Description:

A massive space port at the edge of a solar system isn't everyone's idea of home, but for Vynessa, it's everything. The only place she's ever felt safe. When a disaster spells the gate's end, she has to decide what's more frightening: leaving Lanuit, or falling with it.

Length: 3,700 words (12-minute read time)

***

Sitting at a table next to real plants and under a fake sun, I prepare for the worst. The courtyards are a health requirement for those of us who live on space stations and gates. Iain and I have lunch together in one when our work schedules align, but he’s never interrupted my morning for an “important conversation". His nerves are clear from the way he bites his lip and can’t look me in the eye. I want so badly to run away from whatever unpleasantness is about to happen, but when someone with precognition tells you something is urgent, you listen.

“Remember a few months ago,” Iain says from the seat across from me, “when I had to cancel our dinner plans?”

“For that maintenance project? Someone ended up sick that day, right?” Iain is among the engineers keeping the jump gate functional. The teleporters get all the credit, but without engineers, there wouldn’t be gates like Lanuit for teleporters to send ships between.

“That’s the one.” He turns to me with one of his disarming smiles, the one that shows off the dimple in his left cheek. My heart aches for whatever I’m about to lose. “I had to fill in. I was expecting a miserable night of work, but when it was time for my dinner break, you called me. Through the power of a video call, we had dinner together from opposite ends of the gate. I don’t know that I ever thanked you for that.”

“It was a very small thing—”

“That’s just it. You have this ability to know what small things will have a huge impact. You’re always looking out for others, putting people at ease. I know you struggle, probably more than you tell me about, but…” he frowns as his voice trails off, as if his train of thought left without him. My past life is the last thing I want to talk about. I left that nightmare two years ago and arrived here with nothing. A security guard—who’s still my closet friend—helped me create a life here. I fold my hands on the table between us and focus on relaxing them. If I can keep my body calm, I can keep my mind calm.

“Iain, what is all this about? Surely you didn’t need to urgently compliment me in public?”

He takes a deep breath and I think: This is it. He never wants to see me again, or he’s met someone else, or he’s leaving Lanuit, or…

“I want you to promise me that you’ll remember this,” he says instead. “Remember that you’re the kind of person that inspires others to be better. That you’ll have a long future of being the incredible beacon of kindness that you are.” He leans forward and wraps his hands around mine. After what I escaped to come here, I haven’t felt comfortable with any kind of touch. Iain has never pushed that boundary. Now the warmth of his skin against mine is strange, but not unwelcome. His skin looks so pale against mine.

“Promise me, Vynessa,” he says with an urgency I don’t understand. I look up from our hands and meet his gaze.

“Okay. I promise.”

He smiles, but his eyes brim with unshed tears. Then his expression shifts to the one he gets when his precognition comes unbidden, and a vision of some possible future takes over his sight.

“Was I wrong?” he asks as if I could have an answer. His mouth opens again to say something, but then the universe shakes.

Cold hits me as he snatches his hands back, his body convulsing. Before I can check on him, everything goes sideways. I’m face-first against something and it isn’t until I blink through the dark spots that I realize it’s the ground. My ears are ringing and head is spinning as I try to push myself upright. Leaves and petals lie scattered everywhere. The fake sky is destroyed, light panels off or shattered or sparking. In the dim light remaining, shadows give the impression of tables, chairs, and people knocked over onto the ground. Screams and cries begin to penetrate the fog over my senses.

“Iain?” I can barely hear myself. I crawl to where he’s lying, face-down just as I was, but he hasn’t gotten up yet. “Iain something’s wrong with the courtyard.”

There are several other courtyards around the ring of the gate, but they’re farther away. Employees are required to spend time in them every day for their health. I’ll need to change my break times to compensate for the added walking time and…

Iain hasn’t moved. His eyes are closed and face relaxed. He must have hit his head, and the trickle of blood from his ear could be from a ruptured ear drum. I pull my compad out to call a medic, but the screen is black and it won’t turn back on.

A failure of this level won’t go unnoticed. Someone will be by soon. Someone will help. They’ll fix things and it will be fine.

I hold Iain’s hand and wait for him to wake up. He will. At any second.

***

An eternity later, someone grabs me. It snaps me from my stasis, and though my feet are numb I still fight back and try to wrench myself free. I shout for help but still no one comes.

This doesn’t happen on the gate. Lanuit is safe. It’s why I’m here. This is something that happens elsewhere, anywhere but Lanuit.

