David watches Yossi land with that little flying device. The first thing he does is ask David where Rachel is. David turns to him and sees a man walking on the edge of a great chasm, trying very hard not to look down. He seems older, somehow, tired. His mouth twitches under the grey beard—there must be an itch behind his visor that he can’t reach. Perhaps the long, ragged scar running down the side of his nose.
David points to the cliff, not trusting his voice. Yossi’s eyes are a brown so deep it seems black; they scrutinize David, measure him. David knows that he barely convinced the man not to kill Vempress. He knows that if Yossi finds out what Vempress did to the newcomer, what she had done to David, this will change.
But Yossi’s gaze is sympathetic, not suspicious. He seems to read David’s emotional state, but likely credits it to Rachel’s absence. That’s good. David’s a horrible liar, but he still manages to lead Yossi on. He hates every second of it.
They speak of psycho-therapeutic theory. That’s also good—anything to keep Yossi afloat. There may be a time where Yossi must face that which he is avoiding, but that time is not now. It is a long time after he leaves that Rachel comes back, carrying the folded net behind her. David can’t hide what has happened from her, though, but he feels guilty for telling her, and relying on her for support.
She tells him that he’s trying too hard, caring too much. But what does it matter? What will happen if he cares too much, if he tries too hard? All that will remain are the consequences of his actions, even if no one recognizes them. The cumulative benefit of good deeds—that is his only consolation.
Rachel and David lie in a pool of soft dust, her curled up in a fetal position, him big-spooning behind her. She’s as tall as he is, and it bugs him that he can’t wrap around her more. It bugs him that he can’t bury his face in the nape of her neck, and instead can only put his helmet to the back of hers. Still, he’s warm, and he thinks that he’s warming her up, too. It’s not that he feels her warmth exactly, but her form blocks some of the cold emanating off the vast emptiness. That’s good enough.
“I don’t want to die,” she says.
“I know.”
“How do you know? Maybe I’m not afraid at all.”
“I know because I know you,” he says.
“You know me? You don’t even know who I am.” Her tone is soft, despite the harsh words.
“Does it matter? Would anything be different if I did?”
“I guess not.” She laughs, and hugs one of his legs with her own.
David considers the possibility that Nurit was thrown out of the airlock before him, that she’s roaming somewhere in the crater, and wonders what his wife will think if she caught him now, his leg between another woman’s thighs. He dismisses it as unlikely. “It’s enough that you’re in my arms, right now.” He squeezes her a bit tighter, as if he can compress every bad emotion out of her like water from a sponge.
“I admit, this is an improvement,” she says. “I trust you, for some reason.”
“That’s because you know me.”
“What? I don’t know anything about you.”
He even loves that little spike of anger, when she thought she was being patronized or ignored. “No, I mean, yeah. Sure—you don’t know who I was, what my story was, what happened before, but it doesn’t matter anyway. You know I’m someone you can trust. You know I can’t hurt you. That’s what you’ll remember.”
“What makes you think I’ll be the one remembering you, and not—you know what? Never mind.”
“Did you sew a patch to your suit?” David says, quickly changing the subject that made her uncomfortable. “I think I felt something on your thigh.”
“You can’t sew into a bag; it’ll leak. I found some tape, and I used it to make a little pocket to keep the rest of the tape. Try not to touch it; I don't know how strong it is,” she says, and something in her tone is clearly off.
David doesn’t know why she’s lying, what she has to hide, but her secrets are hers to keep. They lie in that warm darkness for a while, until the sounds of a distant conversation rise above the background noises of space.
“And how does that help me?” one voice, assertive and suspicious, asks.
“After you lose some of your inside air—both nitrogen and oxygen—the suit won’t be able to replenish the nitrogen supply,” answers a calmer voice.
“Why would why I care about nitrogen? I only need the oxygen to live.”
Rachel shakes David off and lifts her head above the lip of the little crater, to see who’s approaching.
