Chapter 7 #2
“What’s your destination, Vessel?” Yan asked and pulled a cigarette from his pocket.
He made a point of slowly lighting it and taking a deep drag.
Catching Iris’s frigid glare, Yan’s lips stretched in a self-satisfied grin.
The smoke streamed from his parted lips like fog on an early winter’s morning.
“Would you look at that? A miracle, truly.” He took another drag.
“If you think about it, Vessel, we’re just the same, tumbling through space with no goal or destination.
Our ship is just metaphorical in nature and bigger and can’t be sold for millions.
Your temple would probably be more concerned with one they could turn a profit from.
” He motioned for Iris to crouch down to his level and look at the screen.
“I think you were right about us being watched, but they’re not doing it through cameras.
The camera feed, here, it’s dead. Don’t know how long ago it went dead, but it’s dead now.
Not sure if you’ve noticed, but all the cameras are busted too.
Maybe deliberately, maybe just as a product of time.
Who knows? But whoever is watching us is looking at the little bursts of signal wherever we interact with the ship. ”
“Like trying to jury-rig a maintenance control room door?” Iris asked, half smiling, only a little peeved to go without a cigarette once again.
Yan made a point of blowing a puff of smoke in Iris’s direction. “Yes. Like that.”
“Can we do the same? Can we watch for these little bursts of signal to see where they are interacting with the ship?”
“Very good, Vessel,” Yan muttered, his fingers running across the keys in rehearsed patterns. A timid flash of hope and pride sprang up in Iris’s chest. “Maybe you’re not completely useless after all.”
Oh, how brief were both hope and pride.
“Look here.” Yan pointed to a string of code running across the small screen.
“Here’s the deck level, and here are all the various doors and switches.
When a signal goes through to open or close a door, there’s a change.
” Yan pointed to one such flicker in the code. “Here, see? Someone opened a door.”
Iris furrowed his brow. Hidden in the text and numbers that ran across the screen in neat little rows was a single digit of importance.
He followed the code the way Yan did, breaking it down into sets of coordinates.
Deck level. He searched for it on screen.
Is this what you see? How you see? Iris asked VIFAI.
This is the bridge between how I see and how you see.
I see what those numbers and letters represent.
I see, if you can call it that, the signal itself.
VIFAI noticed the simmering frustration flooding Iris’s synapses as he tried to decipher the code.
Don’t blame yourself. You’re not made to see the signal, to speak it.
We are inherently two different things or two different makes.
But imagine converting this to speech, and you’ll understand why it’s faster to just communicate in signal.
Iris understood. It didn’t help him at all, but he understood.
He too was of a different make than others, speaking a language no one else spoke.
Very often, he wished for silent communication, to be understood exactly, without filter or translation, or elaboration, or reliance on metaphor.
It would alleviate much of his frustration as well. “Isn’t that our deck?”
Yan held out his hand to silence Iris and scanned the screen, a tendon along his neck tensing as he mouthed something to himself. “Yes. It’s far off from where we are. All the same, let’s call all the doors and spots we can interact with the ship seams. All the seams are sequential. This one is—”
But Iris couldn’t say silent, not when he was so certain. “No. I meant this one.” He jabbed a thin finger on the screen. “This one right here is the airlock Ishtan and I checked out. Someone just opened it. Or closed it, I can’t tell.”
“Opened it. Didn’t you say it was toast?” Yan asked, voice hushed. He shut the screen and scurried to his feet. “Let’s go. I want to see what’s going on there.”
It’s trying to ping me again, VIFAI said.
“Engineer Yan, we’re unarmed. I don’t think this is the best idea.”
“You’re armed,” Yan threw over his shoulder, already halfway back through the orchard. “Stay here if you’re chicken, but I’m going to go figure out who’s keeping us inside.” With those words, he jogged the remainder of the way to the door and vanished as the two halves shut.
It’s trying to speak again.
Iris knew, even without VIFAI’s warnings that always came two seconds too late.
The growing headache was enough to clue him in to what was coming.
With a frustrated flick of his robes, he went after Yan, through the orchard and back down the corridor, jumping over the puddle that would electrocute him if he slipped.
Iris begrudgingly pattered downwards along the steel staircase, picking up speed as he went.
