Whispers in the Mist: Black Winter Book Three

by Coates, Darcy

  Johann was already storming towards the door, where a chute was waiting to accept trash.

  “He’s overreacting.” Dorran smiled and shrugged. “But at least we can be useful.”

  The discovery had shaken Johann, but it seemed to have changed his attitude towards Dorran. As they crept between the plants, lifting leaves and hunting for the tell-tale symptoms, Johann didn’t scrutinise their work beyond quick glances. Clare had the sense that he no longer saw them as a liability.

  In the end, five potato plants were condemned to the incinerator. Johann seemed faintly relieved as he sanitised and hung up their tools and offered to lead them back to the main parts of the ship for dinner.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Clare sat on the edge of her bed, running a comb through her hair. Niall had come in and helped them change the sheets, and even though she’d only been awake for half a day, she was already feeling tired enough to sleep.

  The ship was fitted out beautifully, but it still lacked one thing that Clare was starting to miss: windows. She found her eyes constantly roving across the walls, looking for a frame to stare out of. Some had art installed on them. They were pretty, but they didn’t replace a view of the outside.

  She was also missing the natural light. According to Niall, the bunker’s occupants were following a strict twenty-four-hour timeline, and he was monitoring them to make sure their sleep schedules didn’t start drifting. Clare could see the value in that. Already, she’d lost her sense of time. The clock on her bedside table said it was just after midnight, but it could have told her it was noon, and she would have believed it.

  Dorran cleaned his teeth in the bathroom. She enjoyed listened to the noises of him moving around. The sickness still left an impact. Shadows clung to his face, and he moved more stiffly than he used to, but for the first time, she could tell he was slowly growing better, not worse.

  He seems so much happier here. Although he still spoke rarely around their new companions, he didn’t have the wariness he’d shown around Ezra or Beth. It wasn’t the first time that Clare had wondered if he might have a sixth sense about others’ intentions. He even seemed comfortable around Johann, who had been the most vocal about getting them off the ship. Clare hoped that was a good sign.

  The tap shut off, then Dorran stepped back into the bedroom. He’d changed into night clothes—loose pants and a white T-shirt he’d borrowed from Johann. They looked good on him.

  “Would you mind lifting your feet up?” he asked. Clare lifted her legs off the ground and tucked them under herself. Dorran planted his hands on the second bed and shoved it until they bumped together.

  She grinned. “Nice idea.”

  “I thought it would be good to stay close tonight. But I also thought it would be good to have room to stretch.” He crawled onto his half of the new double bed and bent over the midway point to kiss Clare. His lips, feather light, traced across hers. Clare leaned in to deepen the kiss, and he happily obliged, one hand coming up to run over her neck.

  “Love you,” he murmured and pressed the light switch above their bed.

  They both ended up near the centre of their joint bed, hands tangling together. Tiredness abruptly fled Clare. The room was too dark. She felt as though she were drowning in the shadows. Her muscles tightened.

  Dorran ran his hand across the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrist. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” she lied. “Just trying to get my mind to slow down.”

  “Mm. If you’re not ready to sleep, we can put the lights back on.”

  “No, I’m good. I just have to get comfortable first.” She squirmed around a bit, hoping a different angle might let the stress drip out of her. Even if she couldn’t sleep, Dorran needed rest. It was just darkness. There would be plenty more of it once they left the ship. She needed to get used to it.

  The last time it was this dark was…

  She saw the scene clearly in her mind. Fetching dead wood to keep their campfire alive. Stepping into the shadows in search of dry branches. Leaving Dorran, unconscious, behind her.

  A cold sweat rose across her skin. She tried to keep still, knowing movement would alert Dorran, but her heartrate was rocketing. Her eyes were wide, staring blindly into the dark.

  “Clare.” His hands ran across her skin and felt how clammy it was. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

  She couldn’t talk to him. Not about this. Not about Beth. Especially since he’d borne the brunt of her mistake. How self-centred would she sound, seeking comfort when she’d suffered the least? “Just… just can’t slow my mind. I’ll count some sheep. That’ll work.”

