Bypermanent solution, he meant: a new planet.
“We need return probability models,” Elias said, already scrolling through the data. “This isn’t just about the bunker. Look—” He flipped the tablet toward me. “Oxygen levels are rising and stabilizing. If we could clean the air of ARS-7…” he trailed off.
“We could go home,” I finished.
Commander Zhang excused the room, but Adam managed to linger, cornering me off at the door. He smiled, opening his arms as if expecting me to give him a hug but managed not to look disappointed when I stopped short.
“Haven’t been sleeping well?” he asked. “Nightmares?”
“Something like that,” I muttered. I wasn’t sure nightmares was the proper word, not when the dreams were the best moments of my life. Not when I dreamt of Solace’s head on my bare chest, our bodies tangled together. Calling it a dream felt wrong, because there was nothing restful about it. Sometimes waking up was actual torture.
Adam nodded slowly, as if he understood. “I’m here if you want to talk about it.”
“I’m fine,” I said quickly, stepping past him. “It’s nothing.”
10
Paul’s Garden
Solace
Sleep had been difficult since the Scourge. It was almost impossible to find, and even harder to hold onto. Lately, though, I've been sleeping like the dead. I’d tried explaining my dreams to Patricia once, but she didn’t care to listen. They were strange things—sterile halls and small circle windows staring out into nothing. An endless black. Sometimeshewas there. And every time I woke, my chest hurt.
I laid there wound tight, fingers itching for something. But what, I couldn’t say. At first I thought maybe it was anxiety. A reflex of my muscles crying out for music. To dance across ivory keys. I’d mostly curbed the urge by replaying the recordings from my high schoolers’ last performance over the loudspeaker. The echo of a piano filling the bunker was often better than silence, since Patricia was mute.
I shifted in my cot, rolling onto my side as the narrow frame creaked beneath me. The canvas had sagged months ago, but I’d piled a few sweatshirts across it before stretching a twin sheet over the whole mess. It helped. Mostly.
With a sigh, I pushed myself upright. The control room was dark and the main dashboard sat silent infront of me, its screens black where they’d once glowed with neat rows of information. When the power outages started, I unplugged anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Like a few lights, air circulation, water, and the microwave.
Funny thing about the end of the world—I grew up without a microwave because of my mother’s fear of radiation, only to live through nuclear fallout.
My eyes drifted across the panel where something blinked. A small red light pulsed steadily near the corner of the dashboard. I frowned.
“That wasn’t doing that before.” I leaned forward and tapped the console. Nothing happened. “Huh. Patricia, have you seen this?” Maybe I’d kicked something in my sleep. I stared at it a moment longer, then shrugged. If the bunker exploded, at least it would save me the trouble of rationing breakfast.
I swung my legs off the cot and padded down the corridor toward the kitchen. The pantry shelves looked worse every time I opened them. Rows of empty space where cans had once been stacked high. I’d been stretching the supplies for months now, cutting portions smaller and smaller.
Bridget and Paul would bring more when they got back.
I reached automatically for the coffee bin, then stopped. Inside sat the last handful of instant packets. Running my fingers through, I counted them again. Three weeks,maybe.If I behaved. I sighed and pushed the lid closed. “No coffee today,” I muttered.
Breakfast ended up being half a ration bar and a few crackers. I chewed slowly, mentally cursing Paul for notbeing rich enough to install a proper garden down here. A billionaire bunker without hydroponics. What a waste.
Afterward, I carried my wrapper to the trash and headed toward the open space in the center of the bunker. It had once been the common room, and now it was the gym. I stretched first, rolling my shoulders and loosening the stiffness from sleeping on the cot. Then I moved through the same slow routine I’d been doing for months—squats, pushups, lunges, some jumping jacks. Enough body weight movements to keep the muscles alive, but not too much or they’d start eating through what little food I had left.
When I finished, I sat on the floor for a moment, catching my breath before heading back to the control room. The radio console flickered when I powered it on and static filled the speakers. I waited. Sometimes the other bunker came on around this time. I had no idea where they were—somewhere far enough away that the signal cracked and stretched thin across the airwaves. At this point I was fairly certain they were somewhere in Asia. And for all their talking, I understood exactly none of it, but the sound of another human voice was enough.
Today the radio stayed quiet. “Guess they’re asleep.” Patricia watched from the doorway while I moved around the room, checking gauges, adjusting switches, straightening things that didn’t really need straightening. “Did you switch this on? I don’t remember it blinking this way before.” She said nothing. I rolled into the chair and flipped a few switches I knew didn’t work, hoping one of them might turn the light off. It didn’t. “Welp,” I said, pushing away from the panel. “Don’t know. Hope it’s not important. I’ll ask Paul when he gets back.”
I leaned back in the chair and rubbed my eyes. “What should we do today? I’m almost finished with the second movement, but I’m running out of paper and I’d rather not waste it. We could play Uno?” I glanced at Patricia. “Or not.” With a sigh, I stood and grabbed the book from my cot. “I guess I’ll read.”
The common room was as one might expect—plain, boring gray. A dome of concrete with electrical tubing running the length of the walls and industrial lights flickering overhead. I tried to keep the lights off since it always seemed to push the system over the edge, but today they held steady. I settled into the couch and pulled the green itchy blanket over my legs. It was freezing down here more often than not, and lately it had only gotten worse. Which had me thinking we were probably on the cusp of winter.
It was a shame that the only books that managed to make it into the bunker were those on gardening, mechanics, electrical and medicine. Nothing fun or helpful in mental escape. Solace wanted a historical romance, or a witty lit-fic. Currently, she was making her way through a book about the electrical components of the air filtration system for the fourth time already.
If we ever got out of this, I was fairly certain I could pass the test to become an electrician on one attempt. Or a farmer. The books on gardening had undoubtedly been the most interesting. “Too bad there isn’t a garden to tend to, eh Paul?”
If I was allowed to go to the surface, I could probably identify everything in the forest. Or could—who knew what it looked like now. I wasn’t sure the trail cams were working any longer considering it had been years since I’d seen any sort of life pass by.
