“I’ve ruled out simultaneous psychotic break, because the odds of that seem so low as to be incalculable,” Nysus is saying when I walk onto the bridge. “But the fact is we now have record of three people seeing the impossible. Captain Gerard, Lourdes, and Kane.”
“Four,” I say reluctantly.
Heads whip around to face me. Kane gives me a brief nod, as if he expected nothing less of me. Voller groans. Someone, probably Kane, dragged him from his rest to join us. Lourdes, wrapped in a blanket and seated at the comm station, eyes me warily.
“I saw … one of the passengers,” I say.
“One of the dead passengers?” Nysus asks.
“Uh, yeah.” I shift my weight uneasily. “She was under the bed, grabbed my ankle. But then she vanished.”
“Oh my God,” Lourdes whispers, her hand pressed to her mouth.
“It wasn’t real, obviously,” I add. “Though it felt real at the time.”
“Did she look dead?” Nysus asks.
“Come on,” Voller moans at the same time, where he’s sitting with his head in his hands in the command chair. He looks pale and sweaty, with that undertone of green still holding steady in his skin. “You pulled me off rest for this bullshit?” He looks over at Kane. “You gotta give me something more for this headache, chief. I’m dying.”
Kane ignores him. “Productive conversation at this point would be most useful, Ny.”
“I’m trying to gather data,” Nysus says, before looking to me for the answer.
“Yes,” I say. “She did.” Her skin was that horrible shade of gray that just doesn’t exist on living humans.
I shudder.
“Interesting.” Nysus taps his fingers against his lips as he paces the front of the bridge. “That’s definitely what one would traditionally call a ghost. Someone who is confirmed as deceased.”
“You’re not fucking suggesting that the ship is haunted, are you?” Voller demands, his voice muffled by his head resting in his hands.
“It’s a theory,” Nysus argues, sounding a little frayed at the edges. He squeezes his eyes shut, as if in an attempt to resurrect the privacy he so valued back on LINA. “Humans have documented supernatural experiences in locations that have seen violent death for centuries. Battlefields are particularly—”
“Except not everyone is seeing dead passengers,” I say. “Just me.” For now. Forever.
“True, and that’s our problem,” Nysus says, opening his hands in a wide gesture. “We don’t have enough data. Every theory is equally valid right now.”
“Not ghosts,” Voller mutters. “Ghosts don’t exist.”
“No?” Nysus asks. “I’m assuming that none of you are seeing my father pacing in that corner over there.” He points a trembling finger to the far side of the room, and all of us look.
The space is empty.
An icy chill runs down my back, like an unfamiliar fingertip brushing the length of my spine.
“How do you explain that?” Nysus asks Voller. “I can see him and you can’t.”
“But what I saw was real,” Lourdes says immediately. “I was there. I saw her.” She can’t look at me as she’s saying it.
“Here’s what we know. TL, you’re the aberration here. You’re the only one so far seeing the confirmed dead,” Nysus says.
I clear my throat. “And that’s happened before. To me, I mean.”
Lourdes and Voller both turn to stare. My face flushes.
Nysus’s eyebrows shoot up. “I definitely want to hear more about that. But for now we have to discard you from the data set. One of these things is not like the others. It could be something in your brain chemistry, a preexisting condition. But we just don’t know.” He pauses, rubbing at his ears with a pained expression. “They keep ringing,” he mutters.
Kane straightens. “Any dizziness or headache?”
“Yes!” Voller lifts his hand up. “And this weird popping sound? Or tapping?” He scrubs at his ear. “No one else can hear that?”
“You’ve already had the maximum dose of painkiller,” Kane says. “I can’t give you any more right now.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not doing shit,” Voller mumbles.
“No,” Nysus says. “No pain, no headache. Not yet.” He shakes his head, refocusing. “So, we look at the commonalities. We have four people—Kane, Lourdes, Captain Gerard, and me—experiencing hallucinations of people to whom we’re emotionally tied.”
