Thrum

The broken comms array waits for me in the cargo bay. It rests on the floor, too large for the worktable just to the left of the door, its various parts sticking out at strange angles like a metallic carapace, a dead insect. There are tools laid out before it, a neat line of implements, exactly the ones I need.

For a moment, I am hopeful. A flicker of elation: the prospect of repair, of going home. Fixing Pioneer. Refueling her. And then…

And then?

My glimmer of hope judders and fades, and then it’s gone. And then — what? Just go back to Earth, where everyone I once knew will be long dead? Then, what…? I write up a debrief about Dorian, say “thanks for everything,” and continue the mission? I’m a woman with a ship and a dead crew. With ghosts clinging to my heels, tripping me up. A pink comb in my pocket that shouldn’t exist. An alien man, whispering in my ear. A whisper I’m afraid won’t ever let me go, no matter how far I flee.

“I trust this is what you need,” says Dorian, and he is close, just behind my shoulder. His deep voice permeates my being.

With a barely contained shudder, I remember his true voice, its tonguing of my brain, and I swallow to keep the bile from rising. But I don’t move away. I’m reeled in, a fish at the end of his line. I turn my head, chin rising, and he is so close, too close.

“Thank you,” I manage, and drag myself to the comms array. I crouch before it, running a finger along the ridged edge where it was damaged. Whatever thing did this, whether alien or something worse, it lives at the edge of my thoughts. It’s in the far corners of the docking bay. It’s just behind me, reaching, long-fingered and dark-eyed.

“Do you need help?” Dorian asks, coming to crouch beside me. His voice is warm but it’s countered by the unceasing hum in my skull, the vastness of the cosmos, my ever-present horror on this ship.

“No,” I say automatically, but I can’t stop the blood from pooling in my face, between my legs. He owns me, and I hate it. I think about his eyes, the way he sometimes freezes and stares like a jungle predator. I avoid his gaze. “Thank you. I think I’m all right for now.”

He leaves me alone to work. I embrace the repetition, the focus of it. First, I cut and shape a sheet of metal to replace the one that’s missing. Dorian has provided a worktable, saws, and welding gear. I revel in the spark and grind as I cut through steel, millimeter by millimeter, exerting measured control over this one thing. This is one thing that is mine, that is not — cannot be — obscured or changed. The array is the array, and this steel is steel.

It has to be.

When I’m finished with the saw, I turn it off. A loud silence assaults my ears. The sparks were so bright, the saw so loud, and now the cargo bay is awash with shadow. Yellow-white lights flicker in my vision, and I turn, heart pounding as if something might come lurching out of the edges of the room, the universe personified, reaching for me, pulling me away, away.

I blink and shake my head to clear it. But it has the opposite effect. The shadows begin to curdle and turn red, like thick crimson smoke. And the ringing, the humming in my ears intensifies. It coalesces and deepens, until it is a sonorous song, vibrating from outside of me, seeping into my bones, filling my ears and nose and mouth until I am the sound, a pulsating thing of muscle and blood and bone, fit to burst.

I lean over the worktable, elbows braced on its solidity, and I press my forehead to the surface, eyes squeezed shut. I take a long breath in, hold it, a long breath out. This is shock. This is trauma. This is my body revolting against the cognitive dissonance of this ship, this place.

Footsteps sound on the metal floor behind me. It’s the night, coming to get me. It’s the infinite dark, ready to swallow me up. It’s the ghost of Vasilissa.

A hand presses my back, warm, between the shoulder blades. I jolt upward, a gasp dislodging itself from my lungs.

Onyx eyes meet mine. Dorian.

“You’re panicking,” he says, matter-of-fact. “Why?”

I glance over his shoulder, past him, into the shadowy edges of the cargo bay, expecting to see living forms there, or misshapen limbs reaching outward, extending toward me. But there’s nothing. The shadows are only shadows.

He takes my head in his hands, forcing me to face him. This time, I can’t look away. He feels so terribly human until our gazes meet. Until his eyes bore into me, showing me the most alien part of him, these twin pools of slick oil. His thumbs press to the muscle below my ears. His fingers dig into my hair at the base of my skull.

“Ami,” he says, his voice a deep, low hum itself, as if he seeks to counteract the sound that haunts me. “Whatever you think you see, whatever has frightened you, it’s not real. Do you understand?”

I nod.

“Do you understand?”

I pull my lips inward, biting at them, my chest on fire. Dorian holds me with his gaze, and I am a willing victim to it. Tilting my head into his hands, like a cat leaning into a delicate palm, I allow my eyes to flutter closed. Everywhere he touches me I’m alight, and my breaths are slowing, and I’m safe.

