The walls are painted a soothing blue, with a hint of green for warmth. Every detail is carefully considered with patients in mind, down to the heavy knitted blanket tossed casually over the back of the couch for those still dealing with shock, and even the pointed tuck on the recyclable tissues in the gleaming metal cube on the side table. (Makes it easier to remove one when vision is blurred with tears.)
But at dusk, when patient hours are done for the day, that’s when the space truly becomes Ophelia’s.
Like right now. The sun is setting, turning the old skyline into black shadows against an orangey-red backdrop of sun. Old Downtown must have been something before the riots and the fire. The second one.
Ophelia sinks back into her desk chair, stretching her legs, contemplating the spread of her space. Hers. Her pen and notebook rest on the far edge, just waiting for her first patient the next morning. The image of her primary screen hovers in the air in front of her, projected from her QuickQ, flickering a dozen reminders to update files and progress reports.
The iVR is functioning just as it should, giving her a completely realistic version of her office back on Earth.
Ophelia settles in, relaxing. She’s just starting to doze, that lovely, drowsy, relaxed in-between state, when she hears the automated office assistant’s smooth voice.
“Dr. Bray. Rueben Monterra is here.”
Her eyes snap open, and she bolts upright in her chair, hands clawing at the armrests, heart pounding. What?
“AIVA, I missed that. Can you repeat?” Even to her own ears, she sounds wary.
But AIVA remains silent, as she should. That functionality for the iVR is not enabled. No voices, no people, virtual or otherwise. Not to mention, that patient … Ophelia shakes her head.
She waits several seconds, but AIVA does not speak again. Odds were she never spoke at all. It must have been the start of a dream.
No, a nightmare. One that just happened to be set in the same location.
Because it couldn’t be anything more than that. For one thing, Rueben, he always came in the morning. That’s one of the reasons why everything was so—
The room goes dark abruptly, triggering the automatic lights overhead.
That … has never happened before.
Ophelia watches in horror as the windows across the room reveal a deep, black night with pinpricks of stars for bare seconds before transitioning to deep blue and then light gray, precursors to sunrise.
This is not right. No, no, not right. The scene in her office, it’s always dusk. Always.
She pushes her chair away from the desk and stands. It feels sickeningly warm in here, as if waves of heat are radiating from the pale walls. What is happening?
A glitch? If so, this is one hell of a glitch.
She reaches up to pull the iVR band free from the receptors on either side of her temple. But her fingertips find only warm skin. No flex-metal. No trace of the headset at all.
Abandoning caution, Ophelia scrubs her hands over her face, a move that would normally send the device flying.
But there’s still nothing there. No headset. Just the bridge of her nose, the quick brush of eyebrows, the heat of her panicked breath against her palms.
Ophelia snatches her hands away from her face, curling her fingers into her palms. It’s just a dream. It has to be.
Except she’s awake.
Okay, okay, just breathe. It’s a lucid dream. Maybe triggered by the upgrade.
Never mind that this wasn’t in the brochure and that maybe Montrose should leave the exposure therapy to actual therapists.
Ophelia takes a deep breath. She can manage this. All she needs to do is—
“Dr. Bray, Rueben Monterra is here,” AIVA bellows. Her words boom in Ophelia’s head, and she reaches up instinctively to block her ears, a primitive impulse that does no good when the sound is inside.
“Dr. Bray, Rueben Monterra is leaving,” AIVA shrieks, just seconds later.
Ophelia freezes.
It’s exactly … that morning. The morning that Rueben died. Not that AIVA was yelling then. She just kept repeating herself—“He’s here. He’s leaving. He’s here.”—in that flat monotone that expressed no confusion, no concern.
But clearly subtlety is not part of this new program.
Ophelia lunges for the door, moving on instinct, much faster than she did on the day when it really happened. If the headset is going to make her relive one of her worst days, she’s going to do it better than she did the first time.
In the actual moment, she’d assumed a virtual assistant malfunction. What else could it be?
Now, though, Ophelia knows: her patient is pacing on the roof, one level above her office, triggering the virtual assistant’s proximity sensor bubble—five meters in all directions, the grim-faced building engineer later explained—on and off and on again.
