It’s my fault. Voller is dead and it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have, I knew I shouldn’t have …
“Just stay still, Claire,” Kane says, strain in his voice. “Don’t move, don’t try to talk.”
Did I say something out loud? I can’t tell. The agony in my head is such that I’m afraid to ask, to move my lips, to draw a deeper breath.
I detect the flickering of the lights, in the alternating patches of soothing darkness and painful brightness behind my eyelids. Beneath me, a hard surface. My left arm is trapped underneath something heavy. Someone heavy. Voller’s body.
“I know, I know,” Kane says under his breath. “I’m doing the best I can.” He pauses for a moment. “No, she won’t. I won’t let her.”
He is talking to someone who isn’t there.
“Kane?” Lourdes asks through her sniffles. “Is she going to be okay?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I need…” He trails off seemingly mid-thought. “I need…”
“Well, are you sure this is even the right Claire?” Lourdes asks. “She’s over there, too.” A whisper of fabric against fabric traces her movement as she stands. “Claire. Wait, come back!”
We are all going to die.
The ground is softer beneath me when I resurface from the blackness again, and my head feels different, thicker.
Bandages. My mother’s voice again. A cool brush of a touch against my cheek.
Tears leak from my eyes and trail down my cheeks. Mama. I’m sorry.
It’s dark now, dim behind my eyelids. No more flashing lights. The grinding pain in my head is less at the moment, but I can feel it looming, waiting to crash down on me again. My left arm is now free, but a tightness grips near my elbow, faint pressure against my skin. I manage to shift that arm slightly, hear the crinkle of plastic, the painful tug of something attached to my skin beneath the surface.
An IV maybe.
Where is Kane? Lourdes? Oh God, I hope Ny isn’t … that was a hard hit to his temple. Skulls are so fragile there.
With an effort, I open my eyes to a squint. It takes me a moment to recognize my surroundings in the dimness, lit only by the control boards. I’m on the floor of the bridge, near the door, the carpet rough against my back.
After a few more seconds, I realize what I’m not hearing or feeling. The engines. We’re stopped or slowed to the point where I can’t feel it anymore.
Voices whisper close by, but I can’t tell who is speaking.
Then, next to me, there’s movement in the dimness. Someone sitting up. “Claire?” Lourdes asks, sounding confused.
It hurts to look her way, but I have to see, have to make sure she’s okay.
My breath catches in my throat. I’m seeing double. Two versions of Lourdes. One of them is frowning down at me as she pushes herself to her feet. “I don’t understand…” she says.
And I don’t either. Because the other version of Lourdes is stretched out next to me, her eyes bandaged but not hiding the clawed mess of her cheeks and the great gouts of dried blood down her neck and on her jumpsuit. She’s too still.
Then the standing Lourdes stares down at herself and then me. “I don’t understand,” she says again, as she raises her hands to her eyes, her fingers digging in.
I squeeze my eyes shut reflexively, and the whispers grow louder, spinning over themselves until it sounds more like the wind blowing than voices speaking.
Ignoring the pull of the tubing at my arm, I brace myself against the floor with one hand and slowly push myself up into a sitting position. Dizziness swirls through my head, making me sway and nearly collapse.
When I dare to open my eyes again, blackness oozes at the edge of my vision, but there’s only one Lourdes. The one on the floor next to me.
Silent. Empty. Dead.
No! I reach out for her, but that movement is too much. The blackness rises up, like dark water swelling around me. I can’t fight it, I can feel myself slipping under its pull, losing my grasp on my surroundings.
And then … I’m gone.