This Splintered Silence

by Kayla Olson

  I’ve never seen fury and fear like I have on Natalin in this moment. She could spontaneously combust; she could shatter every orb and assail us with a storm of shards.

  But she holds herself together. Looks me straight in the eye and says: “Completely. Royally. Screwed.”

  44

  WHEN IN DARKNESS, STRIKE A MATCH

  NONE OF US wants to be here.

  We don’t want to talk about how completely wrecked we are. We don’t want to stumble on each other’s live, frayed wires, don’t want to feel the shock wave of electricity as it radiates through our skin. We would all be better off alone right now.

  We don’t have that luxury.

  I ordered an emergency meeting of our six, again in SSL, with its silent, still forest of glowing pillars. Silent and still is all I crave right now—we have problems upon problems upon problems, and they’re not going away unless we find a way to deal with them.

  Natalin is the last to arrive. She stalks over to us, paces around the spotlit lab instead of making a place for herself. The rest of us might be steady where we sit and stand, but the tension is palpable. Even Leo’s looking cracked and worn down, and Heath—Heath’s eyes have never looked so heavy.

  I should say something. They’re waiting for me to say something. I called this meeting, after all. But I’m at a total loss. How would my mother handle this? How would she deal with this spiral of defeat that grows more hopeless, more bleak, with every hour?

  She wouldn’t let it crush her, I know that much. But she also wouldn’t give false hope just for the sake of lightening the mood.

  “We’re imploding,” I say finally. “I know it, you all know it.”

  No one says a word. No one moves. Only Leo and Heath meet my eyes, and the others—the others stare at their hands, at the floor.

  “Zesi, Heath, thank you again for making the trip to Nautilus.” Zesi looks up, his brown eyes hard and cold. It’s an unnatural look on him, and for a moment, it steals my breath. Everyone hears what I’m not saying, I’m sure: thank you for making the trip even though you brought back a useless filter and, possibly, a new strain of sickness.

  “It’s particularly devastating,” I continue, “to have so much at risk. To think you’re making progress, to come so close, only to have it not work out after all. And to have huge consequences on the line, life at stake.” Now I’m the one who has to look away. “On one hand, it would be easier not to try anymore at all—the higher your hopes, the harder the fall when they don’t work out, right? And nothing seems to be working out. At all.”

  All the emotions I’m trying to swallow are trapped in my throat. I take a moment, close my eyes. Still, no one speaks: we have never had a meeting so silent as this, not once. We are in even worse shape than I thought.

  “We may be imploding,” I go on, “and we are definitely frustrated, and tired, and nothing we’ve tried has fixed anything, and we are running out of time to fix it.” I don’t throw out hard numbers—everyone saw how little clean water was left in that one orb. If we place a station-wide ban on showers, at least we’ll have drinking water for another day, maybe two.

  “But”—I pause, wait until I have eye contact from each and every one of them, even Natalin—“we aren’t dead yet. We can figure this filter thing out, there has to be a way.”

  “And the virus?” Haven cuts in. “Even if we figure the filter out, what’s our plan with that?”

  “The new strain we might’ve brought back? Or do you mean the murders?” Zesi says, and all heads turn.

  “You told him?” My words are knives, aimed straight at Leo’s heart. How could he? How could he share that, when it took so much faith for me to confide that much in him?

  Everyone is talking now, so many voices so many words so much noise, so loud loud loud they lace together like a tightly spun spiderweb. I can’t pick apart the individual questions, I only know that the faltering hope we had—the tenuous trust we had in each other—just took a major hit. Perhaps a devastating one.

  “Yes,” I say, my voice like iron as it cuts through all the others. The noise falls away, and I take a deep breath. Like it or not, the terrible secret is out. “The recent deaths—someone killed them on purpose.” Someone could be killing again as we speak, and I hate that my time and energy and attention are so desperately fractured right now. There is too much at stake on every front, too little time.

  It is also not lost on me that that someone might be in this very room. I don’t truly believe that to be the case, because the panic on their faces is real. But what kind of scientist would I be to rule an entire group out based purely on my own feelings?

