“… Aurora Academy?”
“No,” he sighs. “Ra’haam agents destroyed it during the attack on the Galactic Caucus. And the station moved too slow, anyway.” He looks at me, faint horror in his eye. “It … listens, Kal. It’s so big now, it can hear everything. Hole up on a planet, it’ll find you sooner or later. Hide inside a fleet, eventually it’ll sniff you out like those poor bastards downstairs.”
I shake my head. “Where is safe, then?”
Tyler shrugs faintly. “If there’s no world you can call home, no ship that’s safe to hide inside, well, you just use both.”
I blink, putting the puzzle together in my head.
“Sempiternity,” I smile.
15
SCARLETT
My guidance counselor once told me that the words “if she only applied herself” had appeared more on my assessment transcripts than on any cadet’s in Aurora Academy history. And I’m almost certain this wasn’t what he meant when he told me, “Practice makes perfect, Cadet Jones.” But I’ve died thirty-seven times so far today, and it turns out I’m pretty talented at it.
It sounds weird, I know. Maybe even a little insane. But as strange and morbid as it might be, I’m beginning to suspect the biggest reason people are afraid of dying is because they don’t know what happens afterward.
Zila, Finian, Nari, and I all know what happens. To us, at least. And it’s somehow getting harder to be afraid when you know what’s coming.
Black light.
White noise.
A moment of vertigo.
And then I’m standing in front of Finian again, back aboard our shuttle, with Lieutenant Nari Kim’s fighter waiting just outside in the dark.
The fear didn’t disappear right away. And at first, the strangeness of it all was so heavy that I wondered for a little while if I wouldn’t rather just stay dead. There was something wrong about it. Unnatural, even. But like I say, I’ve always been a glass-half-full kind of girl. And once the fear disappears, I gotta tell you … this immortality thing is almost amazing.
So here we are, on another attempt to access Dr. Pinkerton’s office. Attempt #37, to be precise, to discover the secret of what the hells is going on inside this facility. Lemme take you through it all real quick.
First, we’ve discovered we have to access the admin levels through the elevator shafts, not the emergency stairs like Lieutenant Kim first told us. Stairwell A leads to the unshielded part of the structure, and we’ve already seen what happens when that quantum pulse hits the station and we’re all just standing there looking gorgeous.
ZAAAAPPPP.
You might be wondering why we don’t wait till the pulse hits and head up afterward. Excellent question. Sadly, we tried that already, and discovered when we loitered too long on the lower level, security found us, not once, not twice, but three times straight.
BLAM.
BLAM.
BLAM.
Turns out even with the damage to the station, some of the camera feeds are still operational. Who would’ve guessed the SecBoys in a covert black-ops military installation would take the presence of saboteurs so seriously? I thought getting punched in the ta-tas hurt. Let me assure you getting shot in them is a lot worse.
BLAMBLAM.
We decided to try our luck with Stairwell B next, and on our maiden voyage, an entirely new piece of strangeness was added to the mix. You see, on the way to meet us, good Lieutenant Kim decided to take a different route to shave a few minutes off her trip. She entered Corridor 16B, Level 6, at the precise moment a bulkhead failed and vented the corridor’s atmo into space.
HISSSSHHHHHH.
THUMP.
And even though Zila, Fin, and I were still crawling through waste disposal at the time, suddenly—black light, white noise, vertigo—I’m standing back aboard our shuttle, looking into Fin’s big, pretty eyes again.
That was the final confirmation of my theory. Somehow, the four of us are locked in this thing together. Doesn’t matter how, doesn’t matter who—if even one of us gets taken out of the loop, the whole thing resets.
Again.
And again.
Like it or not, we’re all in this together.
So next we busied ourselves with Stairwell B. We gave it three attempts, but even moving fast as we could, we only ever got halfway up before the life-support system decided to play kissy-kissy with a shorting circuit somewhere in the superstructure, and the whole stairwell caught fire.
FWOOOOOSH.
YARRRGGG.
So. Elevator shafts it is. Good news, the damage to the station has knocked out security cams over here. Bad news, it’s also weakened the cable and disabled the safety systems. We figured that out the first time we crawled into Shaft A, and an elevator full of engineers got ordered down to the core levels at the precise moment we were trying to crawl up it.
TWANGGG.
SQUISH.
Luckily, Shaft B suffers no such shortfalls, and after another attempt, in which Finian discovered the structural integrity of rung 372 of the access ladder had been compromised (SNAP, “OH FFFFFUUUUUUAAAAAGGGGG”), we managed to reach the hab section, where Dr. Pinkerton’s office can be found.
Buuuut don’t start celebrating just yet, folks.
The elevator doors up here are sealed as a precaution against atmo breaches, and it takes three minutes and forty-nine seconds for Fin’s cutting torch to slice the locks.
Sadly, opening the doors sets off a silent alarm. We found this out the hard way exactly one minute and twenty-three seconds after our first successful attempt, while cutting our way into Pinkerton’s office.
“FREEZE!”
“Please don’t shoot! My name is Scarlett Isobel Jones, I’m—”
BLAMBLAMBLAM.
Bad news is, there’s no way around that alarm. The moment we open those doors, we’re making an appointment with those security goons.
Good news is, after some trial
“FREEZE!”
“Maker’s breath, don’t you dirtboys have anything b—”
BLAMBLAMBLAM.
and error
“FREEZE!”
“Why do you assholes even say Freeze when you’re just gonna—”
BLAMBLAMBLAM.
we’ve figured out a way to get into Pinkerton’s office without having to waste a bunch of extra time cutting through his door.
It goes a little something like this:
Legionnaire de Seel and I head up through Shaft B (studiously avoiding rung 372 as we go). While I hang on the ladder below him, watching the way the sparks reflect in his eyes, Finian cuts through the doors leading out to the admin level. Meanwhile, Zila and Lieutenant Kim head down to the station morgue, where the body of the recently deceased Dr. Pinkerton resides.
After four attempts
BLAM.
BRAPPPP.
“FREEZE!”
STABSTABSTAB.
the ladies haven’t found a way to avoid station security and get what they came for: the electronic passkey around the neck of Pinkerton’s corpse. But like I say, I’ve got a good feeling this time.
So cross your fingers, kids.
Sparks are raining down from the metal, the faint hiss of Fin’s cutting torch barely audible over the wailing alarms, the occasional alert klaxon. I hang on the rung below him, watch him work: his lips pressed thin, a dark line of concentration between his brows.
“Can I help?”
He smiles. “You asked me that the last three times. I’m good, Scar.”
“How you think Z and Kim are doing?”
“Well, we haven’t vanished in a burst of temporal paradox yet.” He wipes his brow on his sleeve. “So, better than last time.”
The station vibrates faintly, and another alarm wails. I feel kinda useless just waiting here, and I don’t like it.
“You sure I can’t do anything?”
Fin grins. “I’m kinda thirsty?”
One arm hooked through the ladder rungs, I swing the backpack he brought off my shoulder. Reaching inside, I fish about among our useless uniglasses for the canteen. But instead, my fingers brush against something soft. Furry. Pulling the object out into the light, I feel a warm rush on my skin as I realize what I’m holding, a smile curling my lips.
“You saved Shamrock?”