Chapter 12: What Was in His Pockets

Nobody in the atrium made a sound.

Veda stood at the gallery rail, thirty feet above them, with blood running down her leg.

Damon held Tobias in front of him.

"Let him go," she said.

"In a moment." His voice carried across the whole dome. "I have something to show everyone first."

He shifted the gun to the side of Tobias's head.

With his free hand he reached into the pocket of Tobias's cardigan.

Tobias twisted, and Damon's arm tightened across his throat.

"Don't," Tobias rasped.

"Quiet."

Damon pulled out a handful of small white shapes, and held them up for the crowd to see.

They were folded in torn pieces of tissue, each one twisted shut at the top.

"Three days ago, a doctor told this ship that three doses of medicine had gone missing," Damon said. "I'd like to know where."

He tore open one of the tissues with his thumb.

A capsule rolled into his palm.

On the paper was a name, written in pencil in a small, careful hand.

"Bed three," he read. "The woman with the lung cancer."

He tore open another.

"The schoolteacher. Bed twelve."

He tore a third.

"The man in bed nine, with the heart."

He flung the paper away, and the pieces fell into the atrium.

He kept reading, and he kept tearing.

Each tissue had a name, and a capsule.

By the time he reached the end of the pocket, there were twenty-two of them lying on the marble floor.

"Twenty-two doses," Damon said softly. "Every one with a name. Every one stolen from this ship's own pharmacy."

Veda stared down at the white scraps.

She knew the names.

She had heard them in the infirmary annex, in the dark, over the sound of Tobias reading aloud.

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