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Chapter 27
Zach Croft: 2053
“Zach? Are you there?” a voice said on the radio.
Zach shot a surprised look at Ryker. In a hushed voice, he asked, “Is that Carver?” as if confirming that Ryker had heard what he heard.
Ryker’s lip curled. “Find out where he is.”
Zach nodded, then spoke into the radio. “Yes. Carver. Carver, I’m here.” Zach closed the door to stop anyone from hearing him. “Where are you?”
Another voice echoed behind him. Rhea, possibly? It sounded like her. Whoever it was, Carver quickly brushed her off and continued with Zach. “I want to talk.”
“So, talk.”
“In person.”
Zach glanced at Ryker, whose eyes grew large at Carver’s request. He shook his head as if to say, “Don’t.”
Zach thought for a moment, then responded to Carver. “Where?”
“Main loading bay. Ten minutes.”
Before Zach could respond, the line went dead.
Ryker threw up his hands in frustration. “Are you nuts? Do you really think he just wants to talk? I almost blew his brains out! He’s not gonna just let that go.”
“What else can we do? Avoid him forever?”
“No. We can fucking kill him like we should have the first time.”
“Everyone on the Gateway thinks he’s a goddamn hero. He saved their lives. Nobody knows what he did to you, or to my dad, or to Prescott.”
Ryker raised his eyebrows. “So, we’ll tell them.”
“Nobody’s going to care! It’s all ancient history to them. We kill Carver, and they launch us out of the airlock.”
Ryker growled in frustration, then kicked the heel of his boot against a cabinet.
“Look,” Zach continued, tempering his frustration, “last time, I wanted to talk to him, and you shoved a gun in his mouth. How about we try it my way this time?”
Ryker sighed. “Fine.” He stood up and strode to the door. “But I’m coming with you.”
Zach entered the loading bay with grim determination as Ryker lingered in the hall, just out of sight.
The bay was a cavernous space with multi-story racks of giant wooden crates and massive shipping containers. Varying sizes of forklifts were parked in neat rows along the sides, along with several loading cranes. An enormous airlock designed to accommodate supply ships from Earth dominated the space-side wall.
In the center of the room, Carver sat at a table waiting for Zach. He straightened his back as Zach entered. “I wasn’t sure you’d show up,” he said. “How are you?”
Zach approached the table warily. “A little tired.”
“Well, please. Take a seat. Let’s talk.” Carver gestured to the seat across from him.
Zach claimed his chair at the table but kept one leg hanging off to provide quick means of escape if needed. “Start talking.”
Carver pressed his lips together with a ghost of a smile. “You probably don’t want to be talking to me, but hopefully, we can come to some kind of agreement here. I keep seeing myself in your shoes, you know.”
“Seems like an odd thing to do, considering.”
“Let me get right to the point.” Carver’s hand swiped at the air as if turning the page of a book. “I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. You were right about everything: the flares, how pointless rebuilding the magnetosphere was. Everything.” He shrugged, his head dipping forward a bit in resignation.
“Excuse me?” Zach said with a mixture of confusion and disbelief. In all the years Zach had known Carver, the man had never admitted to being wrong. Not once. “What?”
“I should have listened to you. You’re smart. Brilliant, actually. And I took that for granted.”
No mention of Prescott, Ryker, or Quinton thus far. Zach nodded cautiously. “I warned you. Why couldn’t you listen?”
“I believed what I wanted to believe: that I could save everyone. But I was wrong. And you were right.”
“You were wrong.”
“I should have authorized your Mars mission instead of forcing you to take it into your own hands. We’d all be toast if you hadn’t. Getting the irogen… That was a big deal. I applaud you for it.” Carver fixed the cuff of his jacket.
Zach could feel something off in Carver’s voice, the unexpected warmth of his words. Carver wasn’t one to layer on the compliments. “What do you want from me, Carver?”
Appearing a little offended, Carver coughed. “We all owe you for what you did. Truly. And I think it’s time you sit back and reap the benefits yourself. Take a breather. Stop carrying the world on your shoulders.”
“What does that mean?”
