“About the food?”
“About Mila,” she says. “About the mutation.”
I hesitate. My opinion isn’t going to be a popular one—not with Haven or Natalin, anyway. “Don’t tell them anything yet.”
Natalin’s perfectly arched eyebrows go through the roof. “It’s their right—”
“Before you rail me,” I say, “I saidnot yet. I didn’t saynot ever. What good is it to tell them now? We don’t have answers, and you know they’ll have questions. We may not be able to stopthis thing, but we need to at least look like we’re trying. Telling them immediately isn’t going to do anything but make people panic.”
“You don’t know that.” Natalin won’t meet my eyes.
“I really, really do.”
We all do. Paranoia and panic, that’s what happened the first time around. I hid out in Medical with Dr. Safran, preoccupied myself withfixingour situation instead of agonizing over it, but still, I heard all the stories. Some people wouldn’t touch the food. Some wouldn’t leave their cabins. Some hoarded supplies, soap and antibac and breathing masks.
None of this mattered, in the end.
“What happens when they ask about Mila?” Haven asks. “Why they haven’t seen her around?”
I’m not a fan of slippery lies. It’s too hard to keep your footing with one, and lies tend to multiply. “She’s helping out in the lab,” I say. “That’s the official word.”
5
FIRE AND THE SEA
WHEN WE BREAK, Leo walks me to the lab. I hear the gurney wheels long after Heath and Zesi roll Mila out of sight. Zesi is intimately familiar with the layout of the entire station, thanks to his time at systems. He’ll know how to get to the base deck, where the crematory is, without drawing attention. No one’s finding out about this tonight—if anyone knows how to keep a secret here, it’s him.
“You should sleep, Linds.”
The other girls went back to bed. Their work centers mostly around a daytime schedule, when everyone else is awake. Mine doesn’t.
“It’s important to check this out,” I say.
“It’s important to check it outwhen your mind is fresh.” He mimics my tone. It sounds too haughty.
“Listen, don’t start with me tonight, okay?” He’s almost never wrong, and he knows it, and he knowsIknow it—but his exceptional clarity can be really inconvenient.
I reach for the lab door; he catches my hand, turns me aroundto face him. His eyes are wide, deep brown with flecks of gold. If his are fire, mine are the sea. “When is the last time you slept? No, don’t look away, I’m serious.”
“What do you mean by ‘slept,’ exactly? An hour here, an hour there? All night? Every night? Or—”
“Lindley.”
It isn’t a matter of wanting to sleep. No more sleep, no more dreams—not for me, at least. Now my nights are full ofwhat if, what next, what now?
We’ve lost so much more than just our parents.
His hand is soft in mine, but I pull away. If I’m going to give him something real, I’m taking something back in return. “I don’t know how anyone sleeps anymore.”
He doesn’t press me after that.
The lab is just as I left it last night, steady and bright and predictable and certain, crisp and clean, my own personal oasis. Unlike Medical, the lab spans an entire wing: station after station of equipment, ready and waiting to unlock the entire universe.
Except all our experts are dead.
Dr. Safran was an expert in everything. Most of the one hundred were experts in two or three fields—only the best of the best made it onto the station, thisbeacon of hope for humanity, as it was deemed nearly two decades ago at its christening. A few limited themselves to a single area of concentration, but that was rare. Our station is the main hub in our fleet’s trio, home-base support for the two teams stationed much fartherout in the galaxy. Each and every member—on our station and both of the others—was recruited for a lifetime of service from an extraordinarily capable pool of candidates.
Let’s hope we who are left inherited enough of their intellect and instinct to keep ourselves alive.
