Chapter 2

The Mars One-Way Pioneer Program.

My eyes stayed locked on the faint twitch of Ervin's eyelids.

"Stellar Aerospace is recruiting patients in vegetative states to test their deep-hibernation pods."

"The minute Ervin goes up, the company pays us ten million dollars, all at once."

The words dropped into a room gone dead silent.

Summer Fox stared at me, eyes wide, like I was out of my mind.

"Are you insane? It's a one-way program. Once he goes, he never comes back! And it's a human experiment. Ervin will freeze to death!"

Ervin's mother caught up too.

She snatched the agreement, tore it to shreds, and jabbed a finger at my face, screaming.

"Joy Swanson, you cold-blooded, poisonous woman! You'd murder your own husband for ten million dollars?"

"And you'd better remember something. If my son hadn't thrown his money behind you, you think you'd be sitting up there as some glamorous news anchor?"

Listening to her guilt-trip me, I couldn't help a cold laugh inside.

Ervin, support me? What a joke.

Back when he started the company, he lost everything down to the last cent.

I was the one working three jobs, chasing news stories by day and running a night-market stall after dark.

I even sold the old house my parents left me, just to get him through it.

Later the company grew, and yes, to everyone else he became Mr. Gilbert.

And how did he repay me? Half a year ago, he bought Summer Fox a big luxury unit.

I threw the proof of his affair in his face and asked for a divorce.

And him? He slapped himself across the face a dozen times right in front of me,

begging me to give him one more chance, for the sake of everything we'd been since childhood.

Then he turned around and worked with Summer Fox behind my back, moving the company's assets, deliberately opening up an eight-million-dollar hole of bad debt.

His whole act of turning over a new leaf was for this: today's staged death by car crash.

So that I, his lawful wife, would be saddled with the enormous debt and hounded to death by loan sharks.

While he ran off overseas with his mistress, living it up.

I pulled my thoughts back, looked at his shrieking mother, and drew ten identical copies of the agreement out of my bag.

"Go ahead and tear them, Mom. I made a hundred copies."

"If he can't come back, then he can't. Director Lambert already said it himself, didn't he? His brainstem's damaged. What difference does it make where he vegetates?"

As I spoke I lunged at the bed, found the tenderest bit of flesh on the inside of his thigh, and pinched it hard.

Beep.

The heart rate on the monitor shot straight up.

Behind his oxygen mask, Ervin's face turned a visible, liverish purple.

But he still clenched his back teeth and rode out the wave of pain.

"Why's Ervin's heart racing like that? Is he so thrilled to hear he's going to Mars?"

I cried it out with fake delight.

"Don't touch him!"

Summer Fox panicked and rushed over to shove me off.

"Director Lambert said Mr. Gilbert still has a chance of waking up. You can't send him to Mars!"

Ervin's mother caught on too.

Ten million was a lot, but if her son actually got launched into space, who would take care of her in her old age?

"Joy Swanson, I won't let you ship my son off. You'll sell the house and pay the debt like a good girl!"

"That's not up to any of you anymore, Mom."

I gave a cold laugh, took out my phone, and pulled up the newscast replay from earlier.

"Because I mentioned all this on air. The whole country knows now that Ervin Gilbert is a great, selfless vegetative volunteer."

Right then, the Director Lambert Ervin had bribed pushed the door open and walked in.

"What's all the shouting? A patient's room needs to be quiet!"

Summer Fox looked at him like he was her savior and grabbed his arm.

"Director Lambert, tell them, quick. Ervin can't go to Mars. His condition isn't that far gone, right?"

Director Lambert immediately wanted to bolt.

He'd only taken a hundred thousand from Ervin as a kickback to write a fake diagnosis and play along with the act.

If the aerospace program's experts actually reexamined the case, he'd lose his medical license, maybe even go to prison.

"Miss Fox is right. I... I've got a surgery to get to. I'll be going."

Seeing even the doctor giving up on him, Ervin's heart rate on the bed spiked straight to 150.

And just as he was about to lose it and jerk upright like a corpse coming back to life,

heavy footsteps came down the hallway.