by Kayla Olson
For Sailor, Emme, Nieva.
For Jaako and Kerr.
For Mila.
For those who will be next, if I don’t put a stop to it.
This. Ends. Now.
65
ECLIPSE
STARBOARD-SIDE LAB: EVEN from outside its glass doors, clear and sparkling, row after row of illuminated pillars cast an eerie glow on the otherwise pitch-black room. Not a hint of shadow mars the perfect white light; wherever Haven is, she must be deep in the forest.
I press my back to the cool steel wall just outside the door, collect my breath. Now that this moment is here, all I want is to never have to face it. What do you say when someone you’ve known forever reveals herself to be skin and bones and cobwebs? Did she ever truly have a soul, and if not, how did she hide it? If so, where did it go? When she looks in the mirror, does she feel remorse for the terrible choices she’s made?
Or does she only feel alive?
My lashes flutter closed, and I will my eyes dry. Be strong for the station, I tell myself. Be brave.
I’m not so much afraid of dying—it’s looking in her eyes that’s hard to think about. Looking inside, searching for any sign of the friend I thought I knew. Finding her already dead.
I take a deep breath and tap in my entrance code. A blast of cold air escapes as the doors part, like it can’t leave the room fast enough. I slip into the shadows, let the doors seal me inside. I’m here, and I’m not leaving until this is over. Even if she does show a hint of compassion, humanity, remorse—what then? How am I to know it’s real, and not just another false act of desperate self-preservation?
And what will I do with her when I find her? I’ve focused so thoroughly on discovering the truth that I didn’t stop to think about how to ensure justice. This is unprecedented on the station, really. I don’t remember anyone ever having to face serious consequences for anything. Perhaps I can send her down to Nashville, let the board figure out how to deal with her. Or, worse: perhaps I could send her with Vonn.
If I can just make it to the lab station, I can check the tablet to confirm my suspicions—that she’s at pillar F23, Atropa belladonna. Because why else would she be here? Not for witch hazel, certainly. I can’t remember ever telling Haven about Yuki’s nosebleeds, now that I think about it. A shiver raises the hair on my arms. Maybe Heath told her?
The spotlit lab station isn’t far from SSL’s entrance, but it’s not terribly close, either. Nothing will hide me except darkness until I’m there, and then—if Haven happens to look that way at just the right moment—I’ll be bathed in bright light.
On second thought, maybe I should head straight for F23: in the forest of pillars, at least, I can hide. I can slip out of sight, disappear in the darkness.
If only I remembered, for sure, how to find the pillar I need.
It is utterly silent in this room, and I make myself a ghost: I match her, silence for silence, as I edge toward the first row. The pillars are arranged in a large grid, more than a hundred in each row, planted evenly from this end of the room all the way to the far side.
I take careful steps, seeking out the deep-black shadows between pillars where their glow doesn’t reach. My reflection is distorted in every curved bit of glass, and my eyes are too bright, like I’m starry-eyed with hope, when what I truly feel is the precise opposite. I’m almost afraid to breathe, for fear of giving myself away; I get light-headed quickly from all the shallow breaths, dizzy from all the paranoia.
What could she be doing here, for so long, so quietly, in such secrecy?
I’m deep into the forest when the lights flicker—every pillar, dark, for a split second, before they hold, steady and bright.
I hear a gasp.
She isn’t far. She could be as close as a few pillars away.
My heartbeat picks up, trying to run straight out the back of me instead of continuing on in the direction we’re moving. It’s so strong, and so fierce, I eventually give in: I crouch, in a spot of pitch-blackness, try to calm down. I’m shaking.
The lights flicker again, and this time it’s followed by the blaring alarm, same as before. What’s happened? What’s happening? Did Zesi activate the defense shields like before—did he activate them for real? Are we under attack? I want to call him. Desperately, I want to, and it takes everything in me to keep from buzzing him.
Instead, I stay where I am.