“That’s not—” Lourdes objects.
“People who are, as far as we know, alive,” Nysus continues as if she hadn’t spoken.
Kane flinches.
“Another commonality. None of this started until we were on board the Aurora. Now correlation is not causation, obviously, but given what we know of the events involving the passengers and crew on the Aurora prior to our arrival—”
“Something here is causing it,” Kane says flatly.
“We’re going to end up like them?” Lourdes whispers.
“No,” I say quickly, because I can see Nysus getting ready to nod, or, almost worse, shrug. But to be fair to him, that chaotic scene in the atrium we found in the Dunleavy footage is making a whole lot more horrific sense now.
“We’ve run every test we know to run. Everything came back within normal parameters, with the exception of the noise dampeners and that anomalous energy expenditure,” Nysus says. “No contaminants. No exhaust leakage. No unidentified bacteria at mass levels. Nothing that would cause these symptoms.”
“So what are you saying?” I ask.
“I don’t know why this is happening,” Nysus says. “I don’t know how to stop it. I need more information.”
“We could just leave,” Lourdes says. “Just open the doors and—”
“We gutted navigation on the LINA for parts, remember? Plus, the doors don’t work like that,” Kane says. “They weren’t meant to be opened from the inside. No airlock. Our suits would help somewhat, but we could end up with decompression sickness or worse. Unless we attempt to pressurize the whole ship, and that could take almost as long as—”
“I’m not fucking leaving,” Voller snaps. “Not when we’re this close.”
Automatically, I glance toward the countdown on the main screen. Fifty-three hours and counting.
“We also don’t know that leaving would solve the problem,” Nysus points out. “If we’ve been affected, infected … possessed … we might well carry it with us.”
“I think we should search the rooms,” I say.
“Uh, you did that already, TL.” Nysus sounds slightly worried.
Humiliation zings through me, a live spark zipping along my nerves. This is why I never tell anyone about what I’ve seen. What I see. They don’t look at me the same way after. “I know,” I say, working for patience. “I remember. But we were looking for bodies. Not for information about what happened.” What is apparently still happening.
I hesitate, then add, “Also, they had spare oxygen masks and tanks in the suites on this level.”
Voller snorts, then squeezes his hand against his forehead in pain. “Fuck. You don’t seriously think someone has survived out here for—”
“No, but we didn’t search the whole ship,” I point out. “We have no idea what the conditions are like. And we left for several hours before sealing ourselves in. Plenty of time for someone to do … something. We should at least rule it out.” Again, assuming I’m not responsible for what Lourdes experienced. Though Nysus has laid a pretty convincing case that this is not simply a result of my “condition” or a second breakdown.
“Okay, okay,” Nysus says, wheels turning in his mind. “Highly unlikely, but maybe you can find something. I think we should also consider the possibility that this ship has been out here for two decades and we have no idea what else might have found it first.”
Kane shakes his head.
“Ghosts and aliens?” Voller groans. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“In the absence of additional evidence, all theories are valid,” Nysus repeats. “Is it so impossible?”
“That intelligent beings would finally show up and their main game is to hang out on an abandoned ship and start torturing anyone who happens by?” Voller asks. “Fuck yes.”
“You’re ascribing human motivations and intentions to something nonhuman,” Nysus says. “We have no idea what their goal is. We don’t even know for certain that they are intelligent. Or, that this is deliberate. Perhaps their mere presence causes our brains to misfire and hallucinate. We don’t know. But something is happening.” He takes a breath, sweat beading on his forehead. “My grandfather has joined my father,” he says, turning his head away. “My grandfather is dead, TL.”
So it’s not just me anymore. Maybe I’m just more sensitive to it, whatever it is. Maybe we’ll all start seeing the dead eventually. Oh goody.
“If it’s ghosts or aliens or some shit, how are you going to prove that?” Voller points out.
“If no other logical answer remains, then we have to assume that it’s something previously classified as illogical.”
