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.