Ivo held himself as still as the shaking let him, jacket pulled tight, teeth clenched hard enough to ache, working to keep the tremor small enough that the cargo netting wouldn’t rattle.
The fever had arrived in waves.
Every joint ached.
The iron sickness had climbed from his stomach into his blood, and the Assay tracked it in rust-red text he kept closing and opening just to make sure it was real.
Dross accumulation: marginal.
Hydrate and purge.
Marginal.
He wiped sweat off his face with a hand that wouldn’t stop trembling and tasted blood where he’d bitten the inside of his cheek.
Topside, the ship had gone quiet.
The battery was charging.
The hull had stopped groaning.
Someone Maureen, probably had jury-rigged the heating, and warm air cycled through the vents in a rhythm he could count.
He should move.
Should slip out while they slept, find somewhere less obvious to collapse.
But his legs had gone heavy, and standing felt impossible.
The hatch to the cargo hold opened.
Ivo went still.
Not a choice.
Reflex.
The same stillness that had kept him alive in the blister, in the manifest queue, in every room where being noticed got you thrown out.
Footsteps on the ladder.
Not heavy enough to be John.
Too sure to be one of the kids.
Don West’s voice drifted down, cheerful and annoyed at once.
“I swear to God, if the couplings rolled under the”
The footsteps stopped.
Ivo opened his eyes.
Don stood three meters away, one hand on the ladder, the other holding a work light that pinned Ivo to the netting like a moth to a board.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then Don sighed.
“Oh good. Another one.”
Ivo unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” Don tilted his head, the light shifting.
“So. Question. Are you a stowaway, a hallucination, or some kind of metal-eating space ghost? Because my week’s been weird enough that I’m genuinely not sure.”
“Stowaway.”
“Great. Fantastic. Love that for both of us.” Don came down the rest of the ladder, hands out, like Ivo might bolt.
He crouched a couple meters away, light angled low.
“You look like hell, by the way. How long have you been down here?”
“Four days on the Resolute. One day here.”
“Eating what?”
“Wasn’t hungry.”
Don’s eyebrow went up.
“That’s not how bodies work.”
Ivo said nothing.
The shaking had started again, small tremors he couldn’t flatten.
He saw the moment Don noticed.
“Okay.” Don set the light down.
“New question. Are you dying right now, or is this more of a slow-burn situation?”
“I’m fine.”
“Kid, I’ve seen fine. You’re not it.” Don stood, brushing his hands on his pants.
“Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to get the family, because it’s the right thing to do and also because if they find out later, they’ll space me. You’re going to stay here and not die in the next five minutes. Clear?”
Ivo’s mouth was dry.
“You could not tell them.”
“I could.” Don picked up the light.
“But then you’d stay a secret, and secrets on a ship this small have a way of going septic. Also and I’m just guessing here you need a medic, and we’ve got one, and she’s good at keeping people alive even when they’re being stupid about it. So. Sit tight.”
He was already at the ladder.
Ivo tried to push himself upright, got halfway, and had to stop when his vision doubled.
“Wait.”
Don paused.
“Tell them I’m harmless.”
“Are you?”
Ivo met his eyes.
“I want to be.”
Don held his gaze a beat longer, then nodded once and climbed.
The hatch sealed.
Ivo sagged back into the netting and listened to his pulse hammer in his ears.
He’d counted to sixty-three when the hatch opened again and voices spilled down Don’s, and a woman’s, and a man’s that Ivo recognized from the ice.
John Robinson hit the deck first, moving fast, and Ivo forced himself upright with both hands braced on the crate behind him.
Standing felt like a test he was failing.
Two meters away, John stopped and took him in, eyes moving from Ivo’s shaking hands to his face and back.
No weapon.
No color in his face.
No story yet.
“Stay there,” John said.
Ivo stayed.
Maureen came down next, precise and quick, her eyes already cataloging.
Don followed, and then last Judy, medical kit in hand, dragged out of bed and visibly unhappy about it.
She saw Ivo and stopped on the bottom rung.
Her expression tightened, then smoothed.
“This is the stowaway?” Maureen’s voice was level.
Controlled.
Already past surprise and into triage.
“Yep.” Don leaned against a crate, arms folded.