“Great,” Voller snarls. “I love this plan.”
“I do have one other idea,” Nysus says. “But it’s risky and likely to make conditions more … erratic, especially during a search.”
Because more erratic is certainly what we need.
“What’s the idea?” Kane asks, folding his arms across his chest.
“I think I can push the engines a little harder. Get us through maybe ten hours faster,” Nysus says, scrubbing his hands over his eyes, pushing in too hard, as if that will erase whatever he’s seeing. “It’s risky with as old as the engines are and with this level of charge. But the bigger problem is, with diverting more power to the engines, we may experience instability in some subsystems.”
“Meaning?” I prompt.
“The lights,” he admits. “Maybe even the temperature. It won’t drop to fatal levels, but it may not be … comfortable.”
So, dark and cold, as well as seeing people that aren’t there.
“We need some ground rules,” I say. “Like before, nobody goes anywhere alone. No exceptions. If you see someone or something that doesn’t belong, you tell your partner. If your partner is the one behaving strangely, then report back to the others.”
This is going to quickly spiral into chaos if none of us can be sure what we’re experiencing is real.
“Voller, you can crash on the bridge with Lourdes,” I say.
“Why are we listening to you?” Voller asks, raising his head. His eyes are bloodshot and narrowed. “How do we know it’s not you? That you’re not responsible somehow? You’re crazy already. Everybody knows that.”
Stung, I step back. Voller and I haven’t always gotten along well, but the genuine hate beaming from his eyes right now is disconcerting. Lourdes, too, is giving me a less-than-friendly look. And that hurts. More than I expected it to.
“That’s not how—” I begin.
“Impossible,” Nysus says. “Your theory doesn’t fit the data. It can’t explain Gerard.”
Voller mumbles something unintelligible but doesn’t push it.
Nysus turns to me. “I need to stay here to monitor the engines at the increased levels, make sure we’re not headed toward a blowout.”
So that leaves Kane and me for the search again.
I make myself glance at him, fearing for a moment that I’ll see that same hate or fear from him, but he simply nods.
“All right,” I say. “Let’s go.”
“You did the right thing, you know,” Kane says as we leave the bridge.
“Yeah, we’ll see about that. Voller doesn’t seem to think so.” We’re starting at the far end of the starboard corridor this time.
“Voller is an idiot,” he says.
Maybe so, but Lourdes isn’t.
Kane reaches out and squeezes my hand. I let myself hold on for a few seconds before letting go. That’s progress, isn’t it?
The increased ship speed is noticeable almost immediately in the more intense vibrations through the corridor decking beneath my feet. If it’s like this up here, I can’t imagine what it must have been like on the lower decks.
Where people hid in their rooms … or were locked away by others. The engine noise alone might have played a role in the chaos. They must have all been terrified, none of them understanding what was happening. People lashing out at one another, accusing each other of what they thought they saw. Frightened by hallucinations and other impossibilities. The one small advantage we have is that we know something happened on the Aurora, and that recent events are likely related.
The passengers and crew must have thought they were losing their minds.
Which, incidentally, is still a possibility for us as well, but at least we know it’s not just us.
We make it through the first few rooms without incident. Everything is exactly as I remember it. No sign of anyone or anything unusual. Of course, how can any of us know that for sure now when we can’t trust what we’re experiencing?
I shake my head.
“What?” Kane asks. He’s locking the door of one suite before we move to the next.
“Just thinking about the—”
The lights flicker overhead in an irregular rhythm, creating shadows where there were none a moment ago and the sensation of movement within them. A flash of pale fabric. White with little blue flowers.
I freeze.
“I see it, too,” Kane says quickly. “The lights are going on and off, like Nysus said.”
Claire. Claiiiiire.
Becca. I haven’t seen her in years. Not since Ferris. How is she here now?
I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, take a deep breath, and then open them. “Okay, I’m okay.”
