Ghost station, p.22
Ghost Station, page 22
“There’s no one here,” he says, throwing his hand out wide to indicate the space. “Who would I be talking to?”
“I saw…” Ophelia stops. Had she actually seen him speaking? She replays the scene in her mind: Birch at the window, staring out. Fog from his breath on the glass. But is his mouth moving?
No. The answer is no.
She heard his voice in the hall, but not once she was in the room. She never saw him talking.
Fear soars in her chest, and that sensation of falling while standing still returns. She was so sure that she’d heard it, actually heard it, versus inside her own head. How would she even have known what to imagine, if it was only in her mind?
It dawns on her then: Birch and Ash. Both nature names, in Goliath tradition.
Ophelia squeezes her eyes shut. Brothers would be a good guess, even though Birch’s file lists him as an only child from Alterra Station. And based on his reaction, odds would suggest this is—or was—the brother who died at the hands of her father.
Which means that Ophelia, who once studied everything she could find about her father, if only to avoid becoming him, would definitely have known the name Ash.
Birch makes a disgusted noise, and she opens her eyes.
“Forget the meds. I think I’m better off without anything from you.” He pushes past her without waiting for a response.
“But—” She starts to follow him but thinks better of it after a few steps. What, exactly, is she going to say? Only one of us is right, and at the moment I’m not sure who?
Hands shaking, she returns the painkillers to the medikit and reaches for the med-scanner. She’s going to run every test she can think of on herself, on her arm, and figure out what’s happening. If it’s ERS—or rather, if she’s ruled out everything else, as there is no definitive test for the syndrome—she’ll tell Severin in the morning. Preferably before Birch starts talking.
* * *
Blood cools so quickly on the station’s textured metal decking.
It turns tacky, sticky, losing that red vigor of life. Dark puddles of lost potential, pooling around collapsed skulls and unseeing eyes.
But it’s a necessary evil to combat a larger one. And at this moment, it’s also a useful one.
Perfect little high-arched footprints dance on the floor ahead, outlined in drying red. That second toe is longer than the first, sticking out above the rest, a daub of blood to differentiate. “Royalty,” her mother said once, laughing. “It means we’re descended from royalty.”
This is her fault. She’s one of them. Those eyes, dark and cold, staring back at her through fake tears as she pretended to cower. And now Ophelia has no choice but to solve the problem she created.
Ophelia tightens her grip on the blood-slicked handle of the pickax. “Little Bird, where are you? Come say hello.” Her voice, too deep somehow, rumbles out into the silence, sending a jolt through her.
No response, no sound at all except the faint pings along the wall as the electronics of emergency alert continue to signal danger, alternate panels of flashing red and too-bright white.
She edges forward down the curving corridor on level seventeen. The weight of the pickax tugs painfully at her shoulder. Swinging hard and fast so many times has tightened the muscles across her back, but the adrenaline buoyant in her veins makes the sharp ache easier to ignore.
The mining ax is not meant to be a weapon, just an old-fashioned tool for the tight corners and small veins where their other equipment can’t reach, but it certainly works to split flesh and smash skulls. Gobbets of torn skin cling to the far end of the ax, mixed in with splinters of white bone and grayish clumps of brain.
Signs of a job well done. Disease being cut free of the host.
She picks up the pace, stepping over the sporadic tangles of tubes and cords snaking across the corridor, white minerals crusting over the ribbing. It smells dank and fusty down here, as if there’s rot just beneath the surface. HRUs, humidity reclamation units, cobbled together from spare parts, stick out from jagged holes in the walls, where they’ve been inserted to help pull every spare molecule of water from the air. Post-orbit modifications to carry and recycle more water to the grow labs. More people means more food needed.
Or so they say, but when have they ever told the truth about anything? Do they even eat? She doesn’t know anymore. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the ones who can still be saved and the ones who are lost.
