by Jay Allan
Everyone had lost someone. Why’d they bury it, pretend it was all okay?
Until someone didn’t. Like the traitor. He hadn’t been able to live with what had been taken from him.
Could she?
Era pressed the wet scrap up to her mouth and allowed Zephyr to drag her down the stairs and through the corridors. People stepped out of the way and averted their eyes.
When they got to Era’s cubic, she stood still, numb from the inside out. Zephyr gently removed Era’s shift card from her pocket and opened the cubic. Era would have to move back to the singles sector now, back with Zephyr.
Zephyr activated the helio, illuminating the space, and Era stumbled to the bunk and collapsed onto it, the pain swelling in her again.
Never coming back.
She drew Dritan’s pillow to her like she had every night since he’d gone. The scent of him was faint, but still there. She buried her face in it, and silent sobs wracked her body.
She heard Zephyr fumbling around on the shelf next to the bunk and felt a hand on her back.
“Drink some of this,” Zephyr said.
Era sat up and took the canteen Zephyr offered her, but just cried harder. She bent over, clutching her belly.
Zephyr held up the clear package of pills. “They gave you grimp?”
Era nodded, and Zephyr squeezed one from the pack. “Take it.”
“No.” Era tried to catch her breath. “The president killed him. She killed Dritan. She’s been lying to us about the Defect. They can save my baby.”
She reached out and gripped Zephyr by the arm. “I recorded it all. So when I tell them I won’t abort…if they arrest me for treason, you can get the recording and tell them what I know.” The words came out halting, broken by her sobs.
Zephyr’s brow wrinkled, and she hissed in a breath through her teeth. “I don’t understand. What recording? What does this have to do with…with your abortion?”
“The Defect’s a lie.” Era choked on the words as they came. “I recorded the truth. Hid it. They won’t take my baby.”
“Recorded what? You think…you think the Defect is a lie? I know this is—take this. Take this. So we can talk.” Zephyr held the tablet up to Era’s lips.
Era turned her head. Hysteria was rising in her, a chaotic pulse of fear and panic mingling with her grief. Dritan was dead, and she’d soon follow him if she refused to get an abortion.
“You have to listen. The Defect—”
Zephyr pressed the tablet to Era’s mouth, and Era clamped it shut and shook her head.
“It’s not addicting unless you take it for a long time,” Zephyr said softly. “It’ll help. You need to calm down.”
Era’s whole body ached, and the walls of the cubic seemed to be moving closer, squeezing the air from the room, suffocating her.
The loss, the Dritan-shaped hole inside her felt like something she could never crawl out of. Zephyr pushed the tablet against Era’s lips, more insistent now, and Era opened them. The pain would fade, just for a little while.
The pill dissolved on Era’s tongue, and she took a sip of water to wash the bitter taste away. The drug would make it easier for Era to breathe, to talk and get Zephyr to listen.
Era sank back onto the bunk, tears still leaking from her eyes, and stared at the ceiling. Her distorted reflection stared back at her, and she watched her face relax as the drug took hold. Her hands unclenched, and a warm calm spread through her.
More of a numbness than calm, really. It all just faded away, leaving her floating in an empty space where nothing mattered.
“I’m so sorry,” Zephyr said.
Era’s gaze shifted to Zephyr. She watched her take her eyepiece and handheld from her pocket and set them on the shelf.
“What do you want to tell me? About the Defect?”
“Play something for me.” Her own voice sounded disembodied to her ears, as if it came from someone else’s mouth.
“Play what?” Zephyr didn’t meet Era’s eyes.
“The song. The song you finally finished.”
Zephyr nodded, and Era stared up at the ceiling again, her hands on her belly. Would the grimp harm her baby? She’d taken it without thinking. What did that say about her? About the grimp? She should feel anxious now, but she didn’t. This drug erased everything. The tiny part of her that wanted to care rose up and floated away.
“I’m not aborting,” Era said.
“Shh. Just relax. I’ll play you the song.”
“No. I’m a traitor.” It sounded casual, like she’d said “I’m tired.”
The music began to play, and Zephyr laid on the bunk. “Shh. Stop talking like that.”
Era stared into Zephyr’s blue eyes. “I love you, Zeph. You’re the best friend anyone could ask for.”
“I love you, too.” Zephyr’s voice sounded strained. “I’ll stay with you ‘til curfew, but I need to be back at my cubic for bunk check.”
“I wish you could stay.”
“I’ll take your shift card with me, so I can let myself back in. I’ll be back before first mess. Back before you even wake up.” Tears spilled from Zephyr’s eyes, tracking wet lines down her pale face.
“Don’t cry,” Era said. She smiled and wiped Zephyr’s cheek with her hand. “You’re the strong one.”
Zephyr sniffed and snuggled up to Era, wrapping one pale arm around her. Era’s mind whispered to her to tell Zephyr everything, but she was so tired. She could tell Zephyr the plan after night shift, couldn’t she? There would still be time.
Era closed her eyes, and Zephyr’s recorded voice rang out in the small space, enveloping them in the melody.
Hope’s a dying star.
We need a supernova.
