Chapter 3

Billie brandished an arm half-heartedly at the plexiglass cube in front of them. "Bon appétit."

Cleo cocked her head; there was nothing inside the cube but a syringe suspended from the top by two perpendicular tracks, like a claw machine. Ros squinted at it, mouth hanging open a little. "Please don't tell me we're getting our food injected intravenously."

"No, man, these are the coolest," Abe said, cutting off whatever Billie had just opened her mouth angrily to say. "It's a 3D food printer. No one wanted to spend seven years eating astronaut ice cream, so they built these to squirt out any food they wanted."

"‘Squirt out'?" Ros repeated, biting their lip. "That doesn't sound particularly—"

"All the ingredients are stored in shelf-stable powder form," Billie said coldly, "then rehydrated and extruded molecule by molecule."

"Okay, but ‘extruded' sounds worse. You do understand how that sounds worse?"

"Billie," Abe interjected, "how do I make a cheeseburger?"

Billie ground her teeth at him. "Push the button and ask."

Abe pressed the green button on the side of the cube. "Burger, medium rare. Hot."

Cleo snorted, and out of the corner of her eye she could have sworn she saw Billie look down at her feet, like she was trying not to laugh. But Cleo was quickly distracted from that development by the sight of a burger being built inside the printer chamber, line by line.

"Oh shit," she said, smacking Abe on the arm as the needle created a perfect squiggle of ketchup.

"Oh shit," Abe said, and smacked her cheerfully right back.

Once they'd all loaded their arms with food—hot, fried things and discontinued candy and fruits that had gone functionally extinct sometime in the last two decades—the others scurried across the ballroom of a mess hall to pick a table. Despite its size, the room was almost cozy, full of wood-paneled walls, virtual fireplaces that crackled gently, and long tables and benches for communal eating. Cleo hung back to walk slowly next to Billie. She took a deep breath.

"Hey," she said, hoping she wasn't about to start another argument, "are you, like, okay?"

Billie looked down at her, eyebrows raised skeptically. "In what sense?"

It occurred to Cleo that she didn't know how to tactfully ask whether Billie was just angry due to the probable deaths of her brother and all their crewmates and the failure of the Providence mission and her apparently unexpected transformation into a computer, or if she was simply a jackass by nature.

"I mean," she said slowly, "do you have, like, hologram food you could eat?"

Billie blinked at her. "What possible purpose could that serve, McQueary?"

Cleo shrugged, which almost dislodged an impeccably formed banana from her arms. "I just thought—you probably remember food, right? And maybe there's something you'd like to be eating right now, and—I don't know. I just thought it would be nice if you could eat with us."

Something sad, almost soft, flitted across Billie's face, but it was gone before Cleo could fully interpret it. "I've only been"—Billie scowled, searching for a word—"awake for a few hours. I'm not desperate for a hot dog just yet."

Cleo squinted at her. She didn't quite believe Billie, not least because of the way she was stealing hungry glances at the snacks in Cleo's arms. But she let the subject go as they arrived at the table where the others were sitting, their faces already stuffed and greasy.

"How does a printer make pastry this flaky?" Kaleisha asked, staring wonderingly at the perfectly fried Jamaican beef patty in her hands. Abe, who had somehow already finished his burger and was now scarfing down red bean–filled mooncakes, nodded emphatically. "And how is the Scotch bonnet still so spicy after spending twenty years as a weird powder, hmm?"

"Billie," Ros said, managing to look anxious around a mouthful of hush puppy, "where are we right now? Like, in the solar system?"

"Um—" Billie frowned at the chair Cleo had just pulled out for her. "I can't sit in that, McQueary. I can't touch anything that's not built into the ship."

"Oh, sorry." Cleo abandoned the chair and sat down on the floor, taking a first, life-affirming bite of her steaming chocolate-chip pancakes. Billie's right eyebrow twitched, but then she sat cross-legged next to Cleo and turned back to Ros.

"We should be passing Jupiter any moment, Wheeler."

"Seriously? Is—is there a way to see the planet? Y'know, as we pass by?"

"Sure." Billie waved a hand toward the nearest wall, and the wall disappeared.

