by Lisa Henry
“You’re okay,” I told her, taking her back and holding her close. Running my hands over her to reassure us both. “You’re okay. It wasn’t you. It was Chris, not you.”
She buried her tearful face in my shoulder.
Harry was back on the table, lifting himself up into the vent. “I can’t see them!”
There had been so much noise, so much shouting, so much panic, that I hadn’t felt it at first. Hadn’t felt that someone was gone, no longer a part of us. A light flicked off, plunging a room into darkness.
Kyle.
Kyle was dead.
I couldn’t even say I hardly knew him. Not when I could still see the proud smile his dad gave him, the wrinkles around his eyes deepening. Not when I could still remember the way his dad showed Kyle how to do up his tie before he went away to officer training. Not when I could still feel the warmth that smile filled Kyle with, making him puff out his chest and grin so wide it hurt. His dad had been so proud of him.
“I see them!” Harry exclaimed.
Andre climbed up onto the table and gave Harry a boost.
Then Cam and Chris and Devon were dropping back through the vent hard, puppets with their strings suddenly cut, their useless limbs collapsing under them. They were covered in blood and pain and panic and it hit me like a wall, and I couldn’t pick it apart. Didn’t need to, though. I just needed to act. I shoved Lucy into Harry’s arms and skidded into the bathroom to get the first-aid kit.
“Andre, go and find me some more. Hurry!”
Cam. I focused on Cam first, and on his racing heartbeat. Fast but steady.
“I’m okay.” He was half carrying Devon.
I helped Cam get him onto the bed.
There was a lot of blood. It was soaking through Devon’s tunic. I opened the first-aid kit. Bandages, mostly. Tweezers. Gloves. Antiseptic. Some basic type of painkiller. Nothing actually fucking useful. By the time I’d gone through it, Cam had unbuttoned Devon’s tunic. His T-shirt was covered in blood.
I knelt beside him on the bed and peeled his shirt up.
A sucking chest wound. Great. My favorite.
“Get his shirt off him,” I told Cam and pulled on a pair of gloves. “Chris,” I said over my shoulder, “are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, voice shaking.
Liar.
“Put pressure on your arm until I can take a look,” I told him.
Andre came back with another few first-aid kits.
“Okay,” I told Devon, fighting down the fear that was threatening to overwhelm him first, then me. “I’m gonna tape this up, okay? Because you don’t want a collapsed lung, and that’s what’ll happen if we can’t stop the air from getting in through your chest.”
He nodded weakly, his bloody fingers twitching on the sheets.
“I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die.”
“You’re not gonna die, Devon,” I told him. We both thought of the redheaded woman he’d left back home. Stupid, but he’d thought he was doing the right thing coming here. He’d thought he’d known the risks. He’d been ready to meet the Faceless, to sacrifice his future with that redheaded woman for the future of all humanity, and instead he’d been taken out by a human. It was fucking ridiculous. “I know what I’m doing.”
He grimaced, and blood frothed on his lips. “You mop floors.”
“I’m a man of many talents,” I told him.
I knew this shit. I’d been Doc’s best medic once upon a time.
I wiped Devon’s chest down as quickly as I could, then unwrapped a sterile plastic sheet and laid it over the wound. Taped the top and both sides.
“Okay, I’m going to roll you onto your side now,” I told him. I nodded at Cam. “Injured side down.”
Cam helped me ease him into the lateral position.
“Cam, watch him,” I said, peeling the gloves off and reaching for a fresh pair. “Make sure his breathing doesn’t get worse. Check the blood doesn’t stick the dressing to his skin. If you see the veins in his neck bulging, or if his lips turn blue, let me know.”
“That’s it?” Andre asked.
“Unless there’s a fully equipped operating theater in one of those first-aid kits, then yeah, that’s it.” I turned around to deal with Chris next. Apart from the bullet lodged in his shattered muscle and bone, he was okay. He wasn’t going to bleed out or anything, at least. “I’d go in looking for it, but I’ve only got this screwdriver.”
