The Spindle

by J. Darlene Everly

  At the back of the pack, Parmita stalked back and forth, her arms wrapped around her abdomen, and her jaw tight like she was grinding her teeth.

  “Princess, what’s the story?” he asked, coming up beside her.

  “Troylus,” she said, her head popping up and a smile twitched on her lips before it fell off her face again. “Good to see you survived, Dumbass. Your dad is in there, they’re trying to make sure the doors are all stable enough and nothing else is going to blow so we can all head out and start to fix this.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what exactly even happened.” He shook his head trying to believe that doors were the only thing saving the ship.

  She didn’t answer him, instead she turned to the group in front of the doorway, put two fingers between her lips and blew, hard. A whistle that made Troylus clap his hands over his ears made all the people standing around jump and cringe out of the way enough for him to dart into the crammed office.

  “Oh, Troylus, thank the universe.” Rullon said, leaning forward over the big console and taking a deep breath.

  “What was that whistling for?” One of the people from another shift who sat at the console asked. He tapped on something and the holo in front of him changed.

  “Ignore him. Did she tell you anything?” Maurice asked from where he was leaning up against the wall.

  “No.” Troylus would have said more to answer the question, but he was transfixed by the image on the holo. “Is that right now?”

  Rullon looked up at him and nodded, his eyes pinched and his jowls more pronounced while he frowned.

  “How in the hell did that happen?” The image of the ship on the holo looked like some massive space beast had formed from the depths of the universe and took a bite out of the ship. If their ship were an actual wheel, it wouldn’t have rolled anywhere.

  The people around him all turned to look at a woman who was sitting in one of the few chairs, staring at a wall, chewing in her fingernails and rocking back and forth in slow, small arcs.

  Maurice nodded his head to a young woman with tiny braids in her hair that were tied back tight in a decidedly not regulation yellow sash that stood out even more against her deep brown skin and hair.

  While she leaned down and whispered to the rocking woman, Troylus decided he needed to get to know anyone that was so comfortable flaunting the regulations. They would get along.

  “One of them exploded. That’s what happened,” the rocking woman said around the fingernail she continued to chew.

  “One of what?” he asked under his breath.

  “Not what. Who.” Her voice was eerie, made more so by the fact that she didn’t seem to be seeing anything in front of her, and she sure wasn’t talking to anyone in particular, it looked like she was just answering the questions to the galaxy.

  “So, who exploded?” He couldn’t believe he was asking that. People didn’t explode.

  “They were fighting. People were pulling them apart. I was just trying to get as far from another fight as I could. I can’t have another meeting with leadership. They might make me stay onboard. I left them. I just left them. Next thing I know, I glanced back to see one of them explode in green light and I was flying. I don’t know how I…” She didn’t finish the sentence, but she didn’t really have to. It was written all over her face as she squeezed her eyes shut and grimaced, rocking faster than before.

  “No more of that. It’s too much,” the woman next to her said, putting a hand on her shoulder and turning silver eyes on Troylus.

  His mouth dropped open and so did hers as they stared at each other.

  “Did the person have…” he trailed off, letting the sentence hang, hoping she would know what he meant without outing his secret to the rest of the assembled crew.

  She dropped her gaze and then lifted her eyes back to his, tears swam in them and he guessed.

  Whoever the person was, they probably had the same eyes he and the new girl shared. They probably got in a fight for the same stupid reason so many fights were happening. But this time, the silver eyed person didn’t manifest a power that remade a window. This time it killed a bunch of people and the bearer.

  “Have what?” Maurice asked.

  “Nothing. I don’t know.” He shook his head and focused back on the room and the problem they currently faced, but his idle thought to make a friend by talking to the woman turned into a burning need inside him, as strong as the need to breathe. He didn’t need her as a friend. He needed to talk to her, to pick her brain about what, if anything, she knew about their eyes and what was happening to them.

  “So, what are we waiting for exactly?” Troylus asked, pushing his way out of the office while Rullon swore and yelled his name.

  “Princess? Can you help me?” he asked as he passed Parmita on the edge of the crowd.

  “On it. Now I’m going to have to stop calling you names, huh?” she asked, darting over to his helmet.

  “Nope. You can call me anything you want, as long as we get to work.” He climbed into his suit, and with her help managed to get fully ready in record time.

  By the time his helmet was on, the lady with the braids was suiting up too.

  “Hey, help her out, then don’t let anyone else out there, okay?” Troylus stared into Parmita’s eyes as she furrowed her brow and bit her lip. He stared until she nodded and went to help the lady get suited up.

  She probably wanted to go out there with them, but if Troylus and the other silver eyed person were going to be able to try and do anything beyond their normal level of work, they would need to be alone.

  He could only hope it would be enough. And maybe, if he were careful, he could find out what she knew.

  11

  Zellendine

  They lost two more people. Two people who had been too close to a closing door. According to all of the witnesses, the doors only took seconds to slam shut, saying thousands of lives. There were even doors in the middle of the hallways that she hadn’t known existed.

