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Cadmus cleared his throat, a smug grin on his face. ‘I would say that’s no longer accurate.’

Disbelieving laughs, born more from shock at his audacity than actual humour, tittered around the room. Reece in particular was torn between laughing and shifting uncomfortably at the reminder of what they’d been forced to witness.

‘Yeah… Sorry about that,’ I apologised sheepishly. While I wasn’t ashamed of my body, these people hadn’t deserved to be put in such an awkward position.

‘It’s not your fault, Arty,’ Addy soothed, a small pink hand coming to rest on my shoulder.

‘What are you all talking about?’ the captain asked. ‘What did I miss?’

‘Maybe I should start from the beginning?’ I suggested, not particularly eager to get into the details of my life but knowing I owed these people at least that much.

‘That’s probably best,’ the captain agreed on everyone’s behalf.

My exhaustion doubled at the mere thought of dragging all of my trauma up and throwing it out into the open, but everyone needed to know. They needed to understand who their enemy was, their goals and how they worked, and I was the best person for the job whether I liked it or not.

And so I adjusted a sleepy Baldr in my arms, got comfortable, and started talking.

*

The room was eerily silent when I was finished telling my story.

The reactions varied. Addy was clinging to me, her fingers digging into my arm uncomfortably but she seemed to need it to ground her. Eloria was wide-eyed and her skin had taken on a greenish hue. Henrik had his face in his hands, covering his eyes as if making himself blind would take away what he’d just learned. Urman was stone-faced and still as a statue, a mirror of Captain Hironimus.

The most concerning reactions, however, belonged to the final three. Cadmus and Dorian were angry. Burn the world down kind of angry. Their jaws ticked from grinding their teeth, their muscles were bunched as if ready to strike at the smallest provocation, and their fists were clenched so tightly their knuckles had turned white. A trickle of blood even dribbled from Cadmus’s palms, his nails piercing the skin.

And Reece…

He looked haunted.

He was staring at me, but it was like he wasn’t reallyseeingme. I wondered if his own trauma at the mercy of The Program was playing up, his story merging with mine to create a brand-new hellish conglomeration. Whatever he was seeing, whatever he was experiencing inside his own head, I worried he’d get stuck there and struggle to find his way back.

The captain cleared his throat once, then again for good measure before he broke through the tension in the room. ‘What the doctor made you do… is there any chance…?’

My lips thinned into a straight line, and I shook my head once with finality. ‘I don’t know why he thought someone else’s sperm might work, but the nanites destroy all chances of it taking. I’m not pregnant.’

Henrik lifted his head from his hands at the turn in the conversation. ‘Would you mind if I performed an examination?’ he asked. ‘I know you said there’s no possibility, but you said it yourself: the nanites are unpredictable. If Demari believes they’re responding to you and your emotions, I don’t think we can rule it out until we know for certain.’

I inhaled sharply at his reasoning, not because I was afraid to become a lab rat again – I knew that wasn’t his intention – but because his words made that tiny flicker of hope that had been all but expunged sputter as it tried to reignite. I gulped audibly but nodded my consent.

His answering smile was sad, but I tried to convey my reassurance with one of my own.

‘Actually…’ he continued hesitantly, and I waited patiently for him to say what was on his mind. ‘Since we do not know what to expect from your nanites and… other implants, I was wondering if I could perhaps do daily check-ups to keep track of any changes?’

I paused, mulling it over. ‘That would probably be the smartest course of action. I can agree to that.’

He released a sigh of relief, apparently believing my response would have been negative, and I was happy to prove him wrong. While I may not enjoy being poked and prodded at after so long spent doing just that, I was a rational person and could see the necessity of his request.

‘Can we move on now, please?’ asked Addy, her voice quivering with barely tamed emotion.

‘Right,’ the captain said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together as he stood upright away from the wall he’d been leaning on. ‘We can ruminate over what we’ve just learned on our own time, but we should start on a plan. Captain?’

It took me a moment to realise he was talking tome, and I jolted at the realisation. I also couldn’t keep calling him ‘the captain’ if I was the one that currently held that title. It was an odd situation I had trouble wrapping my head around, but I didn’t think I could call him anything else. To me, he’d always been The Captain, and using his given name would just be weird.

I cleared my throat to bide myself time to compose myself, but it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t sure it ever would be, really. ‘The first order of business should be picking a new location. We still need a place to regroup before we head back to the Forbidden Planet.’

The captain (I really couldn’t call him anything else), picked up where I’d left off. ‘Our home planets are out. We can’t afford to put our loved ones at risk by heading there. They’ll be the first place The Program and the IU will look.’

‘So we need someplace off-grid and out of the way,’ Eloria surmised.