It didn’t seem right to keep the dress, and she had forgotten to give it back to Paxton before he left. In all honesty, she had just wanted him out. When he asked for a hug before going, she obliged, feeling sorry for him. When the hug lingered too long, her hands limp at her sides, she regretted indulging the request.
Senna stood and laid out her brushes on a towel to dry, wiped her hands and scooped up the dress. Maybe it was silly, but she didn’t want to see it in her apartment anymore. She hadn’t found any use for the messaging system on her VIT, since none of her communiqués were clearing the storms anyway. A few times, she thought to check in with Marin, but none of it went through. That wouldn’t affect intra-Dome messaging though, she had been assured.
Returning the dress would give her a chance to set some boundaries with Paxton, too. His interest wasn’t subtle, and the attention made her uncomfortable. It was the way he looked at her, too probing, like he was trying to see through skin and bone, like he was trying to peel back the flesh to see what was underneath.
“The facility is on lockdown until Dome time eight a.m. tomorrow,” Genie reminded her as Senna approached the door.
“I just want to return this to Paxton,” she replied, pausing near the kitchen and slipping on her shoes. She always tilted her head up slightly when she spoke to Genie, as if he lived in the ceiling above her rooms, when in truth she had no idea where “he” resided. “Can you tell me where he is? I’ll be quick about it and come right back.”
“Paxton is currently in his office,” Genie told her. “But you have been asked to observe lockdown protocols.”
Senna gave a hm of curiosity as she approached the door and found it slid open as quickly and freely as it always did. “Seems lockdown is over.”
“It is not,” Genie assured her.
“Well, like I said . . .” Senna stepped out into the darkened hall. “I’ll be right back.”
The straight, empty halls of the guest wing squeezed in on her, strange and cold, like a place abandoned. Senna held the dress slightly out in front of her, unwilling to keep it close to her body. Now that its owner was gone, it took on a slightly haunted quality. Clothes could be so intimate. She wondered what Anju had done in that dress, where she had gone. Maybe she had been a wild child on the station, staying out all night before consigning herself to the quiet, isolated focus of life on Ganymede. Or maybe she had a husband somewhere, or a wife, and this was what she wore out to their anniversary dinners. The more she considered the possibilities, the heavier her heart became. What a senseless, stupid loss. Anju had been nothing but kind to her, and Senna didn’t care what Zurri said—it was perfectly understandable to grieve someone, even if their acquaintance had been a short one.
How awful that Anju’s parents wouldn’t learn of her death until the storm that had killed her moved on.
Senna tiptoed swiftly out of the guest wing and onto the balcony overlooking the Dome courtyard, a view traveling east to west. No AR birds flitted through the canopies, no reedy insect calls filled the still paths below. Without its dynamic, artificial light and dynamic, artificial life, the courtyard held the sinister emptiness of an after-hours exhibit. Back on the station, Marin couldn’t convince her to leave the condo and go to the museum at the university, but she did show Senna how to navigate the VR tour of their exhibits, borrowing a friend’s pricey VR goggle set and letting Senna spend the afternoon perusing dinosaur skeletons, Viking canoes and real sarcophagi on loan from Earth museums. The program did not simulate other human beings wandering the corridors with her, and she found the experience unsettling, alone with the ancient dead. Even if it was just a virtual tour, Senna couldn’t help but obsess over what the Vikings or the Egyptians would say, knowing their preserved bodies were now on display two hundred fifty thousand miles from home. When it was over, she was subjected to Jonathan’s elaborate Egyptian aliens theories, while Marin, increasingly drunk, heatedly pointed out that they were now colonizing space, and no pharaohs in flying saucers had turned up to protest.
For the rest of the month, Senna had nightmares of the mummies waking up and slowly, inexorably, hunting her through the echoing halls of the museum.
