by Kali Wallace
“There’s space between the levels,” he explained. “Find the panel that opens.”
We traced the edges of the floor panels with our fingertips, but we could not pry anything loose. The cold made my fingers feel fat and numb, and my vision was beginning to blur. I found four small screws holding one panel in place. I pointed, and Malachi nodded—we were too short of breath to waste words.
I pushed myself back up to the workstation. We needed a tool. A screwdriver, or anything that could be used as one. I fumbled with the strap of tools, not bothering to search through them, just tugged the entire collection down to the floor again. The room swam around me, and my head throbbed with crescendoing pain. I began coughing—rough and dry, an uncontrollable urge—and in spite of the cold, a sweat broke out all over my skin. I struck my head on the hull of the probe when I misjudged the distance, but the sound of the impact was muffled beneath the siren and the cotton-stuffed feeling in my ears. Malachi was a blurry shape before me, moving with underwater slowness as he searched through the tools.
He found an electric screwdriver, but the cold had long ago killed the battery, so he had to turn it manually. When he got the first screw loosened he moved on to the next, and I took over with my cold, clumsy hands, turning each screw the rest of the way, tugging them out and leaving them to drift. When all four had been loosened, Malachi tried to jam the screwdriver head into the seam, but it was too wide. He cursed in frustration. Every breath he sucked in was shallow and desperate.
I searched through the tools again, looking for something thin enough to pry, wasting precious seconds before I remembered Dr. Summers’s pocketknife. I kicked up to her to retrieve it, kicked down again, and snapped it open. I sliced my palm in my hurry, but the quick-hot sting was only a small pain among so many other agonies. I jammed the short blade into the seam, as careful as I could be, terrified of breaking the thin little blade.
It took only the slightest nudge. The pressure on the other side of the panel was still normal; that air was pressing into our suffocating chamber. The seal broke and the panel lifted.
Beneath the panel there were only wires, tubes, and a red handle with no label.
“What do we do?” I said in the brief silence between sirens.
There was no answer. Malachi’s eyes were open, but he was staring blankly, unseeing, his entire body shuddering with useless breaths. I reached for the red handle and tugged. After a few wasteful, fruitless, angry pulls, I realized it rotated. It was a manual crank.
I turned the handle as fast as I could. My grip was slick with the blood from where I had cut myself, and at first nothing seemed to be happening—then I felt a warm breeze flowing upward from the control compartment.
There was a gasp—not me, not Malachi, but mechanical—and a larger panel began to sink into the floor. Rushing air hissed all around it, shoving through the gaps and flowing over my blood-slick hand, warmer than the air around us. I wanted nothing more than to lean my face down to that tiny crack and suck at it, but I didn’t stop. I turned the crank until the floor panel dropped and moved to the side, centimeter by centimeter, at first moving so slowly I could scarcely see it change, then in great gaps—my mind was stuttering, blacking out and snapping to—and a hole opened. The space beneath the floor was dark.
“Malachi,” I said. His eyes were still open, but he didn’t react. “Malachi! We can get out!”
He blinked vaguely and twitched one hand, moved his lips as though to speak, but the word came out as an unintelligible mumble. I grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him down, headfirst, through the half-meter hole in the floor. It was harder than I expected to push him against the flow of air, but I was able to maneuver him far enough to make room for me to follow.
The air coursed around me like a strong wind as I tugged myself into the hole and pushed Malachi’s legs aside. He groaned and said my name, and my heart stuttered with relief to hear it. I fumbled for the crank again, turned it closed as frantically as I had opened it, blocking the light but also the air rushing out. The hiss grew to a higher pitch when there was only a sliver of light left, and I turned the crank the last few rotations.
And it was quiet, and it was dark.
I let go of the crank, fumbled in the dark for one of the handholds.
“Zahra?” Malachi said. His voice was still slurring, weak, and he coughed on the exhale. “I don’t want to, um, alarm you. But I can’t see.”
