Chapter 22 · Briar Has One Last Order

The gun's still up. Briar's hand doesn't shake. Mine do.

"Briar." My voice cracks. "I didn't—"

"Shut up." Her tone's flat. Professional. Like she's already decided.

The casket alarms are shrieking through the hull. Dozens of them. I can feel the echo of that signal still rattling in my skull, a frequency that shouldn't exist, a call I didn't make but came through me anyway. The ship used me. Reached into whatever's left of the old Sable's brain and pulled the trigger.

Vey's voice cuts through comms, sharp and pissed. "Holt. Situation."

Briar doesn't look away from me. "She's contained."

"The caskets?"

"Waking. All of them."

A pause. Then Vey, quieter. "How many?"

"Forty-three and counting."

Another pause. Longer. I can hear him doing the math. Forty-three mouths. Forty-three bodies pulling air and heat and rations. We don't have forty-three anything.

"Lock her down," Vey says finally. "Hard. I want her off the network."

Briar's jaw tightens. "Copy."

The gun doesn't move.

I'm still on my knees. The emergency shutdown tool's on the floor between us, that ugly Keelwright brick Ivo slipped her in case I went full ghost. She used it.