The Spindle

by J. Darlene Everly

  Maybe he had to make a report to leadership.

  For most of her life his duty as part of leadership didn’t bother her, but just the thought of him making a report to them made her stomach flip and her throat run dry.

  Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to remain calm because she could trust her dad.

  Zellendine made her way back out of the clinic and into the masses in the hall.

  Leadership wasn’t in session when she stopped by the gathering room. Instead, there were tons of people weeping, some of them in desperate sobs that clawed and scratched at her soul.

  Bodies were everywhere, under sheets and motionless.

  Even after the terror and the agony of the people she saw in the clinic, after the triage and the worry, she was not fully prepared for the level of devastation surrounding her in the gathering room.

  Zellendine scanned the faces of the mourners, their eyes red, their cheeks tear streaked, and those that looked like they were in shock. She took them all in, not that she wanted to, but it would have been just like her dad to be there and offering what he could.

  Instead, she saw other medics weaving through the people. A still no sign of him.

  Where was he?

  None of it made sense to her as she wandered away from the gathering room. He wasn’t going to just run off when there was so much work to be done that he was able to accomplish. That wasn’t like him.

  The orchard was full, but neither he nor Troylus were there. The cryo bay was also filled, but empty of the people she was looking for.

  How was she supposed to find him in the throngs of people and the pandemonium of the disaster’s aftermath?

  16

  Troylus

  He wandered, aimlessly, allowing himself to be swept along, for hours. He roamed the halls temporarily not angry with the crowds. At least they were heading somewhere and gave him a direction.

  There was too much in his head, too many things to think about.

  Mid step he stumbled, part of him wondering why and the other scanning the people in front of him.

  Did he see something? If he did, what?

  Under his feet, the ship lurched, the same engine acting up kind of movement that plagued him all last shift but that the engine crew didn’t seem to notice.

  The engine rooms weren’t that far from where he was. So he made the turn their way.

  He wasn’t doing anything important anyway, he might as well actually ask the engine crew what was going on instead of just looking in at them and making an assumption.

  Ahead a ways in the hall, turning toward a door before the engine room, one he was sure he had never seen open before, was Zellendine.

  Her blonde hair wasn’t why he knew it was her. Nor was it the uniform she wore that looked the exact same from behind as everyone else on board. No. And it wasn’t a specific thing about her walk. He just knew.

  She paused. More than that. It looked like someone had tapped a holo and turned her off. She was frozen, staring into the dark of the other side of the open door.

  And then her freeze stopped.

  Zellendine screamed.

  Her hands flew to her mouth, trembling while her voice was a steady wail.

  People in the hall tripped over each other trying to back away from her like whatever tragedy she saw would leap across the space between them through the power of her voice.

  Troylus shoved and yelled, throwing people out of his way, heedless of what happened to them.

  Zellendine kept screaming.

  17

  Zellendine

  “No!” It was all that would come out of her mouth, endless shrieking and the word “no,” over and over.

  There was no way it was true. Her brain couldn’t wrap itself around the horror of it, it couldn’t accept the reality. Because in no universe did it make sense.

  Arms wrapped around her as her legs gave out.

  Her screaming didn’t stop.

  All the muscles in her body lost their ability to work, turning to liquid. Her lungs and her vocal cords took up all her strength, trying to force the universe to hear her anguish.

  “Oh, stars, Stephen,” Troylus said above her, his voice quaking.

  She didn’t hear his voice so much as feel his words move through her as her eyes remained unblinking on the charred body of her father. Her screams reverberated off the walls.

  “Come on, Zellendine. Step away. Shhh.” He tried to pull her away from the remains, but she replanted her numb legs, still screaming, “no.”

  Under no circumstances was she going to be taken away from this. She had to see it, to commit all the details to memory because she knew she needed to revisit it all later. She couldn’t do it yet, but she needed to eventually. She needed to know what happened.

  “No,” she screamed again, her voice cracking as she threw herself on the floor near his body, only stopped from careening into him by Troylus grabbing for her.

  Near Stephen’s outstretched hand, still wrapped in the bandage Zellendine had made him put on, his holo sat on the floor. It was dark and a sob broke through her screams. Was this last, small token of him broken?

  Troylus tried to pull her to her feet. She smacked him, shoving him away from her.

  She snatched the holo and clutched it to her chest, allowing herself to finally be drawn away from the remains of her father.

  His eyes were open, staring into nothing, taking in nothing.

  One whole side of his torso, including his arm and up part of his neck, was a scorched, twisted mockery of flesh. His uniform, where it wasn’t gone completely on that side, was indistinguishable from the parts of his skin and muscle that had been reduced to ash. There was no smell that normally accompanied burned human, and the lines between where he was burned and where he was whole were so clear it looked like they didn’t belong to the same body.

  When the accident happened, his uniform was singed and his burns faded in and out across his skin. This was the difference between a star and an asteroid.

