“That sounds about right.” Catherine smiled in spite of herself.
“And it’s bullshit. They don’t want us to remember.” Addy leaned back in her armchair, trailing her fingers over the worn and faded upholstery on the arm. “It’s easier for them if we don’t. But I do, now. I remember everything.”
Catherine cleared her throat. “Tell me what you remember. Please.”
“I didn’t have a big fancy ship like Sagittarius. It was just me. NASA went old-school for the Persephone missions. One astronaut and a small ship. I had room to move around, a bed, some rudimentary living space.” Commander Addy snorted. “They called me a pilot, but I wasn’t a pilot any more than Ham or Laika were, back in the days before they put people in space. I was just the trained chimp. Almost all of it was automated. I was along for the ride to see if a human could survive the trip.”
“All the logs said everything went according to plan,” Cal said.
The buzzing was getting worse, the rattle of an incandescent light bulb right before it blew out. But there were no electric lights anywhere. Not in the ceiling, not on the tables. In fact, as she looked around, the only thing Catherine saw that used electricity was the ham radio.
Addy was looking at her closely. “I know,” she said, sounding irritable. She wasn’t talking to Catherine or Cal. “I can see it plain as you can.” Then she addressed Catherine. “They aren’t happy, are they? Your friends. The ones you came back with.”
Catherine forced herself not to look at Cal. Friends? “Do you mean…” She couldn’t believe she was going to say this out loud. “… the aliens?”
“Of course I mean them. Do you have any other friends in your head besides them?” She tapped her temple. “My friends helped me remember everything.” She looked at Catherine shrewdly. “See, I made them my friends, instead of my enemies, and now they’re on my side.”
“You don’t… they don’t… control you?”
“Not anymore.” Addy sounded smug.
Catherine’s mouth went dry. Speculation with Cal was one thing, but hearing it from Addy…
Cal spoke up, resting a calming hand on Catherine’s back. “How did they make contact with you?”
Addy eyed Catherine a moment longer, then said, “Got to ERB Prime, confirmed that it was, in fact, an Einstein-Rosen bridge, and went through. We had probe data that suggested how long the trip would take, and what space looked like on the far end, but nothing concrete.”
“That’s a long time to be alone,” Catherine said quietly.
“Four years, give or take. You were alone for longer.”
“True, but no one planned for me to be alone that long.”
Addy smiled thinly. “I don’t think they expected me to be alone that long. Absolute truth—I don’t think they expected me to come back at all. No one said anything, but I saw their faces when I boarded. They were expecting a one-way trip.” She shrugged. “Besides, I didn’t mind being alone. I never have.” She gestured around her.
“What…” Catherine swallowed and fought the urge to reach for Cal’s other hand. “What happened next?”
“I’m not going to lie, coming out of that wormhole was probably the most exciting moment of my life. I was seeing a part of space no one had ever seen before, not with the naked eye.” Addy smiled at the memory. “I only had a few days. I sent out probes, collected data; that was the busiest time of the trip, really. I had something to do besides be a passenger.
“On the second day, after I’d brought the third probe back in, the messages started.”
Catherine sat forward. “What messages?”
“At first they demanded to know what I was doing.” Commander Addy’s eyes went distant, as if she were reliving the moment. “Who I was, where I had come from… believe it or not, there actually was a protocol for what I should say. I sent them the information that was on the Voyager Golden Record and waited.”
“I hope NASA updated it a little since 1977,” Cal said. “It’d be embarrassing to send aliens an out-of-date mixtape.”
Catherine gave him a little shake of her head.
“That’s when the demands to surrender started,” Addy went on as if Cal hadn’t spoken, and Catherine drew a quiet breath. That sparked something in her, a distant memory, a chill running down her spine. The buzzing in her head got louder.
“Your friends don’t like me very much,” Addy said. “They don’t want you to remember.”
“Surrender, Catherine Wells, you are ours,” Catherine muttered. Oh God, she could see it. It was in all capital letters in her head, on a screen. On the screen, the comm screen in Sagittarius.
“That’s pretty much what they said, all right.” She sat forward, watching Catherine with new tension in her shoulders. “Told me they’d come in on one of the probes I sent out, and that they were part of me now.”
(kill her kill her now)
The urge was strong and unmistakable, and Catherine reached for Cal’s arm, hand tightening hard enough that he winced. “Catherine?”
Addy stood up. “They’re telling you to kill me, aren’t they? My friends can hear them. They’re mad we won’t do their dirty work anymore.”
“Catherine… what’s going on?”
“I-I don’t know.” She could feel that familiar feeling of being shoved back—but it wasn’t working. A part of her mind was roiling with fury.
“Listen to me, girl.” Addy stepped forward, her eyes gleaming with a divine sort of madness. “It’s a hive mind. Only the ones in my head managed to break free of the hive. The ones with you haven’t.”
“How do you know that?” Cal asked, shifting closer to Catherine, ready to get between her and Iris again.
“Telepathy,” she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “That’s how they communicate.”
Catherine stood up. She couldn’t sit still anymore. “Shut up!”
(KILL HER NOW)
The guns on the wall seemed to glow in front of her. They were right there. No one could stop her if she took one down.
Catherine clutched at her head. “Make it stop!”
Cal came over and put his hands on her shoulders.
“Hold her still,” Addy said. Before Catherine or Cal could answer, she closed the distance again, and put her hands on Catherine’s temples.
It hurt. The buzzing in her head turned to a scream, two sets of voices seeming to rise and fall in a language she almost understood. There was a sense of invasion, as if a foreign army had come marching into her mind, planning to wreak havoc. When the searing pain started, she staggered and cried out, but Cal and Addy kept her on her feet.
“What are you doing to her?” Cal demanded.
“My friends are setting her free. Now hush.”
Everything went silent. It was a silence like Catherine hadn’t known since Sagittarius. She wanted to ask what Addy had done, but she couldn’t find the words. They were buried beneath images and sounds flooding through her mind, nearly four years’ worth of missing memories, somehow unlocked.
Everything. Everything was there in her mind. The entire mission. TRAPPIST-1f. Tom.
Oh God, Tom.
Sagittarius I Mission
DAY 1142, FIVE DAYS AFTER THE EVENT
TRAPPIST-1F TWILIGHT LANDING AREA, ON BOARD SAGITTARIUS
Catherine moved around the command module of Sagittarius, getting it ready for takeoff. She’d tried to salvage as much as she could from the wreckage of the Habitat, thinking it might help the team back home figure out exactly what had happened. She knew that Tom was behind it, but she didn’t know how. Or why. She hadn’t seen him since the day he’d left her all the supplies. His quarantine was over, but he hadn’t contacted her again. She’d tried once or twice to find him, halfheartedly, but had no luck.