“I’ll pass,” Chris said, his face pale.
“Smart.” I bound his arm as tightly as I could, made him a sling, and then went and pulled a chair up close to the bed.
I watched Devon.
Nothing else to do except watch.
* * * *
Out the window, the lights of the Core blinked in the black. The med bay was right there, right fucking there, for all the good it did us.
“Will Kai-Ren come and help Devon?” Lucy asked me quietly at one point.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Pretty sure a Faceless pod was the only thing that could save him now. He was in shock. His lips were blue.
“He’s coming,” Lucy said. “He’s getting closer.”
I don’t know what terrified me more—that Kai-Ren was coming, or that he wouldn’t make it in time.
With a proper med kit, at least I could have overdosed Devon on morphine and let him go quicker. Let him go without pain. Let him go wrapped in nothing but warmth and the memory of that redheaded woman with her crooked smile and the taste of coffee in her kisses. But I had nothing.
Devon took over an hour to die.
* * * *
“What do you think?” Chris asked, his voice rasping.
“What do I think about what?” I asked him as I adjusted his sling.
“Been a while since we heard anything. You think the officers are back in control?”
“I think those painkillers are pretty fucking strong if you’re even asking,” I told him. “If they were in control, they would have checked on us.”
“Yeah.” He leaned his head back on the wall and closed his eyes. “Wishful thinking.”
Chris was right, though. It had been a while since we’d heard any explosions. Maybe they’d given up.
I thought of the guys I remembered from my first time here on the station. O’Shea, who snored like a bastard. Hooper, the half-stir-crazy, half-actual-crazy fucker from engineering. Cesari, with his silver crucifix and his strange unspoken faith in something bigger than the black and the nightmares in it. Branski, that rat-faced little fuck, and Wade. Fucking Wade. I was sixteen when he jumped me in the showers that time. Nineteen when he kicked the shit out of me, broke almost every bone in my body, and left me to burn in a UV chamber.
Well, fuck him. He was dead. Fuck him.
I thought of those other guys and wondered which side they were on in this. Wondered who was in charge. Wondered what they’d do next.
Maybe their next move was to get control of ops and simply cut our air off. That would have been my next move, but then I was never that creative. Not as creative as those assholes outside, apparently.
Lucy gasped suddenly and turned back from the window. “Brady, look!”
I turned around slowly, expecting to see the Faceless ship looming darkly out of nothing, blocking out the starlight. Expecting Kai-Ren. Instead, I saw a Hawk. It was close, the clean, sharp lines of it lit up by the lights of the station. The lights that blinked on and off like buoys in a dark ocean, marking out safe channels. Lighting the way home.
“Move!” Cam shouted. “Move!”
The Hawk pivoted slowly, as graceful as a dancer en pointe.
They couldn’t get through the doors, so they were going to come through the walls. Puncture a hole in the side of Defender Three and rip the oxygen right out of our lungs.
We barreled out into the corridor, straight for the fire store. My hands shook as I shoved a mask over Lucy’s small, thin face and tightened it as much as I could, and rippe
d off her backpack to hook the tank over her shoulders instead. It was heavy.
Wouldn’t be, though.
Not for long.
Not once the hull was breached and we lost atmo.
“Cam? Cam, Jesus. Cam, what do we do?”
Cam slapped a mask over my face. The seal felt loose. I reached behind my head and fumbled with the straps. My fingers slipped.
“The blast doors,” Chris said, his voice distorted by his mask. “They won’t risk a hit near the blast doors.”
I held Lucy’s hand, and we hurried toward the blast doors.
I thought we’d still have time.
I thought it might even work.
I thought that maybe we could get inside a room and wait it out.
Ride out the sudden decompression and wait.
Wait for Leonski to retake control.
Wait for a rescue party.
Then the Hawk punched a hole in Defender Three, and the universe tore us apart.
