LEGS TANGLED IN the blanket, I tumbled out of bed, my hands and knees slamming into the floor with a sharp smack of pain.
Red lights flashed in the darkness. I saw faces, moving limbs—glimpses of the same panic that I felt—bathed in split-second blinks of red, like a living horror movie.
There was rushing, shouting. I yanked the sheets around until I was free, then I was up, unsteady on my feet, dizzy. No one seemed to know what they were doing. I stood still until I could block out some of the shrieking alarm and think.
The control panel in the kitchen. That was the only thing I could think of that might have some kind of switch to shut off the damn alarm. I made my way slowly down the bunks, feeling for the feet of the metal beds so I wouldn’t break a toe or knock my freshly bruised knees.
Someone collided into me, banged my shoulder hard. It was Mitsuko, the whites of her eyes drenched with the bloodred light.
“The kitchen,” I shouted near her ear, but I had no idea if she could hear me. I kept stumbling forward. I couldn’t tell if she followed me or not.
A few of the beds I passed still had bodies in them, sleeping with pillows pressed over their heads. I rolled my eyes. Don’t worry, I’ll fix it for you.
Somehow I reached the control panel. I couldn’t read any of the labels, so I just started flipping switches and hitting buttons without any expectation of success.
Suddenly there was another presence beside me, a large dark shape. I had to crane my neck to see his face, and in the flashing light, I realized with a start that it was Luka. He must have had the same thought I did. He didn’t look at me, but scowled at the panel and punched a large red sphere at the top of it.
The sudden silence made me think I’d gone deaf.
There was a smattering outbreak of applause and halfhearted cheers. The sleepers grumbled and turned back over in their bunks.
I looked over at Luka, but my eyes were still adjusting to the darkness, and the details of his face were unreadable.
“Thanks,” I said.
He nodded tersely.
“What was that?”
“That,” he said, “was the fire alarm.”
The speaker right in front of my face crackled to life, making me jump. “Houston to SLH. Apologies for the false alarm. No action required on your end. Over.”
Those bastards knew very well what they were doing. I had no doubt that alarm was meant expressly to make us lose sleep and put us on edge.
Luka hit the reply button. “Understood. Over.”
He took his thumb off the button, and I could feel him looking at me in the dark. “False alarm,” he repeated. “The first of many, I’m sure.”
I smiled. “Maybe we should take shifts.”
That earned me a little chuckle. “Great idea. You can get the next one.”
Luka went back to bed. I certainly wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep, so I took a shower while I had the chance for privacy and went to explore the other half of the SLH. The SLH was one large dome, with the bunks separated by a thin wall from the living and working space. The kitchen and bathroom were side by side, near the entrance hatch. A control panel, with screens and readouts that were mostly blank, took up an entire wall beside the kitchen.
The living space consisted of chairs and tables, even a small gym that contained a few weights, a stationary bike, and a treadmill. A large screen took up a good part of one wall, but it wasn’t a TV—at least not one that we could figure out. There were no books, no windows, no clocks. Nothing to help pass the time.
Seven days living in an isolation dome with eight people and nothing to do.
Challenge accepted.
The others woke in spurts after the lights came back on for morning. There were a few short squabbles over the bathroom, and a few grumbles about the alarm, but all the kids who were left knew by now that every action and every complaint was being observed, dissected, scrutinized. Everyone was intensely conscious of the fact that this SLH was something actually designed for use in space, and if someone couldn’t handle living there, then they needed to give up now.
Food came in shrink-wrapped trays through a port in the wall three times a day. One plastic tray for each of us, identical except for special dietary concerns. I was impressed that mine was vegetarian.
This wasn’t a vacation, however. Our hours were scheduled down to the minute. That day we were to fill out psychological evaluations, which consisted of essay questions and complex tests trying to ferret out any defect or propensity for falsehood. In the afternoon, the screen in the living quarters came to life—its purpose now apparent—and someone from Mission Control walked us through hypothetical emergency scenarios, quizzing us on what actions we would take.
We each had to spend two hours per day exercising, which was tricky, considering there were two machines and one set of weights for nine people. I solved the problem by finding a free patch of floor space and doing some yoga.
In the evenings, after dinner trays had been put back into the port in the wall and everyone had finished their paperwork, we were allotted an hour of free time. But there was precious little to do. Someone had found a deck of cards in the living space—maybe forgotten about, maybe left there on purpose. So people made up games using the only supplies we had: the paper from our psych evals.
Mitsuko tried to get me to play cards, but when she found I didn’t know any card games, she huffed away and asked Kendra.
I was tapping my fingers on the table, daydreaming about playing piano, when I realized the music I was tapping along to wasn’t coming from my own head.
Am I losing it? I quashed that thought before it could finish forming into words.
Of course not. There was music in here.
Slowly, keeping an eye on the others, I rose out of my chair and made my way around the living quarters, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. It never got any louder than the quietest whisper, but I recognized it: Beethoven. The Moonlight Sonata. One of the most famous pieces of piano music in the world, and no one else heard it? In a room full of people with enhanced senses?
Unbelievable.
The music followed me all the way to bed, never getting louder, never closer. By lights-out I was beginning to think I might be in danger of losing my calm.
I lay in bed, sheet pulled up to my chin, and talked myself out of it. I closed my eyes and imagined I was sitting in the auditorium at school, listening to a concert.
It wasn’t until after breakfast the next morning that someone else spoke up about it.
“Does anyone else hear that?” It was Boris.