If Ophelia can stop Rueben, if she can just reach him before he commits to stepping off into thin air, she can change things. Even if it is just in a dream.
Her fingers curl around the too-warm door handle, and for a moment she’s certain that the lever will not turn, that she will be forced to live through this moment of failing him again.
But the tongue retracts with an audible click—so real, the details—and she rips open the door.
The corridor outside her office in real life is decorated in light shades of gray and purple, with a carpet design that has made her wonder, more than once, if the designer was aware of its end location. There are tiny faces with a variety of expressions, hidden among the abstract flowers and geometric shapes.
She’s already stepping out, her focus on reaching Rueben, before she realizes it’s all wrong. The location. This is not the hallway outside her office. It’s not even the right building.
A dim space station corridor stretches out before her, the lights at fifty percent to conserve power and the alert stripes on the wall flashing red, indicating the general alarm and containment to quarters for all but emergency responders. Not that it would do anyone any good.
Goliath. Home.
Unable to stop her forward momentum, Ophelia stumbles, and her foot—now suddenly bare—lands on the familiar squashed octagonal pattern on the floor. Her toes slip through the wetness of gathering condensation, dampening the grittiness they have already collected during her flight.
No. No, no, no. Her lungs shrivel up on themselves, retreating from their responsibilities. Nausea rides her hard, as if determined to crater her into herself. To turn her inside out.
The hydroponics deck looks exactly as she remembers it. Crowded and cluttered, with the extra jury-rigged humidifiers created from spare parts to pull any excess moisture from the air and rechannel it toward the small and frail food crops. But that also made it a good place to hide—in a game of hide-and-seek, where the stakes were simply losing a game. Not loss of life.
Ophelia clings to the door, which is still somehow impossibly her office door, refusing to look down at herself. The sticky blood and body fluids on her, from where she crawled under the table in the mess hall—they were all once people, people she knew and …
“Little Bird, where are you?” Her father’s singsong chant sounds from somewhere in the distance behind her, and chills roll up her spine like a smooth, cold hand drifting over her vertebrae.
Ophelia gags, hard, and lets go of the door, hands flying up to cover her mouth.
And when she turns to reach for it, the door is gone. She’s on Goliath, with no hint of it ever having been her office.
Enough is enough.
“I’m done now,” she says through clenched teeth. “I’m waking up.” She squeezes her eyes shut, hot tears leaking from beneath her lashes.
All she has to do is open her eyes. That’s it. Just wake up and see the striped cloth of Liana’s mattress above her.
Ophelia counts to ten slowly, ignoring the dripping of water near her and the thud of footsteps in the distance, but growing closer. He’s angry today. Hide. You need to hide!
No. I need to wake up. This isn’t real.
Ophelia draws in air until her lungs ache with it, and then releases it as she opens her eyes, certain that she’ll find herself back in her bunk.
But instead of staring up, she’s staring out across the corridor on the hydroponics deck, directly at the carved-out nook that she once used for shelter, pulling one of the raggedy humidity reclamation units in front of her for cover from her father. Who had murdered twenty-three people already, and then five more when he couldn’t find her. If you counted him as a victim—and no one did—he reached twenty-nine. Just short of a perfect thirty.
Go! Now! Before it’s too late.
“Little Bird, don’t make it any harder than it is! I don’t want to do this. You know I don’t.”
The vibration of his heavy tread reverberates through the metal floor beneath her. That should be impossible. But all of this is impossible. She’s not eleven anymore. And he’s dead. Long dead.
But the desire to run, to hide, is so strong her knees are trembling with it.
“You’re infected,” he calls. “You don’t know, but you are. I have to save you. Please, let me save you!” A sob tears from his throat. “I love you. I—”
Coughing, a harsh-sounding jag, breaks in, interrupting him. The noise is somewhere nearby, closer even than her father somehow.
Ophelia frowns. That’s not what—
The world around Ophelia rotates abruptly and she automatically throws out a hand to push off from any hard surface that she might smack into. Intermittent artificial gravity failures weren’t all that unusual on Goliath back in the day, thanks to worn-out parts and austerity measures that made it difficult to get replacements.
