This Splintered Silence

by Kayla Olson

  “Got it,” Heath says. “I’ll be there in three.”

  We end the call, and Leo says, “Hangar deck?”

  “Last resort,” I reply.

  By the time we reach the hangar deck’s viewing room, Leo’s all caught up and I’m ready to stop talking, ready to actually fix this. We’ve set aside the awkwardness of our last interaction for now, both of us more than eager to focus on the black-and-white task at hand. Heath arrives just a moment after we do, and begins suiting up immediately. I flip a switch on the motherboard, watch the electric-purple grav-force glow bloom out on the runway. In this precise moment, I have déjà vu—step for step, we are a living memory, floating on autopilot through the exact same routine we took before Heath and Zesi set off for Nautilus.

  So much has shifted since then, and it’s only been, what—days?

  I’ve lost all sense of time.

  All I know is that every minute brings something heavier than the last, and that I long for the days when our most pressing problem was a possible viral mutation.

  Heath settles his helmet into place, the final piece of protection. Leo watches him, and I watch Leo: I watch as his eyes shift to study the second suit, the one Zesi wore out to Nautilus.

  “Think that would fit me?” Leo asks. Zesi’s a medium at most; Leo’s thick arms alone would likely make that suit a tight fit.

  His words hang in the air. I hear what he isn’t saying: he wants to go out.

  With Heath.

  With zero experience.

  “No way,” I say at the exact same time Heath says, “More suits in the closet.”

  I shoot Heath a look.

  “What?” he says, his voice electronic and thin through the helmet’s vocalization processing unit.

  “No way is he going out with you, is what I meant.”

  “It’s not a three-person job in here,” Leo says. “I can run comms like Zesi did when they went out, let Heath focus on the flying.”

  I hate that he always has a point. Still, though. I’m not risking both of them. There’s very little time left to attempt putting a call through to Vonn, or one of his firebirds; six are headed our way, and just one of them firing shots could cause damage. Flying out in peaceful surrender—having Heath settle in one spot, unmoving, with the bird’s tail side in their face so it’s obvious our weapons won’t be deployed at them—that’s the most powerful symbol I can think of to keep them from launching an all-out attack.

  Whether they feel the same way is another question. This strategy is not without its risks.

  I refuse to lose them both.

  “You’ve never been in a bird, Leo. You don’t have that much experience with the comm systems, not like Zesi. You’ve got stitches in your dominant arm.” I tick my arguments off on my fingers. “And . . . the . . . other suits might be too tight?”

  My case isn’t strong enough and we all know it.

  “Suit up,” says Heath. “I’ll go prep the bird.”

  The next minutes pass in slow motion.

  Heath strides confidently across the glowing runway to where our firebirds are docked. Where the runway cuts off at each of its faraway ends, there are no walls, no windows—it’s nothing but wide-open space, yawning like a mouth full of glitter. I can’t even begin to count the stars.

  In the closet at my back, Leo has found a suit, a perfect fit. Once he locks the helmet in place, it’s easy to forget he’s never worn one before; he looks like a natural. He looks like Heath.

  “You’re sure about this?” I ask. “You’re sure?”

  I’ve never known life without Leo in it. As much as I’m growing to crave Heath’s presence, Leo’s is like gravity itself.

  “We’ll be back, Linds,” he says with a sad smile that isn’t reassuring in the least. “Have a little hope.”

  A half laugh falls out of me. Hope.

  I glance out the viewing panels, see Heath standing beside the bird. He’s positioned it in the precise center of the runway, and is motioning for Leo to join him. “Guess that’s your cue.”

  He takes one last, long look at me.

  “Don’t lose yourself out there,” I say, recalling our conversation back in the lab. If you ever lose yourself, I’ll come find you, I told him. What a broken promise. At least I intended to keep it when I made it. Back then, I thought I could save everything. Everyone.

  “Deal works both ways, remember?” he says. “If it takes losing myself to save you . . . then . . . that’s what it takes.”