  “You weren’t going to say anything to us, Lindley?” To me, I hear underneath Heath’s words. You weren’t going to say anything to me?

  “But why would someone do this?” Haven says, her voice rising with every word. “It doesn’t make any sense. And how? How did they do it and make it look so . . . so . . . so much like the virus?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” I say. “I didn’t want anyone to panic, so I’ve been trying to learn as much as I could on my own before I called for lockdown or told anyone . . . else.” I give Leo a pointed look: I still can’t believe he told Zesi. I never explicitly told him not to, and I never explicitly mentioned the deeper reasoning behind keeping it a secret—because how do we know, for sure, who didn’t do it? Leo spilling this secret: not helping my trust issues.

  “Figure out the how and you’ll land on the who.” Natalin’s voice is heavy, sharp. “Maybe you should go get to work on that, Lindley, before anyone else dies? Clearly you don’t need our help.”

  Her eyes are a challenge. I turn mine to steel, straighten my shoulders. She’s just anxious, I tell myself. Fearful, and past the point of freaking out. She does this every time, shifts the blame wherever she can—she doesn’t want any slight weight of failure to fall on her shoulders. Not her fault if I can’t figure out how to stop the deaths. Not her fault. My fault.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I say, betraying no emotion. “I should go get to work. I really don’t do enough around here.”

  I don’t want to bear the weight of failure, either. I can’t. A person can only bear so much.

  So I won’t fail. I promise this to myself, because other people’s lives depend on it—and my own life does, too—

  I. Will. Not. Fail.

  45

  SPITFIRE

  LEO RUNS OUT after me, calls my name over and over.

  I don’t stop.

  “I’m so sorry, Linds, I’m so sorry”—he is breathless when he catches up to me—“I thought maybe Zesi could help us look through the security feeds, so I told him in private. I thought I was helping, Linds, I thought—”

  “I told you that in confidence.” I pick up the pace, turn left, on autopilot to the lab at Portside. “I almost didn’t even tell you. Do you not realize it could be anyone? Someone on this station killed them, Leo, and we can’t just go making assumptions about who did or did not do it.”

  “Zesi seemed safe enough—”

  “There’s your mistake,” I say, whirling to face him. “No one is safe.”

  “I’m safe,” he says. “You know I’m safe.”

  “Are you? Are you really? Okay, I totally believe you because you told me you didn’t do it.” I’m just spitting fire now, and I know he doesn’t deserve this, but he’s here and I can’t stop. “I honestly know you don’t have it in you to murder people, Leo, but do you see my point? We don’t know anything. Not a single thing. Everything I thought I knew flipped on its head the instant I discovered these deaths happened because someone wanted them dead—we can’t afford to make assumptions. We make assumptions, we die.”

  We stand there, staring at each other, for a single moment—and then he nods, conviction taking over: conviction and determination. Something I said must have clicked.

  “Okay,” he says. “Okay. What can I do? How can I make thi
s up to you, Linds? I’m so sorry. I get it now. I want to help.” A beat passes, a breath. “I’m so sorry I messed this up.”

  “Search the security feeds all the way back through the night when we first found Mila,” I say, despite myself. I want to do this alone, but I can’t. I physically, emotionally can’t do everything on my own. “Buzz me immediately if you flag anything suspicious.”

  “You got it.”

  “And tell Haven to call for a station-wide lockdown, effective immediately. Tell her to have them break off into groups of four—make sure no one’s alone and everyone’s accounted for. Don’t tell them why.”

  “Will do, Linds.”

  We linger, long enough for me to think if he were going to kiss me now, he would have already.

  I’m glad he can read me well enough to know not to try.

  Lindley, buzz me back.

  Lindley, I know you’re seeing these.

  Lindley.

  LINDLEY.

  Haven’s messages pile up, one on top of another, but I’m in no mood to talk. I have work to do. I already said all I had to say to Leo—she can call him.

