by Kate MacLeod
Then something mewed. Girl immediately began making her I-want-to-play-with-that whining noise, wagging her tail furiously as she attempted to force herself between Scout and Shadow and charge into the room to find the mewler.
“Girl, stay!” Scout said, grabbing her collar to pull her back. “Stay!”
Shadow sat down in his best erect posture like a soldier at parade rest, but Girl just kept squirming.
Scout leaned into the room and found the cat tucked between the foot of a bed and the side of the room opposite where the open door stood. He looked up at Scout, tail flicking imperiously back and forth as he regarded her.
“You’re probably fine where you are, Tubbins,” Scout said to the cat. “We’ll leave you be.”
She was about to lean back out of the room when something caught her eye. Something was resting on a little shelf over the head of the bed, something like an electronic tablet. Viola, living alone, was likely a voracious reader, but what if it was something else?
“Dogs, stay!” she said, then climbed up onto the bed. Her knees sank so deeply in the pillowy mattress that crawling was awkward, but she managed to stretch and reach for the tablet without straying too far from the doorway where Girl watched intently, looking for any opening to rush in and seize the cat.
Scout sat cross-legged on the bed and looked over the tablet. It was a very old model, clearly designed for rough use, as it was heavy but durable. She found the on button and pressed it. She had a brief glimpse of a menu screen before an alert window popped open. No network connection. Given the state of the communications room, that wasn’t exactly a surprise. She cleared the alert and went back to scrolling through the menu.
The tablet definitely wasn’t designed for reading fiction. It must have belonged to the stationmaster originally, as the menu listed items for controlling payroll, expenses, inventory, travel logs, and other similar bits of bureaucracy.
Then Scout found the link to the station schematics. This was perhaps too much information, a screen full of overlapping colors designating plumbing, electrical conduits, emergency systems, and more things she couldn’t even name. She summoned a submenu and began unchecking boxes until all she had left was an outline of the walls of the facility with little labels on each room.
There it was, off the hangar, just as she had suspected—and frustratingly close to the room she was sitting in, if she could just bust through walls. She reached out and touched the wall in front of her. Nope, far too solid. She was going to have to take the long way around.
“See you, Tubbins,” she said, giving the cat’s ears a scratch before clambering back out of the bed. She pushed Girl back with her knee before the dog could hop up on the bed and also give Tubbins’s ears a go. “Come, dogs,” she said, drawing Warrior’s pistol and heading back through the red-lit rooms to the maintenance door to the hangar, tablet in hand.
There had been other doorways, once. The schematic showed doors on most of the walls of the octagonal rooms, but when Scout reached through the shelving to pass a hand over the walls, she felt no sign of a door. Over time things had been sealed off, she guessed, although she couldn’t imagine why. Viola said she had customers, but given the state of the hangar, they clearly weren’t entering from there. Did everyone come through the long tunnel they had taken from the emergency beacon? But that required crawling on hands and knees through an all but invisible tunnel to the almost entirely blocked doorway. That didn’t seem very customer-friendly.
And yet, the door was only almost entirely blocked. Did the wind really create that pattern, the emptiness within the hill? Scout doubted it. Someone had worked to keep that open, but only just. Now that Viola was gone, it hardly mattered. At some point after the storm her customers would discover she was gone. And even if they were as standoffish and secretive as Viola, eventually the word would get out that all of this was just waiting here for the taking. Looters would follow.
Scout ducked through the maintenance door into the hangar, the dogs close at her heels. They were off-leash this time but not anxious to run on ahead. Shadow sniffed at things as they passed them but was careful to stay close to Scout’s light. Girl padded along, uninterested in any of the mountains of junk around them.
As they drew nearer the utility room, Scout hear a soft clang, then someone whispering a curse. She gripped the pistol tightly, tucking Viola’s tablet into the back of her belt to keep her other hand free. Shadow was sniffing the air like crazy, but Girl still seemed unconcerned.
They wormed their way around another stack of abandoned supplies and Scout saw a faint light streaming from the doorway to the utility room. She kept her own light low on the ground just in front of her feet.
There was no disturbance in the thick layer of dust in front of her, only her prints and the dogs’ behind her. That, plus Girl’s continued calm, told her who she was sneaking up on.
She stepped into the utility room, pistol raised to just above hover chair height. “Hello, Liv.”
23
Liv didn’t turn around. She had a panel from the wall removed and resting across the front of her hover chair as she leaned in to dig into the cables that had been behind it.
“I have a gun on you,” Scout felt compelled to point out.
“Whatever makes you comfortable,” Liv said, head still bent over her work. Scout looked at the pistol, then tucked it back away. Like Warrior had said, the most dangerous thing about Liv was her mouth. The gun would be useless against that.
“Why did you take out the power?” Scout asked.
“I didn’t. I’m trying to turn everything back on,” Liv said, reaching further into the cable-filled space.
“You can’t just flip a switch?”
“Not anymore. Clementine left a nice collection of booby traps.”
Scout watched her follow the length of a cable with her fingertips and pull out some sort of device that was attached to a number of other cables. She ran her hands delicately over it, trying not to disturb any of the junctions as she examined the cables.
