“Brilliant,” he says. “It should still be back at Medical. I only grabbed her blood sample out of the cooler before we left for the lab.”
I’ll believe it when I see it. The official sample should be here, but it isn’t. Samples don’t just walk away.
“Good, good.” I’m not thrilled, but this will work. If it’s there.
“You’re worried.”
“Do you blame me?”
I hear Zesi in the background, then Leo’s muffled voice. “No, I can’t blame you,” he says when he comes back. “I’m coming down there.”
For as long as I can remember, it’s been my dream to follow in my mother’s footsteps. Medical training first, station dutiesnext—and, eventually, assuming her role completely when the time came for her to pass down the torch.
Eventually was never supposed to happen this soon.
None of this was official yet, of course.Try medicine for a while, my mother said.You might find you don’t enjoy it—you might want something different.
But I’ve always known. I’ve never been like Heath, constantly taking in the possibilities, equally tempted to pursue them all. I’ve never been like Haven, or the handful of others on the station who dream of living life on Earth—as if lakes and sky and forests and mountains could ever hold a candle to the glorious field of stars outside our every window. I would never trade the station, and not just because of the view—in all the universe, the station is the only place my mother and I ever coexisted, where every memory I ever made was born. It’shome.
Now tomorrow is darkness.
Tomorrow is me starting a fire with my bare hands, not the passing of a torch.
Tomorrow is slippery for us all now—and today is for staying alive.
Mila’s reader is in Medical’s cooler, exactly as it should be. I tuck it inside my satchel—my mother’s old satchel, with an insulated pocket—and head back to the lab. Already, it’s past noon. I’ve let too much time slip away.
Leo should be waiting for me by now. He has codes to everything; all six of us do. We keep them to ourselves.
Which is why, I think as I walk back, it’s so very odd that the blood went missing. Leo’s sharp and he’s trustworthy. Haven and Natalin went to bed, Heath and Zesi were at the crematory. The doors lock automatically, so no one could have broken in. And even if they could have broken in... why would anyone want to?
When I enter the lab, Leo’s seated on one of the tall stools, at the never-used island right beside the scope station that’s started to feel like home. His back is toward me, and he doesn’t budge. It isn’t like him.
“You didn’t mean this fridge, did you.”
The station where he sits is meant to support exoplanet research missions, but ever since theNautilusgot an equipment upgrade a few years ago, they haven’t needed our lab except to run extremely specialized sample diagnoses. We always have advance notice to prep on our end, so at the moment, none of those appliances are even operational—we unplug them at stations that aren’t used often in order to conserve energy. The mini-fridge is right next to the one I checked so thoroughly.
Oh, no.
Now that I’m closer, and not behind him, I see why he’s staring: Mila’s blood sample sits, lonely, on the island. I don’t even have to ask to know it’s ruined.
“The other refrigerator was just so full...”
He meant well, he meant well. Still, it’s frustrating. “It’s full for a reason.” Leo is usually so on top of things. He runssystems and tech with Zesi, and works with Heath to keep the peace. “Did it not tip you off that there wasn’t anything else in that fridge? Did you not think it felt a little warm?” I close my eyes, breathe. Bite back my disappointment before it slams him in the face.
“It did, but—you know how last night was, Linds.” His voice is low, crackling. Too little sleep, too much stress. “It was late, and everything with Mila was just too much. And I was worried about you.”
“I get it.” I do.
Our mistakes might be understandable, but it doesn’t mean they don’t matter.
“It’s too much,” I say, settling onto the stool opposite him. We lean on our elbows, head in hands. Mirror images. “We shouldn’t have to deal with this.”
“I feel like I’m losing it.” He stares, unblinking, straight through Mila’s blood and into something only he can see. “Losing my footing, you know? Trying to do everything, all at once. Failing miserably.”
This is why we go so well together, why we’re closer with each other than we are with Heath, or Haven, or even our own parents before they... well, before. We feel the same things in the same way, fracture under pressure the same way, crack and break and try to hold ourselves together in the same way. We’re both reluctant to accept the reality that we’re capable of breaking at all.
I train my eyes on him, wait quietly until he meets them. “You really worried about me?”