  Another message buzzes in on the heels of the last: If you don’t buzz me back in the next five minutes, I’m making an announcement about the water situation without your input whenever I call for the lockdown. I know you want input on this, Lindley, so BUZZ ME BACK.

  I close my eyes, breathe in and out deeply, then tap into the screen.

  “I knew you were just watching my messages roll in,” Haven says, not two seconds later.

  “I’m trying to focus over here.” I keep my voice even, try to stick to business and not feelings. Haven tends to veer toward feelings more often than not. “As far as the announcement goes, I think it’d be best for you to keep it to a bare minimum.”

  “Bare minimum, like, ‘No more showers, only drink what you need, and by the way, we’re all going to die’?”

  She can’t see my face, and that is a good thing.

  “Wow, Lindley, chill,” she says when I say nothing. “That was a joke. Learn to take one.”

  “This really isn’t the time, okay?” She’s wasting my time. And how can anyone joke about we’re all going to die after everything we’ve been through? After everything we’re still going through? I know some people process stress by turning everything into a joke, but come on.

  “I can’t believe you seriously thought I’d say that.” She sighs, a loud and dramatic thing that scrapes at my ears.

  I choose to ignore this direction she’s trying to take us, shift back to the announcement. “I definitely think it’s a good idea to make an announcement about the water, because we’re going to run out soon if we aren’t careful—we need everyone’s help on this so we can buy time while we figure out a new plan.” Perhaps it’s time to make a leap of faith onto a burning bridge, attempt to reach out directly to Sergeant Vonn since we still haven’t been able to make contact with Nashville. Despite the inevitable fallout that would surely follow—I still believe we’d be trading slow-starved death for a miserable future, and everything in me recoils at the thought—we need to figure something out today. If our situation doesn’t significantly improve within a few hours, I decide, I’m making that call no matter how resistant I feel to it.

  “Tell them water access will be restricted to drinking water only, from now until we tell them otherwise,” I continue, before she can get a word in. “Twenty ounces per day, per person, max. Toilets are on their own separate system—tell them to proceed as usual, in case there’s any question—but showers take a major toll on the supply. No showers for anyone, and please emphasize that.”

  I already regret this announcement, because ugh. Talk about unpleasant, being stuck in close lockdown quarters without the luxury of keeping clean. Unpleasant is preferable to dead, though. Unpleasant is preferable to displaced.

  Haven makes a noise of disgust on the other end, but doesn’t argue. “Do you want me to give them any time frame for when things will go back to normal?”

  For when things will go back to normal. When, not if.

  “Let’s not make promises we likely can’t keep.”

  She’s quiet, and I have no clue what she might be thinking. Finally, she says: “We can take showers, though, right? As long as they’re quick?”

  I knead my temples. “Haven. No. Seriously?” What part of we’re running out of water does she not understand?

  “I just thought, you know, since we’re in charge of things, we might have certain privileges—”

  “Listen, I really need to get back to work,” I say, putting some bite in my voice. That’s the only way this conversation is ever going to end. “I’m not going to tell everyone else they’re under water restrictions and then go bend the rules for myself, but if that sits well with your conscience, by all means do it.”

  She hangs up on me.

  It’s probably for the best.

  46

  Q

  HAVEN’S VOICE COMES through the speakers not a minute later, a shade dimmer than usual. Will the rest of the station pick up on this subtle change in her, or am I simply hyperaware of it in light of the conversation we just had?

  The announcement comes to a blunt end, almost as if Haven’s intentionally making our situation sound even more bleak than it is—if that’s even possible—just to get a rise out of me. I don’t regret what I said, though. We shouldn’t bend the rules for ourselves; it’s our responsibility to do everything in our power to conserve water while we figure this out. Whatever she feels for me right now, maybe my words will make her think twice. Maybe she’ll think about the entire station, not just herself.

  Not that I don’t get the temptation. Didn’t I do the exact same thing just this afternoon? I turned off my buzz screen; I tried to sleep. I took a shower, and not a short one. That was before, though—when we were all riding high on the news of Zesi and Heath’s successful mission, when I expected we’d have the new filter installed within hours.

