He had never reminded her of her father, though. Not until now.
She didn’t put her finger on it. Not at first. She struggled with her own intrusive thoughts. The boy’s voice that seemed to be just behind her speaking in a language she didn’t know but understood anyway. The eerie, almost choral voice encouraging her to let her sense of self go. The woman who had given a child up for adoption and now was torn between guilt and relief. And then the Korean boy again, still lamenting his sister. It took effort for Teresa not to listen, not to engage, to hold herself to herself, and so that was what she thought Jim was doing too.
For hours, she followed Colonel Tanaka’s lead, weaving in and out of the cave-maze of the station while her mind sparked and slipped. It was like a nightmare she was trying not to wake up from, and the effort kept her from consciously noticing the little things that were wrong with Jim. The way his skin tone had changed. The difference in his eyes. And more than anything, the sense of disconnection, like he was slowly peeling away from what she thought of as reality.
Once he forgot to turn off his mic, and the nonsense he was muttering to himself—I forgot how much I didn’t miss your gnomic cop stories and I hear you and Duarte’s doing the same thing, using people like building blocks for something he wants—spilled out over the radio.
Other times, he seemed almost normal. He checked in on her and how she was doing, the same way he sometimes did on the ship. He talked with Tanaka about how to use heat to find a path for them. At those times, he seemed the way he usually did. Himself. And then they’d start moving, and he would start to drift again.
They found a passage of the same blue-glowing metallic substance as the station’s shell and had started down it when Tanaka opened the private channel between them.
“There’s a conversation that you and I need to have,” the colonel said. “Captain Holden is compromised.”
“We’re all compromised,” Teresa said.
“Not what I’m talking about. He injected himself with a live sample of the protomolecule. The eggheads stabilized it as much as they could, but in my estimation he is losing function quickly.”
Teresa, distracted by the noise in her own head, hadn’t focused on him. She did now. He was beside her, and a little back, his arms at neutral and a small, dreamy smile on his lips. A memory came to her of being in her father’s room, holding his hand, trying to make him understand that Dr. Cortázar was going to kill her. The vagueness and distance were the same.
“He’s fine,” she said, surprised by the heat in her voice.
“I’m not asking for your judgment, I’m informing you of mine,” Tanaka said. “At this point, I believe Holden may still be useful in finding and recovering the high consul, so I’m willing to take the risk associated with his condition. But I need you to understand that this will not always be the case.”
“We’re not leaving him behind.”
“When we locate your father, you will need to make the approach to him. Convince him to stop this thing he’s doing with our minds. That’s what I need you to do.”
“I know.”
“If after that, Captain Holden has continued to decline, I will take any action I feel necessary to keep you and your father safe. I need you to understand what that might entail, because if you get upset, the high consul might too.”
Teresa was quiet for a moment. Understanding exactly what Tanaka was saying was harder than it should have been. I don’t like her, the boy with the missing sister said. She acts calm, but she’s acting. Teresa shook her head, but the sense of presence in her stayed the same. She had an uncomfortable memory of being Tanaka, naked and chemically altered, pinning a man to a bed. She felt his wrists pop. She remembered the pleasure in making the young man hurt. Making him fear her. You will not like the version of me that comes calling on you then.
“You’re saying you’ll kill him?”
“It might come to that, yes. If in my estimation he is compromised enough to pose a threat.”
“He’s not a threat. He won’t be one.”
“I need you to understand that this is a military operation, and my mission is to keep you and your father safe. I will do whatever I need to do to achieve that. Your duty is to approach your father. I will take care of everything after that. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good.”
Absently, Jim lifted a hand and scratched at the surface of his visor. He didn’t seem aware that he was doing it. The long weeks and months of watching her father change flowed into Teresa. The horror of the sudden snap when the change came, when he went away. When she lost him. I won’t cry in a vac suit, she thought. I am not going to cry in my fucking vac suit.
She tapped her suit’s maneuvering thrusters, just enough to drift close to Jim. She took his hand. For a moment, he didn’t seem to notice, then slowly his gaze swam over to her. His eyes were wrong. There was a shimmering in the whites that hadn’t been there before. That didn’t belong there.
“Don’t fall asleep.”
Jim started to speak, lost focus, started again. A look of frustration came over him, and without warning, he popped the visor off his helmet. He took one long breath, then another. The impulse welled up in Teresa, part defiance of Tanaka, part anger at the universe, part a weird sense of allegiance to the old man who’d plotted to get her killed once and then saved her. Teresa took off her own helmet and hooked it to the strap at her hip. The air in the corridor was oppressively warm and felt strange in her lungs.
When he spoke, she didn’t hear him through the radio, but the open, alien air. I’m not going anywhere. I promise. She knew that wasn’t true, even if he didn’t.
Tanaka’s voice came in a thin, tinny buzz from Jim’s radio and the speakers in the helmet at Teresa’s hip. “What the fuck are you two doing?”
“I was having trouble with my mic,” Jim said. “And my nose itched.”
“Teresa, put your helmet back on.”
Or else what? Teresa thought. She was so tired of being bullied by the people who said they were there to help her. She was so tired of being Laconian. She pretended she couldn’t make out Tanaka’s words, even though they all knew that wasn’t true. Tanaka’s anger was less than her own. When Tanaka opened up her own visor, Teresa felt a little thrill of victory.
“Be ready to put that back in place on my order.”
They turned their attention back to the corridor, the station, the hunt. A few minutes later, out of nowhere, Jim said, What was the trick? He wasn’t talking to either of them.
Tanaka locked her eyes on Teresa’s. I told you there was a problem with him. I told you he was degrading. “When we find him, you make the approach.”
“I understand.”
“I will take care of everything else.”
“I understand.”
“Daddy?”
The months had thinned him, but he hadn’t grown a beard. His cheeks were as smooth-shaved as if Kelly had seen to him that morning. The old pockmarks were evidence of boyhood acne he’d suffered through long before Teresa had known him. His clothes were the same he’d worn at the State Building in Laconia, and they weren’t ragged, but they seemed thin and brittle. Like paper that had been left in the rain and sun.