by S. K. Vaughn
May sat down for a moment to regroup and try to breathe out some stress. She wasn’t angry at the broken machine, or Eve, or even Jon Escher for breaking it. The gravity of the situation was simply pushing down on her, a brutal reminder that they had run out of options.
“Why couldn’t we have just died in the cargo rig? It’s a miracle we didn’t. A miracle. Followed by this . . . utterly . . . Having to just wait like a lamb bound for slaughter. Well, I won’t do it. No fucking way.”
She eyeballed the top of the transformer nearby, with its arcs of electricity, remembering how it had annihilated Jon. At least he had his blaze of glory.
“May, I’m worried about you. Perhaps you should work on this later, after—”
“After lying in bed some more without the benefit of sleep, or even rest? Or maybe after I shove some more pasty food-flavored muck into my mouth? There is no later, Eve, in case you didn’t get the memo. If I don’t fix this, we’re fucked. Full stop.”
“I will organize the schematics, make them clearer. We still have time.”
“No,” she shouted. “No, we don’t.” May heaved with sobs. She couldn’t imagine going on, but even thinking about quitting made her want to beat herself senseless.
“You need to rest and relieve stress. For the baby, May. For the Cheekster.”
May laughed a bit at Eve saying “Cheekster,” and that broke enough tension for her to think about the baby. The poor thing was probably terrified as well, but didn’t even know why or how to deal with it. She could probably feel the panic and despair in May, which explained her restlessness when May tried to sleep.
There was no winning in the engine room, so May gave up and headed back to her quarters. She felt better after a shower and some food-flavored muck.
“I think I just needed to let go of some of that, Eve. I feel a little better.”
“Good. You are probably releasing a lot of hormones that affect mood.”
“You mean crazy juice? I got it bad. Usually I can take just about anything. I’ve got very thick skin. Everything gets under it now, though. And big things, like thinking about pile driving into Mars, send me right off to la-la land.”
“I will not let that happen, May. We’re going to solve this problem too.”
“Yes,” May said, yawning. “We can do it. Right after I take a little nap.”
“Sweet dreams,” Eve said.
May was out before Eve dimmed the lights. Her body just took over and plunged her into sleep. Fragments of dreams floated in and out, most of them dark projections of anxiety. In one, she was on the surface of Mars, looking skyward. A bright object cut through the atmosphere with a trail of fire, shaking the red earth with a sonic boom. It was the Hawking II, breaking apart and falling right at her. When it hit, everything went dark, and the sound of the impact trailed into the sound of a slamming door and breaking glass.
The scene changed, and she was lying in a bathtub, covered in the fragments of a shattered shower door, blood running down the side of her head. Stephen ran into the room and looked over her, saying something she couldn’t hear.
“I’m . . . broken,” she whispered. “Broken.”
She woke up crying in her berth. That dream was part of a memory, the day her mother died. She nearly drank herself to death in a hotel room after leaving the grim London hospital. She had wanted to die then too, overwhelmed and exhausted by life, with all its pain and mockery. The darkness of her berth felt as though it were suffocating her, but she was too fearful to get out of bed. There was something about it that felt menacing, somehow alive and able to wrap itself around her body to steal her last breath. When she looked out her observation window, the darkness was out there, its thick mantle spreading like oil across the void, dragging the light out of the stars.
“May?”
Stephen’s voice called out, a hand reaching into the abyss, feeling for her.
“May, wake up.”
The sound was so clear. May waited, resigning herself, waiting for the dream to turn on her and expose its teeth.
“Jesus, are you even in there? It’s like a black hole.”
May sat up. Not a dream. Definitely Stephen’s voice.
“Shit, I’ve lost my mind,” she said to herself. “He sounds real. Shit.”
“That’s because I am. Hit your room power switch.”
She did. The lights came on, along with her wall screen. Stephen was on it, smiling.
“Your voice,” she said, trembling. “Everything was so dark. But I heard it. I heard it.”
61
“I’m still not fully convinced this isn’t a dream.”
After May shook off the cobwebs, Stephen filled her in about Ian and the rescue plan. Before he woke her up, Ian’s Mission Control team, floating in his state-of-the-art space station, had already been working with Eve to establish comms and telemetry. In typical Ian style, things were moving forward without needless discussion, everyone caught up in the thundering pace of action. An anthill of workers climbed all over his experimental ship around the clock, simultaneously prepping for the voyage and finishing construction.
May was ecstatic. Relieved. And grateful. Even optimistic. If anyone could pull it off, it was Ian. But that didn’t change the surreal quality of it, that feeling one got when it became blatantly clear that what came around absolutely went around. The eternal wheel, making certain that we all repeated history, our knowledge of it be damned. Ian, first love. Ian, betrayer of the highest order. Ian, savior. He was going to save her life. Why did that make so much and so little sense, all at the same time? Gift horse, mouth. Keep yours shut except for please and thank you.
“I’m with you. To be honest, I had nearly given up,” Stephen confessed.
“Join the club. Hold on a moment; I just realized there’s no delay. We’re just talking as though you’re standing on my doorstep,” May declared.