"Shit on a stick, Billie—"

Cleo's voice was lost in the awestruck cries of the others as they all dropped their food and leapt to their feet. The wall wasn't gone, Cleo realized, just projecting the view outside onto its slightly curved surface with perfect clarity. She drew closer, winding her way between the tables and drinking in the view of the stars shining steadily against the pitch dark of space. Had she ever seen true black before, undiluted by the world? Had she ever seen the stars as they honestly were, without air pollution and light pollution and thousands of old, dead satellites in the way? Cleo didn't think so, now that she was looking at them, now that she was seeing,now—

Now that she was seeing Jupiter in the distance, sliding across their range of vision all too fast and far enough away that she could have blocked it out with the pad of her thumb, but still, wondrously there. The sun side of it swirled hazy and bright against the night side, and Cleo could just pick out a few moons, glittering tiny and precious around the planet, if she squinted.

"You don't have to—"

Cleo turned just in time to see Billie lift and spread her arms. The image on the wall zoomed in, and suddenly Jupiter was as tall as the ceiling and Cleo could see every cloud swirling its way across the red-striped surface.

"Never gets old." Billie was at Cleo's side now, and her reverential whisper was the kindest she had sounded yet.

"You were on the Erecura Deep mission to Europa, right?"

"Ah." Billie blinked hard, blinked again. "I guess I was."

Cleo waited, but Billie didn't elaborate. "Well, I could get used to this."

"You shouldn't have to." Billie cleared her throat then, snapping the other three out of their reveries. "Anyway. We have about three hours before we exit the Oort Cloud and make the jump to sub-lightspeed, after which you're all going to quickly become very useless, so I suggest you get moving if you want to send any messages or do your little gumshoe act."

"Christ." Kaleisha glared angrily at Jupiter. "What happens when we jump to sub-lightspeed?"

"Well, first your bodies will need time to... adjust."

"That pause was so pregnant it's probably four centimeters dilated," Ros said. "So what, pray tell, do you mean by that?"

"Ever been motion sick, Wheeler? It's like that, but all the way down to your soul. I'm remembering it now. Not fun." Ros and Kaleisha shared a very apprehensive look, but Billie didn't seem to notice. "Following your recoveries, we'll hopefully have at least a response from NASA, and we can begin strategizing in earnest."

The idea of a message from NASA sent a little thrill up Cleo's spine, despite everything. She still couldn't help feeling excited about getting her hands greasy in the Providence, rather than being scared. The unfortunate fact remained that spending years on a spaceship with her best friends sounded like her ideal scenario.

Before the guilt and confusion over all of that could overwhelm her, Cleo shot some finger guns at Billie. "I believe we have a date," she said, immediately putting her guns down at the look on Billie's face. "I hope you remember how the ship works. I don't know how many more surprises I can take. Kal—"

"I'm headed to the flight deck," Kaliesha said, maybe reading Cleo's mind and maybe cutting her off before she could do any more damage to their friendship. "See if I can get a message back to Earth." She turned to Abe and Ros. "You guys go check out the crew's living quarters."

Abe held out a hand to Ros, who grimaced and high-fived it weakly. "Go team!"

"Good luck with that, you two," Billie deadpanned. "Let me know if you find anything that a megacorporation and a yearslong investigation couldn't—"

"Alright, Oscar the Grouch." Cleo forgot herself and reached out to grab Billie's arm. Billie buzzed, and she spun around with an affronted noise, just in time to miss Abe sticking his tongue out at her behind her back. "Come give me the all-access tour of your trash can and leave my friends alone."

***

ARCHIVED: "Progress Report" — Dr. Kristoff Halvorsen to the Crew and Board of the Providence I Mission, June 2, 2041

My esteemed colleagues,

I am pleased to report that the engine has completed final testing and is now fully operational and ready for launch on July 1. This is, of course, thanks to my brilliant and unflagging engineering team, who have been working around the clock for years to pull off what is arguably the greatest technical accomplishment in human history. I don't need to tell you all how crucial our achievements here are going to be to the continued survival—and prosperity—of our species. Here's to even more to come.

With gratitude,

Dr. Kris Halvorsen

ARCHIVED: "Re: Progress Report" — Capt. Wilhelmina Lucas to Dr. Kristoff Halvorsen, June 2, 2041

Kris, call me. I have a couple questions.

