Alone out here, p.21
Alone Out Here, page 21
“I just don’t know why you’re still here, if—” I start, but he says at the same time:
“I hate watching you compromise yourself into nothing when I know you’re more than that.”
My face grows hot. His words beat in my ears like a pulse.
A small part of me feels galvanized by the way he said it—with faith, like I’m something brave and good underneath everything. Most of me is terrified that he’s wrong.
The machines’ gentle vocalizations nearly swallow my words: “I’m scared I’ll never stop letting you down.”
His perpetual frown eases. He looks almost sad. “You don’t let me down,” he says. “That’s not what I feel.”
I tilt my face up to see him, the crooked arrow of his nose and the stubble that he, like most of the boys aboard, has beaten back with a dry shave, leaving red dashes against his neck, the corner of his jaw. His black hair is long enough now that a defined curl reaches for his eyes like a shepherd’s crook. As his gaze moves over my face, something pulls tight in my abdomen.
“What do you feel,” I say quietly, but it’s not really a question, and he doesn’t answer. Instead his knuckles brush mine and stay there.
Something happens in my vision like a curtain drawing back, removing a layer of shadow. I realize how close we’re standing, how every time he exhales I feel the touch of air on my cheek. I’m startling awake in a way I thought I’d forgotten.
He waits, quiet but not expectant. I remember how nervous I was when Marcus stopped me outside my room a lifetime ago, when he set his hand on the wall above my shoulder, as if he’d read somewhere that this was the stance you took to make your declarations. I was filled with dread for the moment I would have to push him away, for the disappointment that would—and did—crumple his expression.
I spend so much time afraid. But as I look up into Anis’s face, I feel my fear draining away instead. There’s only the realization that for once in my life, I know what I want. I want him to keep looking at me this way, like he understands me, like he trusts me, like he even wants me. Like I’m someone worth wanting.
I rise toward him as he tilts down into me. When our lips touch, it’s not what I expect it to be. It’s not strident or forceful. His mouth is soft, settling gently against mine, one of his hands brushing my cheek as the other slides into my hair. A shiver runs through me. My nerves reverberate like chimes. I link my arms around his waist to pull him closer.
The murmur of the machines. The soft, frustrated sound he makes against me when I press him back against the wall. The line of blue light that drapes across his dark features in dramatic chiaroscuro. I’ve heard a hundred stories about first kisses, about their awkwardness, their upsetting taste, the way that tongues or teeth or noses or hands become unfortunate main characters. Marcus used to tell and retell the story of his lip getting caught in his eighth-grade girlfriend’s mouth guard. I always wondered why I never heard anything positive or reassuring, nothing except comedy and humiliation. Now I think I understand. I think maybe when it’s beautiful, people want to keep it to themselves.
The next morning, when I wake up, my cabin feels quieter than usual. I stand from my bunk, unable to keep a small smile from my lips as I tug my uniform on. The world seems tinted, slightly different than it looked yesterday. I’m picturing Anis rolling out of bed, splashing water on his cheeks, working his fingers through his hair. I don’t know how I’ll keep myself from glancing toward his usual seat at breakfast, how I’ll act normal.
But when I arrive in the canteen with Caro, there’s no sleepy breakfast chatter, no usual divide of groups at tables. We find the group clustered around the dispensary screens, their discontented rumbles traveling the length of the hall.
My thoughts of Anis, the secret, giddy feeling—it all fades. I trade a glance with Caro before hurrying forward.
As they part to let us through, I catch glimpses of Sergei and Francisco at the front, and worries begin to circulate. Sergei was livid last night. Has he relayed the story about the petition to the group? Did he get enough signatures for a majority? Did he and Francisco get into a public fight?
But when we reach the boys, neither one looks angry. They’re facing the dispensary screens.
“What is it?” I ask, hurrying up with Caro.
“We don’t know,” Francisco says while Sergei points to one of the red messages blinking at the top of every screen. error 318.01, they read, unhelpfully.
