Naomi leaned her shoulder heavily into the wall of the maintenance corridor, and took a moment to fight back angry tears. They had all abandoned her; Amos and Alex so worried about their own survival that they couldn't wait, and Holden too wrapped up in the bigger picture to be concerned about his own life or anyone else's. Trying to care about everyone had somehow left her with no one.

She rubbed the back of her hand against her nose. She was being dramatic. Everyone was dealing with this extraordinary situation as best they could. And what was best for her was to catch up to Amos and Alex, get back to the Roci. She sent a quick message to Alex, got a location from his terminal and started shouldering her way through the frightened crowds in the main thoroughfare.

She hunkered down as she walked, making herself small, avoiding the gaze of the armed thugs menacing the throng. They didn't seem to be ushering people toward the radiation shelters anymore. Mostly they were just standing around looking scary. After a few more minutes down the hallway Naomi spotted Amos' face through the metal grate of another maintenance hatch, his expressionless eyes locked on her. He nodded once, face tense. She tried not to feel hurt by his coldness. Amos was in survival mode – she'd seen this before – and nothing else would concern him until they were safe again. Naomi waited until no one was looking at her before she ducked into the service tunnel to join him.

Episode Ten: Leviathan Wakes

"As far as I can tell," Alex said, looking up from his hand terminal, "all the transit pod lines are shut down."

"Why would they do that?" Naomi asked. "All the ships are locked down, nobody's going anywhere."

Amos turned back from anxiously surveying the crowd passing by their hiding spot. "First thing's first: the Roci. There's gotta be other ways to get to the docks, so we need to find one."

"Wait." She initiated a connect request on her hand terminal, ignoring Amos' annoyed energy when he saw who it was for. "Holden. We're on the move." Suddenly her terminal went blank. So did Alex's. They had lost connection to the Roci's network, and to any other. "Comms just went dark!"

"This ain't an accident," Alex said after a moment. "It's a plan."

A building commotion at the Tube station across the street from them captured their attention. A throng of people were massing by the doors, demanding to be allowed to get on the transit pods. There were two cops in riot gear blocking their path; desperate parents with their kids right up front.

"Move along now, or we will use force," one of the guards bellowed. A moment later, seemingly just to make his point, he knocked a father begging for entrance down with the butt of his gun.

"Are we just going to stand here?" Alex asked Naomi.

"We can't just charge in and start shooting," Naomi responded. She hated what was happening too, but she couldn't see a useful way to intervene.

"Pretty sure we can," Amos responded.

A familiar security officer appeared at the front of the crowd; the dark-skinned cop who had come upon them in the Blue Falcon. "Hey, keep your hands off these people, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Just following orders," the guard replied.

"That's Miller's pal," Amos said, making sure everyone was paying attention.

"Yeah I didn't get any orders like this," the cop said, trying to calm the situation. "You stand down. I got rank here."

"Not today, you don't," the guard said.

"Sir, sir," one of the men from the crowd pleaded, putting his hand on the cop's shoulder, "we're trying to-" he was cut off as the brutish guard opened up on him with his machine gun. The crowd scattered in screams; Naomi ducked reflexively, watched Amos' feet as he happily joined in the firefight to help take those guards down.

The tunnel-like hallways of Eros station were eerily deserted after the firefight. Several civilian bodies were lying on the empty floor. Alex checked a few; there was nothing to be done for any of them.

"You're Miller's friends," the cop from the Blue Falcon said, looking up from the wounded at their group.

"That's a stretch," Amos shot back.

"Where the hell is he?" the cop asked, ignoring him.

"No clue, he's got his own agenda," Naomi responded. She changed the subject to the problem at hand. "This 'emergency' is bullshit. There's no radiation in the tunnels."

"That's not the only thing that stinks," the cop said. "These CPM guys are a bunch of gangsters from Ceres. I don't know what game they're playing, but they're working for someone else. Hard-core mercenaries."

Naomi shook her head. It was the same thing Miller had said, and it was a layer to the mystery that she didn't care to try and figure out. "We're getting off this rock."

