My head hits first, a glancing blow against the sharp edge of the far corner of the nightstand, and pain is a lightning bolt, quick and razor-sharp, through my skull.
My shoulders and back slam into the ground next, knocking the air out of my lungs. I arch up off the carpeting instinctively, struggling for breath. But it will not come. It’s as if the front and back sides of my lungs have been squeezed together and are now stuck, unable to inflate.
I scrabble my fingers frantically against the carpet, searching for I don’t know what. My vision begins to darken, unconsciousness threatening. And right as I’m convinced that I’m going to pass out or suffocate, unable to move with that … woman just inches away and likely clawing her way toward me, something unlocks in my chest and I gasp. Air floods in, sweet and light.
Pushing against the bed with my legs, I scoot myself away. Not far, not nearly far enough. But it’s all I can do.
I roll onto my side, white spots dancing in my vision. I want to see her coming, at least.
Except.
She’s not there.
I blink rapidly, trying to clear my vision of the spots. They gradually recede, but she’s still not there.
There’s no one underneath the bed. Just the expanse of empty carpeting I expected in the first place.
I push myself up on one wobbly arm—it takes two attempts before I can hold myself up—to look for her. She’s not at the foot of the bed. Or anywhere that I can see.
With one hand pressed to the growing and suspiciously damp lump at the back of my head, I struggle to my knees for a better view of the room.
It’s empty. She’s gone.
Or—more likely—she was never here in the first place.
I sag back to the floor, tears spilling down my face. Pulling my fingers away from my head, I find blood. Not a lot, but enough.
Shit.
It was her, I’m fairly sure, the woman Kane and I found under the bed in one of the other suites. The one with her eyes and ears covered, whose discovery had so bothered me. The one whose body we had removed and placed on the other side of the sealed bulkhead doors.
What the fuck is happening to me?
Except I already know. Revisited trauma, hallucinations, leading up to a psychotic break. It has to be. Starting with seeing my mother. My own brain was trying to warn me, and I didn’t listen.
But this time, this time is different. When I was eleven and alone, I could feel myself slipping away, could feel my grip on reality loosening. And being a terrified kid, I welcomed anything that made me feel less isolated and scared.
But now? I don’t feel that same disconnect. Reality feels as tethered to me as always. And I’m not alone. I have people depending on me. I can’t afford to lose my mind.
And yet, here we are.
Carefully, I push myself to my feet, gritting my teeth against the throbbing in my head, and stagger toward the bathroom.
A few moments of rummaging in the detritus on the floor produces what appears to be a clean washcloth, which I press against the back of my head with one hand.
Refusing to look at my reflection in the mirror, I run cold water over my other hand, rinsing away the blood. Then I freeze, realizing what I’ve done. Contaminated myself with their water, if there are contaminants within to be found.
Fuck. I need to report this—all of this—to Kane. Tell him to take over, and, I don’t know, knock me out. Stick me in a room somewhere and lock me up until we get back to sector K147.
My face burns with humiliation and frustration. I was right. I’m too damaged. Too dangerous.
But the thought of ceding control, even to Kane, feels even more dangerous. Like I’m the only one standing between us and disaster, which is a special bit of arrogance. As if I’ve ever been able to stand between anyone and disaster without flinging the door wide open.
I shake my head and wince.
For the safety of my crew, I need to tell Kane what happened. Let him decide what to do. If I keep it to myself and truly lose my shit, they may not realize it fast enough to save themselves. Someone needs to be on the lookout for aberrant behavior. Rather, more aberrant behavior.
I wait until the bleeding has mostly stopped, then I clean myself up, wiping the blood out of my hair and the tears off my face with cool water from the faucet. In for a penny, in for a million more, apparently.
Maybe I would be more convincing to Kane if I showed up tearstained and bloody, but I don’t have it in me to go that far. Dignity may be cold comfort in this situation, but I’m going to hold on to whatever I can salvage.
Once I’m as pulled together as I can be, I head out of the suite and slowly toward the bridge, running my hand along the wall to keep my balance steady against the pulse in my head.
When I reach the bridge, though, I find Nysus and Kane huddled over something on one of the screens at the comm station, and Voller at navigation, scowling at the readout projected on the stars through the window in front of him. It provides speed, coordinates of our current location, our projected path, and time to destination.
According to that readout, I was asleep two hours more than my designated six. Lourdes should have woken me up. Not that that matters now.
Except …
“Where is Lourdes?” I ask.
Only Kane seems to register the question. He looks up and around, distracted, before focusing on me. “She’s not with you?” Then he seems to take in my appearance and straightens up, turning fully toward me. “Are you okay?” he asks, his forehead creased in concern.
“I—” I begin.