As a child, she used to wish for gravity loss on the station like the children of Earth once wished for inclement weather to keep them out of school. Except, in her case, she and the others would spend the few minutes giggling and playing, shoving off each other and the walls, playing tag in the corridors, until the grav generators were fixed and they were tasked with helping to clean up.
But then her fingers brush over fabric, and her eyes snap open automatically.
Her surroundings spin into a blur that resolves itself into a gray-and-white-striped fabric overhead. She can, once more, feel the gentle press of the mattress against her shoulder blades.
Ophelia’s back. Here and awake.
She sits upright with a gasp, like a diver breaking the surface from unknown depths. She reaches up to wrench the iVR band off her face, only to find it missing.
An immediate burst of panic makes a cold sweat break out all over her skin, until her waking mind finally kicks in.
Right. She’s not wearing an iVR because she pulled them all last night.
No one objected when she retrieved the headsets to run a diagnostic. Just to be sure. It was new tech, after all.
Only Birch gave her side eye about it, but he said nothing.
Pulling her knees to her chest, she wraps her arms around herself, making her body as small as possible, just as she once did to escape her father. Her heart is still chugging hard enough that the beat of it taps against her upraised thigh like a fingertip keeping time.
You’re fine. You’re safe.
Dim light from the corridor spills through the window in the door, so Ophelia can see Kate across from her, gently snoring. In the bunk above, Liana murmurs in her sleep, but nothing indicates alarm or surprise. Probably one of them coughing had woken her enough to pull her out of the dream. She shudders to think how long it might have gone on without that interruption.
Just a nightmare, conjured up all on her own.
Not surprising. Given the stress. Given Birch.
She stares down past her knees, her knuckles turning white with her grip, the clutch of dread stronger yet this morning. She can’t help feeling there’s something more she could—should—be doing about Birch, but she hasn’t been able to come up with a solution that doesn’t seem inadequate. Or frightening.
Keeping an eye on him and trying to convince him that she’s not like her father, that she truly is here to help, is the best she’s got.
With a sigh, Ophelia pushes back her blanket and stands. She doesn’t know what time it is, but checking her wrist-comm is pointless. It’s not like she’s going back to sleep after that.
Maybe not ever again.
She reaches for her shoes at the foot of her bunk and stops.
Her right shoe is missing.
That’s weird. Frowning, she checks under her bed, and then under Kate’s. Nothing.
When Ophelia went to bed the night before, she lined up her fabric shoes at the foot of her bunk, just as she had the previous night.
Now, only the left one is there.
She tiptoes to the corridor and glances up and down. The same leftover junk from the previous team remains in piles. It’s on Severin’s list for cleanup, she knows.
But no sign of her shoe.
She creeps out into the corridor, closing the door to the bunk room gently behind her. The metal floor is cold and gritty against her bare feet, triggering memories of her dream. And that day.
He’s angry. Hide. You need to hide! Now!
The panicked internal voice of the child she once was is loud in her head, until she forcibly pushes it down. She’s not eleven anymore, and she does not need to think of her father.
Ophelia continues toward the central hub, with the thought that her shoe might have somehow ended up in her office. Not that she would have left it there, but perhaps someone is messing with her again. Suresh might have—
She stops short when she enters the central hub.
Her shoe is sitting alone in the shadowy space, a white dot on the open expanse of dark metal floor. Like a rowboat on the ocean, or an escape pod shooting deeper into space instead of toward home.
An uneasy feeling seeps through her as she edges forward to retrieve the shoe. The sensation of being watched raises goose bumps on her skin.
She doesn’t believe in ghosts, not literal ones. Past trauma, sure. People reinflicting damage on themselves as they make fear-based choices to try to avoid more pain, inadvertently causing unhealthy cycles. But in terms of actual spirits reliving their past or torturing the living as vengeance, no. Never.
And yet …
The dimmed overhead lights flicker slightly—the generator struggling to keep up even with reduced demand.
Don’t be ridiculous. No one died here.
Except for all of the Lyrians, buried beneath you, of course. And the ones just over there in the city. Their gaping mouths hanging open, pleading for help that’s never going to come …
Shaking her head at herself, Ophelia heads deeper into the central hub.
