Well, Emily had actually underestimated their air supply. She had guessed that it would only last months. But instead it actually lasted for over three years. It was a slow transition, the air transitioning from oxygen to carbon dioxide. It had taken Emily over two weeks to figure out how to turn off the blaring alerts and alarms from the ship once the carbon dioxide concentration grew above a certain level in the air. For a normal human they would become short of breath and start breathing rapidly and becoming lightheaded. Their body breathing in but becoming confused when only Carbon dioxide entered their lungs instead of the oxygen it needed.
If they didn’t get help then they’d fall to the floor unconscious and if they didn’t have someone nearby to save them, then they’d die.
But none of the ten of them truly needed to breathe anymore, so the blaring alarms warning them of their imminent deaths constantly just became an annoyance. And given its importance the designers had been very careful that the alarm was very hard to break, having it embedded along with many of the ship's core systems.
But Emily figured it out with some grunt work from the rest to assist her. Luckily all of them could still speak. Their voices sounded odd now that all of the oxygen in the air had been replaced with carbon dioxide, but after a few days to get used to it they all learned to ignore it.
After a few weeks the change to their voices and hearing due to the change in the air faded into the background as it became their new normal.
The boardgames had been a godsend. Clara might have been right that they all might have gone crazy without them. The ship even had an atomic three dimensional printer, so they were able to make their own custom game pieces for monopoly. It was meant to create parts to repair the ship, but they used it to make little totems and knick knacks like that mostly. Although Emily still did use it for its original purpose occasionally.
It was only once or twice a week that Emily actually had to go out and fix something wrong with the ship. The detection system on the ship was excellent, so she usually was able to do a monthly sweep and swap out whatever part was worn with a new one before there ever ended up being a problem.
They were in deep interstellar space now. Nothing but blackness and small stars far far away. The time passed. Emily did her rounds to repair the ship. They all played board games. They had their arguments with each other, apologizing afterwards. The occasional meal every few weeks to bring everyone together as a luxury.
The engine of the ship was still firing full force to accelerate them, so they had some weak gravity of sorts on the ship which was a relief. At the halfway point in their trip the ship would flip around and start firing the thruster the opposite way to slow down again. Otherwise they’d splat directly into the surface of their new planet at a significant fraction of lightspeed if they just kept accelerating the whole way there.
Emily was still closest with Clara, and the two of them spent a lot of time together in their free time. Emily also spent a lot of time with Peter discussing the state of the ship and her repairs on it. They also talked on a personal level sometimes, but nothing too intense really. Emily still felt a little strange talking to him casually considering how much she still respected him as her former boss. Boss’s boss actually. He was an excellent leader, diffusing tension when things started boiling over between people but making himself scarce when it was something that people had to work out between themselves without his interference.
And he and Emily were both excellent at chess. Emily lost against Peter most of the time despite her intelligence. They played often, and it let her loosen up around him a little as they bantered over the games.
The rest… Well, it was a work in progress. Emily had wondered why none of them wanted to spend any time with her outside of the ‘group’ activities like board games or meals. None were rude… But none of them talked to her unprompted or asked her her opinion about whatever silly debate topic the group was having. No one but Clara and Peter that was.
“I just don’t understand why!” Emily complained as she sat on her bed, Clara sitting opposite her and lounging in a puffy chair they’d brought into her bedroom to relax in, away from the echoing common spaces of the ship.
“I’ve been helping with the ship,” Emily continued, “More than anyone else actually. I don’t think I did anything to upset any of them as far as I can tell. But none of them want to talk to me for some reason.”
Clara sighed and shook her head.
“C’mon Emily. You must know. You’re telling me that you haven’t figured it out after spending over ten years on this old ship?”
“No!” Emily huffed, “I’ve tried puzzling it out. But nothing. What did I do? Am I offending them somehow? Do I smell? Am I ugly? I just don’t get it.”
“It’s not what you’re doing. It’s what you did. Or what you supposedly did. The whole deal with the virus, the bombs. All of it. They think you’re at fault somehow. Not that it makes any sense. But that’s what they think.”
“What? But Peter can tell them. He knows that it wasn’t my fault. It was some terrorist that forced me to! It was Empire terrorists threatening my family!”
“So he’s said over and over to everyone. But the others still blame you. It’s not rational, and it’s not your fault. But that’s why.”
“You don’t think so?” Emily asked, “When did you learn all of this?”
“Sanje recognized you about a year into our flight here and told the rest of us,” Clara said, “None of us knew before he told us. Mr. Rose defended you, the rest wanted to confront you and start blaming you for things that weren’t your fault.”
“But why didn’t you believe it? Shun me like the others?” Emily asked.
Clara raised her eyebrows, “Somebody’s extra hopeful, hm? Wanting to experiment again?”
Emily quickly looked away, “No. Of course not. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No, no. Sorry. I shouldn’t tease you,” Clara said quickly, “I… I didn’t realize it was your first real time. I’m sorry. I don’t think I ever apologized to you for that. I didn’t mean to lead you along or play with your feelings for so long.”
