Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
DUTCH
Thirteen people isn’t a number.
It’s Lina with Tom’s blood dried on her sleeve because she refused to change and I refused to make her.
It’s Nia with red eyes and a tremor in both hands, sitting upright only because she’s too angry at herself to collapse.
It’s Marta with one arm strapped to her chest, swearing every time anyone looks sympathetic.
It’s Sol, Priya, Cal, Jules, Anika, Tess, whose names I have repeated twice because numbers make liars of people if you let them.
It’s Maren at the boundary controls, pale and steady, preparing to show Kevin a bigger door.
It’s Reyes at the pod interface, telling a damaged vessel to behave.
It’s Holden with the survivor roster in one hand and comms in the other, making sure no one gets left behind by accident or mercy.
It’s me at the bay access line, turning what’s left of us into a load the pod might carry.
Twelve seats nominal. Thirteen people breathing. Bad math. We use it anyway.
“False weakness armed,” Maren says over comms.
Her voice comes through every speaker in the lower bay corridor, calm enough that the survivors look up like calm is still a thing they can borrow from someone else.
“Western boundary nodes eleven through fourteen. Sonic overlap reduced on my mark. Pressure-chemistry deterrent drops six percent. EM remains active.”
“Kevin?” I ask.
“Outer approach. Holding at bay perimeter.”
Reyes looks up from the pod hatch. His coveralls are open at the throat, hair damp, face drawn down to its bones. “Boarding order.”
I give it to him.
“Wounded first. Low mobility. Lina. Nia. Marta. Priya. Sol. Anika. Tess. Jules. Cal. Maren at nav. Reyes at controls. Holden on comms and passenger management.”
Holden looks at me. “You left yourself off.”
Maren’s head turns.
I don’t look at her yet. “Floor brace,” I say. “Cargo webbing at the center channel. I can wedge between the forward bench and hatch frame.”
“No,” Maren says.
“Not a vote.”
“It is when you’re using yourself as furniture.”
“Structural support.”
“Furniture with tactical vocabulary.”
Reyes checks the center channel, then looks at me. I can see him doing the weight, angle, impact, and oxygen math in his head.
He hates the answer. He should. “He’s right,” Reyes says.
Maren turns on him.
He doesn’t flinch. “Dutch has the mass and reach to brace the loose channel and keep the hatch side clear if the pod rolls during launch. Holden’s injured. I need my hands at controls. You need nav and Kevin tracking.”
“I hate all of you,” she says. Her eyes snap to mine.
There’s more than anger. There’s the other thing too. The thing from my terrible little room and the floor by the viewing window and her shoulder against my chest. It’s there in front of everyone now, inconvenient and alive.
No time to hide it. Hiding is bad operational practice anyway.
Lina, strapped into the first seat with her jaw set hard enough to crack, says, “I’m sure this is touching, but the death tube has limited parking.”
I look at her. She looks back. Pale. Furious. Heartbroken. Still Lina.
“Noted,” I say.
Maren almost smiles.
The first boundary tremor rolls through the facility. Deep. A whale-note through metal and glass and every person waiting to be loaded into one damaged chance. The western line drops on the map above the hatch, soft red blinking in a place we all hope Kevin wants more than us.
“Mark,” Maren says.
The false weakness goes live.
On the bay feed, Kevin moves.
Everyone sees it because I left the monitor visible. Enough to show direction. Enough to prove the plan is doing something besides asking us to believe in it.
Kevin turns away from the bay approach. Slow. Then faster.
The body that filled our damaged exit slides toward the western grid, toward the lie that might become true if he understands it too well.
“Movement confirmed,” Holden says. “Kevin leaving bay perimeter.”
“Committed?” I ask.
Maren doesn’t answer fast enough.
Reyes does. “Not yet.”
“Board,” I say.
The word turns people into motion.
Marta tries to climb into the pod without help and nearly goes sideways when her bad arm catches the hatch frame. I catch her by the belt.
She glares. “I had it.”
“You had gravity.”
“I hate you.”
Nia’s next. She stops at the hatch and looks back toward the atrium corridor. Like part of her is still standing in that bright room watching the wall open.
I step into her sightline. Her gaze finds mine. The spores are lower now. Air scrubbers are doing their job. But trauma has its own chemical cloud, and she’s walking through it.
“I almost went to it,” she says.
“Didn’t.”
“Maren had to hit me.”
“Smart woman.”
Nia’s mouth trembles. “Which one?”
“Yes.”
That does it. A small break in the wrong direction, then corrected. She boards.
The next tremor hits harder. Western boundary response. Kevin pressing the lie.
“He’s at node twelve,” Maren’s voice is tighter now.
“Good?” Cal asks from behind me.
Nobody answers. Bad question. Honest one.
Holden takes Cal by the shoulder and guides him forward. “Inside. Seat six.”
Cal goes.
Holden has become useful in a way I didn’t expect to respect this much.
He doesn’t make speeches, hover near Maren, or stand outside with the report like a man waiting for the right angle to judge.
He moves people. Checks names. Clips restraints.
Keeps one eye on the list and one on the living bodies that remain.
I still reserve the right to annoy him later.
Anika freezes at the pod hatch.
The pod interior is too small. Too crowded already. Amber lights. Exposed panels. People strapped close enough to feel each other’s breath. The smell of blood, antiseptic, salt, and fear.
“No,” she whispers.
“Anika,” Holden says.
“No. No, I can’t. It’s another sub. It’s another L-2. I can’t.”
