Thrum

Stars glitter, dreamlike, through the massive window of the docking bay. I’m standing just inside the forcefield that prevents me from being swept out to space, and I can feel its powerful electric murmur like a million insects.

The stars are radiant. There are so many of them, an impossible array, and utterly unfamiliar. I feel like a teenager again, lying on a cramped stretch of rooftop with my boyfriend, a thin blanket draped across the corrugated metal that digs into our backs, gazing up at a meteor shower. The main thing I remember about that night is the cold. We were crowded together for warmth, even in our coats and hats on that unusually clear, November night. And every time a falling piece of space debris made its fiery way through the Earth’s atmosphere, we gasped and cheered. Sometimes there were three or four at once, cutting golden arcs over us. Eventually, we grew too cold to watch the display, and focused our attention instead on staying warm, and on each other.

But he ended up hurting me, just like all the others.

I falter where I stand, blinking hard. A flash of a memory assaults my senses: Dorian’s body, his hands caressing a symphony on my skin, sweat and heaving breaths and moans of pleasure.

My cheeks heat, my skin tingles. I thought — no, I’m here. In the docking bay. Only, I can’t remember how I got here. The last thing I remember is Dorian. And…

I shove my hands in my pockets and feel the objects waiting there: the comb, the chewed pencil.

There’s a sound behind me. The quiet, deliberate shuffle of footsteps that don’t wish to be heard. I turn, heart pounding.

No one’s there.

Only Pioneer, a dark shape in the gloomy bay; and beyond her, the comms array.

But it’s gone. The comms array, the one I was nearly done repairing, is gone. So is my work table, and the collection of tools. I move haltingly toward where the table had been, wanting to confirm what I’m seeing, but my feet are like lead.

“Mahdi?” I say, senselessly.

I finger the comb in my pocket.

“Vasilissa?” The name is painful in my dry throat. I’m calling out for ghosts. No one will respond; I know that. I do.

“They’re dead,” I announce, but my words come out like choked-up splinters. “I finished fixing the array, and Dorian moved it somewhere. Maybe it’s attached to the ship again.” But my own words don’t convince me. I walk around Pioneer until I see where the comms array should be. It’s not there. Nor is it anywhere in the docking bay. It’s not a small contraption, not easily hidden. There’s nothing here but me and Pioneer and a few large boxes in the corner.

“What did you do with it?” I breathe, and I don’t know who I’m asking.

There’s no answer. Only the deep breathing of Dorian’s ship, the thrumming in my skull and in my veins.

A movement catches my eye. A shadow, darting behind Pioneer.

My pulse races, my scalp prickling. There was something familiar about that shadow. Something strangely intimate, a shape I know well, and she’s calling to me. Lily.

“Wait,” I say, rushing forward. “Lily!”

But when I come around the other side of Pioneer, no one’s there. I would have heard footsteps if she was running from me. If anyone was here, I would have heard them.

She’s not here.

She’s haunting me, I think wildly. They all are. It’s unfair that I’m alive and they’re not, that I survived stasis. It’s unfair that their bodies are frozen, preserved in dreamless sleep, while I…

“It’s not my fault,” I snap, as if Lily is standing before me, arms folded, one eyebrow raised in chastisement. “I couldn’t have done anything.”

But a sickly guilt froths in my stomach like acid, an accusation. I’m here, and they’re not.

“I couldn’t have done anything,” I say again, weakly this time, backing away from this imaginary Lily. “I was asleep too.”

And then Lily is there.

Solid, colorful, human. But her eyes are wide and unearthly, and as she moves toward me, her face begins to contort. A dark stain appears on her chest, spreading, dark dark red, blood seeping from a wound.

I take a step back, but Lily moves closer still, closing the gap between us, and I smell the burning scent of iron and fear and terror.

“Look,” says Lily, wrenching open her shirt. She is naked beneath, and between her breasts gapes a deep, angry wound. So deep, I see her heart beating through it, jagged edges of her ribs peeking whitely out through gore.

I can’t look away. My own heart threatens to judder and stop. My feet are frozen to the spot.

“Look!” she insists again, and the wound grows larger, spilling red-black blood down her front.

I’m looking, I try to object, to make her understand. I am looking, I see you, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. There was nothing I could do. I was asleep. I was asleep.

But no words come; my throat is closed, my heartbeat erratic. I think I might pass out from fear. My fingers close around Mahdi’s pencil, and I try to scream, but nothing comes out.

As if to mock me, Lily opens her mouth wide, grinning in hideous silence.

And then, just as suddenly as she appeared, Lily is gone.

Shaking uncontrollably, I fall to my knees. I can’t catch my breath. The docking bay walls close in, close in, and the ship’s thrum grows louder in every cell of my body, as if its droning echo might soothe me.

It’s only when I try to wipe the tears from my face that I notice my hand. The palm is pierced where I clutched at Mahdi’s pencil in my pocket, where its sharpened tip drove into my flesh. But I feel nothing. There’s a smear of blood across my palm, and the pencil, when I inspect it, is stained red.

“I need a bandage,” I murmur. I struggle slowly to my feet.

Returning the pencil to my pocket, I leave the docking bay. And with every step, I feel that I am being watched.

“Dorian?” I need him.

I’ve only gone a few paces, just beyond the docking bay, when I hear his footsteps. He comes up behind me, and I turn to face him. By now, I’m used to this, or maybe even numb to it: his appearances in my blind spots, as if I won’t notice that he’s appearing from nowhere. But even with this knowledge, it’s like the fear I should be feeling, the dread at his spectral approach, won’t surface. Instead, I feel my terror and dread subsiding into a distant murmur of comforting sound.

