03:51

We’re taking one last trip to the Spire. It feels like a suitable place to say goodbye. We’ve left before sunrise to make it there for the spectacle of the orange light hitting the smooth, reflecting stone of this natural wonder.

We’re going to lose access to the loading bay where the rover is usually stored, but Bastian’s said that eventually, we might be able to restore power to it. Still, this might be our last chance to take a ride on it for a long time. Or for the last time.

Toby, Will and Jordan are with me in the rover. Of course, Bastian stayed behind, Han helping him, and Jim is still trying to hack his way into whatever signal might be able to reach the bomb. None of them wanted our help, and with our supplies all stored away in the safe part of the station, there was nothing left for us to do.

We never make it though. We’re minutes away from cresting the hill that will give us a full view of the Spire when the comm crackles and silence falls over the rover.

“Guys, come back!” Jim shouts. “I’ve figured it out!”

***

02:37

Jim has channelled his comm to all of us, so we can hear his progress no matter where we are, which means that Bastian and Han can continue working on preparing the separation of the three parts of the station, while the rest of us are still parking the rover.

“Whoever programmed this was a genius. They’ve given themselves an option to control the intensity of the blast. There are six levels, I assume that means that there are six cartridges of explosives within the bomb. Somehow, they can disengage them individually, no idea how though. Maybe there’s a chemical in there that renders the explosives useless? Or soaks it in water for long enough not to explode when triggered? No idea, but the how doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that we can disable them one by one.”

A short crackle announces that someone else is trying to speak, and Jim pauses for a moment.

“Can you disable them all at once?” Han asks. Even without seeing him, I can hear the trace of hope in his voice that is beginning to settle in my heart.

“Maybe, if I had more time to figure out the code,” Jim replies. “But I can either do that without knowing if I’ll manage to succeed in time, or disable them one by one, which might take longer, but at least I know that it’s possible.”

I lift my comm bracelet to my mouth and speak. “Don’t waste time on finding another way,” I instruct. “Get rid of them individually. I don’t suppose you know which one will affect what system? Like, can we disable the one destroying the oxygen pipes first?”

“Sadly, this doesn’t come with a manual,” Jim replies drily. “It’s trial and error, so I can’t promise anything. I’ve got the first section disabled already, five more to go.”

I nod before noticing that he can’t see me.

“Good. Need any help?”

A moment of silence, before the comm crackles again. “A cup of tea, perhaps?”

***

02:28

Dark circles surround Jim’s striking blue eyes and he looks like he could do with several days’ worth of sleep. Couldn’t we all. Hopefully, in less than three hours we’ll have averted this disaster and can continue our life as before. Or we’ll be sleeping forever. Permanently.

I shake off that thought and put the large mug of tea in front of Jim, together with a plate of biscuits.

“Wish I could add some milk, but well... no milk on Mars,” I chuckle. “I added two pieces of sugar though for this special occasion.”

“Appreciated,” he mutters, taking the mug and breathing in deeply. “Not the last supper but the last breakfast.”

I put my hands on his shoulders and begin to massage them gently.

“Hopefully not the last, but just one of many more. Is there anything I can do to help?”

He shakes his head with a sigh. “No, but keep going with that massage. Had I known you can do that, I’d have asked for one weeks ago.”

I laugh softly. “From now on, anytime. We’ll be in your debt forever if you manage to defuse this thing.”

“We’re already in your debt for making the vaccine and keeping us alive. I’m just returning the favour.”

I press my thumbs into the hard muscles around his spine and he groans slightly.

“Too much?” I ask, but he shakes his head again.

“No, it’s perfect. Now I just need one last kiss and I’ll die a happy man.”

I use my grip on his shoulders to turn him to me, before sitting down on his lap, straddling him. His hair has grown longer, no longer as short cropped as when I first saw him. It distracts from the thin scar running down his cheek.

I draw a finger over the scar, like so many times before.

“I love you,” I whisper. “Please don’t let us die.”

He grins before wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me closer until our heads are level.

His lips are almost on mine when he murmurs, “I’d die to keep you safe, Louise.”

And I for you, I think, but instead of saying it, I break the space between us and kiss him hard, pressing my lips against his. If this is our last kiss, I might as well make it count.

I cup his face, exploring his skin with my thumbs. I know him inside out, like all my men, but their kisses are always like a brand-new experience. Just as good as the first time.

He runs his hands over my back, one of them slipping beneath my shirt, his cold touch giving me a pleasant shiver of goosebumps.

Far too soon though, he ends the kiss with a final nudge of his tongue against mine.

“I’m sorry, but I need to disarm a bomb,” he deadpans as if that’s the most normal thing ever. I ruffle his hair playfully and climb off his lap.

“Let me know if you want more tea. I’ve got nothing else to do.”

He nods and turns back to his computer screens, all four of them. There’s lines of code on them that I’ll never understand, but for him, they seem to make sense.

I close the door behind me quietly, before looking at my bracelet.

