The crew bunk room, when Ophelia finally finds it, is smaller than she pictured from the ship’s schematic. It’s tucked in an odd offshoot of a corridor between the engines below and the cold sleep room above. The sign is missing from the door, but there’s no mistaking what the room is.
The space is vaguely hexagonal, with a built-in bunk in each wall and several drawers beneath for storage. Everything is that dingy, institutional white that only seems to make its appearance in small, high-traffic locations where some overly optimistic designer chose hope over practicality, believing the lighter color would make them seem brighter, bigger. Hospital waiting areas. School corridors. Space station security offices.
Her office back on Montrose’s corporate campus isn’t much bigger, and certainly is not in better condition, but it’s cozy. She painted the walls a tranquil shade of blue and brought in cushiony chairs that offer comfort and invite confessions. It also has a door.
Here, the only privacy comes from an individual pull-down metal screen that closes off each bunk from the room at large, creating a nook that’s only a little larger than the cold sleep tanks they just emerged from. The bunk room is only where they’ll be sleeping when they aren’t on the surface of one planet or another. A kind of home base of sorts. But conditions in a hab on the surface aren’t likely to be much better.
No wonder patients return with such issues. The stress of working and living in such close proximity to one another is far too much even under normal conditions, let alone for the length of time R&E teams are away. It feels … tight already, too close.
How much smaller will it seem in the dark, with five other people in here, sleeping, snoring, murmuring?
The air seems to press against Ophelia’s face, too warm, too thick. She shakes her head to dismiss the phantom sensation.
Tightening her grip on the slippery, sealed packages of company-issued clothing, she hoists her small bag of personal items higher on her shoulder as she searches for her name. Each bunk has the last name of each crew member on a small plastic tab, brown background with white lettering, mounted on the wall to the left of it.
Commander Severin’s, closest to the door, has the metal screen firmly in place, revealing nothing of the interior. So, no clues there. Or that is the clue. The man clearly does not want anyone in his business. Which Ophelia can hardly blame him for, not without being a hypocrite, which she tries to avoid as much as possible, having grown up surrounded by the trait. That being said, he doesn’t have to be such an ass about it.
Suresh’s screen is half wedged open at an odd angle that suggests a broken or jammed mechanism, a tangle of covers visible inside the dim interior. A mirror on the back wall of his bunk space is surrounded by mobile press-on lights. Two overstuffed toiletry bags hang from a hook nearby. Unsurprising. That level of fussy handsomeness—not to mention his hairstyle—requires maintenance and dedication, especially out here.
Liana’s bunk is wide open, her bed neatly made with a fuzzy purple throw and a variety of pillows in different shapes and sizes. A few digi-fotos of family wave and laugh silently from their positions on the wall. But most of her personal space is dominated by drawings on thin, rough hemp pages—stick figures holding hands in front of an ocean or a lake, and what might be the Resilience in the sky above, given the childish backward R on the outside of a spaceship-looking vehicle—in clashing shades of pink, purple, and blue. All of them are dedicated to Liana, in various misspellings of her name and title. Ont Lee-lee. Aunt Liannna.
She also has a set of those mini firefly drones that light up when activated and hover near the ceiling. They’re dormant at the moment, clinging to the wall like the bugs they are meant to mimic.
Bugs. Ophelia shudders. They have so many legs to … skitter with.
Skin crawling with the sensation of imagined beetles, roaches, and millipedes, she turns away to the next bunk. Kate’s is wallpapered in digi-fotos. Not a centimeter of blank space. They even line the outside perimeter of her bunk, nearly covering up the sign with her name. The constant motion in them—two or three seconds repeating—makes it hard to look at them or past them to the space within. Most of them seem to feature a beaming Kate on various adventures. Scaling a space elevator infrastructure. Cliff diving. Platform jumping on Mars at the threshold of the atmosphere. A man with similar features is grinning at her side in almost all of them—her twin brother, the colonist on Trappist? Probably.
Ophelia swivels toward Birch’s bunk, to her immediate right, on the other side of the door. It’s also tidily made but bare of any hint of personality.
Except …
The heavy blanket is corporate supply, thick faux wool blend with edges ragged from use. The cheap but durable blankets are thick and scratchy, meant to double as wall hangings to preserve the heat in your quarters in case of a station-wide outage.