“Yes,” I breathe at last. “I understand.”

He leans forward. I feel his breath against my ear, and he presses a warm kiss to my temple. The movements are hesitant. Searching. Wondering. I’m a cornered animal, and any sudden action might send me into another panic. But the kiss, gentle as it is, chaste as it is, hits me like a storm. Every synapse in my brain lights up, and every muscle in my body relaxes, and all I feel is calm and safe and safe and safe. I’ve never been afraid in my life. How could I be? There’s nothing in this universe that can hurt me.

“There,” he says, pulling back slightly, but his lips brush my cheek as he speaks. “I have you. I’ll keep you safe. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Let go.”

The ship’s hum reverberates from within and without me, and this time, it is a balm. I drink it in like sweet syrupy wine, and it consumes me.

I wake up in my room, tucked in bed. I’m naked, except for my underwear. The lights are off, and for a moment I can see nothing but the illuminated viewscreen, the trail of lights across the blackness, stars and celestial bodies that shine eons away. My gaze darts to the far corner of the room, but there is nothing watching me, no glowing eyes, no Dorian-shaped silhouette clinging to the edges of my vision. I notice, then, that I’m not afraid. I didn’t wake with a start, but with a satisfied sigh.

I’m safe. Dorian will keep me safe.

It occurs to me that I don’t remember how I got here. I have no memory of leaving the cargo bay, returning to my room, or climbing into bed. The last thing I remember is Dorian, holding me against his chest, his lips to my skin.

And the ceaseless hum.

I should get out of bed and write this down. I should have records of every interaction, every strange occurrence. But I’m too tired, too relaxed. It doesn’t matter. I’ll do it when I wake. I’m perfectly safe.

I am back on Pioneer. Everything is brightly lit, sterile, and correct. When I glance out the airlock porthole, I see stars zipping past us like fireflies. I make my way down the ladder to the med bay, my footsteps muffled as I descend, my ears ringing.

Everything is white and bright and so spotless, and the longer I descend the ladder, the brighter it becomes, until my eyes sting.

At last, I drop down into the med bay, bypassing the last few rungs of the ladder, and there’s hardly a sound as I hit the floor. I find it hard to walk; my feet lift slowly, impossibly heavy as if they’re encased in concrete. But I have to get to the stasis pods. I can still save them. I can save Mahdi, his crooked smile. I can save Lily, her infectious laugh. I can save Vasilissa, who could have been a friend if we’d had more time.

I just have to get to them.

But the journey from the ladder across that tiny room is interminable. I’m wading through thick mud, my eyes streaming from the bright, blinding lights.

When at last I come to Vasilissa’s pod, I’m breathing hard. So hard the sound fills up my ears until my skull is roaring with it.

I press the button to open her stasis pod, and the top slides back to free her, her gaunt face coming into view with terrible clarity. I go to Lily next, then Mahdi. One by one, their pods slide open.

I’m here to save you.

I stand there amongst them, the roar and ring of an endless sound in my head, squeezing my brain.

All I have to do is open you up.

I notice that I’m holding Vasilissa’s comb. It’s pinker than I remember, and the prongs are longer, sharper. They curve toward me, waving like tentacles.

Suddenly, with a sickening surge, Vasilissa sits up. Her body is rigid, her eyes wide, and she has no whites, no pupils or irises. Just black, black, horrible eyes that hold me. I can’t move or speak or think. Blood-red swirls form in her gaze, like clouds of blood in dark waters, and she opens her mouth in a mirthless grin. Her lips split, and the skin of her face begins to slough off. Because she’s dead. She’s been dead for years. Years. And I opened the pod, and now she’s decomposing, becoming a skeleton before my eyes, her skin and muscles falling off in horrible chunks, slithering down to the bed where she sits, staring at me, her eyes horrible and black, and red and shining.

“That’s my comb,” she says, reaching out for it. Her hand has lost its flesh, nothing now but a series of interlocking bones.

I’m shaking so hard I can barely hold the thing. I don’t want it. “Take it,” I manage, and I fling the comb toward her.

“Take it!” I scream as the plastic prongs lodge into one of her lidless eyes.

Take it!

I jolt awake, strangled cries frothing at the base of my throat, and I’m thrashing, blankets tangled about my legs. I lie half-sobbing in the dark, my breath a rasping choke. It was a dream. I close my eyes, hard, pressing my knuckles into the sockets. It was a dream. Opening my eyes again, I’m half-blinded by the shimmer of flashes in my vision. Sitting up, sweating and shaken, the light flares on and I blink, my gaze going immediately to the corners of the room.

Nothing is there.

“It was a dream,” I insist, but I don’t know who I’m trying to convince.