She sat up. Bean lifted his head and watched her.
“Okay,” she said to him. “Okay.”
She stood. Her legs were weak from disuse and her head swam for a moment before steadying. She walked to the bathroom and set the shower to air-exfoliate. As far as she knew, water was still being rationed. She hadn’t showered because of this, and because getting up had not been a thing she’d wanted to do. Luv had kept glasses of drinking water on the bedside table for her, so she “wouldn’t shrivel into a desiccated corpse,” but she had to assume that work had stopped. What was the point, when the station was condemned and there were nonitsto fix it?
To be on the safe side, the air-exfoliate setting would do, although Holly winced as she stepped into the bathing enclosure and the glass doors sealed shut around her. The air-exfoliate cycle stripped dead skin and grime using pressurized, filtered air and fine mist. It was effective. It was also painful.
Holly gritted her teeth and endured it. The sting of the pressurized air on her neglected skin was clarifying, to say the least, and frankly, she probably deserved it for avoiding her responsibilities for days. By the time it finished, she felt raw and clean and vaguely angry, which was better than feeling nothing.
She brushed her teeth and pulled on clean clothes. Soft pants. A top in a color she liked. Not the Sol-Arc suit. Neverthe Sol-Arc suit again. She looked at herself in the small mirror above the sink. Her face was thinner than it had been. The circles under her eyes were still there, but fading. The pimple on her chin was gone, at least. Her hair was clean and damp and fell in waves past her shoulders.
She looked like someone recovering from Phasia flu, but it would have to be enough.
In the living room, she found the food Luv left for her on the table and ate it standing at the window. The light outside was a dim, reddish twilight. The square was quiet. The fountain sat dark and silent.
“You look better,” Luv said, rolling over to her.
“Low bar.”
“Extremely, but I’m happy to see it.”
Holly finished the protein bar and looked at Bean, who was sitting by the door with an expression of tentative hope. She was going to go outside and face whatever was left out there. Start saying goodbye to the station. Probably have a cry for the old trees that were going to die when the power was cut. Then, at some point, she was going to turn on her comm and sign whatever needed signing and begin the miserable process of figuring out what came next.
She was reaching for her shoes when a knock came at the door.
“You should answer this one,” Luv said.
Holly paused. Her hand hovered over the left shoe, her body caught between the reflex to ignore it and the new, fragile resolve to stop hiding.
Through the door, she heard voices.
“Try again. Knock harder. She might be in the back.”
“Andrew, I’m not going to pound on her door. It’s rude.”
“Well, she’s not answering the gentle knock, is she? Maybe we should just… Is there a way to override the lock?”
“We arenotbreaking into our daughter’s home.”
Holly dropped the shoe and pressed a hand to her mouth. Her eyes burned. Her chest cracked open like a door she’d been leaning against for days. But she was stuck, frozen, listening to their voices, wondering if she was hallucinating. “Is that…my parents?” she whispered to Luv.
The Homeboti made a sound like a digitized sigh. “Why don’t you open the door and find out?”
The discussion continued in the hallway. “I’m not suggesting webreak in,” said her father’s exasperated voice. “I’m suggesting we find whoever runs this place and ask them to open the door. There must be a manager.”
“Holly runs the place. She’s the manager,” her mother said curtly. “And the owner.”
“Then we try the robot. The one with the attitude.”
“Andrew, so help me, if you try to recruit a robot to break into Holly’s apartment, I will leave you on this moon.”
“Attitude,” Luv grunted. “Well, are you going to stand there or let them in?”
With a whimper, Holly broke from her paralysis, lunged forward and threw open the door.
Her parents stood in the hallway. Her father in a clean jacket without a single smear of clay or paint. Her mother in a smart travel jumpsuit with her pink curls escaping from under a scarf. Her eyes instantly softened with relief when the door opened.
“Mom,” Holly said on a voice crack. “Dad. You’re here. How did you…?”
