by Lydia Kang
A moment in time isn’t a static point in space. It is infinite if you look close enough. And I could have had a thousand infinities with Fenn. If only I could do it all over again.
My body is getting tired, or weak, or numbed; I’m not sure what. Cyclo can only have so many chemical restraints to use on me, but she’s buffing every last molecule of sedative into me because she won’t lose me again. Faintly, there is a jarring sensation, as if my entire world has been shaken hard, rent and throttled. But it goes away. My ears buzz; my ability to hear is disappearing, and I can no longer feel anything below my knees, beyond my elbows. I hear a yell from far, far away. A memory, perhaps.
Hana. Fight.
Hana. I’m coming for you.
I try to shake my head, but Cyclo has already made a pillow for it, and the gel is rising near my cheeks, ready to envelop my face. There is a stinging feeling, and a pull against my neck. Cyclo has removed my biomonitor. Through a layer of gel around my ears, I hear the voice again. As I forcefully rouse myself back into consciousness, the sound becomes clearer, even with the muffling gel.
Hana.
HANA.
“Hana! It’s me. Fight, fight Hana! I’m coming for you!”
But it isn’t Fenn’s voice speaking.
Chapter Thirty-Four
FENN
I have nothing to fight with. All my bots and drones have been crushed into oblivion.
“Hana!” I yell, but I can barely speak for what I’m seeing. The container full of radioactive boules is torn from her grasping hands. A wave of blue takes her, slips her sideways, immerses her. Her helmet is being pulled off as the image goes partly dead.
“Hana! I’m coming!” I yell as the image goes completely blank, and I start running.
I run like I’ve never run before, and no matter how painful it is, I’ll go faster. Because nothing matters. This is the end, the end that I knew was coming, though we’d pretended we could try to outwit Cyclo, outwit our own sense of doom, to keep hoping.
My airways sear from breathing so hard, and my muscles burn with angry pain as I finally reach the northwest quadrant. I’m met with an impenetrable wall of hostile red matrix. As soon as it sees me coming, it pours down a steaming, caustic layer of brown and green liquid. I cough as the fumes hit me, and my eyes water and nose burns. I can’t even get within ten feet of the wall, and beyond that wall is Hana. Wave after wave of coughing incapacitates me, and my eyes tear until my vision is nothing but a blur. I can’t even think, and I’m slowly asphyxiating.
I drop to my knees, coughing, dry heaving. The gas flowing from the chemicals is only getting thicker. I drag myself away from it. From the lack of oxygen, stars and lights pop in my vision. They only get brighter, threatening to completely bleach my retinas before I pass out.
Wait. The bright light is only when my eyes are open. I shield my face, holding my shirt up to my mouth to filter the air, and look around me through the gassy fog. A few plastrix-embedded windows to my left are blasted full of flickering light.
It’s a ship.
It’s a damned ship.
Doran. He actually made it here, after all!
I’m in the alpha ring right now, as is Hana. Which means when this thing comes crashing in, Hana’s going to die if the ship crashes into her. I go to the window, still coughing, still gagging, and gesticulate wildly to tell the ship to dock closer to the southern quadrant. But it’s too late. The ship is small, and it’s already backed up to get enough distance to ram itself into Cyclo’s exoskeleton. And if I’m here when that happens, I’ll either be flattened, or dead from being exposed to the atmosphereless cold of space.
In my head, I scream at myself. Run, Fenn. Run because this time your life depends on it, and Hana’s, too, if there’s any chance left on this damned ship to save her.
So I half shuffle, half run down the hallways, watching as the ship accelerates forward. I take the first hallway that veers upward to beta, climbing the stairs and galloping crookedly because of the low g, and head south. I barely make it before the ship crashes into the hull.
I go flying and land on my back. All the air leaves me in a whoosh, and I immediately cradle my head as splinters of white endoskeleton and meaty chunks of beige and pale blue matrix fall around me. A loud creak reverberates through the floors and ceilings and right into my jawbone, like metal pressing relentlessly against wood. The sound is so loud and excruciating I cover my ears.