With that in mind. Senna willed herself not to think about the shadow thing she knew lurked in the facility. It had appeared too many times—and now to other people—for it to be just her mind playing tricks. But she had stayed walled up in Marin’s condo because of her fear of other people, for fear of their judgment and scorn and pity, and now she was in a place where everyone knew her, there were no more excuses, and if a memory of a mummy and a shadow could give her nightmares, then surely keeping a dead woman’s dress in her possession could do it, too.
She turned the corner to the right, hoping to take the faster path to his office that ran along the walkways that overlooked the gallery and dining area. The shutters had been drawn down tight, however, blocking off that door and the faster route. From the balcony, the way through the huge double doors opening onto the gallery from the Dome appeared clear, so she would have to take the ramp down into the courtyard and follow the less-appealing path through the twisting, leafy turns.
At the bottom of the ramp, she caught sight of a shadow dodging behind a tree and froze. But the shadow had never hesitated to show itself or approach; in fact, it never showed any kind of fear.
“Who is it?” she whispered. “I know you’re there.”
“You looked like you were on such a mission, it didn’t seem right to interrupt,” Efren called back, stepping around the cocoa-brown trunk of the broad-leafed tree and leaning against it. “We’re on lockdown, you know.”
“You’re the one hiding,” Senna said back. Now that she wasn’t where she was supposed to be, she felt bolder. “Did you know Anju well? I’m sorry about what happened to her. It must be hard on you all.”
Efren wandered out farther onto the path, the light in the Dome perfunctory, warehouse-thin and unflattering. Even under that unfriendly cast he looked handsome, put together. He wore the same black suit, his hair falling soft as ravens’ wings around his ears. Senna had the strangest desire to stare at him and keep staring, and she wondered if that made him feel the way she did when Paxton stared at her. Vulnerable and squirmy.
“I’m part of things here,” Efren pointed out, “I’m not on lockdown. Anyway, I won’t tattle, if that worries you.” He came closer, but maintained a respectful distance from her. Senna continued holding out the dress in front of her, as if afraid of its contamination. “Your sympathy is appreciated, but I didn’t know Anju well. None of us really did.” His smile changed, deepening, welcoming. She realized he was appraising her back, but it didn’t unsettle her. It was the oddest thing, the way she wanted to study him closely, as if drawn in, as if he had tossed hooks behind her eyes and begun gradually to pull. “I didn’t have you pegged as a rule breaker.”
“I’m really not. I was brought up to love rules, all kinds of rules.” Senna gestured with the dress toward the right, toward the path she needed to take to Paxton’s office. “I’m returning this dress; it belonged to Anju.”
She shivered, wishing the birds would come back, and the comforting mundanity of their little calls and squeaks.
“You don’t like the Dome at night,” he observed, falling easily into step with her as she began to tiptoe along again.
“It’s too quiet,” Senna replied. “It’s all too quiet. Can I ask why you didn’t know Anju well? There’s so few of you here, I thought it would make you all close.”
They walked on, Efren no longer looking at her, his eyes fixed on the leaves bobbing around them as they passed. Senna couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. Was this attraction? Marin had told her that when she met Jonathan, it was love at first sight, though Senna couldn’t imagine how anyone could be in love with Jonathan, let alone instantaneously. Maybe that worked in his favor; the love came before Marin ever had a chance to
hear him speak. She liked Efren’s profile, it was even better than his face head-on, his nose bent in a way that reminded her of ancient coins.
“We couldn’t get close,” Efren explained in his strong, magnetic voice. “Not for a number of reasons. Her loyalty to Paxton, for one. And her . . . I wouldn’t call it disinterest, that doesn’t capture it.” He glanced down at the floor, almost tripping. After steadying himself, he sucked in his cheek and sighed, wrestling with something. “It doesn’t matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t see me.”
“So cryptic,” Senna sighed. They had skirted the outer edge of the gardens, coming to the tall doors opening onto the gallery. Here the light changed, not brighter, but milkier, hazily predawn, the purple crystal chandelier sending a kaleidoscope of pale violet shapes across the empty floor and between the statue pedestals.