“Oh. Well, uhm. Apology accepted.”
“Thanks. And I know you, Emily. Clearly the rest don’t if they think you’re the one behind anything malicious at all.”
“I… I’m not perfect,” Emily said quietly and stared at her hands, “I’ve had to do horrible things. Done them without meaning to. I can’t control myself sometimes. Maybe they’re right to dislike me.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Emily that I know. The sensitive little flower that wilts at the prospect of someone not liking her and blooms when she wins at board games.”
Emily looked up and grimaced, “You apologize for playing with my feelings then call me a blooming flower, pick a lane Clara. And I’m not sensitive.”
“Well more sensitive than me,” Clara allowed, “People were known to call me a bit of a bitch sometimes. Back… Back on Earth. It’s not one of my better qualities. After the bombs dropped it was a bad time for all of us. If you want we could trade. You tell me your darkest secrets and I’ll do the same. We’ll pinky promise never to share a word with anyone else.”
Emily looked at Clara for a long time as she thought about it seriously.
“Are you sure?” she eventually asked, “You want to share all of that with me? Everyone you lost? What happened after the bombs dropped?”
Clara nodded even if her expression flashed with sadness for a brief instant.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Yeah. Let’s cry it out, sister.”
Clara held her hand out and stuck out her pinky to Emily.
“Pinky promise?” Clara said.
Emily smiled a bit and stuck out her own pinky and they shook on it.
Then they talked. Not dancing around the past like they had before, speaking only in generalities and only shallow details of their old personal lives. But everything about each other that they’d never discussed before.
It started slowly with some more personal stories. A level beyond even the somewhat embarrassing ones that they’d told before. Ones that Emily had only told Luke back then.
Clara had had a very traditional family. They wanted her to marry early, start a family with a boy that their matchmaker had paired her with when they were kids. But Clara had rebelled and seemed like had caused all sorts of worry and trouble for her poor parents. Sneaking off in the night to meet boys she liked, going to all sorts of parties in the city and getting a fake ID. Getting a real career and working for herself rather than marrying and becoming a housewife like her parents wanted for her.
Clara had been an only child. Her whole family and everyone she’d ever known had died in the nuclear blasts in the city of Abuja. She’d joined a large group and stayed with them until the end. Waiting and watching them starve and become sick one by one. All until Clara had been the only one left in the end. Just as healthy as she had ever been despite the haze of death around her. That’s the way that Clara had described it, a far off expression in her eyes.
“How about you, Emily?” Clara said after Emily spent a while comforting her from the pain of all the old memories that seemed to be overwhelming Emily’s friend, “Now it’s my turn. Just let it all out. I feel better than before, just sharing it all with someone else finally.”
Emily took a shaky breath, “My life was a mess even before the bombs dropped,” she said hesitantly, “You probably already know this. But I was… mentally ill. Hallucinations, hearing voices. The whole thing. It was… horrible. Yet somehow the voices were right about everything. Probably just my own paranoia playing tricks on me at the time. But somehow they were right. Sinestra was right.”
“Sinestra? Who’s that?” Clara asked.
Emily started from the beginning and explained it all from the top. The voices she had heard ever since her school days. How things had quickly escalated in high school and past graduation. How it all had disappeared as soon as she gained her powers.
“Hmmm,” Clara hummed sympathetically, “Maybe it healed away? I had an old ache from where I sprained my wrist when I was a kid. It’s gone now, good as new. Maybe it did the same thing, but for your brain?”
“Well… Maybe,” Emily said doubtfully. She kept going, the momentum of her talking for so long overwhelming her. Now that she had started she couldn’t stop anymore until she got it all out and told Clara everything.
Emily talked about Luke, her best friend. Sean, her brother. Her parents. All the people she’d gotten to know at the virology lab that had been killed by the Empire terrorists attack that she’d only avoided by chance.
Then the bombs dropping. All the hard decisions that she had made. Abandoning Jack and the other irradiated survivors of CODA city to die so she could check on her parents. Brutally killing all of those infected men in a maddened haze so strong that she had lost her memory of what exactly happened.
Her much more clear memory of killing Major Smith with her bare hands. Hitting him over and over until she was sure that he was dead… How she’d had another maddened massacre after she’d seen those men breaking into her apartment and hurting Sean. What she’d heard from the rumors of what she’d done and how she’d found the heart that she’d removed from the man’s chest across the room…
“Hey!” Clara said forcefully as Emily started rambling and talking about how horrible it all had been, “Sounds like you did what you had to do. Those infected men, didn’t they attack you in a group? What do you think they would have done if you weren’t who you are?”
Emily shuddered, “I’d be dead,” she said, “If not by them then by the virus that they’d have infected me with.”
“And Major Smith? Did he give you any choice? Didn’t you let yourself get shot for a while before begging him to leave you alone? Didn’t you give him plenty of chances to leave you be?”
“That’s true. But there should have been another wa–”
“Nope,” Clara said firmly, “No have beens or buts. In that moment. Could you have walked away and been sure that it wouldn’t lead to your brother’s death?”