And then it’s silent.
I get to my knees, and then slowly stand. I haven’t broken any bones, but my ears are still ringing. I can breathe, but I thank the stars that I don’t feel that irresistible, terrifying suck of decompression. So whatever crashed into Cyclo has managed to seal off the breaks in the exoskeleton.
I stagger to the end of the hallway, surveying the damage. Chunks of endoskeleton and oozing, rotting matrix the color of curdled blood lie here and there. I step over them and make my way back down to alpha, going slowly around the corridor, dodging larger shards and jagged pieces of Cyclo that have broken from the impact.
Beyond that, a small oval ship, silver colored, has embedded itself into Cyclo’s hull. The hull of the ship isn’t metal—like Cyclo, it ripples with different colors—purple, flecks of metallic white—and it’s exuding a biological stratum of a deeper gray color that’s adhered to the ship and the broken hole it’s made in Cyclo’s exoskeleton. A side door near the nose has opened, and I hold my breath, waiting to see my savior. Hana’s savior.
The first thing I notice is that he comes out of the door wearing a full protective suit, along with what looks like breathable air tanks, which is smart. Because if I was landing on Cyclo now, I’d assume the air wasn’t breathable. It wasn’t for me a few moments ago. I wonder if the suit is also radiation proof.
The second thing I notice is that Doran is really small.
He sees me, but I can’t see him through his mirrored helmet, and after he looks around (and probably realizes the air is more or less okay), the visor on his helmet slides up. And this is where I realize I’ve made several mistakes. Because it’s not Doran at all.
It’s a woman, who’s so petite, she’s probably shorter than Hana. Her hair is gray and black, shorn close to the head, and her eyes look tired and angry and wise, all at once. She looks like a much older, angrier version of Hana, and she looks like she’s about to yell at me. I have about two million things I want to say to her, but my mouth twists and stays shut because I’m overwhelmed with gratefulness that she’s here. I step forward, my arms beseeching her, the first movement that precedes the “I’m Fennec and please get me and my girlfriend off this evil ship,” but she beats me to the punch.
She pulls out a large plasma gun I hadn’t noticed was holstered to her leg and points it straight at my face.
“Where is my daughter?” she asks with a cold fury.
I swallow air and cough about ten times before I can answer her.
“You…you’re Dr. Um? You’re Hana’s mother?” I croak.
“Yes. Where is she?”
“But…you died!”
“A fallacy, obviously.”
“But…how did you…”
“You’re from the Selkirk? One of the—” She stops herself from attaching a label to me—convict? Left-for-dead? Boy? Narrowing her eyes, Dr. Um doesn’t lower her weapon for a moment. I guess now is not the time to tell her that I’m also Hana’s boyfriend.
“Yes. And Hana needs help. She’s in northwest alpha, and Cyclo’s trapped her there.”
“Trapped? What do you mean?” The tip of her gun wavers for a second. “You have about one minute to explain everything. This ship is about to collapse.”
So I explain so fast I nearly trip over my own tongue. How we’re the only survivors. How Cyclo has killed off the other crew members, and we tried harvesting radioisotopes to refuel the Sel
kirk (here she interrupts to tell me this is a terrible, useless idea) which is when Hana got caught.
“Cyclo knows she’s dying. She wants to die with Hana. It’s some sort of death wish of the ship.” I pause for a luxurious second. “Listen, we’re both trying to survive. I’m not the enemy here. So can you point that thing somewhere else?”
Dr. Um’s eyes go from hostile to regretful, and she reholsters her gun. “I’m sorry. They told us you were all convicts.”
“We are. We were. It doesn’t matter.” There’s no time to explain myself. “Cyclo’s built a wall, and the gases around it are toxic. I can’t get through it, and I have no protective gear. Hana’s on the other side.”