I couldn’t help myself: I laughed. It hurt, laughing as my lungs filled again with air, as oxygen flowed through my blood, and the feeling of clammy cold returned to my skin, with the pain in my hand and the bitter metallic taste of every breath. The air was stale.
“Zahra?” Malachi said again.
“Yeah,” I said. “I can’t see either. There’s no light.”
“There’s—oh, shit.” A clank as something hit metal with a dull thunk. I hoped it wasn’t his head. “We’re in the maintenance tunnels?”
“I guess so,” I said. “I don’t suppose you know how to get us out?”
“Uh,” he said. “Not exactly.”
I started to laugh again, but it turned ragged, rough, and I slammed my mouth shut before it could turn into a sob. I was not going to cry. My head, my heart, every pulse of blood through my veins, they all ached with my failures, and I was not going to cry.
I reached down, down, feeling blindly until I found Malachi’s hand. After a second he squeezed mine in answer. I closed my eyes, and we stayed there, breathing that bitter, precious air, clinging to each other in the darkness.
Nothing helps. They’re in so much pain. Another group escaped custody and fled into the ruins. Every time we think we have [data corruption] the people up in the ship don’t know what to do with the samples we sent to them. It’s not safe for them to come down, and it’s not safe for us to return. I always knew I’d die here, but not like this. Not this soon. I was supposed to have decades. We were supposed to have a lifetime.
—FRAGMENT 4, MOURNFUL EVENING SONG VIA UC33-X
JAS
And she was gone. In the fraction of a second between the ripple beneath her skin and our gasps of shock, Ariana had whirled away and propelled herself down the corridor.
“Wait!” I shouted. Driven more by wild instinct than logical thought, I followed.
She was outrageously, impossibly fast. She moved as though she had lived in space her entire life, kicking from one wall to angle off another, gliding so smoothly it was difficult to see how she anticipated each necessary motion and planned each action and reaction. She didn’t look back. If she heard us shouting, she chose not to react.
My heart was pounding, my mind racing. My mother’s words from Ariana’s mouth. The rattle and thump of the bathroom door. It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him. That terrible grasping hand.
The thing beneath her skin.
I wasn’t as fast as Ariana, being ten years out of practice, but I was faster than Baqir and Xiomara. Soon their shouts were well behind me. I didn’t stop. She had spoken my mother’s words. I was not going to lose her.
I held my helmet in one hand, the headlamp lighting every turn. My breath formed whirling clouds in the cold. The hallways burrowing through Level 7 were short, rarely straight, interrupted by common areas and alcoves: the shipbuilders’ attempt at softening the engineered precision of living spaces. What had made the hallways fun to play in as a child made them frustrating now. I caught the edge of a doorway to change direction, kicked with both feet to propel myself around a bend. A few meters ahead the passage opened into a large chamber.
Ariana had paused in the doorway. She was a silhouette in the low red light. Her rainbow hair shone in stiff streaks of light and dark. Unmoving, her back to me, she did not turn. I stopped only a couple of meters behind her.
Beyond Ariana, visible over her right shoulder, was the Earth.
It was o
ne of my father’s gardens. A large, round chamber on the side of Level 7, with windows facing outward like a great eye, it had once been home to cascades of ivy, flowering vines in living braids, delicate epiphytes embracing sturdier branches, and shadowy alcoves of trellises shaded by broad leaves. Small benches looked out toward the stars, tucked away in what should have been a riot of greenery and color, misty air and endless twilight, a place for quiet and contemplation.
My father had liked to come here after supper, when the ship was settling into its evening routine. If my mother was still working—and she was, most nights—I would accompany him. He taught me about pruning the vines to encourage healthier blossoms, clipping away the old to make room for the new, gently guiding the plants into a living work of art. I had never been as interested as he wanted. The stars beyond the windows always drew my attention.
Now, like everything else, the garden was dead. The vines were dull and crisp, the leaves crumpled by an unending winter. Even in the cold I could smell a faint decay.
