Chapter 7
7
Jones, come in .
The sun warms my face.
Jones.
I open my eyes, blinking against the light. Grasses rustle above me like a whispering forest. I’m on my back in the plain, gazing up at the sky.
Jones, come in .
Someone’s talking to me, but their voice is staticky, muffled. Who could possibly want to pull me away from this? This , the ecstasy of my back pressed firmly against the living ground. I dig my fingers into the dirt and sigh. This, my skin against soil. This, the joy of life curving over me, grasses caressing my limbs, my cheeks, curling into me with abandon, unbound by propriety, by physics, by anything.
I sigh, languorous. I close my eyes and begin to decay.
It feels like the slow build to orgasm, the growing ache, tightness at my core, the knowing — impending blissful pleasure. Maggots rise up from the ground and consume me. My flesh rots away revealing sun-bleached bone. Fungi cluster at my softest spots, where the flesh is warm and bacteria-heavy.
Yes.
My body melts into the earth, inch by inch.
Jill Jones! Respond!
Ben’s raised voice cuts through the haze of half-sleep and jolts me fully awake. I open my eyes again, and the sun blinds me, harsh. I sit up, arm over my face to block the too-bright light. I press my walkie-talkie with my thumb. “What?”
Jesus, don’t scare me like that.
“Sorry.” I run a thoughtless finger along a blade of grass, and it curls around me, all the way down to my wrist. “I fell asleep.”
Fell asleep .
Something like that. “Weird dreams.”
Weird dreams? Jones — What the hell did I say about going off alone? Stay there, I’m coming to you .
“No, don’t bother, I’m fine.” I study the dirt under my fingernails. What was I thinking, taking a nap in the middle of nowhere? I don’t even remember lying down. If the weather turned… but the weather doesn’t turn here. There are no surprise storms, no flash floods. No stealthy predators. Just mild days and crisp nights, the perfect conditions. Always.
I’m a quarter klick from your position . I’ll be there in a second.
“What the hell is a klick?”
It’s a kilometer.
I stand up, turn, and see Ben’s figure striding through the grass toward me. I wave, but he doesn’t wave back. He’s supposed to be off to the north, investigating that anomaly. Why is he out here bothering me?
He arrives with a sour look on his face and gives me a disapproving once-over. “Are you sick or something?”
“No, why?” I glance down, brushing specks of dirt from my jacket. “I got tired, drifted off for like a second. Aren’t you supposed to be checking out that energy spike?”
He gives me the strangest look. “I did check it out. Hours ago. I went back to camp, and you weren’t there. The others hadn’t seen you.”
I check my watch. Fuck. I was asleep for hours. I glance at the sun, and — it’s already past midday. I thought it was still morning. “Oh.”
“Oh,” echoes Ben, obviously displeased. “You can’t disappear for hours on an alien planet. Especially not in direct violation of an order.”
His distress lights a pleased, defiant little fire in me. He’s not my boss. Not technically. “Sorry, sir .”
He closes his eyes for a long second, like he’s already so done with this shit. “Don’t call me sir.”
“Whatever you say, Dad.”
“Not that , either.”
I bite the inside of my mouth to stop myself from this shameless flirting. I don’t know why I want to push every one of his buttons right now. Who is he, though, to tell me what to do? Just because he has a gun. I hold his gaze defiantly. “You had my location the whole time.”
He moves toward me, his jaw tight. “You weren’t responding to my communications. You could’ve been dead for all I knew.”
I think of the dream, the slow sink into my grave. It felt good. Beautiful. Right. “What if I did?” I say, staring past his shoulder at the plain beyond, the dark smudge that is the forest, and the pale purple-blue hints of mountain beyond that. “I’d rather do it here than on a ship.”
“Okay, spooky, we’re going back to camp now.” He radios the others, letting them know I’m safe and that we’re heading back. He puts a firm hand between my shoulder blades, urging me forward. “Let’s go. There’s something you need to see.”
I stop walking. There’s something in his tone that feels like a bruise being pressed. “You found the source of the anomaly?”
He turns to me. “Yeah. But it’s—”
“What is it?”
He won’t meet my gaze. Then he sighs, screwing up his face like he’s losing a fight with himself. “In the plain to the north, I found a piece of equipment left behind by your mother’s expedition.”
I blink, all my pointless defiance gone. “The entire camp is full of equipment they left behind.”
He rubs the back of his neck, squinting up at the sky. “This one belonged to your mom.”
A stone settles in my gut. “Oh.”
“It’s nothing, it’s a walkie-talkie. But I thought you should have it. It’s back at camp if you want to—”
“Why was it out there?” I ask, like he’ll even begin to know. My mother dropped it, obviously. In some kind of fit. Or a panic. While running from something. To something. It could be any reason, none of them nice.
He finally catches my gaze again and softens. “Listen, Jones, I can’t begin to guess. And frankly, we’ll never know. But something’s stumping me.”
I nod. “How it could have been emitting that energy spike.”
“Bingo. I haven’t checked it out yet, but it’s a miracle if the battery’s even running.”
