I feel like I’m losing my mind. Like there is no gravity, no sun, no oxygen—like I can’t trust my own judgment, or my own memories.
Hope and fear can only coexist as equals for so long before one devours the other.
I only pray the fear will starve when it runs out of crumbs.
49
CATWALK, TIGHTROPE
HOW DO YOU hide, forever, in a place like this?
Where the walls feel like they’re closing in—
Where beyond the walls is a suffocating void: from the safe side of the windows, the glittering starlit space is more majesty than instant death—but the safe side of the windows has become every bit as risky.
How do I hide?
If I hide, I’ll starve or get trapped in my head, running blind on an endless dark loop. If I hide, I die anyway.
These are my three options: venture beyondLusca’s walls out into the void of space; simply continue on as I always have; never leave my unit again. Two of these hold certain death—are those preferable to the one that comes with betrayal? Secrecy? Manipulation? Death after death after death, all illogical and completely avoidable?
Unfortunately, the option that terrifies me most is the only one that holds a chance at survival.
The water might be perfectly fine, I tell myself.
The water might be perfectly fine.
I can test it in the lab, prove it’s safe to drink. But how long do I have before we stumble upon another dead body? Or alotof dead bodies, if the entire supply has been tainted?
I rummage around the drawers in SSL and grab an empty test tube, along with a cork I hope will fit—we’ve had issues with these tubes in the past, so delicate they crack when corked. Carefully, I fill the tube with water from the lab’s tap, then ease the cork into place. The glass holds.
Halfway to Portside, I decide to take a detour down to the hydro chamber. A series of panels near the filter console gives a constant read on the mineral levels in our water supply—they wouldn’t necessarily inform me of the presence of belladonna there, but if the levels show any abnormalities, that could be a clue. Aside from that, I simply want to make sure the sample I pulled from the tap is water from the filter Zesi installed, not the little bit left over from before. Each orb self-sanitizes before refilling with water, so it should be fairly easy to tell if my sample came from the dregs of Orb 5 or from full-to-the-brim Orb 1; if there’s any water left at all in Orb 5, my lab test will be useless until I can get some that’s been through the filter Zesi installed.
I tap in my code, and the door zips open—but I’m stopped dead in my tracks when I hear a pair of hushed voices, sandpaper voices that rub roughly against each other.
The argument cuts off abruptly; their echoes take longer to die. My paranoia crescendos to worst-case scenario in aheartbeat. Anyone outside our core group should be in their cabins on lockdown right now.
“Hello?” I call.
No use pretending I haven’t interrupted. They know I’m here—well, they knowsomeoneis here. I can’t see them from where I stand, but that doesn’t mean they can’t see me. And if they can see me, that’s an advantage I’d like to take away. If I’ve stumbled onto something—if they think I’ve overheard things I shouldn’t—
Now does not seem like the time to place myself in anyone’s crosshairs.
“Lindley?”
A wave of relief washes over me. “Heath?”
It’s only Heath... and... who? My relief is quickly chased by a wave of suspicion. What is Heath doing in the hydro chamber? And since when does he get into heated arguments with people?
“Yeah, over here,” he says.
I follow the catwalk around toward his voice, find him sitting like Haven and I did earlier, beside... Natalin?
My eyes dart back and forth between them. Heath and Natalin? Heath... and Natalin. I can’t think of a single time I’ve ever seen them pair off on their own.
Maybe it’s because they only pair off in secret. Sort of like now.
I could sit here all day trying to read between the lines, or I could attack the question head-on. What would my mother do?
