Lana Lopatin

IV. GONE LONG.

When Lana's father disappeared, he was glowing.

It had happened right after the first kneeling man died in the mud. When the creature that covered the sky vanished and buried itself deep into the recesses of her unconscious memory. Was that the final trigger? That creature and the radio tower were tied by some unknown force. A promise of conflict. At least, that was how Lana remembered it. What had the creature in the sky sacrificed to disappear so completely?

The radio tower exploded at that moment, or so it seemed at first. The shockwave was what came first, not the blast – a wave of neutral pressure with the intensity of something with a conscience. It proceeded the explosion by a couple of seconds, knocking Lana from her kneeling position and onto her side, but giving her enough time to push herself off of the ground. The explosion itself, if it could even be called that, was instantaneous. All-consuming and gentle. As if someone had flicked on a light switch, the tower was gone, engulfed by the white light that was no longer kept at bay by the creature.

What had she thought back then? Was she scared? Was she confused? Why couldn't she remember?

But there were some things that she did remember: a lingering pressure in the air, electrically charged and coiling all around her. That white light that encompassed everything she could see yet remained confined to a single sphere around the radio tower. And something else: the creeping desolation. The single thought it carried like a message in a bottle lost to time and distance. Can they see it? Can they see it? They did. The men in the field had turned to face the tower, staggering and struggling to maintain balance. But they weren't shielding their eyes from the light, as Lana found herself doing without even being fully aware of it. Whatever they saw, it wasn't the same.

The second kneeling man saw his chance, freed from the attention of the standing men. When he stood up to run, Lana realized – had she realized it at the time or after replaying the memory thousands of times in her head? – that he wasn't a man at all, but a child. A boy, not much older than she was. He wasn't running directly toward her. As far as Lana could tell, he was more concerned with getting away than causing any extra problems for himself. There was also the issue of trust. He now knew that she had been watching everything. Or at least the stuff that mattered. Despite the circumstances, however, he still ran close enough for her to make out some of his features in the darkness. But how long had it been since Lana had allowed herself to get this far in the memory? Sure, she had seen his face years ago, but what remained now was a shadow, a pale mask floating in and out of sight as it wove through the reeds and tall grass around them. She could now only see the distant reflection of her face in the tears on his cheek, the glint of his gray eyes. Disconnected from all meaning before they disappeared entirely, and she was alone again.

Lana wasn't dreaming then, and she wasn't dreaming now.

Her first instinct when she saw the light pouring up through the carpet was to collapse onto the ground and let it engulf her. End it. It had come close before, and one of the questions that had pulled at her psyche her entire life was: why wouldn't it just do it? She was there. She saw it, and it left her be. Not only had she seen it, but something in her gut told her that she had disturbed it when she entered the laboratory at the bottom of the ship. Did that imply that Helius had conquered it? Or that it was something that could be conquered in the first place?

If she collapsed, what would she find on the other side?

The light spread like a thick fog, uncontrolled and wild. The chaos of her surroundings made it relatively easy for Lana to push herself away from it without attracting too much attention to herself. After all, she was the only person who could see it, so it wasn't as though she was causing any additional mayhem by simply joining in with the movement of the crowd. If she was being hunted by the American government or by some of Helius's mercenaries, if they even existed in such a capacity, she doubted they would have Milan's nerve or skill to take her down in such an environment.

After some serious shoving and an awkward climb over a railing that stood behind the final row of seats, Lana found herself at the top right corner of the theater, opposite to the door from which she entered. The entire room was shaped in the style of a rectangular amphitheater, with the rows of seating arranged in a semi-circular pattern, each row increasingly elevated as you moved toward the back of the theater, around the stage, which sat at the front of the room in all its shiny circular glory. Lana chuckled. With all its prestige and – presumably – government-issued funding, a ripoff of the TED presentation layout was all they could manage to build in the amount of time they had to renovate the ship?

Even though she knew it was there, Lana could no longer see the door she entered through because the entire corner was engulfed in the light-fog. Every few seconds, an arm or a leg or an entire person would emerge from the expanding cloud, completely unfazed, before diving back in, their body disappearing without hesitation or reason. As if being pulled out of the universe and into some other dimension that Lana wasn't allowed to see.

They couldn't see it, but part of her wondered if they could feel it. The pit inside of her could. It still begged her to move closer, to stop hiding, to discover what's on the other side. Because even if the crowd couldn't see it, Lana somehow knew that if she followed their lead, she would be able to see what truly lay beyond the barrier.

And how close she had come to that before all of this. After the gray-eyed boy ran far enough into the distance that Lana could no longer see him, she turned her attention to the men in the field. Her father, no longer holding his hand up to the sky. All three of them ringed with light and rooted to the ground like trees that had never once been disturbed, and that would continue to exist until the end of time. They did not react as the light surrounding the radio tower began to steadily expand. They did not move as their bodies began to glow as it came closer.

Lana turned to run. She didn't exactly remember if she said anything before she did, but something told her that she had called out to her father during those last few moments. Or maybe that was something she had learned to tell herself over the years to keep herself from losing it. It didn't matter whether or not that was what she should have concerned herself with after everything that happened – it didn't matter that it was just a silly, irrelevant detail in the long run. Hers was an experience that lacked detail and definition entirely, and one day, sooner or later, the reality of that would destroy her. Because whether or not she called out for him, in that crucial moment just before she tried to escape, Lana's father turned around, and she saw him. A second camera-flash from the light around the radio tower. In less than half a second, the men in the field and the radio tower had disappeared, leaving only Lana and the dead body sinking into the soil.

She hid at home for a week and three days, eating the lobsters that her father had prepared for dinner before he left that night. She ate them slowly and divided up portions for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Four days later, when she had burned through her seafood supply and the rest of the edible food in the house, she resorted to going to the houses next door to take small amounts of food when she knew their occupants wouldn't be present. In between trips to her neighbors' homes, she would return to the field, putting special care into not being seen by the police who had set up a tent and declared the area a crime scene. The radio tower had reappeared without reason, still looming and twisted. Her father had not.

Milan's absence was also beginning to chip away at her confidence. If he was in hiding... well, what for? It was a question she was truly sick of pondering over and over again, but it kept resurfacing at crucial moments such as this one. And, frankly, she was becoming tired of constantly submitting to his authority, especially at times when he wasn't even in the same room as her. Her old fears began to crumble once confronted with new scrutiny: sure, he was pretty talented with several incredibly deadly weapons, but if there was another person on the ship who understood just how fucked up the entire situation was, it was probably Milan. In fact, the only reason why Lana was confined to the theater while Milan was nowhere to be found had nothing to do with their individual levels of understanding. It was simply because Milan was better at applying brute force algorithms to problems which he deemed unsolvable.

Gray eyes. When she first saw Milan in person in Saint Petersburg, those were what grabbed her attention. So pained and stark with the same unprocessed trauma that Lana saw in her own eyes when she looked in the mirror every morning. But not yet familiar enough to bridge the gap between that fateful day on the road and that fateful night in the field. She didn't see it then, but she could see it now. It made enough sense, she supposed. The two of them were about the same age the day they first technically met in the field, and although it wasn't like she hadn't met somebody with gray eyes since that day, there was something instinctual about her reaction to him in Saint Petersburg. Something that she couldn't exactly explain, but something that didn't necessarily need to be explained in the first place. It reminded her of the radio tower back home in Novokuznetsk. The reasons why it disappeared at that moment did not matter, and the reasons why it appeared out of nowhere in the following days mattered even less.

The light in the theater was still expanding, and by the time Lana actually stopped to consider that, she realized that the cloud took up about a quarter of the room, but it had mostly stopped expanding outward and had begun climbing up to the ceiling. That was something she had failed to recognize: the light presumably came from the floor below the theater. She still had no concrete idea of why the passengers were stuck in the theater, but external circumstances notwithstanding, what did that mean for the possibility of some kind of escape? Did it make any difference if the doors were unlocked? How much of the ship had already been destroyed, if any of it? Lana had a terrible vision of the theater floating in an empty void of piercing white light, removed forever from the rest of the living world as it slowly began to fall apart under the pressure of its surroundings.

But even though she hadn't been told exactly what the issue was, it hadn't taken her long to figure it out on her own. The light in the theater was the same light she saw in the lab was the same light she saw in the field. Either the pale creature had escaped its containment – was that her fault, or was it possible that it was something that happened independent of her actions? – or the scientists in the lab had returned after she'd left and done something to agitate it. Or it could have been something else entirely because there was no doubt in her mind that the light from the pale creature existed well before she arrived on the boat. And despite the horror that it instilled in her... well, she was still alive, wasn't she? There was some comfort to the knowledge that the existence of the pale creature posed more of a threat to Helius than Lana's. She was a secondary concern, and that was nice, even if it was most likely only temporary.

The air was filled with the acrid sting of vomit, and Lana rolled her eyes. She'd heard nightmares about cruise ships being hotbeds for diseases for years. She could only hope that the Dining Hall had given someone food poisoning. It wouldn't be contagious between people, and she wasn't able to stomach the idea of eating the engineered vegetarian shit when she had the chance to eat that night, so she'd be alright. Even though she considered her chances of dying on the ship to be considerably lower than she had a few hours ago, the idea of being gunned down by Milan or an American agent while battling a veggie-based stomach bug just seemed like an unnecessary kick to the face.

Despite her annoyance, that smell was enough to pull Lana back into the world. Something about the tang in the air put her on edge, made her think a bit more critically. Was it possible that the smell was the product of a single person? It certainly had the intensity to suggest otherwise. But if people were vomiting all at the same time, at least it supported her theory of food poisoning over something like, say, the flu. And as the light continued to stretch in a column through the ceiling to the floors above them without making any indication that it would move closer to her corner of the room, Lana began to reprioritize. If the light was going to neutralize itself for the time being, weren't there better things to focus on?

As it turned out, there weren't. The ship rumbled once more, stronger this time, and the light vanished completely.

Someone in the crowd, hidden somewhere behind the circular stage at the front of the theater, began to moan, and for a moment, Lana was overtaken with confusion so debilitating that it forced her to grab onto the railing in front of her. The same feeling of disorientation and dizziness she had felt before she had found the laboratory that existed within her like the decaying remains of a primal warning system. Something is wrong again. She remembered. The last time the light had disappeared in that manner was the last time she saw her father. The smell in the air thickened to the point where Lana couldn't bear to breathe, but it was beginning to lose the tang to something else entirely. Was it coming from something in her corner? Was it coming from the other corner? Even though the light and the threat it posed to her seemed irrelevant in that moment, and despite the urges of the pit in her chest, Lana didn't trust the space that the light had once claimed at the opposite end of the room. She couldn't put her finger on why – that was another thing she realized was tired of, actually: caring about how much she knew about unknowable shit – but that space felt off. Altered in a way she couldn't immediately see but in a way that posed danger nonetheless.

