Satellites

14. Do You Copy

Do You Copy

Solace

It had been two days since the great revelation—or awakening. Whatever you wanted to call it. Two days of severely rationing my water. Two days of drifting in and out of strange dreams. Two days of exhaustion carefully carving its name into my sanity.

I couldn’t sit here and read the same boring books, listen to the same seven CDs, and maintain the same mind-numbing routine.

My realization? If I stayed here, I was going to die.

I skipped the sink bath and, luckily, didn’t have to change much about my bathroom routine considering Paul had, in fact, installed composting toilets. Two of them, actually. I stared at the empty room that was supposed to be a garden. Oh, Paul…

I smacked my gum louder than necessary, listening to the sound echo through the bunker with an odd sense of satisfaction as I tried to put my tired mind to work.

Paul and Bridget left the bunker twenty-two months after the last bombs dropped.

Back when we were still keeping track of time and daylight hours.

The radiation levels alone could have killed them—but Paul had suits.

I wasn’t sure if there were any left. I had never bothered to check.

Spitting my gum onto the floor, I clamped the flashlight between my teeth and flipped the page.

The longer I stayed down here, the stronger the knot in my gut grew.

I hadn’t found a single leak in the water lines.

No condensation forming on the walls. There weren’t any puddles beneath the pipes in the systems room.

I propped my boot against the metal cabinet, resting the heavy manual on my knee. “Patricia,” I said around the flashlight, “I fear we may have to brave the outside.” The words were a curse on my tongue. Could I even survive outside? I highly doubted it. Which I think went to show my desperation.

I flipped another page. According to the manual, the water reservoir was filled partially by the bunker’s filtration system and partially by an underground well.

Which Paul had apparently paid handsomely for, judging by the receipt tucked between the manuals I found in a kitchen drawer.

If the plumbing textbooks were anything to go off of, there was a good chance something was wrong with the well pump.

Considering nothing had been maintained in over a decade—and had somehow survived the destruction of the planet—it probably needed a little TLC.

It was a shame a thirty-something music teacher was going to be the one providing it. I knew absolutely nothing about plumbing. Or wells. Or filtration systems. Or water, for that matter. Science was Jude’s thing. Not mine.

Jude.

My heart clenched. Of all people, why did my brain insist on latching onto him?

There was a time when I was always chasing a little warmth from him.

The last time we spoke was the night of my first performance in New York.

I’d left tickets for him at the box office, and he’d boarded a plane that morning to sit in the front row. Like always.

Usually I’d be single, and he’d have a girlfriend.

He’d be in town, as I was leaving. His job was demanding and my life was never quite sure which path to take.

They were all near-misses, and eventually, I came to expect that.

So when he showed up that night with the largest bouquet in hand, I broke every rule and ran into the crowd to throw my arms around him.

“You’re not seeing anyone, right?” he asked, pulling away just enough.

“No?”

“No? Or—no.” He caressed my cheek, thumb brushing back and forth.

“No.”

“Good.” Then he pressed his mouth against mine, in a blood-searing, heart-claiming kiss as he dipped me like you see in the movies.

That night, in the earliest hours of the morning when the sky was threaded with blue, in my tiny apartment, our hearts found purchase in one another's skin and I swore I’d never be the same. But like every other damn time, it was short-lived.

Naked, limbs tangled, we woke to the sound of his phone buzzing. He had to leave on urgent business that he couldn’t tell me about, nor name, and I was left with a cold bed and to wonder after him.

I didn’t hear from him again.

Bridget told me it was toxic, but what did she know? At the time she was getting a divorce while rendezvousing with a man twice her age who may or may not have been the reason for the divorce in the first place.

It never worked with Jude and me because we could never quite nail the timing.

A sudden burst of static split through the bunker.

I froze. It was only the radio, it crackled again, a violent rush of sound that bounced off the concrete walls and hummed through the pipes.

The usual voices came through—fast and overlapping.

I rolled my eyes and flipped another page of the manual, tightening my grip on the wrench.

“Still can’t understand youuuu!” I sang.

