by Kayla Olson
DEDICATION
In memory of my sweet Nana,
one of the most brilliant stars to ever grace a sky
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
1. Fireflies
2. Starless
3. Bloodbubbles
4. Wobble, Squeak
5. Fire and the Sea
6. Eternal Light, Eternal Night
7. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
8. Again with the Losing
9. Solar Flare
10. Cracking Open the Universe
11. Heartbeaten
12. Shadows and Sun
13. Origami
14. Like Forever, Only Never Again
15. Blink to Black
16. To Shatter, to Splatter
17. Haze and Fuzz
18. Turn Up the Blaze
19. Like a Falling Star
20. Alonely
21. It’s Only the Weight of the World
22. There Is No Away
23. Stardust
24. A Gash in the Galaxy
25. Throne of Chains
26. Rock to a Storm to an Ocean
27. Drowning in an Hourglass of Sand
28. Flocks of Flies
29. Fractal
30. 129,600 Seconds
31. Peace in Pieces
32. The Light That Blinds
33. Shade and Shadow
34. Zombie Stars
35. Secret Secrets
36. Break
37. Unsettle, Uproot
38. Girl Against Time
39. Unravel
40. Exceptions
41. From Endless Night
42. Knots
43. Incendiary
44. When in Darkness, Strike a Match
45. Spitfire
46. Q
47. Toxin
48. Feed and Fire
49. Catwalk, Tightrope
50. Living in Nightmares
51. A Sea of Thorns and Glass
52. Half-glow
53. White-Hot Black Hole
54. Seven and Counting
55. Message from the Dead and Dying
56. Fear Is a Pile of Feathers
57. Shade Upon Shadow
58. Fusion
59. Like Wishes on the Verge of Burning Out
60. Skeleton Sphere
61. Pandora
62. Made of Splinters
63. The Lies That Blind
64. Heart, Petrified
65. Eclipse
66. Beginnings
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Kayla Olson
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
FIREFLIES
I FIND MY mother in the shadows—like the shell of a hollow moon, on the verge of crumbling to dust. Like I might not make it in time even though she’s a mere twenty feet away.
“Hello?” My voice bounces from the steel-gray walls, from the shale-slab tile, from the panorama of glass that separates the inside of our station from the glittering ocean of stars. “Mom?”
If she hears me, she doesn’t show it.
She’s curled on her side on the floor, her back to me, her small frame barely moving. Still breathing—technically. I rush to kneel beside her and am relieved to see her eyes wide open, taking in the view. It is less of a relief to see the spattering of blood nearby, fresh ruby droplets smaller than strawberry seeds.
“Mom?” I sweep a thick wave of hair away from her face, tuck it behind her ear. “It’s me, Lindley. Mom, can you hear me?”
Her eyelashes flutter, not quite a blink, but it’s something. My heart climbs into my throat—I wish she’d look at me. “LeeLee,” she says, her voice hoarse from all the coughing she’s done today. “Fireflies, so many . . . pass me the jar?”
I blink until my eyes clear. She’s speaking total nonsense, which is more frightening than I’m ready to admit. I’ve never seen her anything but composed—her mind is sharp, and it’s fast. She was an easy pick for commander of our station, according to the rest of the team. My entire life, forever, everyone has always made a point to tell me exactly how much they adore her. How brilliant she is, how incredible. How she makes it look easy to lead with such calm confidence. Not that anyone needs to tell me—I know her better than anyone. But I’ve never seen her like this, out of her mind, not even this morning. Not even an hour ago.
At least she still knows who I am.
I type out a fast text to Dr. Safran, emergency and observation deck 12 starboard and my mother.
There are no fireflies here on the station, of course, let alone an entire jar full of them; she must be digging far back into her past, to all the years she spent on Earth. I can’t even begin to count the number of times she’s told me the story of that hot summer night when she was just six years old: how she and her father had set off for one of their evening walks, through the thick forest behind her childhood home. How they’d stumbled upon hundreds of swarming fireflies—thousands, maybe—and she caught enough in her jar to light their path. The sky outside our station window reminded her of that night, she loved to tell me. Stars like fireflies: they reminded her of him.