His pillow is lumpy and uneven, a striking contrast to the tightly pulled blanket and sheets, but it’s also familiar. Pillows were one of those things that took up too much space on supply and resupply missions. So the miners used a set of spare clothing in a pillowcase as a substitute, and then, by the time they could have pillows sent to them, their solution had become part of their cultural identity. If you use a real pillow on a mining station, or even in one of the communities made up of those from the stations, it’s as good as declaring yourself soft or weak.
In fact, the reigning insult is “softheaded.”
Birch is definitely from one of the Pinnacle mining stations. That perhaps explains why he seemed so familiar.
She ignores the tiny pinch of homesickness in her gut, along with the ever-present swell of anxiety whenever she thinks of the mining stations, and focuses instead on the last bunk.
It’s the farthest from the door and from Severin, directly opposite him across the room. The privacy screen is closed, preventing her from seeing inside. But it has an empty, abandoned air to it.
It takes Ophelia a moment to realize why: the brown nameplate is missing.
She moves closer for a better look. Rough patches of white foam adhesive still cling to the wall where the identifier should be, where it has been removed but not scraped clean.
Olberman. This is … was Ava Olberman’s bunk.
Ophelia had reviewed Ava’s file before leaving, so it’s easy to pull up a mental image of the woman—athletic build, silvery hair cut short, tired but kind eyes. In the digi-foto included with her file, Ava was posing with her daughter, Catrin. Catrin wore an ESS, an exoskeleton suit, surgically connected to her legs and upper body to help her stand and walk. Sometimes the spine simply could not be healed or even regrown. She had been paralyzed in and barely survived a horrific air-veh accident, the same accident that claimed the life of her father, Ava’s late husband.
And now Ava is gone too.
For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to Ophelia until this moment that this was where she would be sleeping. That she would not just be taking Olberman’s seat on this mission but also occupying the woman’s most intimate space—where she slept, where she dreamed, where she died.
No. Ophelia shakes her head. Not where Ava died. She ran out of air on Minos 972-C. With a malfunctioning geolocater and mostly likely a raging case of ERS that led her to act unpredictably. No need for added melodrama; the situation is tragic enough on its own.
She grips the handle on the privacy screen, cool metal against her fingertips, and pulls, half expecting to find it secured from the inside.
But the screen retracts easily and smoothly overhead, revealing the bunk inside. A harsh white light flickers on—now she can see why Liana and Suresh both have alternate sources of illumination—highlighting a simple bare mattress and a new pillow and crisp white sheets in the same plasti-seal as her jumpsuits. The faint smell of lemon-scented cleaner wafts outward.
Nothing ominous. And why should there be?
She’s letting her nerves get to her, still jumpy from that stupid prank.
Ophelia opens the top storage drawer and dumps her company-issued clothing in. In the drawer underneath, the larger one, she tucks her whole bag. She’s not sure what she wants to take with her to the surface yet, and there’s no sense in unpacking just to repack.
Not that there’s much in the bag to begin with. Pen and paper, to take old-school notes that cannot be uploaded or hacked into—that always seems to reassure her most paranoid patients. A cheap, disposable tablet that holds downloaded photos, music, and media, as her QuickQ implant won’t work out here. Her birthday present from Dulcie last year—a necklace with a tiny delicate bird charm on a thin gold chain. Their mother almost swallowed her tongue when she saw it. Dulcie had assumed it was because of what she’d spent.
The rest is mostly clothes—thicker undershirts, warmer wraparound sweaters, and heavy socks. Space is cold.
After closing her bag inside, she straightens up and reaches for the sheets. But an unexpected flash of color stills her hand. There, just between the new pillow and the packages of bedding—pink.
Carefully, Ophelia pushes the sealed sheets aside, sending them slipping across the mattress, until she can see the source of the color more clearly.
It’s a flower. Three of them, actually. Delicately folded bits of pink paper turned into origami lotuses. Dark veins of printed words run across the leaves and petals. A memorial of some kind?
Instantly, her mind flashes to the outer wall of her building on Montrose’s campus. Two weeks ago, someone hacked it, so instead of running the latest corporate messaging, it showed emotional images of flowers waving gently in the breeze, balloons lifting into the sky, and messages that said things like “Gone Too Soon” and “Never Forget.” Also, of course, “Montrose Blows!”
Instinctively, she shuts her eyes against the memory. But in turn, that only summons another, older one:
Dim corridors lined with carefully assembled bouquets of tiny greenery from the greenhouse, string or leftover scraps of fabric tied around their delicate stems. Weeping echoing from the mess hall. The slash of dark red paint across the door to their quarters, before her mother hurried her inside.