To wipe space clean,
And just start over.
There’s more than this; I feel it.
Drifting through this useless existence,
Held down
Held down
Held down
By artificial gravity.
Era closed her eyes, the music pulsing within her, and let the beat carry her away.
∞
Dark red liquid. Sticky, half-dry. The thick metallic scent of it fills my lungs, and my stomach heaves.
Blood coats the doors, drips down the number six. I’m on all fours, in a pool of it.
I scream and try to stand, but I’m sealed to the landing.
The doors to level six slide open, and I can’t scream, can’t even breathe. A hull breach.
But the doors shut. Air is restored to my lungs.
I pull against the floor again, and my hands come free. I run.
Up.
To Observation.
The deck is empty. Zephyr’s not here.
It’s just me.
Me and Soren.
Era opened her eyes. She’d never escaped the breach before in the nightmare.
A helio hovered in the air above, and she sat up, glancing around, disoriented. She was in her cubic. In her bunk, the blanket thrown off, her suit stuck to her sweat-covered body, her boots still tied on.
Her gaze landed on Dritan’s shift card, hanging from its hook on the wall.
He’s dead.
Her throat tightened, and she reached for the grimp packet and canteen on her shelf. She squeezed another pill onto her tongue and washed it down.
Her muscles relaxed, and a numb calm flowed through her, settling into her bones. She leaned against the wall, staring into nothing.
The sound of gears grinding brought her out of it. She straightened, eyes riveted to the door.
It slid open, revealing a sole helio hovering in the corridor and darkness beyond.
Two men stepped into her cubic.
The silver infinity symbols on their sleeves glinted in the light. Guards.
Era stumbled to her feet.
The helio moved, illuminating their faces. Chief Petroff stood closest to her. Tadeo Raines, his face downturned, was behind him.
Chi
ef Petroff stepped forward and grasped Era’s arm. Her mind registered pain at his tight grip, but the pain felt dull, and so very far away.
“Era Corinth. You’re under arrest for treason.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“No. I didn’t do anything.” Era tried to pull away from the chief.
They knew. But how did they know? She’d erased her eyepiece signature.
He gripped her tighter. “Where’s your husband’s shift card?”
Era’s eyes darted to the hook, but she didn’t answer him.
“Raines, over there. Get it.”
Why did they want Dritan’s shift card?
The chief pulled Era from her cubic, and she stumbled alongside him, struggling to keep up with his broad steps.
She shivered as they walked down the chill corridor. She’d never been any good at lying. What made her think she could commit treason and get away with it?
Her mind knew these things. She could see her situation in a cold, detached way, as if her problems were a glitch in a piece of tech. She knew she should feel terrified, but she couldn’t muster even a spark of fear. The grimp had stolen her emotions, left her with nothing but cool logic.
The corridor was silent, except for the thud of their boots hitting the tiles beneath their feet. Two pairs. No. Three. Tadeo had come up behind them.
They reached the stairwell, and Era expected them to take her upward, to executive sector. The breach on level six had been fixed a few days ago.
Only they didn’t. They went down. Down to the sublevels, which held the machines that powered the ship, cleaned the air, and recycled the waste.
She should try to escape. But where would she run? There was nowhere to go. And running would be more proof of her guilt.
No. She had to maintain her innocence. She’d erased the evidence. They couldn’t prove anyone had looked at the cube. They couldn’t even prove anyone had added it to the list on purpose.
They took her down deep, deeper than she’d ever been. The hum of the power core grew, until she felt it through the soles of her boots. It was too loud down here, and the air, scorching. The hum grew to a dull roar as they descended.
When they reached level P2, Chief Petroff led them through a maze of corridors, never letting up on the tight grip he had on her arm.
They finally stopped at a cubic, and the chief swiped his card. The door slid open. He said something to Tadeo, but she couldn’t hear it over the roar of the power core. How could anyone work down here?
The chief pushed her into the compartment, and the door slid closed behind her.
It was quieter in here, and she could hear her own rapid breathing. The tiny compartment looked like it’d been meant for storage, but the shelves had been ripped out, and the walls were covered in the same rubber floor tiles they used in the living cubics. Why were the walls padded with floor tiles?
A lume bar flickered above a single metal chair.
Era turned to face the door, waiting. Sweat trickled down her back, between her shoulder blades. She flexed her fingers. What were they going to do to her?
The door opened, and the roar intensified. Chief Petroff stepped through, a metal case in his grasp.
President Nyssa Sorenson walked in behind him. Her suit looked pressed and new, her blond hair smooth and tight in a low bun on her head. But the flickering lume bar above brought out the lines in her face and made her pale eyes appear sunken.
Era clenched her hands into fists and felt the first thing she’d felt since taking the grimp. Resentment. This woman had killed Dritan and wanted to kill her baby. This woman was lying to the entire fleet.
The door closed, and the hum died back down.
“Sit,” the president said.
Era shook her head and took a step back.
The president sighed and met Era’s eyes. “There are two ways we can do this. You can either sit and answer my questions honestly, or, if you’d prefer, we can use the drugs in that case to encourage you to answer honestly.”