“Yeah,” I say, distracted. I brush my knuckles against the grass, a thoughtless act of comfort, and the grass caresses me in return.
“Let’s head back,” Ben says with finality. “The others are worried about you. We can look at your mom’s walkie more closely if you—”
“I don’t,” I interrupt. The thought of it makes me sick. “I mean, not yet. I’m still…”
He pats my back, two sharp slaps, a straight male platonic showing of support. “Got it. No need to explain.”
Somehow, his lack of curiosity bothers me. Doesn’t he want to know? The rest of the world seemingly can’t get enough gossip about my mom. “It’s just strange,” I say, staring out at the grass.
Ben looks at me. “Yeah?”
“Being here. Knowing she was here. And not even knowing exactly what happened, outside of what was in the news.”
He rests his weight on one leg, crossing his arms. “She never told you.”
I shake my head. He’s going to make some snide remark, now. Or ask what I think happened, or try to dig deeper into my mother’s trauma.
But he just sighs. “I know you don’t wanna talk about it. And I won’t ask you to. But I know what it’s like to walk out of Hell and get an ice-cold welcome from the people who are supposed to be on your side. Whatever happened here, all those years ago, your mom’s a victim. And so are you.”
I bristle. “I’m not—”
“I mean it’s okay to feel like shit,” he says, putting up a hand in placation. “Even in this gorgeous place.”
My defenses recede, and I realize I’m close to tears, startled by his understanding. In all my thirty-one years, I’ve never been allowed to feel the way I want to feel about my mom. It’s always been about how I should feel, that I should be proud, or grateful, or ashamed.
Ben slaps his thigh with one hand. “Welp, shall we?”
I can’t help but smile. “We shall.”
We walk side by side back to camp. We’re further out than I remember going, and I’m vibrating with the fact that I’m alone with Ben. I glance sideways at him. His gaze is straight ahead, but every once in a while, he surveys the area, a habit burned into him for life, I suspect. He keeps his hand near his sidearm, one thumb hooked in the pocket of his cargoes, fingers hanging inches away from the weapon at his thigh.
“What do you think you’ll have to shoot out here?” I ask. I genuinely want to know.
He sighs, a staccato exhale that almost feels like a laugh. “If you make a joke about trees…”
“No, I’m curious. Do you have to carry it?”
“Yes.”
“By law?”
His mouth twitches in a half-smile. I’m quietly triumphant; I like surprising him. “It’s for our safety.”
“To protect us from the rodents.”
“Yes.”
We’re quiet for a few moments. “What about the grass?”
He frowns, glancing at me. “Grass?”
I hold out my hands, palms down, caressing the curving green sea with my skin. He watches, still frowning, and comes to a stop. I stop too, watching him. Hasn’t he noticed it? Hasn’t he felt it following us, angling eagerly toward us? I drink in his expression as something clicks into place.
“It’s… moving,” he says, holding out one hand. The grass shivers, reacting to his touch the same way it reacts to all of us: with hungry reverence. He turns his hand over, running his knuckles along the green, and my breath catches. I can almost feel it, the coarseness of his hands, his calloused palms against my skin.
I watch as his expression turns from confusion to disbelief, and then a soft awe.
“Well, fuck me,” he says. “It’s beautiful.”
There’s wonder in his voice. His words hit me like last night’s wine, making me light-headed and warm. In a rush of near-madness, I find I want to press my lips to his, to inhale that praise like it’s mine.
“How?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I breathe. “I haven’t tested it yet. But I think it’s similar to this species of fern back on Earth that reacts to physical touch.”
He raises his eyebrows. “It’s not dangerous, is it?”
My gaze falls to his hands again. He’s still fingering the lush blades of grass, his expression thoughtful, like he wants to understand it on a cellular level. It occurs to me that this isn’t objectively sexy. It’s a man touching grass. But as he runs one finger along a particularly eager length of silver-green, I swear I feel it. I don’t have to imagine the sensation of his hand, warm and firm, roving up from my waist to my ribs. I feel his thumb brush against the underside of my breast, and with a sharp inhale, I—
“All right, come on,” Ben says. “I’m starving. Haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
I snap back to reality, humiliation pooling in my gut. I’m having vivid fantasies about what amounts to my boss because he’s interested in grass . I should’ve gotten laid before we left.
“Yeah,” I say, my face hot.
But Ben doesn’t notice, or he does and decides not to comment. I’m grateful either way.
By the time we return to camp, Julian and Darcie are expanding the already large dent in the wine store. The main tent’s flap is pinned open, and it smells like Darcie’s cooking something.
Before we reach the tent, Ben touches my arm, stopping me in my tracks. “I know you won’t, but just… don’t go out alone again. Not until I’ve cleared it. Got me?”
I nod, acutely aware of where his fingers just brushed my sleeve. “Yeah, got you.”
He huffs. “Just… pretend I’m your senior officer for two seconds.”
A shiver runs down my body. “Yes, sir.”
He grins. “Good. Now let’s go see what’s on tap for lunch.”
I follow in his wake, hating that the more I call him sir , the more I like it.