Page 73 of Every Almost

The truth hit her as all the air left her lungs.

Elena didn't PERS back.

Reyna launched herself off the floor and ran to the data console, her hands aching to track her signal. The engineer commanding the console didn't even put up a fight, moving out of the way before Reyna even reached the station. She loaded the PERS tracking system, and pulled up the signal map. She had programmed the trackers to flash green when PERS signals were active but unused, yellow when certain ones were off-ship, orange when signals were in use, and red when their signatureswere missing or unable to locate. This could be due to anything, a lack of power, a communication array disturbance, even something as simple as someone sitting on their device wrong and it trapped without being able to broadcast its location. She had calibrated the system this way herself during the refit, and personally recalibrated every cycle, because the safety of her crew was not something she trusted to full automation.

As she scanned the tracking system, she saw many green lights flashing, a few yellow, none that were orange...

And one red.

Elena's PERS signal was missing.

Before another second could go by, Reyna ordered the sweep. She ordered it calmly, using the voice she had learned from Elena herself that carried the authority of certainty, even when she was barely holding it together on the inside.

The scouting crew took the shuttle back to the area of assignment where the incident had happened. Reyna sat in the bridge, the comms active for everyone there to hear the scouting crew's updates.

They swept the area for hours.

A day.

Two days.

Crew members came and went. Shifts changed over four times. But Reyna stayed. She never left the bridge, never walked far enough away that she couldn't hear the scouting crew. Jere was with her for most of it, but occasionally left, bringing Reyna back food and nourishment.

"Borran orders you to eat," Jere said as evening approached on the second day. "He's been tracking your food intake and is very worried."

"He told you that?" Reyna asked.

"His grunt did," Jere replied. Reyna looked over at him and he gave her a lopsided smile. Reyna didn't respond, and only turned her gaze back to her console.

"Please, Rey. Just some food. Even just a few bites."

Reyna didn't respond to him, but she patted the side of her console table. He understood, leaving the plate of food there for her. She didn't know if she'd eat it, but Jere, and Borran, were right. She'd be no good without keeping herself in peak shape. And that included eating and drinking.

Another day passed, and the Frontier gave them nothing. Space was already massive, and a single person in it was very small. And as time ticked on, Reyna began to seriously worry that the technology that should have brought Elena home was scattered across a planet surface in pieces too damaged to function.

On the fourth day, Jere approached her again. But this time, it wasn't about food.

"Rey," he began, his voice soft but strained and raspy. "Reyna."

Reyna pulled her eyes away from her console screen. She knew she must look a sight. She hadn't slept properly since Elena's disappearance, grabbing little bits of time here and there on the surface of her console table. She hadn't showered, or changed her clothes. She knew that was probably what Jere was coming to tell her. To clean herself up, and that he'd watch the console and listen to the scouting crew on comms. She didn't know if she could do it.

"I know, Jere," she started, attempting to catch him before he said something about the way she must smell. "I need to get cleaned up. But you must promise me that you won't leave this desk, and ifanythingcomes through comms while I'm away, you come and get me as soon as?—"

"That's not why I'm here, Rey," Jere interrupted, the words almost sounding wrong the way they escaped his mouth.

Reyna looked at him in confusion. "Then, why?"

And then Jere began to cry. Softly, tears slipping down his cheeks slowly. And Reyna sucked in a staggered breath.

"Rey..." he pleaded to her. "It's been four days, Rey. The scouting crew has turned that planet and its surrounding area over more times than I can count in my current state." He took a deep breath. "Rey... we need to call it."

"No."

"Reyna—"

"No, Jerel!" Reyna screamed, her voice echoing off the walls of the bridge. Her heart was pounding. The bridge was getting smaller. She knew it wasn't, and it kept happening anyway.

She turned away from Jere and sat back down at her console. She felt the sting of tears threatening to fall behind her eyes, but she tamped that down, securing it under a layer of solid rock deep in her chest.