The voices shifted, then a woman spoke clearly in English. “Hello—hello— is anyone there?” The signal wavered, crackling softly between her words. “This is Commander Zhang of Station Seven. We are searching for survivors of the Scourge. Copy.”

The flashlight slipped from my teeth and struck the concrete with a sharp crack, rolling away in a beam of wandering light.

I dropped the book, where it slid from my knee a moment later, landing with a heavy thud while the wrench clanged against the copper pipes beside me.

For a moment I simply stood there as my heart stalled in my chest. Then it kicked back to life all at once. “Oh—shit.”

I ran. My boots pounded down the narrow corridor as I slammed into the doorway of the control room, reaching for the headset hanging beside the console, but there was no microphone.

“Hello?” the woman said again through the speakers. “If anyone can hear this transmission, please respond.”

“Wait—wait, hold on!” I spun in a slow, useless circle. Where the hell was it? Then the memory surfaced. “Shit. Just a second!” Yesterday I unplugged it and dragged it out to the common room.. I took off again, sprinting down the hall so fast my shoulder clipped the wall. “Ow!”

It wasn’t on the couch, or the floor, or the bookcase, or any other surface for that matter. I tore through stacks of supplies I’d left littered around until spotting the bunkroom door sitting ajar out of the corner of my eye. The door squealed on rusty hinges as I shoved it aside.

I never came in here anymore, except yesterday when I briefly lost my mind. Bridget’s bunk sat exactly as she’d left it, and there on the mattress was the microphone.

“Got you.” I snatched it up and bolted back down the hallway, lungs burning by the time I reached the control room again. My hands shook as I shoved the plug into the console.

The speakers hissed softly. “—repeat, is anyone receiving this transmission?”

I slammed the talk switch. “I’m here!” I gasped. “I’m here—do you copy?” Interference crackled between us. I leaned closer to the microphone, my voice suddenly small in the enormous quiet of the bunker.

“Hello?”

“Oh my god,” I sputtered. “You’re speaking English.”

“Solace?” A male voice cut through the line next; his voice hard and somehow familiar. “Solace, is that you?”

Jude Ransom.

No—

I yanked the headphones off and dropped them to the console as if they’d burned my skin. The muffled sound of his voice spilled from the headset as I sat there, hand covering my mouth.

“Solace, it’s Jude. Solace—do you copy? Come in. Solace—” His voice grew frantic with each repetition of my name.

With fumbling fingers I grabbed the headset again and shoved it back over my ears, leaning into the microphone. “It’s me,” I breathed. “Is it really you?”

“Baby—”

For the first time in years, I cried. I covered my mouth, pressing hard, as if I could keep the sound inside me. But the bunker was too quiet, and too bare—each unsteady breath brushed the walls and returned, relentless, like a reflection I couldn’t escape.

On the other end of the line, someone cleared their throat. “Lieutenant,” a woman said softly in the background. “Let’s give them a moment.” There was the sound of chairs shifting. Papers rustling. A door sliding shut somewhere far away.

It all fell away to silence.

“Sol?” The way he said it—tender and uncertain—nearly broke me all over again. “I thought you were dead.”

I laughed weakly, dragging the sleeve of my sweatshirt under my eyes. “Yeah,” I snivelled. “Well… funny story.”

He let out a shaky breath. “Jesus Christ.” For a moment neither of us spoke—eight years of distance hung between us as though a dust-riddled cobwebbed veil. “Are you really there?” he asked finally.

I gripped the microphone tighter, as it had now become my lifeline. “I’m really here.”

Mercy was not a gift I’d been given, not until this moment.

Living through the end of the world was a sentence I couldn’t fathom my soul was deemed dishonorable enough to bear.

Yet, now, hearing him call my name once more, I had to wonder if the dreams were ever just formless thoughts in my subconscious or if they’d held greater meaning. Grander purpose.

Another breath from him, deeper this time. “Solace,” he said again, like he needed to hear the name out loud to convince himself I was real.

“Hi, Jude.”