***

If, twenty-four hours ago, Cleo had been asked to guess what the personal lab of Captain Wilhelmina Lucas, PhD, looked like, she probably would have imagined sleek surfaces and immaculately indexed bookshelves. She was thrown, therefore, to discover that the space looked like a college town flea market the week after the seniors from the queer dorm cleaned out their rooms. The lab took up nearly an entire level of the ship, and every inch of it was cluttered and colorful and full of outlandish things. Bookcases covered every wall; cabinets and workstations of all kinds turned the lab floor into a maze of tables and stools and machines. Cleo saw a chemistry set, a carpenter's bench, an easel, what looked for all the world like a tiny urn on its own tiny shelf, a desk practically sagging under a mountain of circuit boards, a rusting cast-iron skillet that her hands itched to take a steel-wool scrub to—and that was just in the immediate vicinity of the elevator.

"Damn, Billie," she said, picking up a circuit board the size of her face. "I've been told my bedroom is, to quote Kaleisha, ‘a danger to all who dare enter,' but this is next level."

"Don't touch that," Billie snapped, even though she had her back to Cleo and was marching deeper into the maze. "If you make a mess, you'll have to put everything back, and I'll have to suffer through watching you put it back wrong."

"I hate to break it to you, but this is, uh. Already a mess."

Billie turned to glare at Cleo, but didn't stop walking. "I don't expect you to understand, but everything in here does have a place."

"Mm-hmm." Cleo's eyes landed on a pile of old, coffee-stained books. "And why does The Mushroom Hunter's Guide to New England, third edition, have a place in your space lab, exactly?"

"I get bored. Easily." Billie was already half obscured by stacks of boxes, and Cleo scurried between a sewing machine and a bin of tarnished handsaws to catch up. "Space gets very boring."

"Rousing words, Captain."

Billie huffed out a humorless laugh. "What makes you think I have any interest in rousingyou?"

"I don't know," Cleo muttered, kicking a tennis ball out of her way and under a table, "maybe the fact that I grew up watching you be all cool and reassuring on TV?"

Billie stopped dead, and Cleo had to whirl her arms to avoid tripping through her. Billie turned to face her, suddenly closer than Cleo ever expected her to be. She craned her neck up to meet Billie's eyes, which were green and blazing behind her glasses in a way that made it hard to believe she was just code and light, rather than flesh and blood and simmering feeling.

"Let's get one thing straight right now," Billie growled, her voice an angry register deeper. "I am not the woman you grew up idolizing."

Cleo swallowed. "Yeah, okay, because you're a hologram, I've picked up on—"

"No." Billie flexed her fingers, inhaling deeply through her nose. "Because that woman never existed. She was a fiction, invented for the donors and the cameras. She's about as real as I am."

And Billie turned on her heel and stalked away. Cleo stood frozen for a moment, then gave her head a little shake and began picking her way determinedly after Billie again.

"So you are just an asshole," Cleo called, trying not to let any hurt into her voice. "You just used to be pretty good at hiding it."

Billie didn't answer. So, without giving herself time to second-guess it, Cleo picked up the nearest Allen wrench she could lay her hands on and threw it.

Of course, it sailed right through Billie, who flickered, flinched, and then growled in frustration.

"What is your problem, McQueary?"

"My problem?" Cleo rounded a hulking old television to look Billie in the eye again. "My problem is that I'm finally, finally on a spaceship, just like I've always wanted to be, except I don't understand how it works or how me and my friends are going to survive for the next seven years, and the only person who can help me is the giant shit stain of an operating system!"

"Sounds like you've got it made, actually," Billie snarled. "I'll just go back into the computer, and then you'll have everything you ever wanted."

Cleo stared. The detail in the projection really was immaculate—she could see Billie's pupils dilating, the loose hairs flying free from her ponytail, the muscle twitching in her jaw. "But I don't want you to go away. I want to work with you."

Billie's frown deepened. "Well, you can't always get what you want."

"But—"

"You don't want to work with me, McQueary," Billie said, stepping even closer in a way that made Cleo very aware of her heartbeat in her ears. "What would you say is the appeal, hmm? That the first crew I ever led, which included my little brother, are all dead and gone now? That my life's work, apparently, is a failure on a historic scale? That I'm a fucking computer now, with no obvious purpose and questionable recall abilities? Or is it that I have had about two hours and sixteen minutes to process not only these new developments, but the fact that I'm going to have to spend the rest of my goddamn life on this goddamn ship, which will consist of—if I'm lucky—getting you and your friends to Proxima Centauri B in one piece before I have to watch you freeze and starve to death?"

Cleo blinked. "Do you, uh... Do you need more time to process, is that—"

Billie pinched the bridge of her nose again. "No, McQueary. I need to teach you how this ship works so you don't die in some horrible dark matter explosion."

