Excerpt from INFINITE ARCHIVE by Mur Lafferty:
When thinking back, Mallory wondered if the house of cards started to fall with what happened next or if it was earlier. But she stepped off the lift with Phineas to get a tour of the convention space and immediately was grabbed by Aaron.
“Mallory! Thank God you’re here,” he said, taking her wrist. “There’s been a murder.”
His shirt was smeared with red, and his hair was messed up. A bruise was blooming on his cheek.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“A convention attendee was found stabbed,” Aaron said, leading her by the wrist toward what looked like a panel room.
Inside stood about twelve people, some of them looking awkward and expectant, some of them looking terrified. One of them, a pale teen wearing a deerstalker hat and no other attempt at cosplay, smiled and then quickly hid it.
I’ll have to keep an eye on that one, Mallory thought. She looked up at Phineas. “No one enters or leaves. If the killer is still here, even.” She looked around the room. “Where is Pablo?”
“Who?” Aaron asked blankly.
“Pablo. Convention security.” Everyone looked baffled. “No one thought to call security? Christ.” Mallory rubbed her forehead and then realized she had transferred some of the blood from Aaron onto her forehead. “Shit.”
There was a body lying across the table at the front of the room where the panelists would sit. It was a young Black woman with a teased Afro wearing a white bodysuit. Blood had splashed from her chest to her face. Mallory looked around the room. “Who has the murder weapon?”
Everyone else in the room—which she now realized included Kath, Bruce (who was holding the ugly alien again), Jason, and Cosima—all looked at Aaron.
“It’s gone,” Aaron said. “We found her like this.”
“You as in Aaron, or you as in the dozen or so of you?” Mallory asked, disbelief coloring her voice.
“All of us,” the smiling teen said. “I’m Reginald Baker the Third, an oil tycoon from Texas.” He pointed to the woman on the table. “And that’s my ex-wife Barbara.”
Mallory turned slowly, her entire head feeling like it would catch on fire. Everyone was looking at her. A few were smiling. “Is this a joke?” She gave the “corpse” a firm poke to her ribs, and the body flinched. “Jesus, you were just crying wolf.”
The woman propped herself on one elbow and looked at Aaron. “When do I get to do my flashback? I wasn’t clear on that.” She rubbed her face and scowled at the blood on her hands. “You better not have gotten any blood in my hair.”
“This was all a game. You unbelievable bastard,” Mallory said, her voice low and dangerous.
“No!” Aaron blanched. “I told you . . . you were going to star in a LARP. The Live-Action Role-Play. That’s today. Everyone here has roles, they’re all suspects, and you’re supposed to be the sleuth.”
“Yeah, because I really want to play a game that makes light of the most stressful times of my life,” Mallory said. “Especially when you don’t tell me that it’s a game. You could have told me it was starting. You could have given me a schedule. You could have said anything helpful.” Some in the audience were now giving each other awkward looks. Others were straight up enjoying the spectacle. Mallory’s embarrassment and rage were making her lightheaded. She walked up to Aaron and made herself keep her hands off him, but she pointed a finger in his face. “Fuck you, man. Fuck you for not taking me seriously and treating me like a prop in your little game. You’re fired.”
Feeling that she deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for not hitting Aaron in his astonished face, she stalked from the room.
“Mallory!” she heard behind her, and then a squawk.
“You can stay back here,” Phineas said. “Don’t make this worse on yourself.”
Mallory stopped in the middle of the hall and looked around. She didn’t even have anywhere to go. This wasn’t her home. There was a whole lot of vacuum between her and home.
“Fuck,” she said, balling up her fists. She headed for the terrible hotel restaurant instead.
She was well into her Bloody Mary when someone took the seat beside her. She didn’t look over. She instead wondered how badly she could hurt someone with a cocktail garnish sword.
“I saw what happened,” Eve said.
Surprised at her attention, Mallory turned. “You were watching?” “Only because Metis told me what was going on,” she said, holding her hands up. “She was concerned for you.”
“So a ship that has known me for fifteen minutes knows me better than my own agent does,” Mallory said. “Great. Do you know if Metis is taking clients?”
Eve smiled slightly at that. “If she is, I’d better be the first person she signs.”
Mallory laughed. “Fair enough.”