  That’s not how it works, I want to say.

  Losing him would kill me a thousand times, not save me.

  A loud buzzing noise crescendos outside the viewing panels, and we both snap our heads to look just as it reaches full volume—then cuts off to silence—and the electric-purple glow blinks out to pitch blackness.

  “What the—what was that?” I depress the button that will put my voice directly into Heath’s helmet. “Are you okay?”

  The lights flicker back on just as he starts to respond—just in time for Leo and me to see both Heath and the bird slam down onto the runway.

  “Did the grav force just go out on you?! Are you hurt?” My voice spirals toward panic, but then Heath stands, slowly, shaking out his left arm. He moves to inspect the bird’s tail, on the side I can’t see, and is limping almost imperceptibly. Hopefully neither of them are badly damaged.

  I’m getting an incoming buzz, so I motion for Leo to take over with Heath. A piercing alarm sounds, drowning out the voice in my ears as it says my name.

  “Zesi?” I say, glancing down at the name on the incoming call. “What the hell is going on? Are they here already? Did we get hit? What is that alarm?” My questions burst like tiny bombs.

  I hear him trying to respond, but the alarm is so loud I only get bits and pieces, fragments of curses. Another call tries to cut in—Haven or Natalin, to be sure—but I ignore it. I have so many questions for Zesi; I need to know if we’re under attack. Leo’s out on the open deck now, working with Heath to inspect the bird. Do I call them back in? Send them out as planned?

  The piercing wail dies out a few seconds later.

  “That was all my fault, sorry, all of it—it was—” Zesi’s breathless, more panicked than I’ve ever heard him. He pauses, takes a breath so loud it crackles in my ear. “I was just testing our defense shields, trying to see how fast I could get them up. Required more energy than I realized to shift ’em at top speed—glitched out the power in some sectors of the station.”

  “And set off an alarm, apparently.”

  “Apparently. Yes.”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose. “So no one’s shooting at us?”

  “They will be, if Heath doesn’t get out there, like, now.”

  “Got it,” I say. “Thanks for working on the shields—don’t go with top speed again unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  As soon as we end the call, my buzz screen goes off again—Natalin, like I guessed—but as much as I need to take it, I let it go. Whatever’s going on down in the safe room . . . it can’t be good, but it can’t be our station is about to get decimated levels of urgent. I’ll call her back as soon as I can, but I have to get Heath and Leo out of here now.

  “Are you good?” I ask, putting my voice directly into Heath’s and Leo’s helmets. “Is the bird good?”

  They’ve moved on from the tail, each with one hand firmly on the bird’s body—like they’re trying to hold everything in place to minimize the damage if the glitch happens again. I look down, find myself gripping the edges of the motherboard; I wasn’t even out there when the grav force went out, yet my knuckles are turning white.

  Gravity: one more thing that’s proven unreliable as of late.

  We all trust in the world we know until it proves it shouldn’t be trusted, I guess.

  “Good enough,” Heath says.

  I don’t want to say goodbye, but it doesn’t matter. There isn’t time for that anyway.

  “Go fast
, okay?” I grit my teeth until I feel pain in my jaw, will my eyes to keep dry.

  They climb in, pull their straps tight. The protective shield lowers over them. Seals them inside.

  I blink and they’re gone, a tiny blip of a vessel out in the endless, glittering sky.

  I take in this moment.

  This silence.

  This could be it. I could be this alone forever.

  I didn’t think there could be anything emptier than being on my own, forever, without the people I love. But when I think about losing Leo—and Heath—and my mother, of course—it’s like bits of my soul are being chipped away with a sharp knife. There’s something worse than being alone, and it is this: my soul, scraped into a fine pile of shadow. A fading star eclipsed by dust, not quite dead and not quite living.

  Natalin buzzes again, and the sound of the vibration is too loud in this empty room, now that everything is still. I don’t want to take the call, don’t want to hear anyone tell me how I should be handling this mess. I never wanted any of it. I want it to be over—all of it, with all of us at peace, all of us together. All of us alive.