Carver leaned forward, rubbing his lip with his index finger and thumb. “The people on this vessel, they’re OSE. That means they’re my responsibility.” He leaned back in his chair and gave a slanted, satisfied smile. “You don’t have to worry about them anymore. I’ve got it.”
“I’m confused… What are you asking me to do? Stop caring about what happens to us?”
“No, of course not. I mean, you don’t need to keep trying to run the show. I’ll handle it from now on.”
Carver was sorely mistaken if he thought Zach would be content to fade into the shadows. “You want me to just sit back and do nothing?”
“Zach, I know you’re angry. But we have to put the past behind us and move on. For everyone’s sake.”
“Move on?” Zach let off a slightly hysterical laugh. “After what you did to Prescott? After you shut down the cryobay when my father told you it could cure the plague? You killed a hundred people!”
“Zach—”
“No. Don’t try to explain yourself.” Zach mimicked Carver in leaning over the table. “You tried to kill me. When I was a child. I only got home because something went wrong with your plan. So don’t pretend like you give a fuck what happens to me.”
“I never tried to kill you, Zach. But if the Red Plague had gotten loose on Earth…” He trailed off, allowing the implications of the statement to sink in. “I couldn’t let them come home.”
“So you killed a hundred sickly people? They needed your help, Carver.” Zach pressed two fists against the table, baring his teeth slightly.
“Remind me again: why were they sick?” Carver cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. Zach went quiet. “Oh, that’s right. Because you went into the crater when you were told not to. You brought back the Red Plague. You’re the reason everyone got infected.” He sneered at Zach with open disdain.”You’re up here on your high horse as if you’re any better than me when you were the reason they needed help in the first place!”
“I— I was a kid! What’s your excuse?”
“I did what I had to.” Carver folded his hands on the table, regaining his composure. “I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think it was the right thing to do under the circumstances. It was in everyone’s best interest.”
“Who are you to decide what’s in everyone’s best interest?”
“Zach,” Carver said with a knowing look. “Come on. You do the same thing, and you know it. But you don’t question the decisions you’ve personally made because you know why you made them. You chose to steal the Gateway, which nearly ended with the remainder of the human race starving to death on a cruise ship, and yet you haven’t given it a second thought. Why? Because you know, deep down, that you did it for the right reasons. And I feel the same.”
“That was different,” Zach said. “We’re different.”
“Maybe we are.” Carver nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe we’re not. But do I wish I did things differently? Absolutely not. I made the best decisions I could at the time. But that doesn’t stop me from thinking of Quinton whenever I look at you. He and I may have been at odds, but he was still my friend.”
“Some friend,” Zach sneered.
Carver’s eyes turned cold as they gazed into Zach’s. He shrugged. “Okay. I tried.” He slowly stood, taking a long, deep breath. “I wanted to give you a second chance.” He wiped his lip, pressed his eyes tightly shut, then said in a raised voice, “Rhea…”
Rhea stepped from behind one of the shipping containers, looking dazed and glassy-eyed, her mouth ajar.
“Rhea—” Zach started.
“Shut up.” She blinked a few times. “Hands on your head.”
“Rhea, you heard everything he said!”
“Be quiet. Do what I say. Now.”
Far behind Rhea, Ryker lingered in the shadows, looking concerned. Zach wondered briefly how Ryker had snuck into the room with none of them seeing. Then, he returned his attention to Rhea. “Hey, look at me.” Zach indicated his eyes. He slowly rose to his feet. “Think for a minute. What do you really know about Carver?”
Rhea unholstered a handgun, pointing it at Zach. “I’m not going to tell you again.”
“I have logs that prove all of it. Just lower the gun.”
“Hands on your head!” She primed her pistol.
Detecting a glimpse of movement behind Rhea, Zach’s eyes shifted a fraction of an inch from her face to a point over her shoulder.
Something about the slight movement of Zach’s eyes must have triggered Rhea’s military training because she spun around at the exact moment Ryker stepped from the shadows and lunged for her. He tackled her sideways, lowering his shoulder into her ribcage like a linebacker. The blow caused Rhea’s finger to twitch on the trigger. A gunshot rang out. Zach ducked out of the way. He heard the gun clatter to the floor.
