Page 231 of Every Almost

Reyna sat in the dark with Charlie's music in her ears and let the song ask its questions.

She didn't answer. But it wasn't as though she was searching for one. Truthfully, she had known the answer she wanted for a while now. Knowing had never been the problem.

She left it unanswered because saying it, even here, into the dark, to absolutely no one, would make it real. And once it was real, she would have to do something about it.

That was the one road Reyna Solas had never found the nerve to drive.

The song ended.

She played it again.

THIRTY-ONE

NEVER TEAR US APART

The alarm pulledCharlie out of a dead sleep. As if on autopilot herself, she went to the door of her quarters and out into the corridor.

Engineering alarms had a specific pitch. They weren't smooth escalating tones like many of the other alarms on the ship. This one was ugly. It immediately communicated that a system had started failing on its own schedule. She'd learned it in her first month on the Emberkind and hoped never to hear it because, usually, it meant a catastrophic and dangerous failure.

Yet here it was, blasting over the ship like a siren.

Charlie ran to Engineering.

Tavi intercepted her at the corridor junction.

He wasn't grinning.

In all the months Charlie had known him, she had never once caught him without his signature grin. Its absence hit her harder than the alarm and told her everything she needed to know without words.

"Coolant manifold," he said quickly. "Cascade failure. It's bad, Spark Plug."

"Where's Cael?" she asked.

"Gone."

Charlie stopped in her tracks. "Gone? Gone where?"

"I mean, he's not there," Tavi said, stopping beside her. "Maren already pulled the access log on the way down. Apparently, he ran a solo diagnostic on the manifold. Off-schedule. Off-protocol." Tavi's voice had lowered, and Charlie could hear his thoughts in the tone. "He pushed it to full capacity, Charlie." Tavi's jaw worked. "But then the log just... stops. He was there, and then he was gone." Tavi shook his head. "Maren caught him on the corridor feed. He ran for the duty stations two decks up."

Charlie's quarters were four doors down from the bay. Cael knew that. Everyone in Engineering knew that.

He had gone two decks up instead.

He would rather have run the length of the ship than knock on her door.

There was a version of Charlie that would have fired a retort first and asked about the manifold second. That Charlie would always get her shot in early because nobody else ever did it for her. Even now, she felt herself load the round, months of Cael's face packed into one clean sentence.

But she set it down.

She was surprised how easily it flitted away. A few months ago, it would have cost her something to hold that back. But now it just... didn't matter. Cael had done this to himself, everyone could see that without her input or addition.

And besides, Charlie had a manifold to save.

"Talk to me while we move," she said to Tavi instead, and they ran.

Engineering was completely flooded.

The coolant was a clear, temperature-reactive fluid that moved like water and carried a faint luminescent charge, and the whole flooded bay had lit up blue-green from the inside. It looked like the bioluminescent tide Charlie had read about as a kid. The tide that glowed where the waves broke and lit up around your ankles when you walked through it.