Fall of Night
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The atrium is lively today. From where I stand, I can see it all through the reflection in the observation window. Near a hundred travelers fill the atrium's curving benches, waiting for their next flight across the galaxy. A group of students has taken over one section, playing games and watching movies. Near them, a pair of freshly-crowned husbands gush over honeymoon plans. On the other side of the room, a young boy plays with a plush doll under the watchful gaze of his very pregnant mother, whom I'd just helped rebook a connecting flight.
More than two years ago, I'd stood in this same spot with nothing. No money, no plans, no hope. I'd finally had the courage to leave a bad situation, only to end up at this jump gate lost and alone. Now I wear the green uniform of Guest Services. I'm one of the permanent fixtures of a gate that teleports people across the stars.
I stop at this observation window every day. My translucent reflection makes me feel like a guardian spirit of the atrium. Normally, the letters of the gate's name—LANUIT—appear over my shoulder, affixed to the wall opposite the observation window. Today, however, a maintenance crew has taken the letters down to clean off the dust and replace the lights.
Another break from the norm is the person walking toward me.
“Good morning, Nessa,” Iain says once he reaches me.
“You're a long way from engineering,” I tease. I see him nearly every day, but usually not until lunch or after our workdays are over.
“I have the day off,” he says. “I was hoping we could talk? I know you're working, but it's important.”
A lump grows in my throat. From the way he's shoved his hands in his pockets, he's clearly nervous. I fight my desire to put it off and delay what I suspect will be an unpleasant conversation. When a precog tells you something is important, you listen. That he's interrupting my workday - something he's never done before - tells me this truly can't wait.
“Sure,” I say, “in the courtyard?”
He nods and I follow him out of the atrium. We weave around visitors as we go and pass by Jìngyí standing guard near a clutch of shops. A security guard, she's been my friend practically since I arrived. She points to Iain with a questioning look when she spots me. I give her a thumbs-up and she relaxes.
I smell the courtyard before we reach it, and we soon step into a large room with real plants and a fake sky.
There are several courtyards around the ring of the gate, some locked to staff only. For those of us who never experience real sunlight, the fake kind is meant to be good for us. It took me a few months of progressive misery before I figured out they were right. These days I try to have lunch in the nearest courtyard every day. When our work schedules line up, that lunch is often with Iain.
“What's so important, then?” I ask once we're settled at a small table next to a row of purple flowers and a backdrop of swaying trees. I may have given Jìng a thumbs-up, but the lump in my throat hasn't subsided. “Is this about the movie? You don't have to come, I don't want to drag you where you don't want to go.”
He smiles in that disarming way of his, showing off the dimple on one of his cheeks. “You're not ‘dragging’ me anywhere. You've been telling me about this film for weeks, at this point I'd be disappointed to not see it with you.”
Patience lines his every word. We've had conversations like this more times than I can count. I've been practicing trusting him, but part of me is always waiting for him to either prove my fears right or get sick of reassuring me. He's yet to do either.
“Remember a few months ago,” he says, “when I had to cancel our dinner plans?”
I lean my elbows on the table, my hands folded in its center. “For that maintenance project? Someone ended up sick that day, right?”
“That's the one. I had to fill in. I was expecting a miserable night of work, but when it was time for my dinner break, you called me. Through the power of a video call, we had dinner together from opposite ends of the gate. I don't know that I ever thanked you for that.”
“It was a very small thing—”
“That's just it. You have this ability to know what small things will have a huge impact. You're always looking out for others, putting people at ease. I know you struggle, probably more than you tell me about, but...” he frowns as his voice trails off, as if his train of thought left without him.
“Iain, what is all this about? Surely you didn't need to urgently compliment me in public?”
He takes a deep breath and I think: This is it. He never wants to see me again, or he's leaving Lanuit or...
“I want you to promise me that you'll remember this,” he says instead. “Remember that you're the sort of person that inspires others to be better. That you'll have a long future of being the incredible beacon of kindness that you are.” He leands forward and wraps his hands around mine. After what I'd escaped to come here, I haven't felt comfortable with any kind of touch. Iain has never pushed that boundary. Now the warmth of his skin against mine is strange, but not an unwelcomed one.
“Promise me, Vynessa,” he says with an urgency I don't understand. I look up from our hands and meet his eyes.
“Okay. I promise.”
He smiles, but his eyes brim with unshed tears. Then his expression shifts to the one he gets when his precognition comes unbidden.
“Was I wrong?” he asks as if I could have an answer. His mouth opens again to say something, but then the universe shakes.