I hug my knees. Feel my heart pound against them.
The alarm cuts off abruptly, mid-blare, but my ears keep ringing. Steady, steady: I breathe. Wait. Wish for my mother. Try to trust everyone else to handle what I can’t—try to trust I can handle what I must.
Haven isn’t buzzing anyone, I can’t help but notice. All those offers to help, all those professions of loyalty to the station, and to me—yet when the alarm sounds she is silent. I’m only silent because it would give me away.
Dread falls over me: Does she know she isn’t alone?
Slowly, I stand. The backs of my knees tingle as I straighten. SSL’s sliding doors are pretty quiet against the hum of all the pillars, but if she was listening for them, it’s not impossible that she could’ve heard me come in. Perhaps we’ve even been circling each other, she on her way out, me venturing ever deeper. If I don’t act quickly, she could disappear, slip into any single room of the station, hide there indefinitely. It would take forever to find her.
I take careful steps toward the sound of the gasp I heard, do my best to stay in the darkest spots. It’s impossible to avoid all of the light. Still, I’m pretty successful at keeping myself hidden.
And then.
I see her, sitting on the floor, her back to me. Unlike me, she isn’t shrouded in darkness: she’s sitting close to the pillar, practically drowning in its light. She’s bent over, working on something, a curtain of her shiny blonde hair hanging down on the right side like always.
She looks so achingly familiar—so much like she’s looked on countless late nights when we sat, cross-legged, eating midnight chocolate from my mother’s stash and playing chess. The sight knocks the wind out of me. I can’t move.
I stand, staring, not sure what to say or do—
And then I’m getting a call, the vibration loud enough to rip steel, and that’s it, it’s over.
Haven turns, on her feet in an instant. On the floor is a tray of leaves, shredded.
My eyes travel up, up: to the razor blade in her hand. Traces of belladonna cling to its sharp edges.
I find my voice before she finds hers. “That . . . isn’t witch hazel, Haven.”
We meet eyes, and she knows, I can tell—she knows I’ve figured out the truth. I’ve caught her in her lies. I watch the full spectrum of fight or flight cross her face, her beautiful face that so perfectly covers such a horrific mind.
She doesn’t run.
She doesn’t move.
The second one of us so much as flinches, it’ll be the beginning of the end. For now, it is checkmate.
My throat constricts. “Why?”
It’s broken, nothing more than a whisper.
She shakes her head, slowly at first, eyebrows knitting together, and the expression deepens and twists until it’s pain upon pain, painful to look at. Her careful mask is gone. I’ll never be able to unsee this.
And then she smiles, like she has nothing left to lose. “Why not?” The smile falters as she falls apart. “All my life, forever, always, I just . . . I wanted . . . I didn’t want this, but I never get what I want, so it doesn’t really matter, does it?” There’s a look in her eye like she’s surrounded by a thousand fun-house mirrors, all of them bending reality, all of them covered in distorted versions of herself. It’s almost as if she isn’t speaking to me at all. “But you don’t know how that feels, do you? Commander’s daughter—Commander Lindley. You don’t know what it’s like to live in your shadow, or your perfect brother’s shadow, or to never get credit for the things you do, because no one sees them at all, right? I only wanted to do s
omething that matters, I swear!” She swerves from pain to laughter and back again. “I was trying to help! They were dead weight and you know it—I was doing my part to save everyone else, Linds, can’t you see?”
My eyes are full of tears that won’t spill. “You wanted to do something that matters? You wanted to help?” My voice is like rough rock, like a snarl through sharp teeth. “You wanted to be remembered.” I shake my head, and the tears fall. “You offered to help me when you knew exactly what was going on.” Even as the words are still coming out, her disjointed logic suddenly makes sick sense: I get it now, and it’s unbelievable. “You offered to help because you knew the answers all along—you created problems only you could fix, a crisis so huge it could only be outshined by the person who ended it. You wanted to be praised for solving murders you committed—that is seriously disturbing, Haven.”
