“Aw chakk, what got us?” Finian asks over comms.
“I thought for sure we were safe that time,” Scarlett agrees.
“A core breach,” I tell them, rising from my pilot’s seat. “The station reactor overloaded fifty-eight minutes after the quantum pulse struck it, destroying the entire structure. It seems the damage the station has sustained will ultimately prove critical, no matter what we do.”
“Why didn’t they order an evac?” Finian asks.
“The call to abandon the facility was only made three minutes before detonation. Given the amount of money the Terran government must have spent on this project, I believe what is left of station command was desperately trying to salvage the situation.”
“And we somehow slept through all that?” Scarlett asks.
“You looked very tired. I did not wish to wake you.”
We made the decision to devote our last loop to rest. The cumulative effect of the repeated resets, the adrenaline surges from near misses and the moments before our deaths, and the sheer ongoing effort of mental calculation has fatigued all of us—and of course, we were tired when we arrived here.
When Scarlett realized we had essentially been on the move for well over twenty-four hours, and none of us were resetting feeling refreshed, it was evident that sleep was indicated.
I volunteered to take the first watch, and we hunkered down with Nari—who has also completed over a day’s worth of loops—just inside our entry point by the waste ejection system. We were crowded, but we were safer there than drifting aboard our damaged ship. Until the station went quite dramatically to pieces around us, of course.
Now back in our shuttle once more, I meet Fin and Scarlett in the corridor en route to the loading bay.
“From the look on your face,” Scarlett says, “this isn’t good.”
“I am not certain,” I reply. “But if the three fragments of crystal—yours, Dr. Pinkerton’s, and the main probe—are the cause of the loop, and our way home, and all three were just destroyed in a large-scale explosion …”
“Then this loop always ends,” Finian frowns. “No matter what we do.”
I nod. “Fifty-eight minutes after the quantum pulse.”
“Chakk,” Fin sighs. “That means that even if we dodge all the ways there are to die in that place, we’ve only got an hour and three quarters each loop, give or take. That’s a lot less than I’d like.”
“I am uneasy,” I admit.
“And unrested,” Scarlett points out. “Did you sleep at all?”
“I shall do so during a future loop,” I reply. “I had an opportunity to think while I kept watch. Let us return to Dr. Pinkerton’s office.”
“Nobody step on a cactus this time,” Fin adds.
• • • • •
We reach our destination more quickly each time now, but I am growing concerned we are still not fast enough. Earlier, I thought us efficient in our efforts. Now I am aware that a considerable portion of our limited time is being spent each loop just to access Pinkerton’s office.
But we must know more.
Nari and I work in perfect concert as we retrieve Dr. Pinkerton’s passkey from his corpse, and once we are within his quarters, I am able to navigate through a now-familiar set of menus promptly. We no longer waste time in surprise at the crystal fragment that is a twin to Scarlett’s, or the sheer improbability of our predicament.
Finian and Scarlett are buying more time—distracting the patrol that otherwise arrives at Pinkerton’s quarters, shooting us and ending our loop.
The station shakes around us.
“WARNING: CONTAINMENT BREACH ESCALATION UNDER WAY, ENGAGE EMERGENCY MEASURES DECK 9.”
Nari stands watch as I gather data about the disastrous tests that were running at the moment the loop initiated. I have learned during our recent escapades that she is more talkative than I had anticipated.
I do not find it distracting. Rather, it is calming. My eyes are gritty and I know fatigue is slowing my thoughts. I anchor myself to her voice.
“So,” she muses. “You’re friends with aliens, huh?”
I do not look up, speaking softly. “Technically, everyone is an alien to somebody.”
“You know lots more races than the Betraskans?”
“Many,” I confirm. My mind goes to Kal, so far away in space and time. And then to Auri, leaning over Magellan as she tried to catch up on two centuries of history, to learn about the aliens that so fascinate Nari.
But Auri is gone now, and Magellan is a broken collection of circuitry in Finian’s bag. I set that memory aside.
“You must have seen some amazing places,” Nari continues, unaware of my momentary lapse in attention. “I mean, all those alien homeworlds. You said there are hippos on one, right? I can’t believe hippos beat me to interplanetary exploration.”
I am unsure why, but I find myself wishing to remove the note of regret from her voice. “This is still a wondrous time to be alive. There is so much to be seen now that will soon be lost.”
“Like what?”
“That book, for example,” I reply, nodding toward the display case. “What an extraordinary thing to hold in your hand.”
“I guess so?” Her tone suggests I am humoring her, but this is not so.
“A book captures a story within its pages. Not like a specimen pinned out lifelessly for display, but vivid and alive. A whole world lies within the cover, a life waiting to be lived by each new reader.”
“You still have stories in the future,” she points out. “Though that’s more poetic than I expected from you.”
It is, perhaps, more poetic than I expected too. “We still have stories,” I agree. “But they live in the ether. The book in that display case represents something we will never know. Something … permanent.”
“Stories never die,” she counters.
“They do not. But in a book, you always know where to find them again. They have a home.”
There is something in my tone, on that last word—as I speak of something that has not been mine since I was a child.
Home.
She hears it, and turns from the door to regard me thoughtfully. A question is about to push past her lips, so I continue.
“You have also seen many places that are lost to us,” I say, leaning in to study the screen. “Strange as it sounds, I have never even been to Terra.”
“What, never?”
“Never,” I reply.
“That’s … kinda sad,” she smiles.
“REPEAT: CONTAINMENT BREACH ESCALATION UNDER WAY, ENGAGE EMERGENCY MEASURES DECK 9.”
I look her over, noting the way the light from the tempest outside highlights her features. Black and mauve pulses, gleaming in her eyes.
I should be working more swiftly on a solution to our quandary.
But I am drawn back once more to the idea of … home.
