These Broken Stars (Starbound #1)(60)

I make it to twenty before opening my eyes again. The beam of the flashlight shudders with each breath, the effort still enough to shake my whole body. But the darkness is no longer trying to strangle me.

Tarver’s a liar, but he lies to keep me moving, and I can’t fault him for that. The least I can do is try to prove him right.

I’ll take the girl I know, thanks.

I force myself to stand up, opening the door again with an effort. I take a long breath through the collar of my shirt, trying to filter out the stench of decay, and step back out into the hallway.

The flashlight dies.

A tiny sound catches in my throat, but I keep from screaming again. Instead I stand still, gazing into the darkness and forcing myself to breathe.

I catch a whiff of something fresher, something untainted by the smell of death all around. I move toward it, picking my way in utter darkness slowly and carefully through the bodies and wreckage littering the floor.

It turns out to be coming from a tear in the side of the ship, where something ripped a long, narrow gash along its hull. I squeeze my body through, careful not to slice myself on the exposed metal and wiring nearly two feet thick in the wall.

It’s night outside, but it’s like walking out into the sunlight. The air has never smelled so sweet, the sky never seemed so full of stars. The clouds have cleared and the mirror-moon shines down, coating the world in its pale blue luminescence. I drop to my knees, gasping for air, as though I can wipe away my memories of what waits inside the ship with enough fresh oxygen. I can’t go back in. How can I go back in? I can’t. It’s a tomb. We knew not everyone could have made it onto the pods in that frantic press of people, but now, faced as I am with the proof, the thought of returning to the ship makes me want to retch. I must have been near one of the evacuation points when I fell.

I let myself crouch in the darkness for the count of five, breathing deep, before I get to my feet and follow the outer hull of the ship back to camp.

Tarver’s unconscious. It’s almost a relief, though I don’t know if unconsciousness is a bad sign, or if the rest is good for him. But it means he doesn’t look at me with those burning eyes, doesn’t reach for me unseeing, shout nonsense, speak to me as if I’m his mother, his lover, his corporal, anyone but me.

I bathe his face and chest in cold water, then lift his head and trickle some water from the canteen into his mouth. He swallows a few times, then moans and pushes me away. Angry red lines have begun to march their way from underneath the bandage up the inside of his arm. I trace them with my fingertips and swallow my dread.

He’s so quiet, so still. I smooth his hair back from his brow, run the backs of my fingers along his cheek, rough like sandpaper with the stubble of the past few days. He looks younger than usual, no older than I am. I dampen my fingertips with water and run them across his mouth, which is dry and chapped. Even his lips are hot, flushed.

“Tarver,” I whisper, cupping his burning cheek with my hand. “Please don’t—don’t leave me.”

My whole body seizes up, my insides clenching with a horror and helplessness more profound than any I’d felt when confronted with the corpses in the wreck. Unable to breathe, unable to move, I crouch over him, my hands shaking as they try to somehow smooth away his illness.

“Please don’t leave me here alone.”

My fingers fan through the damp hair at the nape of his neck. My lips find his forehead, then his temple. I’m shaking, and I force myself to stop, dragging air into my lungs.

“I’ll be back,” I whisper in his ear. I say it every time I go. It’s as much a promise to myself as to him. I try to make my feet move, make that promise real, but I’m so tired. All I want is to curl up beside him.

I stagger away, and as I wipe at my eyes, I spot something lying just inside the firelight. Something I know wasn’t there a moment ago, because a moment ago I’d been stretched out in that spot, at Tarver’s side.

It’s a flower.

I pick it up, my fingers trembling, though I already know what it is. Two of the petals are grown together, a mutation, one in a million. Unique. Except that I’ve seen it before. And that flower is gone—it was destroyed in the downpour, crushed against my skin. I left the pieces behind where we camped by the river.

How is it here now?

I cup the flower in my hands, closing my eyes for a long moment. I brush a fingertip along the joined petals, and abruptly I see Tarver’s quiet smile, the beauty in the moment he gave it to me. The memory spreads like a fire through my limbs, feeling and strength coming back to me. I can do this.

Whoever or whatever is watching us, I realize that this is a gift, just as the canteen was. I don’t know what they intended, but I know what it means to me.

I’m not alone here. Perhaps I never was, even in the depths of the dead-filled wreck. These whispers, whoever, whatever they are, can see into my thoughts. They can see into my heart.

I shut my eyes, turning away from the empty space at his side.

Behind the camp looms the black monstrosity of the wreck, darker than the night and blotting out the stars. The tomb. The meat locker. I force myself not to look back at Tarver asleep in our bed again. I know that if I do, I might not go. That this time might be the one where I fail, and fall down, and can’t get back up.

I walk back into the tomb.

“How did you divide up the labor?”