Zero-G (34 page)

I scream.

It lasts for perhaps half a second, cut off as my throat slams shut. The knife is through. It skidded off the edge of the cut, but I barely felt it, the adrenaline knocking away the pain.

I did it.

I slice through the remaining wire, and then I'm holding the bomb in my hands.

The entire casing fits into my palm. I'm laughing now. It's a horrible sound, lumpy and angry. My entire body is drenched with sweat, and my knee … I can't even look at my knee. When I lift my arms from around the cables, pulling myself out, the muscles in my upper body scream in protest.

I swim towards the reactor as if in a dream. With every beat of my heart, darkness pulses at the edge of my vision.

You will not pass out. Not now.

Time skips forward again. I'm in front of the reactor. The bomb is suspended there, nudging one of the rubber seals. The storage box is positioned on my shoulder like a rocket launcher. I'm aiming it right at the bomb. One hit. That's all it'll take. I have enough presence of mind to throw the canister, rather than swing it – no telling how big the explosion will actually be.

There's a voice. The words hang in the air as if caught in the low gravity themselves, and it takes me a few moments to understand them.

“Riley, what have you done?

Very slowly, I turn my head.

Prakesh is floating in the open door of the airlock, his eyes wide with confusion and horror.

I try to say something, but the words won't come. He puts a hand on either side of the door, and launches himself into the room, heading right for me.

No – not for me. For the box I'm holding on my shoulder. I grip it tight, ready to launch it at the bomb.

“Stay back, Prakesh,” I hear myself say.

He's grabbed hold of a cable, pulling himself to the stop. “Ry, you're hurt – we need to get you some—”

“I said,
stay back
.”

“OK,” he says, raising a hand. “I'll just talk then. All right? I'll just talk.”

He can't keep his eyes off my knee, a thin stream of blood still trailing from it. When it touches the metal on the reactor, it spreads out, so dark it's almost black.

“We're too far away now,” he says. “If you blow the reactor, we'll never make it back.”

I say nothing.

“They know you're here – I only just managed to get ahead of them. Come back with me. Please.”

I don't hear the rest. I'm looking past him. All the way to the reactor airlock.

Okwembu is there, along with Mikhail.

They've got Aaron. Mikhail has an arm around his throat, and a stinger pressed to the side of his head.

I can't move.

I have to blow the bomb. But if I do that, Aaron dies.

All I can see is the stinger, jammed up against his head. He's barely conscious, and there are dark rings under his eyes, standing out against his pale skin.

“Better put it down,” says Mikhail, pulling his arm tighter around Aaron's throat.

“I didn't want it to come to this,” Okwembu says. She's moved into the chamber, a few feet away from Prakesh. “But Ms Hale, you need to do what he says.”

“I can't.”

I'm crying now, the tears spurred on by the waves of pain coming from my knee. They fall out of my eyes, drifting in front of me.

Okwembu speaks slowly, as if carefully examining every word. “Outer Earth is lost. It's finished. Even if we somehow repair the Core, we've lost too many people to Resin.”

I think of Anna, her father, all the others left behind. “You're wrong.”

But it's as if she doesn't hear me. “The only thing that matters now is that humans survive. And the best chance of that is this ship.”

“Don't listen to them, Riley.” Aaron's voice is almost inaudible under the noise of the reactor, but there's still some strength in it. “Just…” His words are choked off as the arm pulls tighter around his neck.

“Riley, please,” says Prakesh. “Just do what she says. Do it for me.”

I stare at him, not understanding his words. When comprehension comes, it's as if a bullet has gone through my own head. “You're with them?”

“You know I'd never want this. Any of it. But I can't let anyone else die. Not you, not Aaron, not anyone else in this room or this ship. And if you blow that bomb, that's what'll happen.”

“And Outer Earth?” I say. “What about them?”

The regret on Prakesh's face is infinite. “We can't help them, Ry.
I
can't help them. I never could. The only thing I can do is protect what we have now. I can help keep this ship safe.”

“Prakesh—”

“You have to let me do this,” he says.

Is he telling the truth? Would Prakesh lie to me? It's impossible to think. It feels as if there are more people in the room than the five of us. Kevin is there, and Yao, floating just out of sight. Royo, his dark eyes locked on mine. Amira, right behind me, whispering in my ear.

My father is here, too, with my name in orange letters over his face. I can't quite see his eyes.

“I'll give you three seconds,” says Mikhail.

Okwembu glances at him. “No, Mikhail. I have this under control.”

“Three!”

“Riley, I love you, but you have to stop,” says Prakesh.

