It’s sickening. My chest aches; a dull throb like I’ve bruised it. Only a matter of hours ago, I was desperately in love with J, and now I can’t see anything but how horribly fake his messages are.
He’s sending me these unnecessary requests from the UPR and then pretending that he’s worried about me doing them, all at the same time. He’s using the UPR to twist me up, to torment me.
J has been lying to me the whole time that I’ve known him. He’s had me wrapped around his little finger for months. It’s obvious now.
I can’t ignore the evidence, or what it means. He faked the UPR. He invented the war. He’s made me spend almost a year worrying and panicking and obsessing over what was happening to the people on Earth.
He can’t have done that for any reason other than cruelty. He’s been tormenting me long distance, the only way that he can. Everything the UPR made me do – from sitting in darkness until I wet myself to living covered in grease and sweat without showering – was really because of J. He made up a complicated lie and even took over my computer so he could do those things to me.
How could he put me through that? Why would he even want to?
I read every email, desperate for some evidence that our connection is real, that it can’t be J doing this. A particular line from one of his recent messages jumps out at me:
I wonder if we would have been friends, if we had been meeting in less exceptional circumstances. I hope so. I really do, neighbor.
Something about that particular phrase sounds familiar. Meeting in less exceptional circumstances.
I can’t place it. I think about it all afternoon. Where have I heard that before?
Then it hits me: it’s a line from one of my fics.
Jayden says that to Lyra, in a fic I wrote back before I ever met J.
“You’re OK,” he said, his voice a low, calming murmur in her ear. “Relax.”
Lyra sagged under his – very solid – chest.
“Thanks,” she said, her voice cracking in an embarrassing way. “I’m Lyra.”
“Jayden. It’s great to meet you, neighbour,” Jayden continued. “I just wish we were meeting in less exceptional circumstances!”
I wrote that line. And J used it in an email to me.
It might just be chance, but … it’s exactly the same.
I check the date I sent the fic to Molly and run some calculations. The transmission would have crossed The Eternity’s path almost six months ago – giving J more than enough time to pick up the transmission, read it and include a quote in an email to me.
Is that possible? Would he really do that? Even now, I’m hoping that it’s a coincidence.
I read J’s emails again one by one, carefully analysing the words.
I find ten more lines, taken word for word from Jayden’s dialogue in my other fics.
Is it OK if I call you tonight at 7 p.m.? If it isn’t, just don’t answer. But I hope you do. I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long. I haven’t been able to think about anything but speaking to you. I can’t wait to hear your voice.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long,” Jayden said, nose pressed into her cheekbone. “I haven’t been able to think about anything but speaking to you.”
I want to hear more about the UPR. It’s really worrying me that you’re suffering when I can’t do anything to help. I hate the thought of them upsetting you. You’re stronger than you realize. I believe in you, Romy Silvers.
“You’re stronger than you realize. I believe in you, Lyra Loch.”
Don’t you give up on me, Romy, not yet. I’m coming – just hold on a little longer. It will be easier when we’re together.
“Lyra! Don’t you give up on me, Lyra, not yet. I need you. Just hold on a little longer.”
I keep finding more. I can’t find an email where J hasn’t copied something from one of my fics. Not one. Even his earliest messages contain lines from fics I wrote when I was thirteen, sent to Molly long before I even knew The Eternity existed.
He’s been using my own words against me.
The bile rises in my throat and I run to the bathroom and vomit until my stomach is empty. Then I press my sweaty forehead against the side of the toilet seat and cry until I feel like there’s nothing left inside me but fear.
Why? Why would he—
Was he pretending to be Jayden? Was he trying to make me like him by mimicking Jayden Ness?
If he has been pretending to be Jayden this whole time then who am I even talking to? A scream bubbles up in my throat and gets trapped somewhere behind my tonsils, sharp and terrified.
If everything I thought I knew about J is fiction (made up by me), then who is J at all? Who is he?
Who is this person who forges messages from Earth and creates something as horrible as the war and the UPR? Why would anyone ever pretend to be a fictional character?
Why would he spend all this time playing with me? Who am I talking to?
He took a character that he knew I liked and adored. He posed as him. He made me like him, made me love him.
He’s been trying to destroy me, piece by careful piece, while I romanticized every second of it.
For the first time, the number of days until The Eternity catches up with me aren’t exciting – they’re terrifying.
Eighty-one days.
That’s it.
I try to increase the speed of the ship, rerouting power to the thrusters to stretch out the time left before we meet, but The Infinity is already travelling at its maximum speed. There’s nothing I can do.
In only a few months I’m going to have to meet whoever is on board the other ship. I’m going to have to face him, after everything he’s done to me.
I can’t trust anything he says, not any more. I don’t even know who I’m talking to. If he’s lied to me about this, then what else?
I have no idea what to do, no way of even beginning to make a plan. How can I stop him coming for me? How can I escape?
I can’t.
At seven, a shrill ringing sound comes from the computer. J’s calling. Right on schedule.
I’m not going to answer it.
There’s no way I can talk to him. I can’t hear his voice and pretend I don’t know what he’s doing to me. I’ll sound like a completely different person to yesterday.
I shudder and squeeze my eyes shut, like that will get me out of this, like if I just try hard enough I can erase time and make it so that The Eternity was never launched at all.
I crawl into my bunk and pull the duvet over my head until I’m safe in my cocoon of bedding, where I can ignore the computer and nothing can hurt me.
It rings and rings and rings.
I curl a pillow around my head to try and block out the shrill wail. It vibrates through me. It seems to last for ever.
Finally, finally, it stops.
I lie back, stare at the ceiling and try to catch my breath. Before I’ve even relaxed, the ringing starts again, loud and piercing and insistent.
I start to cry. He’s not going to stop. Not until I answer. He’s never going to leave me alone.
He rings three more times.