Dr. Um drops her face shield back down. A comm speaks to me from her suit, digitizing her voice. “Are you aware that the other half of this ship is having a nuclear meltdown?”
“Er, yes. That was sort of our fault.”
Dr. Um raises her face shield just briefly enough to give me the angriest scowl I’ve ever received (and this includes the criminals I’ve done business with. Note to self: don’t mess with mothers) and walks around the nose of her ship.
“Stay here. Don’t you dare touch my ship. It’ll know if you do, and it’s been programmed to retaliate.”
At this, the skin of her silvery ship flashes a big red X on its skin/hull that looks vaguely like a skull and crossbones. This one has a sense of humor, albeit a pretty dark one. I hold both my hands up.
“I’m at your mercy. For God’s sake, just save Hana.”
At this, Dr. Um pulls a shoulder-launching ion cannon off the large pack on her back. “I intend to.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
HANA
I know that voice. I jerk my limbs hard, trying to fight Cyclo and fight the numbness in my brain.
It’s not a voice from my dreams, of people I’ve never met, of storybook characters I’ve only touched by absorbing their words, the images on a screen. All false.
I claw at the matrix, trying to uncover my face and ears, straining for mental clarity.
The voice calls again. “Hana! It’s me!”
This isn’t a dream. It’s real.
It’s Mother.
How can this be? How? Mother is dead. I don’t understand, and yet I open my mouth to call frantically for her. I open my eyes to see her. I reach my arms to hold her.
I am thwarted in every way. Cyclo fills my open mouth with a cascade of matrix to silence me. It enters my throat, down to my trachea, into my stomach. It is nauseating and claustrophobic in a way it never has been, because it’s against my wishes. I buck with dry heaves, but Cyclo fixes me in place. Inside and out, she is controlling me utterly. I can no longer move my limbs. I try to open my eyelids, but they are heavy, so heavy. I would gag and cough and gasp, but I cannot because she is drowning me, like an insect in amber, a jeweled prize for whatever short future I am to have.
A jarring motion moves me, and something akin to an earthquake makes me and the matrix around me shudder. I open my eyes and see only purple—her matrix is changing colors from blue to red, but I can barely control my own eyelids to blink.
Hana.
Hana.
Hana.
Cyclo’s words are a heartbeat but they’re growing more erratic.
Ha
NA
NO
NO. STOP.
Cyclo’s chemical grasp on my muscles is weakened for a moment. I wiggle my hands and toes and find that I can cut through the gel with my fingertips. Cyclo isn’t providing enough oxygen for me through my skin, and I’m feeling so air-hungry now I begin to thrash about, and I find I can move my limbs better. I try to blink again, and I see something swishing back and forth. A dark figure looms over me, raising an arm with something blurry in its grasp. Greedily, I recognize her movements—they are hers. Her build and breadth—they are hers. I think it’s Mother, which is impossible, but still I am not sure.
The gel around me goes bright red, the color of poppies.
The figure plunges its arm into the matrix, straight for my body. The hand grasps my upper arm and yanks ruthlessly. I’m dragged out of the matrix. I get a glimpse of silvered helmet and suit, and as soon as air hits my face, I inhale. Which I can’t because there’s still gel crammed into my airways and stomach, so I vomit, inhale a little air, and then liquefied matrix comes pouring out of my nose and mouth. The gel around my body recedes until I’m on the ground, heaving and coughing and my eyes tearing so bad I can’t see anything.
But Cyclo has receded enough that I can finally get to my knees, wiping my face. The figure stands, holding an ion cannon propped on its left shoulder, and a hand at the ready near a holstered pistol.
I knew that voice, though. It has to be, but I’m too afraid to say a word. This person who’s come to rescue us—it can’t be. It just can’t. I can’t handle that kind of disappointment again.
“Who are you?” I finally gasp.
The figure touches its helmet, which decompresses with a whoosh and a click. Hands pull off the helmet, and I see cropped, dark hair streaked with silver and a face that has aged twenty years since my last glimpse.