  It couldn’t be real.

  It didn’t make sense.

  It would never, even if she came to know how and why it happened, ever make sense.

  Just like Stephen, her father, the only family she had left, would never be with her again.

  Zellendine’s voice gave out. It broke down into sobs, silent and wrenching, they felt as if they would turn her inside out.

  “Shhh,” Troylus whispered into her ear, arms holding her tight.

  But he didn’t need to shush her anymore, she had nothing more to say.

  18

  Troylus

  Zellendine was inconsolable. He was lost, scrambling in his mind for the right words, any words to say to help, to make it better. Even if it could only help a fraction, he wanted to be able to give her that. But there were no words for this. There was no way to make this better.

  He didn’t want to look at Stephen like that. The man helped everyone, devoted his life, far beyond even most medics, to helping everyone on board. He didn’t deserve whatever had caused the damage Troylus saw all over his body.

  After the people he had collected on his walk, he never expected to see death again so soon. Least of all in the form of this man. Zellendine shuddered in his arms and he renewed his grip on her, biting his lip and fighting back his own tears.

  People in the hall milled about, most of them keeping a respectful distance, and some even stopped others from breaching the small circle he and Zellendine took up in the middle of the floor. He wanted to thank them, but she needed his attention. Those people didn’t.

  Some piece of his brain knew leadership, or their representatives, would be along eventually and it made him keep looking toward the main corridor. But all he could think about clearly was what he needed to do for Zellendine now that her father was dead.

  Could he trust that her roommates would treat her with the care she deserved after this? He wasn’t sure.

  Poor Zellendine needed peopl
e to make sure she would eat, to keep an eye on her. No one deserved to find their dad this way.

  Finding someone dead was one thing, but to see them after they had been killed?

  He shook his head against the top of her hair where she was tucked under his chin and against his chest.

  Stephen’s burned arm and hand were curled up in an unnatural, tight, and contorted way in front of him, but that lonely whole hand reaching out to nothing… It was haunting and Troylus wondered if Zellendine was going to see it in her sleep.

  In a dark corner of his mind, he wondered if they would be able to measure the same kind of radiation that Stephen had found evidence of in Troylus’s scans.

  The crowd shifted and moved, the general noise level rising. Zellendine seemed unaware of the activity starting around them.

  Members of leadership from another shift, Troylus could tell by the way people around them acted, arrived with helpers in tow.

  None of them were members of their same shift, but every single one of them stopped and had to take a moment to compose themselves before they tried to move Stephen’s body. One even turned back to face the crowd, closing their eyes, and didn’t turn back.

  As soon as the first person touched Stephen though, the hush that everyone was operating in was shattered by Zellendine’s scream.

  She thrashed in Troylus’s arms, trying to fling herself in the direction of her father’s body.

  “You should get her to her quarters, she doesn’t need to see this.” One of the leadership team crossed to Zellendine and crouched down, blocking her view to the body. Their eyes were soft and their mouth in a sad smile. “I promise, we will be as careful and respectful as possible. He was a wonderful man, and so proud of you.”

  Zellendine didn’t stop thrashing, she only grew more frantic in her efforts.

  The leader closed their eyes, squeezing them shut as if they were in pain themselves, then made eye contact with Troylus and nodded before they stood back up and headed to their duty.

  He took it as a signal that his duty was to find a way to get Zellendine away from that scene.

  “I’m going to pick you up and carry you to your quarters,” he said, hoping she would forgive him for doing it.

  She wailed and threw her head back, howling toward the ceiling as Troylus lifted her in his arms and moved toward the crowd who parted in silence and averted their eyes.

  Grief, especially the way Zellendine was showing it, wasn’t something that should have had protocol attached to it, but he couldn’t help thinking the people in the hall were uncomfortable around someone being so open.

  But to him, she was making the same sounds and the same moves he wanted to when his mother died. He envied her bravery. As a child, all he allowed himself to do was cry, silent, wracking sobs that screamed to the universe in salt what he wouldn’t allow his voice to.

  He hoped she got a better response than he had back then.

  Carrying her around the last bend to exit the hall with her father in it was like he put a shield over the action center of her brain. She stopped thrashing and turned into a limp siren, the only thing moving her vocal cords.

  No matter how limp she was, her grip on Stephen’s holo never lessened.

  19

  Zellendine

  She was lost in a black hole, spinning and aimless. Alone, floating and falling forever, but she had her father’s holo. It was the only thing that could save her. Without it, she would never find her way out of the dark.

  Her hands and arms ached with the effort to keep the holo close to her, with the effort to not allow it to fly off into the darkness.

  And she couldn’t stop the high pitched, piercing cry that flowed in waves past her as she fell.

  20

  Troylus

  By the time they reached the hall where her quarters were, his arms felt like they were going to fall off his body, but there was no fucking way he was going to drop her.

