Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
ELAINA
She hunched over the console, fingers drumming against the surface as the diagnostics blazed on her screen. Her stomach rumbled, a bitter reminder of how long she’d waited for Cyan to return with the breakfast he’d promised. She should’ve known better. He’d done this before—disappeared after she thought they’d had an amazing time. This time just felt different. It always did, didn’t it? Elaina let out a shaky breath. Maybe he was just busy. Or maybe it really was all in her head.
She had to get herself out of this situation and not treat it like some kind of fucking challenge. She’d tried to be more open, more forthcoming, and she simply picked the wrong person to do it with. Caring was presence, and reliability. It wasn’t… whatever this was.
Only something about it felt so familiar. She’d never acted like this with a partner, but she sensed a similar uncertainty in Cyan as her own in the past, with others. Cycles-long relationships in which she never really let herself get too close.
Or maybe it was all in her head, and the perceived relatability was just an excuse for her to tolerate this waste of time. She had to stop now, before she got too attached.
Oh, who was she kidding? She was already too attached. To a stupid stranger who was barely ever there. Who might not even like her.
Fuck. There were so many more important things to worry about. Elaina turned back to the code, scanning line after line of garbled data. At least here, in the quiet of her workstation, everything had its place. Everything made sense. Losing herself in the data was a comfort. Here, she could make progress and patch things.
Elaina’s eyes narrowed as a strange pattern flashed across the screen. She paused, scrolling back. There it was again—a ping from a system she didn’t recognize.
“What the dead drift is acorn one-oh-nine?” she muttered as if the ghost in the machine could hear her.
She dived into the diagnostics, and that only made the confusion worse. The firmware for this thing wasn’t written in any code she could recognize. Elaina fumbled about as best she could, deducing what was going on… She found something somewhat familiar eventually, a locator driver connected haphazardly to the foreign code. That, at least, was a lead—the locator had been a common gadget used to track high-value devices across the station. Elaina had patched dozens of them up here. And this one appeared to be stationed somewhere in the decommission dock.
But what is it tracking?
Elaina wheeled herself back from the console, spinning around in her chair, her mind spinning with it. She needed a breakthrough. If she couldn’t figure out where this virus came from, how was she ever going to stop it? Earendel was barely on anyone’s radar. No one was coming to save them. And she couldn’t even keep her own head straight, let alone patch this mess. Was this foreign system related, or a false flare taking her on a ghost run?
She tried to think, but her brain wouldn’t work and a headache was threatening at the back of her skull. She rubbed her sternum, thinking. Elaina knew she wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long. She was already on an irregular orbital stint and it had already taken her way too long to recover after the last one. It was just getting so hard to connect the dots.
The realization hit her like a decommissioned satellite crashing into the sand dunes.
Of course!
This was why she’d gotten so weirdly tangled up in Cyan. She was still messed up from orbit, and now she was back in it. Elaina simply wasn’t thinking straight, her head all over the place. She wasn’t making good decisions—fixating on a near stranger, likely exaggerating whatever connection she’d sensed, and, in retrospect, catastrophizing his behavior.
He wasn’t an asshole, nor was he that special. She was just a little fucked up right now.
Immediately the weight lifted off her chest. The confusion of it all had been the worst part. Now that Elaina realized what was really going on, she could handle it. The sudden clarity was a relief, knowing that she wasn’t as tangled up in this guy as she thought. That it wasn’t Cyan himself, but the dizzying effects of orbital shifts that had turned her own mind against her.
Elaina got back to work—so much easier with one less distraction.
But as she walked back to her cabin that night a small, quiet part of her wondered if maybe she just wanted it to be that simple.
After quickly downing a wrap, Elaina was inspired to go to the small fitness center on her side of the station. That was what she should’ve been doing all along—exercise was crucial to keep yourself stable in orbit and off. She’d just had so little time or energy for that lately.
But now that she was thinking more clearly, she could get a hold of herself and do the right things.
She did a few three-span sprints, gazing at the surface of Earendel outside the viewport in front of the sprintmill.
As she stepped off the mill and wiped the sweat off her face with a clean towel, Elaina already felt better. Clearer. She washed off in the communal showers and prepped to get back to work with a satisfying post-exercise ache already settling in her limbs.
As if on cue, her comms line vibrated with a ping.
Cyan.
The message was an audio track sung in Gaian. She listened on her way to the command center, scrunching a towel through her wet hair. The melody wrapped around her, soft and haunting. For a moment Elaina let herself get lost in it. But as the song faded, so did the feeling. A song wasn’t what she needed from him just then.
Maybe it was just a cultural thing. They just did things differently on Gaia. Talked more slowly maybe? Now that Elaina knew her irrational attachment to the strange man was fueled by orbital side effects, she could keep it at bay and address the situation logically.
I really like you. I do. But I’m not sure what your priorities are—or where I fit into them. I don’t want to waste either of our time.
Elaina hesitated before sending the reply. She knew she needed to be clear about what she wanted. But as she subvocalized the words, a small voice whispered in the back of her mind, urging her to soften the edges. What if she pushed him away for good? What if it really was just a misunderstanding?
But if he were the kind of man he seemed to be, the kind she’d want, directness shouldn’t scare him off.
Elaina hit send.
She was taken aback by the immediacy of the chime she got in reply. She opened the comms line.
“Hi,” she said.
“I really like you too.” His voice had this funny way of disarming her in the most frustrating way possible. “I’ve just been… I’m sorry. Things got busy this morning. Can I come over?”
“Now?”
“Yes, if that’s okay. I miss you.”
If he really missed her, why hadn’t he answered her ping all day? Why had he left to get breakfast, and disappeared for almost two hours? She was busy too—but still she’d waited for him that morning.
“Can’t tonight, sorry. Got to work.”
She s wanted to learn more about that weird code she’d found.
“Oh.”
“But maybe tomorrow,” she relented. Was that a mistake? But now that she’d recognized her own limits, maybe Elaina could find out what Cyan’s intentions really were. Without compromising her work. “My cabin at 2900?”
“I’ll chec—” He paused on the other line. “I’ll be there.”