“You’re not wrong, but your suit only has oxygen reserves. After you seal it the life support will try to restore pressure, leaving you to breathe much more oxygen with each breath.”
“And that gets me high?”
“Fuck if I know. Oh, here they are, the sweethearts.” The tone changes to one of pleasant surprise.
The other one keeps silent.
David lifts his head as well and peers out into the open, trying to spot them in the dark. Rachel’s already on her feet. Two men are coming towards them, using metal rods, moving faster than David has ever seen anyone move on the surface. He remembers that Yossi told him their names, yet the sight of the two stampeding towards Rachel is terrifying. She stands steadily, but she seems so small, so alone, and he can’t protect her.
He notes the safe distance they keep from one another. They don’t trust each other, and it makes him not trust them either. They bring themselves to a full stop in front of Rachel and him, the taller one in a fluid, confident motion, and the shorter, stockier one with unnecessary force. His face is frozen in a half-grimace, his green eyes narrowed, as if he suffers from a constant, chronic pain. He stares at the sword at David’s side, and the net Rachel carries in one hand, and his grip around the metal rod tightens. The taller one had darker eyes, set in a long and tranquil face. The way he looks at things makes David feel like he’s taking in every detail in methodical boredom. David isn’t sure which of them worries him more.
He braces himself to break the ice, take control of the situation, when Rachel steps forward, her body tense as she floats past him. She points at the taller one. “You Alex?” Her voice is controlled and commanding. “You look like an Alex.”
He smiles and nods. “Good day, everyone.” He manages to put a great deal of irony into that one little phrase. “And you are?”
“I’m Rachel,” she says. “This is David.”
Alex turns to look at David, and says, as if to a co-worker, “Oh yeah, Yossi told us about you. You’re going to be Pythia, right? Nice to meet all of you. This guy’s Shaul. He’s shy, but give him time.”
David looks at the man. He doesn’t seem shy. The mistrustful eyes look at David, then at Rachel, then at the crater they’ve been lying in, and his expression grows acidic. David didn’t know a silence could be so uncomfortable.
“David,’ Alex says, “if you’re taking the role of Pythia, I could ask you for a confession, right? My friend here had his, but I haven’t.”
“Right now? We don’t have much time…” They are near the airlock, which means that Vempress might be listening in, and they should start making the walk towards Pythia if they want to make it in time to capture her.
“It won’t take long,” Alex says.
They put their helmets together. What’s said, David cannot repeat to any other ears. But it’s fairly quick, even if it isn’t a confession per se.
When they’re done, they begin the trek towards Pythia. Alex teaches Rachel and David how to use the stick to propel themselves, while Shaul stays at a safe distance, his eyes always on them. When they reach the shuttle, Rachel assumes command so naturally it surprises David, and directs David to stand on the shuttle itself.
It’s an eerie thing, large but nearly weightless, with the broken statue above it, two legs with the torso folded behind it, broken, like a shattered symbol of hope. Inside are Vempress and Yossi, both unpredictable in their own ways.
David climbs slowly, making his bootsteps as soft as possible. His heart beats so hard he’s afraid the vibration will pulse through his feet, into the metal. That they’ll feel it, on the inside.
According to their plan, all that David need to do is seem like he’s about to attack Vempress, to draw his attention to her. That will give the others a chance to act. He doesn’t understand why Rachel didn’t take the sword from him. There wasn’t time to explain. There wasn’t time for a lot of things.
She directs Alex and Shaul to hide behind rocks. She places herself in front of the door of the shuttle, holding the net. When they begin their attack, she’ll be in the most immediate danger, counting on the others to distract Vempress.
After a startlingly short wait, a vibration runs up through David’s feet as the shuttle door opens. He tenses. He can’t tell the others, of course, but they’ll soon know. Except Rachel’s looking at Shaul who, despite his orders, is standing tall, nervously peeking over the rock. “Your head is too high, dumbass! She’ll see you!”
