by Erin Bowman
Something brushed her lips, a force pressed down on her chest, purposeful, precise. It repeated in a steady rhythm. The fog wasn’t so white anymore, but a muted fleshy pink. Her eyes felt heavy.
Another soft pressure on her mouth, the more aggressive thrust on her chest.
His thoughts suddenly filled her mind, pummeling her like waves. Don’t leave me. You can’t leave me. Please come back, Thea. Please. I can’t lose you. Don’t you dare die on me. Thea? Goddammit, Thea. Come on.
Another thrust on her chest and she lurched beneath the force. Water bubbled at her lips, trickling down her chin. A hand snaked behind her back, helping her sit. She coughed again, expelling more water, gasping and grunting.
Oh my god. Thank you thank you thank you. I can’t do this alone. I wouldn’t make it without y—
The thoughts stopped the moment her eyes fluttered open. He cut them off, tried to hide them. He hadn’t been trying to tell her these things, not consciously, at least, but she’d heard everything.
She stared at his slack-jawed face, the relief in his eyes. His chest heaved.
Thea, he said, her name a whisper in her mind.
Then he grabbed her face and crushed his lips to hers.
He pulled away just as quickly, their eyes locked. She was frozen, cemented to that spot, unable to do anything but stare. For a moment that should have been filled with their thoughts, the world was shockingly quiet. Her lips tingled.
The guards edged nearer and Coen shot to his feet, wheeling on the men. There was a sharp undercurrent to his energy—something hot and filled with hate—a detached expression she’d seen on him as he fought infected Black Quarry members on Achlys.
Coen managed to tackle a guard and bring him to the ground before the cap he wore surged with electricity and he rolled onto his back, twitching.
“Get him out of here!” Burke yelled as the guards descended on Coen. “Get him back in his cell, now!”
“No,” Farraday said sharply. The guards paused. Thea turned to the doctor, puzzled. He was eying her and Coen with a calculated gaze, the smile on his lips so thin it unsettled her. “Look at this huge spike in brain activity. It’s unprecedented. And their readings are nearly in perfect synchronization.” Burke’s gaze moved to Thea. “Bunk the hosts together tonight, and keep a dozen guards on watch outside the room. I have a hypothesis I want to test.”
Nova tossed in the bed, wrestling nightmares.
She was back on Achlys, searching Black Quarry’s drill site, but in her current physical state. She half limped, half crawled down the catwalks, using the guardrail to pull herself along. Her shoulders burned.
The infected had chased her down to the drilling deck. She’d been separated from her crew, but she couldn’t remember when.
A drilling platform waited ahead. She summoned her final bit of energy, staggering onto the platform. Toppling forward, she caught the railing, barely avoiding a fall. Her weight sagged into it.
Nova hoisted herself up. A light on her helmet illuminated the narrow ravine below.
Below, she saw her crew—all of them, dead in the ravine, frigid water trickling over their bodies. Dylan, Thea, Coen, Toby, Tarlow, and Sullivan. Her cousin. A memory seared behind Nova’s eyes. Sullivan asking her to relay a message to his wife and boys, then a wild version of the man, tackling Nova to the ground. She’d fought back, slitting his throat with a knife. It wasn’t a nightmare. It was real.
Nova lurched awake, gagging. She’d killed him. She’d murdered her own cousin.
She rolled from the bed, landing on all fours on the floor and barely crawling to the toilet in time to retch up her dinner.
Behind her, she heard someone enter the room. “Here. Let me help.” Amber. She shut the door, closing them in together.
“It’s just nightmares,” Nova said. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not. And neither am I.”
Nova lifted her head from the seat of the toilet, looked over her shoulder. Amber’s fair skin was even paler than usual.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Your friends are infected.”
“What?! They can’t be. They weren’t showing symptoms. If they’re—”
“They’re able to host it. It’s made them stronger, Nova. Better hearing and sight and strength. The Radicals are trying to replicate it to create a supersoldier.”
A dark ravine.
Hemorrhaged eyes.