“You have to see this, TL,” Nysus calls to me excitedly.
“Can you guys shut up?” Voller swivels around in his chair. “My head is fucking killing me.”
Kane rolls his eyes. “Old champagne seems less than a good idea now, right?”
“Whatever,” Voller mutters. “It’s not that.” He rubs at his temples. “I didn’t drink that much, and it was hours ago. Besides, I’ve had a hangover before. This is different. It’s like my teeth are vibrating in my head.”
“Uh-huh,” Kane says, folding his arms across his chest. He glances to me, and I realize he’s waiting for me to make the decision.
“You can take your six in the bunk room, but leave the door open so we can hear you,” I say to Voller reluctantly. That should be a decision Kane is making now. But Voller vaults from his chair and leaves the bridge before I can say anything more. I turn my attention back to Kane. “But I still need a minute to—”
“No, Ny is right. You definitely need to see this,” Kane says, his mouth set in a grim line.
My eyebrows go up. Kane is not one to exaggerate or over-respond. “Okay,” I say slowly.
Kane frowns at me as I approach. “Is that blood on your collar?”
“I hit my head,” I say, each word clipped. Telling Kane and taking myself off active duty is the right thing to do, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
Which conversely makes it easier to put it off for a little while longer. “I’ll tell you about it in a minute,” I say. “Part of what I need to talk to you about.”
“Are you okay?” he asks, reaching out to tilt my head toward the light. I want to lean into his warm touch, but he spots the lump almost instantly, reaching to probe it with gentle fingertips.
I suck in a breath, and he pulls back immediately.
“That’s a hell of a hit,” he says. “Did you fall out of bed or what?”
“Something like that,” I say flatly.
“Okay, okay,” Ny says, shifting his weight from foot to foot, eager to get on with his show. “Can I just tell you now? We found a couple things and—”
“Start with the diagnostics,” Kane suggests.
“Fine,” Nysus says, his fingers flying across the boards, and numbers and abbreviations dance across the screen above. “Okay, so you know the ship runs a diagnostic every time—”
I wave my hand. “Yeah, yeah, I got that earlier.”
“So, I decided to just review the data from the initial diagnostic at the start of their trip until the end. Just to see what I could see. For fun.”
That would be his version of a good time. “Knock yourself out,” I say. At least my sense of humor is intact.
Nysus looks up at me, startled.
Or not. “Nothing. Never mind.” I shake my head, forgetting for a moment, and wince as pain reminds me of the injury. “Just … what did you find?”
“There are some anomalies I can’t explain. Everything is operating within normal parameters until a few days before the last recorded data.” He pauses, doing something until the numbers and figures change into a recognizable bar graph. “Look, here, this is the energy draw on the engines. You see some minor fluctuations in the first six months of travel, no big deal, depending on who’s running what on the ship. How many people are awake with the lights on, whatever.”
The thick yellow lines move up and down in slight increments.
“But if you look at this point, toward the end, that last week…” He gestures toward the screen, and I bend forward for a closer look.
The yellow bar jerks up and stays up.
“It’s a spike,” I say.
“Exactly,” Nysus says with satisfaction. “Something was drawing down on their power. Elevating their usage stats by at least ten percent, higher always than their previous high. And consistently, until the last diagnostic.”
“What would cause that?” I ask.
“I have no idea!” Nysus sounds thrilled to have a mystery to solve. Oh, to have the mental capacity to enjoy finding one of life’s unsolvables—like why my brain is broken and seeing dead people all the time—instead of being defeated by it.
I shove that thought down. “What else?”
“The noise dampeners,” Kane puts in.
“Right, right,” Nysus says. He slides his hand across the screen, wiping away the yellow bar graph and substituting a similar one, this one in a serene blue.
“So if you look, the noise dampeners are operating at near the high end of their capacity for the first six months of the voyage,” Nysus says. “Not great, but fine. Minor fluctuations only when the speed increases or decreases.”
“At the time, the engines were larger than anything else previously built, and CitiFutura was trying a new alloy for the outer hull,” Kane adds. “They probably didn’t know how the engine noise would interact with the alloy. I suspect it was louder than they anticipated. Upgraded dampeners would have helped reduce some of the ambient clutter for the passengers, but even without the upgrade, the passengers shouldn’t have been experiencing anything too intrusive. If anything, only the crew and the folks on the lower level might have noticed louder vibrations.”
“The cheap seats,” I say. “So not a priority, I’m guessing.”
Kane nods. “Exactly.”
“But then at the same time as the additional energy draw, we have this,” Nysus jumps back in. He swipes his hand across the screen, and the serene blue becomes a bright sea of red.
“The dampeners are redlining,” I say.
