The first room is bare, open to the elements. Our boots crunch on debris as we climb in through the twisted opening. I’ve seen a hundred outpost entrances like this one—room for a sentry if you need one, or your muddy gear if you don’t.
An inner door opens into a larger room lined with monitoring equipment and file cabinets. It’s dark, lit only by the light streaming in through the blasted entrance. At some point there was a fire, leaving half-burned pages from the files scattered all around the floor. I can see stacks of printouts, half intact. Some have been dumped in trash cans, where the fire burned out before the documents dissolved completely into ash. I wonder if they hold the answers to our questions about the mirror-moon above us, or the cat beast near our crash site—things that have no place being here.
“These could lead to a generator, or some other power source,” she suggests, standing above a bunch of cables that plunge down into the floor. She crosses to a bank of circuit breakers on the wall, jerking open a small door and pumping the switches. For an instant I see her in the pod, stripping wires with her fingernails and hot-wiring our escape.
I close my eyes, trying to shake the image away. This isn’t her. Instead I lean down, pressing my cheek to the nearest computer bank. With my eyes closed, I can feel the faintest of vibrations if I hold my breath.
There’s still power here. A knot of tension releases inside me, and I stay where I am, letting the monitor take my weight. Power means some chance of a signal. Power means the game’s not over yet.
The lights above us flick on one by one, dim from lack of power or long disuse. The walls and the far end of the room are illuminated, covered in something patchy that looks like wallpaper for a moment, completely out of place. Then my words die in my throat.
It’s paint.
She turns, and together we stare, uncomprehending. Words and numbers cover the walls, incomprehensible equations and nonsensical half sentences. They start orderly, in marker, scrawled in even lines across the walls. But here and there they start to dip and slant crazily, the marker replaced by paint, until the words devolve into pictures crudely painted on by fingertips. Figures of animals, trees—and men. Handprints. Here and there a swirl of blue stands out amid the earthy reds and browns, electric—always the same shape, a spiral radiating outward. The blue spirals are a focus, but I can make no sense of them. The colors are as bright as if someone had painted them yesterday. With a jolt, I recognize the same reds, blues, and yellows we saw dried on the lids of the paint cans in the shed, back when we inspected the hovercraft.
Paint dribbles down from the walls to the monitors. Some of the paintings are orderly, almost artistic, painted with sensitivity and planning. Clearly identifiable. But overlaid on these murals are cruder, savage depictions of death and carnage, of men and animals fighting and dying. Gaudy crimson streams from a gash across one figure’s throat. Another is impaled by a thick slash of black paint, some kind of spear. Red flames stream up from a bonfire laden with bodies.
“They went mad,” she whispers, fearful, and I shove my hands in my pockets to keep myself from reaching out to take her hand.
I know what she’s thinking—something about this planet sent the people stationed here insane. If an entire station of monitoring specialists, researchers, and whoever else was posted here fell apart so completely, what chance do we have? At least we’re starting to get a picture of why this place was abandoned. Why the entire planet stands empty and forgotten. I tear my eyes away from the walls and focus on the lights overhead. We have to keep moving.
I clear my throat, and she startles. “If there’s a generator we could turn it off. Disrupt the power, and if they’re monitoring it, somebody might show up to do maintenance. Or maybe they’re broadcasting updates, we could hack that and try signaling prime numbers to show someone’s here?”
“I think we can do better,” she says, swallowing hard. Her skin’s pale beneath her freckles, but her voice is firmer. I can see it’s still an effort to remain composed. Discussing the circuitry and power sources was the right move—like my Lilac, these things interest her. “I think perhaps we could send a real signal.”
She drags her eyes away from the paintings and walks slowly back to the circuit breakers. Slowly, she closes the cover so I can see the mark stamped on it. It looks like an upside-down V, but everyone in the universe knows that symbol. Even I know it, out in the muddy far reaches of the galaxy. Especially there.
The lambda. LaRoux Industries. Not only was this an abandoned terraforming project—it was Lilac’s father’s.