She waves a hand in the air. “Sounds kind of horrible when you say it like that, honestly.” Bright white light winks from the razor blade as she tightens her grip on it. “But the best part is—I still will be praised for it all.”
Her mouth quirks up at one corner.
I run.
She’s fast but so am I, and I have the advantage of slightly longer legs—I run past pillar after pillar, brilliant white and pitch darkness alternating like a strobe light. If she catches me, if she murders me, she can create the truth: I won’t be alive to tell anyone otherwise. She can be the hero, she can be the one who saved the station from me. And of course the deaths will end, because she’ll assume the role of commander. She’ll deftly erase any traces of herself on the vid-feeds, and all Zesi will know is that there was a tablet left out on the station counter—for all he knows, I could’ve been the one who put it there. Haven could plant seeds in his mind to undermine what I told him earlier, when I accused her of being our murderer; she could tell Natalin I asked her to get the witch hazel. She’ll lie, and she’ll pull it off.
I cannot let that happen.
She’s gaining on me; I turn a sharp corner, weave into darkness, try to lose her so I can get behind her somehow and knock the blade from her hand. She’ll be nothing without it—we’ll be evenly matched, at best. A belladonna-laced blade will be my certain death, though, if I let her get close enough. I have no doubt now that she’ll go through with it. She’s delusional, clearly. If the praise she craves is finally within reach, she’ll shred me like a paper snowflake and call it self-defense.
I dart around another pillar, catch a glimpse of the spotlit station. If Zesi happens to look at the vid-feeds at just the right moment—if we’re not under attack, which we could be, for all I know, though it’s at least slightly reassuring there haven’t been any more alarms—if Zesi sees us on the screen, he’ll have to know I’m the one being hunted, and not the other way around.
I head that way, and she completely takes the bait, follows me. She’s losing ground with every step, out of practice and unable to keep matching my pace. It gives me a split second longer to figure out a plan—I eye the open drawer, look for anything I can use. There are no blades, only microscopes and empty petri dishes and a handful of zip ties.
It isn’t much. But zip ties worked on Akello, when he was yelling outside my door that morning. If I can bind her wrists without getting cut by the razor—
I grab several zip ties, and a microscope for good measure. It’s relatively large, with decent heft, and it’s blunt; I’ve lost my lead, and she’s closing in on me now, and I swear I don’t see anything behind her eyes as she lunges, blade-first.
I ram the base of the microscope out on instinct, feel it connect with her knuckles as she cries out in pain. The blade clatters to the floor, glints under the spotlight—there is blood, only a drop or two—was she cut by the blade, or by the blunt edges of the base? She dives for the blade, so whatever happened didn’t faze her. I kick it away, far out of her reach.
Instead of scrambling after it like I expect, she springs back up, wrenches the microscope away from me, and the next thing I know it’s coming toward my head. I barely dodge a direct hit. If Zesi is seeing any of this go down, he’s not buzzing me, and he’s certainly not here in time to help. Haven swings at me again, and this time, manages to graze my temple. It sends a stinging shock through my head, but the room isn’t swaying or sliding or spinning. Not yet.
We meet eyes, only briefly—finally, finally, there is a hint at recognition there, that I do not deserve this, that no one deserves this. I let out a breath, one I’ve been saving in case it happens to be my last. But just as I start to relax, her eyes eclipse again: rings of hazel gold around pupils so dark and dreadful I can’t bear to look.
I hate this. So much, I hate it—
But there is no time to think, because she tries to take full advantage of my hesitation, flinches like she’s going to strike again—and harder this time. Before she gets the chance, I seize her wrist so tightly the microscope falls to the tile; I wrench her arm behind her, not gently, pin her to the lab counter as firmly as I can. I make fast work of the zip ties, twisting her other arm around to meet the first, securing both wrists tightly to each other—
And then it is done.
