And a hundred of those, give or take, should have taken up a noticeable amount of space. But that had not been the case, as far as I’d seen.
So… what exactly is Max planning to do?
24
I lose track of the days. Most of the time, I find that the fragments—pieces of lost or buried memories—show up when I’m not seeking them out. When I’m eating. When I’m writing out pieces of what I already know. When I’m sporadically allowed out of my quarters during the dead shift to run on the treadmill in the ship’s gym.
My only regular company is the ghost—or whatever you want to call it—of Reed Darrow’s grandfather. He of the black suit with wide, outdated buttons and a Verux first-gen pin. He paces in and out through the wall closest to wherever Reed is. Likely next door. The grandfather is a silent but steady presence that no longer unnerves me.
My mother has not been here once, which I don’t understand. But when I look back on it, she seems only to make herself known when I’m panicking or in recognizable danger. Which leads me to believe that perhaps the battalion of experts was correct: she is in my mind. A coping mechanism for dealing with everything else, generated out of need first on Ferris when I was alone. Though that still doesn’t explain everything, so I don’t know.
Kane and the others, though. They are here as often as ever, and most of the time, only showing me exactly what I’ve seen before, for months now.
A few times, there has been more.
A blurry Kane arguing with me, his face flushed with hectic color, blood on the side of his head. The whole moment is washed of detail, and the remembered pain in my head is much worse.
Lourdes, banging on the door from inside one of the suites, crying for help. I’m trying to get to her, but someone pulls me away.
A brief flash of Nysus with an elastic bandage wrapped tightly around his head.
Someone screaming in the dark, as I move through a narrow hallway, one that shows no signs of the luxury of the Platinum Level, or even one of the lower passenger decks.
That one, I think, might be part of the memory I recovered before, with Kane and Lourdes, when she was still alive.
On the bed, I lean back against the wall, dropping the pen on the page where I’m attempting to make everything fit into a coherent timeline—and scrub at my tired and burning eyes.
Here’s what I know: my last memory, the one on the bridge, is not the last thing I did or said on board theAurora,which isn’t news. I got into that escape pod somehow.
But I’m also missing pieces from the time between when I was injured and that moment on the bridge. For example, at some point, Kane, Lourdes, and I were wandering around the ship, outside the sealed area—assuming those snippets drifting through my mind are actual memories rather than scenarios of my own invention. But why? What were we doing? What were we looking for?
That gap in my recall bothers me even more. How much am I missing? Why is it just gone from my head?
But all any of it means is I’m no closer to the truth than I was when I started. Because essentially, there are only two possibilities.
One: I left because my crew was all dead.
Two: I left even though my crew was alive and suffering. And I have no idea why.
Neither of those options is acceptable.
Shoving the paper away from me in frustration, I get up and pace the tiny room again. For the hundredth time or the thousandth, I’ve lost count.
Because I’m standing, I feel it instantly, the tiny, momentary lurch as the engines slow. Then the engine noise declines, just enough to be noticeable in its reduction.
My heart flaps about anxiously in my chest, but the rest of me is frozen in place. Wait, are we here? Or there, rather?
I try to count back, how many mornings have passed since that first one. The number is likely in the high teens somewhere, which means, yes, it’s possible.
Closing my eyes, I try to imagine what’s happening now. They’re reducing speed, which means the next maneuver will likely be to come about and pull alongside…
I feel the shift, a small push toward portside as the ship comes about on the starboard and the gravity generator compensates.
We’re here.TheAurorais right outside. With all the answers I’ve been seeking.
My mouth instantly goes dry.
I rush to the door and beat my fists against it. “Hey! Hey, let me out!” My voice is cracked and rusty, the product of speaking to no one for days.