Cold hits me as he snatches his hands back, his body convulsing. Before I can check on him, everything goes sideways. I'm face-first against something and it isn't until I blink through the dark spots clouding my vision that I realize it's the ground. My ears are ringing and head is spinning as I try to push myself upright. Leaves and petals lie scattered everywhere. The fake sky is destroyed, light panels off or shattered or sparking. In the dim light remaining, shadows give the impression of tables, chairs, and people knocked over onto the ground. Screams and cries begin to penetrate the fog over my senses.
“Iain?” I can barely hear myself. I crawl to where he's lying, face-down just as I was, but he hasn't gotten up yet. “Iain something's wrong with the courtyard.”
He doesn't react. His eyes are closed and face relaxed. He must have hit his head, and the trickle of blood from his ear could be from a ruptured ear drum. I pull my compad out to call a medic, but the screen is black and it won't turn back on.
A courtyard failure of this level won't go unnoticed. Someone will be by soon. Someone will help.
I hold Iain's hand and wait for him to wake up. He will. At any second.
An eternity later, someone grabs me. It snaps me from my stasis, and though my feet are numb I still fight back and try to wrench myself free. I shout for help but still no one comes.
My captor holds fast and pulls me against their chest. I can't see Iain anymore, I can't see anyone. I'm screaming through sobs. My arms are pinned between me and my captor. I can't get away I can't—
“Iain is dead, Nessa,” a familiar voice says in my ear. “I'm so sorry.”
Jìngyí. It's Jìngyí and she's not holding me captive, she's holding me.
I choke on a laugh. I'd finally let Iain hold my hand, and minutes later I'm wrapped in Jìngyí's arms. I hate it yet I feel miles away. Not in my body at all, not even here. Like I'm watching this horrid nightmare and any moment I'll wake up from it. But I don't.
Being far away is helping me not think about what she said.
“Sectors 26 through 32 are gone,” a grainy voice says from Jìngyí's shoulder. “Can't reach 33 from here. Helping evac 25.”
Jìngyí releases me, keeping one hand on my shoulder while she uses the other to control her radio.
“Evac?” the word pulls me back into my body, but my voice hardly sounds like my own.
Jìngyí had pulled me into the hallway outside the courtyard, but it's barely recognizable. There's debris and belongings scattered across the floor. The only other people are a medic applying field stitches to their patient on the floor nearby. Some wall panels have popped open with scorch marks suggesting the cause. A metallic scent fills the air mixed with burnt plastic. Aside from the occasional spark or flicker, the only illumination is a line where the wall meets the floor. Emergency lights directing to evacuation sites.
“What happened?” I ask.
Jìngyí starts walking and I follow alongside her. She's always like that. Assertive. Decisive. When she does something, you can't help but follow. Or maybe I just want to get away from the courtyard.
“Some sort of power surge,” she says, “it fried the whole gate.”
We pass an intersecting hallway whose ceiling caved in, blocking passage. A person sits there hunched over. I slow to help them until Jìng grabs my arm and pulls me away. It's unlike her to be this forceful, but the grim look on her face stops me from commenting on it.
“A lot of people died when it happened,” she says. “Some were unlucky, in the wrong place when things blew. Others don't have a wound on their body. They just... died.”
Like Iain. I think back to his last words. Was I wrong? That whole conversation had to be because of some vision he'd had. Did he know he was going to die? Why didn't he tell me?
Now the whole station is in shambles and we're going to evacuate.
We're going to evacuate.
The idea of leaving Lanuit is like a hand gripping my chest. I focus on what's around to me to quell the panic, but it only makes my head spin with the scale of what happened. What did that radio voice mean about entire sections being gone?
“Um, Nessa?” Jìngyí points ahead where a small child is walking around and crying.
It's enough to make me swallow my panic, at least for now. Jìng has never known how to handle children, and I recognize this one from my morning in the atrium. I even remember his name.
“Hi, Carver,” I kneel down a couple feet from him, softening my voice so I don't frighten him. “Do you remember me? I helped your mom earlier today?”
He looks between me and Jìngyí, his sobs halted for the moment, and nods. His face is smeared with dirt, but that's normal for a five-year-old.
“Would you like to come with us? We're going to where everyone else is and we could use someone big and brave like you.”
“No!” he stomps his foot as he yells. “I need to find Dad!”
“Your dad's probably with everyone else,” Jìngyí says.
“No!” his sobs return and drown out every-other word. I'm able to make out “dark” and “dropped”.
Jìngyí looks to me and shrugs. She informs whoever is on the other end of her radio that she's found a small child named Carver, while I think back to my interaction his mom. I'd rebooked her for a flight she'd missed. She'd said her husband would keep them on time for flights, but “wasn't with us anymore”. Carver had been very focused on his doll. A doll that, come to think of it, looked an awful lot like him.