I felt an unexpected rush of anger, remembering the warmth of my father’s hand on mine, the cool metal of the clippers in my grip, the clean snap of a stem cut through, and how beautiful this chamber had been, how joyful my father’s manner when he tended it. There were scientists aboard the ship who called him a gardener in a mocking tone, but he always laughed as though they meant to compliment him. He believed there was no shame in being a gardener in space, where every living thing had to be protected and cherished. There was no shame in teaching life to flourish where before there was only darkness.
Ariana pushed herself through the doorway and drifted slowly toward the center window. She lifted both hands to stop herself. Halos of condensation surrounded her fingers like ghostly gloves. Silent, still, unaware of me so close behind her, she stared at Earth. From this distance it was small enough to hide behind an outstretched hand.
Countless times I had gazed out that very window, in that very pose, a child staring at wonders both familiar and incomprehensible. During the eight years we lived aboard House of Wisdom, the ship had carried us throughout the solar system. Through that window I had watched Mars pass as a dusty red marble, Ceres as a dark rock lit from within by the sprawling mining colony, Europa with its frozen face pockmarked by research bases. I could still feel the slick sensation of the glass-mimicking window on my fingertips. I could still hear my father’s voice as he speculated about what the universe might hold beyond our sun and its satellites, and how he envied me that I might live to travel so far, that I would surely discover wonders of my own when I was older.
“Where did they go?” Xiomara’s voice carried through the corridors.
“Just up ahead,” Baqir said. “I think this way?”
“Are you sure? It could be—”
“Here,” I said. I did not shout.
They were coming closer, but Ariana showed no sign of having heard them. She was gazing at Earth, rapt, her bare fingers flexed against the window. I could not see her face, only the mist of her breath. I heard the tap of boots on the wall behind me.
“What are you doing? Why did you stop?” Xiomara asked in a hoarse whisper. Then her voice rose in surprise. “Ariana? Ari! Are you okay?” She tried to push by me, shoving angrily at my arm. “Let me go to her. We need to help her. She recognized you.”
“No, she didn’t. That wasn’t—”
“What is wrong with you? You heard her! Ariana!” Xiomara ducked under my arm and pushed away from the garden entrance. I grabbed after her, but she had given herself enough momentum to move out of reach. Baqir caught my arm before I could go after her; the grip of his metal prosthetic hand was cold and strong.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t get close to her.”
Xiomara thumped against the window a couple of meters to the left of Ariana. “Ari, can you hear me? Are you okay?”
For a long moment, there was no reaction. I held my breath, terrified of stirring Ariana into another violent frenzy. None of the people infected during the massacre had been like this. They had been delusional, violent, out of control. They had screamed, shouted, begged for help, attacked friends and colleagues, slashed their own limbs to pieces. If this was the calm Captain Ngahere had witnessed, it was far more eerie than I had ever imagined.
Then, Ariana turned.
Baqir sucked in a breath and let go of my arm. I heard the tap of his metal fingers on the doorway and glanced to the side; he was bracing himself with one hand to raise the suppression weapon Xiomara had taken when we made our escape.
“Ariana,” Xiomara said quietly. “Can you hear me?”
After another brief, agonizing silence, Ariana spoke. But it was not an answer. It was a rapid-fire stream of words in another language.
Xiomara blinked in surprise. “What? What did she say? What language is that?”
Ariana spoke again. Her tone was flat, the words without inflection, but there was something recognizable in what she was saying. It was like the words of a familiar song spoken without their tune, inviting the mind to fall into the rhythm but jarring the ear by resisting.
“Ari, I don’t understand,” Xiomara said, pleading. She extended a hand toward Ariana, withdrew it again, trembling with fear. “What are you saying? Can’t you understand me?”
“It sounds like some dialect of Chinese,” Baqir said. “But it’s atonal. It’s all wrong.”