Nails scratching and clawing.
Nova squeezed her eyes shut, banishing the images.
“Do they realize how dangerous that is? I’ve seen what an infected person does if they can’t host this. It’s chaos. Absolute hell.”
“I know. I told my father the same thing. Hevetz is testing the contagion on rats now. Rabbits soon. They want to move on to humans eventually.”
Nova pressed a hand to her mouth. She was going to be sick again. She inhaled deeply, breathing as the animation had taught her.
“They’ve figured out who can host it,” Amber went on. “There’s a certain window in age, developmentally speaking.”
Thea would be in the first quarter of her senior year right now if she wasn’t being held by the Radicals, and if Nova had to guess, she wouldn’t place Coen much older. “Teens?” she asked.
“Give or take, and we’re the only other young people on this entire station. Yes, station. Welcome to one of the Trios’s most isolated space stations: Kanna7.”
“I have to get out of here,” Nova said, fighting the urge to be sick. “I need to find Thea and Coen, and we have to leave.”
“You can barely stand.”
“I need to leave now! If Hevetz was willing to sacrifice all of Black Quarry just so the Radicals could get their hands on this contagion, do you really think they won’t try injecting me?”
“I’m not going to let that happen.”
“How old are you, Amber?”
“Seventeen.”
“That’s more solidly teen than me. What if they get to you first?”
Amber’s brow wrinkled. If she’d come to this room hoping that Nova would talk her back from a panic, convince her that she was overreacting and they’d both be fine, she was in for a shock. Nova had always been a realist.
“My dad won’t . . .”
“Let that happen?” Nova finished. “If it’s not you, it’s me. It’s one of us, regardless. How far do you think I am from walking on my own?”
“With continued PT and a couple more sessions in the regen bed, you should be pretty steady on your feet after a few days.”
“And you said they were only on rats now? That they planned to test rabbits before moving to humans?”
Amber nodded. “We have a couple days, at least. Maybe a week.”
There was a knock on the door. Without waiting for a response, the person on the other side nudged it open. Felix. He spotted Nova on the floor and the state of the toilet bowl. His lip curled.
“She was sick,” Amber explained.
“I can see that. Get her back in the bed where she can be monitored by surveillance so I can go back to my own responsibilities.”
“What responsibilities? I thought they decided to keep Powell in stasis.”
“I’m watching the whole wing at night. Just get her back in bed, please?”
Amber pulled Nova’s arm behind her neck and helped her stand. Whatever their next step was, whatever plan they needed to form, it would have to wait until tomorrow.
It was Thea’s cell, the only one she’d known on this strange space station, but it felt foreign now, wrong. Coen was on her side of the glass.
Will you quit pacing? she said. You’re making me nervous.
He lurched to a halt beside the wall that once divided them. I can’t help it. They almost killed you, Thea.
But they didn’t.
He folded his arms across his chest, clearly not comforted by this statement. He was still looking at her strangely. Like the mere sight of her cause
d something deep within him to ache.
I heard you during the CPR, she said. I heard everything you were thinking. She hadn’t stopped reliving it since it happened. Each moment spent in the memory made her stomach twist, like a towel being wrung. She couldn’t look at him the same way anymore. His hands, especially. She’d watch them fight off hordes of infected on Achlys, wield weapons and throw blows, but now they’d been on her neck, soft and harmless, holding her face. And his lips . . .
They’d been against her mouth before, too. He’d revived her that very first time in the Witch Hazel bunker, but the kiss in the lab, when she’d come to . . . It was barely even a kiss. It had happened so quickly, she could hardly recall what it felt like. On Celestial Envoy, they’d had more physical contact. They’d even been crammed in the dumbwaiter, chests pressed together as they ascended to the escape shuttle, and it hadn’t felt as significant as when he’d held her face earlier. It had felt like nothing but surviving, doing what was necessary in that moment.
Now the simplest touch felt like more. They were relying on each other, but suddenly survival wasn’t the only thing at stake.
Did you mean it—all of those thoughts?