My captor holds fast and pulls me against their chest. I can’t see Iain anymore, I can’t see anyone. I’m screaming through sobs. My arms are pinned between me and my captor. I can’t get away I can’t—

“Iain is dead, Nessa,” a familiar voice says in my ear. “I’m so sorry.”

Jìngyí. It’s Jìngyí and she’s not holding me captive, she’s holding me. Saving me just as she did before.

I choke on a laugh. I’d finally let Iain hold my hand, and minutes later I’m wrapped in Jìngyí’s arms. I hate it yet I feel miles away. Not in my body at all, not even here. Like I’m watching this horrid nightmare and any moment I’ll wake up from it. But I don’t.

Being far away is helping me not think about what she said.

“Sectors 26 through 32 are gone,” a grainy voice says from Jìngyí’s shoulder. “Can’t reach 33 from here. Helping evac 25.”

Jìngyí releases me, keeping one hand on my shoulder while she uses the other to control her radio.

“Evac?” the word pulls me back into my body, but my voice hardly sounds like my own.

Jìngyí had pulled me into the hallway outside the courtyard, but it’s barely recognizable. There’s debris and belongings scattered across the floor. The only other people are a medic applying field stitches to their patient on the floor nearby. Some wall panels have popped open with scorch marks suggesting the cause. A metallic scent fills the air mixed with burnt plastic. Aside from the occasional spark or flicker, the only illumination is a line where the wall meets the floor. Emergency lights directing to evacuation sites.

“What happened?” I ask.

Jìngyí starts walking and I follow alongside her. She’s always like that. Assertive. Decisive. When she does something, you can’t help but follow. I’ve always wondered what she did before coming to Lanuit, but like me, she never wants to talk about it.

“Some sort of power surge,” she says, “it fried the whole gate.”

We pass an intersecting hallway whose ceiling caved in, blocking passage beyond a few feet. A person sits there hunched over. I slow to help them until Jìng grabs my arm and pulls me away. The grim look on her face makes me realize that person was beyond helping.

“A lot of people died when it happened,” she says. “Some were unlucky, in the wrong place when things blew. Others don’t have a wound on their body. They just… died.”

Like Iain. I think back to his last words. Was I wrong? That whole conversation had to be because of some vision he’d had. Did he know he was going to die? Why didn’t he tell me?

Now the whole station is in shambles and we’re going to evacuate.

We’re going to evacuate.

The idea of leaving Lanuit is like a hand gripping my chest. Lanuit is the only place I’ve ever been safe. The rest of the galaxy is too large, too threatening. The gate is a giant ring in space, sections can’t be gone. It can’t be that bad. It must be fixable.

“Um, Nessa?” Jìngyí points ahead where a small child is walking around and crying.

It’s enough to make me swallow my panic, at least for now. Jìng has never known how to handle children, and I recognize this one. I’d helped his mother rebook a missed connecting flight just this morning. I even remember his name.

“Hi, Carver,” I kneel down a couple feet from him, softening my voice so I don’t frighten him. “Do you remember me? I helped your mom earlier today?”

He looks between me and Jìngyí, his sobs halted for the moment, and nods. His face is smeared with dirt, but that’s normal for a five-year-old.

“Would you like to come with us? We’re going to where everyone else is and we could use someone big and brave like you.”

“No!” he stomps his foot as he yells. “I need to find Dad!”

“Your dad’s probably with everyone else,” Jìngyí says.

“No!” his sobs return and drown out every-other word. I’m able to make out “dark” and “dropped”.

Jìngyí looks to me and shrugs. She informs whoever is on the other end of her radio that she’s found a small child named Carver, while I think back to my interaction his mom. She’d said her husband would keep them on time for flights, but “wasn’t with us anymore”. Carver had been very focused on his doll. A doll that, come to think of it, looked an awful lot like him.

“Your doll is Dad, isn’t it,” I say.

Carver nods. “Mom said Dad had to go away, but the doll is how I can talk to him.”

“His mom’s at evac,” Jìngyí says, “waiting for us to bring him to her.”

“He had his doll in the atrium, that’s likely where he dropped it. Can a teleporter to go and check?”

Jìngyí grimaces. “That’s… not an option.”

“Why not? This is a jump gate, last I checked.” There were over a hundred teleporters on staff tasked with sending entire ships across the galaxy, not counting teleporters in other positions. Any of them could pop to the atrium and back.

