Adrift (23 page)

“I’m here.”

There was a pause that wouldn’t have meant anything to her before. Now Kivi was wondering if he was mad at her. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to say anything nice. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to say anything at all. Maybe he wasn’t mad at all, maybe he was hurting. This was the worst, this wondering. She didn’t want to be hurting him. That was awful. But wondering was worse. Her head was spinning with all the meanings each of his exhales might have hidden in them. Normal people wouldn’t have so much trouble understanding someone they were supposed to know so well, so she didn’t dare to ask him if he was ok, the way she would’ve before their kiss. Boys didn’t want to kiss weird girls. They liked normal ones.

“Ready?”

She’d been so caught up in wondering about how he felt, she’d almost forgotten why it was that she’d come to the engine room in the first place. Kivi gave herself a mental kick. She was the best at focusing. Her parents always said so. That stupid move was ruining everything. Now she couldn’t keep focused and she had probably lost whatever it used to be between her and Tron. The only way it could make things worse was if it distracted her so much she didn’t watch the engine and they all died from it. Though she was starting to think that would be easier than going back up there and facing him again.

“Ok. Yes.”

“Hold on to something.”

Run

Tron could list on one hand the things he loved about Lucy.

His parents. They counted as one, because even though he did love them, he also hated them. It was the kind of desperate, empty love that was the backdrop of half a million vids about messed-up and misunderstood people. Usually the ones who ended up being crazy and killing a whole bunch of people, but you could almost forgive them because their home was so empty of affection of course they turned out wrong. Tron didn’t like thinking about that. Actually, no, he outright hated the thought that any of his actions were the result of the way they treated him. He would rather believe that his routine lashing out at the others on the ship were because there was some genetic defect than that he just couldn’t deal with how utterly uninterested his mom and dad were in the child they took the time to bring into the world. But he knew that it did, on some level. Maybe everything bad he did in his whole life would be a growth stemming from that cancerous root. But he did love them. They were his
parents
, even if they clearly had no desire to be, and nothing in the universe would’ve made him happier than even a hint of approval or pride from either one of them. And he was hurting that they were dead. It was a raw wound that would never close.

He loved Kivi. That was a dangerous thing to think about right now, too. More dangerous than his parents. Because she’d kissed him, and Tron had definitely kissed her back. Even letting himself remember it for half a second sent a thrum of excitement through him that inevitably settled in his groin and made it impossible to concentrate on anything else. That was separate from his love for her. At least, he thought it was. His body was determined to make everything about the two of them revolve around sex, but Tron knew that wasn’t really what he wanted. Or it wasn’t entirely what he wanted, because he absolutely wanted to have sex
. But even having no experience to draw upon, Tron was pretty sure that if things fell apart between them it wouldn’t be sex he missed most. It would be her. Not Kivi, the cute girl, but Kivi the interesting person who’d stayed with him while he was sick and was the voice in his ear when he was waiting to die. It was how she thought, the way she saw things, and how she hummed when she was swept up in a project.

He loved air. By god, he loved air. Blissful, wonderful, recirculated air. He would never take it for granted again.

And Tron loved running. The rec room was pretty large, compared to most of the other rooms on Lucy. It had to be. Every family was required a minimum of two hours of rec each day. They all went as units, two or three families at a time. Except with Tron’s family, of course. They were too busy during their usual schedule at least five out of every seven days, so they always arranged for him to go with some other family. He refused to let the other children see him mope about it, though, so he’d always thrown himself into the exercising with the most enthusiasm he could fake. Eventually he had realized that he wasn’t pretending when he was on the treadmills. At some point during each hour, he would find himself so absorbed in the act of running that he forgot all about the other family and their kids. When he ran, his mind cleared and then emptied of everything but the rhythm.

It was very different, he was quickly learning, to be running away from someone. Or maybe it was just that he was doing that running from the seat of a comfortable chair, alone in
navigation, bringing the whole of Lucy along for the ride. Whatever it was, there was no rhythm or peace to it. There was only terror of what was behind him and a dread that he was going to screw up the way he always did, only this time it would get them all killed.

