Chapter 13
Busted Mechanics
Levi sank back against the console and stared at nothing.
I’m an idiot. I’m an idiot who will never get out because I can’t swallow my fucking pride and just tell him what he wants to hear.
He closed his eyes long enough to feel how tired his face was, how tired his shoulders were, how tired the small muscles at the back of his jaw were from clenching them. Then he opened them, because closing them for longer than that would mean stopping, and he didn’t have the option to stop.
“Jasper,” he croaked. “Pull up the damage report for the section.”
Jasper’s face was stripped of everything Levi associated with him — the grin, the easy rhythm, the stoned philosopher who accidentally found clues in a fucked up asylum.
..all that was left was the man underneath, working because that was the only part of him still functional.
“The purge ran in Sector Three…the command EVA locker has heat damage. Only Kane’s suit is intact. ”
Levi heard the words from somewhere outside himself as he blinked away his tears. “Okay…okay. Let’s go.”
Levi pushed off the console and was moving before the word okay had finished settling in the room. “Owen, where’s the nearest functioning airlock that isn’t in Sector Nine?”
Owen’s hands were shaking on his data pad but his voice was steady. “Sector Two. Secondary airlock, maintenance access. Life support is marginal but breathable. You’ll still have to get the EVA suit from Sector Three.”
“Jasper, can you walk someone through the array disconnect from there?”
Jasper was already grabbing his terminal and tool kit. “If the radio holds, yeah. I can pull up the array schematics from any console with a live feed.”
“Then we go. You, me, and Asher. Now.” Levi looked at Owen. “You stay here. Monitor the creature and keep us on comms if anything changes.” He looked at Maddie. “Keep everyone in this room.”
He didn’t look at Asher. He wasn’t ready to look at Asher.
The bruised knuckles on his right hand and the split in Asher’s lip were both still fresh, and the anger underneath them was still fresh, and the grief for the plan that had been working ten minutes ago was still fresh and none of that mattered because one creature was still alive
“Let’s go.”
Jasper insisted he retrieve the EVA suit, saying he could override the burnt locker in Sector Three faster than they could, but Levi knew it was because of the smell. That area had been hot, smelled of burnt everything, and Elliot’s body was still in there. Levi didn’t argue.
He caught the vibrations a handful of times on the walk, but it never lingered for more than a few seconds.
The last creature was somewhere on the deck with them, but Levi couldn’t pinpoint it.
It could be two corridors over, it could be in the vents…
he had no way of knowing. So he just walked, still a little numb, but now all of his hopes sat on Asher’s shoulders again.
It always comes back to him…he did this. I feel like this because of him and I can’t make myself hate him.
Levi pushed the feeling down as they reached the airlock and Jasper brought the schematics up on the terminal near the airlock controls.
Asher took the EVA suit from him and Jasper started fiddling with the radio rig, wiring something into it with steady hands that would have read as confidence if it weren’t for the fact Jasper was silent.
Jasper was never silent. Asher stared at the suit in his hands, then opened his mouth, looking at Levi.
Levi turned his back on the alcove and unclipped the walkie on his belt. “Maddie, can I get a status on everyone? We’re at the airlock.”
“Everyone’s accounted for, doors are remaining locked until we get the okay.”
Levi didn’t have anything else to say, so he just stood there, holding the walkie by his face, staring at nothing until his vision blurred.
He was angry in a way that frightened him.
He felt like, at least for a moment, waking up in the bunk with Asher still wrapped around him meant things could get better, and now all he was left with was anger at himself.
Jasper tapped on his shoulder. “Hey, man. There’s a lot we need to talk about when this is over. A lot.“ His eyes flicked toward the alcove, then back. “But you need to go talk to him right now. Something’s wrong with him.”
Levi wanted to say no. He wanted to tell Jasper that Asher could go fuck himself. But the look on Jasper’s face said I don’t know what it is either, but it’s bad, and you’re the only person in this room who can fix it.
He sighed and walked to the alcove where Asher was gearing up. Asher had the lower half of the suit on, his gun belt on the floor beside him, his fingers shaking as he tried to snap it shut. The seal engaged halfway and slipped. He tried again, it slipped, and he swore under his breath.
Levi stopped in the alcove entrance and the anger he had been carrying came up his throat like bile. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I can’t do it,” Asher said as he looked up, his eyes wide, and the voice that came out was the small one that turned Levi’s resolve to mush every single time.