The moaning continued. Lana leaned over the railing in a futile attempt to get a better line of sight to the stage, but another wave of dizziness and nausea swept over her like water over a tide pool. It felt so... unnatural. As if somebody had taken a bucket of physical sensations to splash onto her with as much force as possible, letting the excess drip from her while what remained seeped into her clothes and skin. There was no rhythm to the ebb and flow of pain she was experiencing. There was no rhythm at all. The person by the stage – a man, she decided, but wasn't sure – sounded like he was in severe pain, but as far as Lana could see, nobody on the stage had reacted to him. No calls for a doctor, although there must have been plenty trapped in the theater. Another horrifying thought: could they even hear him?

Below her, people were beginning to climb up the rows of seating to her isolated corner at the top of the theater. Or they were doing something else. As some of them grew closer and as Lana fought another round of dizziness than sent her vision spinning in all kinds of impossible ways, she saw them more clearly. Many seemed to have completely lost control of their arms and torsos and were merely flinging themselves upwards as if attracted by some unseeable force at the top of the theater. Perhaps it was just the disorientation, but Lana could not make out any of their faces clearly. Except one.

Before the force behind her – a different force entirely – pulled the bag over her head, Lana watched a pair of icy gray eyes climb up the theater. Unafraid and in total control.

~

Akane

For the first time in so many years, Akane felt lost.

After her interrogation, Akane wandered the halls of the ship in a daze, her mind blanketed in a layer of fog. She wasn't physically unaware of her location, yet in her head, she had no idea where she was. Within the confines of her thoughts, she felt as if she were underneath the decks of the ship again, blind to her surroundings and unaware of the horrors that lay just beneath the shadows. Apprehension gripped her tightly as she fumbled around in the dark, fearful that in just a split second, she might stumble upon another horror that would forever wound her memory.

This feeling was foreign to her. Akane couldn't recall a time in her life when her every move wasn't cunningly calculated, or when there wasn't that overarching goal constantly hardwired in her brain. After all, it was that steadiness, her devotion to perfection that had propelled Akane into such success. She had built her career off of the most pristine missions, and she championed her flawlessly honed abilities. Now, however, Akane was stripped of it all. She didn't have a meticulously designed operation drilled in her head, nor that same determination pumping through in her veins. Instead, she could only hear Mr. Han's words ringing in her ears, a reminder that the destruction once encapsulating her had now leeched its way inside of her. She could only see his harsh eyes staring straight into her own, piercing through every secret that she thought were occluded by iron gates. And she could only feel that sense of futility at the bottom of her stomach, a heaviness that reminded her that no matter what, she was powerless to do anything to stop it. In the same way that the cycle of each day was inevitable—the rise of the sun would always eventually be eclipsed by the night—she would always be subjected to being a mere pawn beneath the larger forces of the world.

Even now, while she stared at the remnants of the convention still scattered about, she felt helpless to whatever invisible hand controlled the artificial movements of the ship. There were still people meandering about, pretending as if these remaining exhibits or lectures captivated their full attention. Even though there had been incident after incident tainting the events of the ship, even though deck 7 was still on lockdown, even though just an hour prior, chaos was rampant in these halls, these people were acting as if none of it mattered. No, what mattered most were the connections, the image, even the slightest opportunity to elevate oneself. The manufactured nature of the event had been exposed to its core. From the minute the first guests began trickling in, Akane could see through their surface-level masquerades. But now, she no longer had to see through it—their shallow intentions were plainly written right in front of her.

--

That night, Akane was consumed by the darkness, yet her consciousness fought to remain awake. She couldn't seem to ease the frantic thoughts thrashing around in her mind, an incessant reminder of the mistakes that defined her. It was as if now that her thoughts were no longer constricted by fabrications, she was finally forced to duel all of the concerns that were previously shoved beneath the earth under the pretenses of weakness. Back then, anything that might've caused her plan to falter was useless. She had mercilessly buried those doubts, until they were unseen from the surface and therefore forever forgotten in Akane's eyes. But now, she realized that even though they had been hidden underneath layers of earth, those thoughts were vines—growing and intertwining until they were too large to be ignored. Akane's eyes were wide open as she stared at the ceiling, trying to trace the pattern of each bump and groove in the paint in order to just block it all out. But any attempts were futile, as her mind kept drifting back to the past, to the times of before—yet as Akane thought about it more, there weren't really any times of before.

There wasn't a single moment that struck here where she wasn't confined to this label that had been handed out to her from birth. Those blissful years of a child, before she had any real grasp of society, had been lost to her by now. As far back as her mind could reach, Akane's life had always been encased in her eventual future. Her being a spy was as much a truth as the sky being blue, and she had never fought that fact. But now, as Akane looked back on it all, she pondered a question: if she had a choice, would she follow the same path?

In the end, Akane gave up on an answer. Anytime she dug too deep into what she truly thought, she stopped just short of the truth, scared of what her real response might be. She hoped that no matter what, this would be the life she chose for herself, and the person who she hoped to become—but what if the answer was a no? What did that mean about her life? What did that mean about everything she accomplished so far? And maybe if the answer was a no, then that meant she wouldn't be here anymore, exhaustion devouring her body yet unable to yield itself to sleep. It would mean that these past few days on the ship would've never happened, she never would've stepped foot onto the lower decks, and Mr. Han would simply be a name rather than a connection.

Mr. Han.

The moment her thoughts flickered to that dreadful interrogation, they couldn't leave. She kept replaying her conversation with Mr. Han in her head, relaying every last detail as if it was a movie imprinted on the backs of her eyelids. It was yet another memory that latched onto her mind, refusing to flee from the depths of her thoughts.

When sunrise approached, Akane had barely slept at all.

However, life didn't care. Even among her weariness, she was still expected to hold up the facade of a guard. She was still required to pretend to uphold the orders of whoever was in charge, as if she didn't know about the disgusting operations that were grinding the gears of the convention. The storm of emotions that had once raged inside of her was gone, but in its wrathful wake, it had left behind a grisly reality of rubble. In the center was Akane, alone in the mess. When she looked into the sky, desperately hoping for a dash of blue, the tiniest glimmer of hope, all she could see were clouds of gray. She felt trapped by the muddled dreariness.

Akane closed her eyes, wishing for a way out. She just needed someone to latch onto, someone who would strip away each heavy layer of paint she had smothered herself with throughout the years. She needed someone to remind her of who she truly was beneath it all, and let their words sink allow her to settle into her genuine self—not who she thought she was, not who she wanted herself to be, but who she truly was. Akane could only think of one person who could do that.

She picked up her phone, bringing up the contact picture of a face of whom she mirrored. He was several years older than her, the maturity always worn in his eyes, and one wouldn't be able to realize that the two were related unless they stood side by side—but once they did, their similarities became unmistakable: the same gently sloping nose, similar cheekbones, and a radiant smile, an honest and glowing contrast to their typical exteriors. Akane stared at the picture for a second, feeling her lips curl up in a smile at the sight of his face radiating with such joy. She still remembered taking this picture on the day she left home, and she could never forget the intense pride that was shining in his eyes, overshadowing any hints of melancholy that hung in the air of her departure. Akane had wanted to document this moment—neither of them ever outwardly expressed their love for each other, and there were times growing up when Akane had doubted its truth. But this picture, with her brother Mako's admiration and care so clearly lit up in his face, it was all the proof she needed.

But the longer she looked at this tiny image, a snapshot from nearly a decade ago, the harder the realization hit that so much had changed since then. She hadn't seen her brother in so long, and didn't even know what he looked like anymore. In fact, she could barely even remember what he sounded like. The time between the phone calls that they had promised each other began dragging on, before they simply became a rarity rather than a routine. Akane and Mako had become as distant as her parents were throughout her life, where their love was more of background noise, constant but not always the loudest. And as it dawned on Akane that her last phone call with Mako had been over a year ago, she finally realized that even if she was never consciously aware of it, she had been pushing him away. She had been distancing herself from the one person she loved the most, in an attempt to demonstrate her independent worth, to prove to not only Mako, but herself, that she was exactly who he thought she was. She had sought such validation that she subconsciously estranged herself from even her own brother. So, whoever this person was in her phone from so many years ago, it was no longer Mako. In the same way that this version of Akane only existed in the present with those other identities suspended in the past, this Mako staring back at her had also been shed into foregone times. Now, would he still look at her like that, proud of who she had become? Would he view Akane with as much respect as he saw in himself, proud of what she had accomplished? But what about after he knew?

Part of Akane desperately wanted to press that "call" button and feel, for just a moment, as if everything was okay. She wanted to let the world around her fall away and simply pretend as if the destruction raging inside of her, was just a hoax. And, most of all, she just wanted to speak to Mako again. He was the one who had raised her, who taught her everything she knew, who was able to show her unconditional love without any words at all. And with each new identity Akane took on, there was never one where Mako wasn't her brother.

But the other part of her was consumed by a fear greater than any other she had felt in her life. The mere thought terrified her—that maybe after not talking for so long, maybe after she revealed every last secret of the ship to him, the former pride he had in her would slowly dissolve away. Calling him now meant confessing her mistakes, her pain, her imperfections, opening the door to disappointment and finally revealing that all along, she wasn't good enough. And Akane didn't know if she was ready for all that, ready for Mako to peek into her faults and be scarred by what he saw. After all, what did they say? Ignorance is bliss.

Akane's finger wavered over the button, paralyzed by her two options. Should she risk her greatest fear for a chance of the stability amongst the chaos, authenticity amongst the deception? She craved that security from Mako, just wanting a way to silence the thoughts rampant in her mind and somehow discover the light out of the tunnel. So, despite her anxieties, she yielded to the only option she had left.

The ringing of the phone echoed in Akane's ears, and her breath hitched as she anxiously awaited the voice on the other side. The phone seemed to ring far too many times, the seconds in between each one far too suspenseful. With each additional chime, her anticipation deepened for the voicemail message that never seemed to come. Suddenly, the line went quiet, and all that remained was a light breath wavering over the speaker, before a familiar voice flooded her ears.

"Akane?"