Closer up, she realizes the fabric shoe is crushed in at the heel, like someone wedged their foot in quickly, not bothering to put it on correctly, and then accidentally walked out of it. Leaving it where it fell.
Pointing toward the airlock.
She bends down to pick it up, half expecting the fabric to feel icy cold or oddly warm. Instead, it just feels like her shoe.
Of course it does.
“What are you doing?” A voice behind her.
Ophelia jolts, nearly toppling over, and then stands, whipping around to face the speaker.
It’s Kate, shivering in the compression shorts and T-shirt she sleeps in, arms wrapped around herself.
“I was just…” Sometimes the truth is the only option. “Getting my shoe,” Ophelia answers finally, holding up the footwear as evidence.
Kate regards her with a confused frown. “Did you leave it out here earlier?”
“No. I don’t know. I think maybe someone—” Ophelia stops herself before spouting theories that might sound like accusations she cannot prove. “How can I help you?” Clearly, Kate was out here—shivering in her nightclothes—for a purpose.
“I just … I woke up when you left the room, and I thought…” Kate trails off, one hand tugging at the embedded stars in her ear. She seems uncertain, for the first time in Ophelia’s memory. “I wanted to talk to you, alone. About Birch.”
That she was not expecting. “Oh?”
“You treated him last night after the fight. He went straight to his bunk after that, didn’t talk to any of us.” Kate hesitates. “Did he say anything to you?”
Ophelia works to keep her expression impassive, to hide the pulse of interest. “Anything, like what?”
Kate stares down at her feet, scrubbing her toe against the floor. “I’m just worried. He’s never exactly been the cheeriest fellow, you know, but that was extremely out of character for him. He’s never struck anyone before. I think … I think he’s struggling more with what happened to Ava than he’s letting on. And I wanted to know if he spoke to you about it.” She looks up, then, a glint of hardness peeking through her somber mask.
What is this about?
“He didn’t say anything to me,” Ophelia says after a moment. More to see Kate’s reaction than anything else.
Relief spreads across Kate’s face for a split second before vanishing once again beneath the veil of concern. “Okay, I just—”
“But even if he had,” Ophelia continues, “I wouldn’t be able to discuss it with you. That’s how confidentiality works.”
A flicker of irritation creases Kate’s brows, but she stamps it out immediately and nods. “I understand. Of course.”
Ophelia gives her best professional smile and moves to walk past Kate, all the while thinking, What the fuck am I missing?
You really have no idea, do you? That’s what Birch said to her last night, what’s ringing through her head right now. And no, she really doesn’t.
“I was thinking, maybe it would be better if you came with us today,” Kate says.
Ophelia stops in surprise, turning to face her.
“If the weather holds, Suresh and I are heading back to the lander to get some parts for generator repair.” Kate lifts her hand up, and the lights flicker on cue. “But the commander will probably have Birch launch the drones today for an updated scan. You could go, maybe just keep an eye on Birch?”
That is … exactly what Ophelia should do.
But why does Kate, a person who seems very concerned about what Birch might reveal in private conversation, want to give her another chance to speak with him alone?
“I don’t think Etha—Commander Severin will go for that,” Ophelia says, kicking herself. One conversation, Phe? Really? One conversation and he’s “Ethan” now.
Kate waves a hand carelessly, not seeming to notice her correction. “Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll talk to him. He trusts me.” She eyes Ophelia clutching her shoe. “You should too,” she adds after a moment, jerking her chin toward the shoe. “With … whatever.”
There’s a message Ophelia can’t interpret beneath her words, only that it feels abrupt, a little hard, and in some way disingenuous.
Or perhaps this is simply her inherent distrust of people rising up to kneecap her, as it frequently does. One might even call it paranoia.
“Dibs on the lav,” Kate says over her shoulder, as she heads back toward the C side.
“There are two—” Ophelia begins.
Kate points upward, still walking, and then Ophelia hears it: the faint off-key singing of a popular game show theme song, one that rhymes “prizes” and “sizes” with “thighses.” Suresh, it has to be.
With a sigh, Ophelia heads toward the galley instead.
By the time she gets her turn in one of the lavs, everyone else is dressed and ready for the day, in their envirosuits, with helmets scattered around nearby.
