Page 139 of Stars

Ethan pushed to his feet. Blood poured down his arm, running beneath his jacket and dripping from his fingers.

Lazarus backed up to the ship’s railing, one arm around Welby’s throat and a pistol pointed at Welby’s temple. “I’m taking your chopper. I’m getting out of here. And I’m takinghimwith me.” He tightened his grip on Welby. “I need food to regrow my children.”

Ethan raised his pistol.

“Ethan, we need him,” Welby said. His voice was calm. Quiet, despite the roar of the rushing water swallowing the corvette. “The world needs him.”

“Don’t you make another fucking move!” Lazarus bellowed. “I will fucking kill him!”

“Luke…”

“It’s okay, Ethan.” Welby said softly. His gaze burned into Ethan, the color of the sky and the water, the color of resignation. He tried to smile. “I know what you have to do.”

Ethan squeezed the trigger.

Welby exhaled. His eyes slipped closed.

Ethan’s bullet slammed into Lazarus’s right eye and passed through his brain, fracturing before part of it blasted out the back of his skull. Cavitation waves liquefied his gray matter in microseconds, passing down and into his brain stem and turning it to mush.

Lazarus went limp, both arms dropping. With the loss of his brain stem, there was no death reflex, no jerk of his fingers to squeeze the trigger and send a round into Welby. As Lazarus fell to the deck, the corvette bucked and shuddered and tossed his body over the railing. With a splash, he disappeared into the black waves and the churning froth beneath the sinking Grisha.

Welby staggered forward. Pete caught him, wrapping his arms around him and holding Welby up. His eyes were wild, and he grabbed his chest, his neck, ran his hands over his head before whirling on Ethan.

Blake ran to Ethan’s side and grabbed his biceps, pressed his hand over the soaked sleeve of his jacket. “You’re hit.”

“Nicked an artery,” Ethan hissed. He could feel his blood pumping in his arm, the pound and throb of his heart. There was too much blood, too much soaking the deck.

“Ethan—” Welby started.

“Don’t ever tell me to kill you again, Luke. Ever.”

“Weneededhim. Everybody needed him. We had to bring him in alive.”

“Not like that.”

“Ethan—”

“If we’re not willing to trade those lives in orbit for the world’s safety, what makes you think I’m willing to trade yours for Lazarus?” Ethan snapped. “No madman gets to decide your life, Luke. I had enough of that with Madigan. We will find another way!”

Blake ripped open a bag of QuikClot with his teeth and poured the packet over Ethan’s biceps, shoving his fingers into the wound and pushing the powder into every nook and cranny of his torn skin. Kilaqqi took a bandage from Blake’s med kit and wrapped Ethan’s arm.

“What if there is no other way?” Welby said. His hands fisted, opening and closing at his sides, too much adrenaline still coursing through him.

“There’s a lot of smart fucking people on this planet,” Ethan growled. “That asshole isn’t the smartest one. We’ll figure this out.”

“Will we figure it out in time?”

The deck pitched beneath them, and black water chewed over the stern. “She’s going down,” Kilaqqi said. “It’s time to leave.”

Ethan turned back to the hatch leading to the hold. Lazarus said he hadn’t completed the virus. But was the key to a cure somewhere in that dark hole?

He’d lost Lazarus. Could he afford to lose the man’s lab?

There wasn’t time. He watched as the hatch sank beneath the surface, swallowed by the waves as the Arctic pulled the corvette and Lazarus’s lab beneath the ice.

Let it be buried forever in an Arctic tomb, forgotten to time. Let the horror disappear.

Blake helped him off the ship. They waited on the island until the corvette sank and the obsidian waters settled. “Good fucking riddance,” Pete said.