Attention: ALL
Subject: Communications with Earth
All communication packets have been reviewed and delivered to personal inboxes. If you feel you are missing a delivery, please contact Cheese in the Comms dept. Outgoing messages are currently being packaged for next Wednesday, so forward yours to @Turkey.Out.lt1 no later than Sunday third shift to be included.
—Milo, Comms
My parents greeted me formally and steered me into their shared office. Remnants of our life in Masdar filled every shelf and surface. They sat behind a long desk covered by stacks of reports. It was strangely warm, homey even, despite the grim set of their faces.
Andrek swiveled in a chair on the other side of the desk and held out a hand. He still wore the Bentley vest, though he’d found a shirt and layered it with a white lab coat like my parents had.
I didn’t take his hand. I may not have been spitting mad like Viveca had been earlier, but I was rather annoyed now that I was looking at him. He never came home, he ignored my messages, and he hadn’t met me in the hallway to prepare me for whatever drama my parents were on about. It was all forgivable, but not without discussion first.
“What’s going on?” I asked, taking the empty chair and pointedly looking only at my parents.
Mom rubbed her temples with both hands, but it didn’t hide the questioning arch of her eyebrow. Dad pressed his fingertips together and gave me a wan smile.
I waited for one of them to speak, sitting on my hands so I didn’t fidget too much. Experience dictated that whoever talked first would determine the course of the conversation. If Mom went first, then Dad was there to soften the blow. That meant bad news, but not so bad Dad couldn’t make me feel better.
If Dad went first, then Mom would still be there with the facts, but only after Dad had determined I could “take it.”
Dad cleared his throat, and my own went dry. “Thank you for coming to see us, Lane. Did your big plans pan out?”
Not good. Extra bad. He was feeling out my mood and it was extremely obvious. I snuck a glance at Andrek. He was staring at the floor.
Dad’s voice was smooth as mirror glaze icing. “I’m sorry we had to interrupt. You were with Viveca?”
They knew I was, so I was sure he was stalling. Or fishing for something. I didn’t like it.
I added an “uh huh” to match his obvious with my own.
Mom lowered her hands to her lap. I didn’t look at her directly, but I felt her studying me—my frizzy hair, blotchy skin, damp jumpsuit—and frowning at what she saw. Words filled the air around her like steam, building pressure.
“That’s comforting to hear,” Dad remarked blandly, though I’d said almost nothing and him just as little. “We hoped we could chat a little about your friends.”
My hands wiggled free from beneath my thighs at that. I squeezed one thumb then another as I waited for him to explain, but the words around Mom got thicker, and Dad now watched Andrek, not me.
“Why?” I asked him, when the quiet went on too long to tolerate. “You probably know them better than I do.”
“Why would you say that?” Dad returned.
I rolled my eyes. “You read everyone’s applications and did their interviews. I only know what people tell me.”
Mom made a nothing noise, something between a snort and a sniffle, and Dad put a hand on her back. Holding the words still, maybe.
“What do you want to know?” I tried instead, because they were exhausting me with this pageant of theirs, and my mind had started spinning through possible reasons for their questions but none of them made sense.
“Well,” Dad started, and I knew it was coming now.
“Have you noticed anything unusual,” Mom finished, “with your friends?”
Define unusual, I thought, but that wasn’t helpful. I couldn’t decide which tack to take, or who they were asking about or why, and I couldn’t answer anything unless they were clearer. “Besides Andrek sitting here like he’s a puppy who peed inside?”
Andrek laughed and covered his mouth, and just that fast things were okay between us again. I knew he’d apologize properly whenever this business was over.
“No,” Dad said, massaging Mom’s back to coax her into taking the lead. “With your new friend. Viveca.”
Before I responded to that surprise, Mom slid a tab across the desk. It was open to a document with way too many names on it to be quickly legible.
“Look at this list and tell us if anything stands out to you.”
I spared a couple seconds to skim, but that was all. “What’s going on? Why are you asking about Viveca? You’re the ones who were obsessed with her all the way here.”
Andrek went rigid in his chair, not looking at me, so I knew he was behind whatever this was. My annoyance flared at him, kicking up so hard and fast I made a spinny noise in the back of my mouth.
Okay, sure, I’d noticed “unusual” things about Viveca since I met her. She was pushy and blunt, and she teetered between emotionally clueless and too in-tune for comfort. And I thought I’d read her wrong in every interaction except, maybe, the last hour, but that was probably me and my crush, or my jealousy and stubbornness, and not understanding her masks yet.
There was also her talk with Halle that I had no business listening to, and which I’d blown way out of proportion in my not-sleeping fits, but how could any of that possibly have an iota of significance for my parents and Andrek?