She could run, yes. But without a blade—or the ability to put in a passcode at any door, with her hands bound behind her, and the fact that I’m already buzzing Zesi before either of us has even caught a full breath—she has nowhere to go. She is no hero, will never be, and we both know it.
I pick up the razor. Toss it into the sink, deep into the drain, where it’s physically impossible for her to dig it out—where it’s physically impossible for me to dig it out and do something I’d forever regret.
Zesi answers on the first try. “Told you I’d take care of us!” His voice is light, almost jubilant on the other end. “We’re good. We’re good, Lindley! Boys are on their way back as we speak!” He’s clearly riding a victory high and has no idea what I’ve just been through.
“That’s—that’s incredible, Zesi.” Relief tears spring up, blurring my vision. “Really incredible.”
I can’t take my eyes off Haven, and she won’t take hers off me.
It’s hardly a moment of celebration.
It takes Zesi a few seconds to register my silence. “You okay?” he finally asks. “Need anything?”
What don’t I need?
“Help,” I reply. For once, I’m eager to ask for it. “Also, a long break.”
Haven lowers her eyes.
I don’t know what’s going on behind them.
I don’t know her at all.
All I know is that it’s over.
66
BEGINNINGS
I KNOW A lot of things about a lot of things.
I know about supernovas, black holes.
I know there are stars that radiate green light but appear white, true colors hidden until untangled by a prism.
I know people are the same way.
It’s been four days since I bound Haven Winters’s wrists with zip ties.
Three days since I confessed the full truth to Shapiro. You’ve done remarkably well, considering all you’ve been through, he said. It’s Vonn he’s angry with, not me—though I did get a strong reprimand for not coming clean immediately. There will be some immediate restructuring, including a number of fresh faces on our own station to help us transition, but we don’t have to leave—and they won’t be staying forever. Not here, anyway. For once, the board sided with Shapiro on something: Radix will have a permanent change in leadership, and we get to keep our home.
Two days ago, the supply shipment arrived. People are eating again, and no one is dying. Haven eventually admitted to faking the food incident, her dramatic collapse, everything—what a disturbing level of commitment, to go so far as to slice her head open, so far as to need stitches.
It isn’t lost on me that I stitched up the very person who later tried to kill me.
We’ve still seen no sign of Nautilus-like symptoms; Shapiro told me to rest easy
about that, that they likely suffered from the same strain as our parents did—that it wouldn’t be out of the question for it to present itself more aggressively in such a relatively tiny station. They’ll have a team up to do full autopsies soon, just to be sure, but we appear to be in the clear.
It’s been two hours since Heath told Haven goodbye. He was the only one allowed, being her twin. The rest of us passed the time in speculation, wondering if she’ll like it on Earth. Probably not, I’d guess—of all the places there are to see down on the planet, she’ll be taken to somewhere smaller than our station’s safe room, somewhere every bit as bleak. My heart cracks a little more every time I think about it.
Only five minutes have passed since I last wished for my mother.
Five minutes is progress.
Heath and Leo are here, at least, with me in my home. It’s a quiet night. It’s been a quiet several days. Shapiro had tucked away a fresh stash of coffee and chocolate in the shipment before he found out the truth about my mother; Leo’s brewing a French press now. It’s a bit late for coffee, but it won’t matter. None of us has managed a good night of sleep yet.
The thing that keeps me awake at night, the thing I dream of that eventually pulls me swiftly out of sleep: there is no going back to how things were, not for any of us. I thought you could only change the future, not the past. But the past is constantly shifting when I think about it. Memories that fall apart when I think of Haven. Memories I see in a new light when I think of all that’s happened since the first time Heath—and Leo—kissed me. The shifting past makes it hard to know what to do with the future. None of us are sure we even know ourselves right now, honestly. We’re trying to help each other remember.
I’ve tucked a new memory away, too, another thing Shapiro said at the very end of our call. You sound so much like her, he told me.
The words got stuck in his throat.