Room-temperature air blows out when I check the vents. The ship’s systems aren’t malfunctioning. So I must be the one malfunctioning. Stress is most likely the cause.
I try lying back down and close my eyes. But my body won’t let me return to sleep without Idris next to me. It’s gotten used to regulating around him.
So I leave my quarters and start walking toward the MedBay. My intention is to sit in the corner, to check Jonathan’s vitals again, to do something useful. My mind needs a task. I don’t care if Idris or Darius argues with me to rest. I want to be there.
The corridor’s rather dark this early in the day, dimly lit by the night-cycle strips along the floor.
Though, halfway down the corridor, I notice something unusual. A dark shape beneath a door. At first, it looks like a spill, but the color’s wrong for water. The consistency is too thick. It moves slowly, spreading outward from the bottom of Subject Three’s door.
Gerald.
My body reacts before thought forms. I run. My feet hit the floor harder than necessary. My pulse ticks swiftly and harshly until I hear it rush into my ears.
I reach his door and press my palm to the reader. My hand slips slightly from sweat. But the screen flashes green. The door slides open.
The metallic smell hits first, heavy and dense in the air. It settles on my tongue and becomes impossible to ignore.
Then I bring my eyes down. My breath catches in my throat. Evenin this dim lighting, it’s clear what occurred.
Gerald’s on the floor, face down, drowning in his own blood.
My vision blurs. I blink and wetness drips down my burning face.
His midsection has been cut open. As if someone mapped the incision, planned it, and followed it with intent. The cavity where his liver should be is empty. The organ’s been removed cleanly.
Blood spreads beneath him in slow, thick waves. The dim lights give the dark red floor an unnatural sheen.
The red reaches my feet. My breath leaves me in a sound I don’t recognize. My knees weaken. My fingers tense until I feel nails dig into my palms.
For a moment, the room doesn’t feel like the ship. It feels like the kitchen floor when I was thirteen, my mother’s pulse slowing to a stop under my fingertips.
I blink hard. Gerald doesn’t move. His skin is unnaturally pale. The wound is exact. Whoever did this understands anatomy.
I try to inhale. It stops halfway, shakes, and breaks apart in my chest. My hands are frozen. My neck is far too hot. The temperature imbalance fogs my glasses. I can no longer see clearly, nor think clearly.
My brain tries to categorize the sensations to obtain a semblance of control, because—I remind myself—I am simply in shock. What I’m experiencing is merely horror. And the underlying feeling crawling up my throat is from feelings of guilt for not reaching Gerald sooner. Of being a…failure.
Gerald trusted me. He trusted the experiment. He believed in the formula I’d recreated to restart his life. He thanked us for not serving him liquor. And while he was supposed to be under my care, someone carved him open.
My throat closes around that harrowing thought. I try to swallow, but my tongue feels too thick. I try to move toward him. My legsdon’t respond.
I try again. But my body’s frozen without my permission. Hot tears run down my face out of frustration.
I tell myself to run. To call Idris. To speak. To move. Nothing follows those commands.
All I can do is stare at Gerald. At the pool of blood. At the empty space inside him.
My body stays locked in place, staring at the violent end of someone whose hope was placed in my hands and lost under my care. His blood pools around my feet. The red blurs until I close my eyes and imagine my mother’s hands turning cold until they were frozen and blue in my quivering hands.
Fire surrounded us. Heat swirled in flames I was prepared to be engulfed in. But she was so cold.
I wanted more time with her. I wanted to tell her I understand what she had to do to survive. That I don’t blame her for taking Kys when she was carrying me. I never blamed her for becoming addicted to it. For relying on it, even when it was no longer clean. I know what it feels to need a sedative to live through the darkest moments. And now, I’m remembering the worst one.
I was coming home, when I saw smoke escaping through the kitchen window. Sprinting in, I couldn’t see through the gray. I cried out for my mother, panicked when I couldn’t breathe. So how could she? I had to save her. I fell to my knees when I drew closer to the fire, heart torn apart at the sight of her, fallen, overdosed, and dying rapidly in my arms while dinner burned.
Hope is not a helpful factor. But I had hoped then that she’d heard me, when I asked her to come back to me. All I want to do is go back in time and reach home—reachher—sooner, but the sirens came and arms pulled me away from her, even when I begged to be with her.
I haven’t felt helpless since then. Not until now.
