There’s a fire.
It’s not big, and it won’t last the night, but it’s burning well enough for now. There are trees surrounding the lake; most of them are stunted and dead, their dry branches and leaves simple to collect. It was easy for Prakesh to pull in some of the burning fuel on the water’s surface, lighting a dry branch while the others build a small pile behind him.
The Furor escape pod has long since vanished below the surface of the lake–and it is a lake, long and thin, stretching further than the eye can see. The forest around them is dense and dark, the wind rattling through the dry wood. The sun has slipped below the horizon, and the sky is fading to a dark blue above their heads.
The survivors huddle around the fire. Like everyone else, Prakesh is soaked to the skin, and he can’t stop shivering. Every part of him, from his ears to the toes in his squelching, sodden shoes, is numb.
And yet, despite everything that’s happened, he feels excitement. These trees didn’t grow in a lab: they’re entirely natural, sprouting from soil that might not have been touched by humans in a hundred years. He can’t wait for dawn, can’t wait to see what the forest actually looks like in the daylight.
Of course, that assumes they make it to daylight. Prakesh is painfully aware of how poor a fire is at transferring heat. They should find something to put behind them, something to reflect the warmth back. But he can barely move, doesn’t even want to try it. They’re lucky they’ve got a fire going in the first place–without it, they wouldn’t last long.
“Rub your chests,” says Janice Okwembu. She’s kneeling close to the flames, and her eyes land on each survivor in turn. There are six of them: Prakesh, Carver, Mikhail, Okwembu, the pilot, plus the man who was sitting opposite him on the Furor, the one praying to every god he could think of. Prakesh struggles to remember his name. Clay. That was it. He’s young, slightly plump, with long brown hair tied back in a ponytail. He’s rubbing the chest of the sixth survivor: the pilot, one of the Shinso’s original crew. The man is barely conscious, a thick trail of drool snaking down his chin. Kahlil, Prakesh thinks. His name’s Kahlil.
No one else in the escape pod made it to shore.
Carver gets up. He has to do it in stages, going first to both knees, then to just one, then to his feet, tottering like an infant taking his first steps. He’s breathing hard–his jacket is gone, lost in the lake, and his shirt is a sodden, steaming mass.
“So now what?” he says.
Mikhail seems to be less affected by the cold than the others. He clears his throat, but Okwembu gets there first. “Well,” she says. “We—”
Carver lurches forward, moving on legs that look as stiff as the dead branches on the trees. He’s heading right for Okwembu, his fists balled up.
Prakesh forces himself to his feet, his own limbs aching with the effort, and gets in front of Carver. “Not a good idea,” he says.
Carver bumps up against him, tries to push past, but Prakesh moves with him. Mikhail is up, too, reaching past Prakesh, his hands on Carver’s chest.
“Aaron, not now,” Prakesh says, somehow managing to push the words past his frozen lips. Okwembu’s payback can come later. If they’re going to survive this, they’re going to need every pair of hands they can get.
Carver roars in anger. He tries to push past again, but Mikhail grabs his shoulders, not letting him. Okwembu watches, her face impassive.
After a moment, Carver turns to Prakesh, his face incredulous. “Are you kidding me?” he says. “After what she did to Riley? We should drown her in the fucking lake.”
“That’s enough,” Mikhail says. He tries to make the words forceful, but they come out slurred together.
Carver sags, then points a trembling finger at Mikhail. “Your plan sucked,” he says. “How many people did you lose? How many of your Earthers actually made it down? If you can call this making it.” He gestures to the lake, where isolated puddles of fuel are still burning.
“They knew what their chances were,” Mikhail says. “But don’t you see? We did make it. We’re back home. We can make a new life here.” His tone is pleading, as if he’s trying to convince himself along with them.
“We were home,” Carver says.
“Outer Earth is gone,” Okwembu says calmly. She glances at Prakesh. “Resin saw to that.”
Carver stands stock still, then tries to make a rush for Okwembu again. It takes all the strength Prakesh has to stop him, but somehow he and Mikhail manage it. Carver rocks on his heels, breathing hard through his nose.
“Actually, you know what?” he says. “I’m done.”
He stalks off, muttering, heading down the shore. He’s shivering, clutching himself, nearly falling twice in the space of ten yards, but he keeps going.
Before Prakesh knows what’s he’s doing, he’s following. By the time he reaches Carver, he’s feeling a little better.
“Wait,” he says. Carver ignores him, only stopping when Prakesh slips around him and puts both hands on his shoulders. Aaron’s face is shrouded in shadow, but his shoulders are trembling, hitching up and down, vibrating under Prakesh’s hands.
“Think about this for a sec,” Prakesh starts, and then Carver punches him.