“Of everyone who’s reported in, crew and otherwise, no one is any type of psion. We’ve asked for teleporters, biopsions to heal people, telepaths to find people, telekinetics to clear debris, metapsions to…” she cuts her own sentence off. “There aren’t any. None that… that survived.”

I stare at her, trying to piece everything together but it’s like the pieces are from different puzzles. A power surge can’t kill psions. And metapsions detect or interrupt other psions, why would they be needed?

Jìng’s radio crackles to life on her shoulder. “Tallis reporting. We found the missing teleporter.”

She curses, then winces as she glances at Carver. She takes a couple steps away to respond.

It’s then that I get a brilliant and terrible idea.

“Stay with Jìngyí and do as she says,” I tell Carver. “She’ll take you to Mom and I’ll meet you there with Dad. Okay?”

Sorry, Jìng, I think, I’ll be quick. I can’t quite hear what she’s saying, something about evac risk, and a counter punch? I’m certain there’s more she hasn’t told me about this disaster, but it’s also unlikely she’ll let me put off evacuating to collect a child’s toy. This is my only chance to sneak away. I can’t let Carver leave without this memento from his late father. That’s too cruel.

I’ll simply have to ask for forgiveness later.

***

On a normal day, the atrium is my favorite room on the gate. It’s large and bright, easily holding over a hundred travelers with its curving benches and tables. Most of my time working in guest services is spent in this room answering questions, giving directions, and doing all I can to help people. On a normal day, I stand at the observation window, watching the room through the reflection. The illuminated letters of LANUIT form a standing display show over my shoulder. A maintenance kit is always nearby to make sure the sign stays lit.

This is not a normal day. The lights are out and a couple letters have fallen over. Trash is scattered everywhere from knocked over bins, mixed in with belongings people left behind. There are—and I try not to think about it—bodies. I’d passed a few on the way, but I was able to hurry past and not think about it. Here, I need to stay and keep looking until I find Carver’s doll and.

And I recognize the young man. He’s wearing the same jacket as the rest of his team. They were on their way to a tournament. He was—his name—

I upright a bin quick enough to retch into it. I stay leaning over the opening, staring at empty cups and sandwich wrappers, until my breath is even again. It will take months to clean everything, to bring life back, but it can be done. I have to believe that.

Urgency pushes me to my feet. I remember where Carver and his mom had sat that morning, so I begin my search there. “Dad” is on the floor not far away. I take a seat as I pick him up and brush off the dirt. I’ve heard of memorial dolls made with the deceased’s clothes. Maybe that’s what I’m holding. Something someone made for a family in mourning.

I have nothing of Iain’s to remember him by, all because I was afraid he’d be like the people I left behind. A fury rises within me, that he knew he was going to die and only thought to have me make that stupid promise. I’ll go back to his room. The locks automatically open during emergencies. I’ll get a shirt, maybe that blue and green striped one he wore so often, then I can—

“For fuck’s sake, Nessa.”

I wipe the tears from my face before I turn to face Jìngyí.

“You got the doll? Good, now let’s go. Kid’s already back with his mom.”

“I…” my throat tightens, “there’s something else—”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

She sighs and sits next to me. “You’re procrastinating. You don’t want to leave.”

My face grows hot. “This is my home, Jìng.”

“It was your home. Backup batteries can’t keep life support going for much longer.”

“You don’t get it.” I shake my head and my entire body shakes with it. “I came here with nothing and this place saved me. I got a job, I met you, I met Iain…” Iain, who didn’t care that I didn’t want to be touched, who didn’t mind that I couldn’t be his girlfriend, who gave me as much time and space as I needed. Who deserves so much better than an anonymous grave on a decrepit jump gate. “I can’t leave. Not like this.”

“Because if you stay, then everything will go back to how it was, right? The lights will come on, ships will come through, Iain will invite you for lunch. As if you can rewrite history by staying, and if you get on that shuttle, then there’s no coming back, and you have to accept every loss. Something like that?”

I try to hold onto my fury and find it growing cold. How dare she.

“If the galaxy was kind, you’d have time to process this,” she continued, “but it’s being a real dick right now.”

I laugh despite my tears, the sound coming out as something between a cough and a sob. I’ve started with nothing before, I can do it again. This time, with a friend at my side. It’s the only way I can fulfill that promise.

“Okay, let’s go.”

With Carver’s doll in hand, we get up to walk to the evacuation point. Until we see him. A man wearing the blue uniform of a gate teleporter, directly in our path. He stares at us with an expression that doesn’t belong on a human face: a contortion of a grin and too-wide eyes, showing not mirth but malice. It’s stopped us dead in our tracks.