“How do I know that’s true?” Scout asked. “You could be booby-trapping it yourself just now.”
“You don’t know anything about these systems, do you?” Liv asked, carefully grasping a cable in one hand. She had a small tool in the other, either something that had been left in the utility room or something she had pulled from her chair. Scout wondered what else was inside that chair. It curved around Liv’s folded legs like an egg. There was room enough for all manner of things. Perhaps even a weapon. And yet if Liv had a weapon, surely she would have brandished it before now.
“No, I don’t,” Scout admitted. “You can see why I can’t exactly trust you when I don’t know what it is you’re doing.”
“Scout, I’m tired. I don’t want to fight you, physically or verbally,” Liv said. Then she looked down at the dogs. “You trust your dogs, though, right? And your dogs don’t seem upset with me at the moment.” She stopped talking to focus on using the tool to detach the cable from the device. Only after she released a held breath did Scout realize that maybe Liv didn’t know what she was doing either, not completely.
“I don’t think my dogs are capable of recognizing the sort of threat you are,” Scout said.
Liv laughed a surprisingly genuine-sounding laugh. “You’re wise beyond your years, aren’t you? Listen, just let me finish what I’m working on here and I’ll explain all I can. We’re not enemies. And with Clementine likely looking to take us both out, we might as well be allies.”
“I might be better off on my own,” Scout said.
“You might,” Liv allowed. “But clearly I have skills you don’t. And vice versa. That might be the only advantage we have.”
Scout watched her work for a moment, then turned to shine her light back out in the hangar, as far as it could penetrate in every direction. There was no sign of Clementine. What was she waiting for? Why take out the lights and leave them exposed? She had left booby traps to slow t
hem down, a distraction to tie them up while she accomplished something else.
“Do we really need lights that urgently?” Scout asked. “I don’t like sitting still while she’s on the move.”
“Lights? Maybe, maybe not. Air? Well, even that might last us long enough, but I’d feel better with it running,” Liv said.
“It is running,” Scout said. “I felt it.”
“It’s cycling old air through the station but it’s not pulling in fresh air from the surface,” Liv said, leaning forward once more to reach for more cables. “We’re few, and the space is large. We could probably breathe just fine for the few days we still have to wait for the storm to pass, but I’d rather not rely on that. Especially if Clementine decides to get really creative.”
“What do you think she’ll do?”
“Seal us off if she can. Find more remote ways of killing us. She prefers to avoid confrontation, Warrior’s death aside.”
“And Ottilie’s,” Scout added, but Liv said nothing. “So you agree she’s killing us off one by one.”
Liv gave another little laugh, this one devoid of real humor. “I know she is. I know her well. Too well, maybe. Come here and hold this for me.”
Scout moved closer but stopped just out of arm’s reach. Liv held out an elaborate knot of cables in one hand, still fumbling in the wall with the other, and only looked up at Scout when she still hadn’t taken what was offered.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Liv said.
“There could be live wires in there,” Scout said.
“I assure you the power is still out,” Liv said, but Scout refused to move. Liv sighed, taking her free hand out of the wall and leaning dangerously far out of her hover chair to extend it toward the dogs. Girl rushed eagerly forward to lick at her fingers. Shadow was more skittish but in the end also touched his nose to the strange hand, then wagged his tail.
“That’s not good enough for me,” Scout said.
“If I don’t fix this, we’ll likely asphyxiate. Is that good enough for you?” Liv was getting testy.
“No,” Scout said, lifting her chin. “I only have your word that we’re even in danger here.”
“Well, help or leave then.”
“I’ll do as I like.”
“Stars save me from moody teens,” Liv grumbled, balancing the knot of cables under one elbow so she could reach both hands inside the wall. She couldn’t get in as far as she needed to and tried tucking the knot closer to her armpit. Still she strained to reach whatever it was she needed.
Scout gave in with a sigh, gently extracting the knot of cables from under Liv’s arm and holding it up as Liv traced the cables back into the wall.
A moment later she sat back with another sigh of relief that made chills run up Scout’s spine at the thought of whatever unknown danger they had just avoided.
“No lights,” Scout said.
“Flip the switch,” Liv said, waving a hand toward the other end of the room. Scout found the switch; being the master switch, it was quite obvious. As soon as she pushed it into the up position, the lights flickered back on and the tiny space was filled with the sound of wind. Scout looked up at a massive fan overhead, pulling in air from the surface. It must be nighttime out there; the wind on her face was briskly cold.
“You’re going to explain now,” Scout said, half shouting to be heard over the fan.
“Yes, but not here. And not in that hangar either. Let’s get back to the kitchen; I’m starving.”
Scout wanted to argue but Liv was already moving away, her hover chair floating noiselessly over the thick dust. The dogs trotted after her, Scout reluctantly bringing up the rear.
“Shouldn’t we guard that?” Scout asked as she walked. “What’s to stop her from just doing it again?”
“I put in a few traps of my own,” Liv said. “Clementine may be clever, but not as clever as I am. I taught her everything she knows, not everything I know.”
