I wanted to sleep—I knew if I could just rest up I’d be able to think again, but it was so loud. Even whispers reverberated, ballooning rather than decaying, and when it was quiet there was the expectation that it was going to get loud again. It was like there were alarms buried like land mines in my thoughts and I had to either wince between them, painstakingly feeling out the edges, or try to cocoon inside the places that had been safe before. Worst was that confirming my suspicion about Fin and Zoellers had reset everything again. Even the people that I’d known for years and had every reason to believe—Marco and Professor Dalton and Verna—seemed equivocal upon more careful inspection, with flaws materializing out of nothingness, lines splintering through distant memories, causing my hands to shake. Causing me to think that I’d been deceiving myself all along, attributing phantom qualities to people because that’s how I wanted to see them. That everything was distorted. That everything was open for reexamination.
It made C3 seem hopelessly large and I’d wake up disoriented, spinning, believing that I’d never be able to get to the other side of the room again. That monsters were sleeping in the hammocks and I couldn’t wake them. And if I did make it out somehow I’d be stranded in pools of bright light from the overheads snaking along the hall. It made bone dissolve in my dreams and pull forward into consciousness, causing my legs to buckle at odd times during the day as if there were trip wires hidden all over the station.
The fear of my disbelief forced me to drink in a room, noticing everything, my mind like a thousand buckets collecting rain. I thought if I just cataloged enough items, maybe I could start making sense of things—that it would all add up to some larger, more fluid view of the world and point a way forward. But there was a leak somewhere, because even though I was listening more I was understanding less and less where people were coming from. Like with Sebastian: I knew he was a self-conscious guy, so in the past I’d take that into account when talking to him. But now I couldn’t put myself in his shoes anymore—I was too worn through for that part of my brain to light up—and I just felt like I was lobbing all the wrong words out there, hurting his feelings in subtle yet penetrating ways, opening up a rift between us in the process.
It was true, too, even with people I thought I had pegged, like Brandon. I knew he’d been behind the attack, and his Zeroes addiction was either an unredeemable character flaw or a calculated act to throw people off balance and get everyone to underestimate him. But then he’d give away his officer privileges or volunteer to help with some mundane, points-irrelevant training exercise with the Greens, and I’d think maybe he really did care about C4. Maybe I was crazy for thinking that he had followed Eve and me to D Block, and it was unfair to be frustrated when he popped up randomly, wanting to shoot the shit and talk strategy.
But just as soon as I started thinking Zoellers might’ve been lying and Sebastian was right about Brandon not being so bad, I’d run everything he’d said through a new set of filters and the doubts would come screaming back, plunging me into an even deeper suspicion. It would go on and on, back and forth like this, until finally I’d stop trying to gather up any more details and just shrink inside myself, pulling up invisible covers and hoping that it was all just a bad dream.
One night when I couldn’t get my mind off things, I opened up an article on the Dyalonian colonists and began flipping through pictures documenting their trip to Drieus on my U-dev. In the first image, people were stacking supplies. In another, engineers were hovering over blueprints on a lightboard while children played with an illumination strip. They all looked kind and energetic, and it was inspiring to see people working together like that. It made me think that maybe after all this was over and we graduated, Eve and I could find a similar group and settle down far away from Mars, the Fleet, and all this mess. I just had to get through it somehow.
Chapter 41
Brandon and a couple of C3 Blues I didn’t know bolted by me down a corridor, almost toppling over a tread-mounted AI carrying a stack of crates.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I don’t know—there’s been an accident or something!”
I had class starting in a few minutes and I didn’t really want to get involved, especially since today was the day Rhys was going to start the trial, but I still found myself following him down a pole and through a thicket of corridors to Medical, arriving just in time to see white-and-red-emblemed medics wheeling a stretcher through the entrance.
“Jesus Christ,” said Brandon, stopping. “What the fuck happened?”
“A tear . . . a tear . . . in his suit on the asteroid,” mumbled Woodrow, who’d been walking by the side of the stretcher.
“Who’s under the blanket?”
“Rhys. He was just lying there not moving . . . his face all blue . . .”
“And how about you?” I asked, looking over at him.
“Me? Oh, I’m . . . I’m okay. All I did was get him back to the landing craft. My suit was fine,” Woodrow answered, near tears.
There was shouting behind us, then Daries and Sebastian skidded to a stop beside me. “Something happened with his suit,” someone else said.
“Wouldn’t that trigger a safety threshold? An alarm or something?” cried Brandon.
The Blue shook his head. “It must’ve been the interference.”
In my mind I’d started retreating back down the corridor as it dawned on me that Rhys was dead, feeling like a hose had come loose inside and I was filling up with something awful. The last time I’d seen Mars field medics had been at the crash, when they’d been lowered on cords into the ruined tangle of metal that held my family. I’d been shouting and thrashing and they’d been trying to hold me back, but I kept struggling until finally they’d injected me with something that disconnected the lights from the airships circling above us and floated them down like petals. The ground had turned liquid and the chopper’s blades and the shouts had become muffled as I sank inside, stretching out into a long, low hum.
