Not exactly an inspiring start, Dr. Bray.
“Fuck,” she mutters, scrubbing the towel over her skin, her assigned locker open in front of her. The blurry rectangle of shatterproof mirror inside the door catches her eye. Her dark red hair is darker still and hanging in clumps around her face, thanks to the bio-gel. The harsh overhead lights paint her skin an even paler shade of white, as if somehow all of her blood is not yet defrosted and circulating.
Patients try her temper and her composure all the time in the office. Sometimes because they want to inflict the hurt they’re feeling on someone else. Sometimes because they just resent the hell of being sent to her in the first place.
Pretending to be dead, however, is a bit extreme.
She chucks the towel into the recycling bin built into the locker wall, banking it in.
And Severin? My team, my decisions.
Ophelia grits her teeth at the memory. He’s not wrong, of course. But why agree to an on-site psych resource if he’s not going to at least pretend to listen?
She reaches into the locker, where several plasti-sealed packages wait for her. After wrestling a T-shirt and compression shorts into place across her damp skin, she opens and shakes out the orange and gray jumpsuit until the arms and legs unfurl, sharp lines where they were folded.
Technically, the mission commander isn’t her boss any more than she is his. She has the authority to pull anyone from duty, including him. But he is in charge of the success of the mission and everyone’s safety. He can make her job difficult simply by not supporting her authority.
Or by supporting her a little too much, depending on how you look at it.
Punishing Suresh, while certainly within Severin’s purview and thoroughly appropriate for that stunt, only makes things harder for her. She looks weak, ineffectual. Even worse, it firmly places her in the role of the outsider, the bad guy, a role that team members are already inclined to cast her in without any help.
Julius was right. It’s a whisper at the back of her mind, her doubts and fears personified.
No. She shakes her head in emphasis as she steps into her jumpsuit. Julius might have been right about the team not wanting her here. That’s hardly unexpected, even back on Earth. An employer-assigned therapist is rarely someone’s first choice.
But this was still the best choice for her. And she’s here now—that’s the most important thing. She needs to focus on making a difference for them, on proving that she can.
If they’ll trust her.
The zipper on her jumpsuit sticks halfway up, and she yanks at it in frustration.
Ophelia. Breathe. The thought that this is exactly what Julius would have said to her, were he here, were they still speaking, flits through her mind before she pushes it away.
She pauses for a moment, closes her eyes, centers herself. Focusing on the pattern of her breathing until it slows, regulates. The tension in her shoulders eases. I can do this. They need me, even if they won’t acknowledge it. Yet.
If nothing else, that whole thing with the sleep tanks screams “cry for help.” It can’t be just a coincidence that Suresh and Liana would pretend to be dead on their first mission after Ava’s actual death.
Ophelia is sure they would deny any connection between the two events, but that doesn’t mean the connection doesn’t exist, even on a simple subconscious level. Ava’s absence is weighing on them. Which is only going to make things more difficult for them, on this assignment and every assignment going forward, unless they get the help they need.
Skyrocketing rates of depression, anxiety, sleep deprivation, domestic violence, workplace violence, and intoxicant abuse had been noted for decades among the space-based workforce, before Eckhart-Reiser syndrome and its triggering event forced the larger medical community to acknowledge that they weren’t dealing with one-offs but a larger issue.
Humans aren’t built for working and living in space. Circadian rhythms fall apart when people are in an artificial environment for too long. It’s even worse for R&E teams stuck on a series of planets with day/night cycles that don’t match Earth’s. Then, add in the isolation, stress—in this case, grief and loss on top of work-based factors—poor diet, and lack of privacy, and you end up with a nice thick stew of contributing factors.
Talk therapy, medication, and regular exercise are all standard practice. But improved sleep—quality sleep, as determined by the three Ds: depth, duration, and disturbances—can also make an enormous difference.
The new iVR helmets Ophelia is charged with testing on this mission—a portable version of the same Montrose technology used back on Earth—will help reduce some of the physiological strain that comes from being off-world. Hopefully. But trial and error, particularly at the beginning, is inevitable.
Better to get started right away.
Ophelia opens her eyes, feeling calmer, more grounded. She knows her purpose, that she has the experience and the abilities to help. She will make a difference here. She is not a failure.
Pulling the baggy jumpsuit fabric tighter against her body, she returns to the zipper, and it rolls up smoothly this time. There, see?