"All ships are locked down," the cop informed her.

"Yeah, well the Roci ain't 'all ships,'" Alex growled.

"Even so, they've shut down all access to the docks. Look, I can find you guys a place to hole up. Ride this thing out."

"Something terrible is happening here," Naomi said, "and we're not sticking around to find out what." An idea came to her, dragging unpleasant memories along with it out of repressed corners of her mind. "Help us get into the old mech shafts. They'll lead us to the docks."

"The mech shafts?" the cop said incredulously. "Half those things are collapsed. I've been a cop here for years, and I can't even find my way through that maze."

"Which is why the OPA uses them as smuggling routes. On every station. Eros included. Get us into them, and I'll get us through them." She spoke quickly and fervently, needing him to just agree and move on. She didn't want to have to explain how she knew this, and she didn't want to leave anyone an opening to ask.

"Okay," the cop said, looking to get the others' agreement as well. "Okay." Then he added: "I've got CPM override. I can unlock your ship."

"Take us with you," called the voice of a tall, scraggly Belter man who had evidently been eavesdropping. "Please." They all turned to look, apprehensive about making their group too big, or trusting a stranger. Another adult man, and a girl who couldn't be older than nine came out of the shadows behind him. "Please, we won't be any trouble."

Amos looked at the girl for a long moment, then turned to Naomi and nodded slightly. His face said we have to take the kid. Naomi couldn't name all the emotions that welled up in her then, moved both by Amos' compassion and by memories of her own past. It was looking like a lot of people were going to die today, and Naomi was growing determined to save as many innocents as she could.

Naomi made her way through the abandoned and damaged tunnels as quickly as she could. She recognized the general layout from other stations carved into the bedrock of giant asteroids. She was glad to be able to project confidence right from the start; doubt was coming off the other men in waves and she rushed to stay ahead of any chance at conversation. Now was not the time to be taking more questions about her relationship with the OPA.

A fork in their path forced her to slow her pace. She couldn't be sure from her own guesswork which way would lead them toward the surface and the docks. But somewhere near here there should be a marker on the wall. She started rubbing at generations of dust, searching the abandoned paneling and shear bedrock. She could feel the rest of the group watching anxiously behind her, and ignored them.

"Look, if you're in over your head, you better say so now," the cop, who had finally introduced himself as Detective Sematimba, said to her.

"Shut up, I'm thinking," she replied. Distantly she heard Alex trying to cheer up the little girl as she searched for the tunnel markers she was expecting to find. She let out a sigh of relief when she found them; a map of the system scratched into the wall. She settled down and tried to memorize the image, relate it to their position in Eros' labyrinth as quickly as she could.

"What you got there?" Sematimba called out, heading over.

"When they first dug these tunnels, they put markers down so the workers wouldn't get lost," Naomi explained. "The OPA uses them to mark the route to the docks." She tried to ignore the sharp glance Amos gave her when she admitted this knowledge. Yes, she had more secrets from him. Add it to the goddamned pile.

"You're full of surprises," Alex commented, asking without asking.

"I've heard that," she breathed coldly, trying to warn him off the topic. Wondering about her affiliations right now was a waste of energy that she didn't have. She was too busy saving all their lives. "This way," she waved, passing them all and charging down the left fork.

"You sure you know where you're going?" Sematimba growled at Naomi for about the eleventh time, stress high in his voice. They were all getting tense; this was taking so long and they still didn't know what catastrophe might strike the station next. Apart from the occasional marking scratched into the wall, the tunnels all looked exactly the same.

"Zip it, buddy," Alex said, voice harder than she had ever heard it. "She knows what she's doing." Naomi felt a wave of gratitude at his support, but didn't take the time to acknowledge him.

They were all moving as quickly as they could. The tunnels were full of debris, crumbing at the walls, and full of mazelike intersections, but Naomi had that map carved into her memory. They were going to make it. She rounded a corner and it was like a weight dropped suddenly onto her chest. "Shit." The passageway had caved in, blocked with large sheets of solid metal.