“Will you tell me about a place from Terra that you have visited?” I ask.
“Gyeongju,” she says immediately. “It’s this really cool city in Korea with all these historical protections put on it by TerraGov. It has these tombs hidden inside its hills, really well preserved—it used to be the capital of the kingdom that was there before it was called Korea.”
I turn back to the console, unraveling a series of menus and studying their contents, pushing through the woolly thinking of fatigue.
“I had not taken you for a history buff,” I admit.
“I’m not,” she admits. “It’s where my halmoni lives—my grandmother. So, you know, my family visits there sometimes.”
There is something easier about Nari’s manner than there has been on previous loops. She is facing the door once more as she keeps watch, but I can see her profile, that dark energy illuminating her skin.
My disobedient mind casts itself back to our last loop, after Nari and Finian fell asleep and Scarlett made herself comfortable beside me.
“Nari Kim’s growing on me,” Scarlett admitted softly.
“Finian would suggest that you can get a cream for that sort of thing,” I had informed her gravely.
She’d snickered. “She’s growing on you, too, Zila.”
“Oh?”
Scarlett’s tone turned sly. “She’s … not tall.”
I rue the day I spoke to Scarlett Jones about my taste in women.
“Zila?”
Nari’s voice recalls me to the present.
What were we discussing?
Home.
“You have a large family, Lieutenant?”
“Oh yeah, huge. But my halmoni still likes us all to report in every week. I swear she’s got a schedule, and if you miss your slot … It took a long, long time to convince her I can’t phone home from a black-ops posting.”
“And have you visited her often, in Gyeongju?”
“Every year, until I enlisted. Now it’s more like every second year.” Nari sighs. “It’s great there. I mean, I’m always sharing a room with half a dozen cousins, because we’re trying to cram so much family into her apartment. But there’s always so much food—she makes the best doenjang stew in Gyeongju, plus a dozen little dishes on the side, and that’s for an informal meal—and one of my cousins is a tour guide on Jeju Island. They’ve got this fruit there—huuuuuge citruses called hallabongs. Stupidly juicy, they end up all over you, but they taste amazing. I took my ex-girlfriend with me once, and I swear the only reason we’re still in touch is that she wants me to bring her back a box of them when I visit. Anyway …”
She trails off, perhaps aware she has spoken at length. Or perhaps—I am not skilled at divining such things—attempting to gauge my reaction to the mention of the ex-girlfriend?
“I have not encountered a hallabong before. But I enjoy citrus.”
“What about the rest of it?” she asks softly.
“The rest of it?”
“Family? Somewhere you’ve been? I’ve talked about me, what about you, Futuregirl?”
“WARNING: RADIATION DETECTED ON DECK 13, ALL DECK 13 STAFF PROCEED FOR IMMEDIATE DECONTAMINATION PROCEDURES.”
“I can offer only disappointment, I am afraid.” I switch my attention to a new set of entries, intrigued by the methods used in the scientists’ attempts to power up the crystal. “I grew up in state care with no family members. And I have not taken a vacation.”
She blinks. “What, ever?”
I shrug. “It was more fruitful to spend my academy leave studying.”
We are both silent after that, and I choose to devote the better part of my attention to the results of the power cycle experiments.
“Were you … always in state care?” she asks eventually, quieter now. Gentler. “Is that common, in the future? I mean, you don’t have to talk about it. If you don’t want.”
I hesitate, which is uncharacteristic. “It is not common,” I say after a while. I am about to continue, to inform her that I do not wish to speak of the experience, when I look across at her.
Our eyes meet.
“Perhaps we can speak of it during another loop,” I say instead.
She smiles, and in that moment there is something so familiar about her that my attention is caught entirely.
I feel my mind trying to switch gears, to fire up the search routines that will help me match her to some memory or experience that explains this familiarity. But I do not have time to study her smile, her eyes. I clear my throat, turning back to my console.
“You want to hear some more ancient history while you work?” she asks. “Or am I distracting you?”
“Both,” I realize.
As she keeps speaking, I let myself sink into her voice, and into the lines of data before me. Unless we find a way to break out of this loop, this will be my life. This will be my day.
Over, and over, and over again.
This will be my home.
“I think I—”
The loudspeaker cuts me off.
“WARNING: CONTAINMENT CASCADE IN EFFECT. CORE IMPLOSION IMMINENT, T MINUS THREE MINUTES AND COUNTING. ALL HANDS PROCEED TO EVACUATION PODS IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: CORE IMPLOSION IN THREE MINUTES AND COUNTING.”
And there it is.
The end of the loop.
We will always have the next one, I suppose.
I glance at the timer on my wrist, then fall still.
I feel a small furrow forming in my brow.
Nari tilts her head. “Zila?”
I must have miscalculated earlier. I told Finian and Scarlett the core overloaded fifty-eight minutes after the quantum lightning strike. Usually I am right. But it has only been fifty-one minutes… .
I must be tired. I did not sleep when the others did.
I do not speak of my mistake.
Instead, I finish what work I can, committing as much of the data to memory as possible. Nari watches me from the window, the starlight glowing on her skin. And finally, when there are only moments left, I rise to my feet, ready to meet what is coming. “I will see you soon, Nari.”
“WARNING: CORE IMPLOSION IMMINENT, T MINUS THIRTY SECONDS. ALL HANDS EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: CORE IMPLOSION IN THIRTY SECONDS.”
“I hate this part,” she admits.
I meet her eyes again and, without knowing why my instinct is to comfort her, reply, “You are not alone.”
She takes a step toward me.
Her eyes are very pretty.
“WARNING: CORE IMPLOSION IMMINENT. FIVE SECONDS. WARNING.”
She is not tall.
“Zila, I know this is terrible timing, but I really think you’re—”
“WARNING.”
BOOM.