My buzz screen vibrates, and I glance at the message—Dr. Safran is on his way.
When I look up again, time tilts on its axis. I suck in a breath so sharp I’m surprised I’m not bleeding.
Her eyes are closed.
She is still, too still in every way.
My hands shake, badly, so much so that my buzz screen nearly shatters on the tile.
I squeeze my eyes shut—I can’t bear to look, but I can’t bear to leave. LeeLee, her voice echoes in my head. Her voice that I’ll never hear again, ever. LeeLee, LeeLee. What I wouldn’t give to hear, one last time, about trees taller than giants and the smell of fresh rain and the way her father’s eyes crinkled when he smiled and the thousand thousand fireflies bright enough to light up the night.
I could use a jar of my own right now.
But there are no fireflies here, and no one left but me who remembers the story.
No him. No her.
Just me.
2
STARLESS
MY MOTHER ONCE told me—before she died, before her colleagues died, before everyone who wasn’t born here on the station died—that each soul is tied to a star, a trail of stardust the tether. As long as the sky is full of stars, and as long as there are people alive to see it, there is hope.
She was the first to flicker, fade, blink to utter blackness.
She never saw the sky after the disease left its mark on us.
One hundred stars have gone out in the past six weeks, extinguished and smothered and choked and simply—whoosh—blown out—by the CRW-0001 pathogen. One hundred out of the one hundred who were sent here eighteen years ago. One hundred percent.
We are parentless. Mentorless. Medicless. Chefless. Commanderless. Less and less and less. It’s been five days since the last of them passed: five days of embers and ashes and choking down the stench of death, and our grief, so we don’t fall apart. Five days spent picking up the pieces of all the broken everything. All the broken everyone.
Before he passed—three weeks, two days, two hours, and fifty-six minutes ago—Dr. Safran, head medic and my mentor for the last three years, concluded definitively that only those who’d spent significant time on Earth were susceptible to CRW-0001. They’re the only ones who coughed up blood. The only ones whose lungs shriveled, whose breaths became forced and far between. Their words sounded like whispers pricked with a thousand splinters as they fought, hard, just to be heard.
Until the silence took over and, one by one, the stars went out.
In my not-so-expert opinion, I believe in Dr. Safran’s theory. I don’t know what dirt feels like, not on Earth, not on any planet. None of us do, none of us who are left. All the air we’ve ever breathed has been recycled for nearly two decades inside these thick walls, steel and Plexiglas—we are a tiny dot stationed amid an extraordinary universe. Not one of us, the second generation, has coughed up a single drop of blood. We are louder than ever, now that no one tells us not to be.
We are also quieter than ever. One hundred percent of us have lost someone who meant the entire universe.
And in the midst of the losing, there are six of us who’ve stepped up. We’ve never led before, don’t really know how to lead, but there is a need. So here we are, the six of us fumbling our way through a world that just became one hundred stars darker.
At least there are five billion trillion stars left.
Five billion trillion stars, though, are not enough light to show me this: Why is Mila Harper, age sixteen, lying dead on the cold, cold floor of the observation deck?
3
BLOODBUBBLES
I KNOW A lot of things about a lot of things.
I know about supernovas, black holes.
I know there are stars that radiate green light but appear white, true colors hidden until untangled by a prism.
I know people are the same way.
I’ve only ever known Mila Harper from a distance. She’s the sort of girl who’s had the same haircut all her life, shiny brown and sleek angles, the long parts in the front constantly falling down over her eyes. I’ve watched her tuck her hair behind her ears every day since she learned to read, more than a decade ago. She reads all the time, curled up in the corner of the sky lounge, one floor below this very starboard-side observation deck, always with a steaming tumbler of tea.