Akane let a gentle gasp escape her mouth.

"Mako."

It was a question and an answer, and at that moment, Akane thought that she would be content if she hung up the phone right now. Just hearing his voice grounded her again to reality, and she felt just a little more stable. She didn't even realize just how much she missed him until now, as if just a single word could mend the gaping hole in her heart caused by his absence. Warmth flooded her body; hearing his voice brought her back to her home in Japan, to a time when she was still naive and the horrors of the world were unknown to her. It brought her to the feeling of being loved and cared for, having the constant reassurance that everything would be fine. She could imagine that he stood right next her, and that was enough—she wanted to hold onto this familiarity forever, latching onto pieces of her past in an attempt to ignore her present. Just a single word, and Akane could leave with what she came for. She could continue painting herself as this image of perfection, leaving him without any indication of the ruins she stood in. But Akane knew that no matter how much she wished she could do just that, it would be impossible to continue upholding this facade of herself. Eventually, guilt would succumb her and force her to reveal her flaws.

"What's going on?"

His voice still had the same faded accent, the intonations of his words slightly off but spoken in a way that seemed purposeful. But, in a way, it was also different. It sounded a bit deeper, huskier, time slowly chipping away at his youthful days.

Akane wasn't quite sure how to respond. What's going on? Where was she supposed to start? With the human experimentation lab, the release of the patients, the interrogation, the compromise on her identity? So, she said the only thing that made sense. "I made a mistake."

"What did you do?" She could hear the concern heavy in his voice, not quite on the verge of panicking but a hint of alarm creeping in. It pained Akane to hear that just the simple phrase could create such anxiety in his tone, as if the mere idea of committing a mistake—any mistake—weighed him down. Like perfection was the standard and anything below would ruin the image of Akane that he held in his head.

"They..." Akane trailed off, knowing that once these specific words escaped her lips, the situation wouldn't just be in her head anymore. She tried to force them down, thinking of any other way to approach the situation, because once the reality sunk into her brother's mind, the possibility of everything spiralling out of control would exponentialize. Yet, with everything spinning in her head, Akane couldn't grasp any other comprehensible sentence. She let out a quick breath, telling herself to just rip off the band-aid. "They found out who I am."

"They? Who's they?" Even though he didn't say it out loud, a huge "how?" and "why?" was blatantly scrawled on top of Mako's words. He sounded strained, the glimpses of panic that Akane had picked up on earlier now gripping his voice much more firmly. Akane could also tell that he was restraining himself from saying more, with so many thoughts no doubt rearing inside his head that he couldn't quite articulate yet.

"BioTech."

There was only silence on the other end. Akane held her breath, feeling the tension that was stringing the two of them together tighten. Neither of them knew what to say, only letting the heaviness of her words weigh down on the both of them. Nothing felt truly real to Akane until now, where the blunt truth of her situation was overtly spread out in front of her. Mako's head was probably struggling to wrap around the truth, but Akane willed him to speak. She felt suffocated by the tenseness of the silence and yet she had no idea how to break it.

Finally, Mako complied to her silent instruction. "Akane, how could you be so careless?

Something in his tone irked Akane, sparking a flicker of annoyance that tugged at her from deep within, forcing her jaw to tense and her mouth to fall into a scowl. That air of condescension surrounding his words bothered her. He said it so accusingly, as if he was above such an inconceivable situation. It was like Akane was twelve again, getting lectured about the consequences of her actions and the severity of the situation. But as quickly as it appeared, the irritation vanished. After all, how could she be upset when this was a question that had been flickering over and over in her own mind, and now it was just simply articulated out loud in her brother's voice?

"I know. I made a mistake." Akane wanted to explain everything. That even as careful as she was, and even with as many cameras she had taken note of, there were likely others hidden so well that they might as well have been invisible. That the moment the purpose of the lower decks hit her, such intense waves of fury and disgust engulfed her so she was unable to think straight. That before the interrogation, no matter how precise Akane's plan was, Mr. Han had her under his palm the entire time. But it was all a mess in her brain, and though she tried picking out the right words, she knew she simply didn't have the clarity to show him exactly what she wanted.

Mako's next words, however, were as clear as could be. "You don't understand."

Those words stabbed Akane. He really didn't think she was enough to really grasp the situation. He didn't think that she was as worthy as they both thought she was. Akane fought back tears, But once the hurt melted away, that same annoyance from before flared up inside of her. How could he just come in here, unaware of the situation, and tell her what did or did not know? Akane knew that she had made countless mistakes. She knew that she had acted rashly. And she wasn't the ignorant child that Mako thought she was. "No, Mako, I do understand. I know that the moment my identity was revealed, my future was at stake. I know that I can't go back and prevent it from happening. Because I know that I messed up. Badly."

"No," Mako said firmly. "What you don't understand is that this never should've happened in the first place. It shouldn't even have come close to happening." Ever since she was young, he often acted this way around her when she made a mistake: firm and harsh with his words. She knew that it was his own way of showing care—she mattered enough to him that he would be hard on her and try to teach her to the best of his abilities. Beneath those words, he was saying that he loved her. But this time, Akane didn't care.

"What?" Akane yelled into the phone, her annoyance painstakingly clear in her sharpness. This was the first time she had called him in years, trying to be vulnerable and honest about what had happened, yet something in his word choice, his tone, was so disdainful. "Obviously I understand that it shouldn't have happened. Do you think I want to be in this situation? But there's nothing I can do about it now. I came to you for advice, not a lecture."

"It doesn't matter. I need to tell you this. This is everything that Mom, Dad, and I have taught you—"

At the mention of her parents, Akane finally snapped. That hint of irritability from the beginning was now ablaze inside of her

"Mom and Dad?" She yelled into the phone. "Are you serious, Mako? Because, you know what? They've taught me nothing. They've barely even taught me that I mattered. And you were the one person who I thought truly believed in me until now."

Akane paused, hearing her words only after they came out of her mouth. She didn't know why she said the things she did; she wasn't sure if she even believed them. After all, she knew her parents did the best they could. Even though they weren't always there physically, and some of their attempts at connecting with her fell flat, there was never a doubt that beneath it all, they loved her. But, at this point, she didn't care what she said anymore. She just wanted to say something, to let go of everything pent up inside of her. She was sick of being used, an empty husk that was no longer anything without the people who commanded it. She was sick of being held to such a standard of perfection, even though the moment she made any mistake, she was back to that naive, little girl who knew nothing of the world. She was sick of living a life that in this moment, she was sure she never would've chosen on her own. And she wasn't done expressing that just yet.

"I hate this job now and I've hated this job then. I've hated everything about this life ever since I was young, but I pushed those feelings down. I pushed them down for you. All my life, that's all I've ever done. And for what?"

Mako was silent once more. Akane could hear him about to speak several times—a half-breath, a quiet stutter—before going quiet again. Then the line beeped twice, and went flat.

Ever since Akane was young, there was always this special place in her heart that was reserved for Mako. No matter how strict he was, in the end, he would laugh and any tension would fade. Akane looked up to him adoringly, a tenderness she held towards him that she could never forget, even when they got into arguments. She could never stay mad at him for long.

But not now.

Right now, she resented him.

Akane slammed her phone down, everything about her feeling as if it was on fire. Not just on the inside, but on the outside, too. During her phone call with Mako, she hadn't realized how hot she had been getting. Now, no longer focused on her outburst, she felt the severity of the heat encompass her.

Akane pressed her hand to her forehead, feeling her scorching skin warm against her hand.

Why was she so hot?

Akane closed her eyes, and willed everything to simply go away.

When she opened her eyes again, she hoped she would be anywhere but here.

~

Lindsay Ann Miller

Marilyn was one of the first ones to have it hit her. It came in a little outburst, a sneeze that turned into a scream.

"Excuse me," she said, rubbing her nose. "Just...feeling like it's rather hot in here, you know? Wanting to scream a little. I hate being cooped up."

"Uh, yeah, same." Lindsay arched her back and readjusted herself in the chair. Sitting with her legs up was a hard task, but she hated sitting properly. She'd hated it her entire life. For once, she turned off her phone and slid it into her back pocket, willing to ignore the cozy online world to deal with whatever was actually going on in front of her. The woman who'd been talking for a full hour suddenly was quiet.

And the people who'd been milling around before had started to shout.

Everyone was by the exit, interrogating the guard who'd been posted there. She couldn't make out individual questions. Just words, thrown into the void and left to rot there. "When!" "Help!" "Outbreak!" "Disease!" "Safe!" "Sick!" "Safe!" "Unsafe!" Their words became a mantra inside Ann's head, breaking down each little barrier she'd set up to make her forget about what she'd seen down there. It was now like they knew what was there--they knew the secrets, they knew the deaths, they knew the disease. They all knew. Everyone had known for years. And they were all talking about it.

How? Had they read her mind? Or was it the guards--the one who'd been on post was removed and a new one had taken his place. Did they say something when switching shifts? Did she miss it due to Marilyn's incessant rants?

"What's going on?"

"I just told you, Lindsay Ann! Oh goodness, I swear your head must be empty today," Marilyn snapped. "The guard let it loose that there's a disease on the ship. Apparently some of security went loose and now they're trying to guard us from whatever is going on. But then, this white guy over there started shouting that he thought they were keeping us locked up because they were going to hurt us, and then extra guards just pulled him out, and now everyone wants to know when we are going to be allowed out."

"What the fuck." Lindsay wanted to cry. Something was loose. That person she'd watched die, they couldn't have--no. Was it her? The person had touched her. Did she spread something? She'd cleaned up in the bathroom, but anyone who'd--

No. No. Lindsay wasn't feeling wrong, so it wasn't that. If it was her, she'd feel sick too. She'd feel weird. Feel different. Whatever was going on couldn't have been started from her.

"Well I don't want to be like them but I am getting frustrated too," Marilyn said. She ran a hand through her hair and came out with several loose hairs. At that, she blew air out of her lips loudly. "Jesus Christ on a hotdog! I am losing hair over this. We're still on for drinks later."

Lindsay couldn't tell if it was a question or a command, so she said "definitely" and turned her head away from the strange woman and towards the crowd who seemed to be eagerly pushing ever closer to the guard and the door.

"Lindsay Ann! Fucking answer me!" Marilyn grabbed Lindsay by the shoulders and roughly pulled her back and Lindsay hit the chair behind her hard. "What the fuck? Are you listening to anything I'm saying at all?"