"Alright, enough. You're lost." Sematimba was speaking to her, but raising his voice to make sure the whole group heard him. Making his play to take charge. "We're not all dying down here. We need to go back topside, take our chances up there."

Naomi ignored him, focused on the clues at hand. She scattered some dust between her fingers, watched it spiral as it fell in the Coriolis effect of the station's spin gravity. It told her they were still moving toward the surface of the asteroid. "We're going the right way," she announced. "We're so close."

The group was scattering already, everyone wandering a bit as they considered what might be their next move. The tall Belter man they had picked up let out a disgusted shout at something, and a moment later the little girl screamed and took off down the hall. Naomi didn't think, reacted on instinct to the shrill cry and ran toward her.

"Stay back, don't touch anything!" Amos warned her. That's right, the mysterious biohazard was on the station, and the body dripping from the grate in the ceiling looked infected.

But Naomi wasn't worried about that, or the fact that the Belter man was now writhing on the floor. She ducked just long enough to grab the flashlight he had dropped. "Come back, mali!" she shouted, running the way the little girl had gone. She would be lost in only a few moments down here. "Come back!" She heard Alex's footsteps racing behind her.

Naomi kept running, and calling. It was hard to be sure which turns the girl had chosen; Naomi could only pray she was still behind her, and hope the girl could hear her voice, would turn around. The sounds of human suffering were echoing down from the ceiling here; something truly awful was happening on the main levels. Finally Naomi rounded a corner and spotted the girl, sitting on the floor and clutching herself. She slowed down, approached carefully. The girl was frightened out of her wits. "I need you to come back with me," Naomi said to her, softly but earnestly. "We can't stay here."

"What was wrong with that lady?"

"She was sick."

"Will she be alright?"

"No." This was no time to try and hide the truth. "But we will be if we go, but we have to go now."

The girl looked away from her, shook her head.

Naomi took her by the shoulder. "You have to be brave." The girl looked up at her, fear still crowding out everything else in her eyes. "You are brave," Naomi said. She didn't know how to comfort a child. After a moment she reached down and took her into her arms. "Setara mali," she whispered into her ear, channeling the soothing little pet name from her own childhood. "Setara."

Alex finally caught up to them. "We got company," he said.

She heard a group of people approach.

"Nalida?" The little girl called out in recognition. "Nalida!" she ran into the arms of one of the women.

"Shukri?" the woman said in obvious relief. "What are you doing here?"

"She was lost," Naomi explained. "We're going to our ship. Kom wit milowda, we've got room," Naomi said.

"Can't get to the docks that way, tunnels are all blocked," one of the newcomers said.

"You come with us," Nalida said. "There's a hospital on Level 9. Her uncle is a doctor there."

"Whatever it is, it's not a sickness," Naomi warned. "It's something else. We can get you off this station."

"This is our home," Nalida said firmly, holding the little girl's hand and pulling her in the other direction. "We'll be safe at the hospital."

Naomi's heart sank. She didn't know what was happening on Eros, but she doubted the hospital could do anything to stop the strange bioweapon. "There's no safe place here." The words came growling up out of her belly, she was so desperate for these poor people to listen. She couldn't abandon the girl to this fate.

"We're going with them," two of the men informed Nalida, and joined Naomi's group.

Naomi stepped forward, pleading with the girl's auntie. "Let us take care of her." If she wouldn't change her mind, at least she might let her save the girl.

"Her place is with her family," the woman said with finality.

Naomi bent down next to the girl. What she was about to say broke so many unwritten rules of human society, but survival was more important. "Shukri," she said, using the name that Nalida had, "be brave. Come with me." The stakes were too high to respect the ties of blood.

"We need to go," Nalida told her, "now." She pulled on Shukri's hand. The girl hesitated, pulled back, looked at Naomi as she tried to decide. Then her auntie tugged her again, and they began walking quickly back down the passage.

"Please!" Naomi called after them. "You'll die if you…" she trailed off, tears choking her. She didn't want to add to the girl's fear, anyway, if these were her final hours. She felt Alex's hand come down on her shoulder as she watched Shukri hesitate one last time, then disappear around the corner. Alex was comforting her, and telling her to let it go at the same time. This hurt worse than almost anything that had happened since the Cant blew.