Correction. She read all the time.
Now Mila’s reader sits, dead, on the floor, a crack spiderwebbing across its face. It’s dotted with bloodbubbles.
Of all the things I know, bloodbubbles are only a recently developed area of my expertise. In the past six—almost seven—weeks since I found my mother, I’ve seen bloodbubbles on everything from butcher knives to medic-ward gowns to control panels on the commander’s deck. Every day, every death.
But never from any second generation–born. Never, until now.
“Lindley?”
I look up, find Leo staring at me with those intense, unreadable eyes of his. I know for a fact he finds me equally unreadable.
“The body? What did you want to do with it?”
He looks so much like his parents in this moment it’s unnerving. Deep bronze skin, and his eyes—his mother’s eyes, keen and bright—and his father’s steady, stoic demeanor. They were my mother’s closest friends.
Of the six of us who’ve stepped up to lead, Leo and I are the roots. Tangled roots, seeds sown in the same hole by so-close parents who wanted their kids to be every bit as close. Pluck either of us up, the other would die. Leave us as we are and we might die anyway, each choking the other out. Not always on purpose.
“Don’t move her yet,” I say. I feel Leo’s eyes on me, wanting more—as if I have more to give. Everyone wants so much from me now. I don’t blame them, honestly. I only wish my anatomy came pre-equipped with an organ to sift through all the conflicting signals sent from my head, my heart, my gut. One that was never wrong. One that never needed sleep.
Now is the time where Dr. Safran would step in. It’s hard to believe I’d never seen an autopsy performed before six weeks ago. I’d seen surgery before—I’ve done surgery before—delicate blades and steady hands and precision, precision, precision. Autopsies aren’t so delicate. I’ve seen eight now. Eight, before the need to identify the virus was eclipsed by the need to contain it. If only it had been containable.
Something feels off, I’m not sure what. Mila came up to the observation deck on occasion, but I didn’t think it was an everyday habit of hers. Maybe it’s that she’s in sleeping clothes, that it’s three in the morning. Of course, all of us mourn in different ways.
“Do you have your imager?” I ask, and it’s out of Leo’s hip pocket almost as soon as I’ve asked. “Snap as many photos as you can.”
My brain is running on fumes. When I look at the scene after a solid stretch of sleep, I’ll see things more clearly. My filters—emotional, rational—are maxed out right now: CRW-0001 wiped out one hundred out of one hundred in just under two months.
Eighty-five of us were left. Now there are eighty-four.
Maybe Dr. Safran was wrong; maybe the virus latched on to all of us—maybe it is simply smothering the second generation more slowly.
Or maybe it’s mutated.
4
WOBBLE, SQUEAK
OUR GURNEY LOOKS nothing like it did at the start of all this.
We did away with the sheets weeks ago, when stubborn stains settled in for the long haul. A deep dent mars one end of the bed, a scar left over from those first days when we still believed the virus could be stopped by an urgent, slam-into-whatever-necessary trip to Medical. Also, one of the wheels squeaks. Another wobbles.
Leo and Heath spread Mila’s body onto the bare metal bed, cold against cold. Wobble, squeak, wobble, squeak. It never gets any easier to walk with the dead.
I hope the wheels don’t wake anyone. No one needs to see Mila like this, for one. Mostly, I want to keep this quiet as long as I can—people are going to panic.
There’s no one I trust more than Leo and Heath, except maybe Heath’s sister, Haven. What Leo and I are to each other, seeds in a hole, we are as a group. Living here, there’s nowhere to hide when you don’t want to see someone. We know—we’ve tried. We’ve torn at each other, torn from each other, more times than I can count. We’ve said things we don’t mean, and worse, things we do. In the end, we always settle back together. It’s made us strong.
Zesi, Natalin, and Haven wait for us in Medical. It doesn’t look right, seeing them here, especially in sleeping clothes. I called an emergency meeting, all six of us. I didn’t say why.