Kivi wasn’t far. Or, rather, she was but she’d proven that the distance between
navigation and the engine room was nothing more than a minor inconvenience when she really wanted to travel. Even if he did mess up, she was sure to swoop in and save him. She was getting extremely good at that. And that would be comforting, if he believed that was possible.

He knew she could summon up every word Whit had ever said about flying the ship. He’d heard her recite enough conversations back now, that he didn’t question her casual claims of remembering everything. Tron was even willing to bet she could fly Lucy, if she had to. For a while, anyway. She could certainly do the math of it. But she’d never once practiced, and he knew what a difference that had made in how quickly he could react to the data from the sensors.
Sooner or later, the fact that she’d never even touched the controls would lead to a mistake. Even from someone who made so few of them, like Kivi.

I
t was on his shoulders, which meant that it was almost definitely going to end in disaster. There wasn’t a single event in his life he could point to that worked out. But even though he knew it was inevitable, Tron wasn’t ready to give up. He was supposed to be protecting Kivi. He had to find a way to keep it together.

So he did the thin
g Whit had told him never to do. He dragged two fingers down across the right side of the console, a blue bar appearing and following his movements, until he reached the bottom of the touch panel. A small box popped up, with a warning that such speeds weren’t recommended. Even Lucy knew she wasn’t up to going top speed. Tron brushed the window aside and repeated the gesture. This time there were no pop-ups. A low rumble filled the ship and the walls shuddered. Then Lucy jerked forward, throwing Tron back against his seat.

For several moments, it was all he could do to grip the seat and mov
e his lips in silent prayers. It surprised him to discover that he believed in god after all. Father Andrei would’ve been pleased. When he finally pried his fingers loose of their death grip, it was because another warning popped up on the screen.

“Kivi!” He tapped his fingers on the screen furiously, trying to figure out how it was Whitman had filled
navigation with atmosphere. He needed to do the same, to fill navigation and the engine room and med bay, all at once. “Kivi! I’m getting an alert that the engine’s going to blow!”

“Overreaction.” Her voice was detached, as emotionless as it used to be before
the attack. That, more than the alert, filled him with dread.

“Want to clarify that?” He shouted into his mic.

“No.”

Her mic clicked off. He had learned how to hear it, not because of a particular sound but by the absence of it. The change was always subtle, because it was rare that he could hear anything more than the faintest trace of her breathing, but even now his ears were trained to listen to it.

Tron swore. He pounded his fist against the console. Then he went back to trying to solve the problem of breathing, once the engine was dead. There was a chance, a small one, that the speed they were at now would get them to Vah before the air ran out. Without anything to slow them down, they would keep going at this pace, along this trajectory. Of course, there would be no way to slow down once they got close, and no way to signal the base that they were coming. He doubted the people there would be ok with a ship barreling into their moon, so Tron figured they’d probably get shot down. Assuming they made it that far without their mystery friends interfering. Assuming the engine’s explosion was small and didn’t engulf the whole ship, like the ones he’d seen in the vids. Thinking about those things didn’t help, though, so he just focused on the air. That was something he could control.

Just as he stumbled upon the commands Whitman had entered, which would only do him good here in
navigation and would be no help at all in the other two rooms, the ship stopped shaking. The alert on his screen flickered then disappeared.

Kivi’s mic clicked on. “See? It was an overreaction.”

He let out a long breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Everything’s alright?”

“I found out what went wrong last time.”

That wasn’t an answer. Not any more than anything else she’d said to him since he’d cranked the engine. No, Tron corrected himself. It had started with the kiss. She’d been acting different since then. Had he? “And you fixed it?”

“I rerouted.”

“Meaning you fixed it?”