02:13

Should I say my last goodbyes, or are we pretending that we’ll survive? Well, it’s no longer pretending, we finally have a real chance. Jim’s given me new hope.

Not that it distracts me from my plan.

“Does anybody need help with something?” I ask in the comm, but the only one to respond is Han.

“I heard there’s biscuits. Can I have some?”

No idea how he knows that, but Han’s got a seventh sense when it comes to food, especially sweet stuff. I grin and head to the kitchen to go on a biscuit giving round, while also taking in the sterile beauty of the station one last time.

Just in case this is the last time I’m seeing parts of it.

***

01:06

“Three down, three to go.”

Jim’s triumphant voice makes me smile. I’m sitting on Toby’s lap – there’s a lot of that happening today – nibbling on a chocolate biscuit. It’s a delicacy I haven’t had in months. We’re going all out today, celebrating life and death on Mars.

My lips are slightly swollen from passionately kissing Toby. My cheeks are slightly sore from his stubble rubbing against my skin, but that’s a price worth paying for a Toby kiss. He might be the best kisser of them all; not that I’m wanting to compare them.

He’s chosen a blue sling for his blackened arm today which looks like it’s made from some kind of floral fabric. We’ve made a game out of gifting him ridiculous slings that we’ve fashioned from the clothes of the dead. Macabre, perhaps, but it’s one of the ways we have to entertain ourselves. I personally love the pink one with tiny little pigs on it I made from someone’s pyjamas.

“Do you believe in Heaven?” he suddenly asks me. It’s not as if I haven’t thought about that in the past two days.

“I think there’s more,” I say slowly. “Not just this life. Not Heaven as such, maybe just a place for our energy to live on. Although I’d love a paradise with virgin men to corrupt. The six of you can watch.”

He playfully hits my shoulder. “No virgin corrupting for you. You’re ours, no other men allowed. Not even to watch.”

“Wrong. You’re mine. And you’re totally enough for me, don’t worry. Besides, I don’t have space for more than six in my bed.”

He throws his head back and laughs loudly, his chest vibrating against mine. I soak in the sound, so different from all the recent gloom.

“Agreed, it’s already quite crammed. Tell you what, if we survive this, I’ll build us a bigger bed.”

I snicker. “You’re terrible with DIY.”

He shrugs. “It can’t be that hard, just some nails and stuff like that.”

My chuckles turn into outright laughter.

“Leave it to one of the others. But you can be the first to try it out with me.”

He grins widely. “Pity we can’t do it now.”

“Yeah, pity. I’ve got one last biscuit trip to make.”

He opens his mouth wide in mock horror. “You’re leaving me?”

“Only for a moment. Bastian needs his biscuits, and then we’ll all assemble in our new control room anyway. See you there?”

He sighs and looks at his wrist. “I guess it’s time. Only half an hour to go. Bastian is cutting it close, so you’ve got my full permission to drag him away. Call me if you need some help.”

I smirk. “I’ll be sure to find some handcuffs.”

***

00:22

“Are you ready?” I ask Bastian, who’s standing on a stepladder, his head hidden behind a thick bundle of cables.

“No,” he grumbles, “I’d need at least another week to get this to a point where I’m confident it will work.”

“Sorry, I don’t have a week,” I reply more cheerful than I feel. “But I have a biscuit for you. With chocolate bits. It tastes amazing.”

“Want to see the bomb?”

I don’t tell him that I already snuck in the day he told us about it and stared at the cylinder with as much hate as I could muster.

I step on the ladder, but before I can climb up further, he hooks his arms under my shoulders and pulls me up until I’m level with him and can stand on a spoke. Wow, he’s strong.

He points at a glint of metal concealed behind a large silver pipe. “That’s the cylinder with the explosives, and here,” he lifts a few red cables, “is the timer.”

The large green digits are staring me in the face, the ominous two dots in the middle blinking alarmingly fast. Are seconds really this fast?

00:19:49

Several cables lead from the bomb to the timer. How easy it would be to cut them, but which one? They’re all the same colour, the same length, the same width. It’s a gamble that none of us is willing to take. Yet.

Suddenly, the metal cylinder makes a noise, like something inside has broken off.

“That’s the fourth charge disabled,” Bastian says at the same time as Jim’s voice through the comm tells us the same thing. “Two more to go. We should leave, it’ll take us a few minutes to get to our new home.”

Our new home. That sounds so positive and is so deceiving at the same time. It’s our current home, but only one third of it. With not many of the important parts. No greenhouse, no loading bay, not even the kitchen. We’re having to start from scratch, and if Toby’s calculations are correct, we’ll starve within less than three months. Such a rosy future.

But yes, let’s call it our new home.

Bastian lets me climb down the ladder first, then follows suit until we’re both standing on solid ground, staring up at the bomb about to destroy our lives.

“He can do it,” Bastian mutters, more to himself than to me. “He’s a genius. He’ll disable the last two and everything will be as before.”