  I try to push all these distractions from my mind. Focus on the task at hand. I’m back at Portside now, about to run a fresh series of tests on the hair and saliva samples pulled from Jaako and Kerr. This time, I won’t be looking for traces of the virus, but for clues as to what actually killed them. Natalin’s words replay in my head: Maybe you should go get to work on that, Lindley, before anyone else dies? Her caustic tone is like acid to my bones, eating away at me by the minute. Perhaps it was unfair of her to shove all the weight on my shoulders, but it doesn’t make what she said any less true. I should get to work. I could have a breakthrough, stop this madness before someone else dies.

  Hopefully lockdown will help; hopefully it won’t backfire somehow. It’s not my style to make big decisions on the fly, but at least it’s something. Hopefully it will be enough.

  I don’t have confirmation through testing yet, obviously, but I have a strong suspicion about the how of these deaths: poison. Mila, Jaako, and Kerr were all covered in bloodbubbles—bloodbubbles that were planted on them, as I’ve already established—but their bodies were absent of flesh wounds. No signs of a struggle, no bruising, nothing at all except quick, silent death. They could have been asphyxiated, of course, but it’s far more difficult to run tests on absence of breath than it is presence of toxins. If my tests come back true-negative, no poison present, it would be a neon sign pointing to asphyxiation as cause of death. I’m almost rooting for poison, though—one killer could not have suffocated both Jaako and Kerr at the same time.

  Asphyxiation would mean two killers. Two liars. Twice the level of coordination it would take to commit these murders alone.

  So. Systematic toxicological analysis it is.

  I wish I hadn’t been so quick to blame the virus for everything, because otherwise—if I hadn’t skipped the autopsies, if I hadn’t already had them burned to ash—I’d skip the hair samples and go straight for their livers. Not that I’ve had anything but textbook experience with livers; ha
ir can simply be a little less reliable, from what I understand. Now I know for next time, I think, before I can stop the thought.

  No. There will not be a next time.

  I prepare the preliminary test to see if my toxin theory holds up; it’s a two-step process, the first step a simple screening to identify the presence of drugs or other toxicants on the hair. Unlike so many other lab tests, this one won’t make me wait even a minute—it will take less than ten seconds for the scanner to give a simple positive or negative analysis. If positive, I’ll move on to the next step, which Dr. Safran simply called Q for its ability to run both qualitative and quantitative analysis at the same time. In other words: Q will tell me exactly which toxin—and exactly how much of it—was present in Jaako and Kerr when they died.

  The screener blips red even before the full ten seconds have passed. This . . . can’t be good. I run a second test on Kerr’s hair, just for the sake of being thorough, and it goes red even quicker this time—not even five full seconds, compared to the eight it took for Jaako’s.

  Well, that’s it. Poisoned, both of them. Mila’s results would yield the same, I’d bet anything.

  I feel a sharp descent coming on—feel my thoughts start to avalanche—but I try my best to hold it off.

  Tests first, theories next. Tests will inform the theories.

  I run Q on both samples, and for both, the results are clear: Jaako and Kerr were killed by belladonna—by off-the-charts, lethal dosages of it.

  And there’s only one place on the station the killer could have possibly obtained it.

  47

  TOXIN

  OF ALL THE times I’ve been to SSL, I’ve never actually used it as a lab.

  That changes now.

  I enter my access code—my meaningless access code, now that Yuki and Grace and stars know who else have it memorized by heart—and head to its central workstation. The countertops are pristine white, but I’m certain there must be substantial equipment in its various underlying doors and drawers. I’m looking for a tablet—a database system, specifically—that will help me make sense of the forest of glowing pillars and their exact contents. There’s nowhere else the killer could have found belladonna; the only other place that’s even a remote possibility is Medical, but Dr. Safran never kept anything like that lying around. I checked every cabinet there, just to be sure, but—in keeping with my theory—the cabinets were all clear.