Adrift (3 page)

Regroup

His whole body was shaking by the time he could stop the sobs spilling from his throat. For years, maybe his whole life, Tron hated everyone on this miserable ship. He was six when his parents moved him here, old enough to have a neighborhood of friends and to have started at a proper school. He didn’t know why his parents signed them up. He’d asked more times than he could count, but the answer was always the same. ‘It’s for the best. Now we’ll all have a better life.’ But Tron didn’t want a better life. He wanted the one left behind.

On the Lucy, he was alone all the time, no matter how tightly packed the ship was.
People with older children were discouraged from joining a colony. There were concerns about bacterial mutations caused by the vaccines required for school-aged kids. Tron didn’t know why he was the exception, but he was the only one. He didn’t even have the benefit of a sibling like most of the kids. Kivi was three years younger than him, and she was the closest to his age. There was no making friends with a three year old, and by the time she was old enough to try it was clear that there was something wrong with the girl. She didn’t talk to anyone, and by then Tron was used to having no one. What it meant was that he was surrounded by little kids he wasn’t interested in and adults who weren’t interested in him. And all he had to look forward to was the day they got to the planet and he got to spend the rest of his life building a colony with these people.

So he hated them all.
The truth was, it wasn’t much of a change for him. His father worked in hydroponics and his mother was maintenance, so neither one of them was ever around with him in their rooms. At least down in storage, there was a reason he was stuck by himself all the time. And there was no one telling him to make his bed. None of that made it ok for them to shove him down there, though. He had gone from the sad, lonely boy they all whispered about when they thought he couldn’t hear to a troubled young man who didn’t even warrant whispers when they wanted to talk about him. Whatever reasons they listed, whether the little kid he hit was hurt as bad as they said or not, Tron knew they really sent him down to the keel so that they wouldn’t have to think about him anymore. Returning their intentional indifference with bitter hatred was one of the easiest things of his life.

Except now that he was in this room, he knew that none of it was real. It didn’t matter that his parents were always busy, or that Father Andrei was more interested in talking at him than talking to him. They were family, and it was only now that he was kneeling in its ruin that he realized how important that was. Every one of the b
odies, with skin ripped and covered in dark blotches of blood, was a part of that.

Now he was really alone. Him and Kivi both.

Kivi. The strange girl. The one people avoided thinking about almost as much as him. What were the chances that it would be the two of them, the only misfits in the incredibly tight-knit community, would be the ones who survived whatever happened to the Lucy? Things like that just didn’t happen.

There had to be someone else. There were a lot of people here. He’d heard the dinner announcement before the world turned into a nightmare. Tron knew that would bring everyone pressing into the mess hall until it seemed
the walls would simply have to buckle to fit all the people. As some pushed their way free, two more would fight in to fill the hole they left. It would be easy for the attackers to catch most of them here. But surely some got away. The room could only hold thirty or forty at once, which meant that at least that many were out in the corridors. But there weren’t any bodies out there. He was sure some were hunted down; the ones who came into his room were probably looking for people who’d run. There was no way he and Kivi were the only ones they missed.

The captain. Jay never ate until everyone else had gotten their meals. He said that it was because he could only enjoy it after he knew all their bellies were full, but Tron always figured the slender man just didn’
t like to be packed in like the rest of them when he picked up whatever paste-based meal the priest and two helpers had prepared for that meal. Tron didn’t blame him. Since being moved to storage, Tron was only allowed in the mess for one meal a day, and he’d come to enjoy the peace that came with having his food delivered. He would probably wait out the crowds too, if he was ever given the choice in the matter. That meant there was a really good chance that Jay was nowhere near the mess when the attackers came. So maybe he was still alive, somewhere. After all, he was the only one that could turn off that horrible screeching alarm.

He only realized he was
standing up again after he’d been staring at a face he hadn’t been able to see before for some time. It didn’t look like her. She was such a pretty lady, with bright blue eyes and a distracted smile that was never far from her lips. But the pale, blood-flecked face was still his mother.

Tron
didn’t have any loud cries left in him. The tears that spilled from his eyes now were silent. They hurt more, like something vital was slipping out of him with each one. He backed away. He didn’t know how long he stared at her, but he knew he couldn’t do it anymore. This place was meant to be filled with so much life it was bursting with it. He needed to take care of Kivi and the engine and finding the captain. This room of death was chipping away at all the pieces of his sanity that Tron needed to do any of those things.

The door hit his back lightly. It was only then that he realized he was moving. One last, gasping sob slipped out of his mouth, and then Tron pushed himself back into the corridor as fast as he could. He jerked the door back into place with all the violence his arms could manage, then he turned to where he’d dropped Kivi when she threw her fit.

The girl wasn’t there. For a second, Tron panicked. He’d been thinking that the attackers were gone, because he hadn’t seen any since the half-glimpse he’d gotten from beneath his bed. He assumed that, when no one came after the commotion Kivi made as she tumbled down the stairs, it meant that no one was there to watch them. That was stupid. They could’ve been hiding, or busy. Or maybe they were just in another part of Lucy and didn’t hear. At the time he’d thought she might as well get on the intercom and announce where she was, but it wouldn’t be hard to be out of earshot. The Lucy was a small ship, especially for as many people as they’d let on, but she was still a ship. There was more than enough distance to render the girl’s cries unheard. Now he was facing the consequences of his assumption, because someone had come back and grabbed her, and he was on his own again.

Then he heard the grunting. It was soft, almost too quiet to catch. But Lucy was as silent as she’d ever been, and any noise was bound to carry in the midst of all that nothing. He squinted his eyes, trying to cut through the darkness. But, just like in the mess, the blue light made everything strange. It cast just enough glow to trick his eyes into thinking they could see and not nearly enough to keep away the darkness. He walked forward slowly, every muscle a tense spring ready to pop if he caught sight of anyone
taller than the tiny girl.

