He was aware of having two different minds. One was the Miller he was used to, familiar with. The one who was thinking about what was going to happen when he got out, what the next step would be in connecting the dots between Phoebe Station, Ceres, Eros, and Juliette Mao, how to work the case. That version of him was scanning the crowd the way he might have watched the line at a crime scene, waiting for some detail, some change to catch his attention. Send him in the right direction to solve the mystery. It was the shortsighted, idiotic part of him that couldn’t conceive of his own personal extinction, and it thought surely, surely there was going to be an after.
The other Miller was different. Quieter. Sad, maybe, but at peace. He’d read a poem many years before called “The Death-Self,” and he hadn’t understood the term until now. A knot at the middle of his psyche was untying. All the energy he’d put into holding things together—Ceres, his marriage, his career, himself—was coming free. He’d shot and killed more men in the past day than in his whole career as a cop. He’d started—only started—to realize that he’d actually fallen in love with the object of his search after he knew for certain that he’d lost her. He’d seen unequivocally that the chaos he’d dedicated his life to holding at bay was stronger and wider and more powerful than he would ever be. No compromise he could make would be enough. His death-self was unfolding in him, and the dark blooming took no effort. It was a relief, a relaxation, a long, slow exhale after decades of holding it in.
He was in ruins, but it was okay, because he was dying.
“Hey,” Holden said. His voice was stronger than Miller had expected it might be.
“Yeah?”
“Did you ever watch Misko and Marisko when you were a kid?”
Miller frowned. “The kids’ show?” he asked.
“The one with the five dinosaurs and the evil guy in the big pink hat,” Holden said, then starting humming a bright, boppy tune. Miller closed his eyes and then started singing along. The music had had words once. Now it was only a series of rises and falls, runs up and down a major scale, with every dissonance resolved in the note that followed.
“Guess I must have,” Miller said when they reached the end.
“I loved that show. I must have been eight or nine last time I saw it,” Holden said. “Funny how that stuff stays with you.”
“Yeah,” Miller said. He coughed, turned his head, and spat out something red. “How are you holding together?”
“I think I’m okay,” Holden said. Then, a moment later, he added, “As long as I don’t stand up.”
“Nauseated?”
“Yeah, some.”
“Me too.”
“What is this?” Holden asked. “I mean, what the hell is this all about? Why are they doing this?”
It was a fair question. Slaughtering Eros—slaughtering any station in the Belt—was a pretty easy job. Anyone with first-year orbital mechanics skills could find a way to sling a rock big enough and fast enough to crack the station open. With the effort Protogen had put in, they could have killed the air supply or drugged it or whatever the hell they wanted to do. This wasn’t a murder. This wasn’t even a genocide.
And then there was all the observation equipment. Cameras, communications arrays, air and water sensors. There were only two reasons for that kind of shit. Either the mad bastards at Protogen got off on watching people die, or…
“They don’t know,” Miller said.
“What?”
He turned to look at Holden. The first Miller, the detective, the optimist, the one who needed to know, was driving now. His death-self didn’t fight, because of course it didn’t. It didn’t fight anything. Miller raised his hand, like he was giving a lecture to a rookie.
“They don’t know what it’s about, or… you know, at least they don’t know what’s going to happen. This isn’t even built like a torture chamber. It’s all being watched, right? Water and air sensors. It’s a petri dish. They don’t know what that shit that killed Julie does, and this is how they’re finding out.”
Holden frowned.
“Don’t they have laboratories? Places where you could maybe put that crap on some animals or something? Because as experimental design goes, this seems a little messed up.”
“Maybe they need a really big sample size,” Miller said. “Or maybe it’s not about the people. Maybe it’s about what happens to the station.”
“There’s a cheery thought,” Holden said.
The Julie Mao in Miller’s mind brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. She was frowning, looking thoughtful, interested, concerned. It all had to make sense. It was like one of those basic orbital mechanics problems where every hitch and veer seemed random until all the variables slipped into place. What had been inexplicable became inevitable. Julie smiled at him. Julie as she had been. As he imagined she had been. The Miller who hadn’t resigned himself to death smiled back. And then she was gone, his mind shifting to the noise from the pachinko machines and the low, demonic wailing of the crowds.
Another group—twenty men hunkered low, like linebackers—made a rush toward the mercenaries guarding the opening to the port. The gunmen mowed them down.
“If we had enough people,” Holden said after the sound of machine guns fell away, “we could make it. They couldn’t kill all of us.”
“That’s what the patrol goons are for,” Miller said. “Make sure no one can organize a big enough push. Keep stirring the pot.”
“But if it was a mob, I mean a really big mob, it could… ”
“Maybe,” Miller agreed. Something in his chest clicked in a way it hadn’t a minute before. He took a slow, deep breath, and the click happened again. He could feel it deep in his left lung.
“At least Naomi got away,” Holden said.
“That is good.”
“She’s amazing. She’d never put Amos and Alex in danger if she could help it. I mean, she’s serious. Professional. Strong, you know? I mean, she’s really, really… ”
“Pretty, too,” Miller said. “Great hair. Love the eyes.”
“No, that wasn’t what I meant,” Holden said.
“You don’t think she’s a good-looking woman?”
“She’s my XO,” Holden said. “She’s… you know… ”