A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2)(12)

She stopped knowing how days went one second later, when something went real real wrong.

There was a loud, tearing sound, so fast and angry she almost couldn’t hear it. Then she actually couldn’t hear. She couldn’t hear anything. Her ears hurt real bad.

Everything went white for a second, but for a long second, long enough for her to see a few Janes get knocked out of their chairs as the white flash filled with dust and pieces and blood.

She sat up on the floor. She didn’t remember how she got there. She didn’t remember falling. She started to yell for help, but then she saw something that made her forget how to make words. Maybe it was because she couldn’t hear. Maybe it was because the air had been knocked out of her chest. But all she could think about was what she could see.

There was a hole. A hole in the wall.

Jane 23 sat all the way up.

There was a big, broken hole in the wall. And there was stuff on the other side.

Jane 23 did not understand what she was seeing. On the other side of the wall, there were not more walls. There were huge, huge piles of scrap, but far away, and the floor in between her and them didn’t look like any floor she’d ever seen. Above them, there was a . . . a ceiling. But not a ceiling. It didn’t look touchable. She couldn’t explain it. There was a ceiling that wasn’t a ceiling, and it was blue. Just blue, for a long, long way. Blue for ever. She felt like she was going to throw up.

Girls were screaming. She could hear again.

Jane 23 looked at the room, and understood the things she saw in there, at least. There had been an explosion. Jane 56’s bench was gone, all the way gone, just a smear of burnt wet stuff on the floor. She wondered what had been in 56’s bin. Probably some dangerous scrap that the little girls missed while cleaning. A bad engine, maybe, or something that still had fuel in it. She didn’t know.

There were dead girls around the smear. She’d seen dead girls before, but never so many, never all at once. Some weren’t dead, but looked like they should be.

Her arm felt wrong. She looked down and saw a metal shard stuck deep. Jane 23 was scared. She’d been cut before, but she’d never bled so dark.

The living girls kept screaming.

Jane 23 got up and ran through the mess, past things she didn’t want to see. Jane 64’s bench wasn’t far, but she couldn’t see her. She made herself look at the pieces on the ground, trying to tell if any of them belonged to 64. She almost threw up, again. Her mouth was dry. Her arm was wet, getting wetter.

‘Sixty-four!’ she yelled. She yelled so loud it hurt.

‘Twenty-three.’ A hand grabbed the end of her pants. ‘Twenty-three.’

Jane 23 turned. 64 was under a bench, holding her knees. Her head and face were bloody, but she was awake and living. She was shaking, though, so hard Jane 23 could hear her teeth click.

‘Come on,’ Jane 23 said. ‘Come on. We need to go to the med ward.’

Jane 64 looked at her. She didn’t move.

‘Sixty-four,’ Jane 23 said. She reached out, took her bunkmate’s hand, and pulled her up. ‘We can’t stay here.’ Blood ran down Jane 23’s other arm, dripping onto the floor. Everything was spinning and scary and loud. ‘Come on. We have to find a Mother.’

There were already a lot of Mothers there, running in the door real fast. Jane 23 headed for the first one she saw, pulling 64 with her. The Mother swung her head down, looking at them without eyes.

‘We need help,’ Jane 23 said. She looked down at her arm, which was so so bloody, and everything went weird and black.

The next thing she knew, she was in the med ward.

There were stitches in her arm. And there were so many girls in the room with her, so many Janes. There was a lot of noise, and crying. Nobody was getting punished for crying, which was different. Maybe the Mothers were too busy fixing things to be angry about crying.

‘You’re all right, Jane 23,’ a Mother said, showing up real fast by her bed. She handed her a cup of water and another smaller cup with some medicine in it. ‘We fixed you.’

‘Is Sixty-four okay?’ Jane 23 asked.

The Mother went quiet. They did that when they were talking to the other Mothers without words. ‘We fixed her, too.’

Jane 23 felt real good at that, the most good she’d ever felt.

‘Take your medicine,’ the Mother said.

Jane crunched the medicine between her teeth. It had a bad, sharp taste, but she sat with it for a little bit before drinking some water and washing it away. She lay back down. The medicine started working real fast. She felt quiet and good, and didn’t need to cry at all. Everything was light and fluffy. Everything was okay.

She looked at the walls. The walls in the med ward were blue, a bright blue. A real different blue from the blue on the other side of the hole.

She wondered about that.





SIDRA


Sidra kept the kit’s eyes pointed at Pepper as they wound their way through the market streets, and wondered if she’d ever get used to this place. With every step there was something new to observe. She couldn’t help but pay attention, make note, file it away. Out in space, something new could be a meteoroid, a ship full of pirates, an engine fire. Here, it was just shopkeepers. Travellers. Musicians. Kids. And behind every one of them, there was another, and another – an infinity of harmless instances of something new. She knew that there was a big difference between a shopkeeper and a meteoroid, but her protocols didn’t, and they clawed at her. She didn’t know how to stop. She couldn’t stop.