  None of us murderers.

  I close my eyes. Answer.

  “Hey.” My voice splinters.

  “It’s getting pretty overwhelming in here—everyone’s freaking out about that alarm,” she says. “And it’s about a thousand degrees, and it smells horrible, and—”

  There’s a commotion in the background, and she yells something that does nothing to calm it. If anything, the volume gets worse. “Sorry if that was loud in your ear,” she goes on. “Anyway, can you please send Leo and Haven back here to help me?”

  My stomach flips. “Leo’s out with Heath in a bird, won’t be back for . . . a while. I thought Haven was with you, though?”

  “She said Grace came to her panicked about Yuki having a nosebleed or something? That was twelve minutes ago—she should’ve been back with the witch hazel by . . . now . . . well, wait, that’s weird.” She pauses. I imagine her thick eyebrows knitting together like they always do when she’s perplexed about a problem. “Yuki’s asleep—Grace, too. And yes, because I know you’re about to ask, I can see them breathing from here. I don’t see any sign of nosebleed, though?”

  “I was about to ask. And you’re right, that’s weird. Can you wake Grace up and ask her about it?”

  “Already on it.” I hear all sorts of noise in the background, but less than a minute later, Grace’s small voice cuts through it. Haven? I haven’t seen her today, why?

  “Grace says she hasn’t—”

  “I heard her.”

  Natalin and I are both silent on either end of the call.

  If she’s like me, she’s trying to stop thinking the worst.

  If she’s like me, she’s unsuccessful.

  Zesi’s busy with our defenses—the gravity glitch confirmed it, as did the blaring alarm. Heath and Leo aren’t even on the station right now, and Natalin? Natalin sounds too genuinely panicked to be lying. That leaves only me, only Haven.

  “Lindley?”

  I make a small noise, something sad and unintelligible, just to let her know I’m still listening.

  “You . . . should probably go look for her, yeah?”

  This: this is the thing that pulls my tears out of hiding.

  This is the hopeless part.

  I don’t know how I didn’t see it before, but now that I’ve put things together, they are blinding. Such a blatant lie told straight to Natalin’s face, so deliberately—if not for that, I’d be fearing for Haven’s life right now, that her lingering absence meant she’d become our next victim.

  I am not fearing for Haven’s life. Instead, I fear the stranger she’s become.

  Haven.

  Haven.

  63

  THE LIES THAT BLIND

  HAVEN AND I are six months apart down to the minute. Heath is just a few minutes younger; Haven likes to remind us. I’m older than them both.

  We’ve known each other since our mothers spoon-fed us SpaceLove puree packs.

  We’ve traced so many circles in these endless station corridors, it’s hard to know which one of us is following the other’s footsteps. Sometimes it feels like I’m following her, even though I set off on the path first—between us, she’s the vibrant one, the magnetic one, the one everyone loves despite her strong stubborn streak. I’m the one with my nose in a book, with needles and scalpels and surgical tools in my hands. I’ve been told my tendency to be unfailingly direct makes people uncomfortable.

  My chest is caving in.

  I never saw her break. Maybe I never truly saw her at all.

  64

  HEART, PETRIFIED

  HAVEN COULD BE anywhere.

  The station is sprawling, deck upon deck of residential wings and common areas and labs, not to mention the hydro chamber and an entire host of energy banks tucked deeply out of sight. With everyone down in the safe room, every turn leads to yet another unsettlingly empty corridor. I’ve never seen a place so dead in my entire life.

  Would she have gone to SSL, true to the excuse she gave Natalin? Or was that just a reason to leave? I keep quiet, step carefully. She could be around the next corner. She could be looking for me—or lying in wait. It seems unlikely that she’d go after Zesi; keeping him alive means keeping herself alive, given that he’s actively running defense against Vonn up in Control. Last Haven knew, though, I was in Control, too, not down on the hangar deck sending Leo and Heath out into the stars.

