29:31

I don’t think any of us got some proper sleep. We ignored the schedule and all slept together in Bastian’s bedroom, the biggest of them all. Jim and Jordan slept on the floor; they’d already had their fill of Louise, as Han put it. The others got their fill on the bed; a desperate lovemaking that had something of a finality that made my heart ache deeply in the moments before I fell into a restless sleep. Their closeness helped, the way their bodies surrounded me, but whenever I woke, their warmth just reminded me that their lives may be extinguished soon and they’d turn into the same cold, rotten corpses I’d seen all my former crewmates become. At least I wouldn’t be around to see it this time. I’d be dead as well, united in death. Maybe there was an afterlife that would let us be together forever. Yes, that was a thought I should keep close. I’d never been religious, but maybe, my mother had been right and there was a God and a Heaven and a place to be happy forever.

"Are you awake?" Bastian whispers, his arm snuggled around my waist.

"Yeah, I've been awake for a while."

"Me too." He sighs. "Shall we wake the others?"

"Not necessary." Jordan's deep voice from behind me makes me turn around, straight into his waiting lips. I kiss him back, wishing I could enjoy the moment. Instead, dread fills me at the thought that we only have less than forty-eight hours to go until we might all die.

The guys are in a similar downtrodden mood, and we get dressed quietly before heading to the common room for breakfast.

Toby makes us a big pot of porridge. When he puts it on the table in front of us, he adds a sprinkle of cinnamon.

"We might as well enjoy it," he says with a shrug. I smile at the irony of it. We're eating porridge because oats are one of the ingredients we still have a lot of, so we don't need to ration them. And now, he's adding cinnamon, one of our rarer goods. All our spices are for special occasions only - they're not on the list of priority food we used to be sent from Earth. And now that there won't be any more deliveries... this little glass of cinnamon is likely all we'll ever have. Once it's gone, the taste of cinnamon will be nothing but a memory.

Why are there tears pooling in my eyes? Because I'm thinking of cinnamon? Pull yourself together, Louise. You've got through worse. Now's not the time to get emotional.

To hide my traitorous eyes from the guys, I stare down at my porridge, trying to enjoy it, but it could just as well have no taste at all. I force myself to eat it all; I need the energy to get through the day. There's a lot to be done, whether it turns out to be preparing for survival or preparing for death.

Once everyone is done, I slip into my role as organiser. Immediately, my eyes dry. It's like acting, putting on a new mask.

"Bastian, give us an update on what you managed to do yesterday?"

He already told us about most of it at dinner, but I want to do it formally now that everybody is here and listening.

Bastian nods. "The bomb is wired to some essential wires that we can't cut. Whoever put it there knew exactly what they were doing. I don't see any way of removing it without setting it off, to be honest. There are some random cables connecting the trigger with the explosives, but unless you want to play Russian roulette, I wouldn't recommend cutting any of them. It's not like in the movies where the hero somehow manages to identify the correct cable. It would be a one in seven chance of getting it right. I'm not willing to take that risk."

"Let's keep that as our last resort," I agree. "If we can't remove it, can we somehow encase it so when it goes off, it doesn't do as much damage?"

He shakes his head. "We don't have anything strong enough, and I'm worried that whatever we use might turn into shrapnel that does even more damage. At the moment, the only way I can see to deal with this is to evacuate to a safe part of the station and take as many resources with us as possible."

"The biggest problem with that is the greenhouse," Will says, pulling out a notepad from his pocket. It's full of scribbled handwriting, numbers and more numbers. "Most of what I'm growing at the moment isn't ready for harvest yet. We'll lose ninety percent of what I've worked on for the past months. Together with the food we have in storage, we might last two months, maybe three at most. Then we'll starve, plain and simple. Without new deliveries from Earth and no greenhouse, we don't have another way of getting food."

