Finian’s lips are warm and soft, and as they leave a burning trail down my neck, I shiver all the way to my toes. We’re lying on a thin temperfoam mattress, and the sheets are rumpled around us, and the view out the small porthole beside us is perfect darkness, lit by tiny pulses of mauve light. My shirt is untucked, and one of Fin’s hands is tracing soft circles in the small of my back, the metal on his fingertips charged with a faint current that makes my skin tingle in the best ways. I run my fingers through his hair and pull him in tighter, sighing encouragement as I feel his kisses on my neck.
The hand on the small of my back slips lower, roaming down into my pants, and I grab a handful of his hair and pull him back to look at him. Fin’s lips and cheeks are flushed just the faintest shade of pink, and he’s breathing heavy, but he’s frozen now, blinking hard.
“Is that okay?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I sigh. “Keep doing it.”
And we crash back together, and he’s touching me in all the right ways, and yes, part of me realizes how stupid this all is, given the situation we’re in. But most of me is focused on the warmth of his skin and the feel of him pressed against me and what he’s doing with his hands and how I seriously underestimated the level of Finian de Seel’s game.
We have, as we’ve done for the last five loops, distracted the security patrol that would otherwise have interrupted and executed Zila and Lieutenant Kim in Pinkerton’s office. It took a few trial runs, but eventually, we figured out that tripping a proximity alarm on the lower floor of the hab section would drag the goon squad away long enough to divert them from the office completely—a few minutes after we trip the alarm, all sec staff are called to deal with the fire in Stairwell B, which by now is spreading into the duct system.
This means that once we trip the alarm, Fin and I have a lot of spare time on our hands. I mean, we could go up and help Zila gather more information from the computer systems in Pinkerton’s office. But it’s not like I’d be much help in that anyway, and it’s not like we need to. If we’re just dying and looping, dying and looping, we can keep doing this over and over until we do it perfectly. We have all the time in the world.
So, for the last few loops, Fin and I have stolen away inside an empty hab unit and have been … getting to know each other better. Because even though we seem to have an endless supply of time on our hands, I’m realizing I’ve wasted a lot of time I could have spent getting to know this boy already.
I’m flushed with the heat of him, my heart thump-thump-thumping against my ribs, and I hear him groan as my tongue flickers against his and I sigh into his mouth. Even though the air is filled with alert sirens and the creak of stressed metal, my sighs still seem awfully loud.
“How does this thing come off?”
Fin pulls back and blinks. “… What?”
“Your exosuit,” I whisper, tugging up his shirt and running my fingers over his taut belly. “How do I get it off?”
“You wanna …” He swallows. “You wanna take my exo off?”
“No,” I say, cruising toward his neck and nipping at his skin. “I wanna take your shirt off. The exo’s just a means to an end.”
“Scar …”
My teeth brush his throat and now I feel him shivering, my lips curling in a smile as I feel what I’m doing to him. “Kinda wish I’d paid more attention in mechaneering class now… .”
“Scarlett.”
“Yes, Finian?”
“Scarlett.”
I pull back at the note in his voice. I know Betraskan culture inside out, I know there’s no societal preclusion on what we’re doing in here, and I know he really wants to. But looking into those big pretty eyes, even behind the contacts, I can tell.
I can tell …
He’s afraid.
The structure shudders around us. Flaming vapor lights the black outside the porthole as a voice rings over the PA. “WARNING: RADIATION DETECTED ON DECK 13, ALL DECK 13 STAFF PROCEED FOR IMMEDIATE DECONTAMINATION PROCEDURES.”
“… Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” Fin lies, clearing his throat. “I’m good.”
I look him over again, reading expression, body language, the rate of his breath and the beat of his heart, chest pressed against mine. I’ve always been good at this kind of thing, even before I studied at the academy.
Ever since I was a kid, sometimes it was almost like I knew what people were thinking before they spoke. I’m not sure how I do it—I always figured it was just something I was born with. Some people are good at jetball. Other people can sing.
Me? I read most people like most people read books.
And looking at Fin closer, I know I’m right.
“You’re frightened.”
A flash of defensiveness comes over him. He gives a gruff laugh to cover it up. Bluff. Bravado. He’s such a boy, sometimes.
“No, I’m not,” he scoffs. “Why would I be frightened?”
“Fin …” I touch his cheek. “You don’t have to lie to me.”
He holds my stare for a moment, then breaks away, looking into the rolling dark outside. The station shudders around us, time grinding sideways, looping around and in on itself, over and over. The snake eating its own tail.
