Lakes of Mars

by Merritt Graves

  “I suppose, but no need to belabor it. This is a good night.” She paused as a burst of laughter erupted around us. “B was really the only block that had a chance of catching us this term, though that’s pretty much gone now with a win like this.”

  “Us,” I repeated.

  “Us?”

  “You said us,” I said.

  “Obviously, us. When we’re doing training exercises we face off against each other, but when we’re not, it’s us”—she gestured out toward cadets from other wings and blocks sitting together—“versus them. You seem smart enough to grasp the distinction. No one’s happy about having to follow Caelus, but for now that’s the way things are.” She shrugged a little and yawned. “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden? It’s good to be suspicious, but these are your friends, remember? You know, the same friends that took you in after everything you kicked up when you got here?”

  “How could I forget?”

  She looked at me skeptically, then lowered her voice. “Listen, I know you mean well, but it’s kind of an uncomfortable subject when people disappear. Don’t look now, but Castor Hall down there on the end of the bench used to be a lieutenant in E Block, and got demoted and transferred for sending a message to the Fleet complaining about how Mars ran the station. It’s clear the Reds did something to him since he was in Medical for a long time afterward, but he won’t tell us what.

  “It still bothers him, so it’s kind of a delicate thing to be bringing up, especially now when we’re getting the rare chance to kick back. I know it’s a lot to take, but try not to be so quick to jump to conclusions, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said quietly, a little chastened. I remembered how Fingers had said that the prohibition on outbound communication was the Reds’ most sacred rule.

  “Now, why don’t you take a deep breath and relax with the rest of us.” Before I could protest she had already filled a glass with firewater and slid it across the table toward me. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” I said. As our glasses clinked I noticed something through the liquid—a faded strip across the inside of her fingers. At first I thought nothing of it, but as I brought the glass to my lips, my hand started shaking. It wasn’t until I dropped it, though, that I understood why. She looked at me and I stared back, for the first time noticing a wide, faint bruise just above her chin.

  A few moments later I was back in the corridor looking at a similar faint red line, only on my palm, from where I’d struggled to hold back the cord that first night in C2.

  II

  Part Two

  Chapter 23

  Throughout the next day I felt eyes on me. In the halls, in lectures, in training rooms, and, worst of all, in C3. I didn’t know whom I could trust. Maybe they were all in on it.

  I only felt calm after finding empty alcoves where I could stop to collect my thoughts, but they weren’t easy to come by. Cadets were everywhere, training and studying and sparring, roaming the corridors in groups of three or four or five, laughing and shouting, piercing the little pockets of silence that occasionally emerged in the wake of other departing clusters. They were all loud because loud meant confidence and familiarity, announcing that they were no easy target.

  It was surprising how few Reds I saw. They gave lectures and supervised training but disappeared after that, as if exiting through unseen passageways back to the Inner Ring. I guess it didn’t matter since they didn’t seem to do much of anything anyway. But it’s what their absence signified, I suppose, that was especially troubling.

  For my part, I kept going around and around, reconstructing conversations I’d had or overheard, searching for clues hidden in offhand remarks, pauses, frowns. Someone had to be telling the truth and I wanted to just hole up somewhere until I could determine who it was, but every time I thought I’d found a place some group would come rumbling down the halls and the station would shrink even more.

  The barrack was the worst. Just hearing the words “Challenge” and “C4” and “Caelus” made the room oscillate and the lights stab down brighter. I went to bed that night half-convinced that they were going to come after me in my sleep again, and the next day and the day after that weren’t any better. I just cycled through the motions, going along with everything that was planned in C3, trying to avoid Caelus until I could figure out what my next move was.

  Usually I’d escape to the Weapons Room, calmed by the repetition of aiming, firing, and reloading, faster and more accurate each time—using the gun to spew out my guilt and anxiety. When I’d wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and reeling from a nightmare, it was the first place I’d go. I went to the Box, too, realizing that if I chose dangerous enough missions and turned the pain settings up high, I’d actually feel myself being cooked alive when I got lit up by a missile or pulse fire. The confusion didn’t disappear then, but it was momentarily replaced by something scarier. Synapses fired. Cortisol shot through me. That, I figured out, was the way to escape. Not by retreating from myself, like I’d originally intended, but by going deeper inside.

  When I’d purged enough fear and lingering dread that I could breathe and talk normally, I went back and tried to sleep again. This worked a little for a week or so, but then one night it started building up worse than ever. It was Wednesday and Space Math, Chemical Engineering, and Military History had left me disoriented. My head was throbbing. Everything was sharp and staccato. It was late, but the barracks were still alive with commotion and the Great Room was busy, so the only place I could think to sneak away to was one of the classrooms—but they were all locked. The more doors I tried, the more I realized that I’d been really lucky to find one open on my first night at the station.

  It wasn’t until after lights out that it occurred to me that I should just go back and retry the biolab, since maybe if Dr. Mitchell had forgotten to lock it once he might have forgotten again. So I crept across C Block over to the Science Wing, though when I swiped my key card it wouldn’t open. I kept trying and trying—wanting so badly to be alone—but the reader flashed red each time. Eventually, I cursed to myself and reluctantly retreated back down the corridor. I’d stopped again a few moments later, half of the mind to go back and give it one more shot, when I heard the soft pad of someone’s footfalls.