“Your doll is Dad, isn't it,” I say.
Carver nods. “Mom said Dad had to go away, but the doll is how I can talk to him.”
“His mom's at evac,” Jìngyí says, “waiting for us to bring him to her.”
“He had his doll in the atrium, that's likely where he dropped it. Can a teleporter to go and check?”
Jìngyí grimaces. “That's... not an option.”
“Why not? This is a jump gate, last I checked.” There were over a hundred teleporters on staff tasked with sending entire ships across the galaxy, not counting teleporters in other positions. Any of them could pop to the atrium and back.
“Of everyone who's reported in, crew and otherwise, no one is any type of psion. We've asked for teleporters, biopsions to heal people, telepaths to find people, telekinetics to clear debris, metapsions to—” she cuts her own sentence off. “There aren't any. None that... that survived.”
I stare at her, trying to piece everything together but it's like the pieces are from different puzzles. A power surge can't kill psions.
Her radio crackles to life on her shoulder. “Tallis reporting. We found the missing teleporter.”
She curses, then winces as she glances at Carver. She takes a couple steps away to respond.
It's then that I get a brilliant and terrible idea.
“Stay with Jìngyí and do as she says,” I tell Carver. “She'll take you to Mom and I'll meet you there with Dad. Okay?”
“We can't risk him getting on an evac shuttle,” Jìngyí says into her radio. “Teleporters are hard as hell to hit, and you can't sneak up on them. The best strategy is a counterpunch.”
Sorry, Jìng, I think, I'll be quick. As curious as I am about what she's talking about, this is my only chance to sneak away. I can't let Carver leave without this momento from his late father. That's too cruel.
I'll simply have to ask for forgiveness later.
The atrium is vacant. Trash is scattered everywhere from knocked over bins, mixed in with belongings people left behind. The LANUIT letters remains where they were earlier, sitting on the floor with caution tape around them, though some have fallen over. It's dark enough that I can hardly see my reflection in the observation window. Like I'm not here at all. A ghost.
I take a slow walk through the room, trailing my hand along the cushions until I see “Dad” on the floor. I take a seat as I pick him up and brush off the dirt. I've heard of memorial dolls made with the deceased's clothes. Maybe that's what I'm holding. Something someone made for a family in mourning.
I have nothing of Iain's to remember him by, all because I was afraid he'd be like the people I left behind. A fury rises within me, that he knew he was going to die and only thought to have me make that stupid promise. I'll go back to his room. The locks automatically open during emergencies. I'll get a shirt, maybe that blue and green striped one he wore so often, then I can—
“For fuck's sake, Nessa.”
I wipe the tears from my face before I turn to face Jìngyí.
“You got the doll? Good, now let's go. Kid's already back with his mom.”
“I...” my throat tightens, “there's something else—”
“Don't think I don't know what you're doing.”
“I'm not doing anything.”
She sighs and sits next to me. “You're procrastinating. You don't want to leave.”
My face grows hot. “This is my home, Jìng.”
“It was your home. Backup batteries can't keep life support going for much longer.”
“You don't get it.” I shake my head and my entire body shakes with it. “I came here with nothing and this place saved me. I got a job, I met you, I met Iain...” Iain, who didn't care that I didn't want to be touched, who didn't mind that I couldn't be his girlfriend, who gave me as much time and space as I needed. Who deserves so much better than an anonymous grave on a decrepit jump gate. “I can't leave. Not like this.”
“Because if you stay, then everything will go back to how it was, right? The lights will come on, ships will come through, Iain will invite you for lunch. As if you can rewrite history by staying, and if you get on that shuttle, then there's no coming back, and you have to accept every loss. Something like that?”
“You act like it's a familiar feeling for you.” I try to hold onto my fury and find it growing cold. How dare she get it. How dare she know me so well.
“In another life.” She's never answered questions about what she did before coming to Lanuit, but I know enough to guess. Not everywhere in the galaxy is as peace right now. “If the galaxy was kind, you'd have time to process this, but it's being a real dick right now.”
I laugh despite my tears. Hearing my thoughts from Jìngyí's mouth doesn't fix anything, but it has reminded me that I'm not alone in my losses today. I don't know that I can handle starting over again, but Iain used his last moments to tell me I could. I can at least try, and with Jìng's help, maybe I'll even succeed.
“Okay, let's go.”
With Carver's doll in hand, we get up to walk to the evacuation point. Until we see him. A man wearing the blue uniform of a gate teleporter, directly in our path. He stares at us with an expression that doesn't belong on a human face: a contortion of a grin and too-wide eyes, showing not mirth but malice. It's stopped us dead in our tracks.