But when I returned to the present there was still panic and confusion and shouting.
“It was Caelus,” Daries said tonelessly.
“You can’t use points to mess with a suit,” Brandon replied.
“I don’t think he used points. I think he had someone just do it.”
“But the cameras—the Reds would’ve noticed. I mean, he was on a spacewalk in a nebula, right? That’s dangerous. It was probably just an accident.”
“Of course it looks like it was an accident!” Daries yelled. “Fingers, get in there and pull as much log data from the Pulsar as you can—and hurry back before anything gets deleted. Castor and Woodrow, I need you to go down to level four and take a peek at the waypoints to see if you can find any deviations—anything out of the ordinary.”
Dread from the present combined with dread from the past, both rising and coalescing, making each second worse than the last. I knew I had to get out of there before I flooded, but before I could escape, Sebastian’s voice sounded beside me. “This is crazy, Aaron.”
I nodded reflexively.
“Do you think it was an accident?”
“I don’t know, man. I have no idea.” I hadn’t thought so after what happened to Pierre, but considering my crash again and now this I couldn’t help but think accidents happened everywhere. Everywhere I went terrible things happened. The steam from a nearby pipe was making my uniform damp and hot, causing it to stick to my skin. Panic welled up behind my eyes.
“Sebastian, I have to go.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere.”
“Can I come, too?”
“I . . . I need to be alone.”
That was a lie. I didn’t want to be alone; I just didn’t want to be there. Before I knew what I was doing, I was following my dream self down the corridor and then I was running past the Great Room and Humanities Wing, on my way to D Block.
“Aaron! Wait!” I heard Sebastian shout behind me, but I barely registered i
t. I couldn’t wait. I needed to be with Eve. I needed to tell her everything. But I realized as I neared her barracks that I was crying and swerved into the shadows as a group of Blues approached.
I couldn’t let her see me like this. I couldn’t let anyone see me like this, since it made me more of a target than I already was.
Pausing to get myself together, I realized that I had no idea what I was going to say anyway. Tell her how scared and confused I was? How I felt she’d understand me because she was losing her brother? How I was practically in love with her even though I’d just met her a few weeks ago?
I didn’t know much about psychology, but I knew enough to know you don’t fall in love with someone else’s mess.
I felt schizophrenic. I went back through the Humanities Wing, the Great Room. Stood outside the Ship Room. Went back to C Block, the whole time looking for an abandoned, unlocked classroom. On my way to the Weapons Room, I turned a corner and found Fingers sitting against the side of the hallway a few meters away from the Membrane.
“There’s something really wrong going on around here,” I said, walking over and slumping down beside him.
“Well fucking obviously,” he replied through a crisscross of tears. “They make us go out in those things without proper training, saying we should learn as we go. That’s what learning as you go looks like.”
“So you think it was an accident?” I asked.
“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Does it even matter?” Fingers cupped his head in his hands.
I hadn’t seen him get emotional before, but I hadn’t really known him that long, either.
“Mr. Katz’s suit ripped last week, but Simon had S-tape and basically saved him. He said the accident rate was really low, like one in . . . I can’t remember. But—”
“It’s all an accident at some point, man. The whole fucking universe. So what’s the difference?”
I didn’t say anything.
“It’d be one thing if it was just an asteroid. But those bastards send us out in the middle of a nebula, where you can’t even talk to each other. I don’t even want to think about it. I just want to get out of this goddamn noisy hallway and go cry somewhere. How does that sound?”
He cupped his head in his hands again but carried on talking, his voice muffled. “You know, the thing is, I thought you two were going to get along great when you first showed up. Rhys was the one person around here with a pair, and if you had one, too . . .” He lifted his head, rubbing his chin in a faux-contemplative way. “I thought things might get interesting. But then you basically disappeared and now he’s gone. I just . . . just . . .”
Fingers started crying again.
I thought about putting an arm around him, but didn’t think he’d like that.
“Just know this. He was a great guy. The best guy here! You hear that?”
I kept my silence.
“I asked if you heard it or not!” Fingers shouted.
“I heard it.”
“He always took care of all the bullshit that Brandon and Pierre didn’t want to deal with—the filing of this report and that report, disciplining Blues for this infraction or that infraction, logistics prep, meteorological prep. The whole time never complaining. Never. And do you want to know why?” This time Fingers didn’t wait for me to answer. “Because he believed if we just fought hard enough and long enough and cared enough, we’d break through to the other side. You could see it in his eyes. But there is no other side, is there? It’s just more of this fucked up shit, on and on and on and on into eternity. He was the most honorable and loyal person here, and they fucking killed him. Corinth fucking killed him. That’s what trying earned him in a place like this. Do you think that’s right, Aaron?”
I was trying to think of something else to say, but it was probably just best to listen and let him get out everything he needed to. “Of course not.”
“But you’re not going to do anything about it.”
