Toxic Read online

  And yet, I start making lists in my head of all the things I have yet to do. A desperate list, full of things like:

  See a real sunset on an actual planet

  Swim in a natural body of water

  Kiss someone in a romantic way

  Catch a flying insect

  See a sky in at least three different colors

  Fall in love

  Climb a mountain

  Have a baby

  Leave Cyclo

  They are lists I’ve always made in my mind, but it occurs to me now that I might not do most of them. They will be impossible. They will dissolve before my life has even started. I look at Fenn and Gammand, wondering if they make such lists.

  After a few minutes of walking (now I notice the passageways down to the alpha ring, up to the gamma ring—Cyclo feels so much more holey here), Gammand leads us up another set of steps to the internal gamma ring.

  “Woop!” I say inadvertently, when I collide with Gammand after too forceful a step. The g-force is so light I can’t walk normally here, and I bounce into Fenn trying to right myself.

  “Careful,” he says, holding my arms. He holds them a few seconds longer than I need, I notice. I like that. Gammand’s hair is very fluffy right now. He points ahead to the narrow corridor, which is rather dark, but lined with colored arrays of smaller data units covering the entire corridor walls.

  “Are these…” Fenn begins.

  “Data cores, stored on organic nucleic helices. Prinniad, actually. They’re a little outdated, but pretty solid.” Gammand starts touching his tablet here and there, and I point to which sections will receive downloads, just as I’d learned in my studies of Cyclo. Fenn, on the other hand, is taking out the card from his vest pocket. At the sight of it, I immediately tense up. He sees my reaction and shakes his head.

  “Don’t worry. It’s not for you. I learned my lesson.”

  “Where are you sending it?” I point to Gammand. “Into him?”

  Gammand, without turning to us, lifts his right fist and raises only his long, middle digit. I’ve never seen the gesture, but it must mean “no” in his blended culture.

  “Uh, nope. I’m going to fly the micro- and macrobots through Cyclo’s portways and closer to the core to get some readouts. I’ve got a list of launches to do while I’m here.”

  Gammand touches his tablet a few more times and shoves it into a port a few feet away. “I’ll download the most recent material. I put in a tablet, since you don’t have a holofeed. You’re lucky; it looks like a lot of the information hasn’t been scrubbed—no point, if the ship is going to be toast anyway. When the light goes green, it’s uploaded and you’re ready to go.”

  “Thank you, Gammand. It was very kind of you to help me,” I say.

  Gammand meets my eyes, and I realize he has wonderfully long eyelashes. The spots along his neck are beautiful and change shape with the movement of his muscles. The belligerence behind his eyes softens a little bit, and I see that he’s been holding his hand around a metal pendant this whole time. His lower lip twitches, as if he was going to smile but his mind had other plans.

  “You’re welcome.”

  He bounces past us in the dark, hooks his hands on the handles by a passageway back to the beta ring, and floats down, letting the gravity pull him there gracefully. I sit down next to the plugged-in tablet and wait, watching Fenn. He’s already launched five different bots. Some are still microscopic, but a few are the size of my fist, emerging from the pockets of his vest. They look like pale-green orbs and buzz slightly. Once again, his holofeed is live, and I see his eyes zigzagging here and there, and the green holo display is awash in movement. He must be communicating with the drones.

  “Oh,” Fenn says. “I totally forgot I have a drone inside me. Well, might as well keep it there.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Having that in you. Like it’s watching everything you do.”

  “Isn’t that what Cyclo does with you, only it’s on the outside?” he says.

  This quiets me. Of course, Cyclo is always watching me. How could she not? She is attuned to every exhalation I have, every frown. If I have a concern, her matrix reaches up to soothe me. But Cyclo is staying very flat underneath me. Usually, she would have comforted me by now. I put my hand down and touch the floor, and find that there are multiple spots among the blue, darker in the dim light here. They aren’t the acid-producing brown color from before, but different. These are white, almost lacy at the edges, and starting to coalesce. As I stare, two small lacy white dots enlarge and touch each other, becoming one blob.