He looked away. Back to her. Away again. Finally, he asked, Can I sit on the bed?
She nodded, but once he sat at the foot, barely a meter away, the cot felt criminally small. His fingers fisted the sheets. He looked at his feet. Her eyes worked over his back—expanding with each breath—and up to his neck, where his tattoo was just barely visible beneath his shirt. Thea swore she could feel the heat radiating off him even from where she sat. She looked at the shape of his ribs along his torso, protesting against the T-shirt. She imagined the tattoo beneath the material, pictured her fingers trailing over the ink marking his skin.
Her heart kicked and she banished the thought, but Coen shifted at the foot of the bed. He’d heard the change in her pulse, Thea was sure of it.
I meant it, he said. Every word. I spent so long alone on Achlys, and it almost broke me. I was at the brink of something—insanity, maybe? But then you showed up and the reasons I’d been fighting came roaring back. I had hope again. And what they just did to you in that tank . . . His brow wrinkled. I can’t lose you. This connection . . . It’s like I don’t know how to live without it, not now that I know what it’s like to share it with someone. Does that make sense?
She nodded, understanding all too well.
Coen pivoted toward her and held his hand up, as he had on the glass that once divided their cells. She reached out, meeting him halfway. Their palms brushed, gently at first, then with more sureness, pressing together.
Her heart seemed to explode in her chest. Contact like this—kind and warm and soft—had become a rarity these past months, practically foreign. She wanted to drink it up, never let it end.
Coen’s fingers folded down, threading between hers. His eyes lingered on her pinkie, now a nub from Burke’s knife, and he scooted closer, his knee knocking hers. With his spare hand, he cradled the nape of her neck, pulled her nearer. Their foreheads met.
Every thought flying through his mind was clear. Loud and buzzing. Half of them made her blush.
His chest heaved. He was looking at her lips.
This is only happening because we have no other options, she told him.
Do you really think that? Is this how no other option feels?
This wouldn’t be happening if we couldn’t talk like this, if we didn’t have this . . . She searched for the right word. This bond.
“I like our bond,” he said aloud. The words were a whisper. She felt the heat of them on her lips.
His private thoughts grew louder. Kiss her. No. She’s hesitating. You should wait. Kiss her before the moment passes, you idiot. No, wait for her lead. What the hell is wrong with you? KISS HER. He’d either quit trying to shield the thoughts from Thea or they were too strong to be contained.
Thea’s gaze dropped, finding his mouth. It would be so easy to edge her chin forward, to let her lips meet his. Part of her wanted such a distraction, craved it even.
“I don’t get close to people,” she admitted. “I’ve only ever been with Mel, and even that didn’t happen until we were incredibly close. Best friends close. Had complete trust in each other close.”
“You don’t trust me?” Coen asked.
“I do. That’s the problem.”
“Why’s that a problem?”
“Because this is only happening because there’s no other option,” she said again.
But Thea knew, deep down, that a hundred, a thousand, a million options wouldn’t matter. Thea had never been attracted to people in that sense. There was a time in middle school when she’d wondered if something was wrong with her, if part of her heart was faulty for not lusting after this person or that, for failing to crush on someone from afar like her peers.
But with Mel . . . it was like her heart had exploded for him years after meeting him. They’d grown close, and only then had things become physical, had she longed for more.
She didn’t understand how she could crave the same type of physical contact with Coen when she’d only known him a few weeks—or months maybe. She’d lost track of time since the Exodus shuttle. But one thing remained clear: what they’d been through together on Achlys, then Paramount, and now this godforsaken space station wasn’t normal. None of this was normal. Not the situation, or their ability to communicate telepathically, or the fact that they were the only two humans alive who were capable of hosting an otherwise deadly contagion.
Coen’s energy soured. She’d been silent too long, and shame now flickered in his thoughts, embarrassment. His fingers straightened, withdrawing from their threaded grip in hers. She squeezed, keeping them there.
He found her eyes.
Maybe there’s no other option because this is supposed to happen, she said.