"Hey." Cleo surprised herself by reaching out and floating her hand through the space just above Billie's holographic arm, so it was almost a reassuring pat. "I can't do much about the, um, everything else. But I promise I have no plans to freeze or starve or get dark matter exploded to death."

Billie frowned down at Cleo's hand. "You're being nice to me again."

"Yup."

"Because you think I'm going to be your cool space mentor or whatever."

"Uh, no, because you're sad and you need someone to be nice to you. And that ‘I am not the woman you grew up idolizing' thing was, like, three whole minutes ago. We're reluctant allies and equals now, try to keep up."

When Billie looked back up at Cleo, she was still frowning. But this time, she didn't look combative so much as she looked like Cleo was a Rubik's Cube she was finding mildly difficult to solve. It made Cleo's skin vibrate. She dropped her arm.

"I don't know about equals," Billie said slowly. "I'm still the captain, technically."

"You're as much the captain as I am the chief engineer, Billie. Things have changed."

"They sure have."

And with a tiny smile, Billie turned on her heel and kept walking deeper into the lab. Cleo stayed frozen where she was for a second, partly because her heart was pounding like crazy, and partly because it was only just starting to dawn on her exactly what caliber of emotional whiplash she was going to be dealing with here. She watched Billie disappear behind a giant centrifuge. Then she heard her call out, her voice echoing around her cathedral of a lab.

"Come on, McQueary. You'll never make chief engineer if you keep slacking off like this."

***

Tempting as it is to watch McQueary and the hologram bicker, the other three are off elsewhere, doing more important things. Reid is on the flight deck, fiddling with the computer until she figures out how to fire off a radio message. Alone, she calls out into the darkness:

"If anyone's listening, we're on Providence I. If anyone's listening, we're about to jump to near-lightspeed, and we can't turn back. If anyone's listening, tell my dad I love him."

Meanwhile, Yang and Wheeler are searching the quarters. For some reason, they think they'll find some sort of hint as to where everyone disappeared to, which is stupid. But there is plenty else to find in there, if they can manage to recognize it.

The crew of Providence I was unusual in a lot of ways, see, the most relevant to our purposes being that only fifty of them were, technically, crew. The other 153 passengers were civilians—"mission specialists," in Erebus parlance—highly vetted, highly trained, and highly competent civilians whose sole purpose on the ship was to survive the voyage, then figure out how to make farms and babies and civilizations on Proxima B.

As such, the passengers were allowed to bring a lot of personal effects. Most of them were young prodigies, precocious twenty- and thirty-somethings with aspirations too grand for a single, failing planet. Our intrepid investigators could guess what skills they were expected to bring to Society 2.0 based on their belongings: a cello here, a draft of a novel there, a well-loved book of handwritten recipes somewhere else.

Yang, who can presumably list off the names of each specialist from memory, gets wet around the eyes. "This is the worst, Ros," he whispers, though there's no need to whisper. "Look at everything they brought. They were all so hopeful."

Wheeler barely grimaces. "I know, bud. Let's just get through it and get out of here."

"I don't want to just get through it." Yang's puppy-dog eyes are truly something to behold, but Wheeler must be immune to them after so many years. "It's better to feel these things fully, right?"

"LOL," Wheeler intones, without a trace of laughter in their voice. "That's, like, the Abe-iest thing you could have said."

Yang frowns. But Wheeler is already moving on without him, so he puts down the cleats he was holding and follows.

A handful of the passengers were family units. Here's where Yang will get even more weepy. There are holographic photo albums full of mountaintop nature shots and birthday party candids that blink out of their memory sticks to light up the dusty darkness. There are baby blankets and very small shoes—never worn, just packed for the little ones that would have been born along the way. There's a jean jacket covered in enamel pins of cartoon characters and a worn-out copy of Heresies by John Gray, with notes scribbled in every margin.

Those last two are from the same bunk, actually. Yang and Wheeler are searching through it now. In a moment, Yang will find a name scrawled on the inside cover of the book: Elijah Lucas.

***

ARCHIVED: Providence Intracrew Messaging System Conversation — Capt. Wilhelmina Lucas and Dr. Kristoff Halvorsen, June 2, 2041

Wilhelmina Lucas

Hey, Kris, congrats on the all-systems-go

Kristoff Halvorsen

Thank you, Billie. It's a joy and a relief.

Wilhelmina Lucas

I'm sure

I bet your team has been desperate for some RR, too

Kristoff Halvorsen

Absolutely. Larson was telling me just yesterday how she couldn't wait to sleep for 72 hours straight!