David hears a howl of pain. The sound is distorted, the radio waves sneaking through the narrow crack between the door and the opening, but he recognizes Yossi’s voice. The look on Rachel’s face displays a combination of terror and guilt. For a moment, no one moves. Everything is silent but for that dying howl.
The door bursts outward. From above, David sees Vempress holding on and hiding behind it, turning her head, surveying the area with cold precision. Her gaze passes on Alex, Shaul, then David. Terribly slow, everything is so slow, and he watches as Vempress cranes her neck over the door and sees Rachel. David isn’t sure but he thinks he sees a measure of disappointment in the way her lips are pursed, her eyebrows drawn near each other.
David realizes that from Rachel’s angle, it might seem like Vempress kicked the door outside, while staying in the relative safety of the shuttle’s interior. Only when Vempress peeked her head out and spotted Rachel could she understand that she was already late on the attack. She throws the net, hurriedly, clumsily, and Vempress kicks the door right at the center of the net.
The net wraps around the door, just the way they planned for it to wrap around Vempress herself. Her hand closes around the edge of the net as if she planned it all along.
Terrified and furious, Rachel charges forward, the metal rod in her hands.
David feels his gloves tighten around the sword’s handle, but don’t move, as if there are someone else’s hands inside those gloves. He looks to the left. Shaul is still hiding behind the same rock, watching and waiting for the right moment.
David looks to the right, at Alex, who stands there, his mouth open, as if struck by… Beauty? As if he’s enjoying what he’s seeing. He follows each and every one of her movements as if he was watching God manifesting.
Alex, David thinks. Save her, goddammit. Do something. Alex isn’t a coward. He could get in there and fight, perhaps even defeat her. David couldn’t.
Rachel’s eyes are wide with terror. Above her, Vempress pumps her jets, using the net with the door tangled in it like a giant slingshot, twisting it around herself. Rachel’s smart enough not to stop—instead, she runs straight into the open shuttle.
But Vempress catches her, slamming the door down with a fluid motion. The net obstructs his view, but he hears the impact on comm. It takes him a moment to understand that the sound came from inside of Rachel’s helmet, from her own microphone. He listens closely for the sound of air leaking through the background noise of many mouths breathing, and notices a soft whistle. Hers, or Yossi’s?
He looks again at Alex. Painfully slowly, he ties the weapon on his back, and finds the proper handholds on the rocks.
What is he waiting for? Does he want Rachel to die before he acts?
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David tries to look at her again, but the view is still blocked. He turns back to look at Alex, only to find out Alex is already looking at him. He crosses his fingers, using his other hand to cross his fingers, wishing me good luck? then shoots himself up and away against the rock. It takes David a moment to realize that he’s just watched Alex run away, without even a trace of shame or apology on his face.
Vempress barks, that imitation of amusement again. She turns her head to the rest of her targets. She looks directly at David, and for a short, terrifying moment, he knows this is how he’s going to die. To his surprise, even with the sword in his hand, she turns from him to Shaul.
Her non-laughter seems to have shaken Shaul out of his paralysis, and a lust for murder resonates in his movements. He vaults over the rock and charges forward—but Vempress moves faster, controlling her jets with one hand, holding the sword in another. She lands to his side, putting herself at an angle that makes it difficult for him to swing at her. He moves back before she strikes, trying to dodge, but she must have planned for this, and as he steps back the tip of her sword nicks him across the ribs, so precisely that no blood sprays from the cut.
The whistle of escaping oxygen is loud in David’s ears. Under it, just barely, is the sound of a man fighting for breath. Shaul tries to turn and retaliate, swinging the metal rod, but something is pushing him sideways, the cut applying force on him. He takes a few stumbling steps towards Rachel.