  Just beyond her door, Briar stood in the corridor, his mouth hanging open as his eyes narrowed and his hands balled into fists at his sides.

  “Hey, did you hear?” Troylus called out to him, but Briar didn’t hang around to answer the question, or even acknowledge he heard it.

  Instead, Briar turned on his heel and stormed through the hall, people moved aside by force instead of moving willingly and respectfully like they were for Troylus with the still screaming Zellendine in his arms.

  Knocking on the door to her quarters, in his mind he begged the stars for someone to be on the other side.

  The door opened and Rullon reached out to scoop her out of Troylus’s grasp.

  Zellendine began to thrash again, and Troylus stumbled, almost dropping her after making it so far with no problem. With Rullon’s help, he moved her to one of the beds, the largest one, and folded her into the blankets.

  She buried her face in the pillow, her body stilled, and her screams stopped. The only sound she made was the quiet anguish of tears that he was sure she thought would never stop.

  He crouched down beside her, putting a weak and shaking hand to her shoulder, and he tucked the blankets just a bit tighter.

  No matter how much he wanted to climb in beside her and hold her, tell her everything would be alright, he knew he coudn’t.

  Because making that promise when he wasn’t sure if it was a lie seemed cruel.

  Rullon shook his head and moved to the table, taking a seat and putting his head in his hands.

  “How are you here?” Troylus asked, collapsing into the seat across from him and putting his head down on the cool surface.

  “Leadership sent a runner, they told me we needed to move in here because they wanted her to have someone,” Rullon said, shaking his head again, his jowls more pronounced than Troylus had ever seen them.

  Troylus lifted his head and slumped back in the chair, wishing he had the strength to get up so he could hug Rullon.

  “Thank you, Dad.”

  Rullon snapped his head up and looked into Troylus’s eyes, nodding once.

  “We should get some food into you. You must need it after that.” He turned and looked at where Zellendine laid in the bed, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed. “She needs some food too.”

  She did. Troylus knew that, but he bit his lip wondering when the next time would be that she would actually be willing to get anything down.

  “I’ll try to get her to eat something,” he mumbled, hoping any attempt he made wouldn’t just make her worse.

  He didn’t know how to do right by her, how to navigate through this with her. All he could do was try, and hope he didn’t screw up so badly he made anything harder for her.

  “Leadership didn’t tell me, what happened to…” Rullon trailed off and squinted his eyes to Zellendine, like he was trying to think of a good way to say ‘Stephen’ without actually saying his name.

  Troylus coughed, drawing his dad’s eyes and he glanced at the wet room, getting up on shaking legs that wanted to cramp halfway up, and heading in that direction.

  Rullon followed him into the wet room and he whispered what little they knew for sure into his dad’s ear.

  After he was done, Rullon stood still with his eyes squeezed shut as a tear escaped anyway and trickled down his cheek.

  For some reason, Troylus had forgotten that his father and Stephen had known each other for as long as he had known her, and likely they shared stories he had no idea had ever happened. He put a hand on his dad’s shoulder and squeezed as much as his worn out hands could.

  “Stephen would take care of you and Indigo,” Rullon said, opening his eyes and nodding. “We’re going to take care of Zellendine.”

  He patted Troylus on the shoulder and left the wet room. Giving Troylus the space he needed to lean against the wall and make wish after wish, to every star he had ever seen and all the ones he hadn’t, that his dad would make it.

  Whatever was happening, the rising threat of people who couldn’t control themselves, the p
eople who might be targeted by a silver that he couldn’t warn, the whole population that deserved to be informed of so much and couldn’t be allowed to know a thing because the reprisal from leadership would be swift, he just wanted the small group he cared about so much he wasn’t sure he could make it without them, to live.

  He walked out of the wet room and Rullon set plates down on the table.

  “There’s more for Zellendine, but I want you to eat something. It will give her a little more time.” Rullon sat and started eating.

  For Troylus, the food was a nice gesture and what he needed, but what he really wanted was to be able to make the kind of treats his mother knew. Rullon may have been good with a service, but his mom knew how to come up with fantastically sweet and delicious small treats. Not meals, really, just the best tiny bites he had ever eaten.

  Looking over at Zellendine, he thought that those would have been more welcome to her at that moment too.

  “Rullon,” Troylus said, after he ate his last bite of food and his dad had just put his last bite in his mouth. Rullon nodded as he chewed, urging him to continue.

  “It’s time. I said I would tell you when I knew how to. I’m still trying to figure out the right words to use, but you need to know. Even if I stumble through it all.”

  His dad leaned back in his chair.

  “You’re right. Because I have a feeling all of this is connected, all the things happening right now.” He raised his eyebrows at Troylus who could only nod.

  He started his story from the moment he woke up furious with Zellendine last shift, even though he repeated some things, to where he was sitting in her quarters, willing to do almost anything for her.

  When he was done talking, he was exhausted. More than just his body, his whole soul and mind were ready to pass out.