“I thought it was weird we hadn’t heard from anyone in a while, from down below, but at the same time, I never really paid attention to how much of our communication before... before everyone, um... before I was alone up here... was initiated by us, not them. Looking back, I think we initiated most of the calls. Also, I’ve been busy lately, distracted—”
“Is there a point to this?” Haven asks.
Zesi sighs. “I tried to use this message system, tested it to make sure it’s working, and you know what I found? It’s ourinternalmessaging channel, not the one we use between the station and Earth.This”—he rolls to the far end of the board, where a smallish red light blinks angrily—“is the channel we need. I only noticed it because it used to be steady and green. I didn’t think much of it when it turned yellow, but the red was sort of hard to overlook.”
“So we have a message,” Leo says. “What’s the problem with that? What’d they say?”
“Well,” Zesi says with a nervous laugh, “thatisthe problem. I can’t get into that particular system just yet. And red could mean anything fromthis message is ten days oldtoALERT, ALERT, TAKE ASTEROID PRECAUTIONS, right?”
Asteroid.
As if we don’t have enough problems.
I stare at the angry red light, as if it’s showing me our bleak future: I imagine an unwieldy space rock, hurtling toward us—ripping through us—ending us.
“Find a way to break in to the system, find a way to unlock the message,” I order. “Stay up all night if you have to. If there’s an asteroid headed for us, we won’t have much time to shift position.” Not that we’re equipped to make asignificantshift—our sheer size renders us mostly inert. We weren’t designed for travel, only self-defense in emergencies. “Are we even equipped to do a scan for that sort of thing? We’d have to be, right?” I’ve been so consumed with dealing with disasters inside the ship, I hadn’t yet considered the potential disasters from outside. Excellent.
“We are, but I can’t keep a close eye on the radarandtry to break in to the message system at the same time,” he says. “I can tell you what to do for the scan, though; I can walk you through it—any of you up for taking lead on that?”
Our eyes collectively land on Leo. He’s the best with tech, other than Zesi himself. Nice to not be the expert for once.
“Yeah,” Leo says. “I’ll help.”
“I can help, too,” Haven says. “I mean, if that would actuallybehelpful? Not too many hands on deck? And that way, we can rotate out if any of us needs to focus on something else for a bit?”
“The more minds, the better,” Zesi says, and it almost makes me feel bad for being the only one to not volunteer. Almost.
“Let me know when you break through,” I say. “I want tobe with you when you listen to the message, even if it’s in the middle of the night.”
It’s very possible I’ll regret these words, but what I’d regret even more? An asteroid slamming through our station. Blinking out to blackness. If that’s even a remote possibility, we need to take immediate precautions.
“Get some rest, Linds, okay?” Leo says. “You deserve it.”
I smile, nod. Keep my mouth shut, because he means well.
We all deserve rest, and I should tell them to make sure they get some, too. More than deserve, we allneedit. But we can’t afford to rest, not really. So I stay quiet.
It isn’t like I’ll be stealing any more time for myself, though, not tonight. It isn’t like I’m a hypocrite.
I leave them all in Control and head for the lab. I’ve got work to do.
16
TO SHATTER, TO SPLATTER
OF ALL THE long days I’ve had lately, today takes the prize. It’s only five-evening, according to the lab’s analog clock, but a week’s worth of problems have crept in and wedged themselves between minute marks. The hours are bursting at the seams.
I take a seat on my old, familiar stool. Lean my elbows on the crisp white Formica countertop. Think. It helps to have this empty surface in front of me—it’s calming, like an alternate universe where nothing is wrong or out of place or broken, where nothing is shattered, or splattered with blood. Like I have endless possibility in front of me, the good sort.
It isn’t easy to clear my head. I came down here to focus on Mila, to see if there’s anything else I can learn from the hazy results of the lab work I did this afternoon, but my mind is slippery. Every few minutes, I find myself steeped in thought over the problems I’ve assigned everyone else. And not only those—unofficial ones, too. Like the thing Haven said today after themandatory check-in:they’re going to hate us. Or Natalin’s fear that a station-wide food crisis will fall on her shoulders. And then there’s this new Heath situation, whatever’s changing between us—it definitely rubbed him the wrong way that I picked up Leo’s call and ignored his, but it isn’t like I did it to hurt him.
I feel like I’m walking on glass, carrying armfuls of glass, in a glass world that’s tipped off its axis.
At twenty after, I hear the lab door slide open. It’s Heath.
“Linds?” Again with the nickname. “I don’t mean to interrupt... whatever it is you’re doing?” He eyes my still-clean table. “Thought you might want to take a look at this.”
He slides a petite plastic bag to me, zip-sealed to contain the tiniest bit of blood inside. I look up and find him staring at me, not the bag.
