This Splintered Silence

by Kayla Olson

  My sight catches on Akello Regulus, whose eyes are locked on me. I blink, look away, pretend I haven’t seen him staring, that it hasn’t unnerved me.

  He knows. We aren’t being truthful, and he knows.

  He steps forward in line, nods at Zesi, presses his thumb to the tablet. When he’s completed the check-in, he once again turns toward the balcony, our balcony, and fixes his eyes on mine. I don’t look away this time, and neither does he. He holds my stare for a second too long before slipping out of the room.

  I don’t know why he’s chosen to keep quiet.

  All that matters is that he stays that way.

  12

  SHADOWS AND SUN

  “THIS ISN’T GOING to work for long,” Haven says as soon as it’s just us. We’re alone in the corridor now, behind closed balcony doors. “Did you see Akello? Did you see how he was looking at us?”

  He was looking at me, not us, but I’m not in the mood to split hairs. “I saw it.”

  “What if he starts talking? Asking questions? What if he knocks on Mila’s door, goes to check on her?” She glances over her shoulder, makes sure no one’s there to overhear us. “I’m going to look like a liar, Lindley. We all are. They’re going to hate us.”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose, will the headache away. “They won’t all hate us,” I say. “Some of them will get it. Some will understand.”

  “Keep telling yourself that,” Haven says.

  We’re long past the days of tiptoeing around each other’s feelings. It isn’t often we agree, and I think she sometimes pushes back just for the sake of being contrary. I know I do that, anyway, to her. Occasionally. She can be a thorn in my side, the shadow to my sun, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. We’re better for it.

  “Hey,” she says when I don’t answer. “Hey—you doing okay?”

  I’m not, but it isn’t like anyone’s going to benefit from knowing I’m depleted. “It’s just a lot, you know?” A station to run. All the death, all the grief. Stepping into this role ten years too early under all the wrong circumstances.

  “I’ll help however I can, you know that, right?”

  I cut my eyes at her—my eyes are too sharp, and I know it, but I don’t let them soften. “It’s not like I can’t handle it, Haven.”

  “Did I say you couldn’t handle it? No. No, I did not.” She makes a show of rolling her eyes. “It’s just a lot to handle, that’s all. And I’m here if you need me.”

  “You’re doing a good job,” I say, thank you in disguise. “Now I should probably go do mine.”

  Natalin is pacing around inside the refrigerator room when I arrive for our meeting, as if I’m late. I’m early, for the record. For once.

  “We’re low on pro-packs,” she says before I can even say hello. “Not critically low, not yet, but if we don’t get another shipment within the next seven or eight days, it isn’t going to be pretty. We have to have protein, Lindley, we need—”

  “I know.” I raise a hand, cut her off. “I know. Let me think.”

  The hum of the refrigerator room is loud in our silence. I scan the shelves; they don’t look as bad as I expected, actually. “We have a lot of VPs, it looks like?” I make my voice bright, as if VPs aren’t the absolute worst. The vege-packs are no one’s favorites—we prefer our celery and spinach in the context of meat stew or chicken soup, not plain. Green things must taste better on Earth. “And we have loads of rice and pasta, right? And potatoes?”

  “Good luck getting everyone to actually eat the VPs,” she says. “The rice and pasta are good options, you’re right, but they could cause more problems—we’re on our last backup water filter, and there’s only so much water to begin with. We can’t cook as much rice or pasta as we’d need, because we’d be maxing out our filters and draining our drinking supply.”

  She’s obviously put a lot of thought into this—and she’s the expert, not me. “You’re basing the math on our current number, right? Not the original population?”

  Natalin’s jaw twitches. “Do I look like an idiot to you? You honestly think I wouldn’t have considered that?”

  I shrug. “Had to ask.”

  “You didn’t have to ask. I don’t make mistakes like that.”

  “None of us are above making mistakes,” I say. “I was just hoping for an easy solution.”