When she emerges from the C side into the central hub, the antigrav sled is near the interior airlock door, which is standing open. The sled is full, stacked two or three high with crates and strapped-down equipment. Scattered crates are open all around it, exposing their soft gray padded insides and the shiny metal bits stored there.
“This would be much easier if we had the rover,” Suresh says, lifting a closed crate to stack it on board with a grunt. “There’s not enough room.”
“Quit your whinging. It’s fine,” Kate says breathlessly, as she wedges a heavy-looking tool kit into place. The nearest crate tower wobbles, and Suresh and Severin rush to steady it.
“Oh, sure, it’s fine,” Suresh says through gritted teeth.
Once the crates are stable, Severin steps back, catching a glimpse of Ophelia. “Doctor,” he says in greeting, turning his attention toward her. Liana looks up from a tablet where she’s skimming something and waves.
True to her word, Kate must have spoken to him. Severin found Ophelia in the corridor as she was waiting for her turn in the sonic shower, told her she was welcome to join them today. He almost sounded like he meant it, too.
Perhaps she was wrong to be suspicious of Kate. Or maybe her suspicions of Kate had their origins in a baser emotion. Jealousy is such an ugly emotion, darling. It’ll prematurely age you like nothing else.
A classic from her mother. Ophelia rolls her eyes and turns her attention to something, someone, else. Birch is off to one side, scratching at his arm and staring off toward the airlock and the world beyond. At nothing. At everything.
“Listen up. We’ll only have an hour or so outside,” Severin says. “Kate and Suresh will be heading back to the lander to pull some supplies. Liana and I will be taking a few ice core samples. And Birch will be attempting to get a drone scan of the area, depending on conditions.”
Birch, at the sound of his name, jerks to attention, blinking rapidly. He sees Ophelia watching him and immediately stops scratching, dropping his hands away from his arms with a scowl.
“Let’s move, people,” he says to his team. “Clock is ticking.” Then he turns back to Ophelia. “Doctor, your suit?”
Shit. Right.
She turns and hurries as fast as she can back to the bunk room, grabs her suit and helmet. By the time she returns, the others are already in the airlock with the precariously loaded sled. Severin is the only one waiting for her on this side of the threshold, helmet tucked under his arm.
Ophelia can feel their collective impatience growing as she sits down to struggle into her suit. She manages to get it up her waist, and then, to her surprise, Severin—Ethan—approaches her.
He sets his own helmet on the table next to hers. “It’s easier if you stand now,” he says.
When she gets up, Ethan tugs the shoulder of the suit up and helps her get her arm inside, and then with rapid precision that speaks to his experience with this, he closes the fittings around the wrist and adjusts the elbow guard.
“Are you sure Birch should be cleared for duty today?” Ethan asks, not in a whisper but in a voice certainly too low to be heard by the others.
He’s asking her opinion. Trusting her. All she’s wanted from the beginning. An unexpected warmth curls through her, followed immediately by a sickening twist of conflict.
He keeps his focus on her suit, shifting to the other side to do the same thing to that arm.
“His blood work came back fine,” she hedges. Which means next to nothing except that he doesn’t have low iron or low thyroid levels making him worse.
When she got the med-scanner results back last night, his red blood cell levels were perfectly in range. No reason for his gums to be bleeding. White blood cells were up a little, but nothing that indicated an infection. Just some mild systemic inflammation, including what looked like a histamine reaction. The med-scanner suggested it was an unknown allergy.
“But you’re still concerned.” Ethan brings the zipper up from her waist, and for a flash, it feels too intimate, too close. Like being cared for. Heat rises in her cheeks.
“That’s what Kate says,” he adds.
Oh, well, if Kate says it …
Ophelia grits her teeth at herself, then nods. “I am. How long has he been part of your team?”
“Last six years.”
“How well do you know him? Do you know anything about his past?” My past. “Have you noticed anything like this from him before?”
Ethan shakes his head. “He keeps to himself. Plays that game with Suresh. Likes word puzzles on his tablet. Makes little creatures and things from paper. Doesn’t use a pillow. Won’t drink coffee or any other ‘stimulant,’ he calls it.” Ethan then gestures for her to lift her chin so he can close the fasteners at her collarbone. This close, she can see the faint freckles on his skin, where he must have been in the sun at some point or spent time under a sun lamp. Dark stubble is a shadow beneath the surface. The vulnerable underside of his jaw moves when he swallows.
