Then Cleo’s voice comes from the kitchen, and I think he and I both stop breathing.
‘I think this is going to work,’ she calls. ‘Let me take a look.’
The merc is a Nordic blond, sharp-featured and muscular. He’s the remaining member of the pair we saw patrolling the corridor – the Boxer was the other.
This is the kind of guy who stirs an instinct in the back of your mind telling you to stay very, very far away from him. Telling you that he’ll hurt you without even thinking about it. He wears a pressure suit like we do, and like us, he’s peeled it down halfway, the arms tied around his waist. His upper half is in a tight black T-shirt that was presumably designed to show off biceps the size of my head, and it’s getting the job done admirably.
I would very much prefer not to go anywhere near him if I can avoid it. You just know he gets up at dawn, takes a cold shower, and then does chin-ups before breakfast. One-handed.
He draws his gun, stalking toward the kitchen, and I silently set down my headsets and speakers, preparing to move.
Mr Chin-Up creeps past the serving counter and makes it to the entrance, disappearing into the kitchen. With a deep, steadying breath, I rise to my feet to sneak after him.
‘Are you listening?’ Cleo calls. ‘And hey, we should get more snacks while we’re here.’
On silent feet I jog across to the kitchen, making it to the entrance, my mouth dry. Will they have knives in there? Will I have time to grab one if I have to?
The kitchen is a long, narrow space, crowded with pots and pans, bunches of herbs and vegetables picked from the greenhouse, and big pots still sitting on the stove where the cooks abandoned them during the evacuation.
Mr Chin-Up is halfway down the room, gun up and out, standing perfectly still as he listens. Then there’s a faint sound from the huge walk-in freezer, whose door stands ajar, its interior as disorganized as the rest of the kitchen. It’s not much – just a quiet, almost muffled click, as if someone’s brushed against one of the walls.
He’s across the kitchen in three long strides and slipping through that gap in the door.
That’s when I really move, breaking into a run. But I’ve screwed up Mars gravity again, and I slam way too hard into the freezer door, sending a bolt of pain through my shoulder.
Cleo comes scrambling down from the high shelf where she was hiding. She drops the remote control she’s holding, and as I push the long doorhandle closed, she’s ready to slip a zip tie around it, securing it against the shelving units next to it. Then she adds another for good measure and carefully hangs a cleaning cloth over the handle, so that on a quick inspection, the fact that it’s secured shut will be hidden.
There’s silence from inside, where Mr Chin-Up is no doubt discovering that his only company is a small cleaning robot, trying helplessly to bang its way free of the maze of frozen food we built for it. The thick insulation of the freezer walls blocks all sound, but the recording is probably still playing Cleo’s voice at him, and it’ll have progressed to a warning:Pull up your pressure suit now, for protection against the cold. You might be here for a while.
Cleo steps back, her hands clapped over her mouth to stifle a giggle. ‘I can’t believe that worked,’ she manages. Andthen: ‘Oh, you’re kidding.’ She points, and when I follow the line of her finger, I see the warning sign beside the zip-tied door.
Please check for staff inside the freezer before closing,every time. Safety first!
And now I’m laughing too – I’m laughing too hard, with the heady relief of not having to fight a terrifying muscle man with a kitchen knife. ‘I’m a Graves,’ I manage with a shrug. ‘Rule-breaking’s always been our thing.’
I can’t remember the last time I laughed like this – with the wild weakness that comes from having braved something terrifying and somehow survived it. Or, wait … I can, actually.
I was about twelve, and I was with my sister. We’d snuck into our mother’s conference room before a board meeting, and then heard the board members all arriving early. Our choices were to dive under the table, or show ourselves and catch hell for being in a room full of classified papers. We dived under the table.
We stayed put for the whole two hours, desperately trying not to make a noise, and at one point Marguerite nearly suffocated me, trying to stop me from sneezing. If our mother had caught us down there, we’d have been skinned alive.
When the last of them left, we collapsed in laughter, clinging to each other, and every time one of us managed to get it under control, we’d make eye contact and start again. It’s one of the last memories I have of us together, before it all … well, went how it went.
Cleo presses a hand to her mouth again, but doesn’t really manage to chase away the laughter. ‘We should keep moving,’ she says. ‘He’s going to spend a minute trying to get out, before he abandons his dignity and radios for help. Assuming he can get a signal through the freezer insulation, but let’s say he can, just in case. Did you get the headsets prepped?’
‘You get the food ready. I’ll turn it on,’ I reply, snagging a muffin on my way out of the kitchen. Back at my nest of headsets, I carefully lift them off the table and set them underneath, where they’re even better concealed. Then I check each of them is tuned to one of the base’s communication channels, of which there are five.
And then I turn on the speaker.
Immediately my own headset is filled with the song now broadcasting on all five channels, the perky tones of Victoriana Lu earworming their way straight into my head.
Gonna blast into space, baby!
Gonna hit third base, baby!
Gotta love this face, baby!
Rocket to the moon, yeah!
