I could do what my mother did, and just … not. Check into a pod. Leave my life up to chance. Refuse to take responsibility.
It would be so easy. But it would be so pointless. Every year I’ve fought to survive would be wasted.
I realize then that I’ve made up my mind: I want to live. I want to live so much that I would tear out the throat of anyone who tried to stop me. I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to sit back and wait for J to find me and play more of his games.
I’m going to fight. I’m going to do whatever it takes to survive.
DAYS UNTIL THE ETERNITY CATCHES UP:
79
I’m hiding in the stores again. Pressed up against the ceiling, I strain my eyes for any sign of the shadow of my mother coming for me.
I hear her quietly calling my name, and at first I think she’s far away in the distance. Then I feel a hand on my ankle and realize it was a whisper.
She tugs, fingernails digging into my skin.
“Come on, Romy. Come out and play.”
It’s not my mother at all. It’s J. He leans over me, his breath foul and rotten. He stares at me with Jayden’s face and J’s voice, laughing maniacally in short bursts.
“Hello there, Romy,” he says, and—
I wake up.
I lean over the side of my bunk and vomit, coughing up the last few lumps of food and stomach acid, then spitting onto the floor.
My heart is racing. My head hurts so badly that it’s like I’ve been stabbed in the skull.
It’s only when I’m calm that I realize I woke up because I heard a noise: an enormous, echoing bang.
I strain my eyes against the darkness, trying to work out if the sound is real or if it’s another of J’s software tricks. Everything is silent and still, except for the dull thud of blood against my eardrums. I stare at the ceiling for long, agonizing minutes, certain that his scratching creatures are back again, crawling across the outside of the ship. I’ve turned off the audio feed, but maybe it’s another subroutine.
Then there’s a slow, steady creak.
I bolt upright.
Emergency lights flicker on around me as I run to the helm. It’s glowing bright red with a warning message.
VESSEL ATTEMPTING TO CONNECT
DETERMINE STATUS
A vessel. Connecting? I don’t understand.
The computer flashes up a new message:
VESSEL IDENTIFICATION DETERMINED
ALLOW “THE ETERNITY” TO CONNECT
The Eternity.
The noise. That was The Eternity, touching my ship. It’s months too early. But somehow…
It’s here.
My brain engages all at once.
“No!” I yell at the computer, frantically typing commands. “DO NOT ENGAGE. DO NOT ALLOW ACCESS.”
CONNECTION WITH “THE ETERNITY” INITIATED
“No! No! No! DO NOT CONNECT.”
I push buttons, cancelling and denying every message that comes up, but the software is J’s software, so of course it doesn’t listen to me. I should have tried harder to get rid of it.
J lied to me. When he said on our call that he wouldn’t be arriving for a couple of months, he was only a few hours away. He knew. He knew he would be seeing me tonight.
He was playing with me.
Yet another game.
The computer keeps refusing my commands. The Eternity overrides every instruction I give it, initiating safety checks and air equalization procedures until:
VESSEL CONNECTED SUCCESSFULLY
AIRLOCK SEAL DECOMPRESSING
A hot flush shoots across my shoulder blades.
“DO NOT OPEN THE AIRLOCK. NO. NO!”
There’s nothing I can do to stop it. The computer won’t let me.
I run to the airlock. If I’m fast enough, I might be able to disengage it manually. I skid to a halt in front of the lock, just in time to see the outer door slide open.
A figure is standing in the doorway.
J and I stare at each other through the glass of the inner door. Behind him I can see the inside of the other ship, glowing with white light, all steel and curving lines.
He steps forward into the repressurized airlock. The inner door detects his movement and slides smoothly open. J steps on board The Infinity.
It isn’t the way he looks that surprises me – even though he is nothing like he described, looks nothing like Jayden at all, which I should have realized was just another thing he told me to try and trick me. It’s his eyes. His eyes are victorious. He thinks he’s already won.
He’s so big. So much bigger than I was expecting. Blond, muscular, stubbled. I tug my nightdress down over my thighs.
We stare at each other. For too long, neither of us speak. We watch. We wait.
Then I turn and run.
I don’t look back, not even to check if he’s following me. I’m fast, I know I’m fast. With a head start, I can outrun him. I know the ship, and he doesn’t. I can lose him.
I just keep running, running, running. Around the corridor to the other side of the ship, up the ladder to the stores, through the tunnel between the stacks. Some instinct tells me that because I was safe here last time, I’ll be safe here again.
I can’t think. I can’t even catch my breath for fear.
I crawl as fast as I can, deep into the bowels of the ship. I can’t hear him behind me, so I must be safe. I must be alone.
I take a left and a right and another left, weaving between the stacks of supplies into the labyrinth. I clamber up on top of a low pile of packets of lasagne and hit a wall. I’ve reached the centre of the ship. There’s nowhere else for me to go.
I crawl along over the top of the stack and drop down into a crevice between the boxes and the side of the ship.
I listen. There’s only silence. I quickly block up the entrance with some containers. Unless you’re looking carefully, you can’t even see there’s a gap here at all. There’s no way he’ll find my hiding place, at least not straight away. I’m safe.
I crawl away from the entrance until it disappears out of sight around the curve of the ship’s wall, so that if he does find it, he won’t even see me.
Then I lean back against the steel wall, silent tears dripping from my jaw, barely able to stop myself from crying out loud.
I’m still shocked by how J looks.
He’s short.
He’s older than I’d pictured – definitely not twenty-two, like he claimed. He must be over thirty.
And he’s gorgeous.
He has blond hair curling over his forehead and carefully cultivated stubble, and bulging muscles, and bright blue irises.
But his eyes. His eyes were trained on me like he was a predator and I was his prey.
Why would he describe himself as something he wasn’t?
Surely you only lie if you’re ugly, or old, or fat. But he’s—
He’s none of those things.
So why did he lie? It must be because he gets a thrill from it. I thought it was because he was trying to make me love him, but that wasn’t the point at all. The lying was the point.
He was just playing with me. Every single thing about J was fabricated.