“It could just be stress,” she says reluctantly. “Like I said, loss affects everyone differently.”
“But you don’t believe that,” Ethan says, stepping back. He holds out her helmet, and she takes it.
“I’d just like to keep a close eye on him for now,” she says, trying not to feel like a despicable piece-of-shit liar. “Has he said anything to you? About Ava?” About me?
Ethan doesn’t respond right away, picking up his own helmet from the table. “No,” he says after a moment. “But he was up, wandering around the hab in the night.”
“Are we going to do this or do you need to hold her hand some more?” Suresh’s voice is small and tinny inside the helmet she’s not yet wearing, but clearly audible. And impatient.
Ophelia glances over toward the airlock in time to see him lift his hands up in a What are you doing? motion.
Heat scores her cheeks. Suresh, she’s certain, only meant to imply that she was incapable rather than anything inappropriate, and yet it feels like the suggestion is hanging out in the air now.
Ethan, back to blank-faced as ever, puts his helmet on, twisting with efficiency until it clicks closed. He gestures for Ophelia to do the same.
As soon as her helmet is in place, he pivots and heads back toward the airlock, without waiting.
“Make sure you stick close, Doctor,” he says over the common channel.
Kate and Suresh lead the way outside, ducking their heads against the wind and tugging the sled behind them. Birch is at the back end of the sled, almost stepping on it in his eagerness to get out. He seems better now, more alert.
Liana is bent over her tablet, next to Ophelia, and Ethan brings up the rear.
“What do we think?” Kate asks, coming to a stop about ninety meters from the hab.
Ethan steps out of line and to the side, surveys the skies and the chipped-ice snowflakes spitting down on them. The wind swirls around him hungrily, but he remains stable, unmoved by it.
“Better than yesterday,” he says. “But that could change fast. Just stick to the line. We can get the spiders started and then come your way to help.”
“Spiders?” Ophelia can’t help herself.
“Yeah, the autodrillers! Remember?” Liana tips her tablet toward Ophelia so she can see three individual schematics of what does, in fact, look like a four-legged spider, with a proboscis thicker than its legs projecting from the center “body.”
“Meet Marvin, Mabel, and Denise.” Liana beams at her. “I program them with coordinates based on the scans we got on the mission briefing, and they core out a sample. We’ll do a couple of shallow samplings to gather data on the environment in the last few decades, snowfall, carbon dioxide levels, all kinds of stuff. They have diagnostic sensors that taste the ice and report back. But then we’ll try for a deeper sample. Roughly one kilometer is thousands of years.”
That piques Ophelia’s interest. “So you might end up with samples that could tell you what happened here. Maybe even biological specimens—leaves, or whatever the equivalent might be.”
“Exactly! If, for example, it involved volcanic activity, which is one of the theories, we’ll be able to pick that up from the higher levels of sulfur and ash or whatever. If there was an asteroid strike on this continent, then we might see a big jump in ammonium ions.”
As she’s explaining, Kate and Suresh are off-loading three large crates from the sled and dropping them on the ground.
“Hey, careful!” Liana protests, hurrying forward.
“Liana, love, we go through this every time. They’re in padded cases, they’re fine,” Kate says.
“Also, they’re not alive,” Suresh adds, sounding slightly out of breath. “Not pets, remember?”
Ophelia can’t see Liana’s expression, but her posture stiffens with hurt. Every team is, in some ways, like a family, with roles to play. When a family member is gone, there has to be some adjustment, or functionality can be impaired. Ophelia has no way of knowing whether Ava frequently intervened on Liana’s behalf or if Suresh kept his mouth shut more often in Ava’s presence, but her absence is notable at times.
Especially in that Ophelia finds herself stepping forward to defend instead of staying back, observing.
She catches herself and stops. Not my job, not what I’m here to do.
“You do know you’re an asshole, right?” Liana shoots back at Suresh.
“Let’s keep moving. Time is short,” Ethan says. “You can work out your personal disagreements in your sessions with Dr. Bray. In the meantime, we have work to do. Birch, I don’t know if the drones can handle this wind in a launch.”