  But in her mind, the time it took for the door to the cryo bay to shut, the agonizingly long time she remembered it being, as she was dragged off Troylus and air was sucked from her lungs, played over and over again.

  At some point she was going to have to ask her dad how he had survived while being close enough to be burnt.

  While she bandaged up an ankle that had been sprained in the scramble to get away from the site of the accident, she saw her dad sprint from one room to another, pulling on gloves as he went, and she knew it would be a long while before he took the time to explain anything.

  “Zellendine,” Journo said from behind her, his face tight and his hands wringing together in front of him as he stood at the threshold to the clinic.

  “Hey, Journo, is everyone okay?” she asked, standing and turning to look at him, not bothering to say anything to the patient. Everyone seemed to understand the people darting in and out of the clinic with updates for their various connections.

  “Physically? Yes. Emotionally… After you’re finished here, I was wondering if you could come by and talk to Upton. He, um, well…” Journo turned to look at the wall and chew on his lower lip.

  She gave him space. As much as she wanted him to spit it out, pressuring him wouldn’t help right at that moment. Whatever was upsetting Upton, it upset his dad too. And there was more than enough to be traumatized by.

  He shook his head and looked back at her, “Anyway, he can try and explain when you come to see him. Briar said he was going to be out this evening and all of tomorrow, so if you want to come by then.”

  Zellendine’s cheeks heated up at the thought that Briar was still so angry with her he told his dad about it and made himself scarce so she could help his brother.

  “Okay. No problem. I’ll come by as soon as I can.” She nodded and dropped back to her crouching position in front of her patient, hoping that Journo wouldn’t ask her any questions about her and his son.

  Peeking back, she watched
as he left, and she could breathe again.

  “There will be a lot of people who need help dealing with the trauma beyond just the physical wounds, won’t there?” Chance said, sitting beside his mom as Zellendine wrapped her ankle for her.

  He was almost old enough to start his apprenticeship, and she wondered if he was going to be one of the medics soon. If people were able to choose which crew they were assigned, she thought he likely would have picked to be in the clinic.

  “Most likely, things like this…” She put the tape on the wrap so that it wouldn’t unravel and grabbed the sealer to spray all over her work, protecting it until she used the counterseal spray in six weeks. “Well, when things like this happened before, people tended to take time to work through them. And that is fine. There is a lot we lost, and a lot that will never be the same, and a lot we still don’t know. But, hopefully, with support from their friends and family, and some help if they need it, we will all be able to work our way through it.”

  She didn’t realize what she said was wrong until she lifted her head after finishing with the spray sealant.

  “Everyone needs to keep moving forward.” Chance’s eyes were wide as he stared at her.

  Crap, there was never a great way to explain to some people about the ways in which they bent the rules to try and balance that motto with what they needed to do for people’s mental health. And she sucked at trying.

  “Of course. Some people just need a little extra help so they can move forward.” He relaxed, so she thought she managed that time. After the trial at the last shift, she was going to have to be more careful.

  They got their crutches and left the clinic. Before she was able to talk to her dad, she had to put it in the notes that she wasn’t available for the mental health side of her job.

  All their schedules were in their holos, so she tapped at hers and found the assignments calendar. How was she going to get out of the rotation, though? Especially since so many would need it.

  Crying came from one of the rooms, and the low susurrations of her dad’s voice, comforting the person, followed in its wake. He was so good at this, she was… not. If she could have gone back to the programmers of that first Chapter computer that chose their jobs for them, she would have punched them in the face.

  Instead, she lied and tapped into the holo that all her time allotted for mental health services was already scheduled. Upton was going to get a very dedicated medic.

  But for that minute, she had to check the vitals of the person who she saw carried in when she first got there.

  The woman’s partner was in the chair next to her bed, his head down and in his hands, he didn’t lift it to look at her as she went about her business. He didn’t seem to even be aware she was in there with them.

  She couldn’t help but wonder as she ran her scans and checked the tubes and wires the patient needed, what she would feel if she was in their position about the person that caused the tragedy.

  For the silver-eyed, like Troylus and Briar, she hoped that everyone wouldn’t label them all a threat. She hoped they would understand that the only times Troylus had used his power was to help her, except when they kissed, but she was pretty sure that was just it getting out of control.

  The tube in her hand dropped back onto the bed, the rest of the line unchecked as she stumbled back under the weight of the possible breakthrough.

  Lifting his head from the bed across from her, the man’s face was stricken. Tears glistened in his eyes as he looked from her to the woman in the bed.

  “Your partner’s the same. Everything looks good. We’ll keep on with this course of treatment, and I am hoping it will work for her.” It was a lie and an empty platitude, but he relaxed and laid his head back down allowing Zellendine to breathe again.

