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The sudden desire to speak to someone besides C, to know what had happened to Tern, gave me a burst of energy, and I quickened my steps. Had the city been evacuated in time? Would the Boola have news from Earth? When it came down to it, hearing any fucking voice besides C’s would be music to my deprived ears, no matter how sweet her voice was when she listed the never-ending repairs, harvest deadlines and watering schedules.
Guilt tightened the back of my throat. Without C, I’d be dead. Yeah, she was an AI, but she’d been my only company for seven months, and I’d grown to rely on her. To think of her as a companion. I swore she was mad at me for delaying leaving level thirty-one for so long.
Surely, she’d be able to help this poor sap too.
The oxy mask sensor blinked red as I maneuvered my unconscious companion into a wheeled transport chair. I may have overestimated my ability to get him to the research station. My back cramped as I lowered him, and I made a mental note to squeeze in a workout every now and then. Clearly, lifting a torque wrench all day and dragging around watering hoses was not enough to maintain my strength.
“Mmm…for the love of Sola, what are you doing to me?” Copper-ringed eyes that faded to molten gold, framed by long, dark lashes crusted with sand, squinted in my direction.
Beautiful.
Creases bracketed his eyes, and he bit down on his full black lip with razor-sharp teeth, groaning in pain.
“Hang on just a minute longer, buddy. We’re heading to the med bay.” I squeezed his shoulder, relieved by his apparent awareness, and tapped the level with the medic’s red cross badge into the hovertube’s navigation panel. “C, we have a visitor. Can you register… What’s your name?”
Before he answered, the frenetic pulse of the red light on my oxy mask stole my attention. I tapped the flashing sensor—it had to be a malfunction—and fought back the panic trickling through my veins. The last drags of uncontaminated air tasted of tin and ash as they met my parched lungs.
“You know that thing’s out of oxygen, right?” He twisted his inky lips to one side while tightening the strap he’d wrapped around his thigh. Blood as thick as syrup oozed from his wound, and his copper eyes drifted closed while he bit back a curse.
Out of the wind, the deep rasp in his voice became clear. Though threaded with pain, it wrapped around me like a friendly hug. It kept my heart from jumping through my rib cage as the hovertube descended in what seemed like slow motion. Each level flashed on the screen over the silver door like a harbinger of horror. What macabre hell lay waiting on the other side? I sucked in a breath of thinning oxygen. “Yep. I’m going to grab a new tank when we get off.”
C’mon, get yourself together. Sporemaggedon’s over.
He clutched his thigh, then his narrowed eyes scanned the space as if looking for something physical lurking there. My head grew muzzier as I watched him stick out a long, thick purple tongue, tasting. “Air seems fine. Something I should know?”
“I’ve never seen a purple tongue before.” I sucked in a metallic breath as he clamped his mouth shut and looked away. “Shit, I didn’t mean to saythat.” My head felt like a helium balloon detaching from my body, but my knees pulled me down as if they were filled with lead. “There’s nothing wrong with the air.”
His eyes widened, and he smiled. “Then you might want to take that off before you pass out.”
“Yeah, I should.” The spores had been evacuated, the research labs blown to bits and scattered to the wind, and the lethal bacterium safely contained in the magma buried deep within the bowels of the volcano. “I like purple. It’s a fine color for a tongue.”
“Sterling Peoples.” Thermal Station C’s AI voice barely registered through the hovertube’s com system as my head drooped. I’d asked her to call me Silver a thousand times. “Sorry for the delay. It took me some time to process your incomplete request. I would be happy…” Dizziness overcame me, my knees gave out and his purple tongue blurred as I collapsed.
Hot air hit my face, and I jerked my head back at the rank smell clogging my nose. My mask sputtered in my lap, the last dregs of oxygen wheezing out. Useless. C’s voice echoed in the cramped hovertube assour-tasting air rushed back into my lungs.
The Boola beamed down at me. Slumped against his transport chair, I listened as he answered C’s question. I hadn’t even heard her ask it. What else had I missed?
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Thermal Station C. I’ll get Sterling Peoples to bring me to the terratherm hub to scan my palm.” His smile grew bigger as his raspy voice slid over my name, sending shivers down my spine.
“I look forward to putting you to work, D’alton of Clan Lasting.”
D’alton. A name at last. I rolled the sound of the letters along my tongue, where they melted like sugared candy. Instead of eye teeth, he had two sharp fangs, but they didn’t diminish the glow of his smile. He’d one hundred percent heard the tongue thing. I’d never been a great conversationalist, but after a year alone my peopling skills had hit rock bottom.
Below his sweat-slicked brow, eyes the color of swirling copper and magma scanned my unmasked face, as if cataloging every detail. They locked me in their grip.
The level fifteen door announcement rang through the air, shattering our unlikely moment of connection. My gaze shifted to the oxy tank just outside the hovertube’s open doors. I reluctantly wheeled D’alton through, taking shallow breaths. The air was fine. If I woke up alive tomorrow, I prayed that would be enough for this irrational fear to be done.
The chair lurched and came to an abrupt stop. What had I run into? D’alton jerked, clutching his ribs. When I dragged my gaze away from him to see what I’d hit, I wished I hadn’t.
Frozen in place, we took in every awful inch of the devastation before us. Bodies, seven months decomposed, blocked the corridor to the med bay. Ranks, names and positions—identifiable from the badges on their crisp black, yellow and blue uniforms, not their eyeless faces—blurred before my eyes.
I snapped my head back to watch D’alton’s brown skin turn ashen. His shoulders stiffened like an iron bar, and I strained to hear the words he uttered no louder than a breath. “What happened here?”
My knuckles turned white as I gripped the transport chair’s handles. “There was an accident.” Goddamn it, I should’ve known better. The med bay would’ve been the first place people ran to when they couldn’t breathe.
The sickly sweet scent of corpses saturated the air. Stomach acid roiled in my gut, and I spun the transport chair back toward the hovertube before my breakfast ended up on the floor. In the mirrored corridor walls, a glimpse of D’alton’s tear-streaked face filled my line of sight.
“I’m getting us out of here.” I hustled us away like we were trespassers caught robbing a grave, though we’d stolen nothing but the silence. “There’s gotta be supplies somewhere else.”