Despite being nearly a foot taller than Rhea, Ryker couldn’t take her down. Instead, Rhea used Ryker’s momentum to flip him over her hip and onto his back. She delivered a punch to his jaw and a sharp knee to his ribs, then dove to where the gun fell a few feet away. Snatching the gun from the ground, she rolled, leaped to her feet, and fired at Ryker in one smooth motion. The bullet ricocheted off the floor next to his head.
Ryker scrambled behind a shipping container, out of Rhea’s line of fire. Zach, too, ran for cover, sliding behind the tread of a nearby forklift. Another gunshot echoed through the loading bay. Zach peered around the side of the forklift just in time to see Ryker race behind a shelf lined with propane tanks. Rhea fired at him as he ran.
Then, everything went white.
A series of powerful explosions erupted from the propane tanks as a stray bullet pierced one of them, setting off a chain reaction that caused them all to burst into flames. Rhea was thrown off her feet by the blast, slamming into the side of a shipping container and then slumping to the floor. She cradled her skull, eyes pressed shut in pain.
The sound of the explosion numbed Zach’s hearing, replacing it with a persistent, high-pitched whine. Flames engulfed the loading bay. Smoke began to fill Zach’s lungs. He looked up to find that the wall panels behind the propane tanks had been completely blasted away, exposing the flammable material behind them. Massive jets of flame roared from the gaps, whooshing in the air. As the fire spread behind them, more wall panels began to warp and twist in the intense heat. The wooden shipping pallets in front of the burning walls ignited, further fueling the fire. Another series of small explosions tore through the loading bay as whatever was inside the containers detonated as well.
Zach staggered to his feet, stabilizing himself with a metal shelf and wheezing in the poisonous air. Flames rolled across every surface. Burning crates lofted clouds of fire. Sparks flew from severed electrical conduits.
As he oriented himself, Zach frantically searched for Ryker but failed to locate him. Instead, he spotted Rhea stumbling across the deck toward the loading bay’s inner door. She glanced over her shoulder at the destruction she had caused.
“Rhea!” Zach called out, praying she would be decent enough to turn back and help. “Please! We need help putting this out!”
But Rhea didn’t turn back. She kept walking until she was past the inner airlock and beyond the flames’ reach. She paused for a moment, then exited the loading bay. The blast door closed behind her, the lock engaging with a solid clunk.
That bitch! Zach thought. How could she just leave them? Didn’t she realize how dangerous it was to have a fire out of control on a space station? She was jeopardizing the entire Gateway, the entire human race. No matter how selfish Zach thought she was, he never would have expected her to be so vile. She was no better than Carver.
Carver, Carver. Where was Carver? He didn’t appear to be anywhere—did that mean he’d already gotten away while Zach wasn’t looking? How?
Zach dropped his head, a loud, involuntary moan emitting from his hoarse vocal cords. Ceiling panels began to plummet to the floor around him, landing with a whoosh of raw embers.
“Zach!”
Zach turned toward the sound of the voice. Ryker reached out to him from under a pile of collapsed shelving.
“Get this off of me,” Ryker grunted as he tried to extract himself from the wreckage.
Zach rushed to him. Ryker was pinned under a fallen crossbar. Zach wrapped his arms around the rail and lifted with all his strength. It only moved a few inches, but it was enough for Ryker to slip out from under it. Ryker rolled away from the pile and climbed to his feet, hopping on one leg. “God damn it.” He tried to put his weight on his injured leg, and it held. Thankfully, it didn’t appear to be broken.
“Where is she?” Ryker growled.
“She’s gone,” Zach said. “She left us.”
“And Carver?”
“I don’t know.” Zach wiped a layer of grime from his forehead. The air was hot, full of smog. He struggled to breathe as the acrid gas filled his lungs. “We’ve got to stop this fire.”
“The sprinklers,” Ryker said. “Over here.” He limped to the far side of the loading bay, locating a red metal control box labeled FIRE SUPPRESSION. He tore the cover open, grabbed the thick handle, and yanked it down.
Zach prepared himself for a flood of water from the ceiling, a welcome relief from the boiling heat. Instead, the sprinklers sputtered, spitting out a few coughs of brownish liquid, then went dry. Ryker flipped the handle up and down. Again, the sprinklers released a quick spurt of water, then stopped.
