Her suit responded instantly, tightening around each of her joints, including her neck, and forming airtight seals with her skin. It wasn’t enough to stop the dust. Kira felt the cold tickle progress up her arm to her elbow, and then past.
“Mayday! Mayday!” she shouted. “Mayday! Neghar! Geiger! Mayday! Can anyone hear me?! Help!”
Outside the suit, the dust flowed over her visor, plunging her into darkness. Inside the suit, the tendrils wormed their way over her shoulder and across her neck and chest.
Unreasoning terror gripped Kira. Terror and abhorrence. She jerked on her leg with all her strength. Something snapped in her ankle, but her foot remained anchored to the floor.
She screamed and clawed at her visor, trying to clear it off.
The dust oozed across her cheek and toward the front of her face. She screamed again and then clamped her mouth shut, closed off her throat, and held her breath.
Her heart felt as if it were going to explode.
Neghar!
The dust crept over her eyes, like the feet of a thousand tiny insects. A moment later, it covered her mouth. And when it came, the dry, squirming touch within her nostrils was no less horrible than she had imagined.
… stupid … shouldn’t have … Alan!
Kira saw his face in front of her, and along with her fear, she felt an overwhelming sense of unfairness. This wasn’t supposed to be how things ended! Then the weight in her throat became too great and she opened her mouth to scream as the torrent of dust rushed inside of her.
And all went blank.
CHAPTER III
EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES
1.
To start with, there was the awareness of awareness.
Then an awareness of pressure, soft and comforting.
Later still, an awareness of sounds: a faint chirp that repeated, a distant rumble, the whir of recycled air.
Last of all came an awareness of self, rising from within the depths of blackness. It was a slow process; the murk was thick and heavy, like a blanket of silt, and it stifled her thoughts, weighing them down and burying them in the deepness. The natural buoyancy of her consciousness prevailed, though, and in time, she woke.
2.
Kira opened her eyes.
She was lying on an exam table in sickbay, at HQ. Above her, a pair of lightstrips striped the bracketed ceiling, blue-white and harsh. The air was cool and dry and smelled of familiar solvents.
I’m alive.
Why was that surprising? And how had she ended up in sickbay? Weren’t they supposed to be leaving for the Fidanza?
She swallowed, and the foul taste of hibernation fluids caused her to gag. Her stomach turned as she recognized the taste. Cryo? She’d been in fucking cryo? Why? For how long?
What the hell had happened?!
Panic spiked her pulse, and Kira bolted upright, clawing at the blanket that covered her. “Gaaah!” She was wearing a thin medical gown, tied at the sides.
The walls swam around her with cryo-induced vertigo. She pitched forward and fell off the table onto the white decking, heaving as her body tried to expel the poison inside of her. Nothing came up except drool and bile.
“Kira!”
She felt hands turning her over, and then Alan appeared above her, cradling her with gentle arms. “Kira,” he said again, his face pinched with concern. “Shhh. It’s okay. I’ve got you now. Everything’s okay.”
He looked nearly as bad as Kira felt. His cheeks were hollow, and there were lines around his eyes she didn’t remember from that morning. Morning? “How long?” she croaked.
Alan winced. “Almost four weeks.”
“No.” Dread sank into her. “Four weeks?” Unable to believe it, Kira checked her overlays: 1402 GST, Monday, August 16, 2257.
Stunned, she read the date twice more. Alan was right. The last day she recalled, the day they’d been supposed to depart Adra, was the twenty-first of July. Four weeks!
Feeling lost, she searched Alan’s face, hoping for answers. “Why?”
He stroked her hair. “What do you remember?”
Kira struggled to answer. “I—” Mendoza had told her to check on the downed drone, and then … and then … falling, pain, glowing lines, and darkness, darkness all around.
“Ahhh!” She scrabbled backwards and clutched at her neck, heart pounding. It felt as if something were blocking her throat, suffocating her.
“Relax,” said Alan, keeping a hand on her shoulder. “Relax. You’re safe now. Breathe.”
A clutch of agonized seconds, and then her throat loosened and she sucked in a breath, desperate for air. Kira shuddered and grabbed Alan and held him as tight as she could. She’d never been prone to panic attacks, not even during finals for her IPD, but the feeling of being suffocated had been so real.…
His voice muffled by her hair, Alan said, “It’s my fault. I should never have asked you to check out those rocks. I’m so sorry, babe.”
“No, don’t apologize,” she said, pulling back enough to look at his face. “Someone had to do it. Besides, I found alien ruins. How amazing is that?”
“Pretty amazing,” he admitted with a reluctant smile.
“See? Now, what—”
Footsteps sounded outside sickbay, and Fizel walked in. He was slim and dark and kept a short, faded haircut that never seemed to grow out. Today he was wearing his clinician’s jacket, and his cuffs were rolled back, as if he’d been giving an exam.
On seeing Kira, he leaned back out the doorway and shouted, “She’s up!” Then he sauntered past the three patient beds set along the wall, picked up a chip-lab off the small counter, squatted next to Kira, and grabbed her wrist. “Open. Say ah.”
“Ah.”
In quick succession, he looked in her mouth and ears, checked her pulse and blood pressure, and felt under her jaw, saying, “Does this hurt?”
“No.”
He nodded, a sharp gesture. “You’ll be fine. Make sure to drink lots of water. You’ll need it after being in cryo.”
“I have been frozen before,” said Kira, as Alan helped her back onto the exam table.
Fizel’s mouth twisted. “Just doing my job, Navárez.”
“Uh-huh.” Kira scratched her forearm. As much as she hated to admit it, the doctor was right. She was dehydrated, and her skin was dry and itchy.
“Here,” said Alan, and handed her a water pouch.
As Kira took a sip, Marie-Élise, Jenan, and Seppo rushed into sickbay.
“Kira!”
“There you are!”
“Welcome back, sleepyhead!”
Behind them, Ivanova appeared, arms crossed, no-nonsense. “Well it’s about time, Navárez!”
Then Yugo, Neghar, and Mendoza joined them as well, and the entire survey team crowded into sickbay, packing in so close that Kira felt the heat from their bodies and the touch of their breath. It was a welcome cocoon of life.
And yet, despite the nearness of her friends, Kira still felt odd and unsettled, as if the universe were out of joint, like a tilted mirror. Partly because of the weeks she had lost. Partly, she thought, because of whatever drugs Fizel had pumped into her. And partly because, if she allowed herself to sink into the depths of her mind, she could still feel something lurking there, waiting for her … a horrible, choking, suffocating presence, like wet clay being pressed into her nose and mouth—