He’s mad again. We made it down one fucking corridor before Elliot fucked it up.
“Thirty seconds,” Elliot insisted, staying near the door and crossing his arms.
Every second Levi spent managing this was time he wasn’t spending on the scenario. Every second Elliot spent being concerned was a second closer to Asher deciding to solve the concern permanently. And the briefing — the one thing in this loop that might actually tell him something useful about the game — was going to happen despite Asher’s jealousy and Elliot having become the equivalent of Clippy as a romance option.
Levi could feel Asher’s gaze boring into his back as he walked over to Elliot and tried to angle himself so Asher would be able to see the distance between them. It probably wouldn’t help, but he had to try.
“I know what happened between us didn’t mean what it meant to me,” Elliot began, pitched low enough that the room wouldn’t catch it. “And that’s fine. I’ve made my peace with that.” Levi’s mouth opened and nothing came out, because there was no version of this conversation he was equipped to have.
“But I know what you look like when you’re okay,” Elliot continued, “and I know what you look like when you’re not, and right now you’re not. I don’t think it’s cryo.” He glanced at Levi’s throat and his jaw tightened. “I need you to know that I care about you, and I don’t hurt people I care about.”
You need to stop talking before he decides you’re a problem he needs to solve, and this time he’ll feel justified about it.
“Elliot.” Levi kept his voice down and tried to make it land. “I need you to listen to me. I’m okay, and I need you to go sit down.”
“I can help you,” Elliot insisted. “You know I can help.”
“Please.” The word came out harder than he intended, sharpened by the awareness of Asher’s attention making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. “Go sit down. We can talk later. Not now.”
Levi heard the chair move.
He didn’t look. His shoulders sagged, and his gaze dropped to the floor — not in defeat exactly, just the specific exhaustion of watching two problems converge that he’d been trying to keep separate.Three words on a corridor floor, and now this is what they cost.
“I’m going to need you to step back,” Asher said over his shoulder, so close that the warmth of him hit Levi’s back.
“Kane—”
“Step back.” Asher grabbed Levi’s wrist and tugged him backwards.
“You don’t give me orders. I outrank you on this vessel.”
“I’m not asking again, Elliot. Step back.”
The room had gone very quiet. Owen’s tapping on his data pads had stopped. Jasper had put down the cable. Tyler was still. And the briefing — the checkpoint, the information, the thing Levi actually needed from this room — was evaporating while two men stared each other down over his head.
A woman in her mid-fifties with short silver hair stepped through the doorway beside them. She had the kind of posture that moved entire rooms out of its way, and the expression on her face as she took in the tableau — Elliot and Asher squared off across Levi, the rest of the crew at various stages of pretending not to watch — did not change.
“Gentlemen,” she said without inflection. “Seats.”
Asher pulled Levi back harder as he took a step away from the woman and Elliot.
“Captain Reynolds.” Elliot immediately stood straighter, turned toward her, and gave a salute.
So that’s the captain.Levi watched her set a tablet on the table and look at the room.
“Let’s use the time we have,” Reynolds said, taking a step back, her arms clasped behind her back. “Dr. Mercer. Walk us through where you are on the specimens.”
Every eye in the room turned to him, and Levi suddenly felt like he was in high school, about to give a book report on a book he had only read the back of.
You can do this. It’s like an unconventional boss fight. Except the boss is a middle-aged woman with good posture, and the weapon is a question I don’t have the answer to.
Levi thought about seventeen pods. About electromagnetic signatures, proximity responses, and the sensor alert that got dismissed. “The preliminary read is…” He stopped and took a steadying breath. “The sensor alert yesterday—”
“Was logged as a malfunction due to crew,” Reynolds said, her eyes flicking to Jasper.
“Right, but we shouldn’t overlook the possibility of other causes.” He was buying time, and she narrowed her eyes at him like she could tell he was buying time. “Before we open anything, I’d want to run external sensors on each unit individually, because if the electromagnetic signature is—”
“What specific readings are you expecting, Dr. Mercer?”