  “If there were an easy solution, we wouldn’t be having this meeting.” She picks up pacing where she left off, from the VP shelf to the dry grains shelf and back again.

  “Listen, Nat, we’re on the same side here.” I try to meet her eyes, but she deftly avoids me. “I’m here to help, okay? Don’t treat me like this is my fault—”

  She turns to face me, and her glare is a force. “So whose is it? Mine?”

  “I didn’t say that. And that isn’t what I think, either.” I grit my teeth, try to summon my mother’s patience so I don’t make things worse. Because seriously?

  “They’re going to say it’s my fault,” she says. “When they’re starving and thirsty, they’re going to blame me, right? We have to fix this.”

  “So let’s fix it. Let’s focus on what we can do about it, okay?” I’m talking to myself as much as I am to her—there’s a fine line between handling things and spiraling into panic, and I’m doing all I can to stay on the calm side of that line. “We have plenty of VPs to last us. If they starve because they won’t eat them, that’s on them, not you.”

  Reluctantly, she joins me at the shelf. We stare at the pouches, their slick SpaceLove logos and glossed-out vegetable artwork. “What if they won’t send another shipment? They’ve already skipped one, and look where we are.”

  There it is, the real problem. I’d be lying if I said the same thought hadn’t crossed my mind—right before I shoved it into a drawer and locked it inside. “They know we need food, Nat, and I’ll put in a call for extra measure. They’re not just going to leave us up here to starve.”

  “But what if they do?”

  I try not to let it show that I’m every bit as unnerved by this as she is—one of us needs to act calm, right? Even if it’s the furthest thing from what we feel? We usually get a shipment every fourth week, but we’re closing in on seven weeks since the last one—our rations have stretched this long only because we’re smaller now by half.

  “They didn’t cancel the last delivery forever,” I say. “They just postponed it until we were all in the clear.” It’s my best effort at encouragement, and it falls admittedly flat.

  “But we’re not in the clear,” she says. “You really think they’re going to risk a delivery when they find out the virus has mutated? That it killed Mila? We could send a new strain straight back to Earth.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, try not to let her fear get under my skin, where it will only stir up my own. “Let’s just focus on what we can control, okay? We have enough food to last seven or eight days, longer if they’ll eat the VPs, even longer if we ration those.” I think, do a couple of quick calculations in my head. “Sit with the numbers this afternoon and figure out a way to make them stretch—take body weight and muscle mass into consideration. Age, too. We’ll give new guidelines first thing tomorrow.” I have no idea how much these will actually help, but Natalin seems to be turning things over in her head, so I guess I at least sound like I know what I’m talking about.

  “They’re not going to like this.”

  “Pretty sure they’d like starving even less.” I crack open the door, feel the warm air rush in. “All we can do is our best.”

  13

  ORIGAMI

  I SLIP UP to Control, find it deserted and dead silent. It isn’t unusual to find Zesi tinkering up here with our systems—it’s become his safe place, where he can lose himself in tech and forget about flesh and blood for a bit. Many of our people do the same, I’m noticing, only it takes different forms: they read, they run, they party more than they used to, they do flight sims until it makes them dizzy or sick. I hear rumors of hookups.
Rumors of theft. Rumors of words that cut like knives, rumors of nightmares. Everyone wants an escape from reality, but there’s nowhere to go, so people end up folding in on themselves like origami, flightless paper cranes.

  It’s my job to smooth over the resulting paper cuts—never mind that I’m still healing, too.

  I settle onto the rolling stool, its unforgiving metal cool even through the thick fabric of my pants. I’m not nearly as familiar with the control board as Zesi is, but the message-system panel is pretty easy to pick out amid the various knobs and dials. No one ever got the chance to train me on this, but how hard can it be? Two seconds of poking around pulls up a directory—I tap Nashville, where our Earth-based team is planted, then connect.

  And then I wait.

  And wait.

  Having never put a call through to anyplace other than inside our own walls—let alone all the way to Earth—it’s entirely possible I simply need to be patient. We’re far out, very far out, and perhaps fifty unanswered rings is only half as many as it takes?

