Plantae > Angiosperms > Eudicots > Asterids > Solanales >
Solanaceae > Atropa > A. belladonna
Belladonna has a tortured history; while its value is primarily medicinal, it is most notorious for its toxic qualities. Primary medical benefits: sedative; remedy for bronchial spasms; common ointment for skin, leg, or joint pain; treatment for excessive sweating. Use with caution, use reliable measuring devices for exact dosages, use only if no better alternative is available.
WARNING: When ingested in heedless proportions, belladonna becomes a deadly poison.
Storage Index: F23
I tap F23, which takes me from the compendium directly to belladonna’s entry in the storage index app. Now that I know for sure the belladonna originated here in SSL, the index itself isn’t as helpful as a map would be. While I can tell enough from this list that Section F is devoted entirely to medicinal plants, it isn’t as easy to figure out how the pillars themselves are arranged in this physical room. There are no signs, just row after row after endless row.
In poking around the index, trying to find a map, I stumble on an answer I hadn’t even begun to search for yet—by tapping into F23’s index entry, I’ve accidentally pulled up a request form. Its entry fields prompt me to select a quantity, then manually enter an access code. Instead of filling out the form, however, I tap a small, gray link off to the side:Activity Log.
There’s only one item in the log. Who knew two tiny words, a timestamp, and an access code could be so chilling?Six leaves, it says, and is timestamped four hours prior to Mila’s death.
The access code is exactly the same as the only one I know, the one that grants entry to this place.
And suddenly, my hopes flip—whereas just a few days ago, I had hoped Yuki and Grace were the only ones who knew the access code outside our core six, now I hope for the opposite. I hope this knowledge is pervasive, a secret everyone knows but no one talks about.
Otherwise, our list of potential killers officially just took a drastic hit.
Otherwise, our list of potential killers now looks like: Yuki, Grace, and the five people I thought I could trust more than anyone in the entire galaxy.
I hope beyond all hope there is something here I’m missing.
Belladonna’s pillar is tucked away in the far recesses of the lab. A few more minutes of tapping around pulled up a map, so now I’m leaning against the window full of stars and staring at the bright pillar, as if it will divulge the secrets I want to know.
It could still be anyone. Yuki and Grace had secret intel, and I had no idea, so who’s to say there aren’t more people wandering around the station with restricted access codes?
This reasoning brings me no comfort, though. No matter how emphatically I try to preach it to myself, my counter-thoughts are louder and more convincing.
Because, by now, we would have found more people in places they shouldn’t be: more people trying to access medicinal herbs for their own stress relief or recreation, more activity in the log than two isolated incidents of belladonna and witch hazel retrievals.
Because Akello Regulus would have used the code to access the lab at Portside that early morning. He wouldn’t have been yelling at me through the glass door if he could’ve slipped inside it instead.
There’s always the possibility, of course, that someone I’d never suspect has the code and is simply being extremelycareful. If they’re thinking enough steps ahead to commit murder with such calculation, it makes sense that they’d be smart enough to cover their tracks.
My head hurts.
As much as I’d rather not think about the most likely suspects, it’s time.
I know of eight people who have the access code. Leo and Heath and Haven, Zesi and Natalin. Yuki and Grace. Me.
Unless I have deep repressive issues and have somehow blocked out the planning and execution ofthree murders, I’m ruling myself out.
Yuki and Grace are natural suspects, since they have obvious knowledge of how to get into SSL, and more suspiciously, knowledge of how to retrieve botanical matter from the pillars. They were also missing in the hours after Mila’s death—but what about the hours leading up to it? When, precisely, did they leave Mikko’s party? Was anyone paying close enough attention to know how long they stayed, and when they left? Even if so, I can’t think of a way anyone could provide substantial proof of that information. It would also be good to know what time they arrived at the party—if they were there by 9:13 that night, they couldn’t have been retrieving belladonna from SSL at the same time.
Next up: Natalin. Natalin has been overly combative with me lately, but that seems to spring from her intense desire to keep people alive. That’s not exactly her entire motivation,though—she also has an intense desire to not be at fault, to shove all responsibility on me. It’s possible she’s so deeply afraid of how the station will look at her if we run out of food that she resorted to creating a diversion: something even more terrible, something evenmoreout of our control, than our supply shortage. And cutting down on the number of people who need food while she’s at it? Kind of brilliant. Twisted, yes, but this could be killing two birds with one stone at its finest—exactly the sort of calculation needed to pull these murders off.
As for Zesi—he and Leo were the first to find Jaako and Kerr, after the tip-off from Noël. He was the one to bring me their (potentially tampered-with?) samples, and also the one who discovered Mila in the middle of the night. Even if he didn’t have a direct hand in their deaths, he’s consistently been the first to uncover the news: I can’t think of a more brilliant way to position oneself as blameless than to shine a light on the deaths, to be the first swallowed up by grief and shock. On top of all this, he has intimate knowledge of our tech—he could have tampered with our security vid-feeds, or evaded detection altogether.
Haven, Heath, and Leo: it’s most difficult for me to wrap my head around any one of them committing these murders. It’s difficult to imagine how—like vines grown from the same soil, under the same sun and the same rain—any one of us could have sprouted, not to mentionhidden, such a homicidal streak.
It’s like slicing off a piece of my own heart to set aside mytrust in them, even for this single moment. If I’m honest with myself, though, I will reluctantly admit my trust cracked more than a little when Leo shared with Zesi the things I’d confided in him—and when Heath confessed the truth of his bee crash, a secret he’d hidden for well over a year—and it fractures a little more every time Haven pokes and prods at me about how I’m holding up. Those aren’tmurder-level trust issues, though. Right? Those arewe’re supposed to be able to share everything with each otherissues. They’rehow can I possibly feel supported by you, Haven, when you constantly make me feel like I’m never enough?issues.
And yet. Imustconsider them.
No matter how small the break, I can’t say with absolute certainty that I know every shade—every shadow—of their hearts. We’re all changing, each and every one of us. Every minute since the last of our parents died, every minute we’ve been stranded up here alone. We are as constant as starlight, yet every bit as unreliable: by the time it’s obvious a star has died, it’s much too late to prepare yourself for the darkness.