“What’s wrong with it?” Zach shouted.
“I don’t know!” Ryker flipped the switch off and then on once again. “Come on…” Still no luck. “Fuck! It’s not working!”
Zach coughed, his lungs tearing and his throat burning as he fought to breathe in the thickening smoke. He tried to think of what to do next, but his mind was cloudy from a lack of oxygen. “Is there any other water source? A hose, or—” Another coughing fit cut off the rest of his sentence.
Ryker shook his head. “No.” He began coughing too. “Nothing.”
Zach looked around wildly, searching for some other solution. There had to be something they could do. He couldn’t imagine dying like this. After everything he had been through—everything they all had been through—surviving apocalyptic solar flares only to die in a fire was too terrible an irony to bear.
After a moment, Zach’s eyes settled on the towering door of the exterior airlock, the one that opened into the endless vacuum of space. The airless vacuum of space. A realization hit him like the shockwave from the exploding propane tanks.
“We need to open the airlock!” Zach exclaimed breathlessly. Ryker stared at him in confusion. Zach continued, “Fire needs oxygen. If we drain the air, it can’t burn.”
“That’ll kill us!”
“It’ll kill the fire first.”
Zach ran to the outer airlock, where a touchscreen command terminal was mounted to the wall. Perspiration ran down his back, and his head throbbed. “Hold on to something!” he shouted to Ryker as he quickly navigated the menus, bypassing all the warnings and confirmations until he reached the final flashing red prompt: CONFIRM AIRLOCK RELEASE. His finger hovered over the CONFIRM button. He looked over his shoulder, searching for something solid he could grab. He spotted a safety railing bolted to the floor nearby. It looked stable enough. Taking a deep breath, Zach jammed his finger onto the touchscreen, then ran for the railing and wound his arms around it.
Deafening klaxons sounded as the airlock opening procedure began. Swirling yellow and red emergency lights illuminated the smoke-filled air. The airlock depressurized with a tearing sound, exposing the loading bay to the vacuum of space. Smoke and flames were sucked from the bay, along with anything else that wasn’t bolted down. Floor panels launched into the void, joined by piles of flaming debris and collapsed wreckage. Zach swung out of the way of a forklift sped past him, narrowly avoiding being crushed by the speeding machinery as it cartwheeled into space. Another forklift followed. Then another.
Zach felt himself being drawn toward the abyss. He held on with every ounce of his strength, his muscles threatening to tear from his bones. Still, he felt himself slipping. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing it all to be over. For a moment, a crazy thought crossed his mind: he could just let go. He’d fly out into the vacuum and have one hell of a view before his body imploded. It would be fitting death. Not easy, necessarily, but fitting. His corpse would drift through the universe for eons to come, just like the bodies of the other colonists who had perished on the Gateway. Just like his father.
But it also meant that Carver would win.
Zach opened his eyes. A surge of hope swelled in his chest at the sight of the flames beginning to thin. It was working. It was really working. He scanned the loading bay for Ryker, discovering him holding onto the frame of a loading crane. The entire structure of the crane was bending, leaning toward the open airlock. Ryker’s face was contorted with strain, his lips blue from lack of oxygen. His eyes rolled in his head.
As the last licks of flame disappeared, Zach reached for the airlock’s emergency closing mechanism. Opening the airlock had been a complicated process with multiple confirmations and authorizations; closing it was as simple as pulling the bright red lever on the wall. Simple was a relative term, though—the lever was several meters out of Zach’s reach. In the panicked moments when he opened the airlock, he hadn’t considered the distance between the safety of the railing where he clung and the lever he needed to pull.
He stretched for it, reaching as far as he could, but there was no way he could grab it. It was too far. There was only one thing he could do.
Jump.
If he missed the lever, he would be sucked helplessly into space. But he’d end up that way if he didn’t try. His oxygen-starved brain would cause him to black out. He’d lose his grip on the railing, and … well, it would end badly. For him and for Ryker. He couldn’t bear the thought of failing his friend again. So, with the last bit of energy left in his body, Zach braced his legs against the railing, let go with his arms, and jumped.