Ahead of Ophelia, the footprints taper out to smudges before disappearing. But that’s all right; there’s nowhere for her prey to go. Hydroponics is an essential service, so every door on this floor will be locked down during an emergency. Even the stairwell at the end of the level won’t open without an administration access chip.
She steps around another HRU that’s jutting into her path—this one not doing its job so well, judging by the glistening seepage beneath—and creeps around the final curve, hoping to surprise the child. Hoping the girl doesn’t try to run. Ophelia wants this to be as simple and painless as possible.
Raising the pickax, she lunges out, away from the wall, to find … nothing. A patch of empty floor with dust and detritus gathering in the corners. The torn edge of a reflective wrapper from a meal bar winks and blinks back at her. The stairwell door is still shut tight, yellow light flashing “No Admittance” on the panel to the right of it. The service panel to access the station’s mechanicals is still bolted in place.
Ophelia smears a hand across her eyes, as if that will change what she’s seeing. The girl came this way, she’s certain.
Isn’t she?
The pain in her head flares, the buzzing in her ears sending waves of dizziness over her that warp and bend her surroundings, twisting them until she can’t tell which way is up.
Ophelia is out of time. They’re taking over. She can feel them changing her, altering her cells. Soon she’ll be like the rest of them.
Her gaze falls to the decking, searching for any trace of footprints. But the floor around her is barren, except for the slow expansion of the water puddle beneath the nearest HRU. A puddle that’s clearly new. Still emerging.
An idea flickers at the back of her muddled brain, rising above their influence.
She leans the ax against the corridor wall. Then, with an effort that feels like it takes every bit of strength she has left, she tears the HRU away from the wall. Water sprays into the air before cutting off to a dull trickle.
From the jagged hole in the wall, amid the tubes and wires, vivid green eyes—just like the ones that stare back at her from the mirror every morning—stare up at Ophelia. She is huddled to fit into the narrow space, her head down, knees pulled to her chest, and arms wrapped around her shins. Her dirty and bloodied toes stick out from beneath her blue school tunic and uneven leggings.
When Ophelia reclaims her ax, the girl offers no defense, no plea. She blinks once, a single tear streaking down one flushed cheek.
“I’m sorry, Little Bird.” Ophelia raises her arm and—
Ophelia lurches upright in bed, gasping. It takes her a moment to reorient herself. She’s in the bunk room, not hiding behind an HRU on Goliath or wielding a pickax over the child version of herself.
Her dream made her both her father and herself, both the murderer and his potential victim. Jesus. That’s messed up. Even for you, Phe.
She drops back onto her mattress. Her left arm is throbbing, and her eyes are gritty with lack of sleep. The light in the outer bunk room window tells her nothing about what time it is, but Liana’s mattress above her is still bent with her weight. So it must be early yet.
Ophelia spent hours yesterday, late into the night, searching for patterns, details she might have missed, looking everything up against every database she has access to out here, which is not many.
Now, she could probably diagnose and perform a routine appendectomy with the help of the Med-Bay medical unit on the Resilience, if they could get up there. But she found nothing that matches what’s going on here.
ERS is, of course, the top contender, simply because of the frequency with which it occurs in this population (R&E teams) and the newness of the condition, which means they’re still learning about it and variations may crop up.
So, Ethan then. She needs to tell him. All of it. Just in case.
Maybe he’ll understand.
He won’t look at you the same, though. None of them will.
Ophelia takes a deep breath and then sits up. She makes herself look as she pulls her arm out from under the blanket. She’s not sure what she’s afraid she’ll see—more of the bumps? Larger ones? Sprouting strange antennae?
She poked and prodded last night, even took a sample, which registered absolutely nothing on the med-scanner.
Which doesn’t mean it’s nothing, just that it’s nothing their medical equipment has been programmed to recognize. Another point in favor of the alien something-or-other diagnosis.
Ophelia shudders, and it takes her a second to work up to looking down at the skin she’s exposed, the few centimeters below her elbow.