  His hands moved away, and for a second, Clare thought he was stretching. Then the light above the bed clicked on. His beautiful dark eyes glittered in the dull glow as he settled back down beside her and carefully encircled her with his arms. For a moment, he just looked, his gaze moving across her face, reading her. Then he said, “Do you want to talk about Beth?”

  Please, no. She closed her eyes to escape his scrutiny. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  A deep rumbling laugh emanated from his chest. His thumb grazed under her chin. “I asked if you wanted to talk. I didn’t ask if you wanted to apologise.”

  She opened her eyes. Dorran’s posture wasn’t tense. He was languid, lying on his side, facing her, his eyes heavily lidded and full of warmth. She didn’t think that kind of calm could be faked. Clare wet her lips and whispered, “Do you want to talk about her?”

  He considered it before answering. “Maybe a little. We didn’t really… discuss it earlier. And I don’t need to. If it hurts you too much, I won’t mention her again. But… I think it might be good for both of us.”

  Clare wished she could take his offer and never mention her sister again. But he was right. It would loom over them, the elephant in the room, growing larger the longer they tried to ignore it. And, if nothing else, Dorran deserved a chance to express how he felt. “Okay.”

  He waited, his posture just as peaceful, his eyes questioning. Clare felt too vulnerable. She looked away first. “You start.”

  “Hah.” Again, he smiled. “All right. I suppose I’m curious to know where she is right now. Do you think she would keep travelling, or do you think she’d find a home to live in? I wonder if she would return to her old suburb, or whether it would be too bleak there?”

  Clare choked on her words. She felt tears prickling, but she refused to let herself cry. “I don’t understand how you can be so calm. You must hate her—”

  “Ah.” Dorran’s expression took on a hint of sadness. He curled forward to kiss Clare’s forehead. “No, my darling. I don’t hate her.”

  Clare frowned at him. “But you should—”

  “Should I?”

  Her eyes drifted towards the bandages peeking above the collar of his shirt.

  “I wasn’t awake for that last night, and several days before are clouded and confused.” His sad smile deepened. “I’m afraid I don’t have many clear memories of her.”

  Clare swallowed, blinking against the tears. “Well… good. That’s probably for the best.”

  “You may need to feel a lot of things,” Dorran said. “You might need to hate her. That’s all right. You might need to grieve for her. That’s all right too. But I hope, with time, you can remember her for what she was before the stillness. That’s how I think of her.”

  “Do you really?”

  “As much as I can. I think about the stories you told me about her. And about how much she loved you. She might not have been a perfect older sister, but it sounded like she tried to be.”

  A rogue tear escaped, but Clare kept her head down so that he wouldn’t see it absorb into the pillow. “Thank you.”

  “Mm.” Another kiss to her forehead. “Shall we keep the light on tonight?”

  Clare was beyond trying to pretend she was fine. She nodded.

  “I love you, my darling.” Dorran’s arms stayed around her, his fin
gers tracing unfathomable patterns across her skin until she finally sank into sleep.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  A harsh, mechanical whooping noise blared through the room. Clare jolted, and Dorran’s arms tightened around her, reflexively clutching her against him.

  The fog of sleep stuck to her, and it took Clare a second to remember where they were. The blankets were in disarray around them, the light above their bed left on to cut through the dark. Clare looked at the digital clock beside the light. It said it was eight in the morning.

  The alarm rose and fell in sickening undulations, so loud that Clare could barely hear anything else.

  Dorran sat up, his eyes wild, a pulse jumping in his throat. “We need to find the others.”

  The words broke through the paralysis. Clare swung her feet over the side of the bed and fumbled to fit her shoes. She was desperate for the alarm to stop. She was terrified of what it might mean.

  Dorran snatched their jackets off the back of a nearby chair then offered his hand to Clare. Together, they jogged for the medical bay’s door and forced it open.