Emily opened her mouth and sent herself back to that moment in her memories. She tried to deny Clara’s claim, but the words didn’t come out.
“No,” Emily said, “I guess I couldn’t. I couldn’t have walked away. I had to stop him.”
“As for that last one…” Clara said, “They were about to kidnap and probably kill your brother. If brutality is justified anywhere then that’s probably the place. What you did, that shit sounds like a movie, girl. You just ripped out his heart?”
Clara reached out with a clawed gesture with an exaggerated snarl and let out a low growl. She pulled her hand back from the thin air and held it vertically over her head and pulsed her fingers in and out as if to mimic the beating of a heart. Her face was still in the exaggerated snarl as she looked at Emily.
“RaHHHHHH!!!!” Clara screamed suddenly and whipped her arm towards Emily as if to throw the invisible beating heart held inside her clawed grip towards Emily. Emily jumped and screamed and Clara broke down laughing. After a moment Emily giggled a bit too, even if she didn’t find it quite as funny as Clara did.
“See? Just like a movie,” Clara said, “It’s just so over the top. Don’t you worry. You’re a genuine action hero now.”
“Hehe,” Emily chuckled weakly, “I guess.”
Emily focused intently and searched Clara’s face, “Did you ever have to kill anyone?”
Clara’s smile slid away and she silently nodded, “Yeah,” she said, “I had a group to protect, and other people wanted our spot on top of Aso Rock. Some of them wouldn’t take no for an answer. I had to shoot a couple to scare off the rest.”
Emily could see that Clara was affecting a casual attitude, but it clearly had affected her far more than that based on the serious and distant look in her eyes as she spoke about it.
Emily continued explaining the war between the soldiers and the gangs and the resulting war between the gangs afterwards after it became clear that Clara wouldn’t continue speaking.
Clara was confused, and so Emily had to backtrack and explain about the burn pits and the brutal regime of the military, killing anyone they found in the streets just in case they’d been infected. She’d glossed over some of the more horrible details the first time she talked about it.
Clara was genuinely horrified the longer Emily spoke in more detail of what had actually been happening. It seemed she’d gotten a wrong sense of things when Emily had talked about the quarantine and military rule before. Despite the starvation in Abuja and skirmishes between the gangs for territory, the conflicts and battles had seemed to always stay small. There was no large military presence or single controlling group in the area, the old government having collapsed almost immediately in the aftermath of the bombs dropping.
The larger groups and gangs had avoided each other mostly and Aso Rock was isolated enough from the rest of the city that Clara had never really personally dealt with any of the gang wars or seen most of the horribleness that had gone on.
Emily had been spared most of it as well, but her connection to the gang members that had joined their group had filled her in on the gory details and made her feel almost as if she had been there herself as she had connected the gunfire in the distance in her memories to the battles that Frank, Simon, and Vanessa had talked about.
Then came… the most painful part. More than all the people she’d killed surprisingly. More than everything else than perhaps the bombs dropping itself.
“I killed them,” Emily said sadly, “Vanessa and Frank. I gave Sean all of our food. Cared for him, gave him all our medicine, the spare blankets… Whatever he needed. I took it from them and gave it all to him. They died because of me.”
Clara didn’t say anything for a while, opening and shutting her mouth for a moment and her eyes shining.
“I know,” Clara said softly, “I know. My whole group, one by one. All of them died because there wasn’t enough to go around and somebody had to be left behind. It only got harder each time.”
“It was all for nothing either way,” Emily said despondently, “After everything, all that effort… All of them died anyway. Sean died while I was out scavenging for more food. I didn’t even get to talk to him one last time before he was gone.”
Clara didn’t say anything to that. They sat silently across for each other for a while, just reflecting on their memories and their emotions.
“Don’t get any ideas now,” Clara said eventually, “This is strictly for friendship only. This isn’t me teasing.”
Clara sat forward and hugged Emily and after a moment Emily returned the gesture. Emily felt something wet hit her shoulder and she realized all of sudden that Clara was crying as she rested her chin on Emily’s shoulder as Emily did the same to her.
Emily was crying too. She hadn’t even realized it.
They let all of their emotions out at once. It was cathartic and they were both exhausted by the time they were both done.
Clara released Emily and with a mischievous smirk puckered her lips and pecked Emily on the cheek with a kiss.
“That was teasing,” Clara said, “So you can tell the difference for the future.”
Emily dumbly reached up and felt the spot where Clara’s lips had touched her.
“I feel so much better,” Clara said as she rubbed her face on her sleeve, “Seriously. I can’t believe how amazing it was to finally share it all with somebody I can trust.”
“I- I know. Amazing,” Emily repeated, her hand still held on her cheek.
“Well, I’m exhausted,” Clara declared after nothing else was said for a while, “I’m going to go to bed now.”
Clara stood up and walked out the door to Emily’s bedroom. Emily closed and locked the door behind her and went back to her own bed and tucked herself in underneath the covers. Sleeping sounded like just the thing right now…