“Just another thing to forget,” Zurri sighed, snapping open the Talpraxem bottle and shaking out two into her palm. The tiny pink ovals glistened under the kitchen light, but Zurri waited to toss them back, angling into her chair while her fellow inmates stared holes into the table. The storm warning sirens had ended, though the facility remained shrouded in gloomy half light.
“It’s horrible,” Senna murmured, emerging from the darkened hall and returning to the kitchen. She had changed into a sack of a T-shirt dress with her same long coat over it. Zurri couldn’t blame her for wanting to immediately change out of a dead woman’s dress. “Just horrible.”
“You knew her for twenty-four hours,” Zurri told her. “You’ll manage.”
“I can still be upset!” she replied, voice muffled as she pulled her knees up to her chest and nestled her chin into them. “It can still be sad.”
“Something weird is going on,” the boy said, dropping a blood-smeared earring onto the table.
“You think?” Zurri was tempted to swallow the Talpraxem, but it didn’t seem like the prudent thing to do until official word came down on why one of the Dome employees had just pancaked against the facility exterior. She shivered, then checked to see if either of the other two had noticed her discomfort. Nope. Senna was still buried in her legs, a human egg balled up in her chair, and Han was too busy fixating on the earring. The other woman’s apartment was about as cutesy as she expected, themed in a soothing ocean theme with a big mural in the living room and sea glass set into the table.
“I hate this place,” Zurri sighed, letting the pills clatter onto the table.
“Go on,” urged Senna, staring across the table at Han. “What’s weird?”
“Besides people flying into the windows like confused birds?” Zurri stood up and crossed to the refrigerated box, helping herself to an aluminum cylinder of white wine. The Talpraxem was for later, but she didn’t have to spend this time with them completely sober.
“Let him talk,” Senna murmured. “Go on, Han.”
The kid hesitated, dark eyes hovering on Senna’s face as if he maybe didn’t want to tell her specifically, then took a steadying breath and shrugged his bony shoulders. “I saw something tonight. A . . . shadow thing. I thought it was Zurri, but it couldn’t be, because she showed up later and it was definitely ahead of me. Leading me somewhere.”
“I’ve seen it, too,” Senna assured him. She had gone pale, and flinched when Zurri opened the wine with a crisp crrrack. “The shadow was in my room; it was watching me sleep.”
“I don’t know about you two, but I can’t take three more days of this,” Zurri muttered, taking a long sip. The wine wasn’t going to put a dent in her anxiety. She didn’t want to say that she, too, had seen the shadow, or thought she had, glimpsing it briefly, when the storm made the power flicker. “Locked down until further notice, can you even believe that shit?” She rolled her eyes. “Dunn is going to wish he never built this place when I’m done annihilating his ass to the press. He’ll have to call it off now. He can’t keep this experiment going when someone just died.”
“He can’t do that.” Han tore his eyes away from the earring. “He can’t.”
“Kid, I know you’re his fan club president or whatever but this is serious,” Zurri told him. “I want an explanation from him and then I want out.”
“You can’t,” Han pointed out. “The storms.” Then he tapped his VIT with two fingers. “None of my messages are going out. Even if Paxton wanted to send us home early, he can’t. You saw what happened to Anju, do you want to climb in the rover right now?”
She made a face and dumped the rest of the wine down her throat. “I just know I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m not going back in that LENG room, I’m staying right here. I mean, Christ, can either of you remember what goes on in there?”
“No, I can’t picture it,” Senna replied, pouting out her lower lip. “Does this feel like what you expected?” Senna asked.
Both Zurri and Han shook their heads no.
“There are . . . blanks. I can feel the voids. It’s like my head is going to burst whenever my thoughts wander in the wrong direction, or if I try to remember my time in the LENG room.” Senna played nervously with the ends of her oversized coat, and she could sense there was more coming as the woman chewed and chewed it over. “There’s another man in the facility, I’ve only seen him once, but I didn’t see him tonight with everyone else. Do you think . . . do you think maybe he had something to do with Anju?”
“I met him, too,” said Han, spinning the earring slowly with his right forefinger. “He seemed nice enough.”
“Hold up, there’s another person here? Why haven’t I met him?” The door chimed softly as Zurri’s voice rose and Paxton stepped into Senna’s apartment, rubbing at the weary line etched between his brows. “Perfect,” she said, standing. “Maybe you can explain what the hell is going on here.”
“Thank you for being patient.” Paxton stood in the hall, a few feet from where they had gathered at the table. He seemed particularly intent on Senna as he pursed his lips and then announced, “We’ve reviewed the security footage. It looks like what happened this evening was a terrible accident. Anju logged a concern with one of the north-end shutter depots, a thermal regulator failed, and ice jammed up the track. Our maintenance suits have clip-in systems to prevent something like this from happening, but it looks like her clip failed or the wind was too powerful for it. I’m just . . . I apologize that you all had to see that. As you can imagine, we’re reeling. Anju has been part of the team here since the early days, and we’re all going to miss her.”
“How awful,” Senna murmured. “I’m so sorry, Paxton.”
Zurri frowned. She knew vague corporate speak when she heard it; it had been spouted at her thousands of times whenever some intern fucked up and made a shoot run hours too long, or a hungover director slept through call time. “What was your assistant doing out there? Don’t you have maintenance Servitors for that?”
Switching to rubbing his eye under his glasses, he said quietly, “We all wear a lot of hats around here, Zurri. Maybe you can save the accusations until after we find a way to recover her body. If . . . if we can at all.”
Silence. Han and Senna wilted, convinced. Zurri wasn’t so sure. She watched Paxton carefully, vigilant for any signs of deception. Annoyingly, he just looked tired, impatient to be away from them. That scanned, at least.
“Are you calling off the program?” Senna finally asked in a tiny voice. To Zurri, she almost sounded hopeful.
“No,” Paxton replied firmly. “We can resume in the morning. I know we’ve all had a bad shock, but Anju believed in what we’re doing here as much as I do. She understood the dangers of working at a facility like this, the dangers of pushing the boundaries the way we are.” His voice shook with real emotion, but Zurri forced her eyes not to roll. “I just ask that you all stay in your apartments for now, while the staff shifts gears. Sixteen will deliver any food you might need, and your updated schedules will be sent to your VITs.”
At that, he gave Senna one more furtive glance, which she was too distraught to notice. What was up with them? Zurri stowed it for later.
“Zurri? Han?” he prompted, dismissing them.
She stood in her own time, subtly collecting the two Talpraxem and hiding them in her palm, then taking her mostly empty can of wine with her to cover the movement. While she rounded the table, Han swiped the earring off the table and brought it to Paxton, presenting it to him with what felt like a tacky flourish.
“Senna says this was Anju’s. I found it on the floor.”
“Thanks, Han,” Paxton murmured, taking the earring from him and slipping it into his pocket. “And I understand that this could affect your healing and progress here, so if anyone would like to update their neural maps to include tonight’s tragedy, that can be arranged.”
Called it.
“Classy,” Zurri muttered, passing him in the hall.
“I’m simply offering,” Paxton replied, cold.
It didn’t seem like he was following them out. Zurri let Han leave first, lingering a little in the doorway. The protective hairs on the back of her neck were standing up, the ones that recognized a fellow woman in need.
“Good night,” he told Zurri firmly, refusing to budge.
“Senna, are you going to be okay if I go?” she asked, ignoring him.
“Sure,” Senna said around a yawn.
Zurri narrowed her eyes and shook her head, backing out the door with her eyes locked on Paxton’s. The smallest, strangest smile appeared on his face. I’m watching you, she thought. One of us has to.