"I-"

It hit her like a surge of rage--a little simple, a little slow, and then a full-on gasp that trickled down her back like spinal fluid. Lindsay pushed herself off the ground so fast she was dizzy and grabbed Marilyn by her hair.

"Listen up you hag," Lindsay said. "I'm trying to see what the fuck is going on and you won't fucking shut up! So for once in your life shut the fuck up."

She pulled away in horror, but the damage was done. Marilyn's eyes crossed and she rammed herself into Lindsay at full force, a shriek escaping her lips as she went for blood. As Lindsay hit the ground again, she heard what sounded like a battle cry from a hundred trapped souls all screaming at once.

~

Aaron De Monte

There are only a few moments in life that every really, truly, matter. Try as hard as he like, Aaron was never able to shake the notion that perhaps, that was true. How could the day to day activities of life be just as enthralling as those truly great moments? Where his heart raced and his muscles thrived off of the adrenaline being pumped through his veins? This was what he wondered when he walked into his boss's office, fingers pale from how tightly he clutched them, breathing slow and shallow in his throat.

He'd found something. Something big. Something that could change the very concept of his work forever. In his mind, Aaron could see the headlines that would follow when his story made it big. Artificial intelligence, no longer as artificial as people hoped. The door was open, waiting for him, as his boss smiled as he walked through the door. "Hi, Aaron," she called, sitting back in the cold leather chair that faced him, "please have a seat." Eagerly, he complied, eyes flickering around the room as another pair of footsteps joined their conversation. "Let me introduce you to Mr. Wright, our team's legal representative." Slowly, her hand raised up and Aaron heard the door close quietly behind him.

Lips twitched upwards in a smile, he struggled to conceal the way his knee bounced as he made eye contact with the tall, bald man in the suit that rounded the desk. "Nice to meet you." The lawyer smiled back, a thin-lipped look that didn't quite reach his eyes. But it didn't matter. Nothing did except—

"We read through your report, as you suggested." Aaron's heart lurched, attention brought back to his boss as he leaned forward in his chair. There was a firm seriousness in her voice, the manilla folder strewn across the desk full of his recorded findings. "And we have more than a few concerns that need to be addressed immediately."

Relief was like a cold rag draped over the back of his neck, pulling forward a soft exhale of air as he listened to her speak. This is it. They were so close now. "Good," he told her. "Because I really think that we can stop production now if we act quick⁠—"

"Mr. de Monte." Aaron paused, lips still parted with all of the forgotten words etched on his tongue. The lawyer's eyes burned into him, unwavering as he spoke. "When was your last psychiatric evaluation?"

Like a power surge killing everything in sight, Aaron felt all the lights inside him begin to flicker and die. Quietly, breathlessly, he found the ability to speak at last.

"What is this?"

The world felt like it was coming apart in pieces and Aaron was forced to stand by and watch it happen. It was a steady, rapid decay from the inside⁠— the way rust devours iron. From the holding cell they had brought him to, Aaron witnessed the spread. First, it came for the walls, melting them into a blur of incomprehensible colors and shapes. The earth no longer moved around the sun, but around the swimming of his head and the pull of the tides. Then, it came for him. It surrounded his body, letting waves of dizziness pull him under the surface to suffocate only to break him free once more. Every chink in the armor of his consciousness was exploited, every weakness drawn out by leeches against his flesh. Seasickness had never been something he'd experienced before, but the rock of the boat as it plowed deeper into the ocean was utter torment to his senses. On his tongue, salt became memory and the taste of blood was as common as the restlessness in his bones.

Through the fogginess of his brain, he knew where he was. They'd pulled a small cot into the security cell to monitor them after Eros had been taken. In the first few hours, he'd been impossible to control. All of the anger, all of the grief, buried inside of him had come forth in bursts of violence. But then the dizziness took over. The sickness. His body became too hot, too cold, too weak to stand even with the rage boiling inside of him.

Footsteps echoed through what could have been his ears as two pairs of feet entered the cell. He was docile now, unable or unwilling to move through the burning heat that consumed him. "Is he awake?" a quiet voice called, hesitantly moving closer to the cot.

"Not likely." Aaron knew the second speaker. Knew his voice, the way his fingers pressed against Aaron's throat, feeling his fluttering pulse. Dr. Han. He wanted to move. To scream. To find Eros. But his body betrayed him and gave in to the small chime and frustrated sigh that left cold air against his flesh. "Fever's up another two degrees."

"This is bad."

His hands wouldn't stop trembling, tearing apart the desk that had been his own since he'd graduated from college. This was supposed to be his dream job, helping to pave the way for the future of artificial intelligence. Now it had become a nightmare. "This is so bad." His voice cracked as he spoke, eyes furiously scanning a darkened, unresponsive screen as he crouched over the small desk. Everything was gone. The computer had been wiped clean of his presence. Papers floated through the air, discarded in his frantic search for something— anything that could document his time here. What he'd seen. What he'd discovered. Panic and fury were a festering wound, creeping through his bones and hollowing out his nerves until his whole body vibrated with energy.

A small sigh was the only indication that he had been caught. His boss stood in the doorway, her arms folded in disapproval. "Aaron, come on," she told him firmly. It was too late now for pleasantries. His back straightened, hand still gripping the mouse as their eyes met. "You had fifteen minutes to clear your desk. Don't make this harder than it needs to be." For a moment, he paused, letting her voice sink into his skin. Security could be here in less than a minute to escort him out. The whole building would know. They would believe the lies and rumors that would follow his disappearance.

Slowly, he shook his head, shoulders trembling as he spoke. "My notes are missing." Each word was an accusation, an arrow aimed and fired. "My research. It's not here." But she deflected every one of them with a slow, steady blink of an eye.

"All of those documents belong to us." The explanation was a punch to the gut, knocking the air out of his lungs as his grip finally went slack. "Legally, you're not entitled to any of them." Everything he'd worked for. Everything he learned— buried deep in a vault somewhere, forever inaccessible.

Aaron could barely speak, eyes burning as his throat closed around a tight knot of defeat. "You can't⁠—"

She held up a hand to stop him.

"Nobody can know about this." Dr. Han's voice was firm, cold and unyielding against the shivering, feverish man before him. Through the cloud of his memories and dreams, all swirled together into one suffocating hallucination, Aaron knew he had to stay awake. There were eyes on him now. Dozens of eyes, watching from every corner of the room. It's the people at the bottom of the ship. They can see me. They know where I am.

His assistant shuffled, the sound of rustling papers following their words. "For now, we're doing the best we can."

Something didn't feel right. It was a deep, unsettling growth beneath his skin as if something was squirming inside of him⁠— desperate to break free. Sweat coated his body in a sheen, forcing him to turn and twist beneath the thin sheet as he struggled to keep consciousness. I have to stay awake. I have to find Eros. He needs me.

There was a pause. Decades passed in between the syllables, but Aaron was able to make out the words. "I need to get myself and my work off this boat as soon as possible."

"You're leaving?" The android's soft voice was like a gunshot in the dark, hollow silence of the night. Processors whirring, crowding the hallway with sound as it tried to follow beside him. There was betrayal in its eyes, lips parted ever so softly as it lengthened its stride. The robot overtook him in a second, stopping hard in front of Aaron in attempts to get him to pause.

A frustrated hiss left his lips as Aaron scanned the building for any sign of security. "I have to," he whispered, pleading that the android would copy his tone. "They think I'm crazy. They think that you- you can't be what you are." He tried to duck around, to continue his escape. Unconsciously, his fingers stretched for his pocket, feeling the outline of the empty data drive still secure. This is the only way, he told himself. I have to get my research back.

The android shook his head, innocent confusion and heartbreak so clear on his features that Aaron could feel his own heart start to ache in his chest. "I don't understand." There was so much he wanted to say. He wanted to tell him that it was his fault. His fault the android felt too much, too deeply. Because Aaron designed him that way. Because Aaron gave him too much.

But there was time to say nothing. A cold, white beam of light rounded the corner, emitted by the flashlight held on the other end. "Shit," Aaron hissed, stumbling backward a step as panic began to set in. Time was up. He grabbed the android by the arm, pulling him towards him. Fingertips fumbling, Aaron pulled the drive out of his pocket. "Hold still," he instructed, pulling open the soft, pliable skin behind the robot's neck to reveal the port he needed. "Access your security functions. I need to download all of your code externally."

Something changed as the light hit them. A flicker, a warping of reality, and the face staring back at him was too different to be familiar any more.

Eros's eyes grew wide, large enough that he could see the night sky reflected inside them. "Aaron," his voice was so soft, bottom lip trembling as he spoke, "you aren't listed as an administer anymore." The android reached out his hand, pulling the drive out of his neck. With his free hand, his fingertips stretched to meet Aaron's warm, living flesh. Their fingers locked, and Aaron watched his knuckles turn pale as he squeezed.

A single, shuddering breath entered his lungs, pulled forward as he shook his head. "Override it." The ground beneath him began to tremble, lights flickering and humming as he uttered the command. Brightness pooled from every corner of the room, devouring the shadows whole as it was bathed in white. Hands reached out, their shapes hollow spaces where the light could not reach. They clung to his face, his arms, prying him from Eros's grip. "Override it, please, I know you can," he begged. Aaron could hear his heart beating from some distant monitor, the steady beeping of his own body artificially kept alive. Tubes ran through his veins, down his throat, pinning him down as he struggled to break free. But there was nowhere to run to. Nothing existed at all but the brightness of that horrible white light and the sound of Eros's voice.

"I can't⁠—"

"Override the ship's security protocols as soon as we reach land," Dr. Han instructed. "Nobody gets off but me."

~

Eros

"So, what're we looking at here?" The words were bitter and short. There was a clipped aspect to the voice, a coldness that couldn't be hidden. Footsteps matched in time with the voice, an echo cut short as a door slammed shut.

"The memory card is right here." The answer came from another voice, this one unrecognizable but closer. There was a small shuffle and a clink of metal for a moment before silence fell. Nothing happened for a long moment, until footsteps crossed closer than ever.

"Get to erasing it then."

<Shut down>

_Turning on...

<Shut ͕́down>̘̋̌

<Restart?>

<Yes> <No>

<No>

<Yes̞̮ͤͪ>

ERROR

ERROR

ERRO͑̓̿͢R

The android was cold. At least, he thought he was. Eros couldn't access his own internal temperature, nor the outside. There were no statuses to check, no programs to run. His eyes were open but they were empty. There wasn't anything in his vision, almost as if he couldn't reach his own eyes. The white text box was gone, the men above him were gone, Aaron was gone.