He’s completely unprepared for it. Carver’s strength has been sapped by the cold, but he still knows how to throw a punch. His fist takes Prakesh in the side of the head, and for a moment that side of his vision is gone, nothing but black. When it comes back, he’s lying on the ground, and explosions are going off in his head.
Carver is yelling at him. “Where were you? She pulled Riley out of the pod, and you were asleep! You just passed out!”
Prakesh tries to speak, can’t. It’s not just that he can’t find the words–it’s as if the thoughts going through his head are too big to comprehend. One of his teeth is loose, jiggling in its socket.
“I’m going to find her,” says Carver, staring out across the lake. “You can come with me, or not. I don’t care.”
Prakesh knows Carver has feelings for Riley. It was hard to miss, locked in that medical bay. He wanted to bring it up, wanted to confront him, but he could never quite figure out how. Carver danced around the subject, too, radiating undirected anger. His usual upbeat, sarcastic personality had drained away. They settled for oblique remarks, snapping at each other, circling but never attacking.
And Riley’s absence is like a physical pain, deep in his gut. But it’s not just her. It’s everyone on Outer Earth. His team in the Air Lab. His parents. And every single person who died after being infected with Resin, the virus which sprung from a genetically modified superfood that he created. They’re all lined up behind Riley, and all of them are staring at him.
Carver might hate Okwembu and Mikhail. Prakesh does, too. But he has far more blood on his hands than they do. Not just ten more, or twenty, but hundreds and hundreds of thousands, dead because of him. He thinks back to his parents–he doesn’t even know if they’re alive or not, if they survived Resin. Even if they did, he knows there’s a good chance that the decompression in the station dock will have wiped out everybody in Gardens. Probably everybody on the station. That thought, too, is an almost physical pain.
The tiny group clustered around the fire is all he has left. He has to keep them alive. It’s the only way he can make it right–or start making it right. He can’t do that if he’s hunting for Riley.
He closes his eyes, and says, “We can’t go.”
“What did you say?”
Prakesh gets to his feet. He’s steadier this time, despite the pounding in his head. “If we split the group up, we die.”
“Yeah? Well, that’s fine by me, as long as I don’t have to be near them.” Carver jerks his finger back at the fire, and the figures around it, bathed in shadows.
“OK,” says Prakesh. “Go. Charge off into an environment we know nothing about, with no map and no supplies, at night, in the cold.”
“I’ll stick to the shore,” Carver says, but he sounds resigned now. The punch drained the last of the energy he had stored up. “Riley had to have come down close to here. If we—”
“We don’t know where she came down. We don’t even know if her pod launched.”
“Don’t—”
“You could hunt forever, and never find her.”
“So you’re just giving up? Is that it?”
“I won’t if you won’t. But if you head off by yourself, you’ll never make it.”
Prakesh twists the bottom of his shirt in his hands, wringing water out of the fabric, giving him time to articulate his thoughts. “We don’t know what’s out there, and we don’t know what the war did to the ecosystem. Most of the planet is a wasteland, and that has a knock-on effect.”
“I thought this part of the planet was supposed to be OK for humans now.”
“Maybe. But there could still be extreme weather patterns, localised microclimates.” Carver is about to interrupt, but Prakesh talks over him. “We could be caught in a flash flood, a snowstorm. Anything. That’s without talking about any wildlife we run into, or how we actually find food.”
Carver frowns. “Wildlife? You actually think anything survived long enough to get here?”
“Hard to say without data. The global population of certain species might have been decimated, but it’s possible that tiny clusters could survive, assuming they adapt. If they could migrate, hunt out food sources, they might be able to—”
“I get it, P-Man.”
“Right. Sorry.” Prakesh is secretly relieved at hearing Carver use that damn nickname. It means he’s calming down, thinking more like his old self.
He gestures to the lake. “But if we stay in a group, we can cover a wider area. We can find food, shelter, fuel for a fire. We can keep each other warm. And then I promise: we’ll look for Riley. We’ll find her together.”
Carver hugs himself, shivering. The thunderous look hasn’t left his face, but he gives Prakesh a tight nod.
“All right,” he says. “But if Okwembu so much as says one word to me, I’m going to do to her what I did to you.” He grimaces. “Sorry about that, by the way.”
Prakesh is about to answer when he hears a panicked shout from the fireside. He and Carver swing round. Okwembu and Mikhail are on all fours, leaning in close to the guttering flames. The smoke has grown thicker, swirling in huge curls around them.
“Oh shit,” Prakesh says.
He starts jogging back towards the group, Carver on his heels. He’s desperately hoping that he’s wrong, but even before he gets halfway back, he can see that the fire–their one source of heat–is going out.