“Two!”

“Mikhail,
stand down
,” says Okwembu

“One!”

“Do it, Ry,” Aaron shouts. “Do it now!”

I throw the box.

But not at the bomb.

Instead, I throw the box away from me, so hard that it bounces off the floor with a dull boom. The bomb floats in front of the reactor, its wires just touching the surface.

Silence.

Relief is written on Prakesh's face. “Good. That's good, Riley.”

I look down at my hand. Somehow, the knife is back in it. I don't know how – I can't even remember seeing it since I used it on myself. And, right then, it's as if all the voices, all the people crowding the reactor chamber, the buzzing of the reactor itself, just vanish. My mind is wiped clean. There's just me, and the knife.

And Janice Okwembu.

She's floating in front of me. Her eyes sparkle with triumph. Everything that's happened, all of it, from my father to the Devil Dancers to Resin to the dock to Morgan Knox … all of it is because of her. The chain of events she set off, by bringing my father back, put us here: on a hijacked vessel, with the station in ruins behind us, and hundreds of thousands of people dead.

She's the origin point. She's responsible. She wanted power, and control, and it tore Outer Earth apart.

I'm barely aware of what I'm doing. I feel my hands grab hold of something, and use it to spin me around. I move my right leg, the undamaged one, swinging it around so that my foot is in contact with the surface of the reactor. The knife is pointed upwards, gripped tight in my hand. Its blade is crusted with dried blood.

I push off the reactor in what feels like slow motion, but somehow I know that I'm moving faster than I ever have before. Everything I've gone through coalesces, simmers down into those two things. The triumph fades from her eyes, replaced by fear.

And the sight of it, that naked terror in her eyes, is wonderful.

Someone grabs me around the middle. The world comes rushing back – Aaron, Mikhail, the reactor, all of it. The knife is gone, flying away from me. Okwembu, too, pulled back by Mikhail. He throws Aaron aside as he does so, sending him flying.

I'm shouting, hammering on the arms that grip me tight. It's Prakesh. We slam into the wall of the chamber, and my knee flares with impossible pain. He just pulls his way up my body until he towers over me, pulls me into an embrace, locks me in it. My words turn to nothing, to incoherent screams.

I fight to get away from Prakesh, but there's no strength left in my arms. Eventually, all I can do is stare at him. Betrayal, hatred, love, pity – I feel every single one of them.

“No more deaths, Riley,” he says. “No more. Not even her. It's over.”

There's food, water and a room with very bright lights. The
Shinso Maru
's medical bay – I don't really remember how I got here, but Aaron is with me, strapped into one of the other beds.

I can't feel anything below my left knee – the man working on it puts a huge needle into my leg, and the pain simply melts away. I'm strapped down, held in place by wide velcro straps, but my arms float freely. I can barely move them.

The man is muttering to himself as he works on the cut. “You did this to yourself?”

“There was a bomb in me,” I say. “I took it out.”

I hear him pause for a moment, as if waiting for more. When it doesn't come, he goes back to work.

“There's another one,” I say. I barely recognise my own voice. “Other knee.”

His eyes go wide. Then he shakes his head sadly. “I don't…” he says, and trails off.

“Please. You have to take it out.”

“Dominguez was our medical officer,” he says. “I'm doing what I can, but I'm out of my depth here. I'm sorry.”

He's right. Better to leave it where it is, for now. As long as that transmitter in my ear stays charged, I'll be OK.

It's then that I notice the patch on his chest, faded and frayed, but still legible. KHALIL, ASTRONAUTICS OFFICER.

“The demon of the Asteroid Belt,” I say. I don't know if he hears me. I'm drifting down a long, dark tunnel, shot through with flecks of fire. I expect to see my dad, with my name obscuring his eyes, but I'm way too deep for that.

When I wake up, Khalil is gone. In his place there's one of the Earthers, floating by the door. I vaguely remember him from the attack on the dock – a giant man, with a face that looks as if he hasn't smiled in years. “Are you here to make sure I don't kill anybody?” I ask. My throat feels as if it's filled with razor blades.

He doesn't say anything. Lifting my head, I get a look at my knee for the first time. It's wrapped in bandages; a swollen ball of white fabric, dotted with blood.

I rip off my velcro straps. Using the wall for control, I move over to Aaron's bed. He's flat on his back, his eyes closed. The glaring lights show up the purple circles underneath his eyes. There's a drip stuck into his arm, hooked up to a bag of yellowish liquid.

“They said not to wake him yet,” says the man by the door.