“You were restrained. I would have probably hurt him,” Eve said. “That was a shitty thing to do to you.”
“Violence wasn’t the answer that time,” Mallory said. “Not saying it’s not the answer sometimes. No, maybe it was the answer. Who knows? Can’t turn back time.
“I don’t even know what’s going on with Tina back on Eternity. I supposedly have a keynote tomorrow. Why am I letting this get to me?”
“No one likes when the thing they take seriously is being mocked by others. Even if they’re not intending to mock,” Eve said. “I’ve been there. Believe me.”
Mallory finished off her drink. “Was this real booze?” she asked, pointing to the glass, still red with tomato juice and a stick of celery sticking out of the glass.
Eve nodded. “Yeah, we stocked the restaurant and bar before we left. I’m not sure how Metis makes food, but I haven’t wanted to try it, and she hasn’t taken offense, so I assume it’s not really for consumption.”
“Good to know.” Mallory stretched. “Do you think Metis would be able to give me a lift back to Eternity?”
Phineas peeked his head into the restaurant and waved. Mallory waved him over. “Did you kill Aaron?”
“You looking for a murder to solve since the last one ended up going so poorly?” Phineas asked with a smile. “No, I just kept him from following you. Guy was a dick. Are you okay?”
Mallory shrugged. “Just when I think someone takes me seriously, they punch me in the face. I can’t believe he did that.”
“Same,” Phineas said, leaning on the bar. “That was just bad form.”
Mallory tried to suck more Bloody Mary out of her empty glass, then put it down with regret. “I wanted to grab a ride back to Eternity and see how Xan and Tina are doing—shit, but I can’t because Mobius is still somewhere on this ship, and I am not leaving him again.”
“Oh, I didn’t have a chance to tell you,” Phineas said. “They’re on their way over. Tina and Xan are coming via Stephanie.”
“Oh,” Mallory said. “Then maybe Metis can lend me a room so I can sleep off this embarrassment and anger.”
“You’re thinking of being high or drunk. That’s what you can sleep off. Emotions, not so easy to shed,” Phineas said with the tone of one who’s been there. “Why not just hang out here? There’s a party in an hour, it looked fun.”
Mallory laughed. “Go to a party? Not only after I’m humiliated at the con, but where a murder might actually happen?”
“Yeah,” Phineas said. “Why stop having fun? Can’t let them win. Vagina Dentata V is playing, and I might have a turn on-stage, too.”
Mallory pursed her lips and thought. She would like to see other mystery nerds (maybe not the people who attended the LARP). She had come to Eternity to escape the frequent deaths that followed her around, and she’d made a life on Eternity, but sometimes it was hard to find a human to talk to, and the culture divide between species was massive.
“I’m not dressing up. Or dancing,” she added.
“You’re welcome to be a cranky wallflower,” he said. “But I think you should be there. You might even have fun.”
Excerpted from INFINITE ARCHIVE by Mur Lafferty Copyright © 2025 by Mur Lafferty. Excerpted by permission of Ace. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
The Midsolar Murders
Amateur sleuth Mallory Viridian has just about got her bearings aboard the space station she calls home, but now the physical embodiment of the Internet is on its way, and it's bringing murder with it.
Mallory Viridian has had a quiet few months. Even with the increased influx of humans visiting Station Eternity, she hasn’t seen so much as a bar brawl. Used to people dying left and right around her, the lack of murders to solve has left her unexpectedly . . . bored.
But humanity's favorite way to waste time is on its way to her sector of the galaxy. A giant, one-of-a-kind data ship called Metis is bringing the entire Internet from Earth—as well as a mystery fan convention. On top of that, Mallory's literary agent is aboard, and he tells Mallory that she's the keynote speaker.
It's almost a relief when a killer decides to strike at the convention. When Mallory finds her agent dead, she knows she has to work fast to find the murderer. With a strange new alien with unknown motives, a ship with impossible abilities, a lonely living, comprehensive Internet, and a deadly crime to solve, Mallory has her work cut out for her . . . .
Science Fiction Space Opera [Ace, On Sale: July 1, 2025, Trade Paperback / e-Book , ISBN: 9780593098158 / eISBN: 9780593098165]
Mur Lafferty is an author, podcaster, and editor. She has been nominated for many awards, and even won a few. She lives in Durham, NC with her family.
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