  Although it was clear that curfew wasn’t enforced, it suddenly seemed very important not to be seen. I turned down another corridor, listening out for the steps. When they got nearer to the biolab, they paused. Had the person heard me?

  There was silence for the longest time. It hung there exposed, turning everything inside out, making me long for talking or laughing or the hum of the environmental system to cover it. Then I heard a bag being unzipped and the sound a door makes when it flashes green, and I peeked my head around just enough to see Caelus disappear into the lab.

  It only hit me hours later, in the midst of a fractured, pitted sleep in the hammock, that Caelus’ unlocking the door was probably the reason I’d been able to get into the biolab that first night. And that if I was right, he must’ve been in there with me, staying hidden until I locked myself in the cabinet.

  Chapter 24

  I’d always liked walking around the lake just as the sun was breathing its first life into the day. It was surreal. Thoughts stood out more when I was the only one up, making the quiet ones loud for once, which was helpful since they often had the most interesting things to say.

  Our lake was connected to a dense network of others inland of New London, twisting through the terrain, gouging and submerging, flooding and receding, so much so that some stretches were almost equal parts land and water. Plants rocketed through the red soil on the banks, surrounding the rocks in a canopy of evergreens and deciduous trees, cradling the terraformed crust with their roots. The area was stunning and I only learned after my parents were gone what it cost to live there.

  “By law, only one residence can be built per two square kilometers, which is one of the lowest ratios in Syna Coralis,” the real
estate agent explained of the area. “We call it ‘ensured structural scarcity.’ So you’re not just valuing the house, which itself would be quite valuable given it’s a Corbin Fulton design, but it’s the zoning and the seclusion that are providing the bulk of your multiple.”

  My hands rapped against the counter. I wanted her to stop talking—just shut up about the view and the amenities and all this scarcity stuff. Christ. It was so foreign to and so at odds with what I was feeling.

  “Mr. Sheridan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “Think about what?”

  “The price. The price that we’ll be listing your house for.”

  “Sure—whatever. Whatever is fine.”

  And then I was back at the lake again—at first light, when all was quiet. The water was still slumbering and I didn’t want to disturb anything. Parker, who couldn’t help but wake up with me, was by my side, somewhere between excitement and restraint, in constant limbo between remembering and forgetting his training. Only occasionally did he let a whinny of exhilaration escape, but never a bark. He was a good dog. The best dog you could ever want really: Gentle. Up for anything. Covered in mink-soft fur—a rich cinnamon swirl of shagginess. He’d skip ahead and behind, but mostly trot along beside me, as if he were in orbit and everything he did mattered only in relation to me. Sometimes I wished that he would run off and do his own thing for a while, but he never did.

  The lake put everything in perspective. It swallowed me when I needed to get lost and reflected me back when I needed to find myself, stoic and wind-stirred. Obviously, it was just a lake. But when we say something is just something, what do we mean? It’s just a lake. It’s just a thought. It’s just a stage. Why don’t we ever go the other way and acknowledge how important and beautiful things are while we have them?

  “Aaron. Aaron.”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  “Are you okay?” asked the real estate agent.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “It’s just I’ve been asking you questions and you don’t seem to be hearing them.”

  Chapter 25

  I woke the next morning soaked in the afterglow of Mars, but the feeling modulated as one by one the sounds and textures appeared in blurry, half-remembered streaks, sheeting the house and the lake in an atonal gloom. Somewhere in between Parker and the trail were Caelus and the knifing pain from my ribs, and with all my turning over in the hammock and mashing my head into different parts of the pillow I became aware of just how tired I was. Every thought I had showering and brushing my teeth was punctured by the previous night, the dream leaking into my consciousness, slowly bringing back little pieces of the person I’d used to be.

  I’d set the vibrating alarm on my U-dev fifteen minutes early, hoping to catch Sebastian before class, but he wasn’t in his bunk. When I couldn’t find him anywhere in C3 I went down to the Box and, sure enough, he was in the staging area with Brandon, Rhys, Daries, and Fingers, gesturing at a tactical display on a lightboard. I thought about what he’d said about not having any real friends back home and for a moment I felt happy for him—until I remembered that these weren’t real friends either.

  After seeing the cord mark on Fin’s hand, I’d been waiting for the right moment to tell him that she’d been part of the group that had attacked me in C2, but with Caelus sneaking around after hours in the lab yesterday, I wasn’t so sure, especially since I knew Sebastian was fragile. Everything at C3 was fragile with Pierre gone, and I might not get a chance to walk things back if I was wrong.

  At least now they needed him and had every reason to keep him safe, which wouldn’t be the case if Sebastian and I were neutral. I didn’t think you could be neutral there; we’d been so by default when we first arrived and barely lasted a day. If we were to bail on the Storms, we’d need to join the Fires, but that seemed like too big of a leap.

  The confusion about what to do metastasized, lighting up trees of new questions I hadn’t known I had. I wanted so badly to do the right thing, but I had no idea what it was. I turned one way, walked a few steps, and paced back the other. This had to be another dream.