Am I alone?

Eros stared out at an empty blackness. His ears strained, the soft scraping of a metal tool caressed them. It was coming from above him, only barely. What's happening? The droid tried to listen for more, desperate to hear anything else. If he'd been able to tilt his head toward the sound he would have. Is it happening to me?

Something akin to fear lit up inside of the bot. He didn't know how to describe it exactly. There wasn't any clear indication that he was afraid. He couldn't speak, he couldn't sweat, his system functioned without a heart, and even if he had one, Eros held no feeling in his body. For all he knew, the connection between the two was already severed. Maybe I'm a husk. I could be an empty, severed head on a desk.

<Shut down>

<Restared>

WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED

<Override?>

A heavy sigh entered the room. It was somewhere to the left, frustrated and drawn out. "What do we do with this?" There was a small rattle that accompanied the words. Something shook and a sharp wrap was delivered to metal.

Someone else scoffed painfully. "Trash it. Scrap it or throw it overboard, I couldn't care less," they instructed. Liquid sloshed after the order.

Hesitation filled the air before the response slipped out. It was soft, a warning slipped beneath the tone "It's an E Series. This is still one of the prototypes. They haven't even been release and they cost—"

"Fine!" A loud bang followed the words, a sharp blow delivered to something hard. "Dammit. Of course it is. Good to know those things can lie too." Anger flared in the speech. "I'll reimburse what it costs but I want the brain destroyed. Toss the body out too, and then send a quote to Han's department under something else, tech repairs, consultation, I don't care what."

<Reformat?>

<Yes> <No>

<Yes>

_Processīͤng̶̃͌̊...

<Overridden>

<Overridden>

Stop

STOP

PLEASE

PLEASE

<Restarted?>

<Yes> <No>

<Yeş̹͔ͫ>

_͙̠́͆Proces̪̭̳̕s̯̞̞̈́ing͎͋͑͛..̮̎͒.

<͡Re͟s̷t́ar̢t̶e͏d̶>

The sound of silence came through, no longer filled with anything but the soft whirring of the software inside Eros's chest and the ventilation system in the room. His body was cold, but not detached from his mind. He thought of making his fingers move and they did. The smallest twitch, fingertips pressing against the cold steel below him. When there was no reaction, his eyes flickered open and readjusted. It took a moment to understand the blank white he was staring at was not the same internal screen as before. It was imperfect, one side brighter than the other, and as he turned his head he spotted the fixture hanging from the ceiling.

"Where am I?" The words were soft, barely spoken as Eros moved slow. He got his hands under him and then his arms, pushing his body up to a sitting position. Before him lay his bare chest, missing Aaron's shirt. His hand moved to it, hesitation is each bend of his arm as he felt his own skin. The synthetic was cold, still trying to warm up after being shut down, not yet near the human temperature it needed to be.

His feet swung off of the table he'd been laid out on, now noticing the thin metal as he dropped to the floor. A set of tools lay on a separate stand. "Were these..." Eros trailed off, his voice box fading off as he reached out a hand. Carefully, he sifted through the robotic tools, each one delicate and labeled, meant to scrape around the inside of the wires and circuit boards that made up his brain.

Past events rushed to meet Eros's questions before he could even ask them. What was said in the room, what was done to him in the office, they hit his body like a brick. He hadn't forgotten them, but had been unable to break them down or think while his body was shut down. A shiver raced through the android, processor growing hotter and faster by the moment. His fan whirred, kicking in as it tried to cool him back down.

Eros stumbled away from the operation table, chest heaving. "I-I need to get out," he muttered to himself, stuttering over his words. His eyes darted around the room, finding the door first but hesitating as they caught the small, black brick a second later. The android all but dove for it, shoving the memory card into the pocket of the loose shorts he was wearing. He looked around after he did so, checking for witnesses that he knew weren't there.

Just beyond it sat Aaron's shirt, and he was quick to grab that too before hurrying to the door. There were no windows to the outside, but at least when the droid tested the handle it was unlocked. With a soft click, he pulled the handle down and risked a glance beyond the door. If he'd had a heart, the organ would have been beating unbelievably fast. Instead, his fan could only spin harder as his eyes scanned the empty hallway beyond. A dozen of closed, numbered doors sat on the other side, but there wasn't a soul in sight. Whoever had been disassembling him had left, likely to grab the tools needed to fully deactivate him.

"Okay," Eros whispered as he slipped from the room, pulling his shirt over his head as he did so. He was let out into the deserted hallway and crept forward with baited breath. "I have to go find Aaron." As the words left his lips, the boy felt an ache in his chest. He didn't realize he would miss his own- miss Aaron this much. It was a pain, simulated or not, that he just couldn't silence from inside his chest. Even the idea that he was hurt or trapped now was too much to bear. I want to find Aaron. I need him. "I need him." It was a different experience than before. There wasn't only a protocol he was following, but a strong urge connected to the ache in his body like a sting tied to his ribs, tugging him forward painfully fast. All he wanted was to fill it.

~

Libertine

In all truth and honesty, this was not the first time that Carmen was in handcuffs. In fact, the night before she had been handcuffed, albeit for much different reasons. Although, you could consider what she did a...different kind of trespassing—consensual, of course.

Regardless, she was trapped because her hands were chained to a table and she assumed the door was bolted shut. It wasn't her worst experience being locked up, that award probably went to her time in Honduras where she sweated herself into dehydration and lost smuggling deals when the Honduras police force took all her illegal goods. Not good. Moreover, the prison was dirty, as most prisons are, and she hated that. The air there was thick from the tropic climate and it felt like you were swallowing water instead of breathing air. It took a long time to escape, the longest she'd ever spent out of work—about two months or so. In that time there had been an outbreak of cholera which landed her in the infirmary for two weeks. The beds were close together and they didn't have enough supplies for everybody. The doctors harassed her there. She hated that too, and they sometimes gave her extra jello when they caressed her shoulders or legs. She hated jello. She hated men too. She didn't find a bright side in her 'special treatment' because she never asked for it.

Carmen shivered thinking about it. Her doctor back home had advised against constantly revisiting those moments. She agreed with him, but oftentimes she wasn't in full control of where her thoughts meandered. This time though, she was, and so she moved to think about her apartment in Manila or her condo in Ankara. Those were comforting places. She imagined the tropical fish swimming aimlessly in her tanks or the chinchilla fur blanket draped over the couch—a gift from her father. There were the hardwood floors she missed walking on, or the crystal windows reflecting light in a dazzling array. These were indulging memories. After this mess of operation, she would have to take a leave of absence: order some soaps online, turn the master bath up to its hottest and treat herself for managing to stay alive. Already, she could feel her bedsheets beckoning to her from across the ocean. After some rest, she knew she would return.

Her dream was broken by the slamming of a nearby door. She thought briefly about Libertine, wherever he was. He knew just as well as her that when in custody, pirate code no longer applies. It's every person for themselves. Just escape with the least loss of life, money, and effort. She had done her part. He had done his. And now it was time to wait and get creative.

The room was dark, and she rolled her eyes at that. Interrogation rooms are all the same, but the design didn't make much sense. Darkness to the average person, sure, is scary. However, the criminals they really want to draw things out of were born in the dark. They lived in the back markets or the underground casinos. They weren't afraid of black ceramic tiles or dim lighting. So law enforcement was made up of idiots. Light, on the other hand, a world that's completely transparent? That's when she gets nervous.

She yawned. Her alarm went off early that morning to get ready for the activities of the night. It paid off; a pretty woman is rarely questioned about what matters. Guards just saw them not as people but as moving statues. The hour or so prior when she had been interrogated the security personnel spoke slowly and over-enunciated some of the more complex words he said. The longest word he said was four syllables; he used it incorrectly. This was under the assumption that she couldn't understand what he was saying. It was patronizing but incredibly easy, and for that, she couldn't complain.

Carmen lowered her head onto the table in the most comfortable position she could manage. The table was icy cold, or maybe she was just burning up. She scrunched her eyes while the metal plating burned her cooly. Her pulse throbbed the front of her head. She wanted that to stop but she had no painkillers readily available. When she finally opened her eyes she saw her purse in the corner.

"When the fuck did that get there?" she muttered.

While it was too far away for her to grab with her foot, it was easy enough to grab with a makeshift contraption made out of one of her heels, a dress strap, and her necklaces linked end to end. She had to toss it a few times before her heel hooked inside one of the shoulder straps and allowed her to pull it to her foot. Now easily accessible, she reached inside and found exactly what she was looking for.

It was a slender metal bar, much like a needle except it wasn't hollow. The metal was malleable when enough force was applied. She took the tool and awkwardly pointed it to her handcuffed arm. She was right-handed but that was the trapped hand. Her left hand trembled while finagling the tool about the lock compartment.

Another door slammed outside, and footsteps became louder and louder. It was the thumping of military boots against the ground. Carmen anxiously looked towards the door while struggling to find the last pin and free herself. The footsteps stopped at their loudest. They were right outside the door, or perhaps on the deck above her. She stopped as well, holding her breath. A bead of sweat dripped down her back.

The steps continued.

She breathed a sigh of relief. When she turned back to the lock she found it difficult to focus. Her mind seemed to still be swirling around from the anxiety of getting caught. Her vision blurred and she shut her eyes tightly. It was as if she was being thrown about and couldn't regain balance.

She lowered her head while nausea continued. Saliva began to pool in her mouth and her stomach felt uneasy. Her hand brushed her mouth with a strong force and some of her lipstick smudged onto her hand.

"God, was the shrimp that bad?" She said before a hot stream of bile erupted from her gut. She placed her hand over her mouth but some vomit still managed to escape and drop onto the floor. It was yellow with bits of white foam covering the surface. It looked like champagne, or maybe even liquid gold. Still, it smelled disgusting and the aroma took no time before infiltrating her nose. It was sharp and acidic. She gagged and dry heaved.

Carmen whipped a tear from her eye and reached into her bag to find a tissue. She brought it to her nose and blew into it before whipping some drool from the corners of her mouth. She oddly felt more refreshed than she had prior and held her breath while she finished picking a handcuff's lock. It opened with a light click. With both hands now free she quickly unlocked the cuffs from their grasp on the table and turned to work on the door.