“Would you expect anything less? And don’t ask me how it works, because like everything else, it’s—”
“Proprietary. I know. His middle name. Or is it ‘world changer’? Either way . . .”
She took a moment to just look at Stephen, to watch him move in real time.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Sorry, just adjusting to having a real conversation.”
“I like it a lot too. How is your little passenger?”
“Good. She’s a complete pain in the ass, but that’s how I know she’s baking well.”
“A little girl!” Stephen said excitedly.
May flushed self-consciously. “God, I’m so sorry. My manners are shit. I’ve been alone for so long. Well, I have Eve, but, you know, away from other humans for so long that I just assume everyone can read my mind. Dr. Stephen Knox, please allow me to introduce you to Cheeky, the little stowaway that could,” she said, waving her hand in front of her belly like a car show model.
“Cheeky?”
“Aka Cheekster, Dr. Cheekenstein, Baroness von Cheeks. Temporary moniker, till something more embarrassing comes along. Here, take a look.”
She held up her tablet and showed him a photo from one of the ultrasound scans. The image hit him pretty hard, and his eyes were instantly filled with tears.
“She looks amazing,” he said.
“Of course she is; look where she came from,” May laughed. “She’s finally starting to make her presence known, too.” She turned sideways and showed him her bump. It wasn’t huge, but it was prominent on her slender frame. “Kicks the devil out of my insides. Future soccer star or kung fu master.”
“At the very least,” Stephen said, looking behind him. “Uh, Ian would like to say hello, but he understands you might not be ready.”
“Nonsense. I’m not afraid of him.”
“Always with the one-up,” Ian said, walking into the frame. “Hello, Maryam.”
“Hi, Ian. You’re looking very billionaire these days.”
“Cheers. How’s the lad? He driving you crazy yet?”
>
“Absolutely crazy. She has an insatiable appetite. Restless. Prone to violence.”
“A she, eh? Sounds like someone I know. Give me a look-see.”
May showed him the image she’d shown Stephen.
“Looks just like a baby,” Ian said. “Everything shipshape?”
“Yes, knock on wood. So far so good. I’m just hoping you can get to me before I have to deliver her alone with Igor the robot surgeon.”
“Young lady, this is an Albright mission. Leave hope to the amateurs.”
62
RAF College Cranwell, Lincolnshire, UK
July 27, 2054
“You’re making a mistake, Maryam.”
Thirty-year-old Ian Albright held a handkerchief to his bleeding, and most likely broken, nose. His attempts to keep the crimson drops off his RAF officer’s dress uniform were thwarted by his inability to see anything through watering, and slowly swelling, eyes. Nineteen-year-old May stood four paces in front of him, holding her fist—which was also bleeding and harboring a freshly broken middle finger—like a smoking gun. She had punched many fellows in such a way for many transgressions. In fact, she’d gotten surgically accurate with the nose shot since her mother had informed her it was an excellent way to get a man’s attention while minimizing his capacity for retribution.
“What, by hitting you or by breaking up with you? Because both are feeling like excellent life decisions about now.”
“We could have been—”
“Could being the operative word.”
“—like royalty. We were made for each other. You have to see that.”
“I wasn’t made for you or anyone else, you pretentious fucker. And you certainly weren’t made for me. That’s obvious now.”
Ian attempted a high-nosed sneer, his signature look of condescension and contempt, but the shooting pain that radiated through his skull reduced the whole thing to a crooked, sarcastic grin. “Yes, well, if you weren’t so fucking provincial, perhaps you would understand.”
May shot his own look right back at him, having lampooned it for the nine months they’d been dating. In that time, she had learned about the quaking fragility of Ian Albright’s ego. Like so many young men with old money they’d had nothing to do with earning, it was a smoke screen for “commoners,” a thin coat of arms shielding a soft underbelly. Admittedly, Ian was far more than a self-aggrandizing rich kid. A brilliant intellect and tireless work ethic had saved him from becoming a stuffed shirt. But he couldn’t shake the sense of boundless entitlement that slowly devoured his soul. He dreamed of saving the world but scorned the legless beggar. The arrogant bastard his father had been, and his father before that, was part of his DNA, and life had rarely presented him with reasons to change that—until May had come along, of course, and yanked his world inside out.
“If I had been born to a ‘higher station’ like you, do you think I would actually have approved of your trying to kill my test-pilot commission? Because you’re jealous? Because you want to own me?”
“That’s not—”
“—not what happened? Are you trying to lie about it now as well? To me, of all people? If you value your balls, I suggest you retract.”
Ian went silent, pretending to dab his nose.
“Back to the question at hand. If I were of higher station, should I be inclined to accept this open act of hostility and outrageous lack of remorse on your part?”
He shook his head.
“Excellent. Now that we understand each other, allow me to complete my retort. We’re finished. There will be no reconciliation. Certainly not from me. And I would strongly recommend there be no overtures of this nature on your part. You will tell people the truth about what you’ve done, and you will not disparage me. If you do, that bloody nose will be the least of your concerns. And finally, I would like you to take one last look at me and tell me, again, who is making a mistake here.”