But not worse than what she had already been through, before that life. Naomi brushed Alex off, stalked back to the front of the group and resumed their course to the docks. At least she could save some of these people.

When Naomi and Alex rejoined their group, Amos' eyes passed over their new followers, searched between their bodies for a smaller one. "What happened to the girl?" He asked Naomi sharply.

"She found her auntie," Naomi said softly. "They wouldn't come with us. She's taking her to a hospital."

"They're not gonna be safe there," Amos said, looking down the hall and rocking on the balls of his feet like he was considering going after them. Warmth flooded Naomi's chest at the sight, mingling with the bitter despair already living there.

"She wouldn't listen. Come on, we have to go." Naomi pressed on, back to the blocked tunnel.

"Does this look like the right way to you?" Sematimba spat at her when they arrived.

"This was the way," Naomi said, defeat starting to creep into her voice. She looked at Amos, he just stared back at her coolly. Going back to the surface, like Sematimba wanted, was the wrong move. They had to get to the docks somehow.

Silently, Alex stepped forward and started kicking at the steel plates blocking their path. There was a hollow sound, which was encouraging. Amos stepped up and joined in the effort. Naomi threw her weight into it as well, until they opened up a hole into a vertical passage beyond. Naomi stuck her head into the shaft. "This is it!" she called triumphantly.

Amos climbed in first, and one by one they began the long descent on the shaft's steel ladder, down against the spin gravity to the docks at the asteroid's surface.

They dropped down onto the dock level after Amos shouted the all-clear. "The Roci's here," he said, looking down into the airlock. Naomi felt like she could finally breathe. She had followed through on her promise; they had all made it.

Sematimba pulled out his hand terminal, interfacing it with the console holding their ship in lock. Their little group of survivors milled around warily as he worked. Some kind of guards, or who knew what other kind of trouble, could descend on them at any moment.

Alex leaned in close to Naomi and Amos. "Where's the scruffy guy?" he asked. Naomi realized she hadn't seen him since he dropped to the floor when the little girl ran off.

"He's gone," Sematimba said without looking up. "I think he might have been infected. We're better off."

Naomi was not just going to let that go. "What did you do?" she asked, face screwing up in outrage. They were trying to save people, not just pop off the inconvenient ones.

"We're better off," Amos said over her shoulder. She turned and met his eyes. Trust me this time, he seemed to say. You know I'm right. They had no idea what kind of infection they were dealing with. She was surrounded by hard men, who had made hard decisions today. She had made hard decisions too.

The airlock opened, and Naomi dropped the issue.

"Holden didn't make it," Alex called down from the pilot's deck, like it was a fact.

"Not yet," Naomi corrected him, prepping the ship for launch whenever he showed up, or when the three hours she had promised him ran out. They weren't out yet.

"Passengers are all tucked in below," Amos reported as he came up the ladder to the command deck, Sematimba following behind him.

"How the hell did you guys get your hands on a Martian gunship?" the cop asked.

"Legitimate salvage," Alex replied defensively.

"Yeah, well that's fine by me. Let's get the hell out of here." He turned to Naomi. "Point me to a console so I can override the clamps."

"We're not leaving yet," Naomi said, and turned away from them. Trying to avoid the look she knew was about to come over all their faces.

"What?" Sematimba said.

Naomi turned back, put all the command she could into her face. She was the unspoken XO, now she was the one with rank. "You heard me."

"Hey, hey!" Semi said vehemently. "These mercs, they locked down all these ships, so that no one could leave." Panic was creeping into his voice. "Alright? They've got cameras on all the docks. They could be here any minute, we gotta push off."

Naomi turned squarely toward him, setting her feet. "I promised Holden three hours, he still has time."

"He didn't make it, end of story," Sematimba said.

"We're waiting."

Amos turned away from her, frustration evident. Naomi only barely noticed, her own tension rising as their new companion's emotions were palpably spiraling.

