Ghost station, p.2
Ghost Station, page 2
Ophelia feels like she’s falling, spiraling headfirst toward a hard stop. “Wait,” she says. “Wait.” Her thoughts are slow from the medications coursing through her veins, and her lips feel numb suddenly.
“Did you … Did my uncle…” She can barely say the words, can’t even formulate the question, the idea both completely ludicrous and yet also perfectly, terrifyingly in character for her family.
But Julius doesn’t need her to finish. “I do think this is a bad idea,” he says defensively, lifting his chin up. “I didn’t need someone else to tell me that. You’re so desperate to make up for what happened that you’re not thinking clearly.”
That’s not a denial.
Ophelia yanks her hand free, a yawning chasm opening up in her. Fury and betrayal churn within, each struggling for dominance. “What, were you just lurking in the parking lot, waiting for a signal?” Her voice cracks with the question.
He grimaces, which, in combination with his prompt arrival, is answer enough. “Listen, family is tough,” he says quickly. “I know that. And I know you and your uncle haven’t always gotten along,” he says.
She can hear Darwin in that light, casual phrasing, making it sound like they argued over the implanted wishbone in the soy turkey one Thanksgiving. Her temper ignites, an open flame on a hair-fine fuse leading to years of stored-up fuel.
“What did he give you?” she asks, forming each word with care. “My uncle.”
“He made some good points, Phe,” Julius says. “I think he’s really trying to help—”
“What did he give you?” she grits out between her teeth.
Julius draws in a breath, shame coloring his expression. Eventually he responds. “He said they might be able to pull some strings. With another artificial pregnancy license.”
Oh. The sound is soft in her head, an instinctive reaction of surprise. Somehow, until that moment, until he confirmed the exchange, Ophelia had hoped it was all a genuine misunderstanding, a well-intentioned gaffe.
Julius reads the change in her expression. “You know how hard it is, and we’ve been trying to get that approval for a second—”
“Ray!” Ophelia calls.
“But, Phe, it doesn’t matter. I only agreed to it because I care,” Julius argues.
Ray appears immediately at the door.
“We’re done here. Please escort Dr. Ogilvie out.” Ophelia draws on every ounce of the Bray imperiousness to keep her tone from wobbling. The drugs, softening her defenses, aren’t helping. “And change my emergency contact.”
Hurt flashes across Julius’s face, triggering a wave of molten rage in Ophelia. He betrays her, sacrificing a yearslong friendship, and he has the nerve to be hurt by her response?
To his credit, Ray simply nods. “This way, please.” He holds his arm out in a gesture for Julius to leave. Ray does not, thank God, ask who should be her emergency contact, because at the moment she is out of family members and dangerously low on trustworthy friends.
Julius holds his hands up in surrender and turns to go. But he stops at the door. “Phe, I wouldn’t have done it just for that. You know me, you know I love you, and I meant it. I think there’s something wrong with this assignment,” he says. “Please.”
For a moment, her burning uncertainty returns. She wants to believe him, wants to believe he did this primarily for her benefit. Maybe the assignment is odd. Maybe the whole thing is a setup for her failure.
Or maybe her family is very, very convincing when they want to be.
She knows which one she believes more.
“Make sure you get what Darwin promised you,” Ophelia says. “You earned it.”
2
Three months later
White clouds of vapor drift in front of Ophelia’s face—her breath turned visible—indicating that her eyes are open and she’s at least somewhat alert. Above her, a smear of light filters down through the fogged-over circular window in the cold sleep tank lid. A faint ambient blue glow illuminates the side walls of her tank. She’s awake. More so than before, whenever that was.
The last thing she remembers is … Julius.
White-hot pain slices through her at the memory of his anguished expression at the threshold to the prep room. But after a moment, it cools to a familiar and bitter disappointment.
It’s just so damn predictable. She should have seen it coming. Allowing him—anyone—behind her purpose-built walls is a mistake. Her family will always find a way to use them. She knows that.