She steps back from her locker, starts to shut the door, and then stops, her hand on the cool metal. A standard-issue wrist-comm rests on its side on the locker shelf above her head, a chunky screen on a thick black band. It’s a poor substitute for her QuickQ implant, allowing only limited voice and text transmissions. But comms technology in the field is always a couple hundred generations behind. She—and everyone else in the crew—will have to rely on the ship to receive transmissions from home and then pass them on to these clunky old things.
The screen on hers is already flashing yellow, indicating waiting messages.
Her uncle. Julius, maybe, if he’s come to his senses about how far over the fucking line he was. She should forgive him. Of all people, Ophelia knows how “persuasive” her family can be—persuasive like a knife to the throat of the person you love most. Besides, it’s not as if she’s going to trust him again, so there’s no danger in it.
With a sigh, she reaches up and pulls the wrist-comm down, fastening the thick band around her wrist. She flicks through the notifications on the screen, deleting three messages from her uncle, most of which were received in the immediate aftermath of her turning off her QuickQ. One from an unknown number turns out to be a confused private practitioner trying to refer a former Montrose employee to her and somehow not understanding her on-assignment designation.
Ophelia forwards that one to Emery, her replacement, and then clicks on the next one.
A familiar number: Dulcie, her younger sister. The message is brief. “Ugh. Fine. I guess.” A moment of quiet, then she sighs. “I miss you.” Then the connection ends.
Ophelia’s eyes sting. Dulcie is not just her favorite person in her family, but possibly her favorite person in the world. But she’s doing this for Dulcie as much as herself. All this bad press about your older sister can’t be easy for a seventeen-year-old.
Ophelia clears her throat and blinks rapidly to clear her vision. Then she saves the message before moving on to the next. It’s another unknown number with no text transcription.
That private doc not understanding, again, most likely.
A tinny voice emerges from the microspeaker. “Dr. Bray, this is Jazcinda Carruthers from the To Tell the Truth channel. I was hoping to speak with you.”
Ophelia’s heart stutters in her chest. Jazcinda has never reached out to her directly before. Ophelia’s contact information isn’t a secret; it can’t be, in her profession. But the journo-streamers have mostly steered clear of her, thanks to the phalanx of Montrose lawyers shouting about privacy.
What has changed? Or, what does Jazcinda know that she’s willing to risk it?
“But it seems I’m too late. Or a year and half too early.” Jazcinda gives a self-deprecating laugh, one that’s tinged with artificiality, in that it’s designed to make people trust her. Oops, I’m only human. Ophelia has used a similar technique herself.
“If you’d like to reach out, this is my contact card.” Information flashes on the screen. A momentary hesitation, then Jazcinda adds, “Hope to hear from you soon.”
Ophelia immediately moves to swipe Delete, but something stays her hand at the last moment. Better to know the danger than to turn your back on it. That’s been her philosophy for most of her life, and it’s served her well so far.
At least she’s several million kilometers away from having to deal with it right now.
While she’s still contemplating Jazcinda’s message and its meaning, the next message plays through. Another familiar number. But not Julius.
“Ophelia, it’s your mother?” Her small, faint voice sounds even fainter this far away. Or perhaps that’s just Ophelia’s imagination.
Just turn it off, delete it. No good can come of this, you already know that. But it’s difficult, nearly impossible, to stop longing for parental acceptance. It’s embedded in the brain at such an early age.
“I’m worried about you,” her mother says. In the background, glasses clink and someone laughs a little too loudly. She’s at a party somewhere, a benefit, most likely, following her brother’s—Ophelia’s uncle’s—directive to reach out. Too late, of course.
“I know why you feel you have to do this,” she continues. “And I … I’m sorry.”
Ophelia rolls her eyes. Her mother is always sorry, or so she says, but somehow the words never seem to amount to any action.
“But I think it’s too risky.” Her mother’s tone shifts from soft regret to prim and pointed, a belated assertion of authority. “Don’t go to that planet.”
Ophelia sighs, waiting for the warning about Jazcinda, protecting the family, coming home to the compound in Connecticut. Her mother’s mouth but her uncle’s words—a skilled puppet show.
“I know it’s been years since you’ve had an … incident,” her mother begins, and Ophelia’s eyes snap open. “But you must consider that this environment could trigger—”
Jesus. Her face hot, Ophelia slaps at the wrist-comm to silence her mother, resisting the urge to look around to see if anyone else might have heard. Unbelievable. They must be desperate to go digging that up.
Ophelia shakes her head and slams the locker door shut with a surge of gritty satisfaction tinged with familiar disappointment. She was right. Again.
Ophelia finds the bridge by following the signs, literally. Red directional arrow stickers marked BRIDGE in English, Mandarin, Russian, and Japanese are slapped on the gray metal walls, one on top of another, in crooked columns.