Which is clear. Not a bump in sight. Just a few pale freckles and the thin white line of a scar from the sharpened edge of their table on Goliath.
Frowning, she tugs the blanket down farther. Still nothing.
Her arm aches like she’s done a full day of biceps curls, but there’s nothing visible. How is that possible?
Heart pounding, she shoves the blanket all the way down, revealing that her other arm is also completely normal looking, as are what she can see of her legs beneath her compression shorts.
That’s good news. Whatever it was has resolved itself. The best possible outcome.
But it doesn’t feel right; it’s like she’s missing something. How could something that awful just go away?
Maybe it was never there to begin with, a tiny whisper offers from the back of her mind. You never saw bumps like that on anyone else. Maybe it’s just one more hallucination that—
No. No. She ran tests last night. She took a sample, for God’s sake.
It was real. It was.
It’s just … gone now.
But when she reaches out to touch the smooth skin of her knees, just to be sure, she sees what she missed before, in her search for skin disruptions: dried blood on her fingertips, creasing into her palm. Not a lot, but enough to be fucking alarming, since there should be none.
Tingles spread into her fingers and her feet, turning her extremities numb. Where did it come from? She doesn’t see any obvious cuts or injuries, never mind having no memory of getting hurt. Her period is regulated by an implant, has been for years, and besides, the blood is not on her shorts or sheets, as far as she can tell.
But when she twists around looking, she finds it is on her pillowcase.
Ophelia freezes. Then she reaches up to touch her upper lip. It’s sticky and stiff, and her fingers come away with more red.
A nosebleed. That’s all. Relief makes her insides cave in. For a second she thought it was something utterly horrific, like the sudden evacuation of those bumps by force.
A nosebleed. That she can handle. As long as those fucking bumps are gone.
“I can handle it,” she says in a whisper, more as a reassurance to herself than anything else.
“Ophelia?” Liana murmurs above her.
Ophelia goes still.
“Are you going to your office today?” Liana’s voice is soft but not sleepy. Whatever this is, she’s been awake, thinking about it for a while.
Ophelia tries to think, to move away from her own concerns and focus on Liana and what she’s asking.
“I’m planning to, yes.”
“I was thinking … I could come to your office again. Just to, you know, check in,” Liana adds. “After yesterday.”
Empathy pulses in Ophelia’s chest. The discovery of a body in such a way would have been traumatic for anyone, let alone the person operating the autodrillers, who also happened to have suffered a loss recently. “Of course. Absolutely. Whenever you’re ready.” But speaking pulls at the stiffening mask of blood on her skin. She needs to get cleaned up before Liana or anyone else sees her.
Ophelia swings her feet to the floor. And Ethan … She hesitates. Well, it can’t hurt to wait a little longer, until after she speaks with Liana. Based on the wind howling outside, they’re all going to be trapped inside for at least a portion of the day. She’ll find him then.
She wants this one last chance to help, to make a difference.
Ophelia gathers her jumpsuit and hygiene products from her bag under her bunk and keeps her head down as she leaves for the lav.
The lav is empty, fortunately. The wavy, shatterproof mirror on the wall in the narrow space provides a blurry shock. The blood from her nose is spattered and smeared all over the lower half of her face—thanks to her pillow, she would imagine.
It’s unconscionable to use her water allotment this early in their first week, but sonic isn’t going to cut it.
Once she’s dried off and dressed, she passes through the central hub, stopping just long enough to make a coffee in the galley. She’s exhausted, again. A loud clanging, followed by muffled swearing, comes from behind the galley. Kate—or Kate and Suresh—at work in syscon already.
Coffee in hand, Ophelia rounds the galley and cuts through the central hub to the A side airlock, her mind churning, reviewing what she knows of Liana from their previous, brief conversations and anticipating possible tracks their conversation could take. This … this she can address. The relief of having something manageable to anticipate, within her field of expertise, cannot be overestimated. It makes her feel like she can breathe freely for the first time in several days.