My chest was tight, and blood thrummed in my ears. “It’s Archaic Chinese,” I said.
“The fuck? Ariana doesn’t speak Archaic Chinese. She can only barely hold a conversation in modern Chinese.”
But I was certain now. “It’s the message from Mournful Evening Song.”
I had listened to those words more times than I could count. The Earth our ancestors left behind was dying. The woman who sent her voice across light-years aboard UC33-X had spoken with an accent nobody recognized, in an oddly stiff dialect not spoken on Earth for hundreds of years. Soon we will sink our roots into the soil of a new world. Retrieving that data and restoring that long-traveled greeting would have been Dr. Gregory Lago’s legacy, if not for the virus. We have nothing but hope in our hearts.
“Ari? What’s going on? Why are you saying that?” Xiomara reached out again, jerked her hand back abruptly when Ariana stared at her outstretched fingers. “Sorry. Sorry. Can’t you just say something? Can’t you—”
Ariana spun around—one hand on the window, one foot braced against the base—and lunged. She moved so fast Xiomara had no time to react. Fingers splayed, hand outstretched, Ariana reached for her face, caught the collar of her suit instead. She pulled Xiomara closer—Baqir pushed by me—Xiomara screamed and flailed, striking at Ariana, but it didn’t have any effect. Ariana didn’t loosen her hold. She was pulling Xiomara toward her, fingers curled into claws and whipping toward her face, and I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think anything except, again again it’s happening again, and in seconds Xiomara would be infected, she would be writhing and panicking and tearing at her own skin—
There was a loud snap. Ariana jerked and, for an instant, froze. She began to tremble with powerful, full-body convulsions that seized every muscle.
Xiomara shoved her away with both feet on her midsection, twisting her collar from Ariana’s grasp. Ariana turned, no longer in control of her motions, and I saw the electroshock darts of the suppression weapon gleaming in her arm.
Baqir did not lower the weapon. He turned it slightly to check the charge, aimed it again, and kept it fixed on Ariana. The trembles continued, her arms and legs twitching, her face contorting—and it was not only the spasms distorting her face, but a ripple, that swift, pulsating presence of the thing that had invaded her body, shivering through her neck, along the side of her face, weakening until there was no more movement beneath her skin. Ariana shook as small seizures rolled through her body. Her eyes were open
but unseeing, her mouth clamped shut, her breath hitching loudly.
I pushed myself from the doorway to grab Xiomara and tug her away from Ariana.
“Did she break your skin?” I asked, looking her over frantically. “Did she scrape you? Did any of her blood touch you? Her spit?”
Xiomara shook her head but didn’t fight me. She sucked in a wet breath and wiped the tears from her eyes. “I don’t—I don’t think so?”
She lifted her chin, turned her head this way and that. Only her face was exposed, as she was still wearing her gloves. I did not see any marks or scrapes.
“What did you do?” Xiomara asked Baqir. “How did you even—how do you even know how to use one of those things? Is she hurt?”
Baqir looked down at the weapon in his hand. “The shock setting hurts like a fucker, but it doesn’t do any permanent damage.”
“How do you—” Xiomara stopped herself, shook her head. She pushed me away. “I’m fine. She didn’t even touch my skin, only my suit. We have to get help. She can’t hurt us right now. We have to help her.”
I was watching Ariana. The weapon should not have rendered her unconscious, but she gave no indication that she was aware of what was going on. But she wasn’t attacking anymore either.
So close to the window, with Earth to my left and the dead garden to my right, I had a moment of dizzying, disorienting vertigo, as though I was suspended for only a moment before tumbling into space, falling toward that bright and distant and impossible marble of blue and green. Could it be so simple? It didn’t seem possible. The uninfected would have tried to stun the infected during the outbreak. I had not seen it myself, nor were there records in the data Aunt Padmavati had given me, but suppression weapons were the only weapons aboard. Somebody would have tried—surely somebody would have tried. It had not been enough to stop the outbreak.