Birch, in the process of tugging a shiny silver case off the sled, doesn’t respond.
Alarm flickers to life in Ophelia’s veins, tiny spikes of unease.
“Birch—” Ethan tries again.
“I want to try,” Birch says, hauling the case into his arms. It’s apparently lighter than it looks. “It’ll help if we’ve got updated survey data and visuals.”
No matter what, it would be better if he can keep busy, his mind present and occupied with work, but it’s not her call. Or at least not one she’s willing to make right now.
Ethan seems to reach the same conclusion, though. “Fine,” he says. “But don’t wander too far.”
With that, Kate and Suresh, still grumbling under his breath, venture off to the left, connect with the bright orange safety line, and vanish.
Liana makes herself busy dragging her spider crates into place, and Ethan helps.
“Here?” he asks.
Liana checks her tablet. “Still too close. The coordinates will keep them from running into each other, but we don’t want to destabilize the ice pack.”
Ophelia stays out of their way while keeping a close eye on Birch, who is slogging, in the direction of the city. He stops after a few minutes, kneeling to place the case on the ground.
She glances back at Ethan and finds him watching Birch as well. He gives her a nod, acknowledging that he’s aware, while Liana rushes from one crate to another, opening the lids and poking at whatever is inside.
Ophelia returns her attention to Birch … and the two black crystalline towers, slender and knifelike, tilted at the exact same angle, like two giant blades stabbed into the ground under the gray sky. No wonder the wind makes such strange noises over there. Whistling, calling, screaming.
The blanket of snow at the base of the towers is dramatically humped and bunched, unlike the smooth waves, gentle peaks, and rolling flatness all around her.
Then a mechanical whine loud enough to be heard over the wind pulls her focus to Liana and her spiders.
The automated drills stand themselves up in their protective packing, shaking and stretching each limb and joint before stepping out over the lip of the crate and skittering into the snow.
Ophelia’s revulsion is instinctive, automatic. She shudders. There’s no such thing as “good” insects or arachnids or other pests in an enclosed environment. Weevils, the same ones that once infested hardtack on long sea journeys, still manage to work their way into Goliath’s supplies from Earth, every once in a while. Ophelia has no idea what weevils actually look like, but as a child she always pictured tiny white spiders. They ate nothing with flour during those months. Those were thin months. People can travel to other planets and live in outer space, but they always bring their troubles with them.
The spiders spread out and find their places, coming to an immediate halt at some unseen signal, burying their feet in the snow, and then locking them into place with a series of loud clonks.
Ophelia turns back to the city, back to Birch. He’s standing now, but not moving, the case on the ground near his feet. She can’t tell if it’s open or not. But he appears to be staring at a fixed point in the distance, his hands clenched at his sides.
Fear zips through her, an electric shock to the nerves. Is he seeing someone out there? Is someone there?
She follows his gaze but can’t detect anything beyond the now increasing snow. No shadows, no movements. At least, she doesn’t think so. She can’t decide if that makes her feel better or worse. If she were to see something too, would that mean she and Birch are both losing their grip on reality? It’s a possibility that she has to keep in mind, unfortunately.
A half-forgotten memory surfaces abruptly. Ophelia’s father, with his head propped in his bloody hands on their kitchen table, sobbing, while her mother stands in the corner, trembling, a dent in the wall just to the right of her head.
The dent isn’t very big, but when the walls are thin sheets of plexiplastic over metal, it doesn’t need to be.
Urgency for answers swells in her, drowning out everything else. Including, one might argue, the common sense to leave well enough alone.
A glance back shows Liana and Ethan occupied with the spiders. So Ophelia makes her way over to Birch, calling his name over the common channel when she’s close enough. She doesn’t want to startle him.
“I don’t need you checking up on me,” he says, without turning around. He kneels down to open the shiny case at his feet. A dozen or so palm-size drones are tucked neatly inside protective foam.
With a little bit of fumbling, she manages to send him a request to switch channels.
He doesn’t move, and for a moment she thinks he’s going to ignore her.
