The Spindle

by J. Darlene Everly

  “It’s working. How?” Imogene yelled, although she didn’t have to, she was right next to him and their helmets were always connected via comm even when they weren’t linked to the office.

  Troylus’s breath was ragged as he let go of the blue light and had to brace himself on her arm, bent forward while sweat poured down his back.

  “Somehow…” he started, taking long breaths before he finished, “it’s connected to thinking about someone I love getting hurt.”

  Metal was still mangled and malformed in front of them. He had made it better, but it was still destroyed. Every muscle in his body ached, and he wasn’t sure he had the ability to fix it entirely.

  “Okay,” she said. “I shouldn’t put it all the way back together, but to something that they can finish for us.”

  Imogene nodded, lifted her hands out in front of her and held her body as rigid as the floorboard that had floated past their heads.

  Yellow light, shimmering like it was a solar flare she could hold in her hand, flowed out of her, wrapping around pieces and bending them effortlessly back into sheets.

  When she was done, she collapsed into his side and in front of them the ship looked like the explosion had blown out in such a way that all the metal was just peeled back, exposing a badly damaged interior.

  He tapped his comms back on and did the same for her.

  “Troylus? Uh…” Rullon said, and he cringed at what their little reconstruction project had looked like to the ship’s scanners.

  “All kinds of things are damaged out here.” Troylus set Imogene against the handhold and grabbed on himself. “Censors are probably destroyed, shields are gone, and we can walk through the hole to the interior. But we, um…” He paused to look at the gruesome tail they had created for themselves of the bodies.

  “Um, what?”

  “We’re bringing in some of the fallen, so their families can say goodbye.” Troylus heard the intake of breath on the other end and the low rumble of too many voices saying too many things that followed.

  But Imogene nodded her head, and he took it as a sign that they needed to get back inside the ship. The others could do the rest of the work. Hopefully his offhand comment about the censors and the state of the ship’s wound would cover for them.

  They had done enough, and he had a lot of questions for Imogene.

  13

  Zellendine

  She didn’t want to knock on the door. People moved past her, unaware that she was frozen in place. But she had been to the orchard and the cryo bay. Troylus wasn’t in either. She had to keep moving or the need to tell him what she had figured out would drive her to distraction.

  Briar’s door, the one she had been to a thousand times, dropping him off and picking him up, had never scared her before. He wasn’t even in there. She knew that. Journo had assured her. But it felt wrong for her to walk into his space, and it wasn’t just because of the protocols.

  In an emergency, sure, she would be forgiven for breaching their privacy by going in, but would she ever feel right breaching Briar’s boundaries when she knew he was furious with her?

  Part of her wanted to believe that he would eventually get over his issues with her like Troylus had, but part of her worried he wouldn’t. And every last bit of her thought that this little intrusion, no matter that it was for the right reasons, would make any reconciliation less likely.

  Her hand shook as she raised it and left it hanging in the air an inch from the door.

  Someone in the crowd passing through the hall bumped into her so she stumbled into the door, knocking on it with more than just her knuckles.

  There was barely time to stand up straight before it swung open to silver eyes.

  Zellendine swallowed and stepped back, colliding with someone else, reminding her she couldn’t just turn around and head to her quarters.

  “I’m leaving,” Briar shouted over his shoulder into the room and shoved her out of the way, barreling into the traffic of bodies, leaving swearing people marking his passage.

  A sighing Journo appeared in the doorway, shaking his head.

  “Come in, please.” He held the door open for her and she tucked her holo against her chest, holding onto the edges too tight, to keep her hands from shaking as she walked in.

  She wasn’t sure how to feel about Briar and the way he was acting, but she couldn’t think about it at that moment. She had a job to do. And it was more important than Briar.

  “Hi, Zellendine,” Upton mumbled from a spot on a bed, ensconced in blankets so only his little face showed.

  “Buddy, are you cold?” she asked, moving to the side of the bunk to crouch down by him.

  “Yes. I can’t get warm anymore.” He shivered.

  For a moment she could only see the little boy who was trapped inside his dreams last shift. She could only see the worry and the fear everyone had on his behalf and on behalf of the other sleepers hanging around him like a miasma.

  Zellendine forced a smile onto her face and lifted her holo. Upton was alive and she was going to treat him like he was.

  “Do you mind if I run a few scans. I’ll see if there is a way to get you feeling warm again.” She tapped away at her holo until it showed the beginning of the scans she wanted to run and then turned it so Upton could watch as information poured into it and changed the figures.

  “I know it’s just a computer, but it’s like art too,” he said, his voice low and wistful.

  For a small boy who was usually so full of energy, he sounded like he was as old as the stars. It sent a shiver up her spine as she glanced at Journo and his partner, standing to the side.

  They held hands, their grips tight on each other.

  “Okay, Upton, do you want to tell me about what’s been bothering you?” she asked, “Is it the accident that happened? Your dads have been worried for you.”

