When the bandage pressed to Eliot’s wound, she flinched. White grew heavy with scarlet and her tears fell thicker. Why is she crying? She had no right to sadness or pain when she’d brought all this on herself. On them.
Far was about to say as much when Priya cut in with a steady, take-no-shazm tone. The deck was hers now. “Imogen, try to make Far sit down. Gram, find us a time to land when we won’t crash into the library—”
“No!” Eliot gasped. “Stay in the Grid. We’re safe from the Fade here.”
“Fine.” Priya’s jaw locked. “We stay in the Grid. But after I sew you up, you’re going to tell us everything. Who you are, where and when you came from, why you’re here, what the Fade is. Understood?”
To everyone’s surprise, Eliot nodded. Something inside the girl had wilted: Her shoulders slouched, and her steps dragged as she followed Priya into the infirmary. The door slid shut.
Suspension gripped the console room. The Grid’s timelessness mixed with held breaths. For a second, for an eon, no one spoke. It would’ve felt silent, but now that Far knew what true silence sounded like, all he could hear was noise. The thud, thud of a heart begging for oxygen. Red panda claws tapping the common area floor. The Invictus’s stealth engines made more commotion than he’d realized—their background hum more feeling than decibel.
“The universe is falling apart.” Gram glared at his equipment; his voice boomed.
“Farway.” Even Imogen’s presence was muted—neon gone gray. Far hadn’t noticed her in the doorway until she said his name. “Come sit. I—I can try to make tea. Maybe.”
Far didn’t want tea. He didn’t want to sit. He didn’t want the universe to fall apart. But every ounce of fight-or-flight had abandoned his body, so he let his cousin guide him to the couch. It wasn’t just Imogen’s nose that matched his mother’s. It was the clean part through aqua hair. It was the great sorrow molding her face as she sat on the cushion beside Far’s. He kept expecting her to say something sunshine-y, but each of Imogen’s exhales was as empty as the next. There was no buoying grin. No honeycomb gelato. She’d seen everything that had happened through his eyes. He’d lost a mother and she’d lost an aunt, and this time words wouldn’t help either of them.
30
FAR FROM THE TREE
THE GIRL BLED LIKE EVERYONE ELSE: red. It was a nasty gash, but Priya had seen nastier. Eliot stiffened when the curved suture needle was retrieved from its drawer, snake’s-tooth sharp. In Medic school Priya had learned that bedside manner made all the difference in situations like this. Keep the patient chatting. Talk about the weather, family members, their favorite datastream, anything to keep them from focusing on the pain at hand.
But it was all Priya could do to keep her own focus. The Ancestral Archives program glowed from the other side of the infirmary, details of its search-in-progress hidden beneath a lab coat. Does that truth even matter, now that the questions have changed? Gloves on. Heal-All spray applied. Suture thread strung. Eye on the needle. Don’t think about what you just saw. Don’t think about how Far might have reached his mother, if you’d let go. Don’t think about how close he came to being erased, too….
“You’re shaking,” Eliot said.
“Can you blame me?”
“Is there a less old-fashioned way to do this? I don’t want crooked stitches.” Eliot attempted enough of a smile to show she was trying to lighten the mood.
As if that were possible, after watching the sky disappear. Colors, light, matter all peeling back… It was the surety of an end, coming for them with the wrath of a merciless god. The sight reminded Priya of a line from the Bhagavad-Gita, oft quoted by men who knew they held desolation in their hands: I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
Translation was a funny thing. Some scholars thought it was time, not death, that destroyed worlds. Both versions were chilling, made her ache for warmth and masala chai, still points and perfect moments.
“We don’t have skin glue on board,” Priya told the girl. “Scar will look the same no matter what.”
At this, Eliot held out her hand. The bleeding had slowed after the Heal-All, but she remained quite pale, insides a blue-veined story against her skin, pulse an ode to terror. Whatever it was they’d seen in Alexandria, it upended this girl. She’d become as much a shadow-person as the rest of them.
It only took four interrupted sutures to close the cut. Priya sliced the thread and applied the bandage as steadily as she could. “All better now,” she said, even though nothing was. “Now, go out into the common area and start talking.”
“It’s—a long story.” Eliot stood. “I’m going to need to use the washroom first.”
Because they were suspended in the Grid, Priya nodded. The Invictus was all there was out here. Eliot would be hard-pressed to find a place to run, though she certainly did her best on her way to the washroom, tripping over Saffron before she shut herself away. The red panda bristled thrice his size, his misery made well known as he yowled and leaped up to the safety of the pipes.
Priya checked on her crew. All of them were in the common area. Gram sat on the couch, cleaning off one of his Rubik’s Cubes. A steam cloud surrounded Imogen in the kitchenette, which explained both smells—karha spice and burning. Far sat with his back to the infirmary, unmoving. Priya couldn’t see his eyes, but she suspected they were glazed, reliving the same moment she was. Death or time—whatever windless force it was—bearing down, snatching Far’s mother out from under him, his toga linen feeling like a thousand threads ready to snap beneath Priya’s fingers.
She’d been right to hold on, hadn’t she?
Priya tossed the garnet gauze and the needle in the trash; her gloves followed. So much sorrow, so much fear—Eliot’s ache had spread to the entire ship. The Ancestral Archives results might be slight, but they mattered, because everything stemmed from this girl somehow, and all she’d done was lie. Nepenthe. Ha! If only…
Whatever story Eliot chose to spin next could be held to the tale her genetics told. This diagnostics machine also featured an hourglass cursor. Its eternal sands had been pouring most of the day, were still pouring when Priya lifted the lab coat. Results wouldn’t take much longer, shouldn’t for how many credits she’d dropped on processing power. Though who knew what soon meant in a timeless place…
“I think I murdered the chai.” A glum announcement on Imogen’s part. “There aren’t supposed to be floaty things in it, right?”
“I usually strain the spices out,” Priya said, and made her way toward the kitchenette. The pot in Imogen’s hands was a piece of work: too much milk, burnt at the bottom, bubbling over the sides. Not enough spice, despite the bits that flecked the top. Poor, precious karha mix. Murdered, indeed. “What is this?”