There it is. We didn't need aliens or a meteorite shower to be our end. All we needed were some stupid humans who built a bomb. I wonder if they're still alive or whether they perished in the Drowning. I hope they did. I'm not someone who wishes evil on other people, but these bastards killed my friends, and they now threaten to kill my men. No way am I going to let this happen.

"Is there any way to separate the greenhouse from the other two parts that will be destroyed by the bomb?" I ask. "It's got solar panels on the roof already so could it use that as its energy?"

Bastian shakes his head in regret. "If we had a few weeks, I could probably make that happen, but we have not much more than a day. And even if I manage to reinstate power after the bomb goes off, it will be too late for our plants. They'll have been starved of water and carbon dioxide for far too long. We'd have to start from scratch, but it will be too late. By the time we have new plants, we'll be dead."

"Failsafe," Jim suddenly says and all eyes turn to him. "If I built a bomb with a timer, I'd want to be able to stop it should my plans change."

A tiny ray of hope shines into my heart and I look at him questioningly. "How would you do that? If the person who created the bomb isn't on the station, wouldn't they have to send the signal from Earth?"

Jim nods. "Exactly that. And they wouldn't be able to send it via the normal comms channel that we've been using. It would be too obvious, they'd be detected immediately. There are more firewalls around that connection than I could ever break, and I'm a bit of a computer genius."

Despite myself, I have to grin. He kept them from us for quite some time, pretending he was only a scientist specialising in chemistry and molecular biology. Well, besides that, it turns out he can basically talk to computers. At least that's what it looks like. He gets our systems to function better than they were likely ever intended to. He used to be a hacker in his youth, hacking into secret services and the military, until he was caught and 'converted to the side of the light', he says. So if he says he can't get through the firewalls, then they really have to be almost unbreakable.

"I thought I'd checked everything for viruses, but that was before I thought someone would need to send a simple signal from Earth to Mars to either set the bomb off or stop its timer. Give me a few hours and I'll be able to tell you if it's possible." He sighs. "This is just a theory though. It might be wasted time. I might be more useful doing something else."

I shake my head. "No, you do that. You're right, if I was an evil genius, I'd think of a way to influence my plan from Earth if things change." I turn to the others. "Any other updates?"

Toby shrugs. "Will already said everything about our resources. Basically, we're screwed."

"Never stop being so positive," Han teases, before he turns serious. "I hereby volunteer to try and cut the right cable, if it comes to it. If we decide to let the bomb go off, then the seven to one chance no longer applies."

"It still applies," I protest angrily. "It could kill you."

He smiles. "We don't know how much explosives are in it. It might just be enough to fry a few pipes and cables, and not enough to kill a man."

I stifle a growl. "No chance. I forbid it. Nobody gets to play the hero. We'll do this together, no solo attempts."

I don't say that I've thought of doing exactly that. I'm going to keep my men safe, even if that means getting hurt myself. Or dying. If it gives them even the sliver of a chance, then it's worth it. A one in seven chance. It could be worse. There could be ten cables. Or twenty. Think positive, Louise.

"Yes, no going rogue," Jordan reasserts, giving me a sharp look. Does he suspect something? Usually Han is the one who can read me like I'm an open, large-print book, but the way Jordan is staring at me is making me doubt that the doctor is the only one who's got me figured out.

I ignore him. "So, to sum it up, we're screwed unless Bastian finds a way to defuse the bomb, Will figures out how to save the greenhouse, or Jim detects a possible signal that we can manipulate."

Toby laughs sadly. "At least we'll be able to use up the cinnamon without holding back. Maybe I should bake a cake."

***

26:14

Twenty-six hours to go. That's almost nothing. Not long enough to think about death and what awaits us after. Or say goodbye to my guys properly.

I didn't say it openly during our meeting, but I'm sure everyone has thought about it. If we starve within weeks or months, isn't it better to just die when the bomb goes off? Not waste time and energy on prolonging our suffering for longer?