"Alright look, look, I understand how you feel, alright?" he babbled. "Everybody that I give a damn about is on this station, including Miller, and they're all either dead or dying. So if we stick around here, we run the risk of getting killed."

"He's right," Amos called to her.

Naomi's disappointment in Amos' words stabbed through her like lightning. She took an unconscious step back. "We owe Holden," she tried. He had fought his way through the besieged halls of the Donnager to rescue the three of them, when he could have been safely on an escape pod.

"I don't owe him a goddamned thing," Sematimba growled, and pulled out his pistol. He pointed it squarely at Naomi. Everyone froze.

Naomi was the first to speak. "Shooting me isn't going to get you out of here," she said levelly. She refused to be intimidated. His threat of violence somehow renewed her own resolve; she was almost too angry to feel afraid.

"Get me access to the console, so that I can unlock the clamps," he commanded.

"Whoa whoa whoa whoa, settle down, y'all," Alex called from the pilot's deck. He was too far away to intervene. Naomi held her palms out, careful not to move a muscle, tried not to let any hesitation show in her face. They just needed to get Sematimba calm enough to lower that weapon.

"You stand by to drive us out of here," Sematimba ordered.

"Alex, you don't do it," she said sharply. She had a fleeting memory of an argument on the Knight with Holden; it felt like ages ago.

"Amos, fire up those consoles."

Her heart sank as she watched Amos turn immediately and walk toward the terminals. She pushed the hurt aside, refocused on how she was going to get Sematimba to relax and put the gun away.

"You don't think I'll shoot, do-"

Naomi felt the blood hit her face before her ears registered the sound of the gunshot, before her brain could interpret the meaning of Sematimba's jerking collapse to the deck.

He was shot. Amos stood behind him, pistol cupped in both hands. She blinked at him, trying to catch up.

Her eyes moved numbly over her old friend's face. As calm as if they were just sitting down to breakfast. "You say we wait, so we wait, boss."

She barely heard him. She could barely move. A good man lay on the ground in front of her, a man who had just helped them all escape. Emotions were high, they were all feeling desperate, but Sematimba wasn't going to shoot that gun he had been pointing at her. He had just been helping her escape, a few minutes ago.

"I'm going to go put this below."

At first, Naomi didn't even realize what Amos was talking about. "This." The man. Sematimba. Who was dead. Who Amos shot. Who Amos shot because he was threatening her. Who Amos had just been agreeing with, but then he chose (using the only means he ever chose) to back Naomi's play.

It was a cruel twist on who they used to be to each other. He didn't wait for her to choose whether he pulled the trigger this time, like he had on the Knight when he was holding a gun to Holden's head and this whole mess got started. This time he just acted, then explained himself like he was only following her orders. Called her 'boss' again. For the first time since they hit Tycho. She chose the plan, but this time he chose the means.

She couldn't shake the next thought: did that mean she was responsible for this death?

Naomi had ordered an easy quarter-g burn back to Tycho. Belter wisdom said that this was the best speed for healing bodies, and she was in no rush to get back into the arms of the OPA. Even if it was their only sanctuary. As far as Naomi was concerned, the only safe place in the entire solar system was right here, right now on the decks of the Rocinante. Alex mostly hung out on the command deck, watching the monitors, though he had reported there was no sign that they were being followed. Holden and Miller were unconscious in the medbay, finally stabilized by the autodoc's cocktail of drugs and supplements. Once those two didn't need her anymore, Naomi had been spending most of her time on the lower decks with the refugees. She was ostensibly playing host to their guests, but mainly she was keeping Amos away from them. He was adamant that someone had to be with them, to watch them for trouble, and the thought of letting Amos do that job made Naomi physically sick.

Amos had killed for her now. She wasn't sure if their relationship was coming back from that.

Naomi had been spending all this time trying to get him back by her side, struggling to feel close to him again. Now she didn't even think she wanted that anymore. She wasn't sure she could ever look at Amos again without seeing that dead stare he gave her after Sematimba dropped to the floor. It was one thing to know he was a killer, it was another to have it happen on her watch; to feel that he had done it for her.