The door and the net have sunk to the ground, and David can see the disoriented expression on Rachel’s face. He sees when she starts to remember where she is, looking around her, terrified and then, as she sees Vempress, furious. She gets a grip on her weapon just as Vempress lands in front of her, rotating on one boot-point.
Rachel strikes; Vempress strikes. Rachel misses, her face a savage mask of hate, her limbs flailing, the bar passing just above Vempress’s helmet; Vempress cuts, her body bent and extended like a ballerina’s and the sword outreached, the tip kissing Rachel’s suit open, right above the collar bone. Another whistle of escaping air is added to the chorus.
Vempress looks out into the darkness, at Alex. He’s moving fast, but is not yet out of sight. If she keeps looking long enough, Rachel might have enough time to patch herself up. She said she had tape, didn’t she?
Vempress draws the spear gun from her side—looks down at it and sees that it isn’t loaded. She is still looking out at Alex as she grabs a spear from the side of her life support and loads the gun, but by the time she’s donw her expression has changed. She shrugs and turns to Shaul, who has managed to stagger closer to her, drooling and spitting as he gasps for air, one hand gripping at the nick in his suit.
She points the spear gun at him, but then notices Rachel on the floor, struggling to rip a piece of adhesive tape. For the second time, she turns to look at David. As she does, the sky lights up, casting brown-yellow light down on them. Her eyes are hidden in shadow, but her smile glints. That smile terrifies him more than anything he has ever seen, and he doesn’t know who it is he’s afraid for.
Shaul is almost in striking range from her now. His eyes are bloodshot, his face blue; he sees nothing but her. Doesn’t even notice that he’s stepping on the net.
Vempress pulls it from under his feet in one sharp, decisive motion.
He trips backwards, falling onto his back. She grabs him by the ankle and tosses him at Rachel in a lazy arc.
Rachel has just begun, desperately, to tape the slash shut; she stops to block him with one hand. Vempress swings the net around her, snaring both of them, and pulls it tight.
Shaul and Rachel are bound now, like lovers in a cocoon. David can’t hear the whistling anymore, as if the net has cut them off from all communication, like the shuttle does.
Vempress jets up and lands beside David on the shuttle. Her sword is in her hand, but her grip is slack—she knows she won’t have to use it. “Don’t move.”
His eyes turn to her, then, in tiny increments, his head.
Vempress looks at him with understanding in her icy eyes. No, not understanding. Familiarity. “Drop it.”
Before he has time to consider his actions, his hands let go of the sword. It drops slowly, still within his reach. She extends her own sword until the tip almost slices his forearm, and slaps his sword away. “Now,” she says. “Watch.”
He hears nothing but his own panting, and Vempress exhaling air through her nose in amusement, and another sound he doesn’t fully comprehend, some wet gurgling. He holds his breath.
Shaul is pushing and kicking inside the net, one hand reaching around to his ribs, trying to stop the leakage with no success. Rachel is scrambling to use the roll of tape, to shut her suit so she won’t have to fucking die. David knows her—she’d seal her own suit first, then fix Shaul’s. It’s the logical thing to do. But his violent motions prevent her from using the tape properly.
She screams at Shaul in the thin air, trying to reason with him, to get him to stop moving, explaining, probably, that if he doesn’t, they would both die. For a moment, he does stop—and then his hands are on the tape, his face feral and selfish. David never spoke to the man, but he senses that he’s speaking words that have waited deep inside for a long time. Demanding what he’s entitled to.
Rachel puts an elbow between them and pushes him away. Precious seconds pass while they struggle. It looks like she’s yelling at him again, but he doesn’t listen; he pulls her arm and gropes for the tape. His fingers stick, and so do hers. She still has a free arm, though, the one she used to keep him away, and she reaches for the pocket at her thigh. Maybe there’s another roll of tape in there—but no. She draws something else out. From the way she holds it in her hand, even before it glints in the light, David knows it’s a knife. She tries talking, one last attempt to cooperate, but Shaul keeps pulling and pushing, not listening.
