’ve been the one to rig the crates with explosives, but again…why? Why go to all that trouble on a ship that was left abandoned?

I gazed at the ring, whose round edges had disappeared in the windscreen the closer we flew. Because the ship wasn’t left abandoned. The three of us were here, but if we’d come eight minutes later, we would still be on Parker’s ship staring at what remained of the Vicious. They knew we’d left them and hadn’t wanted us to come back here. But that stupid, repetitive question remained—why? Because they knew I would come back, that I might have a way through the rings. On a ship filled with consumectalons, a parasite meant to be a biological weapon against Team Human. As a suspected murderer/fugitive, this would definitely not help my case.

“Did you try contacting them?” I asked.

“They’re too far away for our telecom, so we tried Crispy’s,” Poh said. “Either Josh’s telecom is shut down or he’s not answering.”

“I just want to be sure, but you do want to go through the rings still, right?” Crispin asked.

A flash of silver light erupted in the window screen. Another ring materialized in the distance, hurtling through space toward us, or the other way around, so fast that it glowed silver. Our destination coordinates folded the space between the stars and rings and thrust us toward Mayvel faster than light.

The high from the parasites eating up both rings crackled through my veins. Lighting me up with power. Leaving me shaking, breathless, and desperate for a taste myself.

“If not…” Crispin turned to me and winced. “Too late.”