  She couldn’t even think about the woman in the bed, or what she should be doing to help her anymore. She just turned and walked out of the room. If she were right, maybe they could do something about the powers erupting from people, about the rage, about all of the negative side effects of whatever was happening to the population of the Wheel.

  12

  Troylus

  Outside the ship was new. The space around it so different from what he was used to it took his breath away. He couldn’t see the wound in her side from just beyond the door lock, but what he could see was the bright light of the sun, large and glorious, filling his field of vision, bathing him in warmth that sunk deep into his bones.

  He closed his eyes and the air moving through his lungs felt like it carried life giving joy.

  “Troylus,” Rullon’s voice came over the comm, quavering and barely keeping it together.

  “I’m okay. Trust me, this is best for now. We’ll just take a look and assess and call for more help when we know what you should bring.” He sighed and turned to grab hold of the ship. It didn’t matter that he wanted to spend the whole month waiting to get to the planet, basking in the rays of the Grimm Star. He had a job to do.

  “Who is we?” Rullon asked.

  “Did you think I would let him come out here by himself?” The girl with the yellow in her hair said over the comm, slamming a hand onto the hold his was on and pulling herself up beside him.

  “Imogene?” Another voice said over the comm. Troylus tried to match it to one of the faces crowded into the office and failed.

  She cringed, shook her head and grabbed the next handhold.

  “Right, so we’ll just get to work, then.” She pulled herself along the same way he always did, without using the boosts of air, just hand over hand while her tether spooled out behind her.

  He hurried to catch up to her, waving a hand once he did until she turned toward him.

  With exaggerated movements, he turned off his comm and she followed suit.

  “If we leave them off for long, they’ll notice and break through,” she said.

  “Maybe you should go to the cryo bay just the other side of the damage later, just to make sure the door is holding. Can’t be too careful,” he said, and tapped his comms back on.

  She nodded and followed his lead.

  Even if he wasn’t going to get to talk to her until later, and even if they weren’t able to get much done for repairs, the trip into the stars was already worth it by her agreeing to talk to him. Maybe he would be able to get Zellendine in on the conversation too.

  Ahead of him she paused, hanging onto the handhold, not a bit of her moving.

  Reaching her position, he tried to steel himself, told his heart to look at everything as just another broken part that needed fixing. This was a mechanical problem, and they were uniquely prepared to remake the world in front of them, it would be fine.

  But nothing could have stopped his soul from aching at the damage he saw, nothing could have made him ready to see bodies, and parts of bodies, still trapped by wreckage that used to be a hallway.

  “No,” Imogene whispered, their comms making her low voice carry with all the weight of the universe to him and those listening inside.

  “Imogene? What do you see? Can we fix it?” Rullon asked, his voice matching hers in his low tone and careful enunciation. As if they were both worried that if they said more or weren’t careful in their language it could all be worse.

  “Rullon, this is bad, but we need to do more checking to give you an idea,” Troylus said, his voice was too loud. He winced, but he had to focus and get to work because he didn’t want to be left crying inside his helmet. Moving past her, although he didn’t want to, he took his tether and used it to collect the bodies of those he thought the families would want to see. The rest he let go into the stars, including the pieces that he didn’t want to think about.

  She trailed behind him doing the same, until they were left with mangled and torn metal and ship interior.

  One of the floorboards broke off as he touched it and floated away.

  He tapped his comm again to turn it off and waited until she did the same.

  “Are you read
y? Can you do this?” If he felt his soul was wounded by the scene before, the nerves while he waited on her answer were shredding his stomach.

  “Yes. I…” She turned to look out at the planet, still so far away. “I haven’t fixed anything before, but I think it’s our best chance.”

  “Last shift I remade a window.” It was his turn to look at the planet and hope they would make it, that their abilities would see them to it instead of destroying them at the door.

  “Really?” Her eyes were huge behind her helmet and he almost laughed, but it died an early death in his throat.

  “Before they get worried, let’s try this.”

  Together they turned back to the gaping maw of the terrible scar on the ship.

  He tried to find the place inside his mind and heart that he unlocked when the window was broken, holding his hands out in front of himself.

  And nothing. No blue light, just regular Troylus, looking more than regular levels of foolish.

  “Uh, I don’t know how to call on it,” he said, looking at his hands, although he knew they didn’t hold any secrets.

  “And I was hoping to watch you fix it. I thought you knew,” she said, her shoulders slumping.

  “No. I just know that if we can make this work, we could fix the hole.” He put a hand to his helmet, which only made him more frustrated that he couldn’t rub the back of his neck or push hair his mind still expected to be too long out of his eyes.

  Zellendine was so close to death the times he had called on it before…

  He looked back at the bodies of those who weren’t lucky enough to be in the cryo bay with them. Instead of turning away from the horrifying reality of their deaths, the fear that must have flood them in their last seconds, he allowed himself to imagine that they were all Zellendine. That he was not able to save her, and he was picking up the pieces of her shattered remains after the fact.

  Blue light poured out of him and he focused on the ship, to make it safe again.