by Melissa Grey
Gabe rolled up his papers and thoroughly failed to suppress the smile on his face.
“Thanks, Dr. Moran. I promise you won’t regret it.”
Her only response was another dismissive wave. But right before he could close the door behind him, she lifted her head, just an inch. Her dark curls fell across her face in a way that was more than a little ominous.
“See that I don’t, Mr. Correa.” She held his gaze, her expression unreadable. “The bunker is a delicate ecosystem. We wouldn’t want to disturb it.” A shadow passed across her face. “If any one system falls, the rest will follow. We must have harmony in all things. Always, Gabriel. Do you understand me?”
He nodded, even though he was pretty sure half of what she was saying wasn’t about systems or ventilation or efficiency at all. The words sounded weightier. Like there was a secondary set of sounds underneath them, outside the range of his hearing. He’d been told—mainly by his parents and sometimes by Sash—that he often missed those subtle cues. But everyone in the bunker knew about that tendency of his. If they spoke in riddles and he didn’t get it, he figured that was more a them-problem than a Gabe-problem.
“Of course, Dr. Moran. Understood.” Well enough.
He scuttled out of the room before she could say anything else. He had work to do.
Moran’s office was warm. Unpleasantly so. Always.
The cloying heat made Sash sticky and uncomfortable but also strangely languid, as though her muscles were glad to have a chance to relax.
Perhaps that was why Moran kept it so hot. To loosen people up. To make them both physically relaxed and physically uncomfortable, so they’d say whatever they had to say to get out of there, but without the filter that inhibitions granted.
Sash drummed her nails against the plush armrests of the chair she sat in. It wasn’t across from the desk, which Sash had never seen Moran use. It was set into a corner opposite an identical plush chair, the two separated by a wicker end table draped in some kind of brightly colored tapestry. The smell of incense burned in the air. Where Moran acquired this endless supply of sage and patchouli, Sash hadn’t the foggiest.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” Moran’s tone implied that she knew there was something—perhaps several somethings—Sash was keeping to herself.
But Sash was happy doing just that.
She shook her head cheerfully. “No revelations today. Same as last week.”
The doctor tilted her head to the side, the way Sash’s ancient Pomeranian had when she was a child and the little dog knew Sash was hiding a treat in her closed fist. “Now, why don’t I believe that?”
A shrug Sash hoped was nonchalant. “No idea. Projecting, maybe?”
In her head, a voice that sounded an awful lot like Yuna audibly gasped.
The inner Yuna. Far more judgmental than the actual Yuna.
But thinking about Yuna made Sash’s cheeks redden. Not much but enough.
Rookie mistake.
A flicker of keen understanding slithered through the doctor’s eyes.
“You understand why the rules are what they are, don’t you?” Moran’s voice oozed with sympathy. It slid over Sash’s skin, leaving a trail of insincerity in its wake.
“You mean the rules you made up that everyone follows because they’re too afraid to do anything else?”
The words were out of Sash’s mouth before she could really think about them. Before she could measure their weight, test them out in the safe confines of her own skull. But now that they were out, an unusual lightness filled her chest. She’d thought it for years. Now, she’d finally said it. And it felt good.
Moran drew in a long, steady breath as she spread her fingers wide atop her desk.
“And now here we are, at the crux of the issue.”
“What issue? There’s no issue.”
Again, the too keen look, this time paired with a condescending smile to match. Moran folded her hands together and leaned in toward Sash, as if the two of them were grand ol’ pals.
“I have a proposal for you.”
Sash quirked a single eyebrow. A pointed query.
“You don’t insult my intelligence,” Moran continued. “And I won’t insult yours.”
Sash’s shoulders tightened, as if a cord had been drawn between them. She spared a thought for lying. For deflecting. But such a thing would be pointless when faced with the look on that woman’s face. So instead, she gritted her teeth and bit out a single, terse, “Fine.”
“You’ve been having thoughts, haven’t you?” Moran asked, as if it wasn’t a completely ridiculous question.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
The doctor tipped her head to the side. “Thoughts of a certain nature.”
Sash didn’t like the way that sounded. A certain nature. No. She didn’t like that at all. Not one bit.
“I assure you,” Moran continued, “such thoughts are completely normal, especially for a girl your age.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“A false prophet, but I digress.”
“Please. Digress.”
Moran’s hand snaked out across the desk and latched on to Sash’s wrist.
The touch was so startling, the physical contact so rare, that it froze Sash to her very core. Moran wasn’t touching her skin—only the fabric of Sash’s sleeve. But still. Weird. Weird and bad. Sash tugged on her wrist, trying to wrest it free from Moran’s surprisingly strong grip, but to no avail.
“It’s perfectly fine to want to be touched.”
“Not by you.” Sash yanked with all her might. Moran dropped her hand at the same moment, sending Sash crashing into the stiff back of the armchair.
“No,” Moran said, voice low and measured. “Not by me.” The doctor shook her head, sighing. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way. Believe me when I say this isn’t the life I wanted for any of you.”
There was something about the phrasing that seemed off.
“Don’t you mean us?” Sash asked. “You’re locked in here with us.”
