THIRTY-SIX
BLACK PEARLS
I have no rational explanation. He wasn’t with us inside the cockpit; I’m sure of that. The cargo unit wasn’t pressurized, but he’s wearing a suit too, so . . . maybe? Hope rushes through me and, with it, renewed energy. We can find a way out of this.
For now, we’re in a pinch though: Anies isn’t stupid; he’s probably calculating that if he opens the air lock, he gets a chance to get rid of March, but mostly he’ll trigger a massacre. I wait, every single muscle in my body tensing the longer he stares at that screen.
“Bahjin,” he says. “Can you stop the ring?”
A slight wince flashes across Bahjin’s face. “Are you sure . . . sir?”
“Yes. On my command, stop the ring, and depressurize section eleven.”
I check the screen. March isn’t wearing a helmet, and I see none around. Oh no, no . . . anything but that. Anies’s gaze meets mine; he reads my distress, plain as day. There’s not a single trace of regret to be found in his eyes as he says, “I’m sorry, Island.”
I have no time left to think and certainly none to cry. Loud cracking outside the room makes me whirl around with a start. March is trying to shoot the lock.
Bahjin shakes his head. “All beef . . . no brain. Everyone buckle up; stopping ring auxiliary engine in twenty seconds.”
I’m out of time; I act on instinct. The Lion whose balls I inadvertently crushed is still standing close behind me, ready to block any escape. I fall to my knees and grip his leg desperately. “Oh God, no! No, please, don’t let them do this!” I scrunch up my face, summoning some waterworks—something regrettably easy to accomplish given the level of stress I’ve been under these past few hours. I sense him startle. I bawl harder. “We love each other! Don’t depressurize my boyfriend, please!”
“Island!”
Anies’s angry shout is the final distraction I need. I grit my teeth and punch the guy with all my strength. My fist hits something soft and a little squishy under his suit. Air instantly escapes his lungs in a loud huff, and he folds inward with a muffled groan. The other Lions lunge at me but not before I manage to elbow my victim in the side of the knee. There’re kneepads integrated in our suits though, and for that reason there’s a distinct possibility that the move hurts me more than it does him. Agony pulses in my arm, but he drops to his knees in surprise at this exotic self-defense combo.
I have half a second to either flee or fight back before two six-foot Lions pounce on me. It could be the adrenaline blazing through my system, but I think I’m starting to understand how March does it. The trick is to trade self-preservation for efficiency. I roll over and grab the Blade Runner gun strapped to Busted-nuts’s thigh. Self-preservation: aim and hope to hold them with the threat alone. Efficiency . . . my thumb finds the safety, and my eyes screw shut as I press the trigger blindly over and over.
I register a grunt. Did I hit one of them? I need to hold them back. I need more time for March, just a little more . . .
My vision blurs and goes black when the man closest to me knees me hard in the stomach and rips the gun from my hands in one quick move. Stars dance under my eyelids, and I gasp for oxygen in vain when his free hand grips my throat to immobilize me fully. I see the sweat on his brow, his dark eyes narrowing at me, daring me to move.
Steps echo somewhere behind him. Black boots appear, integrated to a suit. Anies looms above me. The Lion lets go, and I feel Anies’s hand glide in my hair before he pulls hard. Pain lashes at my scalp and I let out a broken howl.
“I don’t have time for this, Island. And I warned you there would be consequences.” His sighs fan over my face, carrying the mephitic breath of a dying man. “Her hand,” he tells his goon.
I jerk in panic when the guard grabs my right wrist and forces it still, crushing it to the floor. Someone separates my suit’s glove and pulls it off, and I see the black blade in Anies’s hand that the third Lion just handed him. I scream and thrash in vain. Claire and Bahjin watch, their gazes blank, unfeeling. Anies trails the blade across my palm and nicks the skin, drawing a drop of blood. “You’re going to tell me which finger,” he asks, his tone eerily calm, almost tender.
I writhe, arch until I’m sure my spine is going to snap from the effort to free myself. “Uh . . . no . . . no! Let me go!”
“Which. Finger. Island.”
When the blade presses against my pinkie, I know he’s chosen for me. I shake and cry hysterically, willing myself out of this reality as the pain increases.
“Oh fuck, he’s found the auxiliary cable!”
Bahjin’s scream is the only warning we get before the lights go out, and I am effectively lifted from this reality. The Lion’s hold on my wrist loosens as he floats toward the ceiling, like the rest of us. I find myself looking upside down at the screen, on which March is as powerless against zero gravity as we are. Around him, the remnants of the electric cable powering the ring’s rotation engine dances gently, like seaweed in a quiet ocean. He won’t give up. A light kick against the wall propels him to the door, and he tries the manual-opening lever over and over, his features twisting in rage and exertion.
I blink in realization. I get it! He cut the power because he thought it’d allow him to go manual. But we’re in the command center, and one of the cells still powers our computers to protect the launch system so, logically, in the event of an electrical failure, you can only go manual . . . from this side of the door.
I spin around and scan the air lock at the other end of the room. I see the lever, outlined by the red glow of a series of switches. I try to find a way to float toward it, but arms wrap around my waist like a vise. I look up to see Anies’s face in the dark, a terrifying war mask sculpted by the red light bathing us. In that single second, I know this face will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life if I survive this.
The blade he holds glints crimson in the darkness as his fingers wrap around my throat, exposing it. Panic floods my system, and a vision of Dries’s blood flowing from the wound in his neck flashes before my eyes. I know I have to fight this, that this time it’s not about cutting off my pinkie. I try to elbow him and arch away from the blade in his hand. My feet hit something—the captain’s seat. Drop self-preservation; be efficient, I remind myself. I stop struggling and feel his hold tighten around me. The blade closes in on my carotid, grazes it in a chilling caress. I breathe out my fear as my feet find leverage against the back of the seat. I push hard to propel myself. Zero gravity does the rest; we both barrel toward the air lock.