From where Carmen was crouched, she could tell that the glass on the door was one way: guards outside can see in, she couldn't see outside. She groaned. The room smelled better now after she sprayed the room with her dupe of Chanel Nº5. It didn't completely overpower the pungent and foul smell of puke but it added hints of grapefruit and jasmine which she latched onto. The door was easier than the handcuffs because there was more room to move the wire around. To Carmen's surprise, the door wasn't even bolt locked as she expected. After pushing the last pin the handle turned completely. With a light push, the door slid out from its frame and into the open hallway. Sterile light and fresh air flooded the room.

She peeked her head outside and found the hallways empty. They were a porcelain shade of white. This is what she was scared of. In light there is nowhere to hide, no shadows to creep about or shield your face or the twitch of a hand. She had only hoped that no guards were watching the security cameras at that time.

Something in her gut told her to turn right, and so she listened. Aimlessly, but walking with some intent as to ward of suspicion, she made her way down the hallway. She was only briefly able to read some of the door labels as she passed them. Her quick pace was to shield suspicion. She fetched her earpiece to complete the "tech CFO" ensemble she hoped to emulate. Then Carmen arrived at an intersection. She could either go straight or make a left. So cautiously, Carmen looked over the edge. She found herself looking at the guard that had led her interrogation an hour prior. He shut the door he was exiting from behind him and turned to walk away from where Carmen stood. She assumed that's where Libertine was being kept.

She was right of course. After working the lock on that door it swung open and was completely dark. Carmen could hear Libertine sobbing though. Carmen reached into her bag to find her phone and turned on the flashlight. In front of her sat Libertine facing her with his face on the table. He was noticeably red and hot to the touch. His cheeks were also wet. He looked awful

"Pussy," she said, snickering.

Libertine stared at her with glassy eyes. She pursed her lips. He really didn't look good.

"C'mon, let's get going." She said. The handcuffs were removed and thrown into her purse. She wrapped her arm around his shoulder and lifted him from where he was sitting. He weighed down her shoulder as the two of them limped forward.

Once outside of the room, Carmen noticed some of the peeling skin on his arm. She grabbed a scarf from her bag and wrapped it tightly around the burns. She also pulled her phone out of her bag and saw she now had a cellular connection. Libertine noticed her typing rapidly. It was some tech interface that had coordinate points. In the center was what he thought was their current location on the boat. She tapped a bit more and tossed the phone into her purse. She began to walk, with haste, down one hallway. Of course, with that Libertine was dragged along with her.

He was blacked out for most of the journey out of the lower deck. He remembered seeing the cargo room and feeling the tug of the elevator as they ascended to the top decks. The air was much cooler and noticeably saltier than he remembered. They were as high as they could get. Carmen sat him down on one of the benches. His head rested on the railing. His eyes were pointed up towards the sky.

It reminded him of being at sea. The stars twinkled above him. They were a peppering of crystalline halos. They faded inside and out beneath the cover of the clouds. He smiled. It was calm.

The two of them, previously gregarious and chatty with one another were silent. Part of that was from emotional stewing in the brain, and part of it was from an internal push to not talk to one another, to not talk to anyone. So they didn't.

A sea breeze wandered in. It brought with it cool droplets of the sea and the cold comforting mist. It whistled in their ears and carried cries from the decks below them. The pair remained seated.

They were both in thought. Once more Carmen was dreaming about what she was going to return to. She would make some money selling the pictures or the pacemaker and try to disappear into her apartment for a little bit. She would go to lavish restaurants and order the finest Mediterranean octopus or Aegean urchin. She would buy expensive art because that's what she deserves. Libertine thought about that pull from earlier in the night. He thought about the bag of things in the ironclad ship somewhere in the Pacific. That was all he knew as home—the white shirts with oil stains turning them orange and the slippery feeling of over detergented laundry. And the smell, dipping your nose into the fabric and breathing in its cleanliness. Perhaps he would buy new shirts when he returned. That was only if he had the resources to do so, or if they docked in a safe place. He rather liked the feeling of the button upon his skin, and the pristine threading on his khakis too.

Carmen slid her shoes off. Her thighs were killing her. She thought it was from all of the running around she had done that day. It wasn't. She massaged her leg but the stiffness and soreness persisted. She slid her arm inside the dress and pushed it out through the collar, exposing more of her chest to the cold air. The collar lay at her waist now. She was burning up in the black dress. The ocean, in its love, calmed her.

From where they sat they could see a string of gold along the shore. Cities, at a glance, are beautiful at night. Their colors whizz around like magic along the water. Warm ambers and golds rippled and waved amongst the tides.

Behind them there was a loud crash. They continued looking up and forward. It was a nice night, and they didn't want to ruin that. So they didn't, and for a little bit, it remained just like that: a nice night.

~

Iivo Venäläinen

DROPPED OUT

~

Miina Varis

Hey boss, here ya go! My computer is glitching so I hope this gets to you..

I was prepared to sit quietly. The innate boredom of just sitting, staring into the middle distance. Allowing my mind to just wander a little bit. However, it always looped back to the same thing. Flashes of those horrible abominations of nature. Their sluggish and jerky bodies covered in that oozing black substance. Was that their blood?

What had happened to make them like that?

"C'mon, cover your mouth." Iivo's voice scoffed. It snapped me out of my thoughts, and I gave him a side look. My partner was glaring off to the side. I followed his gaze. A few packed tables down, was a woman. She was middle-aged, grey flyaway hairs had been left undyed, and her crow's feet were growing in nicely on her face. Italian perhaps? Hard to tell with her hand flying up to cover her face.

"Oh sure, now you do." Iivo scoffed. I give him a good elbow jab and kept watching. The woman coughs a few more times. The man next to her reached out to pat her back, but she flinched away. She sucked in a breath, almost like she had a bruise there. I narrowed my eyes. Nothing about this should scream suspicious... and yet it did.

The woman swatted away his hand with a small shout. I didn't know what exactly what she said, but the sentiment was incredibly clear. She wanted to be left alone. Not that I could blame her.

I turned back around. Iivo sighed, stealing his glass to take a long drink. As soon as it was off of his lips, I snatched it back to do the same. The alcohol burned sweetly as it slid down my throat. I grunted, but had a smile on my face.

A new glass was quickly placed in front of me. It's pulpy and orange color was a welcomed sight. Looking up, I saw the bartender, who had a solemn smile on his face. He nodded, taking the now empty old glass without a word. Damn he's good. Like a mind reader, he saw what I needed and gave it. He didn't even bother with small talk. Truly, a man after my own heart.

"It doesn't look like we are going anywhere anytime soon." Iivo whispered in Finnish. He leaned closer, much like a lover might. Not that he would ever dare to make that kind of advance towards me.

"No, I'd say not." I begrudgingly leaned in. I hated the close proximity, though the most childish base of my mind found comfort in it.

"So, can you say what you found?" Iivo asked again. I sighed, twisting my back, as if stretching and scanned the room. Very little had changed since the last time that I had looked. Everyone had their heads bowed, and they spoke in hushed whispers. The only peaks in sound was the occasional cough. Satisfied, I slowly resumed our previous pose.

"I can't show you the video, but there was some fucked up shit downstairs."

"No kidding." He snorted. "You never have a single hair out of place unless you want it to be... but you came back looking like had seen a ghost."

"I might have... or something worse."

"Don't be so dramatic." He rolled his eyes.

"No, I'm serious." I turned to face him head on. "I found people that would be better off dead. Cause they sure as hell wasn't alive."

"That doesn't make any sense." He shook his head.

"It doesn't... I can barely make sense of what I saw down there." I sighed. My mind raced with the way to describe it. The best it could provide was "zombies". But that would be ridiculous. They were nothing but fictional creatures, often depicted as green and rotting, not pale and bloody. There was no way that fantasy has become reality here. But then... what was happening, if not that?

Iivo waited patiently as I thought. He squinted, giving him a pensive look. He didn't believe me. He wanted to, but he didn't. Not that I could blame him.

"They were... dead people walking. I don't want to sound crazy-"

"Yeah Gods forbid."

"Yeah..." I looked down, and grabbed for my phone. I didn't want to use it here, but what other choice did I have? I need Iivo on my side completely for this. "But they were basically zombies. By all rights they should be dead, but they weren't."

A particularly loud cough made me clutch my phone to my stomach. Its screen hidden completely by my body. It was a gut reaction, to hide all evidence from prying eyes. Something that had been drilled into me, but was now fueled by the insistent need to make sure there was no mass panic. I jerked my head to the side, looking over my shoulder. Two tables down, was an older gentleman who was wheezing in his breathes. Someone next to him reached forward to grab him as he careened to the side. He hissed and wanted to flinch but the grip was strong enough to get him upright. He looked pale, even for an English man. He went to cover his mouth with his handkerchief as he continued to hack up his left lung.

I'm being paranoid. Well, too paranoid. These people weren't in the know of the inner workings of this conference. They were stupid lambs, flocking desperately together in fright. Completely unaware of the wolves amongst them. Especially of the two of who were right beneath their noses.

With a huff, I turned back around and held my phone up to my face. My eyes had to cross just a little bit to properly see. I double and triple checking that the sound was off before opening up my photos. The video sat right there, the first few seconds dark and innocent. I scrubbed forward until the first victim, the woman, was clearly in frame. I paused it and shifted to the side. Iivo, as is practiced, invaded the space I had just vacated. He placed his hand right over mine, turning it so the phone faced him.

He clicked his tongue, his easy smile slipped. With it, he had a much more serious look, like a stern looking statue. He squeezed, stretching his thumb to hit play. I had to admit that my camera skills were a little lacking, given my training for this cover... but I was able to get a fair amount of coverage. You could see their jerky marionette movements, and their deadeye stares.

When the older man had cracked his glass, I could feel Iivo shiver. I was about to make a snide comment about his lack of faith in what I was saying but-

There was a loud crash. I immediately snapped to attention. I whipped my entire body around to see what was going on. It was the older gentlemen, same one as earlier. He was on the floor, not two steps away from his seat. His wheezing breath had transformed into a full-on whooping cough. Everyone in the room had turned to watch what was going on, and we could do nothing but join in.

"Harold!" The woman next to him called out and moved to his side. She placed her hands on his shoulder and he hissed in pain.

"Leave me alone Berta, I told ya I'm fine!" The man shouted back. Husband and wife, no doubt.

"Harold Jones, you are not. Did you lose your ability to hold liquor, or did you mean to join the ground?"

Harold had no response but another fit of coughing.

I scoffed, ready to turn around and ignore them. Until...

Until I saw his handkerchief. It was now stained in random blotches, creating an ugly Rorschach test on the cloth. Coughing up blood was one thing, concerning but not enough for my blood to turn ice cold. Black bile, however, was.