But then his hand shifts to his wrist, and a corresponding crackle sounds inside her helmet. “We’re supposed to stay on the common channel, Doctor,” he says. “Though, wait, are you still a doctor if all your qualifications were done under a false name?”
It’s not a false name. Ophelia Bray is as real as anyone that money can buy. It’s Lark Bledsoe who doesn’t exist. Not anymore.
“I just need to ask you a question.” Ophelia hesitates, but in for a penny, in for a pound … of flesh. “Did you really see your brother outside?”
Birch shoots to his feet, spinning around on her, his expression contorting with fury. “I am not—”
“I mean, did you see him?” she asks quickly. “Or did you just see … someone?”
Something like uncertainty flashes across Birch’s blue-tinted face before it vanishes. “It was a dream,” he said firmly. “From your invasive mind-fuck equipment. It doesn’t matter.” Another crackle, followed by a beep, indicates his departure from the private channel. He kneels in the snow and begins fussing with the drones in their case.
Ophelia bites her lip and starts back toward Liana and Ethan. Is it a coincidence or a symptom? She can’t stop thinking about the shadowy figure she might or might not have seen through the window in her office yesterday morning.
Ahead of her, Ethan waves a hand, catching her attention. Shit. She forgot to switch back over to the primary channel.
“Everything okay over there?” he asks as soon as she’s on. “Birch?”
“Yes,” Ophelia says too quickly. “Just checking in.”
“Yes,” Birch says after a moment.
A beat of silence holds awkwardly, and she realizes she’s waiting, air caught tight in her lungs, for Birch to give her away.
But he doesn’t.
“Aww,” Suresh says in a ridiculously sulky voice. “Where’s my check-in, Doc? Playing favorites already.”
The last thing Ophelia would want is Suresh doing her a favor, but at the moment his obnoxiousness provides the tension break needed.
“You’re no one’s favorite,” Kate says with an audible sniff. “Now please focus on the task at hand if you want to keep breathing.”
“Did everyone hear that?” Suresh demands. “She’s threatening me, she’s—”
“In the hab, you twat. If you want to keep breathing in the hab. Hand me the—”
A loud, metallic shriek interrupts Kate, making Ophelia jump. For a second she’s confused, uncertain whether the noise came from inside her helmet or out.
“What was that?” Kate demands.
So, not something on their end, but loud enough that they could hear it.
“It’s Denise. She’s hung up on something,” Liana says.
Movement catches Ophelia’s eye: Liana approaching one of the spiders cautiously. Its whole body is shuddering as it tries to pull back from the ground, segmented legs flailing frantically in the snow, trying to gain leverage.
“This is a shallow dig, barely thirty centimeters down. There shouldn’t be anything that close to the surface, not here.” Liana sounds perplexed, tapping at her tablet before shaking her head. “She’s not responding to commands. Her system is probably overloaded. Such a drama queen.”
With a sigh, Liana sets her tablet carefully on the snow and edges closer, hands out like she’s approaching a wild animal, as if she expects Denise to suddenly wheel around and attack.
More likely, it’s in case the spider frees itself unexpectedly and momentum carries it back into her. Ophelia doesn’t know how heavy they are, but it’s almost as tall as Liana is, and the drill is certainly sharp enough to slice into her suit. Or worse.
Ophelia picks up her pace through the drifts. She might not be able to help, but she’d rather be close enough to try. The snow is coming down faster now, and the wind is moaning again, pushing against her and building to a howl.
“Liana,” Ethan warns, stepping up to follow her.
“I’ve got it,” Liana says, with a hint of ferocity. This is her domain, and she doesn’t want anyone interfering.
At the spider’s side, she stops, her hand moving with its undulations, until she’s finally able to reach in and, quick as a wink, tap something on the underside of its core.
She jumps back as Denise stills, legs locking in place. “There, that’s better,” she murmurs, moving to its side again, patting it on its “head.” “We’ll get you all fixed up in no time, you ridiculous bitch.” She looks over her shoulder to Ethan.
“Can you give me a hand?” she asks him. “I need to pull her back, clear the obstruction, and then reset.”
Ethan moves to the other side of the spider, and they rock Denise back and forth gently until its legs come free, sending both of them stumbling backward.
Ophelia is almost there when Liana starts screaming.