She wasn’t far. She’d gotten herself up and was limping along the corridor, her right hand pressed flat against the wall as she hopped along. He watched her go, wondering where Kivi thought she was going.

“What are you doing?”

She jumped and nearly fell. Tron felt bad for startling her, but didn’t bother apologizing.

“Walking.”

He didn’t have it in him to be angry. Not after the room. It wasn’t necessary anyway. He was sure Kivi hadn’t meant to be difficult. It just came naturally. “Thanks for that thrilling news. Wanna tell me where? Or why?”

She turned around and eyed him. There was something unnerving about being the subject of Kivi’s examinations. She had a way of making people feel like she was measuring them by some set of standards that only she knew, and that no one was ever able to meet. He’d even heard her little brother complaining about it once. The light enhanced the effect ten-fold, making her pale blue eyes glow. Tron tried not to squirm underneath it. He half expected her to tell him no. Finally, she nodded. He almost sighed in relief.

“I’m going to Medical. You told me that’s where we’re going.”

He blinked, not sure what to make of that. Did she think he was in charge? He just wanted to patch up her ankle, then find the captain. Tron wasn’t a leader. He wasn’t even a team player. He’d expected her to drift off the second he got her able to walk again. He didn’t want that, but Tron spent a lot of time watching people. Kivi was who she was, and that was the girl who drifted off.

“Here,” he said. Tron offered her his arm. “Let me help.”

She stared at him again, and again he expected her to refuse. But, just like before, she nodded. She took his arm and gave him some of her weight. If he hadn’t carried her up the stairs, he might have thought she was trying to be tough. The girl was short and about as big around as his wrist, but Tron never suspected how little she actually weighed until he’d felt it for himself.

They walked like that for a while, her clinging to his arm as they shuffled toward
med bay so slow that he started to worry they’d die of old age before they got there. But he didn’t complain. He wanted to, but didn’t see it accomplishing anything. He was sure she was going as fast as she could. He could leave her behind, but Tron wasn’t ready for that. She might want to figure things out all by herself, but he didn’t. And maybe they were at risk of being found, but each minute that passed without an attack made him surer that his first assumption about the invaders was right; they were gone.

“This isn’t going to work. I’m sorry.”

It was the first thing either of them had said in a while, and it was Tron’s turn to be startled. “What?” He was afraid she was going to say the two of them working together. He didn’t want to be alone any more than he wanted to be in charge.

“I’m going too
slowly. We’re wasting life support. You need to carry me.”

He tried not to be offended in the matter-of-fact to
ne she took. Tron was sure that something in there was meant to be a polite request. And he was hardly one to complain. He’d spent all of his life making demands from one person or another. And she was still following his plan, and saying the same thing that he’d been thinking. Still, it was kind of annoying for this sprite of a girl to be telling him what to do. He got even with her, a little bit, by being less gentle than he might have been when he scooped her up. She whimpered, but she didn’t complain. They made much better time in that arrangement. They were in the med bay in a quarter of the time it took them to get halfway the other way.

The place was a mess. Lucy had rocked pretty hard during whatever had happened
. That might explain some of the debris scattered around a room that Doctor Geddes always kept so tidy, but not all of it. Most of the supplies were kept in cabinets designed for space-flight. Tron had tried to break into them once, though he couldn’t remember why. He’d had some plan about holding the medicine for ransom or something. It was stupid, just like all his plans, but this one didn’t even get as far as most of the others. He’d tugged on every cabinet in the place, and hadn’t figured out how to open a single one. Only the drawers were accessible, and all those held were bandages and such; nothing worth the effort of getting into med bay without being noticed.

Now, it seemed like every container in the place was smashed up on the floor. There was glass everywhere. He could just make out pills lying among the ruin, but the
re were only a handful, not nearly enough to fill even one of the bottles scattered around the doorway. Every drawer was opened, some of them half off the tracks, and the cabinets were all flung open with more than a few lying on the ground in a splintered mess. Even the doctor’s table, which had always been in the center of the room, was tipped on its side and shoved over into a corner. And, tucked in so tightly beneath it that Tron almost didn’t notice him, was the doctor. Dead. Just like all the others.

Kivi made a small moaning noise in the back of her throat, and Tron nearly made one of his own. He managed to hold it back, barely, and considered the situation. Obviously, the inv
aders went after the medicine Dr. Geddes. They’d taken what they wanted and killed Geddes in the process. But none of that mattered. Or, it did, but not just at that moment. Right now the only important thing was to get Kivi taken care of so that they could hunt down the captain.

He set her down carefully, hoping that there was no glass below her feet that he couldn’t see in the horrible lighting. She didn’t cry out, and he took that as a good sign.

“Stay here. I’m going to go get some stuff. I’ll need my arms. That glass will cut right through our shoes, and there’s no point in us both going.”

“It makes more sense to send me in
. I’m already hurt.”

He rolled his eyes at her dramatically, wondering if she could even see them from her angle. Tron just hoped she grasped his frustrated demeanor. “No,” he insisted in his
firmest voice. When it didn’t seem to convince her, he shoved her harder than he meant to. She collapsed backward and gave him a hurt look. He bit back an apology and headed into the med bay.

Glass bit into the bottom of his feet almost the instant he crossed the threshold.
He swallowed a curse, not wanting to give the girl any reason to follow him. It hurt like hell, and it was all he could do not to scream. He took a couple slow breaths, trying to force the pain to the back of his mind, and slowly walked toward the mess near the center of the room.