He won’t hurt me. He has promised it again and again: I’m safe.

The moment he catches my gaze, his expression seems to crumple, and he rushes to me. “Ami,” he says, crowding into me, cupping my face in his hands. His black hair falls around our faces like a curtain as he kisses me just above one eye, his lower lip brushing my eyelid. “You’re frightened. Tell me what happened.”

I lean into his touch. And as I do, the ship’s hum overwhelms me, deeply vibrating in my gut, my brain. “I thought…” I begin, unsure what to say. Where do I start?

“You can tell me,” he murmurs, warm lips against my ear, his hand at the nape of my neck, holding me close. “You saw something. Tell me.”

I fight back tears. “My crew,” I manage. “I keep seeing them. Imagining them. Only, it feels real. They’re angry with me. And… when you and I… when you came to me, in that room that wasn’t mine…” I try to pull away just enough to look up at him, to meet his gaze, but he holds me tight against him, enveloped in his body heat.

“Do you regret it?” he asks, his voice soft.

Something in me rebels at the question. I can’t stand that he asked it, that he’d doubt me. The sharp tang of conflicting emotions try to rise to the surface. But his warm touch, his slowly rising and falling chest, soothe me, and the feeling fades.

“No,” I answer at last. “Of course I don’t.” It isn’t a lie. “But I was lost in a new corridor, and when I touched the walls, my hand… it came away bloody. And then you came to me, and I…” I trail off, not knowing what else to say, or how to articulate my confusion.

And then I was here. I don’t remember. How did I get here?

“You’ve been deeply traumatized,” he says, voice sweet in my ear. “No other human has ever experienced what you’ve been through. What you’re going through. You’re light-years from home. Grieving. My ship is not accustomed to your brain chemistry, and it’s likely having a negative effect on your mental state. I thought it couldn’t possibly harm you, that all you’d experience was alteration of the senses…”

He trails off, but his fingers remain in my hair, stroking, and I am melting into it. Everything he says rings true. I am traumatized. Grieving. Experiencing things the human mind was never meant to endure.

But something in me flickers, a distant incredulity. “Dorian, are you saying that the bleeding walls, my dead crew, they’re hallucinations?”

“Yes,” he purrs. “Nothing will hurt you. None of it is real.”

My gut tightens in a sick knot. I move away from him, and the effort it takes to leave his embrace is almost overwhelming. He watches me almost warily, heavy-lidded, brows drawn low. I reach into my pockets, one by one, and take out the comb. The pencil. “Are these a hallucination?”

For one mad, fraction of a second, I think he’s going to attack me. His gaze darkens, his nostrils flare, and a shadow passes over his unearthly features, rendering him terrifying and inescapable, an apex predator ready to spring.

But as soon as the expression twists his features, it’s gone again. And he is soft once more, empathetic, comforting.

“I told you,” he says, taking a step toward me, closing the distance I created between us. “My ship is adjusting to your physiology, the complex synapses in your brain. Some of the things you’re seeing, touching, hearing — they aren’t real. Not in the way you think they are. It’s the ship’s way of protecting your mind.”

“This is Vasilissa’s comb,” I insist shrilly, holding it up, its pink plastic catching the light. “And Mahdi’s pencil. I know these objects. They’re here now. Solid. Not hallucinations. Isn’t that what you said about the food? The pothos? Is any of this real or not?”

Dorian’s mouth curves in sympathy. “Ami, deep space was always going to have this effect on the human mind. The experiments your space travel organizations conducted, even within the Sol System—”

“Look!” I insist, panicked anger roiling in my chest. I hold up my hand, palm outward. The skin is still marred, still sticky with drying blood where Mahdi’s pencil pierced the skin. “Is this a hallucination?”

His gaze remains locked on my face. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

I open my mouth to demand an explanation, some measure of clarity, but the words won’t come. How am I meant to argue against him, against a being who sees something utterly different than what I do? We’re two living things, both made of flesh and blood, but our realities are light-years apart. What does this ship look like to him? Am I even holding a comb and a pencil, or are my hands empty? Nausea rises in my belly at the thought.

He doesn’t even hear the thrum.

“The comms array,” I gasp, almost pleading, a last-ditch attempt to make him understand my fear.

He raises an eyebrow.

“It’s gone. Not in the docking bay, not reinstalled on my ship. It’s gone.”

“I didn’t move it, if that’s what you’re implying.”

I almost sob with frustration. “I’m not implying anything. I’m confused. Things don’t make sense here. Things appear and disappear. I wander in circles. There was blood on my hand, and I’m being haunted, or—” My voice breaks. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t worry,” he says, pulling me to him. And I let him, the fight leaving me as quickly as it came. He kisses my forehead, runs his fingers through my hair. The deep and fervent hum, ever present, wraps me in its sound and soothes the rough edges of my thoughts. I relax into him. I breathe deeply, inhaling him, and slowly, the fractures in my world begin to heal.

“You’re safe,” he says, a chant, a prayer. “Let go. You found me. I have you.”

There’s a muffled clatter as something hits the metal floor — the comb, the pencil.

“I have you,” Dorian murmurs again, and his words entwine with the distant hum, curling into my ear and filling me up. “You’re safe. Stay. Stay with me.”

I have no choice in the matter. The ship’s hum serenades me, and Dorian is everything, strong hands and safety and the ship itself, wrapping me up warm and tight, tight, tight. Holding me and never letting go.