Another call buzzes in, Heath this time. This one is even harder to resist—what if he found Yuki and Grace? What if he found them the same way we found Mila? That thought alone is enough to help me ignore the call. I don’t want to know, not yet. Not ever, really. I don’t want to know if he’s found them dead.
What would my mother do? For all her training, for all her years of experience, she never had to deal with anything even close to this. She was always prepared, never surprised. I feel like the opposite: constantly surprised, not nearly prepared enough.
One thing I know for sure, though, is that she had the strongest mind on the station, maybe even the strongest mind out of everyone stationed on Earth and at the Radix terraforming site. Not only in terms of intelligence, either—strong in terms of never bending once she’d set her mind to something.
That’s how I’m trying to be now. I may not be prepared, and I may not have her brilliance, and the challenges I face may end up eating me alive—if the mutated virus doesn’t devour me first—but one thing I’m trying out is her resolve: believing I can do this, as strongly as she would have.
Believing the station won’t die out under my command.
Believing I won’t be crushed under the pressure of it.
A third call comes in, the third in ten minutes. This can’t be good. Either they’re all calling about the same huge thing, or they’re calling about three separate problems. Not ideal either way. It’s Leo—I never ignore Leo, and I’m not about to start now.
Break over.
“What’s happening?” I say, rising to my feet.
“Heath and Zesi did another scan on Grace and Yuki, to see if they’d used their prints to access any of the common rooms—Grace’s prints came up at the rec center. Natatorium, specifically.”
What a relief. Assuming they went to the pool together, Grace could have opened the door for both herself and Yuki. “Timestamp?” I ask.
“Four minutes before Haven announced the mandatory check-in,” he says.
“They wouldn’t have heard it in the pool,” we both say at the same time.
“Great work,” I say. “You going down there now?”
I hear him exhale, low and slow. “Heath already went—didn’t find them,” he says. “But what he did find is concerning:tiny drops of blood on the tile near the pool’s ladder.”
My hope plummets. “You’re sure it isn’t old? Did we clean down there after Katri’s mother... when she...”
“It’s fresh,” he says. “And yeah, Fitch and Pava volunteered to help Zesi and me scrub it a couple of weeks ago.”
Right. I remember now. Fitch and Pava and Katri are close like I am with Leo and Haven and Heath, the two-years-younger version of our tight-knit group. Katri loved the pool like her mother did, and they wanted it spotless for her. As if she’d ever go down there again, with the memory of her mother fresh on her mind.
Then again, I’ve made a bed of my mother’s chair. Perhaps Katri swims laps every day toremember.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay, let me think.” Leo’s quiet on the other end—this is why I never ignore him. He gives me the space I need when I ask for it, and even when I don’t.
I make my way over to the floor-to-ceiling window, look out into the infinite star-studded blackness. My mother always stood in this exact spot when she wasn’t sure what to do, said it gave her inspiration to see how far we’ve come—how much humanity has learned, how much there still is that wedon’tknow. It always made her feel better to remember she didn’t have to know every answer to every problem.
“Tell Heath to search their rooms again, and all the places that don’t require a print-scan for access. They could’ve slipped out of the natatorium while everyone else was at the check-in,” I say, trying not to jump to conclusions. “If the blood you foundwas from the virus, if they were far enough along to cough up bloodbubbles, there would’ve been more of it, I think, even if only one of the girls is sick.” The image of my mother’s blood on the cold, dark observatory-deck floor slips into my memory, broken free from the cage where I put it.
“Got it,” he says, at the same time that there’s a knock at my door.
No one ever knocks at my door. Mostly because I’m only ever home in the middle of the night, but that’s beside the point. “Someone’s here,” I say. “Check back in soon, okay?”
He agrees, and then he’s out. The knocking starts up again, a little louder this time—
It’s Heath.
“Sorry to bother you,” he says, in lieu of a greeting. “You didn’t answer when I called earlier, and this, it’s kind of urgent, I—”
“I just talked to Leo,” I cut in. Heath’s definition of urgent doesn’t always line up with mine. “He told me about Grace, and the natatorium, and the blood—that’s probably him calling you right now.”
He checks his buzz screen, and I can see I’m right. He ignores the call.
“You probably shouldn’t ignore that,” I say.