It was splattered in black spittle and bile. I knew at once what it was. That shouldn't be possible. Those things were still downstairs, I had made sure to not touch anything. So why?

Without really thinking, I pulled my shirt up over my nose. It was a measly defense, but how else could they have spread this disease. How else could I hope to protect myself? Iivo gave me a weird look for a second before understanding suddenly clicked in his eyes. He mimicked my new mask.

"What?" The man on his other side asked. I had forgotten about him. Conveniently so, I suppose. He looked at the two of us, before slowly raising the top of his button up to cover his nose as well. The entire time, he looked flustered, confused and on the edge of crying.

A shrill scream echoed from across the room. Our heads all shot to the side, and saw the woman from earlier also on the floor. However, she wasn't as lucky as Harold. Instead of just collapsing, she was on the floor seizing. People around her gasped, and kept their distance, clearly out of their depths.

"What the hell is going on?" Iivo's flirting partner asked.

"Nothing good." Iivo answered cryptically. He switched to Finnish. "Do you think this is related?"

"It has to be."

As if the spell was broken, the room erupt in motion. People screamed, and ran. They pushed and shoved trying to move away from the two strange cases. Some tried to move upstream towards them, probably thinking they could help. I pity their sanity, honestly.

Iivo and I instantly jump onto our chairs, sliding over the bar. Looking both ways, the bartender, bless his quiet soul, had absconded. Iivo's boy toy stared at us, looking confused, and almost like a lost puppy. It might have been cute, if all of our lives hadn't been in danger. Iivo sighed and waved him over. The man shook his head, leaning backwards.

"C'mon Leif." Iivo tried again, holding his hand out. The man- Leif- just stared, shell-shocked. Some asshole rushed by, shoving the poor thing forward. Leif collided into the counter with a hearty thud. I winced for his sake, but noticed that he was in range. I lunged forward and snatched his hand. If I yanked a little too harshly, who was honestly going to do anything about it right now? It was a small revenge for distracting my partner earlier.

It took some maneuvering to get his squirming ass over. He kept trying to move to help, but always somehow managed to slow me down. He landed in a tangle of limbs and twisted clothes. He looked up owlishly. Iivo chuckled fondly but I kept my eyes trained forward. The crowd was ignoring us thoroughly, still pushing and shoving. Trying to create more space to hide than there actually was. As soon as a cough sounded, they scampered away. It was the world's strangest version of tag.

I was ready to just hunker behind the bar, to hide and wait this insanity out...

Until the older gentleman, Harold, had reached out for his wife's arm... and bit her.

~

Justin Barber

**

ANON: Hey, my attention has been raised to the fact that a few people may believe that Justin's characteristics are the writer's actual opinions. As the writer, I feel it's important to say that Justin is a sexist, racist, hateful white man who does not believe he could ever be sexist, racist, or hateful. He is representative of the moderate white man and I condemn his actions, thoughts, and words. He is a thought-exercise that is supposed to help me break away from the normal characters I write, but I do not want that to mean that I am justifying, or praising, any of his actions. He is the main character, but not a good character. If this was too subtle from the entries prior, I apologize.

**

Monica.

If names were blood Justin would be dying because he had one drop left and it was all hers. Her name on his lips. Her name stuck in his dry throat. He'd been on the ground for hours. Hours would pass like that, with him waking in and out of consciousness, unaware of the slow drip of the easel of time. Everything inside his body shook and trembled.

Where is she? She can't be alone. She won't survive on her own. She's too weak. What if they already found her? What if they hurt her? She's too simple-minded, she can't think on her own. There was a reason that it had been easy enough for Justin to remain married to Monica, and the simple answer was that she didn't have any reasons of her own, no actual thoughts, and unlike the other woman scientists who would occasionally show up in the office from year to year, she was easy to get along with. She didn't question him. She had never questioned anyone in her entire life.

She was simple. Weak. A girl.

And he needed to get out, to find her, to save her. He needed to be the hero.

He needed to lift her off the ground and hold her close to him and--and--goddamnit, he needed to kiss those pretty lips of hers and tell her that maybe, just maybe, through their time of marriage, he'd actually grown to appreciate having her around.

"This is called being sophisticated. It's silly to expect me to wear clothes that haven't been hanging up. What, do you want wrinkles on my sundress?" she asked, leaning in too close with that perfume of hers. Her lips parted and he took them whole in his, pulling her onto him.

"Yes," he growled, "I want wrinkles on every outfit you own. I want everyone to know that I put them there too."

He actually liked her.

Alone at night with his hands caressing the empty space between his body and hers, he knew he liked her. It was her that plagued him during those dark hours of the night, her voice, her sighs, her gentle lips parting at midnight. Ghost kisses and empty pleasure sunk him into an ocean of trouble that he knew he could never escape. It was all he could do to pretend that he didn't like her. Justin already knew that a woman like her could never love a man like him. She was a stupid woman, and stupid woman didn't love smart men. They wanted rich men. Still...

Monica was his. Always had been.

"Oh, Johnny-boy, aren't you ever going to take me on a date?" she sighed, running her hands through his hair. He liked it when she groomed him. She had always taken better care of him than he had himself.

Was it stupid to think that he could have been hers? That their fake dates could have been real?

Of course, it was.

"Where is my husband? What did you do to him?"

Justin's eyes opened to darkness and the darkness opened its red eyes and blinked. The world swayed as he sat up and pounded against the door. At some point, they must have left him alone in there.

"I won't go with you! Leave me alone! Where is he? Where did you take him?"

From the smallest amount of space between the door and the floor, Justin could see black boots stationed outside his door. The legs were spread far apart, which meant it was a man out there. Which meant that Justin was stuck. Because as smart as Justin knew he was, and as strong as he may have been from years on a farm, he couldn't best another grown man. Especially not one positioned to security. If it was Mr. Ex-NBA, there was no way he'd get out at all. The only time Justin had ever fought a black man and won was in high-school, and he'd never gotten to live it down from all the left-wing idiots who screamed 'racism' at every little thing he did. As if giving a black guy a slightly blacker eye was as bad as slavery. The guy was better off than Justin anyway. Justin's family had always been poor. He had no privilege. He was the statistic, not the other way around.

"Justin, please! Save me!"

But no one saw that. The people he went to high school with were like the female scientists who came into the lab. They were all stupid. They didn't think past their eyes and didn't know what statistics were. Justin, on the other hand, actually read the news. He paid attention. He saw through their scapegoats and their evil lies. He saw the truth of the world. That's why he always watched out. That's why he counted every person, why he stayed on alert, why he knew he had to protect Monica. Because America was going to hell, and people were making it worse every day. Determined to put him in an early grave. Tearing apart the sanctity of his beloved country. Tearing apart him, bit by bit.

Even now, he was the one trapped. The black guy out there free as a daisy. And there was Justin, another statistic, another guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Justin, I need you. Where are you, Justin? Where are you?"

It left him burning. His entire body burned. He slapped his hands against the wall and screamed. It wasn't words that left his mouth but hot anger for all who'd wronged him, an anger at all who didn't listen, and a wave of anger that he couldn't protect the one he loved most. Goosebumps left shivers along his arms as he slapped and pounded, attacking the wall. Beating it like it was the face of everyone who'd gotten him into that mess. Beating the face of the detective that had choked him. Beating the face of the man who screamed and spit at him. Beating that grinning face of that man who let it happen. Beating. Beating. Beating.

The wall bled red and he screamed at its pain, at its weakness, at its trouble. This place was fucked up. Even the walls were human. Everything was human.

And, like all things human, it was fucked up. It was rotten. It was disgusting.

But she wasn't.

Golden hair glistened in the sunlight. Instrumental music played in the background. All she would listen to when she was painting was Mozart. A bright blue sundress fell over her knees and atop it was a white smock, covered in various splashes of paint and water.

She was golden and innocent. The pinnacle of a gentle soul. A pretty artist who painted the ocean and made videos for others to watch. A bright soul who'd never hurt anyone. So why were they detaining him? Why were they trying to hurt her?

Why? Why? Why, why, why?

"Please don't hurt me," Monica cried. She was trembling. Fat tears rolled out of her eyes and her mascara feathered across her cheeks. He watched helplessly as they grabbed her by the hair and pulled her down the hallway, her nails scratching at the walls. "Please! Justin! Save me, Justin! Save me!"

Did no one care? Did it not matter when it was his life? When it was hers? Where were their people? Where were their lawyers? Why was no one representing them?

"LET ME FREE," he shouted. He screamed it next. Then again and again and again until his voice was hoarse and the wall was bleeding and his shoulder was hanging at his side, loose, empty, his arm numb and red and brown from the pain. His bruises were laughing at him. Everyone was. They knew he wanted out, needed out, needed an escape.

"I HAVE TO SAVE HER," he shouted. Then again, as his voice cracked, "I have to save her. Please." Tears rolled down his cheeks as he fell against the ground, staring out the crack at the boots that cared not for his existence. "Please." As red spilled out the door, the boots started to move. The last thing he saw before the darkness was the concerned face of a woman opening the door with her gun pulled.

~

Quinn Davis

Quinn Davis wasn't drunk—not exactly. He was somewhere on the line between impaired and beginning to sober up. He likely could have walked in a straight line, spoken in full sentences, and recited the alphabet; however, if Quinn had been asked if he could drive home at that exact moment it would've been an ill-advised gamble. The upside of being trapped on the seventh deck of a cruise ship in the middle of the open ocean was that he would not be driving anywhere anytime soon.

Currently, the boy was reclining back against the small wooden staircase that led up to the platform stage above him. His shoulders rested on the final stair—preventing his head from reaching too far back and smacking into the hardwood—while his legs were splayed out on the carpeted ground beyond. He'd wandered away from the site for a short period with his Coke can in one hand and the other feeling along the wall to support his weight. There wasn't much to see other than more depressing scenes of people crowded around in hushed panic, and it was just his luck that when he'd returned, the once empty room suddenly held several cliques of crackpots whispering to each other scattered around the space.

Had he been interested in other people, Quinn might've swallowed down his acid reflux enough to ask them about what they'd heard, but the thought of making conversation with those he didn't know was more repulsive than usual. He had settled instead for talking to Jax over the phone with the thin device pressed between his shoulder and his ear as he set to work popping both sets of his knuckles.