  I push my hand harder against a normal part of the floor. Cyclo? Can’t you hear me?

  But she doesn’t respond. Not a ripple, not an iota of dopamine flushed into my capillaries. How very strange.

  “Hana? Are you okay?” Fenn asks.

  I look up at him. “Yes. I’m fine. But Cyclo isn’t watching me now. Right, Cyclo?” I ask.

  The color stays its muted dark blue here. No flashes of anything. This must be what it’s like to walk on a regular space vessel, or a nonsentient home on Earth. I feel very small and alone all of a sudden. I frog-shuffle a little closer to Fenn, a little too buoyant. I grab his arm and bring myself back to the floor. Thankfully he doesn’t move away.

  “Anything?” Fenn asks.

  “No. No response.”

  “So I can say whatever I want, do whatever I want, and she won’t eat me alive again?”

  “What a strange way of putting it. But no, I don’t think so.”

  “Interesting. I’ll have to add this to the data.”

  As I wait, I start thinking of my list again. And I glance at Fenn. He is staring into his visor, concentrating. I look at his profile and his lips, satiny and a little dry, with a crinkle in the middle of his lower lip.

  “Have you ever kissed anyone?” I ask.

  Fenn abruptly chokes on nothing. After a few more coughs, he says, “What? Why do you want to know?”

  “Oh, nothing. Never mind.”

  How ridiculous to ask. Clearly, it’s not something that’s to be discussed. It must not be the custom.

  Fenn wipes his eyes, moist from coughing so hard. “No, really. Why did you ask?”

  “You’ll think this is silly. But…I have this list of things I realized I might not ever do if I can’t fix Cyclo. If I…if we…die.”

  “Oh.” He’s quiet for a long time, and I wonder if he’s just ignored my question and gone back to flying his drones, when suddenly he blurts out, in such a rapid and continuous waterfall of words that I can barely understand him: “I can if you want, but I get it if you think that’s weird—it’s just I doubt Miki or Portia or Gammand will, and I’m here right now so if you want to, it’s okay, but if not, that’s okay, too.”

  I take a breath, as Fenn keeps staring into his holo visor. He’s breathing a little fast.

  I think: Hana, you may never get another chance. Never.

  Kiss the boy. Quickly!

  So I get up, lean over, and push my face closer to him, when he puts out his hands to my shoulders.

  “Wait! Not like that.”

  “Like how?” I ask.

  “Not like you’re coming in for an aerial dive-bomb. Hold up, let me put these drones on autopilot. Okay.” He stands up and reaches for my hand. I stand up, too, and bounce a little before settling down on the low-g floor. He wrinkles his eyebrows at me. “You sure you want to do this?”

  I nod.

  “This is so strange, you know.” Fenn steps closer to me. “Never thought I’d kiss a girl after we’d already seen each other naked, but okay.”

  I laugh. “That’s not how it usually happens in books, is it?”

  He shakes his head. I’m looking up at him now. He’s a g
ood six inches taller than I am. I shake out my hands. My fingers are trembling a little.

  “What do I do with these?” I say, waving my hands again.

  Fenn takes my hands and slips them around his waist. Without thinking, I let them slide up his back a little. He breathes a little faster, even faster than before.

  “Okay.” He puts his own hands on either side of my jaw, fingertips barely touching my neck, thumbs below my cheeks. “Okay,” he says again. Oh. He’s nervous, too.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I say.

  “I don’t mind.”

  I nibble my lip, and he watches, before I ask, “Have you done this a lot?”

  “Kissed someone when it’s been requested of me because of our imminent death? No. Never.”

  “I mean, kiss people.”

  “Oh. Not really. I mean, not many.”

  “Well, have you—”

  “Hana,” he whispers. His face is really close to mine now. “I’ll lose my nerve if you keep asking questions.”

