Nemesis Games

If she didn’t try to go when they pulled the umbilical? If she could sneak across now and hide there until they separated… If she could get to the armory instead, and maybe find a demolition mech that could act as an environment suit… or that she could use to cut through the bulkheads fast enough that no one shot her in the back of the head…

“Think,” she said. “Don’t spin and whine. Think.”

But nothing came.

When she slept, it was for thin slips of minutes. She couldn’t afford a deep sleep for fear of waking to find the Chetzemoka gone. And she lay on the ground with her hand clutching the base of the crash couch so that it would tug her awake if they went on the float.

What would Alex do? What would Amos do? What would Jim do? What would she do? Nothing came to her. She waited for despair, the darkness, the sense of overwhelming failure, and didn’t understand why it didn’t come. There was every reason to be devastated, but she wasn’t. Instead there was only the certainty that if the dark thoughts did return, they would come in such strength that she wouldn’t stand a chance against them. Oddly, even that was comforting.

When she knocked to go to the head, Sárta opened the door. Not that it mattered. She followed Naomi down the hall, then waited outside. The head didn’t have anything of use either, but Naomi took her time in case inspiration came. The mirror was polished alloy built into the wall. No help there. If she could take apart the vacuum fans in the toilet…

She heard voices from the other side of the door. Sárta and someone else. The words were too soft to make out. She finished washing her hands, dropped the towelette in the recycler, and stepped into the corridor. Filip looked over at her. It was her son, and she hadn’t recognized his voice.

“Filip,” she said.

“Cyn said you wanted to talk to me,” Filip said, landing the words equally as question and accusation.

“Did he now? That was kind of him.”

She hesitated. Her hands itched with the need to find some way to put her hands on an EVA suit, but something in the back of her mind whispered If they think you’re alive, they’ll come for you. Anger and diffidence made the planes and angles of Filip’s face. Cyn already thought she was bent on self-slaughter. It was why he’d sent Filip.

Her belly went heavy almost before she understood why. If Filip thought it too, if when she went missing, her son went to Marco and stood witness to her suicidal bent, it would be easier to believe. They might not even check to see if a suit was missing.

“Do you want to talk here in the hallway?” she said, her lips heavy, her mouth slow. “I have a little place nearby. Not spacious, but there’s some privacy.”

Filip nodded once, and Naomi turned down the hall, Sárta and Filip following her. She rehearsed lines in her mind. I’m so tired that I just want it to be over and What I do to myself isn’t your fault and I can’t take it anymore. There were a thousand ways to convince him that she was ready to die. But beneath those, the heaviness in her gut thickened and settled. The manipulation was cruel and it was cold. It was her own child, the child she’d lost, and she was going to use him. Lie to him so well that what he told Marco would be indistinguishable from truth. So that when she disappeared to the Chetzemoka, they would assume she’d killed herself, and not come after her. Not until it was too late.

She could do it. She couldn’t do it. She could.

In the cabin, she sat on the couch, her legs folded up under her. He leaned against the wall, his mouth tight, his chin high. She wondered what he was thinking. What he wanted and feared and loved. She wondered if anyone had ever asked him.

I can’t take it anymore, she thought. Just say I can’t take it anymore.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I worry about you.”

“Not so much you wouldn’t betray me,” he said, and that untied the knot. Yes, if she lied to him, it would be betraying him, and for all her failures, she’d never done that. She could. She could do it. It wasn’t that she was powerless before the decision; it was that she chose not to.

“The warning I sent?”

“I have dedicated my life to the Belt, to freeing the Belters. And after we did everything we could to keep you safe, you spat in our faces. Do you love your Earther boyfriend that much more than your own kind? Is that it?”