I glance at him, send him a silentthank youwith my eyes. “Any objections?” I ask, more as a formality than anything. The least I can give, basically, to make it seem like a team effort instead of just ameeffort.
For a long moment, no one says a word. Finally, Leo claps his hands together. “Well,” he says, “that’s settled. We’ll tell them first thing in the morning?”
“I was thinking we’d tell them tonight, right after we’re done here?” It’s already past eleven. We’ll have to wake some people up, but many of them stay up much later than that anyway.
Natalin glances at the clock. “Tonight? Sure you don’t want to wait until morning, when they’ve slept off everything they had to drink?”
Idon’twant to wait, but she makes a good point. It’s important that they’re lucid enough for the warnings to make a deep impression. “What if something happens in the meantime, though? I feel like we should call for lockdown again.” Even as Isay the words, they feel empty. Lockdown didn’t work before—why should it work tonight?
“You heard them out there, Linds,” Leo says. “It’s obvious they’re going to do whatever they want no matter what we say. If we call for lockdown again tonight, it could be the last straw. They might not show up to hear what we have to say in the morning, you know?”
“Gut feeling?” Haven chimes in. “We’ve got to give them a little space if we want them to keep listening to us. It’s not like we’re their parents—we’ll lose them if we push too hard.”
She’s right, and I know it, but still. Just because we’re not their parents, it doesn’t mean they don’t need people looking out for their best interests. Can’t they see we’re only trying to protect them? At the same time, I get it—I would not take kindly to someone close to my own age tellingmewhat I’m not allowed to do.
“Okay,” I say, still a bit reluctant about the whole thing. “Tomorrow at ten-thirty sharp, we’ll meet in the mezzanine. Haven, get the word out when you do your morning announcement, okay? Make sure to mention it’s extremely important that they show up.” I hesitate to saymandatoryafter what happened with lockdown—mandatoryseems to have lost all meaning.
“Great, so can we go to bed now?” Natalin says. She’s been two seconds from sleep this entire time, and after the week we’ve had, who can blame her?
The main reason I even wanted to call this meeting, beforeHaven came in and heaped more terrible news on, was to tell them about Shapiro, about Vonn—ugh. I’m tempted to dismiss them all, stay here all night until I make successful contact with Vonn’s fleet. But have I not learned my lesson? In this, at least, I can try to rely on more than just myself. Not even a murderer will want to suffer an attack at the hands of Vonn—Ihope—or be relocated when they discover we’re merely unattached youth and not a hostile team of Antarctican agents—so I take a leap of faith and rely heavily on one fundamental assumption: that everyone in this room has a strong sense of self-preservation, at preserving their own freedom.
Not that freedom awaits the guilty, if I have any say in the matter.
“Sorry,” I say. “One last thing, before we go.” I fill them in on the good news first—that relief is on its way, even as we speak!—that we just need to stretch our food supply a little longer, and we’ll be in the clear. Natalin, especially, perks up a bit at this.
And then I drop the bad news.
“So... what do we do?” Zesi says, when I’ve finished telling them about the attack fleet headed our way.
“At this point, there’s not much wecando.” I survey the vast expanse of buttons on the control deck. “Are we equipped for defense, Zesi, do you know? And if so, are you capable of deploying it?”
He stares, unblinking, at the control deck. “No scientist orengineer worth anything would strand us up here without a way to protect ourselves,” he says. “I’ll figure it out.” If anyone could do it, Zesi could. He’s been connecting invisible dots since most of us were still learning the alphabet. He’s frighteningly brilliant.
I make a two-second snap decision: it would be smart to not leave him alone in here. “I can reach out to Shapiro, attempt to explain before it’s too late—and I plan to continue my attempts at direct contact with Vonn’s team. Anyone want to take shifts with me tonight?” I want to delegate this completely, but what if someone answers and we can’t manage to convince them we’renotwar-prone Antarcticans? Maybe they’ll hear traces of my mother in my voice, like Shapiro did before. I can’t stay up all night, though. I need help, much as I hate to admit it.
“Nat and I will take shifts with you,” Haven says, obviously pleased I’m taking her advice to make this more of a team effort. “Want to sleep while I take the first one?”
I glance at Natalin, who looks the furthest thing from alert right now. “I’ll take the first,” I say. “You can relieve me at four, and I’ll take over again when it’s time for you to make morning announcements at eight. Good?”
And then we break again: Natalin floats off to her bed to sleep off the day, as does Haven, so she can rest up for her shift. Leo and Heath head out to deal with the latest bodies—it’s beyond pointless to bother with autopsies at this point, when our time is being stretched in so many different directions. Just in case, I have them put them on ice instead of fire. Zesi andI settle in at Control; he’s already pulled up two sets ofLuscablueprints on his pair of display screens.
I make mindless work of clearing the old coffee mugs away, something easy and well within my control, something to do while mentally preparing for tonight; for tomorrow. I pour the dregs down the sinks in the nearest facility, and rinse off the days-old grime until the mugs are far past the point of being clean. I use a white cotton cloth to scrub them until they sparkle.
When I finally take a seat on my stool, on the opposite end of the control deck as Zesi, I’m ready to begin.
I log back into my mother’s private message inbox, jam my finger at Vonn’s garbled contact handle.
No answer, again. Even the most advanced tech can’t connect in deep, dark space. Fine by me—I need time to think of how to navigate my call with Shapiro, what I could possibly say to convince him I’m a competent leader after all of this, what I could possibly say to convince the board to let us keep our home. And I need time to think about tomorrow morning, how I’ll lay out the stark, bleak truth to the entire station about six of the seven we’ve lost. So very many delicate, dreadful conversations.
This is going to be a long night.
55
MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD AND DYING
SOMETIME AROUND TWO-MORNING, I give it a rest. Not a permanent rest—just a much-needed one. My body needs to move.
I haven’t yet worked up the nerve to have my difficult conversation with Shapiro, and my attempts at getting through to Vonn have proven fruitless. I’ve been circling an idea, though. Earlier, Haven broke the news about the recent deaths right here in Control—there’s no way the vid-feeds could’ve been tampered with since then. I’ve been here the entire time, and Zesi’s been completely wrapped up in file after file of complicated blueprints and diagrams.