Except, of course, when Moran wasn’t. She got to leave at night. She got to put on that ridiculous suit and go outside. It might have been oxygen out of a tank filling her lungs, but it was closer to fresh air than any of the rest of them had gotten in years.
“Yes,” Moran said. “Us.” With another weary sigh, she added, “It isn’t safe. Not even in here. Not entirely anyway. We were all exposed. The contaminant … it lives on inside our bodies. We carry it with us always.”
Sash rubbed her wrist, wiping at the spot Moran had touched. She was hot all over, as if the contaminant—whatever it was—was heating her up from within.
“You don’t want to get your friends sick, do you?” Moran asked.
Sash’s jaw clenched so tightly, she thought something in it might crack if she exerted only a little more pressure.
“Keep your hands to yourself,” Moran said, a kindly smile gracing her thin lips. “That’s all I ask. The others look up to you. You should set a good example.”
No, Sash thought. That’s not all. That’s not even the half of it. You ask for that and so much more. You ask for everything we are, everything we could be.
But this, she wisely did not say.
With a nod she didn’t mean, Sash stood up.
“That’ll be all for today.” Moran was already turning away, shuffling a stack of papers on her desk.
Sash retreated, turned the doorknob in a trembling hand, and left.
“And you, Yuna,” Moran said, a fine thread of exhaustion woven through her voice. “Any revelations this week?”
Yuna stilled her feet. Even though she was sitting, she was still running through the petite allegro steps Mrs. Eremenko had taught them during the morning ballet class. Not really running through them, of course, but marking them. That way, they stayed fresh in her mind for the next class.
“Nope.”
Her gaze drifted down back to her feet. Was it four changements? Or
three? Her timing was off, but she wasn’t sure where she’d lost it. Maybe during the echappés?
A pointed—and not at all quiet—throat clearing tore her attention away from her fidgeting feet.
“Oh.” Yuna sat upright, hands laced delicately in her lap. “Sorry. I was just thinking about ballet.”
“Did you have a good class this morning?”
Yuna nodded. “Yup.”
Moran’s lips stretched into a shallow, secretive smile. “You know, you’re an awful tough nut to crack.”
“Oh, I don’t really like nuts.” Yuna blinked. “I’m allergic.”
A tittered laugh tumbled from Moran’s lips. “Of course, dear. It was just a turn of phrase.”
“Oh. Okay, then.”
Maybe it was the counts that were off? It’s possible she misremembered them. Usually, counting off the music was such an innate thing for her, but everyone was wrong every now and then.
“Anything you’d like to share about your friends?”
Yuna cocked her head to the side. “Like what?”
Was it the glissades?
Moran shrugged. Spread her hands in a questioning gesture. “Anything at all. Any concerns you might have.”
Yuna paused to give the question thought. After a long, silent moment, she said, “I think Gabe needs new glasses. He was squinting at the chore board the other day.” But then she frowned. Remembered their current circumstances. “But where would he get them?” A shrug. “Oh, well. What can you do?”
No, not the glissades. The assemblé?
“You’re a vault,” Moran intoned, more to herself than Yuna, “aren’t you?”
Yuna blinked again. “I don’t know what that means.”
Moran sighed. “Of course not.” She waved Yuna off. “I think that’s enough for the day. You can go.”
Yuna didn’t wait for the doctor to change her mind. So, she left.
It was definitely the jetés. That had to be it.
She’d track down Mrs. Eremenko and ask, just to be sure.
Sash was passing the bowl of canned peas to her mother—always canned peas, those seemed to exist in the bunker in an inexhaustible supply—when the lights went out.
Darkness fell over the room, so complete it was as though everything ceased to exist outside of each person’s isolated bubble of fear.
The darkness is good, Sash told herself. The darkness is safe. The things in the light can’t get us in here.
She wished she still believed that.
Moran’s voice pierced through the black shroud enveloping the room. “No need to panic. I’m sure it’s just a hiccup in the generators.”
Sometimes it was a hiccup in the generators. Sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes the lights just went off without warning for no discernible reason. It wasn’t ideal but it was still better than hearing the faint whir of the air filtration system die down. That happened rarely, but lately, these hiccups seemed to occur with greater and greater frequency. Already, in the past month, the lights had gone out three times. That wasn’t normal.
“The bunker is falling apart,” Gabe whispered. Someone shushed him. In the darkness, Sash couldn’t tell who, but she was willing to bet it was Mrs. Correa. The woman didn’t like that kind of talk. She was easily upset by the thought that their lives were anything less than ideal. How she could have convinced herself of that when they were all buried underground, essentially as living corpses, Sash hadn’t the faintest clue. Self-delusion was a powerful thing, she supposed.
A hand found its way into Sash’s lap, seeking her own out.
Her head instinctively swiveled in the direction of where it originated.
Yuna.
Sash opened her closed fist, fingers bumping into Yuna’s where they groped uselessly at her thigh. The moment their hands touched, Yuna’s latched on to Sash’s with a strength belied by how small and delicate Sash knew her to be.
“Everyone, keep calm.”