Efren’s gait slowed as they crossed from courtyard to gallery. “I don’t have to be.” Then he stopped altogether, quarter turning to look at her, though for a flash his eyes lingered to the left and up the ramp, in the direction of Paxton’s office. The doors there, visible from below, glowed red.
“You’re making me nervous,” she murmured. “What’s going on?”
“It’s only . . .” The light hung differently around Efren. She had noticed it with Paxton, too, but where a curiously dark halo sometimes clung to Paxton’s head and shoulders, Efren absorbed the light, pulled it in, the way her attention, too, was drawn to him. For a moment, he struggled, then he unleashed another one of his smiles on her, only this time it was sad, and knowing, and Senna braced for bad news. Nothing good ever came after a smile like that.
“You’re about to see something you won’t understand; I want to protect you from it, shield you, but I can’t. I can tell you to turn around and go back to your rooms, I can tell you to run, but there’s nowhere for you to go. Warnings won’t matter, you’re here now, so what’s coming is coming.” Efren almost reached to touch her shoulder, then stopped himself. “The storm isn’t just outside, Senna, it’s in here, too. You can’t see it, but it’s already swept you up.”
Senna backed away from him. “You’re not making any sense.”
“Not yet,” Efren told her, sliding his hands into his pockets with a sigh. She was frustrated with his spooky, oblique nonsense. Maybe she had misjudged him. This wasn’t instant attraction after all, but repulsion. All the men here were insane. She coasted away from him and to the right, walking swiftly toward the right ramp leading up to the overlooking walkway and Paxton’s office. “Senna?”
She paused at the base of the ramp, listening.
“I look forward to meeting you again.”
“Sure, okay. I need to go. Good night, Efren.”
Now she was just weary. After Paxton took the dress back and she made it clear that she didn’t want anything romantic between them, she would take one of those Talpraxem Zurri loved so much and sleep and sleep, and nothing would stop her from escaping this whole miserable night. In the morning, she would order the greasiest thing available and wait for the winds to subside, then she and Zurri would get on that shuttle and leave Ganymede far behind.
Brighter red pulses bloomed behind the doors, rhythmic, slower than the beat of a heart but hypnotizing. Did she say something? Ask Genie for help? Her presence triggered the proximity sensor. What was wrong with the doors? Weren’t they supposed to be on lockdown? The long glowing panel behind Paxton’s desk swirled with colors, crimson and gold, muddied with what looked like gore and tissue, an amniotic slurry creating the pulses she had noticed through the semi-translucent doors. There was another rhythm, too, breathing, labored, harsh, and a fleshy percussive note, what sounded like someone slapping their own naked belly.
You’re about to see something you won’t understand.
It took a moment for Senna’s heart to connect to her eyes to connect to her brain. The dress fell out of her grasp and slithered to the floor at her feet, the fabric pooling making more noise than her silent squeak of confusion and terror.
I can tell you to run, but there’s nowhere for you to go.
Senna covered her mouth with both hands, but her fingers had gone numb. A naked woman writhed on the ground in front of Paxton’s desk, on all fours. She would have been staring right into Senna’s eyes from that position, but she didn’t have a head. Where a face and hair and eyes should have been, there was nothing, just a bundle of loose, unconnected wires, but her body moved as if she were whole and sensate. Pants around his knees, Paxton huffed and groaned, slamming his groin into her from behind.
Senna began slowly to back away, but Paxton glanced up from the woman’s back. Their eyes met and his mouth went slack, yet it hardly put a hitch in his rhythm. An image of her own mindscape appeared to her, a perfect pink bubble of chewing gum stretching thin, and something poking at the taxed, rubbery surface from within. This—this grotesquerie under an unnatural red glow, in perpetual silence, his breathing, her helplessness—scratched at an itch Senna hadn’t thought to feel yet. The void in her mind, the gap in her teeth that wanted prodding . . . Was she remembering? Was she taking something back that the LENG technology had tried to erase?