“Okay,” I say. “Caro, can you check if something’s wrong with the displays? I’ll check the storeroom—there are some diagrams of the dispensary in there. Francisco, Sergei, just keep people…”
“Calm,” they say together.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
I hurry down the line of screens and slip into the storeroom, but I don’t need to consult the diagrams. Positioning myself below the sample crate in its steel fixture, I see the issue right away. A catch at one corner of the cage isn’t quite secure. It’s been opened.
“No,” I whisper, rushing to the wall and hitting LOWER FIXTURE on the control panel. “No, no, please…” The moment the cage slides to the ground, I’m pulling a dozen other catches, tugging open the steel gridding to reveal its contents. The cube’s packaging has been peeled back, displaying long grooves where columns of food have been removed.
My knees threaten to buckle. I grip the raided crate to stabilize myself, questions pelting through my mind. Who did this? Who could have been selfish enough? And what can I tell the others? Someone’s a thief, and if we can’t get the food back, we’ll have to cut our rations even further.
I close my eyes. Eli will know what to do. She’ll have a contingency plan for this.
Before returning out into the canteen, I clench my fists, close my eyes, and picture myself stepping out of my weak, frightened skin, but it only half works. When I emerge, the lights feel too bright, and Caro, Francisco, and Sergei seem to hover too close.
“Caro,” I say quietly, “can you call Eli with that?” I wave to the one dispensary screen that still lists the Antaeus countdown: 4 months, 16 days, 18 hours…
“Sure.” She turns to it at once, navigating to the screen’s call function.
“What happened?” someone calls from the group.
“What’s wrong?” says Jayanti, slipping up to the front.
For the first time, I notice how skinny they’ve all become, how their cheekbones press out from their faces like knuckles. My eyes meet Anis’s. He looks as tired and hungry as everybody else, but when a smile touches his stubborn mouth, softening his eyes, some of the unrest inside me quiets.
“Everyone,” I call, “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we found the cause of the water treatment breach last night. One of the pressure gauges was miscalibrated, but it’ll be easy to fix. There’s nothing in the treatment plant that we need to find. That means we can stop studying the autosystems and checking pipes.”
Relieved chatter breaks through the crowd. “Finally,” says Luke to laughs from his friends.
“Wait,” Sahir calls out, “what about the bad news?”
“These error messages aren’t because of a glitch. Someone broke into the dispensary last night and stole some of our food supply.”
The smiles disappear. A low moan issues from someone in the crowd, and in the front row, Fatima’s hands come up to clutch her midsection, her mouth distorting like she might cry. Eli, I think, but Caro hasn’t reached her yet. She’s gaping over her shoulder at me. Sergei and Francisco look just as horrified.
“How?” Sergei says.
“How much?” Francisco says.
“Dozens of bars. We’ll need to do a recount, and depending on whether we can recover the missing food, we might need to cut back our diets ahead of schedule. Caro—we need to tell Eli, now.”
“Yes. Right.” Under her shaking finger, the screen offers up call locations—Planter floors, the Menagerie, the Catalog—until she presses Bridge. A gentle tone hums rhythmically through the speakers, once, twice, three times. It goes on and on, sending signals out through the ship, rippling over the heads of the hushed crowd.
It goes on until I realize Eli isn’t going to answer.
I pelt down the hall toward the bridge. When I round a bend, I see the door open far ahead, a white curve like a tooth. “Eli?” I call as I near the threshold. “Eli!”
I break into the bridge and scan the area. The Council’s table is empty, the commander’s seat empty. One of the bunks is unmade, but there’s no trace of her. It’s the first time I’ve seen the room without Eli inside since we were still nestled in Earth’s atmosphere. What is this? What happened?
My eyes are drawn unwillingly toward the airlock. The fine hair on my arms lifts. Inside me is a slow twisting sensation, like someone has gripped everything in my abdomen and wrung it like a rag. I take a step toward the door.
Then a noise comes from the other direction. I spin to face the curved section of wall beside the nearest bunk. There’s a notched handle there, a door to the bathroom. I run for it and throw it wide.