And that was when I remembered my parents didn’t know about Andrek’s work in the RC.
But Viveca had asked if Andrek could be trusted. She’d made that weird face at his Bentley vest, and I’d wondered what she thought she knew about him. Worse, what if she actually knew about his time in the RC? If I said anything sketchy about her, could that bounce back to hurt Andrek? I wished he’d just tell the truth already.
The noise I was making stretched into a screech with the volume on low.
My parents’ eyes became pendulums, wide and swinging, and I slapped the desk with my palm.
Then once more, to be sure I did it right. “What. Is. Going. ON?”
Mom rose to her feet like a helium balloon. “I’d like you to look again when you’re ready. This is a list of names that have been indicated in a recent security check, and your input might be valuable.”
I was looking, all right, but I wasn’t reading. I’d made my eyes into stones that held all the frustration they were handing me.
Andrek shifted again, and I could tell he was shaking his head, though stones couldn’t see. “You know the security restrictions for communication with Earth?”
“Yeah,” I said, enjoying my stone eyes now because they hid the little ping in my brain that said, Hmm. Viveca? I muttered something about not being able to message Zara and Khalid or update my video games.
“This list—” Stones may not see, but they felt Andrek pushing the air nearby, gesturing at my parents to hush. “—shows the accounts that received or sent messages when those restrictions were compromised. That’s not to imply all these people were involved, or any of them for that matter, but they’re the ones the system flagged when communication glitched.”
“Am I on there?”
“No,” Mom and Dad said.
“Was Viveca?”
“No,” Andrek repeated, “but Joule was. Twice. Both within the first few seconds of the breach. On our first night here, then again right before the hatch doors glitched.”
“Then why are you asking about Viveca?”
“Because I vouched for Joule,” he replied firmly. Too firm, until he added, “He’s being questioned by operations now, but she’s the only one who would have also had his tablet’s passcode.”
“Oh.” I scooted back in the chair to think.
Andrek vouched for Joule—some sleepover they must have had—but not Viveca.
I bet Joule would vouch for Viveca if he weren’t already suspected. I was tempted to myself, even knowing that she definitely had something going on with the communications breach, something potentially risky, simply because it felt like they were attacking her without cause.
I wouldn’t risk Andrek though, no matter what, so I decided not to cooperate. “Why would she have anything to do with this mess? You don’t even know for sure she’s the only other person with his passcode. He lives in a dorm with like eight other people, and I bet they don’t all have their own tabs, just like I don’t. And did you even stop to think how racist it is to round on a young Black man and his mixed girlfriend while you sit us down and try to get dirt on them? That is fucked up. Faraday would be spitting right now.”
“Racist?” Mom’s voice teetered toward a squeal. “You’re calling us racists?”
“Your mother used her own body to shield protesters before you were even born,” Dad said, but all I heard was How dare you. “Who do you think taught your sister the politics she—”
I didn’t wait to hear the rest. “I don’t care what you did then or about your politics. It doesn’t excuse what you’re doing now. Look at what’s actually happening.”
Dad opened his mouth, but Mom hushed him. “Collin, stop. Lane’s right. We didn’t consider that.”
Dad eye-checked Andrek for permission to talk again, which was one hundred percent not okay and would definitely be part of our argument later. He wasn’t my service animal. “We aren’t blaming you or your friends for anything. If operations conclude that any of you are involved, we’ll assume it’s because someone else is manipulating matters. We’re only asking to rule things out, so we can help keep you and the trust safe.”
I scratched my head.
I chewed my lip.
I wondered if there was any room left inside me for another thought.
“I can’t think of anything—I wouldn’t know—What do you mean safe? What do you think whoever it is is involved with?”
Dad slid the tablet to Mom. They believed me. “That’s classified, honey. I’m sorry.”
“After all this, really?” I glared at Andrek, and he winced. “You too?”
“I,” he started, then shook his head at my parents. “You might as well tell her. She’ll find out in a couple days anyway, if she doesn’t figure it out on her own.” Then, to me, he said, “I’m sorry.”
“Please keep this to yourself. We can’t give in to panic,” Mom said, her back to us. She picked up a ceramic knick-knack, something globular and indeterminate that little Faraday made. The words around her had grown too heavy to keep spinning, too thick for her to turn and face us.
Bread’s mixed, dove, Faraday might have whispered. Let’s give it time to rise.
My dad locked onto the whatever in her hands, his frown deepening into his mustache. Andrek stared away. If I could trust my internal compass, he was staring away from Earth.
A nameless dread grew like a pimple in my middle, and I didn’t think my ribs were strong enough, or my skin relaxed enough, to hide it.
“Mom.”
“The RC launched a fleet several hours ago,” she finally said. “They’re headed here, to the moon.”