  “It’s more than the accident. The accident just says I’m right.” He tucked his chin inside the edge of the blanket and cast his eyes down to his lap.

  “Right about what?” Asking the question sent a chill down her spine, although she couldn’t have said why. When he lifted his eyes to hers, a tiny shard of silver glinted in one of his irises. A shiver ran down her back and the hairs on her arms stood on end.

  “People are going to die. You can’t be one of us. It doesn’t want you here.” His voice was a whisper, dark and deeper than it should have been. His focus wasn’t on her face, but somewhere beyond her that she couldn’t see.

  “What doesn’t want me here?” Her throat was dry, and her hushed words came out harsh and scratchy.

  “I…” He shook his head and looked at her, instead of through her, his lower lip trembling, “I don’t know, Zellendine. I don’t know.”

  A tear ran down his cheek and she wanted to reach out to comfort him, protocols or not, but she couldn’t force herself to move.

  “O-” she choked on the word and had to cough into her hand before she tried again. “Okay. How about we go over these scans and make a schedule for us to talk about it some more. Would that be okay with you?”

  He took a deep breath, a wavering smile forming on his face as he relaxed back into the pillows behind him and nodded.

  “So,” she looked down at her holo, almost dropping it. The readings mapped the last few minutes of his vital statistics. Whatever just happened, it wasn’t a regular discussion.

  Tapping at her holo, Zellendine tried to examine all the information. It was too much for her to process, it didn’t make sense. It would take her days to even try and make sense of it.

  Maybe she could get Stephen to look through it with her before she saw Upton again. Maybe he would be able to tell her what it all meant.

  No scans she had ever seen looked like Upton’s. No one’s ever should have looked like his did.

  Journo cleared his throat, and his partner was leaning toward her, his mouth open and his eyes wide while a vein pounded so hard in his neck, she could see it from five fee
t away.

  Looking from them to her tiny patient, she realized she had been silent for too long while she examined all the information.

  “Well, I know why you can’t get warm,” she said, and they all relaxed.

  But she didn’t know why his temperature was fluctuating so wildly, or why the spikes of his temperature were above what would give most people a seizure.

  14

  Troylus

  In front of him, the last of the airlock doors opened. Imogene stepped across the threshold and motioned for the others to come and help.

  Parmita disconnected both of them from their tethers. He couldn’t bring himself to look back at the grisly work he left to the others.

  “What the fuck, Troylus? I…” Parmita said, her voice trailing off as she glanced over his shoulder and shuddered.

  “Yeah.” He couldn’t bring himself to say much more. She wasn’t asking why he and Imogene had brought them inside. At least he didn’t think so. Parmita was probably just as worried and confused as everyone else about why it had happened in the first place.

  She helped them climb out of their suits and put them away for them.

  Rullon popped his head out of the office as Troylus passed by and placed a hand on his son’s arm.

  Troylus nodded to his dad and kept walking. He didn’t want to be questioned, he didn’t want to try and explain to Rullon or anyone else. He didn’t want to talk at all about the walk.

  He made his way down the hall from the office and looked back long enough to spot Imogene, with her bright yellow hair tie, making her way through the thickening crowd in the hall.

  Every step beyond the starwalker office meant more people he had to navigate through. Why didn’t the Chapter plan for more room when everyone was awake?

  He wanted to scream at all of them. He just wanted to be able to walk without running into someone.

  No matter that he hated the protocols, every time he bumped into a body it felt weird. The only people he was comfortable touching were his crew, his family, Briar, and Zellendine. That list didn’t even include most of the people on his shift, let alone all the people moving past him whose names he didn’t know.

  Finally, he reached the cryo bay, but it was no longer a refuge.

  Stopped in his tracks, one foot in front of the other, Troylus stared open mouthed at the people scattered through the room.

  There were two blankets on the floor with small groups sitting on them talking in low tones. By the tanks, three couples leaned against the stacks and each other, looking out the window.

  “Where did they all come from?” he asked under his breath to no one. Why weren’t they all in their own cryo bays? Why were they invading this one?

  “I guess this conversation will have to be a little different than I was expecting,” Imogene said, coming to stand at his side before she walked into the bay.

  “Do none of them realize that the only thing between them and space is a damn door?” he asked, shaking his head and following her.

  “You’re here,” she said over her shoulder as she turned the corner between two stacks.

  “Not the same.” He wanted to roll his eyes. She knew it wasn’t the same for them as it was for this collection of strangers.

  Imogene turned and sat, leaning against the wall, and looking up at him with her silver eyes that matched his.

  Troylus took a seat beside her, pulling his knees up so he could lean his arms against them while he looked out the window.

  “How did you realize?” He wasn’t sure how else he was supposed to ask the questions he needed to, so he just left out any specific mentions of their lights.