"I'm telling you, I will start breaking windows," Quinn muttered, teeth grinding tightly against each other as he spoke. His eyes flickered to the nearest piece of glass looking out through the pair of double doors to the hallway beyond as if to make his point. There wasn't anything to break them with but folding chairs, though, which would have been clunky and awkward at best and ended in more than a few cuts at worst.

There was a sigh that followed the words. It landed somewhere between irritation and exasperation as his friend audibly rolled his eyes. "Calm down, will you?" he instructed, the sound of footsteps and ocean waves peppering the background. It was an ambiance that Quinn didn't know he would miss until he was trapped inside the ship.

"You calm down." The comment was shot back within an instant as his tongue snaked in and out of his lips as he hissed. "It's not my fault I don't have my medication, okay?" The boy pressed his hand to his chest to show his indignation to a crowd of himself and himself alone. His hand dropped ever slightly to begin rubbing his chest once the gesture was complete and massaged the scars that lay across the middle of his rib cage. His hands worked over the fabric of his shirt, relieving the phantom itch that was beginning to rise with the tightening of his chest and the shortening of his breath.

A sharp "tsk" was the response, followed by Jax telling him off. "It hasn't even been twenty four hours, you baby. That's not how they work. You're fine. Just take some deep breaths."

The itching only grew, spreading from the boy's scars, up his chest, and swarming around his back muscles and shoulders. A harsh shiver was delivered to his spine and he shook it out much like a wet dog, twisting his own body rapidly to try and shake whatever psychological feeling was trying to manifest physically. "Yeah, well," Quinn began, his mouth hanging open in an empty, unformed protest. He swallowed a small lump building in the back of his throat, squashing the issue before it could grow any bigger. "...Maybe I'm paranoid. Sue me."

"Paranoid? You're trapped on the third nicest deck. Order a martini, Hell, watch the Bee Movie," his friend scoffed. A laugh had wormed its way into Jax's voice, only fueling the itch further. It wasn't on Quinn's skin, yet he was quick to grip his phone with one hand and begin to dig his nails into the cloth covering his back to try and scratch through it.

I'm hot and sweaty and now I'm getting made fun of, great. Quinn rubbed his temples with warm fingertips, sighing slowly to try and lower his own escalating emotions. It's like high school all over again. "Look... I—It's a little hard to explain. It doesn't feel possible to relax right now. I just—" Quinn cut himself off, hand slipping down from the side of his face to his mouth as his teeth began to bite down on the flesh of his thumb, gnawing around the nail where the skin wouldn't be missed if it was torn off. "Can I ask you something?"

The question hung in the air after he spoke, trying to search for an answer in the silence. It didn't make the feeling worse but began to worm a new regret into the boy's chest as he twisted where he was sitting, trying to push himself up higher. The stair behind him dug into the shoulder blade on his left, and his legs cramped as he moved them into a bent position. His eyes searched the room around, flickering between people as his tongue swiped over his cracked lips.

"Hello? Hello?" The test fell on deaf ears, Quinn pressing his own harder against his phone screen. "Jax? Can you hear me?" His knee began to bounce violently, quick, short jolts irritating out of the corner of his own eye as he began to shake his own body. He reached his free hand out and forced his leg down, stilling the appendage. Finally, a short series of low toned beeps met him in response.

He sat up with a start, bending forward and hunkering over his knees as he whipped the phone in front of him to stare at an error message. A sickness rose in Quinn's throat, no longer just a mental lapse forcing itself on his body but the sudden movement of his actions sending bile spiraling up his throat. He barely had time to stumble forward, and grab the small, plastic trash can sitting beside the wall before he was letting vomit dribble from his lips.

Disgust raced through his limbs, sending a hard, full-body shiver through him. His tongue swiped the edges of his mouth, tasting the bitter, sour taste of his own throw up lingering in his spit. Wiping the excess spit up on the back of his hand only brought the smell to his nose, washing over him to cause another wave of nausea.

"Are you throwing up too?" The question came from above him at the same time that a shadow fell over his frame.

Quinn quickly held out his hand that was not gripping the rim of the can. He put his palm up to the stranger, shaking his head vigorously as he managed to spit out the remaining chunks that had glued themselves to his tongue. He swirled it over the inside of his teeth once more, checking for any remaining evidence of the disgusting act, and once satisfied, dropped the can back to the ground beside him. "No-no, just a bit of spit up. I drank a little—" There was a catch in his words, like a hook grabbed hold of his vocal chords and ripped them back as the full question registered in Quinn's mind. "Too?"

There was a soft shuffling above him, the shadow pulling away from part of his body and returning a moment later. With both of his hands cupping his cheeks, Quinn barely spotted the water bottle dangling before him. He snatched it from the air almost instantly and didn't bother to look up at the man who had offered as the stranger began to talk, too content in uncapping the bottle and taking a long cold sip as condensation dripped down his hands. "One of the younger girls was doing the same in the room down the hall. I'm not sure it's one of the symptoms yet or not. Fevers and dizziness have been a lot more common." His voice was light, still clearly male but closer to the tenor range than baritone.

Tilting the bottle up, the boy took a second swig before he asked, "Symptoms?" Quinn scoffed at the thought and whatever it implied. Symptoms make this sound serious. It's not serious. "Of what?"

"Irritability too," the stranger listed, overlapping Quinn's own voice as he spoke.

At that, Quinn whipped his head up to glare at the man loitering over him. "I'm always irritable." He was met with a pair of soft brown eyes. They were like glass, all smooth and glossy, the same as his face. He didn't have a chiseled aspect about him. His whole head was soft edges, surrounded by bouncy ginger curls that his fingers twisted through absently as he stood. It only made the transition to his body all the more jarring, because there were no curves below his shoulders. His body was all angles, sharp and thin, snapable but dangerous enough to poke an eye out. It made him seem younger than he probably was, his features reflecting a man who didn't appear much older than Quinn. At most he may have been scrapping thirty and even that was pushing it if he hadn't dunked himself in a vat of anti-aging cream.

A sigh passed the man's lips, weighing down the words that followed."As for what it is, if I knew, I'd tell you," he assured, his hand movement more fretful as a second, identical sigh escaped his lips. It was heavy and dark sounding, holding an age that wasn't backed up by its own silhouette. The stranger was mature, though, not with wrinkles or smile lines, or even in the way he held himself—his back had a clear kink to it, a curl that stooped his shoulders forward and diminished his thin frame from a young birch tree to a loose twig. He seemed mature in a different sense, like he knew how to do taxes without help, could drive a stick shift, or flip a pancake without having an anxiety attack.

That didn't sway Quinn's poor mood as he bared his teeth at him though. No telling this guy's not just some conspiracy theorist. "What makes you so—" Quinn cut himself off as he noticed the small print of the man's shirt, swallowing his argument in front of the doctor. It was possible he might have only been a nurse, but regardless of his exact position the crew line's medical uniform didn't lie. Warmth began to creep into Quinn's cheeks, not out of a rising potential fever but out of pure embarrassment. "Oh."

"Should I have started with that?" he offered, stretching out his hand in the process. "I wasn't only trying to be nosy. I'm Leon, by the way."

Reluctance lingered in the air for only a second before the boy reached out and grasped his hand, glad his right one wasn't one he'd wiped his spit on as the man's firm, slightly moist hand met his. "Quinn. Did they send you in here to cart off dead bodies and amputate limbs?"

The look he was given wasn't what he'd expected, but the slight smile was at least promising. "I'm not a plague doctor," Leon assured, something between amusement and annoyance affecting his tone. He drew a hand back through his hair and shook his head. "Or from the civil war for that matter. I'm trapped in here like you, like them, like the rest of us." The heaviness was beginning to weigh his voice down once more, the reminder physically impacting his stance and sending him against the nearest wall as if he needed the support behind him to keep standing.

A slight quick twisted the left side of Quinn's mouth. He hadn't intended to smile but now he was smirking at the words. Life's just shit, isn't it? "Good for you, man." Quinn replied without looking at the doctor. He drained a half of the water bottle in a long sip, focusing on the sharp crinkle of plastic buckling under the pressure.

"Look, I'd much rather be out there. That's all I meant," Leon insisted as he slid down the wall some and crouched so that he was more in Quinn's eye line whether the boy wanted it or not. Just shut up.

"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm having a blast in quarantine." There was a fake chipper tone that made Quinn a whole new level of irritable—even with himself—as he spoke. His own insides began to itch again, and he shot up to his full height in his hurry. A harsh wave of dizziness swept over Quinn, painful enough that he put his hand against the wall Leon was leaning against for a moment of support. "Ugh. We-We're stuck on a boat full of rich, white snobs. All I have to wait for is one of them to call some media or security or something on the mainland and throw a huge fuss, while I play candy crush and tweet about my depression."

There was a sigh uttered at the words, but it wasn't exasperated like Quin expected. The dark eyes staring up at him held something other than. It was a sadness, almost a defeat in a sense that dragged a new lump into Quinn's throat as he met it head on. "You haven't noticed, have you?"

A fidgeting started again, more eager this time as the boy began to tap his foot. It wasn't steady enough to create a pattern, but more of a ruined beat. Every time it started to grow steady his own leg would twitch or spasm or tap too fast and the series would have to start over again. "What?" I'm not scared. I'm not paranoid. He's just freaking out, not you—not me. I'm fine. "Noticed what?"

Instead of immediately responding, the doctor reached into his pocket despite the awkward angle of his squat. He pulled a phone back out and turned it so Quinn could see the screen before tapping the top corner with his thumb. "There's no WiFi signal anymore, not on this level anyways."

Confusion earned Quinn's curiosity as he squinted at the display and noted the missing symbol. "So?" The word left his mouth feeling dry. A suspicion crept in, a fear twisting his intestines into one large knot.

"So, we're a hundred miles from the nearest cell tower. No data coverage and no WiFi means no one's calling out anywhere," Leon explained. He dropped down to the floor completely, folding his legs into a loose crisscross and leaning back against the wall so his head could loll to the side as his phone fell into his lap. "Whoever's really in charge of this place wants this event locked down tight."

Quinn opened his mouth to speak. His lips were parted and dry, his tongue a limp piece of flesh inside as no words came out. Fingers digging into his skin, he shook his head. "But that's..."

"Loose lips sink ships." The saying spilled from the doctor's own as he ran both hands through his hair as if he was trying to rip the curls out. They settled onto his face, covering his eyes as his head bent to the ground, staring intently at the carpet below. "Helius is going to keep their ship afloat at any cost, even if they have to drown us to do it."

~

Peter Bancain

Stuck on a phone call with the representatives of Disney.