The corridor behind us groans.
Bay side? Western line? Facility settling? Doesn’t matter. The sound goes through everyone.
Anika backs away. I step in front of her before panic can become direction. She shakes her head, eyes wide, breathing too fast.
“L-2 was hit outside the bay. This pod is damaged. The route is bad. I’m not going to tell you it’s safe.”
Her breathing stutters. Truth gets through faster than comfort when fear is this far up someone’s throat.
“I’m going to tell you this is the only way I can put my body between you and the next thing coming through the wall. Inside the pod, I can do that. Out here, I can’t.”
Her eyes flick toward the hatch.
“Inside,” I say.
She gets in.
The rest load faster. Tess, Jules. Priya with the medical kit clutched. Sol last before the core team, helping Reyes strip one more panel from the pod wall to make room for my brace position.
“Kevin status,” I say.
“At node twelve. Interacting with the drop. He hasn’t crossed,” Maren says.
“Yet,” Reyes says under his breath.
Holden climbs in, then stops and turns back to Maren.
She’s still outside the pod, one hand on the bay console, eyes on the western boundary feed. The false weakness glows red on the map. Kevin’s icon flickers at the edge of it, moving in and out of clean tracking.
Interested.
“Maren,” Holden says.
“I’m coming.”
“No.” His voice is low enough that only we hear it. “I know you’re coming. That’s not what I meant.”
She looks at him.
The corridor lights flicker.
Holden steps closer. “Whatever happens in the next ten minutes, I’m not standing outside you again.”
She nods once.
He kisses her. Brief. Not gentle. Not long enough to become a goodbye, because goodbye isn’t allowed in my corridor. But it’s real.
“Good. Finally. Board,” Lina says from inside the pod.
Maren makes a sound that almost becomes a laugh and then catches on something sharper.
Holden climbs inside.
Reyes is next to her now. They don’t speak immediately. Their thing is quieter. Reyes reaches for the nav tablet in her hand, then stops. Just letting his fingers hover near hers.
She puts her hand over his. Reyes closes his eyes for half a second. Then he leans in, and she meets him.
Their kiss is nothing like Holden’s. It is steady and devastating, a pressure seal finally seating exactly where it belongs. When they part, Reyes says something I can’t hear.
Maren’s eyes soften. She says, louder, “Sure enough.”
He nods. Then he gets into the pod and takes the control position.
Maren looks at me.
The corridor becomes very small. Or maybe everything else falls away because the brain is stupid under pressure and mine has decided to keep only her.
“Dutch,” she says.
“Don’t make it weird.”
Her mouth curves despite the red map, the damaged pod, the missing, the dead, Kevin at the boundary, everything. “Too late.”
I step closer.
She reaches for me first. I like when she does that.
Her hands grip the front of my shirt. I put one hand at the back of her neck and one at her waist, careful of the blood and the bruises.
The kiss is hard. Fast. A little mean with fear. I take it exactly as given.
She leans into me, and I feel her whole body shake. Enough that mine answers by going still around her.
“I can’t lose you,” she says against my mouth.
“Then don’t.”
Her laugh breaks once, tiny and ruined. “That’s your plan?”
“Yes.”
“Terrible.” She pulls back enough to look at me.
There’s no time for I love you. There’s also no need to pretend the words aren’t standing in the corridor with us, rude and armed.
I press my forehead to hers for half a second. “Whatever this is,” I say, “we do it alive.”
Her eyes close. Then open. “Yes.”
She gets into the pod. I follow last.
The interior is worse than it looked from outside.
Thirteen people inside a twelve-person chance.
Knees touching. Shoulders crowded. Breath too loud.
Maren in the forward nav position beside Reyes.
Holden near the center with comms and the survivor roster.
Lina behind him, pale and strapped tight, one hand closed around nothing.
Nia pressed into the corner, eyes shut, lips moving through some private count.
The others packed so close the pod has stopped being a vessel and become a body with too many hearts.
My space is the center channel between the forward bench and hatch frame. Floor brace.
Reyes rigged cargo webbing in a cross pattern. It won’t be comfortable or dignified. Probably not fatal if the pod rolls once. If it rolls twice, I become part of the interior.
I wedge myself down, back against the hatch frame, boots braced under the forward bench, one arm hooked through the cargo webbing. My injured side objects.
I ignore it.
Maren twists in her seat to look at me.
“No,” I say before she speaks.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Face did.”
“My face outranks you.”
“Not in this channel.”
Holden reaches down and clips the last webbing strap across my chest. His hand pauses on the buckle. “Too tight?”
“No.”
He tightens it.
Good man. Annoying. Good.
The pod hatch begins to close.
Outside, the bay corridor flashes amber.
Maren turns to the nav display. “Kevin still at node twelve.”
Reyes powers the manual launch sequence. “False weakness timer at sixty seconds remaining.”
No one else is at the hatch line now. No one outside to pull us free if this becomes another L-2.
The hatch seals. The sound is small. Final anyway.
Reyes checks the controls. “Pressure equalizing.”
“Topside has our beacon. They’re tracking,” Holden says.
“Kevin committed,” Maren says. Her voice changes on the last word.
I look up from the floor brace as much as the webbing allows.
On the nav screen, Kevin’s icon pushes against the false weakness at western node twelve, the boundary responding around him in red and white pulses.
The lure worked. Maybe too well.
The pod shudders as the cradle begins to wake under us.
The launch cycle starts.
I brace my feet and hold the floor.