I focus on the spots of light, trying to ignore the writhing shadows, and force my feet forward. Just hallucinations. Or … something. I am the aberration, as Nysus said. What’s happening to me isn’t necessarily happening to everyone else.
Next to me, Kane jerks suddenly, turning to look behind us.
“What’s wro—”
But even as I ask the question, I hear it. Footsteps. Somewhere nearby.
Heart racing, I turn, but there’s nothing.
Until … cool, invisible fingertips brush my cheek. Gritting my teeth, I force myself not to step back.
Claire. Come play with me.
“Do you see anything?” I ask Kane, even as he flinches, swiftly looking down toward the floor.
“It’s hard to … I keep catching glimpses. A hand. Long hair. Bleeding. I think it’s my ex. But she’s not…” His breath is uneven and harsh.
Shit. It’s getting worse. We’re getting worse.
“This is me,” I warn him as I reach out and take his hand. I squeeze his palm hard, enough for our bones to pinch together uncomfortably.
His gaze jerks up sharply to meet mine, surprise warring with pain.
“If you can, focus on what you know is real,” I tell him. “It’s hard because you can’t trust your senses, but if you can find one thing, that’ll help.” Just out of the corner of my eye, Cattie Dunleavy waits, her fingers tugging at the chain around her neck, her mouth moving in words I can’t hear. Yet.
Kane blinks at me, his blue eyes wide, the pupils dilated in the irregular illumination. “You did this. By yourself for a month.”
They aren’t questions, but I nod anyway. “I focused on my stomach growling, how dry my mouth was. Things I knew were real.”
But I also listened to my mother telling me what I needed to do to survive. The Verux-provided psychiatrists insisted that I must have known what to do and simply “imagined” my mother speaking to me. For some of that, perhaps. But never, in the six years in the colony, had I ever been entrusted anywhere near the communications room. How would I have known what to do, how to signal the rescue team, if my mother hadn’t told me? My mother who would have known what to do, as part of her training. She and several others were considered “first responders” in any kind of emergency.
“All right,” Kane says, taking a slow breath.
“We can do this,” I say, as much for myself as for him. “It’s not real. None of it is real.” Except I’m not really so sure about that.
We finish out the starboard side in just under an hour and find nothing. The emergency oxygen tanks and masks are still in place. There is no convenient handwritten journal for us to peruse. We find more old-fashioned tablets and ear-comm devices, but the charge is long gone in them. I take a couple of them anyway, in case we ever reach a point where we can spare the energy to keep the lights on and charge them.
In the crew bunk room, though, I’m rummaging through the personal products in the one unlocked trunk when something familiar catches my eye. Several sets of bright orange foam earplugs in sealed plastic packets.
I pick up one of the packets. “I’ve seen ones like these before. I think the first officer was—”
“I didn’t! Isabelle, I would never!”
I look up to find Kane pleading with an empty bunk, his gaze at eye level with … nothing.
“Kane,” I say. “Kane!”
He looks up, tears running down his face, but he doesn’t seem to see me.
I drop the earplugs and run toward him. I’m reaching for his shoulder to shake him when someone screams, the sound piercing even through the partially closed door.
I go still, uncertain. I don’t know whether it’s real or …
Kane shifts. “Did you hear that?”
“The scream?” I ask, just to clarify. But he seems more focused now.
“Yes.”
“I did,” I confirm. Which means there’s a slightly better chance that it actually—
Another scream comes, followed by shouting. “Stop, stop! Voller! Help me!”
“That’s Nysus,” I say, bolting for the door. The bridge is directly across from us.
“I’ll be right back, sweetie,” Kane says, presumably to the hallucination of his daughter.
Fuck. Fuck. I keep going, not waiting to see if he’s behind me.
But once I’m in the corridor, I stop. The commotion—Lourdes sobbing, I think, and Nysus arguing with … Voller?—is not coming from the bridge. It’s farther away.
When I round the corner to the portside corridor suites, I find them and the sight stops me dead for a moment.