Levi took a breath, let his shoulders come down, and stepped the rest of the way into the alcove. He knelt in front of Asher without saying anything else and began snapping the suit together at the waist. It’s another mind game. He’s doing this on purpose. He just doesn’t want me to be mad at him.
“I can’t go out there,” Asher whispered, his hands shaking on his thighs. “Levi…I can’t do it.”
Click. The next seal.
“Why?” Levi’s voice had gone soft without his permission. “I’ve watched you jump over bottomless pits. I’ve watched you stab monsters in the face. We’ve been crushed, stabbed, decapitated, and probably ten other things I can’t remember and none of it has ever bothered you. Why can’t you do it?”
“It’s too empty out there.” Asher’s breath came in uneven bursts, his hands curled into fists against his thighs. “It’s too — it’s too empty. It’s too lonely. I don’t want to go out there, Levi.”
Levi’s hands stopped on the next seal.
“I don’t want everything to be empty again…Levi, baby, I—” Asher slammed his fist into his thigh, shaking his head. “I don’t want to go out there because it’s too empty. I don’t want to be empty. Everything was empty before you.”
The sentence landed somewhere underneath his anger and pierced Levi’s heart.
It was the closest Asher had come to explaining himself since the first time they had met in any scenario.
Before Levi, empty. After Levi, not. And now — twenty feet from the viewport, with the void of space on the other side of it — Asher was being asked to walk back into the reminder of his life that had existed before there was a reason not to be alone.
Levi’s heart shouldn’t hurt at that. He wanted to blame it on the vibrations in his chest, still low and not immediately alarming, but he knew it wasn’t. Asher had shown him something real and it was making his heart hurt. He knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that it was insane.
It hurt anyway.
He finished the torso seals in silence as his vision blurred with tears, pursing his lips.
Click. Click. Click. The suit closed around Asher from neck to feet, the HUD on the chest panel blinking green as the systems recognized his biometric information.
Levi’s hands stayed steady through the last of it.
Then he put his hands on Asher’s face, leaned forward, and kissed him.
“Listen to me,” Levi said as he pulled back, still holding Asher’s face.
“I’ll be in here the whole time. I’ll talk to you the whole time.
You’re not going to be alone. Not for one second.
You follow Jasper’s instructions, do what we need, and then you come back to me.
We’ll solve the problems, and you’re going to take me on a date, and I want you to hold my hand for the whole date. Do you hear me?”
Asher made a sound that wasn’t a word.
“Do you hear me?” Levi’s thumbs pressed against Asher’s cheekbones, firmer. The way Asher had pressed his fingers into Levi’s jaw a hundred times to make Levi look at him when Levi was trying not to.
“Yes,” Asher breathed.
“Good.” Levi pressed a last kiss to his forehead. “Now help me with the helmet.”
Levi put the helmet over his head and sealed the collar ring and the HUD inside lit up, and Asher’s face through the visor was still his face — still the wide eyes, the strange frightened thing underneath — but the seal was done and the suit was on and he was ready.
They walked back out of the alcove together.
“Okay,” Jasper was at the console, radio rig ready. “Let’s get you in the airlock.”
The vibration in Levi’s sternum peaked so hard it took his breath away as the maintenance panel above them groaned.
NO. We are too close—
The grate was already deforming, bolts shearing, and the creature dropped into the room, its head whipping back and forth, apertures cycling the fastest he’d ever heard them.
The room was too small. The creature between the terminal and the airlock, between Jasper and Asher, the metal fingertips already reaching.
Asher lunged at it anyway, grabbing the creature’s arm as he tried to wrench it sideways. The creature swept him aside, like batting at a fly, and Asher hit the wall. He went down hard, the sealed gloves scrabbling on the floor, trying to get back up, trying to get between the creature and Levi.
“Jasper, get him in the airlock!” Levi pulled the small gun from his pocket and fired. The bolt hit the creature’s translucent skin, rippling across its surface, doing nothing. “Get him outside!”
Jasper moved surprisingly fast for someone who was stoned in every scenario, grabbing a downed Asher by the collar and yanking him towards the airlock. Asher fought him, his feet kicking as they failed to find purchase on the worn metal flooring. “Let go of me — LEVI —!”