Now Naomi was the one silently leaving rooms as soon as Amos walked into them. She couldn't bear to be around his unnatural calm anymore, not until she had sorted out her thoughts a little better. Amos seemed confused by her avoidance, but didn't push her to explain.

But it was a tiny ship. She was going to have to talk to him soon.

"You put blood on my hands." She tried to say it levelly, but anger and despair were crowding around the edges of her voice. When she was finally ready to talk, she had ambushed Amos where she found him on the ops deck.

Amos looked up from his console. "How do you figure?"

Naomi just looked at him for a moment. Did he really not even understand what he had done? "You killed a man for me. I didn't want that. I don't want that on my conscience."

Amos made a scoffing noise. "Then don't put it there. He had a gun on you. It was you or him. Anyway, I pulled the trigger. This isn't on you."

Naomi shook her head sadly. She wasn't going to let Amos absolve her. "It wasn't our only choice. He wasn't going to shoot."

"You don't know that," Amos replied. "Would you rather be dead? Or have let him have his way, and leave Holden behind?"

No. No, she wouldn't. But that was maybe the thought that burned the worst, that she did wish she could excuse his death, say the right call had been made and just move on. "You didn't have to kill him. You could have just… disabled him somehow."

Amos shook his head before she even finished the thought. "Too risky. If I shot to wound and he still had that gun in his hand, he might have shot you anyway. It was the best way to take control of the situation and keep you safe."

Naomi looked down at her hands. "He didn't deserve to die," she said quietly.

"Maybe not." Amos shrugged his agreement. "That's not for me to decide."

She looked up at him sharply. "Not for you to decide…? You're the one that took his life!"

Amos shrugged again. "Yeah. But that doesn't mean I know if he deserved it. Those are two different things."

It took Naomi a minute to wrap her head around what Amos was saying. "You really live like that, don't you," Naomi asked incredulously. "You're completely comfortable not knowing if what you did was right."

Amos looked at her with those wide, empty eyes for a moment. "Yeah," he replied like it was obvious. When she continued to stare, he kept talking. "I know why I did it, and that was to keep you alive, Naomi. Guess that's good enough for me. But if you wanna think harder about it than that, I guess I can't stop you."

He stood up and left the ops deck without another word. He was down the ladder before Naomi could think of anything else to say to him. The knot of grief and guilt in her throat wasn't any smaller. And she wasn't any less afraid of him.

"He's right, you know," Alex's voice floated down from the pilot's station. Naomi looked up; she had forgotten he was there. He stepped over to the railing, leaned against it comfortably. "How his mind worked to get down to that point was a little frightening, but he's right. He pulled the trigger, he made the choice, it's on him. You don't have to take responsibility for this."

"I was in command," Naomi said, shaking her head.

"We're on a military ship, but this is not a military outfit. The roles on the Roci are looser, especially since the two of you have never served, you don't have those instincts. And I think nobody's been in command of Amos for a while now," Alex replied, twisting his mouth up wryly.

"And that's its own problem," Naomi said, turning away. Alex went back to his post, left her to her thoughts.

All those stupid little thoughts she used to have, comforting herself with the idea that she had Amos in hand, that she was able to direct and control his violence. She had been lying to herself. Amos wasn't her dog. He wasn't her knight. He was a violent man with a faulty sense of morality who used to respect her judgment. He didn't anymore, that much was clear. He was following his own agenda now, something that ran deeper than his desire to earn her respect. Survival at all costs. And he was willing to accept plenty more costs in that trade than she might ever be.

She had to let Amos go, or he'd be taking the last shreds of self-respect she had left down with him. They could serve on the same ship, but Naomi was done trying to recapture the allegiance, the closeness they had on the Cant. It had been a false intimacy anyway; she hadn't really known him, and hadn't really let him see her. She had felt so comfortable with him, feeling like he'd never judge her; but all along she sure as hell had been judging him. And now it was done. He was responsible for his own actions. Naomi could only hope that if they all stayed together Holden would do a better job constraining him than she had. But it wasn't going to be her problem anymore.