Nysus and Lourdes are yanking at Voller, who is struggling to get away from them, back to the bulkhead doors. The plasma drill—our plasma drill—is raised in his right hand. A half dozen blackened spots—one or two still glowing red at their center—show his efforts against the metal.
“If we just let them in, they’ll stop knocking,” Voller says, sounding remarkably calm. “It’ll all stop.”
“You can’t open the doors, you’ll kill us!” Nysus shouts.
Voller throws an elbow toward Nysus, connecting with his temple hard, and Nysus just drops, like someone cut his strings. He doesn’t move to get back up. Doesn’t move at all.
Lourdes maintains her grip on Voller’s T-shirt, trying to haul him back. But he’s too strong for her, reaching up to apply the drill once more. I’m terrified he’s going to get annoyed with her and simply reach back and aim that drill at her instead.
I sprint down the hallway, trying to focus on the scene in front of me through the off-on-off pattern of the lights. With that added element, everyone seems to be moving in hyper-speed except me.
When I finally reach them, I shove into Voller from the side, knocking him partially into Lourdes and then all of us to the floor.
Breathless from the impact, I struggle to sit up and reach for the drill, which was thrown loose from Voller’s hand and is now lying near the base of the door, the bright blue plasma melting the carpet and creating another black spot on the metal.
But I’m a second too late. Voller shoves past me and reaches it before I do. He grabs it and swings up, forcing me to scramble backward.
Lourdes curls herself into a ball in the corner, away from us.
“What the hell,” I say as I get to my feet, breathless from panic and my race to reach them in time. “What are you doing?”
Standing, he scowls, but his eyes are not quite focusing on me. “Can’t you hear it? They just want to come in.”
Who? But I know better than to ask that. There’s no answer to that question in this situation that will make anything better, more understandable. “I don’t hear anything, Voller,” I say. “Just engine noise.” And staggering footsteps approaching that may or may not be Kane.
Claire. My name ripples on a wave of whispers behind me, including one I recognize, one that my mind says is my mother, though I haven’t heard her voice in twenty years.
Claire. No.
Those chill fingers brush over my cheek again, and goose bumps rise over my skin.
“You’re confused, but I can help you,” I say to Voller, edging closer. “Take my hand.” I have no idea if the pain trick that I used on Kane will work on Voller the same way with as far gone as he seems to be, but I have to try.
“No, no, no,” he says, shaking his head. “You just want me to stop. You don’t want to let them in. You’re afraid.”
“Voller, there’s no one out there to save,” Kane says from behind me. “It’s just us, and we die if you break the seal on that door.” He sounds steady, unshakable, but I don’t know how long that will last.
Uncertainty flickers on Voller’s expression for the first time. “My head just hurts,” he says. “And all the noise is making it worse.” He looks toward the door. “Cut it out!” he screams.
Lourdes emits a small whimper.
I take advantage of the moment and close the distance, reaching for his free hand. “Voller—”
But he turns just as I’m close enough and swings the butt end of the drill directly at my head even as I duck to try to avoid it.
I hear the crack, feel the impact of the hit connecting on the back right side of my skull, snapping my head up and to the left. Hard. But it doesn’t hurt. Not at first.
Stars dance and shine in my vision, a rapidly narrowing tunnel, as I fall.
Voller stares down at me, over the sounds of distant shouting. Kane? My mother? I can no longer tell.
His expression is inscrutable as he lifts the drill up, and I’m expecting him to crouch over me at any second and lay that plasma bit against my flesh and bone. I need to get up, to run, but my legs aren’t responding.
Instead, Voller grins at me, a crooked and tired version of his normal bluster, tips me a salute, and then, moving so fast it seems almost a blur, he presses the tip of the drill against his head.
I try to move, and pain from my head comes roaring into my consciousness. I think I scream as everything goes dark.
The last thing I register is the drip, drip, spatter of the blood hitting the floor, a warm tapping against my skin.