The red lettering on white background matches the Montrose logo, which is also plastered everywhere. It is, theoretically, an abstract representation of a mountain with a rose in front of it—a large triangle behind a smaller upside down one with a dotted line to represent the stem.
That said, every time Ophelia looks at the logo, all she sees is the little triangle peeing on the larger one. Probably a good thing the Rorschach test is no longer deemed a useful tool.
The closer she gets to the bridge, the quieter the hum of the engines becomes. The murmur of voices rises and falls in the distance. Tension arcs through her, urging her to hurry, but she keeps her steps deliberate, even. She will not rush, not on Severin’s arbitrary command.
The corridor she’s in eventually dead-ends into the threshold of the bridge, revealing a relatively compact room. Four padded swivel chairs—three of them currently occupied—sit interspersed among banks and wall panels of touch screens and displays. Slightly warmer air, heated by the equipment within, wafts over her at the threshold. Numbers and codes flash on various screens, accompanied by mild-sounding beeps and alerts, but nothing that screams “Danger!” Which is good, because she wouldn’t have the faintest notion of how to respond, unless there’s a big red EMERGENCY button somewhere.
The edges of the banks are worn from use, the floor is scraped and scratched—this is clearly a working ship—but it’s a tidy space, free of distractions. That feels like Severin at work. It’s not an imposing room, physically, but an intimidating one nonetheless, and Ophelia feels a pressure, like a force field, at the edge of it, reminding her that she doesn’t belong here.
Across the bridge, on the far wall, Lyria 393-C hangs in the large viewport, an icy ball rotating slowly in the soothing black backdrop of space. Violent weather systems roil in the atmosphere, hiding most of the surface, including the jagged black remains of ancient nonhuman cities jutting out of the snow.
Lyria 393-C is one of a few dozen planets where humans have found signs of former intelligent life. It makes those planets extra valuable, but more for the oddity, the bragging rights, than anything else. These civilizations are so old, there’s very little left of them. Despite what a certain popular conspiracy vid series would have everyone believe, humans—Earth and her various colonies—are still the only game in town.
On Ophelia’s right, in the chair closest to her, a woman sits sideways, flicking the screen on her wrist-comm. Her legs hang over the armrest, feet jittering with a nervous energy. Her dark hair is pulled back on top, the shaved undercut dyed a bright blue. Kate Wakefield.
Dark obsidian stars pierce both of her earlobes and move up in a curved line through the cartilage. Ah. She’s a collector.
Ophelia’s had other patients who collect. One piercing for each planet visited/survived. It’s sort of a new version of “the scars tell the story,” and winner takes all. Kate might be in a pool of other competitors or not. Some do it just for themselves. On her right ear, though, there’s a bright red patch, healing skin, where a piercing has been removed. Ophelia wonders if it’s from the last mission, the one where Ava died.
Feeling Ophelia’s gaze on her, Kate looks up from her wrist-comm. Her mouth drops open slightly, then she straightens up slowly, swinging her legs to the floor.
Kate recognizes her. Not surprising. Ophelia steels herself, bracing for the barrage of questions or the wave of hatred. Both her family and her career are known to trigger … powerful responses.
But then, after a second, Kate simply nods. “Doc.”
“Hi … Kate, right?” Never assume. Even if you’re right, you don’t want to be the officious jerk caught memorizing personnel files. (Even if that is, in fact, what you’ve done.)
“That’s me.” Kate looks … relieved to see her, pleased even, which has the opposite effect one might expect.
“Dr. Ophelia Bray. You can call me Ophelia.” Wariness colors her response. No one is ever that happy to make Ophelia’s acquaintance, just on its own. But maybe that says more about her than about Kate.
At the sound of their voices, the pilot turns in his seat at the front of the bridge. His closely cropped dark hair and smooth brown skin bring out the bright green of his eyes, which are narrowed in suspicion. His gaze skates over Ophelia from head to toe, but he says nothing.
Not an atypical response, but …
Ophelia catches herself in a frown. There’s something familiar about him, something that didn’t come through in his—admittedly sparse—file. The set of his shoulders, the clenched line of his jaw … She can’t quite put her finger on it.
Birch Osgoode. Unusual first name. Is it possible he’s from one of the mining stations in the Carver system?
Goliath? Her heart trips unexpectedly in her chest. No, not possible. Plus, she doesn’t recognize his last name.
But it was tradition across all three stations—Goliath, Sampson, Jericho—to name children after things the miners missed back on Earth. Seasons, animals, landscape features, trees.