Drugs. What drugs? Why had she never heard of this? Is this what they did to everyone they arrested? Uncertainty began to worm its way into her mind. The grimp wouldn’t last forever. And some part of her brain understood she’d care about this, feel the danger more keenly once its effect faded.
“Why did you bring me here?” Era’s voice came out strong. They couldn’t possibly have proof of her guilt.
The president gestured to the chief, and he grabbed Era’s arms and pushed her into the chair. He’d gotten long strips of scrap fabric from somewhere, and he forced her wrists down, strapping them to the armrests.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Leave us,” the president said.
Petroff hesitated, but left the cubic.
The president took a step closer to Era, her blue eyes narrowed.
Era pulled against the restraints. “Let me go. I didn’t do anything.”
“Did you think it would be that easy to erase your eyepiece signature from an archive cube? Didn’t you realize there’d be backup data?”
Era froze and kept her face blank. Of course. Of course there would be a memory core back-up. How could she be so stupid? The president wasn’t bluffing. Era had made a sloppy, fatal mistake.
Mali had been banging on the door to storage, and Era hadn’t thought to check, to search again. She licked her lips and struggled to keep her expression from giving away her guilt.
“So now, we have an archive cube with damaged files. And your eyepiece signature to go with them,” the president said. “For a tech, you didn’t try very hard to hide evidence of your treason.”
Damaged files? When she’d used her father’s trick to hack the memory core, she’d known it could damage it. “Which files?”
“So you admit to accessing the cube.”
“Have you seen what’s on it?” Era leaned forward, scrutinizing the president’s face.
“Have you?”
“I asked first.”
The president blinked. “What did you see on that cube, Era? If you don’t tell me—”
“You’ll…do what? Drug me? Did you drug that half you took from the galley, too? If the fleet knew—”
“Tell me what you saw.” The president drew each word out.
“Nothing. I didn’t see anything.” Era settled back in her chair and focused on the rubber tiles on the wall. Soundproofing. The tiles were there to keep the sound of the power core out. No. She straightened in her seat. They were there to keep the sound in.
“I don’t believe you.” The president faced the door and raised her fist. She paused and turned back to Era. “I think you should know. After these drugs enter your system, you’ll no longer need an abortion. The cells will be terminated very soon after the first dose. But the aftermath will not be as easy as an abortion would’ve been.”
Terminated. A flicker of fear burgeoned in Era’s gut. “Wait.”
“Yes?”
Her mind cycled through her options, listing and discarding them one by one. Did she have a choice? She could continue to lie and be drugged. Her baby would die. She could tell the truth and what? They’d convict her of treason. Her baby would die with her.
If she found a way to keep them from drugging her, she’d still be forced to get an abortion. Because she could never tell the medic what she knew, not after this.
She still had her fail-safe, but it was useless. She’d never even told Zephyr where to find it. Had Zephyr even been listening to what Era had said about the Defect?
That left…begging.
“I’ll tell you what I saw,” Era said. “But, just…please let my baby live.”
“Your baby has the Defect. I have no control—”
“Babies with the Defect can be cured. My baby can live.”
The president’s face fell, and she turned her head partway away from Era. “We must use our resources for the healthy and the living,” she said, her voice almost too quiet to make out over the low
hum. “I wish you hadn’t accessed those files. Truly, I do.”
She took a deep breath, and her voice turned hard. “But accessing the archives is treason. You were training for archivist. You knew that better than anyone.”
Era was falling, spiraling out of control.
The grimp was wearing off.
Her pulse quickened, and she pulled against her restraints. “Please. Just do the surgery. Let me have the baby. Save it. Then you can do whatever you want with me. I won’t tell anyone—”
“I’m sorry. You’ve compromised the safety and peace of this fleet.”
“I won’t tell anyone.” Era’s voice cracked.
The president looked down at the floor. “The fleet won’t ever know the archives were compromised.”
“I have proof. If you do anything to me, everyone in the fleet will find out the truth.”
President Sorenson’s eyes widened, and she stared at Era. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not. You’ll see.” But Era was lying, because no one even knew where she’d hidden the proof. Her lie must have shown on her face. The president gave a slight shake of her head and turned to bang on the door.
Era laughed, and it sounded forced, too loud in the tight space. “Everyone will find out you’ve been lying about the Defect. And that you’re expanding the subcity, and you arrest people and torture them. They’ll turn against you. You won’t win.”
She sounded crazed, like Sam had in helio sector. How had she not seen how right he’d been?
The door opened, and the president said something to Chief Petroff before walking out. The chief removed Era’s restraints and yanked her to her feet.
A bitter taste flooded Era’s mouth. “Please, don’t do this. Let me go back to my cubic. I won’t say anything.”
The chief grunted and pulled her into the corridor. Tadeo waited there, his eyes locked onto the floor. He didn’t look up, didn’t acknowledge her as she moved past.
Her limbs were weak, shaky, and the walls seemed to tilt around her. The chief half-carried, half-dragged her to the end of the corridor and took something from Tadeo. A shift card.
Not Tadeo’s. He still had his hooked to his belt.
Dritan’s shift card.