Reclaimed Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  Salvaged

  “Salvaged scared the hell out of me, and I write horror for a living! Madeleine Roux conjures real darkness with a brilliant novel that any fan of Alien will simply devour. Brava!”

  —Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of V-Wars and Ink

  “Elegant and inevitable, this is the prose equivalent of playing a survival horror game. Each piece feeds perfectly into the next. Beautifully written.”

  —Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author of Angel of the Overpass

  “Madeleine Roux’s Salvaged is a breathless, claustrophobic twist on the SF thriller, full of deep space dread, conspiracies and malevolent alien spores, with a woman at the center whose courage was forged in all-too-human trauma. This is the Alien we need right now.”

  —Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of The Pandora Room and Red Hands

  “Salvaged is riveting and brutal, a study in scars. The masterful writing and bittersweet beauty of these characters will haunt you long after you finish reading.”

  —Ann Aguirre, New York Times bestselling author of the Razorland trilogy

  “Alien meets The Expanse in this nonstop thrill ride. Rosalyn is a reluctant heroine on the run from her past . . . her resourcefulness and courage lend this unconventional space opera depth and heart.”

  —Michelle Gagnon, author of Unearthly Things

  “Madeleine Roux’s Salvaged is the fantastic sci-fi ‘Beauty and the Beast’ story you’ve always needed in your life.”

  —Peter Clines, author of Paradox Bound

  “Roux’s Salvaged is a tale of creeping horror and daring love, heavy with the weight of loss and trauma. Spooky fungus in space, devastatingly intimate hive minds, terrifying resource management and shockingly sweet romance combine in this love letter to redemption and recovery (and mushrooms).”

  —Caitlin Starling, author of Yellow Jessamine

  “Roux delivers a feminist sci-fi with plot twists, gut punches and a female lead with the strength of resilience.”

  —Mindy McGinnis, Edgar® Award–winning author of The Initial Insult

  “Part science fiction, part horror, part suspense, Salvaged is all awesome.”

  —Geeks of Doom

  “The rich description dumps you right into the world of Salvaged and won’t let you go. Roux engages all senses; this is sometimes a good thing, sometimes bad, always brilliant. . . . I loved it!”

  —Mur Lafferty, award-winning author of Six Wakes

  “From the first searingly brutal line Madeleine Roux seizes the reader by their space helmet and drags them screaming and flailing up into the air ducts of this deeply engaging story of deep space horror. . . . Truly remarkable and unsettling in the best of ways.”

  —Jordan Shiveley, cohost of the podcast Caring into the Void

  “This entertaining, deeply disturbing and clever story hits all the right notes for those who like a little horror with their SF.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “[A] solid piece of survival horror in space. The tension and desperation of the situation meshes perfectly with the characters’ development as they struggle to stay themselves and survive.”

  —Booklist

  “Salvaged is entertaining, funny and frightening as we begin to care for the characters and despair for their chances of survival.”

  —The Oklahoman

  Also by Madeleine Roux

  SALVAGED

  ACE

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Madeleine Roux

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ACE is a registered trademark and the A colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  The Edgar® name is a registered service mark of the Mystery Writers of America, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Roux, Madeleine, 1985– author.

  Title: Reclaimed / Madeleine Roux.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Ace, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021001469 (print) | LCCN 2021001470 (ebook) | ISBN 9780451491855 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780451491862 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PS3618.O87235 R43 2021 (print) |

  LCC PS3618.O87235 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001469

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001470

  Cover design by Faceout Studio / Jeff Miller

  Cover image of liquid by Alexey V Smirnov / Shutterstock

  Cover image of woman by ValuaVitaly / Getty Images

  Title page art: Abstract wave by s_maria / Shutterstock.

  Book design by Alison Cnockaert, adapted for ebook by Shayan Saalabi

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.7.1_c0_r0

  For Zeva, Jeremy and Christi, who pulled me from the quicksand

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise for Salvaged

  Also by Madeleine Roux

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  We must come to grief and regret anyway—and I for one would rather regret the reality than its phantasm, knowledge than hope, the deed than the hesitation, true life and not mere sickly potentialities.

  —A. S. Byatt, Possession

  1

  More than anything else Senna remembered the bitter silence. At some point during the night, everyone around her on the ship stopped breathing. The soft, human sounds of sleep had mixed with the reverberation of space outside the passenger craft, a lullaby of organic white noise that helped her drift to sleep, but once it was gone, the absence was far louder. Unmistakable.