If he’s from the Carver system, he’s going to be pissed at Ophelia for reasons beyond the usual ones.
Ophelia stays still, letting him look his fill. But as soon as she opens her mouth to greet him, he turns away, facing the viewport again. Fair enough. For now.
Commander Severin, seated in the command chair at the center, still hasn’t acknowledged her presence. She’s drawing in a breath to clear her throat, when he finally glances back over his shoulder and nods at her.
Such a ridiculous power play. Irritation rises in her. Back away from the trip wire, Phe.
One of the hardest things in this field for her, for everyone, is navigating around personal emotional baggage without letting it affect the work. She struggles with people who like to wield their position like a weapon, forever caught between being desperate for their acceptance and pissed at herself for the craving.
But her ongoing and long-standing issues with authority and authority figures are not relevant here. She searches out the cool spot of calm in the center of her chest and focuses on that.
Severin rises from his chair. “Let me know when we’re close, Birch.”
“Affirmative, Commander,” Birch says, his voice a deep rumble. An oddly formal response. Ophelia suspects that’s due to her, either trying to not give her anything to write up in a report—even though that’s not how she works—or signaling that he has no intention of being vulnerable in her presence. Like using someone’s last name or title instead of their first to hold them at a distance.
Severin steps around his chair and walks toward Ophelia … then right past.
The cool spot of calm in her chest vanishes in a wave of molten aggravation. Gritting her teeth against an exasperated noise that she is too professional to release, she follows him into the corridor.
Severin stands, waiting, about three meters away, in a wide-legged stance, as if they were on a rolling vessel on the open ocean, arms folded across his chest. He doesn’t need to be any more imposing. He’s nearly half a meter taller than she is, and the same jumpsuit that bags awkwardly around her fits him perfectly. This is his territory, and she is the intruder; he couldn’t make that any clearer than if he started peeing around the perimeter.
His dark eyebrows are disapproving slashes across his forehead. Or maybe that’s his expression when he looks at her.
Ophelia lifts her chin. “Maybe we should start over,” she begins, meeting his gaze, refusing to be cowed. She holds out her hand. “My name is—”
“To be clear, I don’t approve of Suresh’s ‘prank,’” he says. “I sent them to retrieve you.”
Ophelia lowers her hand, face going hot at the memory, at the impression she must have made. Naked, covered in bio-gel and babbling nonsense. “That is partially my fault,” she says evenly, focusing on the center of his forehead. An old trick to create the impression of eye contact when the monkey brain is too overwhelmed with strong emotion for the real thing. “I should have anticipated that resistance to my arrival might result in—”
“But I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding. I only agreed to this arrangement so that my team would be able to continue working instead of being forced into mandatory evaluation leave,” he continues, as if she hasn’t spoken. “You aren’t needed or wanted here.”
That shocks Ophelia into meeting his eyes for real. “I’m sorry?”
“We can’t afford any … distractions. I’m down a team member, and I have three planets to document and survey.”
“To be clear, you’re saying my authorized presence and plan to treat your team is a distraction?” she asks, her grip on her temper slipping. Fire in the hole, Phe.
The corner of his mouth twitches in irritation, but he remains calm. “I don’t have time for a rich girl playing at being useful, sitting in judgment on those of us who have to actually work for a living.” The words aren’t biting or hateful, more a simple statement of fact. But still.
Her jaw aches with the urge to unleash on him. Of all the reasons to object to her presence, at least this is a tried-and-true one. One she’s been dealing with for the better part of two decades, with classmates, coworkers, the media, patients, the guy who sells her her ration of coffee from a cart on the corner. It’s tired, yes, and tiring.
“Commander Severin, I have no interest in interfering. Or judging. I am here to help.” She’s not going to bother addressing the jab about her wealth—or rather, presumed wealth—and inefficacy. Trying to explain never ends well. “As an on-site psych resource, I can address mental health issues more easily and reduce their severity. Maybe even prevent full-blown ERS.”
ERS, if it gets bad enough, if conditions are right, can result in a psychotic break, violence, and actual clinical insanity, known colloquially as a Bledsoe Break. As one of the corporations chasing the bleeding edge in human habitation and productivity in space and exoplanetary exploration, Montrose has a vested interest in keeping its workforce healthy.
Plus, ERS, like suicidal ideation, can be contagious. And with one team member dead under unusual circumstances, it would behoove Severin to take advantage of the help she’s offering.