His body hurled through the air far faster than expected, causing him to launch toward the lever like a rocket. Instead of gracefully grabbing the lever, he crashed painfully into the nearby wall. With nothing to hold onto, he felt himself being pulled back toward the abyss. He reached out blindly one last time, hoping to grab onto anything within reach. His fingers locked around something cold and metal … and red. The lever. Zach’s momentum caused the lever to swing downward, engaging the airlock’s emergency closing mechanism. A different alarm began to sound, and a faraway voice announced, “EMERGENCY AIRLOCK ENGAGED.”
Zach’s eyelids fluttered as his consciousness began to slip away. He felt his grip on the lever loosen. The tug of space dragged his limp body across the floor toward the airlock. He flailed weakly, trying to grab onto anything that might stop him from being pulled into space.
Then, suddenly, he stopped.
The airlock closed.
Zach’s ears popped as a great whoosh of air began to repressurize the loading bay. Gasping for breath, he crawled along the floor to a circulation vent nearby. A steady blast of oxygen whispered through it. Zach pressed his face against the grate, sucking in huge gasps of cool air. He hated the slightly metallic tinge of the Gateway’s recirculated air. But at that moment, he thought it was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted.
Once he was breathing normally and his head was clear, Zach sat up and looked around the destroyed loading bay. He spotted Ryker sitting in the cab of the crane that he had been holding onto. His head was tilted back toward the ceiling. His eyes were closed, and his mouth was open. He looked like a workman who had fallen asleep on the job.
“Ryker!” Zach croaked. His throat felt like it was full of broken glass. “You okay?”
Ryker lifted his head and gave Zach a weak smile. “Never better.”
Zach stood and limped across the loading bay to the inside blast door through which Rhea had fled. The metal was blackened with soot. Beside the door, the control panel was melted into a useless lump of slag. Zach wedged his fingers into the crack between the door and the frame and tried to yank it open, but it was pointless. The door weighed a thousand pounds. It was locked, and the control panel was the only means of disengaging it from the inside.
As Zach looked at the melted, deformed panel, he groaned and dropped to his knees in defeat.
They were trapped.
Cora Keaton: 2030
It seemed like just yesterday that the casket had closed. It was a cold Monday morning. The air was thick with fog. From all around, people in black clothing gathered to honor Victor Keaton, some of whom Cora recognized from the agency. It made sense that they’d be there. After all, Victor was a good leader. He had done things no other head of OSE had done before. But the stress of losing contact with Prescott had been too much for him, and, in a moment of desperation, he took his own life. Cora could only imagine the guilt he must have felt, as if he had failed the colonists, their families, the agency … even Earth itself. So much was riding on that mission—every passing day without contact with the colony must have weighed on him more and more until he couldn’t bear to go on.
The thought of her father leaping off the roof of a building, the very building he ran for more than a decade, made Cora want to cry and vomit at the same time. Cora had never been close to him, but he was good at his job—as the head of OSE and as a dad.
In the days after the funeral, Cora barely said a word. Sleep, eat, cry, repeat; that was her new life. Jason had come by a few times to see if she wanted to play, bringing water balloons or dart guns, but she always took a raincheck. Instead, she stayed in her bedroom with the blinds closed. Whenever Sarina came in and opened them, Cora would yank the covers over her head to block out the light. At night, her mother would try to coax her out of her room with her favorite foods: pizza, pasta, ice cream. But Cora couldn’t even think of eating. Her throat was too raw to get anything down. She couldn’t think of doing anything. Especially not school.
Cora didn’t want to go back. As soon as she stepped through those dual glass doors, all eyes would be on her. She would be known as the girl whose father was too weak to continue living. And with the Prescott colony gone silent, Cora didn’t even have the comfort of knowing that Zach was okay. She didn’t even know if he was alive. Nobody did.
Somewhere downstairs, the doorbell rang. Cora sat up in her bed and looked around with squinted eyes. Even the room was drearier. Grayer. Darker. The computer in the corner of her room was already collecting dust. She hadn’t touched it in days.