  Wake up, Aaron. Wake up, Aaron. Wake up!

  “Aaron, are you okay?”

  It was Sebastian. “Yeah, I’m fine. I was just—”

  “Because you don’t look so hot. And the other night—”

  “I was tired,” I interrupted.

  In that instant I was so close to giving in and just telling him about my talk with Caelus anyway, and how I’d broken someone’s nose in C2 the same time Zoellers disappeared into Medical with a broken one of his own, but in the last moment I caught myself. “Have you noticed anything strange about Brandon and Rhys lately? Have they done or said anything that didn’t seem right?”

  Sebastian looked over at them. “You mean besides being at each other’s throats?”

  “Yeah, besides that.”

  “Nothing any crazier than usual. Why?”

  “I . . . I just have this feeling that things are even stranger than we first thought they were.”

  Sebastian looked perplexed. “Actually, I was starting to think that maybe I was a little too quick to judge. Maybe there are some people here who are good guys, you know?”

  It worried me that Sebastian was so ready to believe things—just like I’d been—assumptions that he’d never have made in science or math or the Box dealing with ship attributes and probabilities. Yet, because it was people we knew and wanted to like, saying stuff that couldn’t be readily disproven, he was deciding to accept it.

  “Yeah, Seb, I know. I was—I am, too. I just think, maybe . . . I just want you to keep your eyes open, that’s all. Take everything with a grain of salt. Will you do that for me?”

  “Of course. But, Aaron . . . you need to look after yourself, too. You’re sweating. Your eyes are . . .”

  I patted him on the shoulder and then gave it a little squeeze. “I’m fine, Seb. I’m fine. Just keep sharp and we’ll be okay, all right?”

  “All right.”

  “Especially with Brandon. He’s . . .”

  “He’s actually pretty nice once you get to know him. He cares a lot about everyone in C3—you included; always going on and on about how brave you are and how we need more of that. And that your pilot scores are off the chart and that you must’ve purposely thrown them before in testing.” He paused and studied me for a second. “That’s why you didn’t think you were coming here? Because you bombed all your tests?”

  I shrugged.

  “But you really topped out in the Box, like you told them?”

  “Yeah, but if I had my way I’d never fly another day in my life.”

  As if on cue Brandon walked over and threw an arm around my shoulder. “Where have you been, man? We missed you.”

  “I’ve been around.”

  “But not at the prep session last night, nor the one that just ended. We’ve got a Challenge with Caelus coming up in a couple of weeks—a ground battle. C Block already has the inter-block contest locked up this term now that we’ve beaten the Bs again, so the only way he doesn’t win the whole thing is if he loses his captaincy. You get what’s at stake, don’t you?” he asked, his arm lingering.

  “I’ve heard,” I said.

  “I know schedules are tough, but we need you there with those weapons scores of yours. You’re kind of the guy now.”

  “Well, maybe you should find another guy.”

  “That’s rich,” Brandon replied, looking around. “Who exactly did you have in mind?”

  Chapter 26

  “That’s not your seat,” Eve said, eyeing me as I sat down.

  “I thought you said Dr. Mitchell didn’t enforce the rules?” I asked, heartened to be back in the biolab. The whole station was freezing as usual, but here, smelling the magnesium sulfate and latex issuing from the chalky lemon cloud of laboratory chemicals, it didn’t really bother me as much.

  She shrugged
. “Fair enough.”

  “Kind of a random question, but . . . if someone were to sneak into the lab after hours, what do you think their reason would be?”

  “Planning something?”

  “It’s purely hypothetical.”

  Eve scanned the room, from the beaker-filled cabinets lining the wall to the closed door in the far rear corner. “The cynical answer would be that some of the materials in the supply closet back there are approximations for Zeroes’ ingredients, and I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but Zs are giving jerking off a run for its money as favorite student pastime. But, that’s just a guess; I don’t have a very criminal mind.”

  “I’d say you’re off to a pretty good start,” I said.

  “You could also—I suppose—go through Dr. Mitchell’s desk, but I’m not sure you’d find much, considering he keeps most of his electronic papers in his main office on the Inner Ring. Usually the kids who want to cheat just hack into the network, since that’s where all the grades and files are.”

  A girl sitting in front of us glanced back and I gave her a wink and a small wave.

  When she’d turned around again a few moments later I asked, “Now, what’s the non-cynical answer?”

  Eve raised her eyebrows. “The non-cynical answer?”

  “Okay, well, what about the science equipment? Like, what does that thing over there do?”

  “Oh, that’s a sequence synthesizer. It—”

  “Good morning, class—I’m Mr. Katz,” said a young-looking man I’d never seen before, walking into the lab. “Dr. Mitchell has a meeting, so I’m afraid you’ll be stuck with me today.”

  He cleared his throat and looked down at his notes. “It looks like you’re wanted to analyze some Verex pathogen, so pair up, head back to the microscopes, and I’ll beam the instructions to your biopads. And yes, it is live, but fortunately we have the latest antidote on hand in the corner cabinet for those careless with needles.”