Eli is sprawled on the bathroom floor, stirring feebly. Her long hair is a straggly mess, strands caught in the pool of vomit that’s congealed around the base of the toilet. The smell hits me in a putrid blast—evaporated bile and something sickly bittersweet.
“Eli,” I choke out. Covering my nose, I kneel by her. “Eli, can you hear me?”
Her eyelids and mouth are both sagging. Again she makes the sound that I heard through the door, an incoherent moan.
I slip one arm beneath her knees, the other under her back, and manage to carry her to the nearest bunk. As her arm flops over the edge of the mattress, I spot a puncture mark in the crook of her elbow, surrounded by a greenish spot of bruising.
Her eyelids flutter, neither open nor fully shut. I want to sprint back to the canteen and get the rest of the Council, but whoever did this could still be roaming the ship. Could they pose a threat to Eli if I leave her by herself?
My eyes land on the dashboard. I run to the navigation screen and scroll back through the contact history, through our hourly unanswered transmissions, until I find access to every screen connected to the network. Moments after I dial in to the canteen, Caro’s face swims up on the other end. In the background, the group is watching the screen noiselessly.
I focus on their faces. The sight of their uncertainty composes me.
“Everybody,” I say, “what I need from you right now is to listen, all right?”
No answer.
“Someone hurt Eli. It looks like the same sort of sedative that was used on Sahir, but she had a reaction to it. She still isn’t really awake. So everyone in Medical track, raise your hand.”
I’m already looking toward the back of the group as Anis lifts his hand. “Great,” I say, my throat tight. “Let’s say Jayanti and Anis, come to the bridge with Francisco, Sergei, and Caro. Then—” My eyes fix on the group of guards. “Pieter, make sure everyone gets breakfast as normal, then take a headcount. We need to make sure nobody else is hurt or missing. With seven in the bridge, there should be forty-seven—” I break off, remembering Irina. “Forty-six in the canteen. After the count, Annie and Pilar, go make sure Irina’s all right in the ninth floor and bring her breakfast, too. Then everyone needs to stay put in the canteen until we figure out a strategy. Eli should be able to tell us more soon—we’ll keep in touch this way. Got it?”
Pieter nods, striding to the front of the group. “Got it. I’ll call you when I’ve got the count.”
“Thanks. Talk then.”
I end the call. Eli lets out another mumbled sound across the bridge. As I hurry to her side and wipe the vomit from across her chin, I remember being eleven years old and seeing my mother with an indigo bruise across her forehead. She’d knocked into the edge of a door, nothing dramatic, but the sight was still deeply wrong. The idea that anything could hurt her felt like a personal threat to me.
“Maybe four thirty,” Eli rasps. Her breath is foul, and we have to huddle close to hear. “Five? Don’t know…not sure.”
My throat tightens. Anis and I got back to the eighth floor last night around 4:30 a.m. If the attacker left the Residential Wing then, we could have been only minutes away from seeing them, stopping them.
Jayanti studies the puncture mark in Eli’s arm. The younger girl looks perturbed, restless. “We…we haven’t learned much about anesthesia yet, but she probably overdosed on whatever they gave her, if she’s like this.”
“Overdosed?” Caro says, her voice brittle.
Anis, crouching at Jayanti’s side, stands up. “None of us are anesthesiologists,” he says gruffly. “Dosage is delicate.”
“You didn’t see who it was, Eli?” Francisco asks, feeding her more water from a cup.
She twitches her head no. “Pillow over my face,” she croaks.
“Here.” Francisco draws a damp towel across her chin, wiping away the last of the residue. It comes away the dark, treacly color of our meal bars. “I don’t see why someone would do this,” he says with rising agitation. “What would they get out of it? What’s the point?”
“And the food,” Sergei adds from one of the copilots’ seats, sounding numb. “What does this have to do with the food?”
Beeping from the dashboard signals an incoming call. I jog over to the screen and hit Accept. Pieter is standing so close to the camera that I can count every freckle on his pointy nose. “We did the headcount,” he says. “Everyone’s here.”