Wilhelmina Lucas

Ha. Speaking of: Did you see my email? I asked you to call me

Kristoff Halvorsen

Must have slipped through the cracks. What's up?

Wilhelmina Lucas

I was wondering if there's anything you can tell me about Jefferson and the others who got sick a while back

Obviously, everything's fine now

But if there's any chance that the problem could reoccur...

Do you understand what I'm asking

Kristoff Halvorsen

You know that I can't share classified info you don't have clearance for. The board would have my head. We've been over this. I've told you absolutely everything I'm able to.

Wilhelmina Lucas

Yeah, yeah, fine

Okay, just answer me this: Is there anything I should be worried about?

Kristoff Halvorsen

Absolutely not, Billie. You can quote me on that.

Wilhelmina Lucas

Alright, thanks.

In other news: More to come, huh?

Kristoff Halvorsen

Ha!

Also highly classified, I'm afraid.

But I'm sure there's no harm in simply telling you that I've started work on further potential applications of the engine. Renewable energy, etc.

Wilhelmina Lucas

[... ]

Energy?

I thought the engine didn't produce any energy

Kristoff Halvorsen

Right, yes. It's complicated.

And classified, of course.

But it's going to be big, my friend. I only wish you could be here to see it.

Wilhelmina Lucas

Right

[... ]

Alright, I'll let you go take a nap.

Or get back to work, more like

***

Billie stopped in front of a well-loved whiteboard, and Cleo watched as she reached, seemingly without thinking, for the marker sitting on its bottom ledge. Of course, her hand phased through. The little frustrated sound she made in the back of her throat almost made Cleo take pity on her all over again.

"What do you need the marker for, Billie? Maybe I can help."

Billie shoved her hands into her pockets. "It's not," she stammered, "it's just—I was going to explain the, uh. Dark matter engine. And writing things out always—but it doesn't—"

Cleo's heart did a little twirl. Finally, a real explanation. "What if I take the marker and you tell me what to write?"

Billie's face pinched. "That's stupid."

"I'm doing it." Cleo grabbed the marker, uncapped it, and grinned at Billie, standing at the ready.

Billie squinted at her. "Fine," she grumbled. "Sketch our solar system and the Proxima Centauri system."

"I think I can manage better than a sketch," Cleo said. The marker squeaked as she drew.

"Big words for a woman who just gave the sun a smiley face."

"That's my uncommon artistic vision shining through. You're squashing my genius."

"Mm-hmm." Billie leaned over Cleo's shoulder and traced a finger between two of Cleo's polka-dot planets. "Now connect the stars, and the planets, and make it so the lines join together in the space between systems. Like strands of a frayed rope coming together."

Cleo did as she was told, then stood back. Two solar systems, joined together by a thick line that branched at either end to send out a strand to each celestial object. "It's the dark matter web," she said, realizing. "The filaments that connect planets and galaxies and stars to each other and everything else."

"Exactly." Billie's hand did a funny thing, almost like she meant to touch Cleo on the shoulder, but then she thrust it back into her pocket. "This is how Kris explained it to me. The flow of dark matter and dark energy along these filaments is what powers the ship. The engine doesn't burn dark matter. Rather, it rides the filaments, so to speak—latches on to one, lets the WIMPs flow through the reactor, and you've got a moving ship."

Weakly Interacting Massive Particles: the stuff dark matter was made of. Cleo had a million questions, most of them along the lines of How did Kris Halvorsen figure it out? and Do you have any of his notes in your computer brain, maybe? and When did he find the time to film Dr. Dark Matter in between making some of the most groundbreaking quantum advances in the history of mankind?, but she thought maybe she should start at the beginning.

"So the vortex I saw in the middle of the engine ring—"

"—is the core of our dark matter filament, yes, flowing through and powering the engine." Billie leaned across Cleo again to point at one of the smaller strands emerging from a planet. "Right now, we're here, riding the filament that connects Earth to the larger pathway between our sun and Proxima Centauri." She traced along the line to where it joined the others. "Once we leave the Oort Cloud, we'll reach the dark matter superhighway, if you will, and then it's off to the races."

Cleo tapped the marker against her mouth. She had only vague memories of news stories and interviews that had revealed bits and pieces of this explanation. Hearing it all together now, however, something didn't seem right. "So the engine transforms the kinetic energy of dark matter into kinetic energy for the ship. The reaction doesn't actually generate any energy."