I don’t have to.
Natalin springs to her feet. “Is that—no.” Tears well up in her eyes, spill out.
She and Mila were close.
“You said we were immune, Lindley.” Haven turns her face away, wavy blonde hair falling over her eyes like a curtain. The sight of blood spins her stomach. “You said we were safe!”
I did say those things. I said them loud and clear, at a station-wide assembly we called last week. People believe me when I speak, they always have. You have one of those faces people implicitly trust, Leo told me, when the six of us were settling into our roles. You’re the one to lead us. I didn’t argue, and neither did anyone else, because it’s true.
“She’s doing her best,” Heath says, always the first to my defense, unfailingly, for better or worse, often at the expense of his own sister. “Let’s not start blaming—”
“I’m not blaming,” Haven snaps. “I’m worried.”
“Well, get it together.” Leo now. He, more than all of us, has a way with Haven. “Worrying doesn’t change the fact that we have a situation on our hands. Linds”—he’s the only one allowed to call me that, and everyone knows it—“are there any hazmat suits that aren’t contaminated? And if the answer is no, how screwed does that leave us?”
Even if there were, there aren’t enough for all eighty-four of us who are left. We may have already contracted the pathogen, anyway. It lies low, lingers, then explodes.
Or it did. Who knows what it does now.
“We burned them all, and spaced the contaminated air tanks,” Zesi answers for me, shaking his dark, thick dreadlocks out of his eyes. “Back when we thought that would help.” Before he took over as systems tech, he spent his free time in the crematory. Brilliant mind, strong heart: he does the jobs no one else can, and the ones no one else wants.
&n
bsp; “Right,” I say. “So this is where we are.” All eyes are on me, as they so often are these days. I’m finally past the point of my mouth turning dry, finally past nerves that shake my voice—finally mustering a fraction of the composure my mother had when addressing her crew. “It doesn’t matter if it mutated, or if we made the wrong assumptions about the original strand. Mila is dead—any of us could also already be carriers. We aren’t necessarily screwed without hazmats, Leo. The scrubbers used them at first, but if you remember, Dr. Safran suspected the suits actually made their symptoms worse.”
Five scrubbers in five pristine suits. All dead within the first two days. This is where our theory of lie low, linger, explode originated—Dr. Safran believed the pathogen invaded days, even weeks, earlier than symptoms began to manifest. Turns out our most recent supply delivery pilot, based down in the States, was infected when he came aboard. Nothing happened for a while, but when it did, it was too late. The hazmats were supposed to keep contaminated air out and clean air in. Instead, the scrubbers ended up dying inside their own personal gas chamber suits, more and more pathogens concentrated in the air as it recycled itself. The insides of the face pieces were worse than anything, Zesi told me. Bloodbubbles everywhere.
“You thinking we should put her on ice or fire?” Heath asks. His piercing gray eyes are still so bright, so alive in the face of death after death. It’s easier to turn a blind eye, some days, pretend away the pain so it won’t feel so raw. For me, anyway. For Leo, too. Heath’s not like us, though. Heath stares at the sun, eyes wide open, daring it to burn him.
“Fire,” I say, mostly because I’m pretty sure it’s what Dr. Safran would do if he were here. I wish he were here. “I’m almost positive the mutation’s already started spreading, but if I’m wrong, we should wipe it out in the crematory, destroy all traces of it. Just in case.” I pause, think. “I could do a full autopsy—”
Haven scoffs. “Right, because you’ve had so much experience with those?”
I shoot her a look, although she makes a good point. I could make the cuts, sure, but I’m not experienced enough to really know my way around. My skills are serviceable, if that. “I could do a full autopsy—but—in the interest of limiting my exposure and everyone else’s, I think the best way to go is to stick to blood analysis. Natalin, I’m going to get on that first thing, so our meeting needs to wait until midafternoon at the earliest.”