She sighed, the sound of someone who had suffered for a long time in silence. Was that how she felt? Had Kivi always been this
difficult, and he’d just ignored it? No. Definitely not. She had been before, which was why no one particularly liked her. The one thing Tron could clearly remember about interacting with her before was the same kind of frustration he was feeling now. But she was different now. Especially since the last time they’d seen their new friends. She’d been opening up. Now she was shutting down again, and Tron didn’t have a clue what he could do to stop it. Take back the kiss? Would he do that, if he could?

“Yes.”

“Will it hold for the next fourteen and a half hours?”

“We’ll find out.”

Another non-answer. He needed to fix this. What they were doing wasn’t communicating. There would be other problems, something new that was trying to kill them. Or something old. But definitely trying to kill them. He couldn’t yell at her every time he needed a straight answer.

H
e’d never kissed anyone before. He couldn’t even remember kissing his mother or father. And it wasn’t like the other kids included him in their experiments with each other. Tron had no experiences to draw upon but the vids, and in those this would be the moment something horrible happened to Kivi, and he had to rush to save her. Then he’d pluck her from the jaws of death and pronounce his undying love for her, maybe even ask her to marry him. Except Tron didn’t want Kivi to get anywhere closer to death then they were already. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to ask her to marry him. No, he needed some other way to fix things between them. He just couldn’t think of what that might be.

Tron was about to say something, not that he had any idea what it was that was going to come out of his mouth, but the console distracted him. This time it was alerting him that the movement had knocked two of the sensors out of alignment. It had probably been telling him that for some time, but he’d been so intent on
figuring out what Whit had done that he hadn’t even glanced at the left side of the station. He grimaced. Whitman would probably threaten to smack him, if the old man knew he’d forgotten about the rear sensors for so long. So long as they were running, those two were every bit as important as the fore ones. They were the ones that were going to tell them when their friends decided the game of cat and mouse was over.

He readjusted them and held his breath while he waited for the data to be compiled. It could all be for nothing, this strain they were putting on Lucy. If the other ship was still closing in, the way Whit was convinced it could even when Lucy was going as fast as she could, then Tron might as well cut the engine. There was no use in shaking the ship apart when it was still just a matter of time before they were boarded.

The other ship was there. Tron’s heart dropped down into the pit of his stomach. They weren’t going fast enough to escape. Then he realized something else. “They’re further away!”

“What?”

His mic was still on. He’d forgotten about that. No matter. He wanted to tell Kivi anyway, even if things weren’t right between them yet. “Our friends! They’re still following us, but the distance between them and us is greater. They’re losing ground!”

“Really?” She couldn’t hide the excitement in her voice. Tron grinned.

“Really! Walk the ship. If we can keep this up, we’re going to shake them!”

She made a circuit once every two hours. If it was up to Kivi, she’d do it more than that. But Tron knew it was important that she spend as much time in the engine room as possible. Even if her ‘rerouting’ held, there was no telling what maintaining a top speed for so long would do to the old girl. The engine had already started falling apart, and they’d only been going a tenth of what they were now.

Besides, Tron liked the idea of having her more or less confined to one area. He was confident, now, that he could pump air into any room on that deck. Habitation and storage were another matter; he couldn’t even find them in the atmo control system, though he was sure they must exist there somewhere. He got nervous when she was on those absent decks.

The other ship fell further and further behind, until it vanished from his screen completely. It might be lurking just outside his range, just like it could’ve been doing the same trick before. But Tron didn’t care. He was content with them being out of sight. It might not be half as good as far
far away, but it was a heck of a lot better than creeping up on them.

Tron kept waiting for things to go wrong, for Kivi to tell him that they had another leak, to discover that he’d
screwed up the calculations, something. But it all kept running smooth.

All, except Whitman.

Every one of Kivi’s circuits included a lengthy visit to the med bay. At first she thought Whit was just sleeping, but by the eighth hour they both knew better. He wouldn’t wake up, no matter how much she shook him. And she said he wasn’t breathing normally. He wasn’t coughing anymore, but she said that it sounded like he was trying to breathe through water. She’d tried to turn him on to his side, but she wasn’t tall enough to manage. Tron didn’t think it would’ve made a difference. They both knew what this was. The old man was dying.