“Maxed out, well beyond manufacturer specs,” Nysus says. “But, and here’s the interesting thing, Aurora’s speed hadn’t changed. There’s no reason for the dampeners’ usage to jump like that.”
“Could the dampeners be responsible for that ten percent increase?” I ask.
Nysus chokes on a laugh. “Dampeners? Taking ten percent from these engines?” He shakes his head. “Half of that, less, would have fried them completely. No way.”
“So what am I looking at here, then?” I ask, trying to swallow my frustration.
“We don’t know, I haven’t figured it out yet,” Nysus says, again sounding delighted.
“All we can say for sure is that something changed right before the end of their journey,” Kane puts in.
“Okay, great, good job,” I say, not sure what else to add. And I need to stop putting off what I came here to do. “Kane—”
Nysus and Kane exchange a look.
“What?” I ask, that creeping sense of dread returning. Increasing, rather, as it never left.
“There’s one more thing,” Kane says. “But it’s a little … disturbing.”
More or less disturbing than the ghost of a dead woman under my bed, grabbing at my fucking ankle? Because I think that might have to be my new benchmark.
A hysterical laugh bubbles out of me before I can stop it, and they both stare at me. “Sorry. It’s just this whole thing”—I wave my hand to indicate our surroundings and the ship at large—“is kind of disturbing. Don’t you think?” I’m not going to drop my experience on both of them like this. I need to talk to Kane privately, let him decide if he wants to communicate my … being indisposed.
“Right,” Kane says after a moment. “It’s the captain’s personal log.”
I straighten up immediately. “You got in?”
“Not exactly,” Nysus says. “It looks like the ship’s log and her personal log have been wiped, and really well. By the captain herself or someone using her code.”
“Even in the black box?” I ask.
“We don’t have the codes to open that, let alone access the data,” Nysus reminds me.
“Okay, so…” I raise my eyebrows.
“We got lucky,” Kane says. “The captain seems to have sent a partial excerpt from her log as a personal message. Or she tried. But they were, at that point, already well outside what would have been an early and rudimentary version of the commweb we have today.”
“The message got caught in the buffer,” Nysus says. “It’s degraded, but I was able to loop it and filter out the noise, but that, of course, meant I also had to—”
“Nysus,” Kane says, a verbal nudge.
“Right. Okay, here.” He taps across the boards. “On the main screen.”
I turn to see a close-up of Linden Gerard. The image is distorted and fuzzy, but I can make out her features and enough of the background to determine that she’s in the command chair, just feet from where I’m standing. Her expression is one of forced calm, stress showing itself in the lines in her forehead and the tension in her mouth.
“… wrong. I don’t know … Officer Wallace seems to think … overreacting. But we’ve had a spate of suicides and … passenger-on-passenger violence is … people are reporting seeing things, impossible things…”
She pauses, glancing over her shoulder at the doors to the bridge behind her. Reflexively, I mimic her action. The doorway here is empty, as it is in her recording.
“I saw Maria.” Linden swallows convulsively. “From the corner of my eye at first, and then at the end of a corridor … foot of my bed.” Her determined calm breaks. “Mia, if you see this, I know you tried to tell me about omens and warnings.” A sob escapes her, and she covers her face. “I’m sorry I didn’t take you—”
A moment later, the recording jumps and she’s looking straight ahead at the camera again, her face shiny with tears and taut with resolution. “And I want you to know that, no matter what happens, I lo—”
The message breaks off abruptly with a loud crackle of static, and I jump.
“Maria is—” Kane begins.
“Her wife,” Ny and I finish.
“I remember,” I say, my mouth dry.
“She was at the time, and still is, on Earth,” Nysus continues. “She stayed behind to care for their three children. She was not on the Aurora, not ever.”
“So Gerard was seeing things,” I say, feeling faint. How is that possible? My history makes me a prime candidate for another mental break, but Linden Gerard was an esteemed captain, with no known mental flaws or incapacities. CitiFutura would never have assigned her the Aurora mission otherwise.
“And it seems she wasn’t alone,” Kane adds. “She mentions the other passengers reporting … oddities.” He hesitates for a moment. “And I’m wondering … I have to think that maybe I—”
A scream tears through the thick cocoon of quiet, and the sound is so startling, so out of place, we all freeze for a moment.
Kane recovers first, bolting for the corridor, heading toward the sound, down the starboard corridor of suites.
“It’s Lourdes,” I call after him, trying and failing to keep up with him, the throbbing in my head sending agony with every step.
I follow as quickly as I can. The smell reaches me first—rotting meat and the metallic scent of old blood—and I gag before I can stop myself. I know that smell. Not just death, but death and decay. And that is no hallucination.