The increased ship speed is noticeable almost immediately in the more intense vibrations through the corridor decking beneath my feet. If it’s like this up here, I can’t imagine what it must have been like on the lower decks.
Where people hid in their rooms… or were locked away by others. The engine noise alone might have played a role in the chaos. They must have all been terrified, none of them understanding what was happening. People lashing out at one another, accusing each other of what they thought they saw. Frightened by hallucinations and other impossibilities. The one small advantage we have is that we know something happened on theAurora,and that recent events are likely related.
The passengers and crew must have thought they were losing their minds.
Which, incidentally, is still a possibility for us as well, but at least we know it’s not just us.
We make it through the first few rooms without incident. Everything is exactly as I remember it. No sign of anyone or anything unusual. Of course, how can any of us know that for sure now when we can’t trust what we’re experiencing?
I shake my head.
“What?” Kane asks. He’s locking the door of one suite before we move to the next.
“Just thinking about the—”
The lights flicker overhead in an irregular rhythm, creating shadows where there were none a moment ago and the sensation of movement within them. A flash of pale fabric. White with little blue flowers.
I freeze.
“I see it, too,” Kane says quickly. “The lights are going on and off, like Nysus said.”
Claire. Claiiiiire.
Becca. I haven’t seen her in years. Not since Ferris. How is she here now?
I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, take a deep breath, and then open them. “Okay, I’m okay.”
I focus on the spots of light, trying to ignore the writhing shadows, and force my feet forward. Just hallucinations. Or… something. I am the aberration, as Nysus said. What’s happening to me isn’t necessarily happening to everyone else.
Next to me, Kane jerks suddenly, turning to look behind us.
“What’s wro—”
But even as I ask the question, I hear it. Footsteps. Somewhere nearby.
Heart racing, I turn, but there’s nothing.
Until… cool, invisible fingertips brush my cheek. Gritting my teeth, I force myself not to step back.
Claire. Come play with me.
“Do you see anything?” I ask Kane, even as he flinches, swiftly looking down toward the floor.
“It’s hard to… I keep catching glimpses. A hand. Long hair. Bleeding. I think it’s my ex. But she’s not…” His breath is uneven and harsh.
Shit. It’s getting worse. We’re getting worse.
“This is me,” I warn him as I reach out and take his hand. I squeeze his palm hard, enough for our bones to pinch together uncomfortably.
His gaze jerks up sharply to meet mine, surprise warring with pain.
“If you can, focus on what you know is real,” I tell him. “It’s hard because you can’t trust your senses, but if you can find one thing, that’ll help.” Just out of the corner of my eye, Cattie Dunleavy waits, her fingers tugging at the chain around her neck, her mouth moving in words I can’t hear. Yet.
Kane blinks at me, his blue eyes wide, the pupils dilated in the irregular illumination. “You did this. By yourself for a month.”
They aren’t questions, but I nod anyway. “I focused on my stomach growling, how dry my mouth was. Things I knew were real.”
But I also listened to my mother telling me what I needed to do to survive. The Verux-provided psychiatrists insisted that I must have known what to do and simply “imagined” my mother speaking to me. For some of that, perhaps. But never, in the six years in the colony, had I ever been entrusted anywhere near the communications room. How would I have known what to do, how to signal the rescue team, if my mother hadn’t told me? My mother who would have known what to do, as part of her training. She and several others were considered “first responders” in any kind of emergency.