I put a hand on Aaron's shoulder, and squeeze. Instantly, the man is by my side, moving between me and the bed. I didn't realise how big he was – my head barely reaches his shoulders.

“Best do what you're told,” he says, staring down at me.

I return his gaze. “What are you, then? My bodyguard?”

“Mikhail says to keep you in here. He'll figure out what to do with you later. You and your friend.”

I'm already working out how to take him down, working out the best way to disable him in low gravity. Then I realise I've only got the use of one leg, and that my other limbs feel like thin glass. I've as much chance of taking him down as I have of surviving in space without a suit. I turn and push myself back to my own bed, pulling myself down onto the edge of it, strapping myself back in.

Sometime later, I look up to see Prakesh.

His eyes are drawn, but he tries to smile as he moves towards the bed. The bodyguard floats between him and me, his hand raised.

“Let me see her,” Prakesh says.

The man doesn't move. Prakesh's eyes flare with anger. “If I was going to try something, I would have done it by now.
Let me see her
.”

After a long moment, the giant lets him past. Prakesh pushes himself around him towards the bed.

I can't look at him.

I keep seeing Okwembu. I was so close. And
he
stopped me, pulled me away just before I could have my revenge. For Outer Earth, for my dad, for everything.

I should hate him. I want to.

But as he reaches the bed, as I see the pain in his eyes and feel his hand on my shoulder, that hatred cracks and crumbles.

I can't blame him for not wanting anyone else to die while he stands aside and does nothing. How can I turn him away, when he's in so much pain? It would be the worst thing possible.

I reach out for him, and we embrace. I bury my head in his shoulder.

Neither of us speak. We don't need to. We just hold each other tight. Both of us have made mistakes. Both of us are broken, in our own way.

I don't mention what happened with Aaron. I don't know how.

“What's it like?” I say. “Up on the bridge?”

He rests his forehead on my shoulder. “They're working out how to shape the asteroid. It has to be structurally sound for re-entry. They're going to need to go outside to do it.”

“That's enough,” says the guard, appearing behind Prakesh.

I squeeze him tight. “Go,” I say. “I'll be all right.”

“You sure?”

In answer, I squeeze even harder. I don't tell him the real reason I want him to go. It's because Aaron is awake, and watching us, and the confusion in his eyes is too much to bear.

“I'll come back, OK?” Prakesh says. “I'll come and get you.”

He looks back at me one last time.

“I love you,” he says.

“I love you, too.”

He leaves, and the door slips shut behind him. The guard doesn't say anything as I unstrap and float over to Aaron's bed. He's sitting up, drinking from a pouch of water through a straw.

“Guess we're going to Earth then,” he says, pulling the straw from his mouth.

“I guess.”

He shrugs. “Gonna be interesting to see how they do it. Even after they get through the atmosphere, they'll still be going a billion miles an hour. I'm thinking they'll use the escape pods, bail out…”

He trails off as I wrap my arms around him. It's all I can do not to start crying again. He hugs me back, then lifts my head to his, his lips brushing mine.

I pull away.

Gods help me, I pull away.

His eyes meet mine. “I just thought – after all we've been through, we could…”

“Please don't ask me this, Aaron. Not now.”

I reach up to touch his cheek, but he pushes me away, anger blazing on his face. “I was there for you. This whole time, I've been right alongside you. Back at the hospital in Apex, the Boneshaker, the fight in the dock, the tug – all of it. Doesn't that mean anything?”

His words echo my thoughts about Prakesh. My heart feels like it's about to shatter, like a single tap on chest would kill me. I have to fight back the tears.

“You really still love him?” Aaron says. “After all that he's done?”

It comes out as a whisper. “I don't know.”

“Then why did we kiss? You tell me that. Why?”

When I speak, each word is like a weight being hung around my neck. “I wanted to be close to someone. I wanted something normal.”

“Excuse me?”

“I shouldn't have done it, Aaron. It was wrong. You're my
friend
.”

He's crying too now. “You don't understand,” he says. “You two have each other. Who do I have, Riley? Who do I have?”

I can't answer him. I wouldn't know where to begin. I don't know what I'm becoming, or what to think any more.

The door opens behind us. I hear Prakesh's voice. “You're OK to come through to the bridge, if you want.”

“Don't go with him,” Aaron says in a whisper. “Stay with me. Please.”

But I don't.

We leave the medical bay, Prakesh and I, the bodyguard floating along behind us. He hasn't said a word. I take one last look back at Aaron – only for a second, because any longer and I'll crack in two. He's turned away from us, facing the wall.

