I take in this moment.
This silence.
This could be it. I could be this alone forever.
I didn’t think there could be anything emptier than being on my own, forever, without the people I love. But when I think about losing Leo—and Heath—and my mother, of course—it’s like bits of my soul are being chipped away with a sharp knife. There’s something worse than being alone, and it is this: my soul, scraped into a fine pile of shadow. A fading star eclipsed by dust, not quite dead and not quite living.
Natalin buzzes again, and the sound of the vibration is too loud in this empty room, now that everything is still. I don’t want to take the call, don’t want to hear anyone tell me how Ishouldbe handling this mess. I never wanted any of it. I want it to be over—all of it, with all of us at peace, all of us together. All of us alive.
None of us murderers.
I close my eyes. Answer.
“Hey.” My voice splinters.
“It’s getting pretty overwhelming in here—everyone’s freaking out about that alarm,” she says. “And it’s about a thousand degrees, and it smells horrible, and—”
There’s a commotion in the background, and she yells something that does nothing to calm it. If anything, the volume gets worse. “Sorry if that was loud in your ear,” she goes on. “Anyway, can you please send Leo and Haven back here to help me?”
My stomach flips. “Leo’s out with Heath in a bird, won’t be back for... a while. I thought Haven was with you, though?”
“She said Grace came to her panicked about Yuki having a nosebleed or something? That was twelve minutes ago—she should’ve been back with the witch hazel by... now... well, wait, that’s weird.” She pauses. I imagine her thick eyebrows knitting together like they always do when she’s perplexed about a problem. “Yuki’s asleep—Grace, too. And yes, because I know you’re about to ask, I can see them breathing from here. I don’t see any sign of nosebleed, though?”
“Iwasabout to ask. And you’re right, that’s weird. Can you wake Grace up and ask her about it?”
“Already on it.” I hear all sorts of noise in the background, but less than a minute later, Grace’s small voice cuts through it.Haven? I haven’t seen her today, why?
“Grace says she hasn’t—”
“I heard her.”
Natalin and I are both silent on either end of the call.
If she’s like me, she’s trying to stop thinking the worst.
If she’s like me, she’s unsuccessful.
Zesi’s busy with our defenses—the gravity glitch confirmed it, as did the blaring alarm. Heath and Leo aren’t even on the station right now, and Natalin? Natalin sounds too genuinely panicked to be lying. That leaves only me, only Haven.
“Lindley?”
I make a small noise, something sad and unintelligible, just to let her know I’m still listening.
“You... should probably go look for her, yeah?”
This: this is the thing that pulls my tears out of hiding.
This is the hopeless part.
I don’t know how I didn’t see it before, but now that I’ve put things together, they are blinding. Such a blatant lie told straight to Natalin’s face, so deliberately—if not for that, I’d be fearing for Haven’s life right now, that her lingering absence meant she’d become our next victim.
I am not fearing for Haven’s life. Instead, I fear the stranger she’s become.
Haven.
Haven.
63