A few people mumbled, shrugged. Emilio tilted his head to one side, listened intently a second, and said, “Yeah, I think so. Maybe?”
“Oh, for God’s sake. There’s an easy way to figure this out,” Mitsuko said. She pushed herself out of her chair and went to the intercom. “SLH to Houston,” she said. “This is Mitsuko Pinuelas. Question for you.”
Crackling on the other end. “Go ahead, SLH.”
“Are we hearing music in here?”
There was a pause. “Confirmed.”
Mitsuko waited for an explanation. When one wasn’t forthcoming, she rolled her eyes and hit the button again. “Houston, confirm this for me: What is the purpose of the music?”
Another long pause from Houston. “Don’t want you kids getting bored in there.”
Mitsuko shook her head and mouthed something I couldn’t understand. “Thanks. That’s all.”
The music wasn’t the last surprise NASA had in store for us, and it was probably the best one we were going to get. Giorgia ran out of the bathroom later that day complaining the hot water had gone out. Nothing but lukewarm came out of the shower from then on, no matter what anyone did.
The air was too cold, then too hot. The radioed instructions to fix it were purposely confusing, frustrating, and the radio kept cutting out. The toilet stopped flushing for an entire seven hours. Dinner was late, and then my shrink-wrapped plate contained a turkey sandwich, which I didn’t eat. Emilio and Mitsuko gave me bits off their plates.
By the end of the second day, Giorgia had left the SLH, and the program, for good. Didn’t discuss it with anyone, just walked up to the hatch and hit the red button. Gone.
Getting woken up in the middle of the night became kind of routine. It was always something. Lights coming on at midnight, unexplained noises, “emergencies” that we had to get out of bed and fix with instructions from the intercom. Night missions where we had to do repetitive tasks until someone nearly fell asleep standing up. One morning the lights never came on and we spent our day mostly in the dark, doing paperwork by the glow of the emergency floor lights.
Then we were tested: Mountains of paperwork came in through the port, each with a time limit for us to complete. Exams based on topics we’d discussed in classes the week before. History tests comprised of previous space missions: what had gone wrong, what had gone right, what lessons we could learn from them. Personality tests, which I started out enjoying and quickly came to hate.
No mail came for anyone, which wasn’t a surprise. There was also not a second where we did not have music pumped in through the speakers.
Ironically, the music became the thing that kept me sane. It changed often, sometimes the same pieces repeated, but almost always orchestral. Classics like Rossini, Tchaikovsky, Handel, and Bach mixed with relatively modern works like Sousa and Yo-Yo Ma and even a few experimental and modern pieces that were brand-new.
At dinner, we ate together at a table bolted into the floor while string quartets played quietly in the background. The strings lent an air of elegance to our artificial, shrink-wrapped meals that I enjoyed. I happened to catch Luka, sitting at the head of the table, his fork poised in midair like he’d forgotten it. Grimacing. The muscles in his jaw worked like he was quietly grinding his teeth, like he was in pain.
I wondered if I should say something.
Someone else beat me to it. “You don’t look so good,” Anton said. Anton was a genuinely nice guy—he really looked concerned. “You feeling sick?”
Luka seemed caught off guard for only a second. He pushed himself upright and the distaste left his face. “No. I’m fine.”
Pratima twisted around to look at him. “Something wrong with your food?” She seemed less concerned, more intrigued, as if she was hoping he’d been poisoned.
Luka shook his head as everyone turned to look at him. Something was wrong with Luka, the man who hadn’t left first place since day one? We watched and analyzed his every move. But he looked fine now. Then there were a few shrill strokes from a violin, and Luka winced as if the sound physically pained him.
Forks dropped onto trays.
“You got a headache, man?” Emilio asked, putting a hand on his shoulder. “There’s ibuprofen in the cabinet.”
Luka shrugged it off immediately. “I’m fine, thank you.”
The music, I realized. That was the only variable that had changed.
I said nothing. But I began to watch him a little more closely.
“There’s just something weird about him,” Mitsuko whispered to me later, during our hour of free time. Luka had disappeared to his bunk right after dinner without a word to anyone.
“So it’s weird that he’s good-looking, tall, athletic, foreign, and doesn’t like classical music? God, it’s just too bad he isn’t perfect.”
She didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm. “Of all people, Cass, you’re defending him? I admit, he may be hot, but who hates classical music? Especially you. I thought you played, like, four instruments.”
I fisted then stretched my fingers. It’d been so long since I’d played, I hardly felt like a musician anymore. “Piano and violin. I tried trumpet but I was no good. You have to do weird things with your mouth.”
“Whatever. You get my point. There’s something off about him, that’s all. I can’t believe you don’t see that.”
I had to poke her to make her lower her voice. “So what? People have quirks. I don’t like him for it, but it doesn’t matter.” I sighed. “Music or not, he’ll probably be the one they pick.”
Mitsuko snapped her head toward me and grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t say that. If they wanted him they would have picked him by now. And he is not perfect. He’s too . . . calm.”
“I don’t see how being too calm works against him.”
“Like, he must bottle up his emotions. People like that are unstable.”
I inhaled deeply, looking toward the bunk where Luka was. I didn’t get that vibe from him at all, but how much did I really know about him? Next to nothing, despite our time in the wilderness.
Mitsuko’s dark eyes bore into me. “I’m serious. Don’t throw in the towel just yet.”
The lights dimmed for the five-minute warning before lights-out, and we went to bed.