  I need to warn Zesi. As soon as I find a place where I’m sure she won’t hear me, where there’s no chance my voice will carry, I’ll call. The second she knows I know she’s our killer—our killer—I still cannot even begin to reconcile it—I lose my advantage.

  Every private place I can think of to make the call could put me at risk. Assuming she’s actively targeting me, no place of my own is safe. I imagine all the places she could be:

  In Portside, tucked in between lifeless appliances at one of its many unused lab stations.

  In Medical, guessing code after code in an attempt to unlock my stash of surgical tools.

  In my home.

  She has clearance to enter every single room because I trusted her. I trusted her.

  There is no perfect spot without risk: that place does not exist. An alcove lies just ahead—it’s a dead end, nowhere to hide if she discovers me. Nowhere to run. I doubt she’d use something so subtle as belladonna this time, not when confronted with someone who knows the truth. Also, a belladonna-laced beverage would be too easy for me to refuse.

  When I reach the alcove, I dart inside and crouch down, cramming myself into a tight spot between a sofa and the window. I’m partially hidden this way, at least, and maybe the plush cushions of the sofa will deaden my voice. These steel walls are unforgiving.

  I buzz Zesi, my hands more than a little unsteady. He answers immediately.

  “You haven’t seen Haven, have you?” My voice is a low rasp, as quiet as I can make it without him having to guess at my words.

  “Haven? No, why?” I hear blips and beeps in the background. Heath and Leo should meet Vonn’s firebirds soon, if they haven’t already. I try to suppress the anxiety I feel over . . . well, everything. Zesi would have buzzed me already if an attack had flared up. Right?

  I shake my head, try to clear it. Focus on what you can control, Lindley.

  “Do not let Haven into Control under any circumstances, okay? Change the passcode if you have to, do whatever it takes—I’m pretty sure she’s our killer, Zesi.”

  He mutters a curse. Leaves it at that.

  “My thoughts exactly.” It’s a relief to have told someone, and it’s also terrible: saying it out loud makes it feel real. I wish it weren’t real. “If you have a second”—I’m pushing it, but I’ve gone undiscovered this long, might as well see if he can help—“let me know if you see anything off on the vid-feeds from SSL?”

  He doesn’t say a word, but I hea
r him shifting and clicking buttons. “I don’t see her . . . only thing I see is a tablet out on the main countertop, and a drawer left half open. Helpful?”

  I nod, my throat constricting. It’s confirmation enough that she’s been to SSL tonight, that she’s likely still there. “Yeah,” I force out. Scraaaape goes the knife against my increasingly stony heart.

  A faint string of beeps goes off; I wish I knew the radar well enough to decode their meaning. “I—I’ve gotta go,” he says, an urgency to his voice that wasn’t there before.

  “Everything okay?” On instinct, I glance out the window beside me. I can’t see a thing from here. “What’s happening?”

  “The guys are within radio space of Vonn’s team,” he says. “Let me worry about this, okay, Lindley? Try not to think about it. I’ll handle it.”

  I have every reason in the galaxy to crave control.

  Every reason to want to handle it myself.

  But I am not enough.

  I am not enough for everyone, at every time, in every crisis—Haven was right, at least about this. I do need help. And I need to learn how to accept it.

  “Okay.” My voice is small but clear. “Okay,” I repeat, with a little more conviction. “I’ll try not to think about it.”

  “Good.” I hear him tapping rapid-fire on the keyboard, multitasking at its finest. “And Lindley?” There’s a break in his typing, just for a moment. “Go get her.”

  I’m shaking as I end the call, my muscles starting to cramp from being held in such a tight, awkward position. Go get her.

  The knife carves a more substantial piece from my heart: a block of petrified, tangled roots. Memories. Questions.

  I kill this part of myself, because it’s the only way to deaden the nerves, raw and stinging. It’s the only way I can face the truth without crumbling entirely. And I do need to face the truth—