I spot shadows in my peripheral vision: Anies’s men are coming to help him. Time is running out, but I’m so close . . . so close. I strain with a howl of rage, of despair. My fingers reach, claw at the air, even as the blade starts biting into my skin. I need more leverage, I just need . . . One of the Lions floats close, to block my legs. Just a little more leverage. I kick back as hard as I can, using him to propel myself one last time, away from Anies and toward the manual-opening lever. A moan of agony buzzes in my ears. Forgive me, Nut Jesus, I think I kicked that poor guy in the balls for the third time. But I feel the lever’s cool steel in my hand; my fingers curl around it! Almost instantly, Anies’s hand clasps around mine to stop me.
He tugs hard to tear my hand away from the lever. I let him.
Relief washes through me and makes me go lax in his grip for a heartbeat. The air lock slides open with a satisfying hydraulic hiss, and in the dark, in the chaos, I see March’s face, his hand reaching for mine.
Anies hauls me back, and I register suppressed gunshots cracking through the room. Fear explodes in my chest; here, in zero gravity, there’s no way to easily dodge. I see March wrestling one of the Lions in a corner of the room while another one floats past us, blood bubbling out slowly from a wound between his eyes. I struggle against Anies’s grip, spurred by his labored breathing in my ear. A fit of coughing rattles through him, my cue to push him hard and break free. Air and blood gurgle together from his throat, and his shaking hand lets go of the blade. I catch it when it flies past me and grip it, terror and rage surging in my veins.
“Island,” he rasps. “I never . . . wanted anything else than to give you all of this.”
A wave of nausea wells in my stomach. All of this? My parents’ blood? The life of a doll? Or maybe all the lives lost, threatened? There’s so much I want to say, to shout, but seeing him like this, defeated, while March is butchering what’s left of his men, I know there’s only one thing that could hurt him more.
I hold out the blade defiantly, to keep him at a safe distance. “I tread on your dream. I fucking trample it.”
In the darkness, bathed in the red of the lights and the delicate blood bubbles floating around us like rubies, shock registers on his face, like he only just realized it’s over. The orbital ring won’t start again, and the power in section five probably can’t be restored to complete the launch.
Yes, now he understands and . . . I pedal in vain as he lunges at me, too fast, his face ravaged by unfathomable hate. His hands are on me, around me, and I thrash in panic. I don’t feel the blade tear past his suit and go in; it’s already in his side when I see black pearls float between us, pouring from the wound. I go still, petrified. My hands shake around the blade, and I let go. His eyes are wide, his features paralyzed. He’s trying to breathe, but he can’t anymore. I remember Morgan’s face when Dries’s body hit the floor, his tears. I don’t know if mine are the same. They blind me and I can find no joy, no relief, only horror.
Behind him, a ghost floats toward me. Claire’s features emerge from the darkness, painted by the red light, and the sound . . . the broken howl erupting from her lips crawls under my skin, twists my insides. She welcomes his lifeless body in her arms and screams, screams, and that’s when I fully process that Anies is no more. He’s dead. I killed him, I repeat to myself, the words impossibly loud in my mind.
I just float, drained, broken. I watch her kiss his forehead, and I see the shift on her face, the tipping point between pain and hate. She draws her gun so fast I don’t understand. I stare at the barrel inches from my face, numb and confused.
Her finger tightens on the trigger but never presses. A single black dot bursts between her eyes, and she too falls asleep amid the black pearls flowing from her wound.
This time, when unseen arms envelop my body, I’m not afraid.
“It’s all right, biscuit . . . It’s over.”
Part of me wants to shout that it’s not, that we’re floating in a sea of blood. and we broke a spaceship we’ll never be able to pay for. I also want to ask what happened to that guy drifting past us, because his neck doesn’t look quite straight. But I’m so tired. I spin around, throw myself into his welcoming arms, and I cry, sob the stress, the pain out. March squeezes me tight, rocks me against him, and we stay like this, weightless, truly suspended in time and space. I kiss his jaw blindly, breathe him. I don’t care that he smells of sweat and blood; the animal in me knows only his body against mine.
I never want to let go, but at some point, March stiffens and maneuvers us apart gently. “I’m sorry, biscuit. Give me a second.”
I watch in confusion as he uses the handles running along the walls to propel himself across the command center . . . in pursuit of the shadow that just slipped through the air lock. I hesitate before grabbing the handle closest to me and following him. I find him floating in section eleven’s hallway, shoving a dark silhouette to the wall. A flash of red from the emergency lights above their heads reveals Bahjin’s wide-eyed face squished against a window.
March presses his gun to Bahjin’s nape. “Please. Land. This. Thing.”
He whines. “I can’t; you ruined the auxiliary cable!”
The hair on my nape stand on end in a prickling sensation. “You mean you can’t fix it?”
“I don’t know, he damaged stuff in section five too.”
Oh my God . . . We’re potentially stranded in space. With a complete douchebag. March and I exchange a look. I read my fear in his eyes. Will we have to eat Bahjin to survive until a rescue mission comes? Will they even send one?
A soft sniffing sound rises from Bahjin. “This time they’ll never renew my H-1B.” He offers me a trembling smile. “Do you think you could testify I treated you well, so they don’t put me in jail?”
March lowers his gun and releases his grip, allowing Bahjin to float a few feet away. He runs his hand across his face with a tired sigh. “I doubt you’ll ever go to jail if we spend the rest of our lives in space.”
Bahjin blinks at him. “I meant when we get back, with the reentry pod.”