“REPEAT: RADIATION DETECTED ON DECK 13, ALL DECK 13 STAFF PROCEED FOR IMMEDIATE DECONTAMINATION PROCEDURES.”
I kiss his cheek. Run a hand through his tumble of pale hair.
“Fin, what is it?”
“… It’s stupid,” he murmurs.
“I’m sure it’s not. You can tell me.”
He meets my eyes again, a small dark crease between his brows. But I can feel the wall he’s trying to build between us now. The armor he’s dragging back over his skin. Shutting down. Closing off.
I touch his face. “Trust me,” I say, my voice as soft as a summer breeze.
He wrestles with it a moment longer.
“… I like you, Scar,” he finally says.
“I like you too,” I smile, running my fingertip along the bow of his lips.
“I mean … I really like you.” He looks down at my body, pressed against his in all the right ways. “And I want to, it’s just …”
I blink then, realization dawning on me. Of course, I tell myself. It should’ve been obvious. But I was so caught up in what we were doing, I wasn’t really thinking about what we were about to do. And …
“You haven’t done this before,” I say.
He presses his lips thin. I can see how hard this is for him. Being vulnerable like this. His whole life, Finian has fought to be treated as an equal, to prove that he’s not a victim of the plague that ravaged his body when he was a kid. To escape the stigma of this metal suit he has to wrap himself inside. And the thought of peeling himself out of it, leaving himself exposed …
“No,” he says.
“It’s okay, Fin,” I tell him. “That’s okay.”
“I’m not sure …” He shakes his head, jaw clenched. “I know you’ve had a lot of boyfriends. But without the exo, I don’t move that well. I mean, I can move, but it’s not graceful, and I don’t … I’m not sure how good I’d …” He sighs, frustrated with himself, with this, with all of it. “Ah chakk. I told you it was stup—”
I stop the word with a kiss, soft and sweet and long.
“It’s okay,” I whisper.
He doesn’t believe me. Avoids my eyes. I touch his cheek again, soft as feathers, until he looks up at me. I realize how much this means to him. That, yeah, he really likes me. And then I kiss him again.
“It’s okay,” I repeat. “Whatever you’re ready for. Whatever you like. I’m happy just to be with you. Whatever you want, it’s enough.” I squeeze his hand, kiss his metal fingertips one by one. “You’re enough.”
“… Really?” he whispers.
“Really,” I smile. “You’re beautiful.”
He runs his hand along my cheek, up into a lock of bright red hair, and even if the whole station weren’t coming to pieces around us, I’m sure the world would still be shaking as he kisses me again.
“You’re kind of amazing, Scarlett Isobel Jones,” he murmurs.
“Yeah, I know. You really lucked out here, de Seel.”
He laughs, and I laugh with him, and as we kiss again, it feels good and bright and sweet, and I wonder if I wouldn’t mind going out in this sweet, bright boy’s arms, over and over again until the end of—
“Scarlett. Finian. Do you read me?”
“It’s Zila,” Fin breathes into my mouth.
“Ignore her,” I whisper.
“Scarlett. Finian. Come in.”
“It sounds urgent,” Fin whispers.
“It’s Zila, it’s fine. Shhh—”
“Scarlett. Finian. Please respond, this is urgent.”
“—iiiitttt.” Pressing the Transmit button on my intercom, I heave a heavy sigh. “Zil, you and me gotta have a talk about sisterhood an—”
“Is the security detail dealt with?” she demands. “I need you and Finian up in Pinkerton’s office immediately.”
Finian and I exchange a glance, and the station around us rumbles ominously as the klaxons continue to wail. He looks so pretty by the dark light of the storm, but I can hear an uncharacteristic note of fear in Zila’s voice, which is enough to put the brakes on my racing pulse as I meet Fin’s eyes.
“We’ll be right up,” I tell her.
It takes a few minutes, a quiet dodge around four panicked crew, and a lucky escape from a burst of plasma in Stairwell A, but we make our way up to the hab level above. The station continues to quake around us as Fin and I creep along, hand in hand. We step into Pinkerton’s office/antiques collection, and I can see the worry in Zila’s eyes, note the thick black curl of hair she’s chewing on. Maybe for the first time ever, she actually looks genuinely frazzled as she glowers at me. Our good Lieutenant Nari “Hawk” Kim is standing beside Zila, staring at the glowing screens. She looks like somebody shot her dog.
“Where have you two been?” Zila demands.
“Zil, you okay?” Fin asks.
“I asked where you’ve been,” she demands, looking me over. “But given the fact that Scarlett’s shirt is untucked and you have bite marks on your neck, I need not have bothered.”