“Found him about two minutes ago. Thought you’d want to know before he passed out and I had to Weekend-at-Bernie’s him up the ladder.”
John shifted his weight forward, closing the gap by half a step.
“Who are you?”
Ivo kept his hands visible.
Kept his voice steady.
“Ivo Lindholm. I was on the manifest as freight. A loadmaster owed someone a favor. I paid to be cargo.”
“Paid with what?”
“Everything I had.” He let that sit.
Let them hear how it sounded.
She stepped closer, gaze sharp.
“How did you get onto this Jupiter?”
“Luck. I was in the lower blister when the Resolute scattered. Grabbed a handhold, rode it down.”
“Why didn’t you reveal yourself when we crashed?”
Ivo met her eyes.
Then John’s.
Then Judy’s still watching, clinical and close.
“Because I didn’t know if you’d keep me.”
The silence stretched.
Judy came down off the ladder, set the kit on a crate, and crossed to him.
She didn’t ask permission.
Just reached out, pressed two fingers to his wrist, and counted.
“Pulse is elevated,” she said, flat.
Clinical.
“You’re sweating. Shaking. Pupils normal. Skin’s clammy.” She pulled a penlight, checked his eyes.
“How long have you felt like this?”
“Few hours. Maybe longer.”
“Nausea?”
“Some.”
“Vomiting?”
He hesitated.
She saw it.
“Vomiting,” she repeated.
“Once.”
Judy stepped back, crossed her arms.
“Toxic exposure. Heavy metals. Where does a stowaway get heavy-metal poisoning on day one?”
Ivo held her stare.
Gave her the smaller truth.
“I was in the lower sections when the Robot attacked. Spent four days in a blister that wasn’t rated for life support. Breathed a lot of things I shouldn’t have.”
It wasn’t a lie.
It just wasn’t the whole of it.
Judy’s stare didn’t move off him a beat longer than it needed to long enough that he understood she didn’t believe him.
She didn’t call him on it, either.
Just turned to Maureen.
“He needs fluids, rest, and observation. If it’s what he says it is, he’ll purge it in a few days. If it’s not” She looked back at Ivo.
“we’ll know.”
Her expression didn’t shift.
“We don’t have resources for an extra passenger.”
“We’ve got water,” Judy said.
“We’ve got a corner of the galley. And if he dies because we threw him out, that’s on us.”
John looked at Ivo.
“You said you want to be harmless. What can you do?”
Ivo’s throat was dry.
“I can fix things. Patch, weld, jury-rig. I’m good with metal.”
“We’ve got Don for that.”
“Then I’ll do whatever Don doesn’t want to do.”
Don snorted.
“Kid’s got a future in contract negotiation.”
Maureen studied Ivo for a long moment.
Then her gaze shifted to John.
John held Ivo’s gaze a long moment, weighing something only he could see.
Finally, he nodded.
Once.
She turned back to Ivo.
“You stay where we can see you. You work if you’re able. You lie to us once, you’re out. Understood?”
Ivo dipped his chin.
“Out loud.”
“Understood.”
Judy picked up the kit.
“Help me get him upstairs.”
Don moved first, offering a hand.
Ivo took it, let himself be hauled upright, and followed them up the ladder on legs that barely held.
The galley was warm.
Bright.
There were people in it who weren’t trying to kill him.
Judy pointed at a bench.
“Sit.”
Ivo sat.
She handed him a bottle of water, watched him drink, then crouched in front of him and met his eyes.
“I’m going to figure out what you’re not telling me,” she said.
Quiet.
Certain.
“So if there’s something I need to know to keep you alive, now’s the time.”
He watched her.
She’d gone into black water to save a ship carrying a stowaway she didn’t know about.
And he was alive because he’d eaten a bolt and burned through the sickness and swallowed the poison.
He gave her the only truth he had left.
“I’ll tell you if it gets worse.”
Judy held his stare.
Didn’t blink.
“It already is worse.”
She stood, turned to Maureen.
“I want his blood work in the morning.”
Maureen said nothing, but her hand moved a small, flat gesture.
Go ahead.
Ivo sat on the bench with the water bottle in his hands and the taste of iron still climbing his throat, and understood that the medic was going to be the hardest person on this ship to survive.
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