Chapter 12
Event Horizon
And like a comet burn’d That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In th’ arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war.
— JOHN MILTON, PARADISE LOST
ORION
The only light in the otherwise darkened telescope room comes from the backlit viewing table. It washes over the scattered instruments and screens, casting a soft white halo around Collins as she curiously wanders toward the table.
She’s more inside the room than I am, infusing every atom with her scent—the sweet notes I can detect and the ones I can’t. She stares down at the glass slides, her gaze slipping over images of constellations and nebulae projected on the table surface, illuminated like an angel.
“Are you really interested in a tour?” The deep sound of my voice breaks the quiet.
I want her to say no. The coating chamber, where lenses are treated with reflective materials, is farther down the corridor in the space where the team that once occupied these stations is now sequestered with the RC telescope—and it’s not sanitary.
Collins peeks up at me, a mischievous slant to her nude lips. “Not really. I just wanted to get you alone in here.”
I swipe a hand over my mouth to cover my smile. “You used Prescott against me.”
“Yes,” she confesses, shameless. “How does that make you feel?”
Like I desperately want to discover what gets under her skin the way she slinks right under mine. “Impressed,” I say instead. “And admittedly, a little wary of your therapeutic approach.”
“We can implement a safeword,” she suggests. “If you need one.”
Something starved and untamed claws at me from the inside, tearing its way through to get to her. She needs to understand that if this goes too far, it won’t be me who needs protection. And there’s nothing that will stop me once that line is crossed, let alone any word.
“I’ll take my chances,” I tell her.
A sexy smile graces her lips, and I’m reminded that, just moments before, I held her throat in my hand. She followed me in here knowing the debased and violent nature of my thoughts. Despite the fear I see glinting in her beautiful eyes, she followed me in here alone, regardless.
An itch flares, my mind uselessly trying to scratch at the infesting, forbidden thoughts of having her all to myself.
Where no one else knows she is.
I unconsciously tap my fingers against my thigh, keeping count.
“So where’s this diabolical particle accelerator?” she asks.
A smile tips my mouth. “In the lab.”
She nods. “This is the control room,” she says, and I nod, because it’s mostly correct. “This isn’t where you work, though.” Her perceptive gaze darts to the spiral staircase that leads to the observatory dome.
I stuff my hands into my pockets, letting my silence sink us further into this moment. Her fragrant scent overtakes the cool, sterile air. Her fingers touch objects, leaving remnants of herself behind. I’m giving myself time to adjust, but she presses against my restraint just by breathing.
“This is as far as most people get.” I give her an honest answer.
Drawn to her, I take a few steps toward the table, but halt to stare down at a glass plate on the floor. When I glance at her, a blush tinges high on her cheeks.
“I dropped it,” she says, confirming the clinking sound I heard earlier from the atrium.
I pick up the plate, my thumb gliding over the Orion constellation before I place it on the table where it belongs.
“Do you always wear gloves, even alone?”
Employing patience, I entertain her questions. If indulging her curiosity makes her happy, I can do that. “Most of the time.”
“Due to fear of contamination,” she says decisively.
I consider how to explain this to her. “That, and when I wear them, I’m not as burdened by the neurotic need to adjust what I touch until it feels right. It’s a barrier, something to dull the senses, so I can focus on a task without succumbing to my need for balance.”
Collins studies me closely. “That’s a form of OCD-related magical thinking,” she says, analyzing. “It’s not rational, but you’ve tricked your mind enough to allow you to have this workaround.”
I nod slowly in agreement. “I’m aware of that.”
“Tell me about your recovery. How long after the accident was it before you started your research again?”
While Collins is doing her best to define and label me, I don’t think about it in terms that can be explained by a medical journal, with identifying numbers and buzz terminology.
Before the accident, I was one way. I’d spend hours in the Lick Observatory, writing code for telescope systems, running simulations, analyzing galaxy data. I was a machine, hardwired and driven.
After the motorcycle wreck, I became something else entirely.
My tainted gray matter whispers, monster.
“There was a before and after,” I tell her simply. “I spent two months in the hospital. While there, fibers began to irritate me. I could literally feel every particle of my clothes against my skin. The germs in the air—I could see them. Taste them. Sense them crawling into my lungs.”