Her eyes snap open. No. Absolutely not opening that door to the past.
She reaches out to pick up one of the flowers by one of the tiny petals. Something about this—the color, the paper—looks so familiar.
Ophelia squints at the words, cut off in the leaf folds and overlapping each other on the petals until they turn to nonsense. Still, a few phrases immediately leap out.
… no evidence of wrongdoing …
… (presumptive ERS), which …
… cleared for return to …
It’s the summary page of an ARD report. Assessment for Return to Duty. A crew copy of one, anyway—those are always on pink paper, to differentiate from the original, and like all official documents, still printed. In this case, so that the employees in question can be handed the assessment in person, in front of witnesses, and there can be no confusion about the receipt.
A Pink, as they’re colloquially known. Her patients frequently refer to “getting Pinked” or “waiting for a Pink.”
After any kind of incident, especially one involving death or severe injury, Montrose’s Internal Human Behavior department is charged with investigating. They are an awkward balance of human resources and a privatized police force—both hated and feared. IHB is responsible for writing the ARDs and delivering the Pinks.
Working in the PBE unit, Ophelia has contributed to more than her fair share of ARD reports, but it’s rare for her to have access to the unredacted final, even when working with cases generated by an ARD incident. She’s seen the pink copies before, usually in the hands of patients in her office, waving them around in protest of the results or holding them up in triumph.
ARDs are highly confidential. Sharing an ARD report with an unauthorized party, even a report in which the employee is cleared of wrongdoing, is grounds for immediate termination.
And yet, here one is. Part of one, anyway. Cut into pieces and transformed into flowers.
What a strange thing to memorialize Ava Olberman with, the company’s assessment that her death was her own fault.
Ophelia runs her thumb gently over one of the sharp, elegant folds. A sign of guilt, perhaps?
That might make sense if a member of the team thinks they should have found Ava faster … or caught the signs of ERS earlier. Then again, guilt doesn’t always work logically. It might simply be someone with an overactive conscience, taking on blame they don’t deserve but can’t seem to shake, nonetheless. People are strange like that.
She gently returns the first flower to its place and picks up the second to examine the words on it.
… left without notifying Commander Severin or her teammates …
All efforts to locate were unsuccessful, despite …
The body, likely in the collapsed tunnels on the southern side of the …
Ophelia’s heartbeat speeds up, and it takes her a second to figure out why. This Pink holds no redactions. No perfect, solid black lines blotting out the words on this flower or the first. Unlike the version in her files, this summary page is seemingly whole.
Her fingers itch to unfold the paper, to see what she’s missed, if there’s anything important she doesn’t already know. A more complete picture might help her better understand this team and how to help them.
But it’s a violation—or the team will view it that way. And it is a little creepy, even with good intentions, to use someone’s obviously private memorial as an investigative tool.
Plus, if she takes these flowers apart, she’ll never be able to put them back together in the same way. And that will serve as an open declaration that she is the snoop/spy they likely think she is. Trust destroyed. No coming back from that.
“Hello?”
Ophelia jumps, startled, and spins around to face the door.
“Just me.” Liana waves from the threshold and then steps inside. “I was looking for you. I wanted to say again how sorry I am for what happened earlier. We shouldn’t have—”
She pauses as she approaches, her gaze falling on the flower in Ophelia’s hand. “What are you doing?”
“It’s … They were in the bunk,” Ophelia offers, feeling both the lameness of that explanation for her nosiness and utter relief that she hadn’t given in to the impulse to pick the flowers apart.
Liana steps forward and plucks the flower from Ophelia’s palm. Her gaze slips to the bunk, where the remaining flowers are now clearly visible. “It must be for Ava,” she says softly, her mouth turning down, carving lines on either side in her smooth skin.
So Liana hadn’t been aware of the memorial until now.
“I’ll take them. Get them out of your way.” She moves past Ophelia and gathers the paper blossoms quickly but gingerly. Answers, information, disappearing right before Ophelia’s eyes.
Watching her, Ophelia resists the urge to tell her to stop, to leave the flowers in place. “I’m sure it must feel strange. To have me here, in this space,” she says instead.
Liana pauses. “You’re just doing your job,” she says quietly, her face still turned away.
“True. But that doesn’t make the situation any less raw,” Ophelia points out.
Liana steps back with the flowers in her loosely cupped hands, pink showing through the gaps in her long, elegant fingers. “I just miss her.” Her dark eyes are bright, shiny with unshed tears.