Cora ignored the doorbell and plopped back against the bed. She burrowed the side of her face into the pillow and lay like that for another minute or two until the doorbell rang again.
“Mom! Can you get the door?” she shouted. Cora waited for a few seconds before calling again, “Mom!”
Sarina didn’t respond, so Cora grunted and sat up. She swung her bare feet around until they hovered an inch above her hardwood floor, then set her feet down. An icy chill raced up her legs.
Cora wobbled as she stood. It felt like she hadn’t walked in weeks. She approached her bedroom door, but stopped when she noticed a large ding in the doorframe. That happened when Victor bought Cora a microscope for her eighth birthday. He had accidentally swung the microscope against the frame while walking in to surprise her.
Cora sighed at the memory, then pulled the door open with a creak. The air in the hallway was warm, or at least the air in her room was much colder. She couldn’t tell.
Over the wooden railing, the black outline of a person was visible through the front door window. Once she concluded her mother wasn’t going to answer, Cora walked a little farther down the hall, then turned and went down the staircase.
She dragged herself across the marble floors of the front room. At last, she came upon the door. It was tall, nearly double her size, with an opaque window in the center. A man was on the other side, his form blurred by the glass.
Cora’s mother often told her not to open the door for strangers, but Cora didn’t care. Hell, if someone snatched her up, would that really be so bad? At least she’d end up with her father.
Cora rested her palm on the door handle and turned it. A gust of air rushed in as she pulled the large door ajar.
“Mrs. Kea—” The man outside paused. “Oh, Cora. I’m Nicolas Carver. I’m the new head—”
“I know who you are,” Cora answered. She had seen him at Victor’s funeral. He was tall and sharp-looking, despite being only in his early thirties.
Cora realized she was wearing three-day-old pajamas. She was a little embarrassed.
“Great,” said Carver. “May I please come in? I need to speak to your mother.”
“Umm…”
“Cora?” Sarina asked, emerging from the kitchen with a dish rag in one hand. “Who’s at the door?”
Carver looked past Cora at Sarina. “Oh, yes, Mrs. Keaton. I hope this isn’t a bad time.”
“Not at all,” Sarina said. “Come on in. I’ve got coffee brewing.” She looked at her daughter. “Cora, honey, please give us a few minutes?”
Cora trudged back up the stairs. What was he doing there? Did something happen? Cora ran through the possibilities as she approached her bedroom. But then Carver’s voice stopped her.
“Before I give you this news, I first want to say… Your husband was a great man. I only hope I can be a fraction of the leader he was.”
Cora’s mother sniffled.
“So, Mrs. Keaton, I wanted to update you on Prescott.”
Cora’s mouth fell slightly ajar. She walked back to the top of the stairs and leaned over the banister, straining to hear.
“Seeing as your husband invested so much time and energy into the mission,” continued Carver.
Come on! Spit it out! Could he say it already?
“Of course,” Sarina replied. “Why don’t you sit down?” Two chairs scraped across the kitchen floor.
“I understand you’ve taken my husband’s place at the agency?”
“Yes, at least for a little while,” answered Carver. “And I assure you, I’ll finish what he started.”
“That’s great. He was in the process of regaining communications with Prescott, right?”
Yes! That had to be why he was there. Come on, then. Say the colonists are okay! Say Zach’s alive!
“That’s actually why I’m here…”
Cora started to get excited. They were going to be okay. They had to be. Maybe they were on their way back, and Cora would get to see them. Oh, Zach and Ryker had missed so much. She had to tell them everything!
“In the days following Victor’s tragic accident, we redirected some research satellites in Mars orbit to see if we could get photos of the colony…”
Stop stalling! Say it already! Say it wasn’t all for nothing. Say that Prescott succeeded.
“I’m sorry, but… it’s gone.”
What? Cora’s face fell, her shoulders dropping.
“Gone?” Sarina asked. She sounded as confused as Cora felt.
“Satellite images show a crater where the colony used to be. Something massive—most likely a meteor—must have impacted the area. It destroyed the dome, the mine, the hab units… everything.”
“And the colonists…?”
Carver sighed. “I’m sorry.”
The news hit Cora like an oncoming bus. Carver’s voice receded into the background. It didn’t matter what else he had to say. All that mattered was what Cora had already heard:
Zach was gone.