  It was like how she imagined the dead of winter, still and adrift, though Senna had never
experienced a true winter herself. Her entire life had been lived in outer space and, more than that, in almost total confinement.

  She had taken a pill and gone to sleep surrounded by life, then woke among the dead. Senna had rolled over, tossing restlessly, and felt her hand brush something cold and almost rubbery on the sleeping mat next to hers. Startled by the sensation, she jerked awake, and under the reddish glow of the emergency lights above, she found herself staring down into the open, glazed eyes of her best friend, Mina. The blood trickling from between Mina’s full lips was as crimson as the emergency lights blinking overhead.

  Senna gasped, and it was the only sound in the entire ship.

  Oh my God. They’re all dead.

  “You can’t leave me,” she whispered to Mina. The fear made her tremble; the shock made her grab Mina by the shoulders and shake. Her bones were thin and birdlike, and her head swiveled back and forth as Senna tried to rouse her. Nothing.

  A door opened across the room, and Senna whirled to face it, torn between the sudden knowledge that she was alone and now the worse fear that she wasn’t, that whoever was responsible for all this death was still alive and with her. That she was next.

  “Senna,” she heard him say. “I didn’t know you were awake.”

  Why was she the only one left alive? And why wasn’t he surprised by it? She didn’t know what to say. What could she say?

  They’re all dead, every last one of them, except for you and me.

  “Hello? Lady? Earth to blondie.”

  She blinked, hard, gazing around not at the interior of a doomed passenger craft, but at an impatient barista glaring down into her face. Grabbing her chest, Senna nodded and waved at him, but the memory took its time fading away. One year ago. It still felt like she was living inside that moment, crushed on all sides by it.

  I didn’t know you were awake, Preece had said. To her, it still felt like she was deep, deep asleep. Dragged under.

  “S-Sorry,” Senna stammered. She hadn’t been outside Marin’s apartment in weeks. The neon haze of Tokyo Bliss Station hurt her eyes. A halo lingered around the barista’s head, the self-driving coffee cart lit with an amber glow. “How much is it?”

  “Ten for the drink,” the barista replied. He was tall and thin, tattooed from the collar of his shirt and apron to his mouth. A series of scrollwork arrows pointed to the ring glinting in his lip. “Three for the cup.”

  Senna frowned up at him. “Three? Really?”

  Rolling his eyes, he shrugged and handed her the mottled brown cup, frothy yellow liquid steaming inside. “Fine, no charge for the cup. Bring something reusable next time, okay? Anything else I can get you?”

  Senna stared down into the drink, the familiar color and smell threatening to bring another wave of painful nostalgia.

  Anything else, she mused. A new brain? A tranquilizer?

  “No,” Senna told the young man. “No, I’m . . . That’s all.”

  “Just remember the cup thing,” he muttered, tapping the scanner on the coffee cart counter, waiting for Senna to hold up her wrist and flash the VIT monitor that ought to be there. But Senna still didn’t have one. The barista noticed, the specter of his shaved-off brows looming low over his eyes.

  “She will.” Marin to the rescue. “She’ll remember for next time. And I’ll take a sweet drip.”

  The barista sighed. “Line jumpers pay double for their cups.”

  “Fine.”

  Marin, petite and dressed in pristine white patent leather, with a glossy black curtain of hair, leaned across Senna and swiped her own wrist monitor across the scanner. The machine dinged cheerfully, transaction complete. She glared at the thing toiling away behind the barista. AI Servitors, working husks of robots skinned with a kind of human latex mask over a carbon skeleton, were ubiquitous laborers across the stations, on the colonies and on science vessels.

  “You know SecDiv is going to roll out lifelike versions of those things soon? With human fucking faces and skin and everything? I guess the regular peacekeeping bots aren’t intimidating enough or something,” said Marin in a disgusted undertone. She shuddered. “So creepy.”

  “Will we be able to tell the difference?” Senna asked, more amazed than afraid.

  “I’ve seen this dystopian vid, and the answer is no.”

  As soon as the coffee arrived, Marin tugged Senna away from the cart quickly, back toward the carbon-black folding chairs and tables clustered on the promenade. The glitzier upper levels of the station rotated above them, rings that rose to impossible heights—financial districts and fashion houses, arcade blocks, cosmetic surgery clinics, augmented-reality parlors and universities . . . Down on their level, close to the bottom of the station and Hydroponica, nothing could be done to control the heat. The food and water operations needed the cooling systems, not the impoverished districts hovering just above them.

  So Senna drank her haldi ka doodh in the swelter, accustomed to it. The hot turmeric milk almost scorched her mouth as she took a sip.