  The siren played through the hallway as well. A red light flashed, casting a harsh glow across the white walls. Clare felt unstable, as though the floor were tipping underneath her, and she clutched at the doorway to hold herself still.

  Footsteps thundered towards them. West appeared, racing along the hall, but he barely glanced at them before disappearing around a corner. Clare and Dorran exchanged a look, then followed.

  Clare hadn’t been in that part of the ship before. The hallways were still generous but slightly narrower than the other areas, and the duller colours told her it was likely a maintenance area. Through the whooping siren, Clare thought she could hear voices yelling but couldn’t make out the words.

  Unathi appeared, striding towards them with long, loping steps as she dragged a jacket on over her shirt, her dreadlocks swinging behind her. She looked furious as she turned in to a room. Clare and Dorran followed but stopped in the doorway. The room was crowded, with West and Johann already taking up the available space.

  A dashboard was set up against one wall. Multiple screens showed security camera views of the ship’s halls as well as the above-ground entrance. Lights flashed aggressively across the board, and Unathi pressed several buttons. The sirens fell silent.

  Everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Unathi straightened, turning to glare at each of them in turn. “Who set off the alarm?”

  “Not me,” Johann snarled.

  “We were asleep,” Clare said, fighting the urge to flinch under Unathi’s piercing stare. “What was the alarm for?”

  “Smoke alert.”

  West cleared his throat, looking apologetic. “I was cooking pancakes. It must have been my fault. I was trying really hard not to burn them but—”

  “No, that wouldn’t have been it.” Unathi turned back to the screens and began typing on the keyboard. “This says it was affecting the ventilation systems across the ship. That’s more than a scorched pancake can achieve. Where are Niall and Becca?”

  “Here, here,” a muffled voice said. Niall entered the room. He blinked bleary eyes, his curly hair lopsided from where he’d slept on it. His shirt was on backwards.

  Becca entered after him, looking equally exhausted, her grey-streaked hair hanging limply around her face and dark bags under her eyes. She’d brought the laptop with her, clutching it against her chest. “What happened?”

  “Fire alarm.” Uanthi continued to work at the console. “I’m trying to pinpoint—oh.”

  The surveillance screens changed. They showed the garden, the plants Clare and Dorran had helped weed the day before displayed in greyscale. Smoke poured into the area.

  “What?” Johann lurched forward, his face twisting. “No. No. Damn it!”

  “What on earth?” Unathi squinted at the screen, nudging her glasses farther up her nose as she tried to make out where the smoke was coming from.

  Johann burst past Clare and Dorran and into the hallway.

  Clare watched him until he’d vanished around the corner, then she stepped closer to Unathi. “Has anything like this happened before?”

  Her voice was calm, but her features were grim. “No. The ship was constructed to be fire-retardant. This shouldn’t be possible.”

  “Do you have a sprinkler system?” Clare asked.

  “Y-Yes.” Becca, shivering, stared at the screens. “But it’s not water. We have a limited amount that needs to be recycled, and flooding the ship would make it vulnerable to mould and deteriorating air quality. But if we can isolate the fire’s location, we can smother it with carbon dioxide.”

  Unathi was cycling through cameras, her jaw working. “The trick is finding the source.”

  “It’s not in the garden?” Dorran asked.

  “No. But it has to be close for that much smoke to be coming through the ventilation systems.”

  Johann appeared on screen, one arm pressed over his face as he ran into the garden that was steadily filling with smoke. Niall made a faint noise of distress. “Ah—as his doctor—I should mention—I have to advise against this—”

  Unathi leaned close to a microphone and pressed a button. “Johann, can you hear me? Get out of that room. We won’t be able to rescue you if you pass out from smoke inhalation.”

  On the screen, Johann raised one hand as though to acknowledge the order, but he continued on his course between the plants.

  Clare thought she could see where he was heading. The smoke was coming from the back of the room, where massive fans were set into the wall to circulate air. Sure enough, he didn’t stop moving until he’d reached a blinking panel next to the right-most fan.

