Page 22 of Stars

“I suspected.”

His stomach twisted, knotted hard. “My scans? My scars?”

“No. Call it a hunch. Or a sixth sense.” Dr. Worrell shrugged, that lopsided smile back on his face. “I hoped one day you would feel comfortable enough to confide in me, but I was never going to push or pressure you. Another one of my astronauts is a lesbian, and it took her three years to come out to me.”

Thoughts tumbled, fears—Was it something I did, something I said that gave me away?—and cheers—I’m not getting thrown out!—crashing headlong into each other.

“How do you feel? Coming out? And telling me?”

“Relieved,” he said automatically. “I mean,nyet, no. Not relieved. I feel fine. It is nothing. No big deal.” He grimaced. “So Idomake friends. I am not alone.” He shifted. Gnawed on the inside of his cheek. “Not anymore. In the past, maybe I was. But… I have a partner. I’ve been seeing him for over two years.”

Dr. Worrell grinned. He held out his hand for Sasha’s folder, flipped it open, and scrawled his name next to the field clearing Sasha through the final medical screen. “That’s fantastic, Sasha. Will I be able to meet him at Family Day?”

Sasha watched his pen swirl in loops and curlicues. “I hope so.” He took the folder Dr. Worrell passed back. They both held on. “Thank you,” Sasha breathed. “I—”

“Remember: you arenotalone.” Dr. Worrell winked, let go, and shooed him out of his office.

* * *

An hour later,Mark stuck a silver astronaut pin to Sasha’s shirt over his heart as the rest of the astronaut office cheered and applauded. Dan winked and grinned, snapping photos and sitting on the edge of Mark’s desk, sporting his own gold astronaut pin.

“When we launch you into space, you get to trade that silver for gold.” Mark beamed at him, arms crossed, eyes gleaming. “What do you say to joining my next mission and launching with my team?”

* * *

7

Washington DC

It tooka week for Dr. Mendoza’s courier to travel from the far east of Russia to Jack and Ethan in Washington, DC. The team had flown back after two days in Malta, and Jack and Ethan quietly debriefed with Elizabeth’s chief of staff when they returned. Pete, Blake, and Welby refurbished the equipment they’d used in Libya, which the CIA had flown back on a cargo plane. They were all together in the K Street office of SR Consultants when the courier finally arrived.

The pictures were grim.

The corpse lay face-up on a dirt road, no more than a goat path. Blood trailed behind him as if he’d tried to crawl to freedom. It was like a river covering the dirt, vibrantly crimson. He’d bled out of everywhere, waterfalls from his nose, his ears, his lips, beneath his fingernails. His eye sockets were empty, ragged claw marks gouged into his face around the holes. Flayed bits of skin, parts of his eyelid, hung from his blackened, bloodied fingernails.

His face was frozen in a scream, a raging wail, as if he’d died midbellow. In excruciating agony.

Jack spread the photos out on the conference table in the office he and Ethan shared. Ethan hung back, his arms folded, as if he didn’t want to even touch the pictures.

Next came the villages. There was the first visit by the medical team and the bones burned in the fire. The entire village obliterated, nothing but the charred outlines of stone and wooden homes. Scattered skeletons half-buried in the ash. Some looked peaceful, as if they’d died in their sleep. Or maybe they were dead before the fire.

Inside the remains of a stone building, a pile of bones made a small mountain clustered against one wall. “That’s an execution,” Ethan grunted. “When they’re piled like that in a sealed building.” He pointed to six blackened skulls that had rolled free. The rest of the skeletons were on top of each other, as if they were clamoring to escape their fate.

The next series of photos was of a forest, pristine save for a patch of excavated earth the size of a football field and gouged a meter deep into the black dirt. A square of the planet had been cut away, carved out like someone had excised a wound.

One of the photos of the scraped earth was taken from the same angle as one of the burned village, and lining them up, Jack and Ethan saw the same burned tree limbs, the same edges of char on the forest. It was a horrifying before and after, a complete erasure of life and death.

And of evidence.

They focused on the photos of the corpse and the reports from the medical team.Symptoms not associated with any known disease local to geographic area. No known toxin capable of observed effects.

Possible unknown pathogen responsible.

Source of pathogen unknown.

A knock on the conference room door made Jack look up. Pete, Blake, and Welby were standing in a line, looking through the glass walls at their macabre display.

Pete pushed open the door, leading the trio inside. “So… we have a new assignment?” His face was faintly green. “That’s not really our kind of mission, is it?”