The line crackled softly before Jude answered. “I was already in orbit when it started.” His voice had goneflat, tone hardened. “Elias and I were sent up on a joint mission with NASA and the Space Force. We were attaching SOL to satellite arrays.” He trailed off, and I waited patiently, leaning in closer as he cleared his throat over the line. “That’s where I went when I left you—” Static filled the headset again and I froze, terror clawing at my throat.
“No, no, no, no—”
“—I wasn’t allowed to tell you or anyone for that matter.” His voice broke through, and I took a deep breath, hanging onto every single word. “Even my mom didn’t know where I was. I was going to call you when I got home, and explain everything. The idea was to build a monitoring net around Earth to track atmospheric changes and radiation levels, that sort of thing.” A short laugh escaped him, but there was no humor in it. “Theyknew,Sol. They all knew something was coming. For months…I was just—I was sitting up there while the planet burned. They promised they’d get our loved ones into a bunker.” His voice broke slightly. “Everything collapsed too fast.”
The radio hissed softly between us.
“What about you? Where are the others?”
My throat closed. “Paul and Bridget are dead.” It was the first time I’d admitted it out loud. They left and they weren’t coming back. “They went to find medicine because some of the others got really sick.” I stared down at the console. “They never came back.”
The stillness on the other end of the line was enormous. “How long ago was that?”
“Years.”
“The others?”
“Died.” I swallowed.
“So it’s just you?”
“Me… and Patricia.”
Another pause. “Who’s Patricia?”
I sniffed, wiping my nose with my sleeve, letting out a shaky laugh. “Paul’s gecko.”
We talked as long as they’d let us, which didn’t feel nearly long enough, except that I was already growing weary, and I knew that if there was any chance of figuring out my water problem, I needed to rest.
I didn’t bother Jude with it, though. We’d already been through so much—and had lost everything. Finding each other again through nothing but sound waves, an entire planet apart, was its own kind of miracle. I didn’t want to ruin it with the dismal truth of my survival.
The Survival Optimization Logic for the real Solace was futile.
“I need to sleep,” I told him reluctantly. “I don’t know what it's like up there, but down here I sleep more than I did up top.”
Ransom sighed, and I could almost picture him now. Face scrunched with worry. The deep crease, settling between his brows.
“Okay, yeah. Get some sleep.” A lull followed—long enough that I wondered if I’d bumped a dial or knocked something loose. Then his voice returned. “Solace…”
My finger hovered over the relay button, I thought I knew what he was going to say. For years it had been instinct to shrug him off—to offer a sullen ‘love you too’ in return—but I did love him.
Fiercely.
Defiantly.
Against every single odd stacked against us—to which there were many.
“Will I get to talk to you tomorrow?”
My heart deflated. “I don’t see why not.”
“I’ll wait all day if I have to.”
I brushed the tear from my eye. “Goodnight, Ransom.”
“Goodnight, Solace. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be here,” I lied. It was the greatest tragedy of all, because once an object was in motion, it stayed in motion.