“Where are you?” The line beeped and I waited. For a moment neither of us spoke, the silence stretching long enough that it was clear we were both trying to fill it at the same time.

“I—”

“You—”

We both stopped.

“You first.”

I rubbed my sleeve across my face and leaned closer to the microphone.

“I moved back home when things started getting scary,” I explained.

“Bridget had recently divorced Luca, so we shared an apartment for a while. I started teaching music at the high school outside of town.” Another pause while the signal traveled through whatever miracle of machines was carrying our voices.

“Bridget was seeing this guy named Paul,” I continued.

“He has this house out on the peninsula. Miles outside of Port Angeles. It's a huge place—ridiculous, honestly.” I huffed out a weak laugh. “He’s a prepper. The kind you used to see in documentaries. Out behind the house there’s this huge concrete shaft that drops down into the bunker.

He spent years outfitting it. He had food storages, generators, an air filtration system—the whole thing.

” My fingers tightened around the microphone.

“That’s where I’ve been.” Silence again. “Since the beginning.”

“Solace—” Another beat of static.

“What about you?” I asked.

The line crackled softly before Jude answered.

“I was already in orbit when it started.” His voice had gone flat, tone hardened.

“Elias and I were sent up on a joint mission with NASA and the Space Force. We were attaching SOL to satellite arrays.” He trailed off, and I waited patiently, leaning in closer as he cleared his throat over the line.

“That’s where I went when I left you—” Static filled the headset again and I froze, terror clawing at my throat.

“No, no, no, no—”

“—I wasn’t allowed to tell you or anyone for that matter.

” His voice broke through, and I took a deep breath, hanging onto every single word.

“Even my mom didn’t know where I was. I was going to call you when I got home, and explain everything.

The idea was to build a monitoring net around Earth to track atmospheric changes and radiation levels, that sort of thing.

” A short laugh escaped him, but there was no humor in it.

“They knew, Sol. They all knew something was coming. For months…I was just—I was sitting up there while the planet burned. They promised they’d get our loved ones into a bunker.

” His voice broke slightly. “Everything collapsed too fast.”

The radio hissed softly between us.

“What about you? Where are the others?”

My throat closed. “Paul and Bridget are dead.” It was the first time I’d admitted it out loud. They left and they weren’t coming back. “They went to find medicine because some of the others got really sick.” I stared down at the console. “They never came back.”

The stillness on the other end of the line was enormous. “How long ago was that?”

“Years.”

“The others?”

“Died.” I swallowed.

“So it’s just you?”

“Me… and Patricia.”

Another pause. “Who’s Patricia?”

I sniffed, wiping my nose with my sleeve, letting out a shaky laugh. “Paul’s gecko.”

We talked as long as they’d let us, which didn’t feel nearly long enough, except that I was already growing weary, and I knew that if there was any chance of figuring out my water problem, I needed to rest.

I didn’t bother Jude with it, though. We’d already been through so much—and had lost everything. Finding each other again through nothing but sound waves, an entire planet apart, was its own kind of miracle. I didn’t want to ruin it with the dismal truth of my survival.

The Survival Optimization Logic for the real Solace was futile.

“I need to sleep,” I told him reluctantly. “I don’t know what it's like up there, but down here I sleep more than I did up top.”

Ransom sighed, and I could almost picture him now. Face scrunched with worry. The deep crease, settling between his brows.

“Okay, yeah. Get some sleep.” A lull followed—long enough that I wondered if I’d bumped a dial or knocked something loose. Then his voice returned. “Solace…”

My finger hovered over the relay button, I thought I knew what he was going to say. For years it had been instinct to shrug him off—to offer a sullen ‘love you too’ in return—but I did love him.

Fiercely.

Defiantly.

Against every single odd stacked against us—to which there were many.

“Will I get to talk to you tomorrow?”

My heart deflated. “I don’t see why not.”

“I’ll wait all day if I have to.”

I brushed the tear from my eye. “Goodnight, Ransom.”

“Goodnight, Solace. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“I’ll be here,” I lied. It was the greatest tragedy of all, because once an object was in motion, it stayed in motion.