“You know those stories of feral psions? The ones that attack people?” Jìng asks.

“Yes,” I whisper back.

“They’re not stories.”

***

“What do we do?”

Jìngyí doesn’t take her eyes off him as she answers. “Get behind something. It’s the only way he can’t see you. I’ll distract him and as soon as you have an opportunity, run.”

“And you?”

“He can’t be allowed to teleport onto a shuttle.” She slowly raises her hand to her radio. “Teleporter at—”

He disappears and Jìngyí makes a strangled sound in place of words. The teleporter throws her to the ground, her body making an unsettling thud as she hits a bench.

I scream and stumble backwards, tripping over an abandoned bag.

The teleporter turns his maniacal gaze to me, but Jìngyí is already on her feet.

“Go!” she yells to me. She swings her baton and it goes straight through the teleporter. I regain enough control of myself to turn and run. If I get to evac quickly enough, I can make sure someone comes back to help her.

The teleporter appears in front of me and I barrel straight into him. As soon as we connect I feel a sickening twist in my stomach. The world around me melts and shifts back into the atrium, where I drop to the ground behind the broken LANUIT sign. Jìngyí and I make eye contact between the letters. She’s breathing as hard as I am and cradling one of her arms. Her radio is a mangled mess on that same shoulder.

She reacts before I see the teleporter make his return. He lunges for her and she uses it to her advantage. He practically brings his face to her fist as she hits him square in the jaw and I swear I hear the crack of bone.

It does little good. In the next breath he grabs Jìng’s wounded arm and pulls her to the floor. She cries in pain as the teleporter steps on her.

I’m no fighter, but I can’t let him kill my best friend. I crawl to the maintenance kit, pick up a screw, and throw it at the teleporter. His form flickers and the screw lands on the floor on the other side. I throw another, and another, each one having the same effect, each one making metallic clinking sounds across the floor.

But it works. The teleporter lets up the pressure on Jìngyí, eyeing the landing zone that’s making all that noise. Then he disappears.

And reappears in front of me. His hands are around my throat, pushing me against the wall as he strangles me. I drop Carver’s plushie, still in my hand after all this, and grasp for anything that might help me. I find a screwdriver. If I try to stab him, I’ll only stab myself, but another option blooms in my mind.

That grin hasn’t left the teleporter’s face, and this close I can see the spit foaming around his lips. I squirm under his grip, my hand searching the wall as I swallow whatever air I can get. With dark spots erupting in my vision, I plunge the screwdriver down. Into an outlet.

I’ve never been electrocuted before. It’s like a million spikes piercing through every inch of me, and then… nothing. Dark. Cold.

When I come to, it can’t be more than a few seconds later. Jìngyí stands over the teleporter’s body and strikes him across the temple using her baton. She drops to her knees and checks his pulse. Her head slumps and shoulders sag as she mutters, “I came here to get away from this shit, dammit.”

“The galaxy can be a dick,” I say. My mouth feels like it’s full cotton. Bloody, coppery cotton.

“Nessa! Thank the stars, I thought you were…” In the faint illumination of stars and emergency lighting, I swear there are tear trails down her face. But that’s impossible, Jìngyí never cries.

“I’m alright, just a little stuck.”

In the moments I’d lost consciousness, the letter nearest me had tipped over, trapping my leg under it. The pain is a vague concept at the moment, dancing at my periphery but not quite coming in.

Jìngyí curses. “I can’t lift that with one hand. I’ll need to run back, get some help.”

“Bring this with you.” I hand her Dad, Carver’s doll. I see her about to object and stop her. “They need it so they can get out of here. Don’t make them wait.”

“Fine, but I’ll be right back.”

“Jìng? You did everything right. Even if I can’t use this leg ever again, it’s not your fault.

“Yeah. Well.” She clears her throat. “It’s not yours, either.”

Her steps echo down the hall until I can’t hear them anymore.

I lean my head against the wall and stare at the stars through the observation window. I don’t know why I lied. My body is failing. A biopsion might be able to save me, but there aren’t any of those left.

“I’m sorry,” I say to the stars, “I’m breaking my promise already.”

“No you’re not,” Iain’s voice says. “There are many ways to live. You have an amazing future ahead of you.”

“I wish you were part of it.”

“I will be.” I feel his hand in mine, and this time, I hold his back.

In my last moments, I don’t feel alone, or lost, or afraid. Lanuit will always be my home, and through it, I will always help others find their way.