  By the hundredth ring, I cut the call short.

  This doesn’t feel right. This is unsettling.

  A chill spreads over me as I realize: not only is there no answer, but there are no missed calls in our log, either. According to the history of my entire life—the faithfully recurring calls my mother took every first day of the month, for every month in the station’s entire existence—they should’ve attempted to get in touch a few days ago, at the very least.

  Not that anyone would’ve been around to answer. Zesi spent that day down in the crematory. Just in case, I tap out a text: You haven’t picked up any calls from Nashville recently, have you? The log is likely confirmation enough—it would be listed here if Zesi had picked up a call—but maybe I’m missing something. Maybe it’s possible for things to slip through the cracks.

  He replies almost immediately, a simple no, ellipsis, that somehow makes me feel even worse than before.

  The virus was swift; the virus was deadly.

  The virus came from Earth, Dr. Safran theorized. From our supply delivery pilot.

  If it caught Nashville off guard like it did with us—

  If it spread like wildfire—

  If we are more alone out here than any of us realized—

  If, if, if.

  I’ll try again in the morning, I resolve. Perhaps their comm lines are simply unmanned, like ours have been while we’ve dealt with all the death. Perhaps tomorrow will be better.

  Perhaps.

  14

  LIKE FOREVER, ONLY NEVER AGAIN

  ALL I WANT is a single day where I can walk to my cabin in peace. One day where I don’t feel pressured to stand up straight, keep my shoulders back. A day where I can slow down. Smile. Answer their questions instead of doing that thing I do, the eyes-trained-straight-ahead, on-a-mission, don’t-have-time-to-hear-you thing I’ve developed as of late.

  Today is not that day.

  I feel their eyes on me. Hear their questions bubble up, then evaporate, as I walk past without so much as a glance.

  If there’s anything I’m learning, it’s this: when there is no peace, when there is no silence, you simply have to carve some out. You have to, or you’ll crumble.

  As soon as I’m inside my cabin, doors closed, alone, it’s like the weight of the universe falls off my shoulders. It’s like I’m myself again, the Lindley I used to be before I started trying to be everything to everyone. I’d spend whole hours near the fireplace, the blaze swiped up to the perfect heat, sketching while curled up in my mother’s soft leather chair. The chair was one of her two luxury items from Earth, inherited from her great-grandfather. I’ve taken to sleeping in it every night. Makes me feel like I still have family.

  It isn’t the same. Even when I swipe the blaze up as high as it will go, I’m always cold. Now when I sit, I spend my time untangling the station’s problems until I’m so exhausted I succumb to an hour or two of restless sleep.

  I don’t sit there now. I stay right where I am, back pressed up against the inside of my front door, and sit down on the cold concrete floor. Lean my head against the smooth steel, close my eyes. Breathe.

  My head pounds. I do my best to turn off my worry—about Mila, about Yuki and Grace, about the look Akello gave me, about Natalin and the food, about the unanswered call I just attempted to put through and what it might mean, about all the questions I probably should have answered on my walk home. I try to tune it all out, just for a few minutes, focus on my own thoughts. But where a swarm of inspiration and hope used to be, now all I hear is the swish of rushing blood.

  None of this was ever in the plan. Life has flipped so drastically as of late that it’s hard to even remember what it was like before—it’s as if the past and the present have been equally eclipsed by the blinding need to . . . not die. Does everyone feel this way? Or do I simply feel consumed by it because it’s on me to keep everyone alive and not just myself?

  The six of us asked for this by stepping up, I realize this. We were the obvious choice to do it—we are the oldest and the most experienced, the ones who took apprenticeships and inherited all the codes—but still. None of that makes anything easier.

  Beyond the life and death at stake in our present situation, I feel a subtle pressure to be flawless in how I handle things. If I ever want a real shot at my dreams—for the space program to take me seriously as a contender for commander, especially since the need for a replacement came years sooner than it should have—I absolutely cannot screw this up.