“Before and after,” she repeats softly, a trace of something meaningful in her expression. “What else.”
I run my tongue over my teeth, thoroughly amused by her. “After eleven months in recovery, I was cleared to return to work.”
After so many years, the memory is somewhat fuzzy to pull forth. But as I hold her gaze, finding those golden stars hidden there, it becomes easier to recall the moment I walked into the observatory. The welcome I received.
And I do remember how empty the space felt, Emma’s absence creating a giant void, a black hole itself.
Her research lost with her. When I touched any surface, I could feel the contaminating elements.
I could see the microbes, flaring black and pulsing at the corner of my vision.
I could hear my pupils dilate, my heart race.
Paralyzing.
The worst part was the way it made my mind feel, discombobulated. Detached.
“My first day back, I spent two hours in the clean room and four locked in my office,” I admit with a chagrined smile as humiliation attacks my ego.
A crease of concern deepens between her brows, and I rub the back of my neck.
“It wasn’t long after that I was put on ‘academic leave’ and was ‘redirected to focus on personal research’.
Academic bullshit that was intended to maintain my sense of dignity, but ultimately meant I wouldn’t be returning to my role. ”
She folds her arms across her chest. “But you did. You started focusing on your own research.”
My jaw hardens. “And I refuse to let anyone take it from me.”
A thick silence builds, heavy beneath the hum of instruments and the ventilation system that insulates us in the dim room. Collins shifts her attention, her gaze landing on the cylinder. She steps closer, extending a hand toward the glass.
“Careful,” I warn.
She withdraws abruptly. “Is it dangerous?”
“No, not dangerous.” By now, she should realize exactly where the danger lies. “But it’s expensive. Leo might have a coronary if anything happens to it.”
She raises a delicate eyebrow, prompting me on.
I expel a slow breath, giving in to her further.
“It’s a sonic black hole,” I explain. “Because escape velocity exceeds the speed of light, nothing can escape a black hole. Here, the circulating water in the cylinder simulates that point of no return, creating an acoustic horizon, where the swirling fluid exceeds the speed of sound. Sound waves are trapped in the vortex, unable to move against the current past this point.” I find and hold her eyes.
“The way matter and light cross the horizon of a stellar-mass black hole. Beyond that boundary, escape becomes impossible.”
I let my gloved fingers rest against the glass. “I record the frequency downshift, the way the trapped sound waves stretch as they approach the horizon. It lets me sonify time dilation. A glimpse at what spacetime does to information at the boundary.”
The faint tremor of spiraling water vibrates beneath my hand. Echoes held at the threshold of loss.
A thoughtful expression softens her features. “So the sound stays caught in motion,” she says, far too insightful as she watches the swirling vortex. “Like a melody pulled into a riptide, eternally echoing deep under the surface where no one can hear.”
I nod once with a hard swallow, throat tight.
“And this relates to your research—how?” she asks.
“I try to hear that lost melody.”
The broken cadence of hers fills the tense space between our heartbeats.
I ease a fraction closer, voice lowering to an intimate pitch.
“Black holes consume everything,” I tell her, “but general relativity and quantum theory can’t both be right if information just vanishes.
I believe the imprint remains, encoded in the spacetime curvature, preserved beyond the horizon.
An echo of existence, suspended somewhere liminal between oblivion and eternity. ”
Her lips part, her breath catching in awe—or dread. “And you’re trying to retrieve these echoes.”
I nod slowly, letting a whisper of the truth hang between us.
She blinks, shakes her head. “I think that’s too much for me to comprehend, Orion.”
My pulse drums as I close the distance another step. “It is for most,” I admit. “But imagine if our memories were never lost. If they survive beyond us.”
Something flashes behind her eyes, a painful echo of her own. There before it’s gone. “Sometimes it’s healthier to let them go. The mind isn’t meant to retain everything. We forget for a reason, we’re supposed to. So we can move on.”
I study her in silence. The way she rigidly holds her shoulders. The way her voice cracks on forget.
“Hmm, maybe,” I concede, tone measured. I want to tell her that we’re tethered to those painful memories, forgotten or otherwise. “But for now, it’s only observation,” I say instead.
She tilts her head, a strand of hair feathering her cheek. “Are you observing something in particular right now?”