by Kali Wallace
“I don’t like this,” Malachi said. “What the fuck is that—is that liquid helium? What happened here?”
After encountering so many dead, passing through so many cold, dark crypts, the restful quiescence of this white-haired woman, of those who had huddled in the garden, of the crew of the computing core, was every bit as unsettling as the violent deaths. I had grown almost numb to the brutalized corpses everywhere—almost—but I could not stop staring at Dr. Summers with her arms crossed peacefully over her chest, and the man who had died so horribly just beyond.
Malachi’s voice in my ear: “I found the last entry recorded into the system. It’s a personal log from an M. Summers.”
The screen on the workstation flickered. The blue vanished, replaced at once by the face of Dr. Summers. She looked younger than I had expected; her light brown skin was creased only in laugh lines around her eyes and mouth. Her eyes were bloodshot, and there were tears on her cheeks. She took a breath before speaking.
“I might well be the last one left.” Her voice was thin, soft, her accent southern hemisphere Oceania. “I haven’t heard anything for over an hour. It’s quiet outside. The captain hasn’t answered since she initiated the medical quarantine. I told her what happened with Saul. I didn’t want to hurt him. He attacked me, and I tried to incapacitate him. He wouldn’t stop moving. I didn’t know what else to do. I told the captain everything. I take full responsibility for his death. I am so sorry for his children. Tell them I am so very, very sorry. That was—” A glance down and to the left. “Seventy-three minutes ago. By the time you find this, you’ll likely know what’s happening out there. You’ll certainly know more than I do. But I want you to know—whoever finds this—I want you to know that we weren’t careless.”
I glanced at Malachi through the glass, but he was watching his own screen.
“We weren’t careless,” Dr. Summers repeated. “We took every precaution we knew to take. We knew better than to trust that the people of Mournful Evening Song were benevolent. So many humans before the Collapse were violent, selfish creatures. We searched for even the tiniest sign of viral or bacterial contamination—human or alien—before we took the probe on board. We didn’t find anything. We began to believe they had not meant us harm. We learned everything we could at every step before we proceeded to the next one. We didn’t ignore Gregory’s theories, no matter what he says.”
My heart skipped at the sound of my father’s name.
“I know he’s angry with us. But he didn’t trust us—worse, he didn’t think we were clever enough to follow where he led. Hubris was always his flaw. He should have let us all work together. We did listen to him, but we didn’t have all the information.”
Dr. Summers didn’t sound angry with him, or frightened of him. She didn’t sound as though she blamed him at all. She pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Gregory, I wish you had, for once in your bloody life, risked a share of the glory. I wish you had trusted us.” Here Dr. Summers looked directly at the camera. Her eyes, a deep soft brown, filled with tears. “Do you remember that week we spent diving at Piopiotahi when we were students? You found the wreck of that old twenty-first-century rocket. It was marked on the wrong spot on the maps, so you thought it was an unknown wreck, one nobody had found yet? You were so disappointed when we realized it was the same one others had explored a thousand times before.”
Dr. Summers stopped again to clear her throat. She looked to her right and extended her arm. She reached beyond the range of the camera, but I knew she was touching the probe.
“That night after we explored that sunken rocket, we were sitting on the boat under the stars—do you remember? It was an unremarkable night, I suppose, and so many years ago, but it was beautiful. The sky was so clear, the stars so bright, and all of us were talking like we always did, students who thought we knew everything. You were going on about your lost ships . . . Even then that was all you ever wanted to talk about.” Dr. Summers pressed her lips together, inhaled through her nose and let the breath out again, and on the exhale it was damp, ragged, with barely suppressed sobs. “You were talking about the people from before the Collapse, and how it was amazing they had ever gotten into space at all, with all the times they had blown themselves up trying, with how obsessed they were with gathering wealth and waging wars and killing one another for the stupidest of reasons. So much hatred, so much cruelty, and so many failures, all across the world. All their broken ships and rockets scattered around like so many toys underfoot. Just another part of the mess they left for us to clean up.
“And you said—you said even knowing they were so bad at everything except killing each other and poisoning the world, even knowing that, you hoped some of those idiots survived out there in the black. You wanted that for them, even knowing what they had done.
“Gregory,” Dr. Summers said, leaning forward, her white hair flowing around her. “I don’t know when you lost trust in us. But I hope you remember that night out on the water, and when it comes time for you to tell them what’s happened here, you—”
A loud siren wailed. I jumped and looked around before realizing it was on the recording. Dr. Summers looked down at the screen. The siren wailed again, and white lights pulsed brightly around her. Her shoulders slumped.
“Oh,” she said quietly, in the momentary space between sirens. “I didn’t recognize that. I’ve only heard it—”
Another earsplitting wail.
“—in drills. But it says right here: fire suppression. I guess she—”
And another, painful in the ears.
“—to me after all. This might at least slow them down.”
Dr. Summers waited for the siren, but it did not sound again. In its place came a low hissing. Behind her the white emergency lights stopped pulsing to shine steadily. She looked up and around, every plane of her face, every line of her body signaling defeat. “If this is Lilian’s doing, I hope you remember her as a hero, not a murderer. Please forgive her. Please forgive us all.”