A rush of noise. Metal screaming. A wall of heat from the missile that tore through the hull. Fire that flared and was gone again in the blink of an eye, ripping through our oxygen and suffocated in an instant. Wind roaring. Debris flying. A maelstrom, and I was sucked straight into it. Straight into the gaping, hungry mouth of the black.
Lucy’s hand wasn’t in mine anymore.
My feet weren’t on the floor. My hands were scrabbling at nothing. I snagged a door frame, maybe. Looked back the way I thought I’d come. Saw the others, linked like a string of paper dolls twisting in the wind.
Just had to hold on.
Had to hold on until the pressure stabilized.
My fingers slipped.
My head hit the wall, the floor, the ceiling, I don’t know. The impact knocked my mask askew. The seal broke. I tried to grab the jagged edges of the mouth the Hawk had made, sharp fangs of metal snapping at me.
Missed.
Blood burst like vapor from the jagged cut in my arm.
I didn’t feel it.
The bracelet Lucy had given me snapped and broke. The blue and green beads floated away on the mist of my blood.
I breathed out. Breathed out, because that was the only thing I remembered to do. Breathed out so my lungs didn’t burst. Buying myself minutes instead of seconds.
Defender Three grew smaller and smaller as I sank into the black.
“Brady! Brady!” Cam and Lucy, both calling for me.
I could feel the moisture boiling on my tongue.
“Don’t let her go, Cam. Don’t ever let her go.”
And then I didn’t feel anything at all.
Chapter Thirteen
I woke up with sunlight on my face.
I blinked my eyes open. I saw sun-bleached clumps of gum leaves swinging listlessly in the breeze. I saw blue sky so brilliant that it burned its shape on my retinas when I blinked. I turned my head and saw red dirt. Saw a green ant marching over the back of my hand, its feet tickling my skin. I reached out and pinched it before it could sting. I bit its abdomen off, and the sweet sugary taste of it flooded onto my tongue.
The air smelled of eucalypts and hard, baked earth.
“I’m dead,” I said.
“Bray-dee.”
A shudder ran through me. “I’m not dead. I’m in a Faceless pod.”
“Bray-dee.”
I sat up and unlaced my boots. Pulled them off. Balled my socks up and threw them away. Tugged my shirt off. Then I hugged my knees and let the sun burn my back.
Starlight, Cam tried to tell me once. Sunlight was just starlight. But the sun was the only star that could warm me. It was the only starlight I’d ever chased.
I dragged my fingers through the red dirt and caught a handful of it. I held my palm up and tilted it to let most of the dirt trickle away. Traces of it pooled like blood in the lines of my palm.
Not dead.
But a part of me wondered what the difference was.
* * * *
When Kai-Ren touched the pod, the skin bowed in, and the pressure of the fluid inside increased. I opened my eyes. The fluid didn’t sting. I knew it was him, even though he was wearing the thin black mask that covered his cadaverous face. I knew his face. His porcelain-white skin stretched tight over angular bones. Hollow cheeks. Yellow eyes. A narrow bridge of a nose, slits for nostrils. A face like a death’s head from some ancient illuminated picture where the creatures from hell danced out of the pit. As primal as a nightmare.
I lifted my hand and pressed it against his. The skin of the pod slid between our palms, as slick as mucus, and then it began to dissolve.
I stared up at him as the fluid surrounding me drained away. I coughed once when the air hit my face, spitting out gobs of the milky fluid, and then my lungs burned as I sucked in a lungful of oxygen. Only the first few breaths hurt.
“Bray-dee.” Kai-Ren ran his gloved hand down my slick chest. He splayed his fingers over my heart. “Mmm.”
I felt the slow burn of pleasure thrum through him as my heartbeat thumped against his palm. It sounded as hollow as a drum.
I lifted a shaking hand to wipe the fluid out of my eyes.