On the bridge, banks of glowing screens are lined up like soldiers. A giant screen hangs from the ceiling; it's displaying what looks like a projected course, the
Shinso
a tiny dot in the top right corner. The Earthers are here – at least twenty of them, floating in small groups. Syria is there, too, huddled by the wall. He doesn't look at me.

The far wall is transparent. I can see the Earth. The sun is just peeking over the far horizon. A band of colour spreads out from it, dark blue becoming crimson and orange and white.

That's when I see Okwembu.

She and Mikhail are floating just below the window, deep in discussion. Mikhail's body has been caught by the sun, but the top half of Okwembu's body is cloaked in shadow. She turns to look at me, and her face is a black hole, silhouetted against the light. It's impossible to see her expression, and she doesn't move – just stares at me, her chin slightly lowered. I get a ghost of the anger I felt in the reactor, when it was just me, her and the knife. Prakesh seems to sense it, and holds me tighter.

We're not done yet
, I think, looking at Okwembu.
You and me. Not even close.

It's Mikhail who comes forward, using the railings that buttress each level to pull himself towards us. I expect him to be angry, but as he comes towards us he actually smiles. “I'm glad to see you up,” he says.

I flinch from him, doing it before I can tell myself not to. He stops, and raises his hands. “You have nothing to be afraid of. Not from us. You understand that we have to keep a watch on you—” he gestures to my guard, still floating behind me “—but I hope you will help us when we reach our destination.”

I'm shaking my head, and when I speak I struggle to keep the rage out of my voice. “Destination?” I say, jabbing a finger at the window, at the black mass under the sun's band. “There's nothing there. Nothing and nobody. We destroyed it, remember?”

“You haven't told her?” Mikhail asks Prakesh. He shakes his head.

“Told me what?”

Mikhail gestures to the big man. My bodyguard. “Alexei. Bring the recording.”

“What is this?” I ask Prakesh.

“You need to hear it,” he says.

As Alexei moves to the other side of the bridge, Mikhail turns back to us. “It's true that most of the Earth is a wasteland. The nuclear bombs saw to that.”

“Then what—”

“Don't interrupt. The climate on maybe ninety-eight per cent of the planet's surface is completely destroyed. But we've discovered a part of the Earth where it's starting to clear.”

I'm shaking my head, not quite believing it. “OK, so what? Starting to clear isn't the same as completely clear. You still don't know what's down there. If it's even habitable.”

Alexei comes back. He has an ancient recording unit, no bigger than my hand. Mikhail takes it, and presses play. Static hisses out of the tinny speaker. Around us, the room has gone silent.

“I don't see—” I start, and then a man's voice is coming out of the speaker, so crackly I can barely make it out. I have to listen hard, but soon I hear the tonal vowels, the clipped words.

“It's Chinese,” I say.

Mikhail nods. “The English message will come in a moment. We think they're broadcasting in different languages to reach as many people as possible.”

“We haven't had any communication from Earth in fifty years. Not one.”

“That is correct,” Mikhail says. “And so we stopped listening. That device in your ear—” he points to my SPOCS unit, still there despite everything I've been through “—it runs off cell frequencies, as you know, which means it can't pick up old radio transmissions.”

And all at once, it clicks into place.

The static. The bursts across the SPOCS line. The interference that Aaron could never fix, that hurt my ear whenever they came through.

I remember the thing I saw in the old mining facility that the Earthers had taken over. The device with the old-fashioned screens, displaying the strange shapes.

We weren't listening. The Earthers were. They found something – something that convinced them that they could survive on Earth. They didn't tell the council because they knew that only a few people would ever be able to return to the planet. They wanted it to be them.

There's a pause in the recording, and then it switches into English.

“If anyone can hear us, we are broadcasting from a secure location in what used to be Anchorage, Alaska. There are at least a hundred of us here, and we have managed to establish a colony. We have food, water and shelter. The climate is cold, but survivable. If you can hear us, then know that you're not the only ones out there. Our coordinates are—”

Mikhail turns off the recorder.

“Do you see now?” he says quietly.

I can barely find the words. “It's an old message. It has to be.”

Alexei shakes his head. “At the end of it, he gives a date. One which was only two months ago.”

“They live,” Mikhail says. “The broadcast was meant for survivors on Earth, but we heard it, too. And we're going to find them.”

It feels like everyone in the room is watching me. Okwembu hasn't moved – her face is still cloaked in shadow. Slowly, I raise my head towards the window.

The world looks back at me, dark and silent, with the sun coming up over the horizon.