  Assuming the space program hasn’t been completely obliterated by the virus, that is.

  Assuming the virus has left anyone alive to care.

  I’m getting a call on my buzz screen—it’s Natalin. The part of myself I’ll never be able to turn off, the curiosity, it nags at me to answer. I don’t, though. I’m sort of dreading our next conversation, am not exactly eager to tell her how no one picked up when I attempted to reach out. She’s verging on panic as it is. And besides: rest is important, my mother always used to say, and as our former commander she knew that better than anyone. She made it a priority to tune out, to spend time with me no matter how busy she was with station demands. Whatever Natalin needs, it can wait ten minutes.

  I hope.

  So I sit. Rest. Try to summon the calm my mother was known for.

  I still think of this cabin suite as ours. Mom’s and mine. It’s the largest residential space on the station by far, and every inch of it was full of us. Now, though, it’s just me living alone with the larger-than-life memory of her, a lingering presence that feels thicker by the day. Her earrings, still in the silver dish beside her bed. Her favorite blanket, still sprawled out and waiting for her to return to it. Her stash of dark chocolate and exquisite coffee, the secret privilege of her position: in her monthly updates to Shapiro, based down in Nashville, she’d occasionally mention she missed certain things, only to find them hidden in the next SpaceLove delivery, tucked discreetly between pro-packs. I haven’t touched her secret stash, not yet, though I am desperately tempted.

  Another call buzzes in, Heath this time. This one is even harder to resist—what if he found Yuki and Grace? What if he found them the same way we found Mila? That thought alone is enough to help me ignore the call. I don’t want to know, not yet. Not ever, really. I don’t want to know if he’s found them dead.

  What would my mother do? For all her training, for all her years of experience, she never had to deal with anything even close to this. She was always prepared, never surprised. I feel like the opposite: constantly surprised, not nearly prepared enough.

  One thing I know for sure, though, is that she had the strongest mind on the station, maybe even the strongest mind out of everyone stationed on Earth and at the Radix terraforming site. Not only in terms of intelligence, either—strong in terms of never bending once she’d set her mind to something.

  That’s how I’m trying to be now. I may not be prepared, and I may not
have her brilliance, and the challenges I face may end up eating me alive—if the mutated virus doesn’t devour me first—but one thing I’m trying out is her resolve: believing I can do this, as strongly as she would have.

  Believing the station won’t die out under my command.

  Believing I won’t be crushed under the pressure of it.

  A third call comes in, the third in ten minutes. This can’t be good. Either they’re all calling about the same huge thing, or they’re calling about three separate problems. Not ideal either way. It’s Leo—I never ignore Leo, and I’m not about to start now.

  Break over.

  “What’s happening?” I say, rising to my feet.

  “Heath and Zesi did another scan on Grace and Yuki, to see if they’d used their prints to access any of the common rooms—Grace’s prints came up at the rec center. Natatorium, specifically.”

  What a relief. Assuming they went to the pool together, Grace could have opened the door for both herself and Yuki. “Timestamp?” I ask.

  “Four minutes before Haven announced the mandatory check-in,” he says.

  “They wouldn’t have heard it in the pool,” we both say at the same time.

  “Great work,” I say. “You going down there now?”

  I hear him exhale, low and slow. “Heath already went—didn’t find them,” he says. “But what he did find is concerning: tiny drops of blood on the tile near the pool’s ladder.”

  My hope plummets. “You’re sure it isn’t old? Did we clean down there after Katri’s mother . . . when she . . .”

  “It’s fresh,” he says. “And yeah, Fitch and Pava volunteered to help Zesi and me scrub it a couple of weeks ago.”

  Right. I remember now. Fitch and Pava and Katri are close like I am with Leo and Haven and Heath, the two-years-younger version of our tight-knit group. Katri loved the pool like her mother did, and they wanted it spotless for her. As if she’d ever go down there again, with the memory of her mother fresh on her mind.