  The six of them crowded into the surveillance room were so quiet that Clare thought she could hear her own thundering heartbeat. They all craned to see the screen, watching Johann as he pulled a metal panel off the wall and buried his hands into the wires underneath. The smoke was so thick that it almost obscured the camera’s view.

  Unathi pressed on the microphone again. “Damn it, Johann, get out of there.”

  He held his position, and Clare bit her tongue, silently urging him to hurry. Then, abruptly, he turned and began sprinting back to the door.

  Unathi released a heavy breath. “Thank mercy.”

  She began typing again, bringing up a map of the compound. Flashing red lights littered the image. Clare didn’t know the building well enough to guess where they were on the maze of lights. New sections lit up as the alarm spread.

  “Ah,” Unathi whispered. “Found it. Mechanical fire, air-intake system. Something must have jammed. Becca?”

  The smaller woman stepped forward, still clutching her laptop in one arm, and began typing on the dashboard with her spare hand. Command boxes flashed up on the screen and disappeared before Clare had the chance to read them.

  The door thumped open as Johann barged into the cramped room. He was wheezing, breathless, and as he entered, the scent of toxic plastic-laced smoke filled Clare’s nose.

  “I shut off the ducts so that the smoke doesn’t kill the garden, but that means it’s going to be building up in the ventilation system. You need to cycle it back outside.”

  “That’s a problem.” Unathi indicated towards the dashtop, where Becca’s quick taps were turning lights from red to flashing yellow. “The fire came from the intake. As far as I can make out, something blocked it and caused it to overheat.”

  Johann pulled his lips back from his teeth, narrowed eyes darting from Unathi to the screen. “But… the external intake wasn’t even supposed to be running. We’re a closed system. That’s how we survived the stillness, right?”

  Becca carefully stepped away from the board and pressed her back to the wall. “Fire’s out. And, yes, we were supposed to be a closed system, but I had to deactivate that protocol when we allowed Clare and Dorran’s bus through the shutter door. Then we were so busy, I forgot to reactivate it. I’m so sorry.�
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  “At least we know the cause.” Unathi traced her fingertips across her jaw as she scrutinised the ship’s map. The blueprints changed: the white hallways faded into grey, and blue lines appeared, detailing the air filtration system. Flashing red exclamation marks lined many of them. “At least, with the vents closed, the smoke will be contained.”

  “That’s only a temporary fix, though, isn’t it?” West tugged on his beard, a nervous tic. “Closing the ducts isn’t a perfect seal. The smoke will still be seeping out, just more slowly.”

  Johann tapped one of the screens. “The intake is positioned behind the above-ground entry. If we can clear whatever’s blocking it, we should be able to reverse-cycle the system and blow the smoke back outside. I’ll head above ground and fix it.”

  “Wait a moment,” Clare said. She turned to Unathi. “Can you find out what caused the blockage?”

  Unathi pressed more buttons, and the screens changed from the blueprint to above-ground cameras. One faced the front entry to the compound and the shuttered door Clare had driven through. She thought it might be the camera attached to the speaker system. Grass swayed in the breeze, and in the distance, the chain-link fence glittered in the early-morning light. Unathi pressed another button, and the screen switched to a different angle of the entrance. “We don’t have a view of the intake.”

  Johann sighed. “Then I’ll take the low-tech approach and go see it for myself.”

  “I don’t like this,” Unathi said.

  “Hell, Chief, neither do I. That’s why I’m gonna fix it.” Johann wrenched open one of the cupboards at the back of the room and brought out the rifle.

  Unathi shook her head. “No, I mean—I don’t understand how the filtration intake could become blocked. It’s supposed to be maintenance-free.”

  “Well, congrats, we found one of the kinks we were put down here to discover. Now we gotta fix it, because that smoke will continue seeping out of the ducts every hour we wait, and I don’t think Aspect is going to send a repairman any time soon.”