Mother drops the shoulder cannon and the helmet and opens her arms. “I’ve come back for you, Hana.”
I run and collapse into her arms.
…
I have so many questions. But the only one that really matters is the only one that comes to my lips.
“How can you be alive?”
We are running back to the ship, and she pauses for only a brief moment while we catch our breath.
“I should have died. I was dead, according to our monitors. No heartbeat, no breathing. Cyclo tried to kill me, and she would have succeeded if it hadn’t been for this.” She points to her forearm, but of course, it’s under her white suit. But I know what’s on her skin there—the slightly phosphorescent lotus flower tattoo that Mother embedded as a decoration, something to unify her and Cyclo in their bond to care for me. An etching to remind her of her family’s Buddhist history, the artistry in Korea that’s so far from her world here.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“Cyclo is programmed never to self-destruct. That includes harming herself in any way. When I implanted her cells in my skin, we could communicate better than I’d ever expected. We couldn’t hide much of anything from each other. But when she found out that the ship was going to be evacuated, and that I had to tell the crew about you, Hana—she knew she’d lose you. So before I got the chance to tell anyone the secret that was you, Cyclo covered me in matrix, sedated me, and tore open the artery in my neck.” She touches it gingerly and winces. “I bled out, but Cyclo’s cells put me into a medicated coma. Every cell in my body went into a deep hibernation. One heartbeat per minute. But I lived. It took at least a week before the monitors on our ship picked up that I was actually alive. They treated my wounds and transfused me. When I woke up, I told them everything.”
I stand there, waiting. Knowing that we only have minutes left on this ship, on my home. On Cyclo, who’s so far from the Cyclo I’ve grown up with that I don’t recognize her violence, her selfishness, her desperation.
But then again, maybe Cyclo is more human to me than my own mother has been in some ways. Mother’s never shown the extremes of emotion that I’ve seen on this ship, that I’ve seen in Fenn, and myself.
I wait for her apology.
It doesn’t come.
“You aren’t even sorry, are you?” I say.
“We have no time for biopsychology, Hana. We have to go.” She grabs my wrist, and I tear it away.
“No. You kept me a prisoner. You kept me to yourself. You had seventeen years to tell them, to tell anyone, that I existed. And when it finally was time, it was too late.” I’m yelling, screaming almost.
“I gave you life!” Mo
ther yells, backing away from me in the hallway.
“You stole my life!” I holler back, making fists with my hands. “You kept me locked away!”
“I protected you! And I’m here to protect you now, and I will do this until the day I die.” Seeing my stricken face, she says, “Come now. We have to get back to the ship. We’ll pick up your things. We have heirlooms in that trunk of yours that are irreplaceable.”
For a split second, I wonder—aren’t I irreplaceable enough? But I say nothing. As we run around the north alpha, I realize we’re heading for my room, not her ship. I say nothing because there are too many thoughts, too many emotions. We find our room—now enclosed in nothing but dark blue, black, and beige scar tissues. My room is dead. Mother eyes the mother-of-pearl and lacquer trunk and picks it up, stumbling a little from the weight. I don’t offer to help.
“Where is Fenn? I need him.” I say this without realizing that it sounds like I don’t need her, but I don’t care.
Mother flinches. “He’s with my ship.”
We start back to west alpha where her ship must be, near the bridge. But now we’re slowed down by the weight of the lacquer box, by the ebony hair sticks belonging to my great-great-great-great grandmother, her diaries, my tiny knitted and re-knitted knickknacks, the wooden mated-pair of ducks, the celadon vase from the Goryeo dynasty.
She’s out of breath, as am I, but I notice her left arm—the one with the tattoo—is barely able to carry the load.
“This is ridiculous. Let it go,” I say. “It’s not important.”
“It’s everything. It’s our heritage,” she snaps at me, and she’s never snapped at me in my whole life. Which is when I realize that possibly all of her past interactions with me have been carefully curated and cultivated. Who is this woman?