  “I don’t know how you can drink that stuff,” Marin murmured.

  “It’s good,” said Senna, shrugging.

  “Blegh. Anyway, sorry I’m late.”

  Senna sat across from her at one of the empty tables. The lunch rush crowd swarmed around them in the plaza, drawn to the coffee cart for their midday blast of caffeine. Behind them, six lanes of self-driving cars and a passenger tram funneled workers back toward the main bank of elevators at the center of the district, elevators that ran the full height of the station.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Senna said, waving off her apology while swatting at the vapor rising from her milk. She liked the slightly grassy taste of the drink. It made her wonder if it was the kind of earthy smell one experienced during a real Earth summer.

  “I do worry,” Marin replied, drinking her coffee. Her nose wrinkled. “Shit. They forgot my Zucros.”

  “I can wait.”

  “No, I shouldn’t leave you alone again.”

  Senna ran her thumb lightly around the softening edge of her disposable cup. She felt stupid and small and unmanageable when Marin said things like that. But Senna also knew she had earned being babied.

  “I shouldn’t have been late. It’s too dangerous for you out here. Anyone could . . . well.” Marin trailed off and glanced around in every direction, which, Senna didn’t point out, only made them look more conspicuous.

  “Anyone could recognize me, yeah.” Senna nodded. She wasn’t stupid, whatever anyone thought. With a tired smirk, she gestured back toward the coffee cart, the Servitor, and the tattooed, eyebrow-less man inside it. “It already happened, Marin. Why do you think he refused to charge me for the cup?”

  “Then maybe I should get you back to the apartment.” Marin tucked one strand of silky black hair behind her ear, chewing her lower lip. “This was a dumb idea anyway.”

  “No.” Senna clutched her cup and took another sip, even if it burned. “I’ve locked myself up in your place for a year. I told you—today I’m going to do one normal person thing. And this is it. So we’re staying and we’re going to do it.”

  Marin sat very still, probably shocked to hear a single word of dissent from the usually pliable Senna.

  “God, that sounded ungrateful,” Senna hurried on. “I don’t mean to be like that. You’ve done so much for me. Without the apartment, without you . . . Thank you, Marin. I mean it, thank you. And thank you for meeting me here. It’s nice! You know, being out.”

  She almost smiled, but then Marin looked at her VIT monitor. Everyone—on Earth and in space—owned one. Craved one. They were ubiquitous, holding a person’s bank access, entertainment, contacts, maps, everything. Most people couldn’t remember their own middle names without one, not just convenient tech but a lifeline. The small, flat screen wasn’t just hooked up to the wireless but to the owner themselves
, jacked into the small implant at the base of the skull; it fed users augmented-reality advertisements curated by their interests, displaying emojis and images that danced in front of stores, enticing passersby to enter. In fact, Marin could probably see any number of specials and sales promoted by the coffee cart spinning around her head just then.

  Crime on the station continued to be almost nonexistent—hard to commit a crime when your own convenient method of finding out, well, anything and everything would also show exactly where you were at all times. It controlled where citizens could go on the station, what levels they could access. It managed a person completely. The station’s security even monitored bio data, predicting a stroke or a heart attack before anyone even called for help.

  Sometimes Senna longed for the convenience of it all, but she had been controlled by outside forces for most of her life. It was time to make her own decisions. She had never gotten the implant. Nobody in the compound had, or if they came there with one, Preece removed it. She glanced up from her drink, realizing Marin had gone silent for too long. And she wasn’t lost in thought, but staring at her VIT, scrolling fast.

  “Is something wrong?” Senna asked softly. Her pulse started to race. Managing anxiety wasn’t exactly her strong suit. That was why Marin’s apartment felt so soothing, so safe. Nothing surprising ever happened there.

  “Just Jonathan, he’s always in a shit mood lately.” Marin’s eyes flashed back and forth as she responded to her boyfriend’s messages, the VIT reading her ocular input through the implant. “Hours slashed again. His division at MSC is a mess. I’ll be shocked if they don’t sack him before the end of this quarter. Then his mood will really be something.” She took a quick, sloppy sip from her cup, spilling coffee down her pristine white blazer. “Goddamn it.”

  “I’ll get something for that,” Senna offered, jumping up.

  “Forget it. Shit.” Marin wiped blindly at the stain, still trying to message Jonathan. She only managed to rub the dark smudge deeper into the fabric. “I swear to God, between the two of you, sometimes I feel like a babysitter . . .”