"Yes."

"But they built and tested the engine before it was attached to the ship. So where did the kinetic energy go?"

Billie frowned at the whiteboard. "I don't know."

"And right now," Cleo said, starting to pace, waving the marker in absentminded loops as she went, "we're not moving at our final, near-lightspeed rate yet. Does the dark matter start moving faster as soon as we're out of our solar system? That seems awfully convenient."

"What are you saying?"

"And the light!" Cleo pointed the marker at Billie like a smoking gun. "What was the flash of light on Launch Day about, if no energy is being generated?"

"I'm not—" Billie gave her head a little shake like she hoped it would dislodge something. "I must be missing something. It must not have loaded yet. Kris explained it better..."

Cleo chewed on the marker cap, feeling unsettled. "Did you ever actually work on the engine? Or even see it?"

"No. It was so secret, so proprietary. They just told me the basics of how it worked, to relay to the press."

"Did Dr. Halvorsen ever explain how they were testing it?"

"No, that was also classified."

"Did you ever feel like something didn't add up?"

Billie ran a hand over her mouth, her gaze growing distant. "I'm trying to think."

Cleo flung her arms up in desperation. "Alright, I don't know, did you ever notice anything weird going on with the engine?"

Billie gasped. She froze, staring unfocused at some point past Cleo's head as her eyes buzzed fast enough to become bright green blurs. And then she exhaled, and looked at Cleo.

"Four engineers on Kris's team got sick."

Cleo dropped the marker. "What?"

Billie pinched the bridge of her nose tighter than ever, like she was trying to keep the memory from escaping out her eyes. "They wouldn't tell me what happened, the board just quietly put them on leave. I remember now."

"Sick how?"

"I don't know. I know they all got evaluated, but that—that was the last I heard of it. I had to—" Billie stopped dead. "I didn't see the results until I started going through Kris's classified files."

Cleo dragged both hands through her hair. "Why were you going through his files? Wasn't he your partner?"

"He was my friend—" Billie's mouth fell open, her eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance. "But he—he said something. Something about using the engine for renewable energy."

Cleo's eyes flew back to the diagram of the dark matter web. "But the engine doesn't generate energy."

"That's what Kris told me." Billie ran her hand over her mouth again. "But it wasn't—it wasn't true, there was something wrong—"

As Cleo watched Billie's fingertips tremble, watched more wispy bits of golden hair escape from her ponytail, watched her shoulders clench and unclench with every bit of memory that revealed itself, she realized: There had to be a reason why Billie was an asshole. Why she could cry. Why Captain Lucas had made such a perfect, lifelike copy of herself.

Cleo clenched her fist around an idea and pounded the whiteboard triumphantly. "Billie, this might be a little forward of me, but let's go to the flight deck. I'm going to need to look at your code."

Billie frowned at her again, but this time it was tinged with something like fear. "Why?" she asked, her voice smaller than Cleo had yet heard it.

"Because I think I know what you were built for. I think Captain Lucas knew there was going to be a mystery that she might not be around to solve." Cleo jabbed a finger at the air right in front of Billie's forehead. "So she tapped you."

***

They find a lot in Elijah's bunk. A desiccated succulent in a tiny pot. An ancient copy of The Joy of Cooking with three different sets of handwriting marking up the recipes. A vintage ukulele, with signs of a meticulous polish job still shining through.

All that, and Wheeler gets distracted by one of Elijah's uniforms. Outwardly, it looks just like every other one they've seen; every crew member had a few breathable blue-gray shirts, matching pants, and an official Providence bomber jacket, and the ones that weren't being worn when they all disappeared in a flash of light were mostly folded neatly on the shelves at the base of each bunk. Elijah's uniform was no different. It was folded a little more sloppily, maybe.

But Wheeler notices something: a second jacket, with a sleeve that isn't lying quite the way the other ones did. They pick it up, see the name printed on its breast, and frown. And when they turn the strangely stiff sleeve inside out, they gasp. They run after Yang, who's already walking away, scrubbing the cuff of his hoodie under his nose. And Wheeler shows him the name, the sleeve, peels back the lining to reveal a layer of something silvery.

"It's Dr. Halvorsen's jacket, in Elijah Lucas's quarters," they say. "This is some sort of protective lining. I think someone knew the crew was in danger." Yang frowns, still not understanding, and Wheeler says:

"I don't know if we can trust Billie."