Besides, it doesn’t matter, not now. There was more after that, after Julius. She focuses until it comes back to her.
Ray, holding her arm, which was bristling with sensors and tubes, not in comfort but in restraint, and telling her to lie back in the open cold sleep tank and take a deep breath.
It felt like squeezing inside a coffin, the sides of the tank pressing against her shoulders. Instinctively, her body rebelled against the rational part of her mind, refusing to relax, to lie fully back.
But she did as Ray said, pulling in a deep breath—her last one for months. A searing iciness spread upward and inward from her left arm, so cold it felt like being burned alive.
“No bugs, no bite,” Ray said, giving the traditional R&E team sign-off.
And then … nothing. Not even the vaguely comforting sense of falling into unconsciousness.
Ophelia tries to blink, but her eyelids respond sluggishly. Once, and that’s it. Then they stay closed, leaving her in the dark.
Somewhere inside the tank, a drip, drip, dripping that taps at her brain, like an annoying fingertip drumming against her forehead.
A strained noise escapes her raw throat, startling her. Her mouth feels cold, her tongue like a slab of thawing meat. Foreign, thick, in the way.
Panic chews at the drug-induced calmness still drifting through her veins. Her hands, her legs, don’t seem to exist at all, for all that she can feel them. And when she tries to open her eyes again, her eyelids flutter but remain closed. It is a terrifying feeling, to not be in control of your body when your mind is awake. Like being buried alive, encased within your own flesh and bone.
It’s normal. This is all perfectly normal, she tells herself.
It’s not as if she’s unfamiliar with the waking process; patients talked about it all the time. But experiencing it directly is an entirely different world. And the only other time, she was so young that it—
She cuts off the thought before it can go too far. Focus on the present.
After a few more moments of forced, steady breathing, more feeling returns to her body and the panic recedes, giving her space to think. And when she tries to open her eyes again, her lids obey.
The sensors, tubes, and wires have been removed—the ones she can see anyway—by the system in the early stages of bringing her back to consciousness. The strange pulling sensation on her lower legs is likely the artificial gravity. After months in a horizontal position, her tank is out of the cold sleep framework and tipped vertically for awakening. But her knees ache, as if she’s been standing on an unforgiving surface without moving for months.
She tries to shift to alleviate the pain, the thick layer of bio-gel over her skin squelching around her, but the strap across her shoulders and chest is too tight for much movement. The lower strap, across her thighs, is looser, which is perhaps why it feels as though her knees are pressed against the tank lid. Her feet are tingling with the jabs of pins and needles as circulation works to normalize.
Any moment now, someone will be here to pop the lid, hand in a towel, and help her out. That’s procedure. The only person who wakes alone is the mission commander, the most experienced traveler.
She holds still to listen, ears straining for the faintest sound of voices or footsteps. All she can hear, though, is that dripping. But the light through the window is steady. She’s somewhere. She just needs to wait, stay calm.
Concentrate on something else, Phe. The team.
Reclamation and Exploration team number 356, one of the top-rated R&E teams, assigned to the Resilience, an Aeschylus class, short-duration exploration vessel, with capacity for ten. Modified StarPlus engines, but not the latest upgrades. Hence, the longer cold sleep times. The Somnalia VII cold sleep system, installed two years ago.
Ethan Severin, mission commander. Thirty-eight, divorced, no children. Raised in the Lunar Valley Colony support housing. Lost two siblings in the collapse of ’76. Supports his mother and remaining sisters, who continue to live in the Lunar Valley Colony but in independent housing under the dome now. Recommended for Montrose’s Distinguished Performance award, with over twelve years of unblemished service. Until this last mission.
Birch Osgoode, pilot. Twenty-eight, single, no children. Only child, born and raised on Alterra Station. So unobjectionable as to be virtually unnoticeable. His file contained only the basics of his work history and biographical data. Probably hired during one of the expansion rushes, when there wasn’t time for or interest in a full background check.