Kai-Ren slid his hand up to my throat and closed his fingers around it gently. My carotid artery hammered against his hand. I blinked and saw myself through his eyes. Naked skin gleaming with fluid, dark eyes wide. A pounding heartbeat. Hot blood pulsing under prickling skin. Waves of confused emotion crashing inside that fragile human skull and spreading out through twitching limbs. A million different synapses firing and misfiring. Nerves sparking. So warm and so alive.
So alien.
A twisting mouth. A rasping voice. Stuttering words laced with fear.
“Are th-they alive?” I asked him.
He tilted his head. “Listen, Bray-dee.”
“Listen.”
“I don’t hear them.”
Kai-Ren made a hissing sound. “You must listen.”
I heard Lucy’s laugh. Heard the clatter of her shoes on the floor of our apartment. Heard the huff of Cam’s breath against my ear as I tugged him into an embrace at night. Heard them arguing about how many pieces of carrot Lucy had to eat before she could have her dessert.
“These are just memories,” I said. “I need to know if they’re alive.”
That same hissing sound. Rebuke, maybe. “They live.”
“Are they safe?”
There was no answer, only a lessening of the pressure on the throat.
“Am I safe?”
Kai-Ren stepped back.
He was my nightmare. I should have been crippled by fear. I had been, last time. I’d collapsed like all my bones were suddenly liquid. I’d sobbed and screamed, curled in on myself like a wounded animal.
Helpless. Hopeless.
Still those things, maybe, maybe always, but this time Cam couldn’t protect me. Couldn’t stand between me and Kai-Ren. This time I had to stand on my own.
I reached up and gripped the edges of the pod. Pulled myself upright. I shivered, even though it wasn’t cold. The Faceless ship was humid, almost dank. I remembered walls that were damp, like living tissue. I remembered floors that would give underfoot, yielding like flesh.
I climbed out of the pod.
The fluid from the pod was already drying on me like a second skin. It flaked away like scales when I moved. I remembered the burst of blood from the jagged tear on my arm and ran my fingers over the skin. There was no wound, not even a scar.
I turned my head and looked at Kai-Ren. The tall black shape of him. Formless. Faceless. I wondered, for the first time, what they called themselves.
He’d saved my life.
If I was an insect to him, and I knew I was, then I was the insect he’d seen drowning. The insect he’d spread his hand under, lifted out of the black water, and set down in the sunlight. The insect he’d watched curiously while it trembled and buzzed awake.
“Bray-dee.”
My heart beat faster as I walked toward him. As I stood befor
e him. As I lifted my hand to touch his Faceless mask.
I’d seen Cam do this a hundred times in dreams. I’d been Cam those hundred times. The feel of his mask, as smooth as latex, as damp as a membrane, was familiar to me.
I touched him.
The dark-eyed alien touched him.
A thrum of electricity ran through us both as the connection sparked and then settled. I could hear the other Faceless then, the ones on this ship, Kai-Ren’s hive. I could hear the hissing sounds they made when they spoke, coalescing slowly into words that I could almost understand. My link was weaker than Cam’s; he’d been the connection that completed our circuit. The link grew weaker as it branched out. Chris and Lucy were farther away from the center. The other Faceless were.
“I want Cam and Lucy,” I told him.
“Lu-cee,” he hissed.
My memories crashed over both of us.
A baby worn in a sling across a boy’s skinny chest, her heart beating against his. A little girl with a grubby face and flyaway hair.
“Tell me a story, Brady.”
“Sing me a song. Brady.”
“Sasi sasi, Brady.”
“Carry me, Brady.”
“Higher!”
My memories, my heartbreak had caught him once. The universe had shrunk under the force of it. He’d sent me back the first time because something about that little girl, about the fierce love I had for her, the shadow of it resonating in the link between us, had caught him.
The Faceless didn’t feel those things like we did, but the echo of it had snared his attention.
The faintest echo, and it had burst like a supernova in his universe.
Kai-Ren had sent me home because he’d caught a glimpse of that light, and it had burned so brightly. It had torn a hole in his armor that no bullet or blade ever could.