  This time, I’m the one silently nodding. I want to ask, should I close my eyes? But I want to see him, his brown eyes as they focus on mine. Should I move my hands? Am I a terrible chore for him? But just as I start thinking of more questions, he leans closer, and my mind goes completely space-calm, airless and empty.

  His pupils, dark with those tiny glints of gold, dilate as he leans in. And his eyes close, as do mine, without any effort whatsoever. They simply fall closed, as if my body has known for centuries exactly what to do.

  His lips touch mine, and at first, it’s just a soft pressure, sweet, and brief. He pulls back, and I’m not ready for the kiss to be over. I want it to last, I want more, and so I lean toward him, but the kiss ends anyway. And just as I part my lips to inhale my discontent, he leans in. But this time, our mouths are slightly open when we kiss again, so that I taste him, and the tip of his tongue touches mine.

  My feet go tingly, and maybe we’re actually in Cyclo’s core because I don’t feel like my feet are touching anything anymore. One of Fenn’s hands slips behind my neck, pressing me closer to deepen the kiss, and his other hand encircles my waist. My hands reach up higher on his back, and I grasp his jacket as I press him closer, too.

  Fenn breaks the kiss many times, as do I, so we can then reunite with mouths parted, heads tilting the other way, because this kiss must be done as thoroughly as possible, I think. But really, I just don’t want to let go, I don’t want to disengage, I want this to go on until I can’t remember why I was even born.

  Something beeps obnoxiously next to us, and Fenn and I pull away. He looks slightly intoxicated, and I must, too, because I feel like I just ingested something astonishing and incandescent and altogether strange…but in a good way. We blink sleepily at each other, and I touch my lips, wondering if what happened just really happened.

  Fenn shakes his head a little, and reality appears to wake him up. He looks to the right. “Oh. Your download is done.”

  The tablet next to me glows blue in a tat-tat-tat of flashes, then goes green. It’s done. Our arms are still around each other, but I don’t let go. Fenn doesn’t, either. He leans close to my cheek.

  “I never would have kissed you if you hadn’t asked.”

  “I never would have asked, if I didn’t want you to.” I smile.

  Before I let go, I want to say thank you for giving me something so valuable that it can’t possibly be measured in any way. Instead of saying a word, I just kiss him on the cheek. And he kisses mine back.

  We slip our arms back to where they belong, and I’m so cold now, even lonelier than I was before. I shuffle away awkwardly, try not to fall over, and gently pull the tablet out of the wall unit. Fenn is staring straight ahead of him. Maybe he’s already gone back to flying his drones, but his visor isn’t on. I think that he is recovering, as am I.

  I look down at the tablet, letting my body float gently to the floor with crossed legs, then grab a handhold near the wall to keep me there. There are thousands of data files here, and I can’t focus well. I take a few long, deep breaths, close my eyes, and tell myself—stop thinking of Fenn. Stop it.

  “I guess we’d better get back to work,” he says, as if he were speaking from somewhere inside my mind. I nod, and he switches on his holo visor and goes back to driving his drones.

  I stare at the tablet again. I don’t even know where to begin. I open up the first one, and it’s full of extremely detailed, extremely boring information on the technical readouts from the ship’s log.

  **.****.****

  Calathus Log 0900.7B8000223.1

  Census 0900.7B8

  947 active duty

  20 respite

  5 youth cohort 1

  5 youth cohort 2

  5 youth cohort 3

  5 youth cohort 4

  5 gestational, day 241

  8 medical ward step-down

  0 critical

  0 death

  1000 total

  25 cohort/pregestational

  5 students in youth cohort 4 have passed training and are now active duty; ID SR889 “Sadie” has released to the environmental systems group, JP776 “Jin” has released to the biomedical group, IR103 “Ira” has released to the educational group, RX221 “Raza” has released in the core engineering group, BO744 “Betty” has released in systems communications. Graduation ceremony was held via monitor.