The corner of his mouth quirked up. I like that theory.
She laughed lightly. Shook her head.
What?
It’s technically a hypothesis, she explained. A theory is tested, well-substantiated, and already proven. But a hypothesis is a suggested explanation based on limited evidence that requires further investigation.
Well, I vote we begin our investigation immediately. It would be irresponsible to delay, agreed?
She smiled and leaned nearer.
Coen’s heart raced as she closed the final centimeters between them, bringing her mouth to his. Her lips were cold—she still hadn’t shaken the chill from the water tank—but her cheeks were flushed. His hand had moved to the side of her face without him consciously deciding to do it, and he felt her warmth beneath his palm.
He pulled her closer still, and as she deepened their kiss, he lost control of his thoughts. Coen wasn’t even trying to control them anymore, and he suspected that he couldn’t, even if he wanted to.
He was acutely aware of everything he was passing to her.
How she’d sent his heart pounding. How her need to correct his terminology about theories had only turned him on more. How one kiss wasn’t enough and how he wanted to pull them down onto the cot, but wouldn’t. Because he wanted to savor this and also because that would be too much. She wasn’t ready.
He knew these things because just as his thoughts had flown wild, hers were rattling around uncontrollably as well. He heard them all. She was flustered and breathless, so he slowed the kiss. He kept his hands on her face instead of moving them to her hips, where they itched to be. Thea’s hands were threaded in his hair, loosening the topknot he always wore. Her thoughts grew louder. She couldn’t believe she was touching him like this. She wanted to touch more of him. She was thinking about pulling his shirt over his head and tracing the shape of his tattoo with her fingers, starting at his neck, working down his torso toward his hips and—
Coen pulled away, sliding to the foot of the bed. With distance finally between them, he sat there panting, trying to control his thoughts. Trying to block ou
t hers about skin and hands and his tattoo. The tattoo he’d gotten for Gina, because of Gina, and how every battle he’d fought so far—how he’d refused to quit on Achlys—had been done for his sister. And now he was sitting here making out with some girl instead of plotting an escape.
Some girl? Thea said, and Coen realized she’d heard everything.
He’d been lazy during the kiss, but not now. Now he was guarded and cautious. He’d folded those last few thoughts away, deliberately tried to keep them from her, and yet Thea had heard them anyway.
And trying to hide it makes it better? She was dripping with annoyance. Her temperament poised to snap.
That’s not what I meant. You’re . . . Coen grappled for the right word. I don’t know how to do this, Thea. You know what I was thinking during that kiss. I didn’t want to stop. But this—us together . . . It doesn’t help me get home. It doesn’t get me back to my family.
Her anger mellowed almost immediately.
I know. We’ll figure something out. Her expression was pained, as though she hurt as he did. I promise we’ll get back to her.
You can’t promise something like that. Besides, why would you?
Because I want you to reunite with your family. You have to. Just like I need to get back home so I can learn what happened to my mother. There’s no other option.
A desperate sensation passed through Coen’s chest—longing, want, need. For a truth. For answers. He was suddenly four, sitting on a bench, watching buses pass by in the spitting rain. He’d been abandoned—no, it was bigger than that. Something terrible had happened to his mother. She’d disappeared.
Coen shot from the bed.
“The hypothesis . . . ,” he uttered.
“Still needs more testing, I guess,” Thea finished with a shy smile.
“Not ours. Farraday’s. He said to bunk us together, that he had a hypothesis.”
Thea’s brow wrinkled, then her face blew blank as she felt what Coen did. He was overwhelmed with a desire to find her mother, just as she desperately wanted to reunite with Gina.
Farraday had suspected this would happen. He’d seen a spark between them—their unprecedented, nearly synced brain activity—and blown on the flames. He’d wanted them together, wanted Thea to be completely alert for their next interactions, not caught by surprise. And now their connection had deepened. They wanted what the other wanted. Felt what the other felt. There was no hiding thoughts anymore, no private moments between them, not even if they desired it.