A silent tomb bathed in red light. A single man’s labored breathing. Her, paralyzed, surrounded by death, powerless to stop what came next. Suddenly she could see Preece standing there, his eyes wild with all that he had done and with the one last thing he meant to do. The ship. The crash. Connections re-formed. Senna knew that if she did not find a way to escape, then she would go down with him. There was only one thought in her head: I cannot let him take me down, too.
“Fuck,” he muttered, wiping at the sweat on his brow. He yanked off his glasses and threw them on the floor, rubbing his hand over his face. “This complicates things.”
Someone was behind Senna, silent and quick. She felt it just before the tip of something sharp and cold pressed against her neck.
I cannot let him take me down, too.
* * *
—
When it was over, what would be left that was true? Would any real, unclouded parts of her remain? Even while the pain built at the base of her skull, even as LENG’s endless black fingers curled into her brain, she tried to hold on to some tiny piece of her essential nature. But what did that mean? What was she—who was she—without her memories?
“What are you doing to me?” she asked weakly, voice no stronger than a whistle through broken teeth.
I am taking. LENG’s voice shook through her every sinew. And this time, I am taking everything.
24
“Hey!”
Han hadn’t expected to find Zurri breezing through the halls with the lockdown in place. Then again, he was the one that had sprung all the doors, so he couldn’t exactly start pointing fingers. They almost collided as she came around the corner from the overlook balcony, returning to the dormitories.
“Hi,” she said, gazing down at him with a serene expression. He noticed a bruise near her wrist, her knuckles were scraped, and her clothes were rumpled, like she had just rolled out of bed. Not exactly the picture-perfect Zurri he was used to seeing.
“You’ve, um, your hands . . .” He pointed to her scuffed knuckles. “I think you’re bleeding.”
“I hadn’t noticed, thanks.” Zurri regarded the backs of her hands and then her nails. One was badly chipped. She seemed . . . different. Calmer, somehow, or maybe it was just that she had never grinned at him like that, open and friendly, without a hint of judgment or snark. Maybe she was just tired.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m great.” Zurri gave him a thumbs-up. “Never better. I was just catching up with Paxton, he was telling me the funniest story about meeting me on Tokyo Bliss Station. He’s so hilarious.”
“He . . . is?” Han glanced over her shoulder. Was someone pointing a rifle at her head and making her say this? Just a few h
ours ago she was railing against Paxton at Senna’s kitchen table. “Is this a prank? You hate Paxton.”
Zurri’s thin brows met over her eyes. “What? No, come on, kid, I’m completely serious.”
“Sure,” Han replied, rolling his eyes and edging around her to leave the guest wing. “Sure you are. God, I’m not that gullible.”
Shrugging, Zurri continued on her way, lifting her hands again to study the torn skin there as she went. It wasn’t until she had vanished around a right corner that he noticed she was missing a shoe. Han filed that away, then spun one-eighty and found his way out onto the darkened walkway. Whoever had designed the lockdown atmosphere for the Dome got points for extra creep factor. Han decided to move fast, to not think about it too hard, and to find Paxton before he could get too spooked and retreat to his rooms or, worse, run into Efren. He was acutely aware that a staff member had just let Anju walk out the airlock; if Efren could come for her, he could come for Han.
Once Han had found his way through the courtyard and into the gallery, he noticed a light on above him, shining out dim but noticeable from Paxton’s office. The doors were slightly ajar, and then closed as he watched, Paxton walking out and pausing until the office sealed itself shut behind him. There was a worn-down stoop to his shoulders, his dark curling hair mussed and greasy, and he wiped off his spectacles on his shirt as he slumped over to the ramp and began to descend.
There was his chance. Han inhaled through his nose, squaring up his shoulders and neck, marching right up to Paxton only to be met with a bemused roll of the eyes.
“Someone’s been a busy boy,” he drawled, stacking his spectacles neatly back on his nose. “Figured out the little puzzle I left for you, then, mm?”
“So it was a test,” Han breathed. The surge of excitement was almost enough to distract him from why he’d come. “Just like The Game. Does that mean you wanted me to find the security footage, too?”
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