She reached forward, then paused, looked at the camera again. For a moment her lips parted as though she was going to say more, but in the end she only shook her head and said, “End recording.”
The screen went black.
* * *
• • •
Zahra,” Malachi said.
“Wait,” I said.
I needed to think. Dr. Summers had known my father and his work. She had considered him a lifelong friend, somebody she cherished. She had not blamed him for the massacre.
Because she did not think the virus had come from Earth.
“Play it again,” I said. “Did you hear what she said?”
“Zahra.” Malachi’s voice was strained and uncharacteristically high. I turned.
Dag and Panya had joined Malachi in the outer room. Through the glass they were lit by the red glow of the dormancy lights, three shapes beyond the ghost of my own reflection.
“Panya, Dag, you have to hear this. It’s about the virus. Malachi, play the log again.”
Malachi was looking right at me, but he said nothing.
“Come on,” Panya said, and Malachi flinched. “Up. You’re going in to join her.”
Only when he rose from the chair at the console did I see that Panya had the muzzle of her weapon pressed against his back. Dag’s weapon was drawn, too, resting easily at his side. I looked from one gun to the other.
“What are you doing?” I asked stupidly.
Dag reached out and slid Malachi’s gun from its holster. I remembered my own weapon too late. I was slow to draw it, and clumsy. I didn’t know where to point it.
“Please don’t be angry with me, Zahra,” Panya said. “It’s not your fault.”
“What—”
“It’s not,” she said, as though I was arguing with her. “You’re too soft and too uncertain. I
tried to warn Adam, but he wanted to give you a chance. Go in, Malachi. He wanted to give both of you a chance.”
Malachi pulled himself toward the door, but slowly, deliberately stalling. “Panya, you—”
“Shut up,” Dag said. He took Malachi’s skeleton key from the terminal. “Get in there.”
“Tell me what’s wrong,” I pleaded, my mind racing. “Tell me what you want. I know the mission has gone wrong, but we can fix it. We still have time.”
“We are going to fix it,” Panya said, her voice soft with pity and regret. “We are, Zahra. Not you. We will be ready when Adam arrives. We will fix the damage you have done. We will restore hope to him and to the family. Give your gun to Dag.”
I adjusted my grip on the weapon. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to hurt Panya and Dag. They were my friends—my family. They were scared and confused and frustrated, but they were still family. I couldn’t hurt them. I kept seeing the boy on the shuttle, the one I had killed, how his head had vanished in a cloud of blood. I had killed him without a thought, as though he wasn’t a person at all. I couldn’t do that to Panya. She had taught me how to survive in the desert, selflessly imparting wisdom she had known her entire life. She was the one who had comforted me when Mama died, who had told me how to avoid angering Adam when I fell from his favor, who had lifted her hand and her voice in support when others argued against letting me lead this mission.
Panya pressed her weapon to the back of Malachi’s head. Her voice was damp with tears. “Zahra. Don’t make this difficult.”
“Panya, please don’t. Don’t hurt Malachi. Help me fix this.”
“You should not have brought the hostages over here,” Dag said. There was no apology in his voice, no pity, but neither was there anger. He spoke as though it was the plainest fact. “If you had left them where Adam commanded, Henke would be alive, and there would not be an armed girl loose on the ship. And now you are getting distracted by unimportant things.”
“It’s not unimportant,” I said quickly. “You have to listen—”
“You are too inexperienced for this command,” Dag said. “Adam was blinded by his affection for you. He made a mistake.”
Malachi said, “You’re right. Zahra wasn’t ready for this. But you still need our help. You still need—”
“And you,” Dag said, “have failed every step of the way. We should have the ship by now. It should have been ours hours ago.”
“He’s been trying,” I said, confused. “You’ve seen it! He’s told you why—”
“Zahra,” Panya said. “Zahra, sweet girl, do not make me kill him. Give your gun to Dag.”
I braced myself on the workstation and tossed my gun toward Dag. It glided easily through the air, turning slowly. I saw Malachi twitch—the beginning of a motion, indecisive—but he stilled again. Dag caught the weapon and holstered it.
“Now, both of you,” Dag said. “Suits off.”
“What?” I said.
“You heard me. Take off your suits.”
“But—”
“We can’t have you following us,” Panya said apologetically. “Please let’s not argue anymore. We have work to do. There’s so much work to do. We need you to stay here, where you’ll be safe.”
“We’ll be infected,” I said, horror making my voice high. “We can’t.”
“It’s not safe here,” Malachi protested. “This is where the virus—”
Panya pushed his head forward with her gun. “I said I don’t want to argue anymore.”
Malachi’s hands were moving at his sides, his head swaying minutely: he was looking around, he was going to do something, he was going to try to get away, and if he did, Panya would fire. He might not believe her, but I knew she was not bluffing. Panya was always sincere. I could not let Malachi die because of my mistakes.
I released the seal of my helmet and tugged it off. The bitterly cold air was like a slap in the face. Beneath the outer suit, the thin fabric of the SPEC uniform was soaked through with my sweat. I began shivering at once. I felt naked and vulnerable, stripped down to the stolen uniform with nothing on my hands, nothing on my head, only socks on my feet. Malachi followed my lead, shedding his emergency suit as well.