“I—”
“It wasn’t a question.” He laughed eerily. “I could never understand how you could stand up to Caelus or the Reds or whoever before; in my mind, it was some mysterious magical power that made you brave. But now I know what it is. And it’s so simple. It’s so fucking simple: you didn’t have anything to lose.”
He drew each word out and put a sharp, decorous emphasis on the consonants. “But guess what? I don’t have anything to lose now, either. I feel like I could do anything. And it’s so freeing. So, so freeing.”
“Don’t say that,” I said softly.
“I could kill myself so easily here. No one would even bat an eyelash.”
“Fingers, don’t—”
“But don’t worry, I won’t do that. That would be letting them off too fucking light. Someone at least needs to get . . . get . . . I don’t know.” He looked up and rubbed his face. “God, there’s Brandon and Daries and Fin. Jesus Christ. I can’t listen to them right now. I don’t want to plan a next move. There is no next move.”
Chapter 42
It was quiet for a long time.
“Now do you believe me?” Sebastian finally asked, but without the upward bending in inflection you’d expect in a question.
“I don’t know.”
“How could you not?”
“We always want to give bad things causes or reasons or whatever, but that can make you react to the wrong things. Follow the wrong people because you’re upset. Believe me, man, I should know.” I covered my mouth. “It might feel right to pretend like Rhys was a hero or Brandon’s a good guy and all this fighting is necessary. But . . . but other stuff’s important, too.”
“I assume you’re referring to your work with Eve.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“What?”
“With that tone. It’s like you think I’m . . . I don’t know—”
“It’s just that we freaking need you, man. Everyone’s freaking out. Rhys . . .” Sebastian tried to gather himself. “Rhys wasn’t an accident. Caelus did it and if we don’t stop him, he’s going to do it again and again and again.”
“How can you be so sure it was him? And let’s say it was, how exactly are we going to stop him?”
“Well, that’s why we need your help.”
I looked away.
“You . . . you don’t actually think it was an accident, do you?”
Whether it was or it wasn’t was all anyone could talk about, so it felt like I’d had this conversation ten times already. “Seb, man, I don’t know.” I glanced up at the cameras, trying to pass it off like I was panning across the room. “There’s a lot of things . . . I mean . . . the most obvious answer is that, yeah, it was. You can say there’s been too many or whatever for them to be accidents but, dude, this is dangerous. The field trip was dangerous. The Tread Room is dangerous. The Weapons Room is dangerous.”
“Is that really you talking, Aaron?” he asked, half in accusation, half in disbelief.
I shook my head and blew air through my mouth. “Our instructor’s suit malfunctioned when we were on the asteroid and the same thing almost happened to him. Did Caelus do that, too? Do we just blame everything that goes wrong on Caelus because he’s hard on us? Mr. Katz said there was a once-per-thirteen-thousand-hour failure rate and given the nebula and all, if that failure happens at the wrong time . . .” I shook my head again. “Eventually it’s the thirteen thousandth hour.”
“But some time for that hour, eh? The morning before Rhys was going to have that trial.”
“That wasn’t a very good idea.”
“That’s beside the point, Aaron. The point is the timing. No, the point is that someone fucking died! At the school! And it’s obviously not the first time either. You should know that better than anyone, right? Right?”
“I guess.”
“So I think you were right before, and that we should get the hell out of here. This place is messed up. It’s really, really messed up. The instru
ctors let . . . let . . .” Sebastian had been angrier than I’d ever seen him, but now he seemed to retreat back into a scattered, searching vulnerability. His eyes watered. His hands traversed his body as if he were trying to smooth out invisible wrinkles in his uniform. He bowed his head and then brought it up even with me, not knowing quite what to do with himself.
“They let anything go. And they’re building some weird diode weapons array on the side of the station.”
“Mr. Katz says it’s defensive works in case the Verex keep planet hopping.”
“I wouldn’t believe a word any of those assholes say,” said Sebastian.
“But Mr. Katz s—”
“Not a word, Aaron. Not a word. They built something on the station orbiting my planet, too, saying it was to knock out this asteroid that was supposedly getting too close, but everyone knew it was to keep the colonial government in check. So who really knows what it is.”
He looked at me a moment. “But then maybe you shouldn’t believe me either, because I think you were right all along; all that tech stuff, the nebula Challenge hero stuff, did go to my head. It was the first time people noticed me. Back home . . . back home I was a joke. But that’s stupid. I know that’s stupid—and it doesn’t mean anything if this place is what it seems.”
He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was deeper and had lost its previous waver. “Anyhow, I’m ready to go now and I’ve got a way to do it, too. With all those wins and points and engineering Student Access Permits, I’ve got roundabout access to the shuttle bay. It’s not the cargo bay, like we talked about; it’s actually better, since now we can take the fastest ship.”
I stayed silent, my mind racing.
“You could fly the scout ship, the Pulsar, couldn’t you, or one of those shuttles?”
I didn’t know what to say. Things had been awful, and I’d wanted to leave. It probably made sense to leave. But the thought of never seeing Eve again made my chest clench. And she needed me; she had less than a month before she started getting symptomatic, and even the little things I was doing were saving her time.
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