Ophelia nods. “Completely understandable. You worked together, lived together. More like family than coworkers.” If her other patients are the standard to go by, anyway. Not that family is any less complicated.
“Yes, exactly,” Liana says softly, her thumb brushing over one of the paper petals. “I was so nervous when I first started, but Ava walked me through everything. Made sure I was okay.” She laughs, shakes her head. “She was such a mom, you know?”
No, not really. But Ophelia can imagine it, based on her experience of other mothers.
“She missed her daughter. She only took this job to try to save for some experimental treatment for Catrin that her insurance wouldn’t pay for. Something that would let Catrin walk again, I guess.” Liana sighs. “She treated me like I was another daughter.”
“She sounds like a good friend,” Ophelia offers, leaving space for Liana to elaborate. In a session, well-timed silence is often just as important as or even more important than what she says.
Liana nods, her gaze remains fixed on the flowers. “She was, and I just wish we had—” She stops abruptly, straightening up, her shoulders stiffening.
“Wish you had what?” Ophelia prompts gently, when Liana doesn’t continue.
“Doesn’t matter.” Liana shakes her head. “Accidents happen, unfortunately,” she says. “It’s sad. But that’s just part of this life, isn’t it?”
These sound like borrowed words, a speech Liana’s heard dozens of times before. Perhaps after being told she was “too emotional.”
Ophelia’s mouth tightens. The outdated attitude that feelings are a weakness—or an inconvenience at best, instead of simply human and a necessity to address—lingers in this industry.
Liana’s eyes are still slightly reddened, but the hint of tears has now completely vanished. She meets Ophelia’s gaze steadily, unflinching, as if she’s trying to impress the words upon her: Nothing to see here.
“Yes, it is sad,” Ophelia says after a moment. “Which can be difficult to deal with sometimes. That’s why I’m here. I can help, and I hope that you’ll come talk with me.”
Liana opens her mouth to say something further, but the ship shifts under their feet, as if a gentle wave has passed beneath them. The pitch of the engines, a constant background hum that Ophelia has already mostly tuned out, shifts to something lower, more resonant.
Liana’s head jerks up, as if she’s hearing a voice calling to her at a distance. Then a small smile breaks across her face. “We’re in orbit. Almost there.” She starts for the door, hands still holding the flowers. Ophelia is willing to bet they’ll be hidden … or dumped in the first recycler Liana encounters, shredded and pulped to be remade into a cup or toilet paper. “He’ll want to start landing prep soon.”
“He,” presumably, is Commander Severin. And not someone Ophelia wants to further agitate by being late or absent. Actually, that’s exactly what she wants to do, but she will accede to her better judgment.
“I’ll be there in a minute.” Ophelia tips her head toward the bunk and the still sealed sheets, lying askew on the mattress now. “I want to take care of this first.”
Distracted, Liana nods, hurrying out the door.
Ophelia tears into the packaging, releasing an overwhelming scent of New, and dumps the sheets out onto the bed, letting her mind wander as her body moves through the familiar motions.
It’s hard, reading people. Especially when you’ve just met them. It takes time to get to know them, their body language, their conversational quirks and idiosyncrasies. Some people are more difficult to read, in general.
But in Ophelia’s experience, extended forced eye contact like that generally only means one thing—lying.
It’s a weird psychological quirk. People know that avoiding someone’s gaze can indicate deception—which is true—but to compensate, they go overboard the other direction.
With the sheets in place, tight and smooth as she was taught so many years ago, Ophelia reaches for the pillow and begins to wedge it into the provided case.
Liana is lying about something related to Ava Olberman. Maybe it’s simply that Liana is hurting from Ava’s death more than she would like to acknowledge.
I just wish we had …
Known? Done more?
Maybe Liana feels responsible for only recognizing the symptoms of ERS in retrospect.
Or perhaps she has information about the events leading up to Ava’s death, relevant and helpful details that might be found in the unredacted Pink.
There’s no way to know.
With a sigh, Ophelia drops the pillow, twisted and awkward in its slightly too small case, into place at the head of the bed.
Or maybe Ophelia’s just looking for something more to be wrong, trying to give herself another problem to solve so she can prove to Montrose she’s good at her job. And worth the hassle.
“Everyone, prep for departure. Our window between storms is exceptionally tight.” Severin’s voice echoes through the bunk room via the overhead intercom.
Either way, one thing is clear: Liana is desperately trying to convince Ophelia that she’s fine, everything is fine.
And Ophelia should know; she’s been doing the same thing for most of her life.