“We took care of the security patrol, Z,” I say. “Just like we were supposed to. Hence you not getting shot. If we took a little detour afterward—”
“That was foolish and selfish,” she snaps. “There are things I would rather be doing too, Scarlett.”
I admit, my hackles rise a little at that. I glance pointedly at Lieutenant Nari Kim hovering over our Brain’s shoulder, and folding my arms, I shoot Zila a meaningful stare. “Yeah, I bet there are, Z. And nobody’s going to judge if you two—”
“That is not what I meant,” Zila says, flushing as she glances at Nari. “Some of us have more important things on our minds than trivial flirtations. Some of us are trying to figure a way out of this mess!”
Fin looks taken aback as Zila’s tone almost rises to a shout. I make a note to put in a call to the Galactic Book of Records.
First time she’s ever done that.
“Zil, what’s the big deal?” he asks.
“How can you possibly ask that, Finian?” Zila demands. “You know as well as I do the level of complexity I am dealing with here!”
“Look, yeah, okay.” He scratches his mussed hair, shooting me an embarrassed look. “Maybe me and Scar took some time for ourselves. I’m sorry, I should be helping you more. I’ll do it next time—it’s no big deal, right? We’ve got literally infinity to solve this. If we mess things up, we just try again until we work it out and break free of the loop, yeah?”
Zila shakes her head, and returns to her readouts.
“When our next loop commences, I require you to devote your efforts to Magellan.”
Fin blinks, and I almost laugh as I glance at Finian’s backpack, the fried remains of Aurora’s uniglass inside it.
“You actually want me to repair that piece of chakk?” He gestures to the glass cases around us. “Z, you’d get more use out of one of these antiques!”
“I will also require your uniglass. Yours too, Scarlett.”
“What for?” I ask. “It’s not like there’s a network for them to—”
“We can network them with each other.” Zila almost scowls at the screens in front of her. “This system is simply too primitive, and I need all the computing power I can get to perform this math.” She rubs her eyes, her face underscored by the glow of her screens. “Something is wrong.”
Fin shuffles closer to the console, taking this more seriously now. “What do you mean? What’s wrong?”
The loudspeaker cuts Zila’s reply 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.
Dying time again.
The station starts to shake around us, and I take Finian’s hand. Comforted by the strength in his grip, the warmth of his body as I lean against him. But Fin pays no attention, instead staring at the time readout on Zila’s wrist. The digital numbers flash on the timer she sets at the start of every loop.
“That can’t be right … ,” Fin says.
Zila meets his stare, lips pursed. “I was wondering when you would notice.”
“Have you checked this?” he demands. “It’s not a glitch?”
“We noticed it a few loops ago,” Nari says quietly. “Well, Zila did. But she wanted to make sure before telling you.”
Zila holds Finian’s eyes a moment longer, then turns her little death glare on me. “Perhaps if you two were not so distracted …”
“Listen, Zila, I know you’re angry,” I say. “And maybe you have a right to be, but can you put the pointing fingers away for a minute and tell me what the hells is going on?”
The station rocks around us. A mauve light flares, illuminating the tempest outside, the colossal clouds coiling and churning out in the black.
Fin looks into my eyes. “The quantum pulse strikes the sail forty-four minutes into the loop.”
“Right.”
“And Zila told us the core overloaded and the station exploded fifty-eight minutes after the pulse hits.”
“Yeah.” I look back and forth between them. “So?”
“We are one minute from detonation, Scarlett,” Zila says, holding up her wrist for me to read.
I frown at the numbers, bright red against the small black screen on Zila’s brown skin, bathed in the monitor’s blue glow.
“One hour, thirty-two minutes,” I say.
“Correct,” Zila nods.
“WARNING: CORE IMPLOSION IMMINENT, T MINUS THIRTY SECONDS. ALL HANDS EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: CORE IMPLOSION IN THIRTY SECONDS.”
The station begins to buck wildly, the metal around us tearing, the air filled with sirens, rising smoke, the hiss of venting atmo. I raise my voice above it all. “But if the core explodes fifty-eight minutes after the strike, and the strike happens at minute forty-four …”
Kim meets my eyes, her face grim. “Yeah.”
“Holy shit,” I whisper.
I look into Fin’s eyes.
“The loops are getting shorter,” I say.
“WARNING: CORE IMPLOSION IMMINENT. FIVE SECONDS. WARNING.”
Fin nods and squeezes my hand, his big black eyes wide with fear.
“We’re running out of time,” he says.
“WARNING.”
BOOM.