I do a quick calculation in my head. It took Jim more than ninety minutes to disable the second and third charge. Then almost forty to get rid of the fourth. He’s getting faster, but there are still two to go. He only has ten minutes each, and so far, his best time has been four times that amount.

He’s not going to make it.

“Let’s go,” Bastian says and pushes me forward, his hand at the small of my back. I walk without thinking, letting him steer me.

We’re going to die.

***

00:08:12

Everybody’s in our new command room, except for Jim. The room he’s working in is in the safe zone though, so that’s fine. None of us want to disturb him in these crucial last minutes.

Toby has brought another pack of biscuits, caramel ones, this time.

“They’re our last ones, but we might as well eat them now,” he says quietly before handing them out. I take mine gingerly. Eating this feels like something monumental. A moment that will never happen again. We could either die or live after this. Well, to be honest, we’ll live for a bit and then die anyway.

I nibble on my biscuit, not really hungry. My stomach is jumping up and down and I feel queasy with anticipation.

Jim still hasn’t told us that the second to last charge has been disarmed. He’s cutting it close, far too close.

I put my biscuit back on the table and get up.

“I need the loo,” I explain and leave the room before they can say anything.

“Seven minutes to go!” Will shouts. “Be quick!”

I nod and close the door behind me. Were these really my final words to the guys? I need the loo? How pathetic, but I can’t let them catch on what I’m about to do. If I’d told them how much I love them, they would have known straight away.

I walk quickly, first towards the toilets, just in case one of them decides to leave the room and see me, then change direction and run along a different corridor, the one that will lead me to the room where the bomb is.

“Charge disarmed, one more to go,” Jim says through the comm, sounding breathless and stressed.

00:05:01

He won’t manage to destroy the final one in just five minutes. It took him almost quarter of an hour this time. To do it in five minutes is impossible.

I skitter around a corner and enter the utility room. It’s been used for storage mainly, but now it determines our fate. I close the door behind me and lock it, just in case.

The comm crackles and I look down at my wrist apologetically.

“Louise, you better come back, we only have four minutes to go.” Bastian. I don’t want to tell him what I’m about to do so I stay quiet.

I pick up a pair of pliers from the floor and begin to climb the ladder. I’ve decided to leave it until the final ten seconds before cutting a cable. By then, Jim will know whether he’ll succeed or not.

“Louise?” Bastian’s voice is more frantic now. “You’d better be in the toilets and not doing what I think you’re doing.”

“Maybe her comm is broken. I’m going to check on her,” Toby is saying in the background.

I better tell them now before they leave the safety of the room. They’ve got oxygen masks there, just in case, as well as medical supplies.

00:03:27

But what am I going to say? Sorry? No, I shouldn’t apologise for this. Hopefully, I’m going to be lucky for once and cut the right cable, and we’ll all live. If not, then I’ll probably die in the blast, but at least it’ll be quick. Starvation sounds a lot worse. It’s the right decision to be here. Definitely.

“Louise?!” Bastian is shouting now, and I cringe at the desperation in his voice.

I sigh and lift my wrist. “I love you all,” I say quietly, almost a whisper. “I hope I’m going to save you.”

“You silly, silly woman!” Will shouts, while the others mostly curse. “We said none of us should play the hero!”

“It was supposed to be me,” Han growls. “It was my idea!”

“Stop shouting,” I bark in the comm and luckily, they all shut up.

I glance at the timer.

00:01:43

“Jim, what’s the situation?” I ask calmly. It’s not like I’m suicidal. If he can do it, then I have no desire to die. I’m only doing this as a last resort. Only to keep my men safe. To give them a chance.

One in seven.

How can fate be so cruel.

“Working on it,” is all Jim says. I can almost see him, his teeth gritted, his fingers flying frantically over the keyboard.

“Louise, come back now!” Bastian commands.

I smile sadly, even though I know he can’t see it. “You know it’s too late.”

It’s true. Even if I was to run back now, I’d likely not make it on time. All doors are programmed to lock at one minute before the blast.

It’s final.

“I love you all,” I repeat. “Thank you for being mine.”

Silence.

00:00:59

A bang echoes through the station as all the airlocks and safeguards close as scheduled.

Even if the blast in this room is large, they will be safe. They will be able to live on, at least for a bit.

I stare at the cables in front of me.

One of them will stop the bomb from going off. I just need to find the right one. I run my fingers over them. Just like Bastian said, they’re all the same.

“I won’t make it.”

Jim is admitting defeat.

Groans and shouts are filtering through the comm, but I switch it off and slide it off my wrist, letting it drop to the floor.

00:00:24

Time to make a decision.

I close my eyes and take the cables in my hand, all seven of them. Then, I release them randomly, one by one, until I’m holding on to the last one.

I open my eyes, staring at the cable that will determine everything.

“Please be the one,” I whisper, before lifting the pliers.

00:00:09

Goodbye Bastian, Han, Jim, Jordan, Toby, Will.

I love you.

I stare death into the face as I take a deep breath, squeeze my hand and cut the cable.

00:00:00