There is no hope. There won't be any magic trees suddenly sprouting from the ground to provide us with food. There won't be a shuttle arriving from Earth filled with supplies, even if we suddenly manage to reinstate communication with them. We're screwed, fucked, dead.

Is it worth fighting? Maybe I should take the guys and lock ourselves into the bedroom. Spend some quality time together. Enjoy our last remaining hours.

But hope always prevails. Us stupid humans with our stupid hope. My rational mind tells me that there won't be any rescue or sudden miracle, but my heart refuses to believe that. It wants to keep on beating.

I've survived for so long. When the virus killed everyone, I lived on because I didn't know what else to do. Then my men arrived, and I fought to live for them. To keep them alive. It's been a struggle for a year, and even before, survival was never guaranteed.

“I’ll take that crate,” Jordan tells me, picking it up before I have a chance to protest. I hate being treated like I’m less strong than the men. It may be true, but I’m pulling my weight just as much as they are. I give him a glare and then take another crate, which turns out being heavier than the other one would have been.

Happy now, Louise?

My arms are aching from carrying stuff back and forth, but this is about survival. That’s what I tell my complaining muscles. If we don’t get all our most important supplies into the part of the station that will stay unaffected by the bomb, we’ll die even quicker.

I think back to the robot we once had to transport things from A to B. It was one of several that had been sent to Mars before the first settlers to set up the station, but over time, most of them perished. The engineers who’d created them back on Earth hadn’t anticipated the Mars dust to be this persistent and damaging. It gets everywhere, into every robot joint, into circuits, into machine oil used to maintain the robots.

The last one – Bertie, we called him – died a pitiful death three months before the virus. We did a funeral ceremony for him, half out of the strange kind of Mars humour we’d all acquired, and half out of actual sorrow to lose the last part of our arrival on this planet. I never got to hold a funeral for my friends. Oh, the irony.

I carry the crate along the corridor, watching Jordan in front of me. His perfectly formed behind is squeezed into tight jeans. If I had time... No, I don’t. No use in thinking of what I’d do or of what could be. We’re in survival mode now, no hugging allowed.

I admire his tattoos that cover his shaved head and travel further down his back, caressing his spine. He’s never told me what they mean; whenever I asked he evaded the question.

“Jordan?”

“Yes?” His voice is just as out of breath as mine. We’ve been shifting crates for two hours now and this is more exercise than I’ve done in a long time.

“Tell me about your tattoos.”

He laughs darkly. “We’re going to die and that’s what you’re thinking of?”

“Now might be my final chance to find out,” I shoot back. “So don’t worry, whatever big secret they tell, I’ll take it to my grave.”

“Maybe they don’t mean anything?” he teases, the darkness in his voice giving way to light humour.

“Even then I’d like to know,” I persist. “Please, indulge me.”

We’ve reached the storage room we’re putting everything in for now – sorting through it will be for later – and add our crates to the stacks of boxes and metal cases already in the small room.

Without warning, he takes off his shirt. Beneath it are hard muscles, his dark skin shimmering with sweat. I’m tempted to touch him, pull him close, but I need answers first.

He turns until I can see his back. It’s not like I haven’t seen him naked before or tried to understand his strange tribal tattoos.

“See that curve on the nape of my neck?” he asks. “It represents how life is fluid, how we never just travel in a straight line. Then, the way it separates into several lines running up the back of my head? That’s tree roots, to remind me to stay grounded. The snake on my left shoulder is wisdom, the...”

“Wait, that’s supposed to be a snake?”

For me, it’s just a black line forming a spiral of sorts. I step closer and run my hands over the supposed snake, enjoying the feel of his soft, cool skin. I can’t help but lean forward and kiss the snake. Well, him. Jordan.

He doesn’t let me kiss more of his tattoo, instead, he turns around and captures my lips with his. So much for finding out more about his markings. Well, sex with Jordan seems like a good way to spend some of our last hours.