Nicolas Carver: 2053
Carver didn’t see fleeing the fire as cowardly.
He had escaped just when Rhea started firing, crawling to the blast door and narrowly avoiding being hit himself. He hadn’t seen what came after. Was Zach dead? Alive? Carver didn’t know.
If Zach was alive and had somehow disarmed Rhea, then he still wasn’t out of the picture. Even if Zach was dead, Carver now had Rhea to worry about too. She had overheard everything—she knew what Carver had done and surely wasn’t happy about it. Would she come for him next? Would he be eating lunch when, out of nowhere, she put a bullet in his skull?
Carver paced the halls of the Gateway as he tried to figure out what to do next. “Confusing”was not extreme enough to describe the station’s layout. The Works and the Spark seemed easy enough to navigate, consisting of only a few rooms each. But the Homestead was a labyrinth of interconnecting corridors that made the OSE lab seem like a studio apartment.
The lab! It was really gone. Though the entire planet was in flames, it had never quite registered that OSE, his kingdom, had fallen. Now, all that remained of it were the people. The workers. The brilliant scientists and engineers that Carver had handpicked from the ranks of elite colleges. A mosh pit of raw intelligence working toward a common goal: the continuation of consciousness in the universe. And they were succeeding. Things were running smoothly. Food was being rationed, water—however disgusting its origins were—was flowing from the faucets, and clean clothes were issued to everyone. Seeing everyone in Prescott-stamped garments made him a little uneasy, but there was nothing he could do about that.
Carver turned a corner, and … who was that at the end of the hall? Is that … Rhea? She looked like hell: burnt clothing, matted hair, and a crazed look. “You!” she yelped, then sprinted toward him. He tried to turn away, but she already had him by the collar of his shirt. “Don’t you dare try to run from me!” She shook him back and forth. “Tell me! Was Zach telling the truth?”
“What? I… I…”
“Was he?”
“No, no, I promise he wasn’t! He was just trying to get in your head!” Carver lied. “That was it. You have to believe me.”
“Why should I?”
“Because he did get your father sick. That was on him. But he can’t come to terms with it all, so he’s pinning it on me.”
“But he was so sure of it.” Rhea loosened her hold on Carver’s collar enough for him to breathe more easily.
“Prescott was Victor’s show,” Carver said as he calmly slipped from Rhea’s grip. “Not mine. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Then, why did Zach say all that?”
“Because—”
The ship suddenly lurched to the side, causing them both to stumble and lose their footing. Rhea landed on her hands, then began to stand. “What was that?”
“I don’t kn—”
Another tremor knocked them back down.
“Something’s wrong.” Rhea sprang to her feet and limped down the hall.
“Where are you going?”
“The cockpit.”
Carver tailed behind her, turning the next corner and confirming that everyone in the hall had felt the same thing they had. One engineer cupped a swollen forehead with a lump from hitting the wall. As Carver passed, he deflected the surge of questions for which he had no answer. After five minutes—and two more violent shakes—they crossed into the Works and continued until a door opened into the cockpit and allowed them entry. Rhea went straight for the pilot’s chair, turned on the computer, and ran a diagnostics check. Then, her face, coated in ash and sweat, went stiff. “We’re losing altitude.”
“How?” Carver asked.
Rhea poked at the screen, bringing up a complex array of dials and readouts. “I don’t know. It’s like…” She leaned forward, squinting at the readouts and shaking her head in disbelief.
“Like what?
“Like … like we’re falling out of orbit.”
“Then, do something about it!” She was the pilot, after all. Zach had asked her on his suicide mission for a reason.
“I fly cruise ships, not space stations.” Rhea pressed her lips into a fine line. “I don’t know anything about this thing.”
“Try, goddamnit.”
“Why don’t you try? You know as much about it as I do.”
Carver growled in frustration. No one else with flight experience had made it off the ground, short of two astronauts-in-training who hadn’t even graduated past simulators. There was only Rhea. “You’ve gotta do something,” he insisted. “You’re the only damn pilot we’ve got!”
A look of realization spread across Rhea’s face. “Not quite.”
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