“I can take a look around wh—”
“No.” Oshiro glares. “Something happens to you, Christie will chew me like I was a ****ing tennis ball.”
The kid squints. “The lieutenant chews tennis balls?”
“No. He…you know.” Vague hand waving. “Like a dog.”
“But—”
“I’m ****ty at analogies, okay? Just shut up. And stay here. That’s an order.”
“Ma’am, yes ma’am.”
Oshiro stares a moment longer, as if daring the kid to move. He does his best impression of Boy With Feet Glued To The Floor, and the sergeant stalks off toward the babble of voices and electronic squeal of a flatlining EKG in Room 24.
The door to the reception office opens with a creak. A girl in a rumpled hospital uniform emerges, a small speaker and mic hooked on her ear. She wears her long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, her light brown skin washed paler by the endless snow outside the cracked windows. She looks three-nights-tired, frayed around the edges, but even that can’t quite wear the pretty off. Her eyes are the color of summer grass.
“Third call, Dr. Wiesner,” she says, her voice crackling on the PA. “Please report to Room Twenty-Four immediately. Dr. Wiesner, Room Twenty-Four.”
Now, here’s where it gets interesting, kids.
I’ve watched this on slo-mo a dozen times, and I swear you can count twenty-seven different expressions on Lindstrom’s face in a three-second period as he sees this girl. He actually does a double take. Jaw dropping like a bag of bricks. Thing is, as the girl catches sight of him, she’s on the same gobsmacked page. Green eyes going wide. She puts her hand to her chest like it’s about to burst. Her whisper crackles across the entire hospital PA.
“Holy ****…”
The kid blinks.
Mouth flapping open and closed.
Sheer dumbfounded shock slapped all over his face.
“…Asha?” he breathes.
“Cherry!”
The kid flinches, startled. The girl, too. He turns toward the sound of Oshiro’s voice, fighting for some control of his expression. The sergeant is standing in the hallway, looking back and forth between the two. Raising a hand to crook a thumb at the elevators.
“Enviro is this way.”
“I…”
Lindstrom glances at the girl. A million emotions crackling between the pair like lightning strikes. I swear you can see the ****ing current, arcs of it, burning the meter between them whiter than the snow outside.
Joy.
Horror.
Terror.
Shock.
“Hey!”
Lindstrom looks back to Oshiro, a frown now darkening the sergeant’s brow.
“Move your ***, Specialist. They ain’t paying us by the hour.”
The sergeant stomps away. Collecting himself, the kid glances one last time at the girl, picks up his jaw from the floor and stumbles after Oshiro to a service elevator. As the doors ping open, he follows his CO inside, looking for all the world like someone landed a flying kick to his baby maker. He stands with his back to Oshiro so she can’t see his expression. Ghost white. Gobsmacked and disbelieving.
“Do yourself a favor, Cherry,” Oshiro warns. “Stay away from civilian tail. Christie catches you cruising on the local sugar, he’ll beat you like…” She frowns. “Goddammit, I had a good one for this yesterday…”
The doors rumble shut. The kid is just standing there, emotions in every color of the spectrum flashing across his face. Trying hard just to keep breathing.
I guess he finally learned to shut up, at least.
The screen springs to life, and the shot spins wildly about as Asha finds a place to prop her palmpad in the supply closet—her hands are shaking, and it takes three tries before she gets it to balance. Then she comes into view, hunkered down in front of it, eyes wide.
“Kady, what the **** just happened?” she whispers, one hand yanking on her ponytail in her agitation. “What in the name of the nine circles of hell made the universe think I need my world to get any more—”
She cuts herself off, dragging in a shaky breath to calm herself down.
“I have to back up the truck a little, cuz. You know, I always really appreciated the way you didn’t ask why my parents exiled me to Kerenza. I know you were itching to find out what I did to get myself kicked out, and it meant a lot to me that you didn’t pry. But now you have to hear the story. So here goes.”
She pauses to dig in her scrubs, retrieving a snack bar and tearing it open with her teeth. She takes a bite, continues with her mouth full. “So back when I was sixteen, I met Rhys. He was the new boy at school. And it was love at first sight. Or lust, to be honest, but whatever. I’m not sure either of us knew the difference.
“Long story short, we dived in headfirst, and we were so totally going to be together forever. Love story for the ages. We were never going to stop ripping each other’s clothes off. He came by every day to walk me to school, and I told my parents I’d joined the math club so I’d have more time to see him after class.”
Finally, she finds something to smirk about. “In retrospect, how did they believe that was true?” And then the smile vanishes. “Damn, cuz, I really miss them.”
She takes another bite of the snack bar and pushes on. “So Rhys and I, we hung out, we made out and we went to school less and less. There was something about him that made me feel…alive. Like he was an adventure right there for the living, if I was only game to step up and take it. My parents screamed about what a bad influence he was, and I ignored them because I knew better. This guy was my life.”
She pauses, the fingers of one hand grasping the left hem of her scrubs, tugging it down and up. Decision made, she finally pulls it up to expose her ribs, which, after seven months under occupation, you can count one by one if you want.
On said ribs is a tattoo, two words written in curly script—like, someone paid for extra flourishes, no question—interwoven with each other, frilly as you like.
Rhys.
Asha.
She’s sighing as she lowers her top. “The one thing about living on an ice planet is you don’t go swimming a lot. No call to undress enough for people to see your poor life choices.