“Okay. Thanks, Pieter.” I lower my voice. “Irina’s door wasn’t open, was it?”
He gives me a knowing look. “No. She was locked in like usual.” His eyes stray over my shoulder. “Is Eli okay? Can I do anything, bring her anything?”
“No, it’s—”
“Yes,” Eli scrapes out. “Come to the bridge.”
Pieter nods. “I’ll leave Matteo and Luke in charge. I’m coming. Be there right away.”
He disconnects. When I turn back to Eli, she’s levering herself upright, one hand clamped to her head with such force that I can practically feel the splitting headache. She pushes away Jayanti’s and Anis’s attempts to make her lie down again. “I’m fine,” she grinds out. “Fine. Thanks…Go back to the canteen.”
Anis glances to me for confirmation. Again the world seems to slip like a poorly fit garment. Not even six hours ago, I was resting my head on his chest in that hidden blue-lit space. Now his face is unreadable.
“Go ahead,” I say.
“Okay.” He looks back to Eli. “Get plenty of sleep.”
“Drink as much water as you can,” Jayanti adds, “but be careful with food. Don’t nauseate yourself.”
As they leave, I watch Anis shrink down the hall, his fists held tight at his sides. He doesn’t look back at me. With a feeling of compression in my stomach, I begin to wonder.
Anis and I left the treatment plant last night near 4:30. He was awake.
My mouth is suddenly paper dry. Anis couldn’t have done that to Eli. The same hands that held me so gently, they couldn’t have stabbed a needle into her arm, forced down the plunger, clasped the pillow over her face while she thrashed, making muffled cries, and eventually went limp.
When I come back to myself, Francisco is saying, “Of course someone wants to steal food, Sergei. You were just complaining about how hungry you were yesterday.”
Sergei shakes his head. “But why all this? Attacking Eli, wasting more of the anesthetic—what’s the point?”
“Whoever stole the food,” Eli rasps, “isn’t going to eat it. They want to send it to the Hermes.”
“What?” says Sergei at the same time as Francisco says, “How?”
But Caro has closed her eyes in understanding. “You think they want one of the rovers.”
“Yeah. Someone knocked me out,” she goes on with more strength, “because they needed time in here. Wanted to figure out how the rovers work…Send our food to some imaginary astronaut.”
I frown. “Could the rovers deliver food to the Hermes?”
“No. They don’t have the communication or the navigation….And if they try to do it, they’ll waste…Here, help me….”
Francisco and I lever her up and help her totter toward the dashboard. As she collapses into the commander’s seat, footsteps clamor out in the hallway. A moment later, Pieter is jogging down the stairs to join us. “I’m here.”
“Good,” Eli pants, pushing her hair back with a shaking hand. “We’ll need you.”
Pieter’s chest swells as Eli looks at the dashboard screen. Her hand gives the occasional involuntary twitch as she taps through the menus. SYS > EXT > SUP > ROV.
She examines a series of charts. Then her wan face sags. “Yes,” she breathes. “Thank God, they’re all still there.” She leans back so we can see the list of seven rover pods. “The food’s still aboard.”
“How do we find it?” Pieter says at once.
“Need to search…every inch of this ship.” She grips the arms of the commander’s seat and slowly, excruciatingly, lifts herself upright. “Besides us, who do we know didn’t do this?”
No one speaks. I half expect Sergei to say Irina’s name—after all, she was locked in the ninth floor—but he doesn’t answer, worrying at his knuckles until they pop.
And me? Who do I trust? Anis, I think, but my doubts redouble. Not even a week ago, he and I spoke about our hopes that someone might be aboard the Hermes. Last night, Eli’s reaction to the petition sent him into panic mode. What if, after walking me back to my cabin, he went to the canteen, and then to the bridge, and took matters into his own hands?
“I trust Matteo Marini,” Pieter says. “And Luke Nabwana. They’re watching the canteen right now.”