May waited, clearly conveying the fact that she was not posing a rhetorical question and that the fury in her eyes was testament to her making good on her threats. When Ian looked up at her, he was crying—tears not just from injury but from knowing he might have destroyed the only real love he would ever get.
“Me,” he said quietly, and walked out.
There was a boyish quality to his defeat. May took no pleasure in it, but she didn’t take pity either. What he had done out of jealousy, possessiveness, and ego had scorched the earth for her, and there was no way of retrieving what they’d had. When he was gone, she cried as well. Ian had been her first love, and he had represented hope that she could rise above the swaggering armies of soulless men who would never be anything more than hard-ons with shelf lives as short as their vocabularies. She could even say he had swept her off her feet, something she’d thought could be accomplished only by flying machines. His mind was dazzling to behold, yet it was the one part of him that gave him humility.
When they had first met, they’d talked for hours about flying, something both had come to love because of the boundless freedom it afforded. Being together had made both of them feel free as well. Neither was the type they’d been sentenced to dating in the past. Physically, it had been the first time May had felt equal and respected during intimacy. Likewise, May had not required Ian to play the clichéd alpha role. But Ian’s hubris was the weak link in the chain, and when he walked out the door that day, he took with him May’s desire to ever trust anyone but herself.
63
After leaving Ian’s facility, Stephen flew to Houston to get whatever he could pack into a suitcase and collect Raj. Before he left, Ian had tried to get him to reconsider going home, but he was determined to retrieve the data drive that he and Raj had buried in his basement wall. Once Robert saw that Ian’s rescue mission was a go, he would blitz the house, and Stephen’s hiding place wasn’t sophisticated enough to dupe a federal strike team.
He left his car in the airport garage and paid a gypsy cab cash to take him to his house. They drove by it once, and Stephen didn’t see anything unusual. He had the driver take him to the alley that ran behind the houses, where people accessed their garages, and walked up to his. Still nothing odd, nothing raising the hackles on the back of his neck. He used the keypad to get into his garage and went straight down to the basement, dug the drive out of the wall, relieved it was still there, and shoved it into an old backpack.
“Motion detector, basement.”
Stephen could hear his house AI on the ground-floor console speaker. He froze. He had never used the security function in the house. Never even set it up. He’d always been more afraid of who would be able to hack it and access his entire life than he was of a burglar looking for valuables that didn’t exist. May hadn’t set it up or used it either.
Stephen stayed quiet and listened: footsteps, very light, in socks or barefoot, moving toward the basement stairs.
Stephen was in the utility room. There was a small storage room next to it with a metal window well. He ran to it. The window was stuck, so he shattered it with a paint can and climbed into the well. Footsteps, running down the stairs. He shoved the heavy grate up and open, throwing out his back. Hot knives of pain radiated out from his spine, all the way to his toes and fingertips. Footsteps in the basement, someone crashing through all the junk he and May had, thankfully, hoarded down there. He pulled himself up out of the window well, the glass shards on the basement floor below crunching as someone ran through them, heading for the window.
Stephen sprinted down the alley, blood on his hands from the glass, his back seizing and wrenching with pain. The taxi was still there. He jumped in.
“What the hell happened to you?” the driver asked.
“Go!” Stephen yelled. “Someone broke into my house,” he panted. “I walked in on them. They’re coming.”
He looked out the back window. A man rounded the corner, sprinting. Stephen couldn’t make him out. Dark clothes, tall, carrying something dark. The driver saw him in the rearview mi
rror. “Shit, he’s got a fucking gun.” He punched the accelerator, throwing Stephen into the backseat against his backpack. The metal drive inside smacked into his back where the muscles had all knotted, and he screamed in pain. When they were clear of the neighborhood, he called Raj.
“This is the last time I’m going to use this phone, so listen.”
“Dude, what—”
“I said listen. Stuff whatever is important to you into a bag. No clothes, toiletries, anything like that. Grab whatever you can’t live without and get the hell out of your place. Meet me at the diner where we met before, the one you didn’t like. Do not take your car. Do not use an app-based car service. After this call, don’t use the phone again. Just leave it at your place. Go now,” he yelled, and hung up.
Half an hour later, they were at the blue-collar greasy spoon where they’d met before when Stephen had wanted a safe place to talk. He’d chosen a booth next to a door to the kitchen that led to the back exit.
“Have you noticed anything strange?” Stephen asked.
“Yeah—when I was jogging this morning, a guy in a windowless black van pulled up to the curb and asked me if I wanted some candy.”
“Asshole. This is not a fucking joke, okay, Raj? Look at me. Am I laughing?”
“No,” Raj said nervously. “Sorry. I make jokes when I get nervous. You know that. And when I think I’m in mortal danger, I’m hilarious. See, I can’t help it.”
“I told you I can’t help it,” Raj whispered harshly. “And no, I haven’t seen anything strange. I’ve been lying low, like you said. This was actually the first day I’ve been home since you left. There’s a twenty-four-seven multiplayer game sphere near the airport, so I’ve been crashing at a motel out there, paying with cash. I think I might have bedbugs.”
“We need to get out of Houston today.”
“What? Where are we going to go?”
“I know a place. I Just need to figure out how to get there.”