Dag gathered up the suits and helmets and boots. Panya took one of the helmets from him and aimed the open neck toward us.
“I wish you had not forced me to be the one to decide your punishment, Zahra,” Panya said. Her voice carried through the helmet’s speaker, small and distorted. “I never wanted to carry this burden. I know it will pain me for a long time.”
Dag shut the door to the laboratory as they left. The lock engaged with a solid metallic thunk that made me jump. I spun toward Malachi. His eyes were wide, his gaze darting and quick, and he was looking all around the room, at all the controls, all the panels, every corner and wall. His breath misted a cloud with every exhale. I wanted to apologize. I could not speak. I hated to breathe, hated to think I might be drawing the virus into my lungs. My jaw ached with the effort of keeping my teeth from chattering.
On the other side of the window, Panya and Dag spoke to each other in the dim red light. Dag gestured, and Panya hesitated, then nodded. Dag tapped a few commands into the panel.
The light in the laboratory faded abruptly, deep dormancy red giving way to darkness. When the light returned, the outer room was empty and the door to the corridor was closed. They had left us.
Malachi said, “We should—”
Before he could say what we should do, an alarm wailed, so loud I winced and slapped my hands over my ears. The careless motion sent me into a slow spin. I flung one hand out to stop myself and caught one of the probe’s metal support struts. The red light gave way to a brilliant, blinding white. There was a brief silence.
I asked, “What is that?”
The alarm shrieked again, like needles pressing into our ears. When it stopped that time, my ears were ringing, and Malachi’s voice was murky when he spoke. Even so, I understood his words.
“Fire suppression,” he said. “It’s venting the oxygen.”
In the silence that followed came a soft, steady hiss. It was the same sound that had followed the same wailing alarm on Dr. Summers’s last log entry. The same bright light.
They meant to suffocate us. Malachi was already moving. He spun around and kicked himself toward the door.
“There has to be a fail-safe,” he said. “It can’t—”
The alarm screamed.
“—in case somebody’s trapped,” he finished.
He tapped frantically at the panel by the door, but the door remained stubbornly locked. The alarm screamed again. It had been so long since I’d seen him in bright light; he looked tense and exhausted.
“Help me!” he shouted.
I searched the workstation, the instruments, the array of computers lining the walls. Help him, help him—but I had no idea what a fail-safe mechanism would look like. This was not a test of loyalty. This was not punishment. They would not return. How quickly they had made the decision. How quickly they had left.
“Zahra!” Malachi shouted, after the alarm sounded again. “Zahra, snap the fuck out of it and help me.”
I looked up quickly, turning my head so fast it sent a wave of dizziness over me. I had never heard Malachi sound like that before, so angry and sharp. There was no waver in his voice, none of his usual quavering uncertainty. I blinked once and nodded. The cold, the thinning air, they were taking their toll, but I had to concentrate. I pushed away from the support strut and caught myself on the workstation screen—the metal was so painfully cold it burned my skin—and twisted myself up, grabbing for the open panel on the probe. I kicked up from the stool for momentum and launched myself to the other side of the probe.
I caught Dr. Summers’s corpse about the middle. As we floated toward the far wall of the
laboratory, I began searching through the pockets of her jumpsuit. In the first I found a gold ring, half of a protein bar, a couple of small screws. In the other, only a pocketknife, not quite ten centimeters long. I let out a growl of frustration. We needed a way out. We needed more time. The hissing had grown louder. I winced, trying to turn away from it, but there was no escape. There was a ventilation panel high on the wall, right over the head of the other corpse.
And on the panel’s edge a neat label: INTAKE/OUTGO.
I grabbed Dr. Summers’s arm and kicked up from the floor, dragging her cold-stiffened body with me, using the dead man’s shoulder as a step. He was infected, he was infected, the thought was a drumbeat in my mind, but I needed the boost. I was growing light-headed, and every piercing shriek of the alarm was like a knife in my ears. I kicked too hard and floated right by the vent to hit the ceiling. Dr. Summers’s white hair was a cloud of dandelion puff around me. I coughed as strands drifted to my mouth, flinched away from its feather-soft touch on my skin. Her face was close to mine, close enough that I could see every wrinkle around her eyes, every hair of her eyelashes.
She jerked away, and I yelped, the noise lost beneath another wail of the alarm, but it was only Malachi tugging her down. He had figured out what I was trying to do. Together we positioned her body over the air evacuation vent.
“It won’t stop it completely,” Malachi said, gasping on every word.
I knew that. I only wanted more time. My mind was racing, my thoughts punctured by the siren, by fierce awareness of every breath, by the aching, clawing cold. The glass wall might be breakable, but we had nothing to break it with. There was only the one door.
One door. A single human-sized door.
I looked at Malachi. “How did they get it in here?”
The alarm shrieked over his answer, but he grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the floor, catching a support strut with his free hand. Urgency made his motions more focused, chasing away the doubt that normally accompanied his every choice.