As before, Ophelia is greeted by the jaunty figure of the abandoned envirosuit, propped against the curved corridor wall outside her office. Even when she’s expecting it, its appearance is still a bit of a jolt, given how person-like it looks.
The helmet and shoulders are more slumped today as the top-heavy suit is sliding toward the floor, but the legs are still crossed at the ankles, looking for all the world like a team member parked out in a patch of sun for a nap—minus the sun, of course.
With a sigh, Ophelia steps over the legs. She would be tempted to move it to the central hub, but she suspects that would simply result in it showing up in other places. The lav. Her bunk, with the covers pulled up.
She halts and then backtracks. DELACROIX. The name glints up at her in block text stitched on the shoulder patch.
What are the odds that this would belong to a crew member other than the one they discovered yesterday? The only person who doesn’t need an envirosuit on this planet is, well, one in his condition. That also means he likely died inside the hab and then they … disposed of his body outside. Rather than an accident of some variety outside, which would then necessitate his retrieval and preparation for burial. Kind of makes sense, given how little preparation they did.
Her mouth tightens. She makes a mental note to tell Ethan. It might make his conversation with mission control go a little more smoothly if he has a name to share. Liana might find it reassuring as well, though, again, Ophelia suspects that Liana’s reaction yesterday, even her decision to talk today, is more about her unresolved issues with Ava’s death than about Silly Bird’s owner, even if Liana doesn’t realize it.
Ophelia’s so focused on next steps that she doesn’t realize something’s wrong until after she pulls open the door and nearly steps on the shattered remains of her iVR system tablet.
She jumps back and stares at the remains of her office. The two chairs are overturned, the tables shoved out of place. The notepads she uses for patient notes are upended on the floor, pages creased and bent. The contents of the medikit are spread around the floor like someone spun in a circle with the case open until everything spilled.
Or like an addict tore up the room, desperately searching for something.
Shit. Ophelia should have locked the medikit up. Even if there aren’t any known addiction issues on the team, she knows better than to leave meds of any kind out where someone can—
An unfamiliar sight snags her gaze along the back wall, below the shattered sample container units, and it takes her a second to understand what her eyes are telling her.
No, it’s not another empty envirosuit or any other person-like substitute stretched out on the table that’s been pushed into place against the wall. It’s a person, Birch, resting on the table, as if that’s the perfect place for a nap.
Or to crash.
“What the hell?” Fury boils over in Ophelia as she navigates her way through the mess, trying not to break or crush anything else. Getting back to the Resilience for replacements isn’t going to happen for who knows how long. “Hey, wake up!” she demands.
As she gets closer, though, past the chairs and the other table, which were partially blocking her view, she sees that his left arm is dangling off the table, fingers brushing the floor. An awkward position for a nap, even a drug-induced one.
The blood spatter starts about a meter away, uneven and chaotic, and then the droplets get larger and fatter, until they pool together, creating the drying red sea beneath his hand.
Blood, too much blood. Her grip tightens on her mug, but the tremors racking her whole body slop coffee over the edge anyway, burning her fingers. The pain registers in a dim, dissociative note, as if she’s watching it happen to someone else, because she’s transfixed by the scene before her.
The sleeve of Birch’s jumpsuit is shredded to ribbons, and it too is hanging toward the floor. The skin on his forearm is sliced and raised in flaps, dangling like loosened bits of bark on his namesake tree, revealing the pink marbled muscle and tendons.
But worse than that?
The ragged chunks, like hacking cuts or bites, missing from both.
21
Ophelia stumbles backward, buzzing loud in her head. A chair leg catches at her ankle, and she goes down hard on her backside. It knocks the mug out of her hand, the air out of her lungs, and for a moment it feels as if she’s going to be stuck here forever. Just frozen in this hellscape with blood and a body and—