“You know those stories of feral psions? The ones that attack people?” Jìng asks.
“Yes,” I whisper back.
“They're not stories.”
“What do we do?”
Jìngyí doesn't take her eyes off him as she answers. “Get behind something. It's the only way he can't see you. I'll distract him and as soon as you have an opportunity, run.”
“And you?”
“He can't be allowed to teleport onto a shuttle.” She slowly raises her hand to her radio. “Teleporter at—”
He disappears and Jìngyí makes a strangled sound in place of words. The teleporter throws her to the ground, her body making an unsettling thud as she hits a bench.
I scream and stumble backwards, tripping over an abandoned bag.
The teleporter turns his maniacal gaze to me, but Jìngyí is already on her feet.
“Go!” she yells to me. She swings her baton and it goes straight through the teleporter. I regain enough control of myself to turn and run. If I get to the evac site quickly enough, I can make sure someone comes back to help her.
The teleporter appears in front of me and I barrel straight into him. As soon as we connect I feel a sickening twist in my stomach. The world around me melts and shifts back into the atrium, where I drop to the ground behind the broken LANUIT sign. Jìngyí and I make eye contact between the letters. She's breathing as hard as I am and cradling one of her arms. Her radio is a mangled mess on that same shoulder.
She reacts before I see the teleporter make his return. He lunges for her and she uses it to her advantage. He practically brings his face to her fist as she hits him square in the jaw and I swear I hear the crack of bone.
It does little good. In the next breath he grabs Jìng's wounded arm and pulls her to the floor. She cries in pain as the teleporter steps on her.
I'm no fighter, but I can't let him kill my best friend. I crawl to the toolbox maintenance left behind, pick up a screw, and throw it at the teleporter. His form flickers and the screw lands on the floor on the other side. I throw another, and another, each one having the same effect, each one making metallic clinking sounds across the floor.
But it works. The teleporter lets up the pressure on Jìngyí, eyeing the landing zone that's making all that noise. Then he disappears.
And reappears in front of me. His hands are around my throat, pushing me against the wall as he strangles me. I drop Carver's plushie — still in my hand after all this — and grasp for anything that might help me. I find a screwdriver. If I try to stab him, I'll only stab myself, but another option blooms in my mind.
That grin hasn't left the teleporter's face, and this close I can see the spit foaming around his lips. I squirm under his grip, my hand searching the wall as I swallow whatever air I can get. With dark spots erupting in my vision, I plunge the screwdriver down. Into an outlet.
I've never been electrocuted before. It's like a million spikes piercing through every inch of me, and then... nothing. Dark. Cold.
When I come to, it can't be more than a few seconds later. Jìngyí stands over the teleporter's body and strikes him across the temple using her baton. She drops to her knees and checks his pulse. Her head slumps and shoulders sag as she mutters, “I came here to get away from this shit, dammit.”
“The galaxy can be a dick,” I say. My mouth feels like it's full cotton. Bloody, coppery cotton.
“Nessa! Thank the stars, I thought you were...” In the faint illumination of stars and emergency lighting, I swear there are tear trails down her face. But that's impossible, Jìngyí never cries.
“I'm alright, just a little stuck.”
In the moments I'd lost consciousness, the letter nearest me had tipped over, trapping my leg under it. The pain is a vague concept at the moment, dancing at my periphery but not quite coming in.
Jìngyí curses. “I can't lift that with one hand. I'll need to run back, get some help.”
“Bring this with you.” I hand her Dad, Carver's doll. I see her about to object and stop her. “They need it so they can get out of here. Don't make them wait.”
“Fine, but I'll be right back.”
“Jìng? You did everything right. Even if I can't use this leg ever again, it's not your fault.
“Yeah. Well.” She clears her throat. “It's not yours, either.”
Her steps echo down the hall until I can't hear them anymore.
I don't know why I lied to her. My body is failing. A biopsion might be able to save me, but there aren't any of those left.
I lean my head back and stare at the stars through the observation window. I'm always so focused on the reflection, I've never noticed how beautiful the view of the galaxy is. A couple planets are in view, and the sector's star is a distant speck.
“I'm sorry,” I say to the stars, “I'm breaking my promise already.”
“No you're not,” Iain's voice says. “There are many ways to live. You have an amazing future ahead of you.”
“I wish you were part of it.”
“I will be.” I feel his hand in mine, and this time, I hold his back.
In my last moments, I don't feel alone, or lost, or afraid. Lanuit will always be my home, and through it, I will always help others find their way.
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Oh, my heart
Solaris -— a sapphic space opera
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