  “Parts of it are hard to explain. I woke up my last shift with my eyes like this, and I was pissed off with a couple people on my shift. People I liked who had done nothing negative to earn my anger, so I knew something was really wrong with me.” She picked at one of her cuticles and he realized it probably wasn’t fair for him to expect her to tell him everything when he had not confided anything in her.

  So he told her the story of that first time his ability showed up. She had broken protocol, so he assumed she wouldn’t panic about Zellendine and him looking back, and as much as he assumed she knew turning him in to leadership would risk her own secret getting out, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her everything.

  “An anomaly?” She was staring at the side of his face and it made him want to hide, but he didn’t. He nodded instead.

  “Mine manifested when I was on a walk too, but it wasn’t because of an anomaly.” She took a deep breath and focused back on the space beyond the window. “My tether broke.”

  He sucked in a breath, the air hissing through his teeth. It was one of his greatest nightmares.

  “I didn’t have the time or the clarity to use the air to propel me. I just reached out and the yellow pulled me to a handhold.”

  “When we were out there you seemed to know exactly how to use it, how did you do that?” His voice was barely audible and his eyes darted around taking stock of how far away people in the room were and how likely they were to hear him. Even if people didn’t understand what they were talking about, he didn’t want anyone to form any questions.

  “After the first time I used it on a walk, I tried to do it again. I worked on it when I was out there by myself, or when I was on the other side of the ship from my crew member. It took a while for me to figure out that I could control not only when it came out of me, but what I did with it.”

  Troylus snapped his head to the side to look at her, his mouth working, but no words coming out.

  Somehow it had never occurred to him that he could do all of that with his ability. There had to be some kind of limit on what they could do, but how they would gain the space to find out what it was, he couldn’t imagine.

  “Have you not practiced?” She asked, turning to face him.

  “I… No. I haven’t.”

  “But you seemed to know what you were doing out there.”

  Furrowing his brow and turning away from her again he thought about it, about whether that was actually true.

  “You know, before we went, I knew we could do it. Because of the first time, I knew that fixing was possible. But I wasn’t so sure I could make it happen. Until I thought about the times it had.” He rubbed his hands over his face, just talking about it, the emotions he had to call on, gave him a fresh wave of exhaustion.

  “That was one of the first lessons I learned too. It’s somehow connected to our emotions. I think it’s why we all have the rage. Not that I’ve figured out why it’s directed at the people it is, but it makes sense that whatever caused this also caused us a way to be forced to realize we had it.”

  She was just musing, looking out the window and paying no attention to him next to her or even the fact they weren’t alone. It was clear she was deep inside her own head.

  He was lost inside his own mind too. For him, the focus wasn’t on what could have caused their abilities, or even on the fact that he was right about the emotional connection to it.

  No, his focus was entirely on the people who were the targets for the rage. Maybe Imogene could be satisfied with having no answers as to why certain people were targeted, but she didn’t have as strong a connection to the person that had pissed her off the most.

  Figuring that part out was probably going to be up to him and Zellendine. Because with Briar’s anger focused at her too, she was clearly in danger from any of the people who looked like he did. And now he knew for sure that they were all as powerful as he was.

  15

  Zellendine

  She did all the things she knew to do, the medications, and the instructions on a wash, but there were no good answers for Upton or his dads. All she could really offer them was to offer calm that masked her desperate attempt not to panic so she didn’t lead them to panic too.

  Maybe her dad would have an answer.

  Her mind kept returning to that improbable hope because he
always had before. And when he didn’t, he at least had a way to make you feel like there was one and he would keep looking until he found it.

  Zellendine didn’t have that ability, especially because she suspected she knew what the cause of Upton’s strange symptoms were. Or at least she thought they were related, even if his eyes weren’t completely overtaken by silver.

  There was just no way she could see that the two were disconnected entirely.

  All the people in the halls made her walk slow and allowed her mind to wander through the charts she had seen — the charts of Upton and Troylus.

  Part of her wanted to find Troylus and tell him all the things she had discovered, or at least all the things she thought she might find at the end of her current search.

  More important than that conversation, she needed to track down her dad and get him to spend some time helping her find answers. Stephen had Troylus’s chart anyway.

  He said he was going to study it more. Maybe he had been able to come up with something.

  A stray thought popped into her mind: What if they could reverse the changes? Would she suggest they do that? Would Troylus want that?

  The thought of deciding for someone made her cringe. It was a little too close to the decisions the Chapter computers made for them all.

  But for some people, Upton included, how could they as medics endorse something that seemed to be hurting the person who was going through it? Should she look at it like a surgery? That sometimes to do the most good at the end required a step through harm?

  Rubbing her eyes, she rounded the corner to the clinic, still packed full of people after the disaster.

  Whatever solace she sought in going to her father was lost in the pain and the fear of the people around her. She was too wrung out to be there. She needed to go, anywhere but there.

  But she had to find her dad first.

  Patients and medics, their friends and family, waited in the rooms. But none of them were her father.