Kate Wakefield, engineer. Thirty-two, in a domestic partnership with Vera Wakefield, two stepchildren. Daughter of two British refugees, fleeing the flooding that swamped most of the island in ’83. One minor dust-up in a pub on her home station of Brighton that resulted in an arrest for assault, but the charges were dismissed. Otherwise a clean record. A twin. Her brother, Donovan Wakefield, is currently trying to make it as a farmer on one of the Trappist outposts.
Suresh Patel, inventory specialist. Twenty-seven, single, no children. Raised on Earth in New York. Three human resources complaints from previous team members in years prior for unspecified “inappropriate behavior”—a throwaway Montrose term that could mean anything from an obnoxious sense of humor to right-up-to-the-line sexual harassment—but nothing since he joined number 356.
Liana Chong, scientific coordinator. Twenty-three, single, no children. Aspiring astrobotanist. Working on an R&E team to save money for her PhD.
And finally, Ava Olberman, systems management. Technically, she’s no longer part of the team, but her absence will loom over this mission to such an extent that she might as well be here. Ava was a widow, predeceased by her husband, Deacon, and survived by her adult daughter, Catrin.
In an ideal world, Ophelia would have preferred to talk with each of them individually first, to get a baseline before leaving Earth, but with the unexpected end to their previous mission and the sudden change in her status, the logistics were impossible.
So she’ll be meeting them all for the first time today. Assuming anyone ever comes to open her tank.
“Hello?” Ophelia calls, flinching as her voice immediately rebounds against the tank lid, seemingly twice as loud. “Someone out there?”
It’s possible this is a prank. R&E teams are known for hazing new members. But it seems odd that they would bother with her, a temporary addition at best. Plus, this particular team is mourning the loss of one of their own. It’s hard to imagine a prank fitting in with that dynamic.
Of course, it could also be a message: we don’t want you here, and we’re going to make sure you know that. But if that were the case, you’d think that someone would be nearby to ensure she received said message.
She holds her breath for a moment to listen better, but there’s no muffled giggling or shuffling feet … just silence.
The first deep pang of dread reverberates within her, like the toll of an ominous bell. Did Nova screw this up? Mistakes, miscalculations do happen with cold sleep. Rarely, but still.
Or, is she in a warehouse somewhere, stored until her uncle decides what to do with her?
With that thought, her earlier panic returns, sharper than before. She thrashes against the straps holding her in place. “Get me out of here!” she shouts, ignoring the bounce-back of her voice. “Now!” A cold sweat that has nothing to do with her internal temperature or the defrost setting on her tank settles over her skin. A prickling numbness returns to her hands and feet.
Stuck in here forever. How long will it take to die? To feel thirst shriveling her insides? Or will she run out of air first?
Her breath shortens, pulls tightly in her lungs, and dizziness sends sparks of bright white through her vision.
It’s only then, her mind racing through death scenarios, that the tiny rational portion of her brain manages to break through. The emergency release. Every tank has one. Ray had mentioned it in his overview that morning at Nova. Ophelia had even signed an e-packet that included a diagram of the release lever and where to find it—with a specific line on that page for her to initial her understanding. (Therefore, Nova could not be blamed if she suffocated in place. That was the idea, if not in so many words.)
Ophelia wriggles in the confined space of her tank until she can get her right hand up from where it rests by her thigh. It has to be here somewhere, on the underside of the tank lid.
Come on, come on.
Her fingertips fumble inside a depression, grazing over the lever and slipping off, the first time she tries to pull. The next time, though, she is successful in yanking the piece toward herself.
The response is immediate. The straps around her shoulders and legs retract into the side walls instantly, whipping across her skin in a manner that might have left friction burns were it not for the bio-gel, and the hinged tank lid immediately pops free with a rush of air, opening on the right side.