It was what Dr. Moran always said when this sort of thing happened. Stay calm. Everything will be fine. Nothing to see here. (In this case literally, because they couldn’t see a single thing even if they wanted to.)
“Why?”
The question was out of Sash’s mouth before she had even really formulated the thought.
A profound silence greeted her query. So rich and deep was that silence that Sash felt as though it might smother her to death, like a nice, soft pillow to the face.
“What in God’s name do you mean?”
The doctor’s voice cut through that inky black darkness with the precision of a well-fired arrow.
But now that Sash had started this, she had to finish it. There was no other option. No other avenue to explore. No other recourse. They were going to have this conversation. Now. Here. With nothing but the darkness holding them back.
“I mean,” she started, unsure exactly what she meant, but trusting that by the end of her sentence she would somehow find her way there, “why should we stay calm?”
The veil of shadows did nothing to mitigate the acerbic force of Dr. Moran’s chuckle. “What else would you suggest, Alexandra? Panic? What, pray tell, would that accomplish?”
Under the table, a solid boot lashed out and kicked Sash square in the shin. It hurt. A lot. She knew those boots well enough to know that they had metal bits at the front to fortify the toe. And she didn’t need to see Misha to know that he was shooting her a glare hot enough to melt steel.
Thankfully, her inability to actually see said glare rendered it powerless.
Take that, Misha.
“I’m not saying we should panic,” Sash countered.
“Then what are you saying? Mind your words, dear. They have more power than you know.”
“I’m saying we need to talk about what this means.”
“Sasha, sit down.” Her mother’s voice was as brittle and clipped as it ever was. But more, it sounded tired. More tired than it usually did. The woman seemed to mostly run on willpower and spite, both sprinkled with a heady amount of fear. But fatigue laced its way through her words.
“Mom.”
“Sasha—”
“This keeps happening!” Sash didn’t mean to shout. It sort of just happened. But she felt not a single ounce of regret for allowing it to. “The lights keep going off.”
“A simple anomaly with the power,” Moran said, as if a single simple anomaly didn’t have the potential to stand between the lot of them and at least half a dozen ways to die. “It’ll be back on shortly.”
“That’s not the point. This used to happen once a year. Maybe twice. Then it was once every couple of months. Now it’s happening every few weeks.”
“Sasha,” Misha hissed. He tried to kick her again, but she was too quick. His boot connected only with the empty air where her legs used to be. She’d moved them to the side, knowing his anger wouldn’t be so easily dissipated.
“And that doesn’t even get into the problems we’ve been having with the air,” Sash said. That was the trickiest point. The one they were universally all more afraid of. They could live in the dark. It had protected them this long. But they couldn’t live without air.
“There are no problems with the air.” Moran’s tone invited no argument.
But she was going to get one anyway.
“Well,” Gabe started, “actually—”
“Actually nothing,” Moran barked, cutting him off. “We have nothing to worry about.”
Baba Olya let loose a jagged little laugh. “At least until we all suffocate down here like rats.”
“There is nothing wrong with the air,” Moran reiterated. Her tone dared Gabe to contradict her.
He was far smarter than Sash. He even didn’t try. Instead, Gabe said absolutely nothing at all, slamming his mouth shut with such force that Sash actually heard his teeth slam together.
But Sash wasn’t Gabe. There was nothing she loved more than powering through an obstacle with sheer brute force.
“We
’ve been in this bunker for ten years. We have to talk about the fact that we can’t stay down here forever.” Even though no one could see it, Sash shook her head. “We never talk about it. That’s nuts. Don’t you see that? It’s insane. What’s the plan? Do we just wait until we run out of food? Drinkable water? Air? Then what?”
“Sasha,” her mother begged. It wasn’t something she did often. “Please.”
“Mom, we have to—” Sash stood. She realized her mistake the second the emergency lights flickered on.
Yuna’s hand was still in hers.
Dinner was the one time everyone took off the gloves. They were allowed to at least eat without them. It was the one time of day Sash felt the most human.
Now, gloveless, she and Yuna were still holding hands. Touching. Unequivocal physical contact. Illicit, delicious, verboten skin-to-skin fraternization.
The doctor’s gaze dropped from Sash’s face, trailed down her arm, and landed squarely on their joined hands.
Yuna let go as if she were holding something hot. As if Sash’s very touch burned.
The sky turned white.
Her eyes felt like they were bleeding. Something scalded her arm.
She buried her face in her father’s shoulder and screamed.
Moran’s eyes roamed upward, locking on Sash’s. “Alexandra. It would seem you’ve forgotten one of our most important rules.”
A heavy silence descended upon the room.
“I—” Sash’s eyes darted to Yuna, who worried her lip between her teeth.
Yuna’s mother whispered something in rapid, angry Korean at her daughter. Sash didn’t understand it, but she didn’t need a Korean-English dictionary to know it was an admonishment. The color faded from Yuna’s face.
“It wasn’t Yuna’s fault.” The words left Sash in a rush. “I grabbed her hand. I wasn’t thinking. I—”
Moran held up a hand to silence her. “That is no excuse, Alexandra.”
Sash’s usual retort about her preferred mode of address died on her tongue.