“Wait—taught her?” Scout repeated, but Liv nudged her hover chair up to a higher speed and she and the dogs had to jog to keep up.
The maintenance door was nearly too narrow for Liv to get her chair through. The widest part of the egg-shaped chair got jammed briefly, but she powered through. The metal of the doorframe scraped against the chrome side of the chair, shrieking in a way that made Scout’s teeth hurt. She shone her light around the hangar behind them, worried the sound would draw Clementine out, but there was no sign of anyone.
She went through the doorway with the dogs and followed Liv back to the common room. Liv guided her chair around the pool of Viola’s and Warrior’s intermingled blood even though she wasn’t about to come in contact with it, hovering as she was. A gesture of respect, perhaps, Scout thought.
“Is there anything to eat that isn’t contaminated?” Liv asked, looking at the shattered remains of the biscuits and crackers strewn across the floor. Scout couldn’t remember what had knocked the tray off the table, Viola’s seizures or Clementine’s kicking feet.
“MREs,” Scout said. “I’ll grab you a couple. Any preference?”
“Not at all,” Liv said with another humorless laugh. “Never could tell one from the other anyway.”
Scout went into the pantry and gathered an assortment: two dinners for each of them plus another two for the dogs. Then she grabbed a couple bottles of jolo and went back out to the common room.
“Maybe we’d be safer in the kitchen?” she said. She wasn’t sure if that was true, but she didn’t savor the idea of sitting down to eat in a room cluttered with dead bodies, one of whom had been her friend, if only for a few days.
“If she’s going to get us, she’s going to get us. I’m done hiding,” Liv said, but she guided her chair into the kitchen to park it at one end of the chopping block. Scout debated for a moment but then carried the food over to Liv without shutting the hatch. Being able to see felt like the safer bet.
Liv was holding out her hands for her share of the food. She took the two meals without comment but smirked as Scout handed her one of the bottles of jolo. “I haven’t had this since I was a kid.”
“Right now it’s safer than the tea or coffee,” Scout said, opening her own bottle. “I don’t know how much has been poisoned or contaminated. Could be the leaves and beans, or the samovars, or the cups—”
“Or the water,” Liv added, raising an eyebrow suggestively. She popped open her own bottle and took a long swallow. She grimaced. “I never liked it much as a kid. Always preferred the fizzy lemon drink. Do they still make that?”
“I don’t know what that would be. Do you want me to look? Everything here is so old, I bet she has a few bottles,” Scout offered.
“This will be fine for now,” Liv said, activating the heating element on the first of her two meals. Scout handed her one of the titanium sporks she had found in the kitchen.
Scout opened two of the meals and served them to the dogs at room temperature. Then she warmed one of her meals, opened it up, and sporked some in her mouth without looking at the label. Liv wasn’t wrong.
Girl paused in her eating, ears alert as she looked back towards the bathroom. Shadow looked up as well. Scout paused in her chewing, trying to hear what they were listening for. But they both went back to eating without so much as growling. Scout rose up from her chair, leaning over the table to look down towards the bathrooms.
“She’s not coming. Not yet,” Liv said.
“How can you be so sure?” Scout asked. “Because you ‘know her’?”
“Yes,” Liv said. She finished off her jolo in one long chug, then sat holding the bottle in her hands as if it were a fragile treasure. The sugar and caffeine that always made Scout’s brain sing seemed to just make Liv melancholy. “She’s going to come for me soon, but not just yet. And when she does, she will kill me.”
“You say that like you have no intention of fighting her,” Scout said.
“I don’t. Aside from just being generally useless, I’m done.
”
“Done fighting?”
“Done with living. But yes, that too.”
“This wasn’t your attitude a few hours ago,” Scout said. “What changed?”
“Nothing. Everything. I don’t know.” She set the bottle aside and buried her face in her hands briefly. But she wasn’t weeping, just waiting. At last she sat back, rubbed the back of one hand across her brow, and reached for her second meal. “I wasn’t injured in the war, you know.”
“No?” Scout said. She hadn’t given it any thought one way or the other.
“No, I was paralyzed in an accident, when I was a kid. My parents had enrolled me in the exchange program. I was all set to go up into space, to train at working in free fall. Not everyone who went up there was allowed to stay, but I was prepared to work twice as hard. I wanted it so badly. But then the war broke out, and all of those programs were canceled.”
“Ebba said after the war the Space Farers took up all the wounded. Couldn’t you have gone up then?”
“By then it was already too late for me. I was tainted.”
“Tainted?”
Liv took a deep breath. “I’m a spy. From the outbreak of the war. I was just seventeen, I had lost the opportunity of a lifetime and was quite despondent. Then a Space Farer approached me with an offer. If I enlisted early, got into communications, and passed key intel on to them, I would earn the right to live in space. Fool that I was, I leapt at the chance.”
“You accused my parents of being spies,” Scout said.
“I think they were. I don’t know for sure; I never met another Planet Dweller spy or had direct knowledge of one, but I knew there were others working in secret alongside me. I’m certain there were. But if they’re dead, it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?”
Scout said nothing. The melancholy, the regret dripping from Liv’s every word was disturbing to her. Where was the cool manipulator now?
