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darkness caused by the partial power outage. But there were signs everywhere of a ship that had been stretched to its limit. A shower room, wedged between two missile tubes, was taped off with a sign: OUT OF COMMISSION . The floor was dusty and the stalls had no curtains. Next to it were two nine-man bunk rooms that were dark, their metal racks bare of any mattresses. It looked like the ship had been designed to carry far more men than she had now, and that she had been reduced, even before the mutiny, to the bare minimum complement. The few lights that remained energized blinked and buzzed, and the air smelled dank, like somewhere below him a bilge needed to be pumped. The Polaris, like her crew, had been at sea far too long.
    He reached the end of the missiles and came upon two massive machines that were covered in indicators and dials. One had a large red tag hanging from a breaker that read OUT OF COMMISSION . Its twin looked functional, but wasn’t energized. Pete looked it over for a minute and found a small sign: OXYGEN GENERATORS . Behind the amnesia, his engineer’s mind went to work, looking at the dials and indicators, and soon enough put together a rough picture of how the machines functioned. They took the one natural resource that the submarine had access to in unlimited quantities: water. They placed a large voltage across that and tore the water molecules into their constituent parts: hydrogen and oxygen.
    While the machine was turned off, a monitoring panel remained lit—a small diagram of the ship with a digital indicator for each of the three main compartments: forward compartment, missile compartment, and engine room. A selector knob allowed him to choose different attributes to measure: oxygen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. The oxygen level of the engine room and missile compartment was 20 percent—the number was in green, leading Pete to believe that was in the acceptable range. The forward compartment reading was lower and in bright red: 14 percent. Perhaps a result of the fire? The panel showed an open valve between the oxygen banks and each compartment, and Pete pictured an outlet somewhere dispensing the invisible, odorless air that they all needed to survive. But the oxygen banks, he saw, were severely depleted. One was completely empty, and the second was at less than one-quarter capacity. Could anyone onboard make that machine run and create new oxygen? Anyone who wasn’t locked in an escape trunk? He continued aft.
    Pete surprised himself by arriving at medical. It seemed like a lot of his memories were like that, trapped right below the surface. If someone had asked him how to find medical, he never could have described it. But wandering through the ship, thinking about everything else, he had found his way there.
    The door was unlocked. He found a light switch but it did nothing when he flipped it. In the darkness, he could see locked glass cabinets containing gauze and bandages. He tried the doors, hoping he might procure some industrial-grade painkillers, but they were all locked, and despite the chaos that seemed to have descended upon the Polaris, he was reluctant to break into them and violate the thin glass and tiny locks that guarded them.
    He walked farther into the room and began opening drawers until he found a thick roll of gauze and a pair of scissors. He started to fumble with the gauze but dropped it, and it rolled across the floor.
    As he bent over to pick it up, he heard movement from the corner, and he flinched just enough to avoid a massive blow. It hit him on the shoulder rather than on his head, where it likely would have cracked his skull.
    He rolled onto his back and quickly kicked the implement out of his attacker’s hands—it was a small fire extinguisher. His attacker looked briefly like he wanted to say something, but Pete gave him no time. He sprang to his feet, punched his assailant quickly—twice in the kidneys—then threw