  Environmental:

  Core temperatures remain steady. Gallium counts are rising at .0008 ppm. Moisture levels are stable. Oxygen levels at .21. For full toxicity update, see…

  …

  My eyes take in the information greedily. Much of this is familiar—I used to also read the temperatures and moisture levels, as an Earth person might scan the atmospheric weather. I scroll through log after log, wanting to know what SR889 “Sadie” looked like, what build she had, if she loved environmental engineering or only did it to fulfill an empty spot on the ship. What did the children look like? Did the babies put their fists into their spit-filled mouths and try to bite their toes with their gummy jaws?

  And yet, each daily log is very similar to the next. As the children in the youth cohorts age, they enter the next group, until they graduate. Babies are born and enter youth cohort one. Crew members die, perfectly matching, within a few months’ time, the batches of embryos being added to the ship. I scan the files looking for Mother’s name, but she had an ID code she went by, and I don’t know that code. Looks like they only mention given names once, at graduation. I only know her as Mother, and her given name, Um Yoonsil. But somewhere I should be able to find more information about Mother. Perhaps there is a census log with the crew’s rank and position. I could find her that way.

  I decide to ask Fenn for help—I am no good at understanding vast quantities of data and mining them for specific things. I put my hand on Fenn’s arm.

  “Fenn,” I say. But he’s now slack-jawed and dead-eyed, staring into his drone-driving program. I don’t like him like this. He doesn’t respond to my touch, so I tap him harder. Still nothing. What is wrong with him? “Fenn! Fenn!” I yell.

  Fenn suddenly pushes my hand away and jumps off the ground, floating for a good second before his legs meet the floor. His hand shoots out, trying to grab mine.

  “We gotta go. Now!” he yells. With one hard yank, he pulls me forward, and I fly toward the corridor. My body bounces hard against the side wall, and I ricochet against the floor. I cry out from the impact. Fenn is using grips on the wall to move as quickly to me as possible.

  That’s when I see something in the distance, far down the curving hallway—a cloud of misty gray coming our way, choking out the normal air and barreling down, ready to suffocate us both.

  “Cyclo!” I cry out. But the walls stay unchanging in color.

  Even Cyclo can’t save us from Cycl
o right now.

  Chapter Twelve

  FENN

  Hana’s mouth is open as she watches the stifling cloud—a moving, chaotic swirl of gray and iridescent particles—barrel toward us. Why won’t she move? Why won’t she run?

  “Hana!” I yell at her, yanking her arm even harder. It jolts her out of her shock. She starts running with me.

  “Wait! The tablet!” she shrieks. She tears her arm out of my grip to run back, snatches the tablet she’d dropped in surprise, and gallops toward me.

  We try to run around the gamma ring, but the lack of gravity is hindering us. Each step we bounce forward, not nearly fast enough. We are living the bad dream of running in a mire of mud, but instead of mud, it’s low-g. The ship lights flicker erratically and go dark. The only light now is from the flashing hard drives on the walls. A hissing sound comes from far behind us, and it’s growing louder. We bounce our parabolic jumps. Finally, there’s a corridor in the floor about twenty feet away. It’ll take us to the beta ring if we can only get there fast enough.

  “What is it? What’s happening?” Hana yells.

  I can’t answer her. I’m too busy looking at my holofeed, which is reading out all sorts of terrible data I wish wasn’t seeing. Oxygen levels plummeting. Nitrogen dioxide gas in critical levels, mixed with chlorine compounds and arsenic. It would kill us with one inhalation, and it would kill us painfully.

  “Portia, Gammand, Miki—are you seeing what I’m seeing? Evacuate southeast gamma. I don’t know how we’re going to contain this.”

  Miki comms into my holofeed. Her face is worried instead of pissed or placid, and that is a very, very bad sign. She’s running somewhere in the alpha ring. “We read you. We are evacuating our posts and heading to the bridge.”

  “We’ll meet you there.” We’ve reached the corridor that leads down to the beta ring, but Hana lags behind me, dragging my arm. She’s so out of breath she’s turning pale. She doesn’t seem capable of running anymore and is doing a very fast shuffle instead. I don’t think a shuffle is going to save her ass. I pivot and grab her by the waist.