But she doesn’t have time to celebrate or feel more than a bare second of relief. Free of restraints, her still-weak body obeys the stronger pull of gravity, tipping forward and sliding out of the tank before she can catch herself. She lands on the smooth floor in a heap, with a wet-sounding smack.
Dazed, she lies there for a second, cheek on the cold surface beneath her. Then she forces her wobbly arms to cooperate, propping herself up on her hands to get a better look around.
The automatic overhead lights are on, bright white illumination that hurts her eyes. A pile of plasti-sealed towels with the Nova logo rests on the metal bench screwed to the floor in front of her. Behind that, a series of ten lockers, six of which seem to have labels on them, not that she can read them through her squinting at the moment. A small circular opening on the far wall, no larger than her head, offers a bubbled view to the darkness of space beyond.
She’s on the ship, then, the Resilience. This is the cold sleep room. She’s exactly where she’s supposed to be.
Relief is followed by an immediate spike in embarrassment, like that dream where you’ve arrived for an exam—or the first day of a new job—only to discover that you’re completely naked and people are staring.
Only this is reality.
She shifts into a sitting position, her muscles and joints all protesting, crossing her arms over herself instinctively.
But unlike the nightmare, no one is here to witness her humiliation.
Two doorways on either side of the lockers, both of them standing open and empty, lead to what appears to be a corridor.
It’s quiet, too. No voices. No footsteps, even from the corridor.
The only sounds are the deep thrum of the engines beneath her feet and the hushed susurration of the environmental system, pushing warmed and breathable air out into the room. It smells of burning dust, hot metal, and old meal-paks.
Where is everyone?
Shivering, she reaches up and grabs for one of the packaged towels on the bench in front of her. Out of breath and exhausted from even that small effort, she tears it open with fumbling fingers and wraps the white nubby fabric around herself.
With one hand on her towel and the other on the bench, she leverages herself into a shaky standing position after a few tries. But there’s a prickling sensation, the feeling of being watched, dancing along the exposed skin at her back and arms.
She turns abruptly, nearly losing her balance in the process.
That’s when she sees it. Rather, them.
Two tanks, alongside hers, tipped vertically for awakening. But hers is the only one with the door open. The other two are still sealed.
That sense of wrongness immediately returns, stronger than ever, and her accelerated pulse rattles through her, sending tremors like a mini quake.
I shouldn’t be first awake. Not ever.
Carefully, she edges toward the other two waiting tanks. Dread uncurls within her, like a dark shadow stretching for room. She’s not sure why at first; the tanks don’t look damaged.
Then it clicks: they’re dark. All the status lights and indicators on the front control panel—the panel that indicates the health and status of the occupant—are dead. Blank. Empty.
She moves closer to peer through the round window in the lid of the nearest tank, and her breath catches. The internal illumination system is down, too, but there’s enough light from the locker room to see the shadowy profile of a nose, a chin, the top of an ear, and a sideburn shaved into a sharp point.
Someone is still inside.
“No, no, no,” she breathes, lurching back instinctively. This can’t be happening.
She forces herself forward again, lifting on her toes to peer into the second tank. This one, too, is dark inside, its occupant turned away from the window, like an actual sleeper trying to avoid the morning. Or someone who suffered a faulty awakening and whatever painful paroxysms that induced.
A glossy black braid runs neatly along the side of the head, above the delicate shell of an ear. Liana Chong, possibly, based on what Ophelia remembers of the crew photos.
Ophelia steps back, gripping her towel tighter. The Somnalia VII system operates on a viability standard, meaning it will wake the crew in the programmed order, unless there are … issues. In that case, it prioritizes the occupants most likely to survive.
If these are the first three tanks and only one of them—hers—was viable, that means the three tanks still in the framework are likely nonsalvageable. Along with their occupants. The system didn’t even bother trying to wake them.
Mission failed before she even started. Even worse, Ophelia might very well be out here by herself.