He was foolish to let the engineer go ahead without him.
Yan was, as he had so eloquently pointed out earlier, unarmed.
Iris’s own weapon was neatly strapped to its forearm holster, hidden from innocent eyes by the folds of his robes.
He was foolish to ever wish hurt on the engineer.
Foolish to wait this long to confide his suspicions to Yan.
Foolish to ask for a cigarette. Foolish.
Foolish. Foolish. Now, the Light was reminding him of the proper order of things, of his own powerless nature.
He raced down the corridor towards the earlier discovered airlock, the moss-covered floors muffling his light steps.
VIFAI was kind enough to project the map without being asked to, and Iris followed it religiously, every step matching a previously made imprint on the moss.
He turned the final corner at full speed and dug his heels into the soft moss to bring himself to a jarring stop.
Yan stood motionless; his back turned to Iris. Before him, the body of the older station security guard lay splayed in a spreading pool of blood. His wide-open, glassy eyes stared at the arching ceiling of the corridor. In the centre of his chest gaped a wound the size of Iris’s fist.
“He’s dead,” Yan said, his voice monotone. “Already checked.” Only then did Iris notice that Yan’s hands were stained the same shade as the moss beneath the body.
“The Light welcomes him back into the One Beginning,” Iris started on instinct. “Death is but a mere illusion, engineer—”
“Shut up.” Yan threw Iris a look, enough for him to see the engineer was a single wrong word away from all-consuming panic.
Still, Yan commanded his voice level and his hands still, even as droplets of blood ran down his fingers and dripped to the floor.
“Go back, find everyone, wake them up, gather them together. All the academics. Only the academics. Now.”
“What about—”
Yan took a slow, shuddering inhale. “Vessel, what do you think makes a hole like that?”
Iris looked at the body. Nothing in his experience made a hole like that. Nothing in his experience could cleanly plunge into a man’s chest at a high enough velocity to create such neat edges.
“No natural thing can make this,” Yan told him. “There are only three of us who are armed. The first one is right here.” Yan nodded at the dead man. “The second was with me the entire time. The third is still among us. Do you understand?”
The rash attribution of blame was foolish, yet something in Yan’s voice made Iris hesitant to argue.
He nodded and ran, faster and faster. Rounding a corner, Iris’s feet slid on the damp moss, and he tripped over himself, landing with one palm on the ground.
He picked himself up, ignored the stitch in his side, and continued running.
Every time Iris blinked, the dead man’s vacant eyes stared right through him from the pit of his memory.
Dilated pupils like black holes. He ran.
Iris sprinted through the corridor, all divine composure and formal etiquette stripped away and replaced with primal fear.
Dead bodies, fresh dead bodies, bodies that died before his very eyes, were nothing new to him, but those were strangers.
This, this was a man he’d watched play cards, a man he’d seen alive and well not five hours ago.
This was a person, a person whose name he failed to ask for, and was now murdered.
Iris stopped. The moisture below his feet slicked like blood, the blood dripping from Yan’s fingers, blood soaking through the moss beneath the body. He didn’t even know the guard’s name.
Keep going.
Shaking himself present, Iris barreled down the hallway, tracing the bends and navigating the branches of the corridor, and into the communal space. He did his best to rouse Ishtan, wrapped up in a cocoon of a sleeping bag, as gently as he could.
“I’m sorry, Ishtan, but you have to get up,” Iris whispered, but Ishtan did nothing more than roll over and produce an impressive snore. The time for gentleness had run out. “Get up!” Iris barked.
With a snort, Ishtan’s eyes shot open. “What in the—”
“Please, get yourself properly awake,” Iris said and scurried over to where Riyu rested. “Dr. Alo?”
But Riyu was already awake, crawling up to seated with one arm in the soft-shell jacket sleeve. She blinked her grogginess away. “Why the yelling, Vessel? Are we in danger?”
Iris didn’t want to lie, so he omitted as always, and said, “Not immediately. Please get yourself ready. We need to have a talk.”
Iris was about to return to Yan when he noticed Jesi and Tev in the dusk of the space. Jesi looked up at him from a steaming mug in her hands. Her dark face went ashen as her eyes darted to the crimson stains along the hem of Iris’s robes.