“In terms of mission efficiency,” Ophelia says, “I think you’ll find if we can work together, it’ll only improve your stats.”
Severin exhales loudly through his nose. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” she asks, frowning.
“The whole ‘get them on your side’ thing,” he says.
“I am on your side,” she says.
He snorts. “Don’t bother. I’ve been through all of this before.”
Ophelia draws in a breath and holds it for a second, trying to trick herself out of the fight portion of her fight-or-flight response. “With a treatment plan and the new technology Montrose sent, the iVR helmets for sleep deprivation, you may discover you’re actually more—”
“Corporate just won’t be satisfied until they dig into every nook and cranny of our brains, will they?” He smiles tightly.
“Yes, and what exactly happened to your lost team member?” she snaps, folding her arms across her chest to match his stance. If he wants to push, she can push too.
Ava Olberman, fifty-two, was last seen alive on Minos 972-C. She left the hab without telling anyone (a big no-no), and the geolocator in her suit was either turned off (a potentially fireable violation of mission safety guidelines) or broken.
Based on postmission debriefs conducted on their return to Earth, no one on her team, including Severin himself, seems to know why Olberman did it. She was a mission or three away from retirement, and looking forward to it. It made no sense for her to wander out into a hostile climate alone, and even less for her to stay out there past any survival point.
Ophelia can’t make a definitive diagnosis without having examined Ava Olberman, but that sure as hell sounds like ERS to her.
Severin jerks back slightly, patches of color rising in his pale cheeks. She’s hit a sensitive spot. He blames himself for Ava’s death, if she has to guess.
She opens her mouth to apologize, but he recovers himself first, his mouth tight. “Are you sure you want to compare track records with me, Doctor?” he asks, his gaze boring through her.
Nausea slips through her stomach, marking its presence with a flood of saliva in her mouth. He knows.
Of course he knows. She gives herself an internal shake. Lots of people do, even those who spend most of their time away from Earth, apparently. That’s why Paulsen was shitting himself about headlines. Because of who she is, because of what happened. Hard to find a juicier story than that.
She wants to hide, duck her head in shame. But she makes herself hold firm. “If you’d like.” Her voice is a little too thin, too sharp, but he probably doesn’t know that. “It’s all the more reason to devote resources to understanding and preventing ERS.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose in exhaustion. “Look, you can try to convince me you’re here to do good, but we both know you’re here for you. If we’re good little heartbeats for you, then you get to feel better about yourself and your guilty conscience, and Montrose gets some good coverage out of it.”
Ophelia flinches. Officially, R&E teams provide an on-site assessment of newly acquired planets, but their primary purpose is to establish a solid residency claim, per the International Space Exploration and Occupation Treaty requirements. Basically, they’re just living, breathing bodies to be counted. A heartbeat.
And once upon a time, R&E missions carried the internal designation “HO.” Heartbeats Only. A lot of displaced workers—former lawyers, teachers, writers, truck drivers, and doctors, whose jobs were eliminated in the previous thirty years with advancements in AI—had no choice but to retrain and take on work that would pay them well enough and provide benefits for their families.
Severin might be right about her being here for ulterior motives, possibly even selfish ones, but she’s never thought of the R&E teams as just bodies, and she’s sure as hell not here to escape her guilt—how can she, when it comes with her everywhere?
But it’s clear that Severin will never believe that. He’s already made up his mind.
“I’ll need to meet with everyone individually for an evaluation and to establish an initial plan,” she says finally. A group session would be the ultimate goal, but they’d have to work up to that. “There will also be some setup required for the iVR system.”
He opens his mouth to object, dark eyes snapping.
“Everyone is, of course, welcome to opt out,” she adds.
“But you’ll report that,” he points out.
“It will be acknowledged in the summary, yes.”
He gives a humorless laugh. “Of course it will.”
Ophelia waits.
Finally he shakes his head in disgust. “I won’t make my team do anything they don’t want to do,” he says.
She clamps down on her rising offense. “I would never ask you to. But you can encourage them to take advantage of—”
“And you’ll need to pull your weight as a team member while we’re on-site,” he continues.
“I’m happy to help with anything you need,” she says, working to keep her voice even. “But my primary—”
“Just stay out of our way,” he says, raising his voice to be heard, as he turns and heads back to the bridge. “If you can.”
Ophelia watches him go, fighting the urge to scream. She’s not sure who won—or lost—that confrontation, not that she should even be looking at a patient interaction in binary like that. But it’s hard not to.
The only good news is that she doesn’t have to worry about contracting ERS and wanting to commit violence against Ethan Severin. She already wants that.