She lifts the thin knife above her head, ready to slice at the tangled tape. Then she hesitates. David sees the exact moment she realizes there’s an easier solution to her problem.
She cries, and cries out, as she brings the weapon down and stabs between his shoulder and neck. She pulls up to stab again but the knife doesn’t come out. The frozen metal sticks in his flesh, and she twists until the weapon comes free in an explosion of blood.
Shaul stops moving, but not because he’s dying—he’s confused, perhaps; doesn’t understand what’s going on. He gets both of his arms up, along with one of hers that is taped to him, blocking her stabbing hand, but she stabs his forearm instead, and pulls the knife out with another spray of blood.
Shaul laughs as he dies. David hears a laughter on comm, though it isn’t Shaul’s. From the corner of his eye, he can see Vempress chuckling, as if echoing Shaul’s emotion. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
Shaul lowers his hands, pulling down Rachel’s arm as well, even as she resists. He reaches for her collarbone and thrusts his fingers into the gash in her suit.
Only then do tears flood David’s eyes, perhaps a kindness performed by his own body to blur the view. He can’t hear them, but he sees the pulling and pushing. Sees a ripping motion.
Rachel stops struggling. That’s it. One moment she struggles and fights, and in the next she doesn’t.
Shaul lets go of Rachel’s body. He moves slowly now, having given up on escaping, on surviving. The tape is stuck to his hands, and with a last effort he rolls up, to look at the sky. Then he stops moving, too.
David lets go of the breath that he’s been holding. Just him and Vempress, now. It’s very quiet.
And he didn’t do a single thing to stop it. He didn’t move, except for a slight movement of his eyes, the loosening of the grip around his weapon. Not a single step forward. Not even the pretense of one.
How he wishes for her to hold a sword to his throat, to kick him in the head, if only so he’ll have an excuse to keep not doing anything. Never in his life has he hated himself as much as he does at this moment. Not for lying to himself, thinking that he could actually take part in a fight to the death; lying to themselves is what people do. No, he’s angry at himself for believing the lies his mind came up with. This was his job, goddammit: to help people see through their own bullshit.
Using every bit of courage left in him, he turns to face Vempress, who’s looking down, as if through the roof of the shuttle. Something happens to her. She doesn’t move, but he still sees it clearly: an ache deep in her stomach she wants to collapse around, to let consume her. She keeps the smile on her face, but only an idiot would take it for anything but a cheap mask. Even now, he finds himself unable to ignore her pain.
Something bubbles in him—something hot and painful, thawing his frozen limbs. Freedom, as he realizes that there really is nothing left to lose, that none of it matters. If this keeps rising, he might actually get the courage to -
“Would you like to go on breathing?” Her words are barely audible, the object of her focus still inside the shuttle. And that’s that. All of the power drains from his body, and he knows that he’ll do nothing. She looks at him, taking full stock of his humiliation, and her smile turns just a bit more real. “Good,” she says. “Then wait here.”
She jets down and throws herself into the hole in the shuttle, and David finds himself waiting for her next command.
#
Estimated oxygen time: ???
In the dark room, lit only by a single visor display, David stopped crying. His eyes still lowered, he laughed bitterly. “Well, that could have gone better.”
I was surprised at the choking cough that escaped my mouth. Was that what my laughter sounded like? Rachel had been right not to trust me; Shaul had been right not to trust me. David trusted me and had somehow survived, but at the cost of everything that he might have enjoyed. Alex… I didn’t know what was going on in his head. I doubted I’d ever see him again, but knowing that he was somewhere out there, walking the hills, brought me the tiniest measure of comfort.
“I’m sorry,” I said finally. A ridiculous apology.
“Me too,” he said, and I didn’t know what the hell he was apologizing for.
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know. But she’ll return.”
“Ok, so what are our chances of making something good out of this?”
He looked away. I hoped he wouldn’t cry again. “Not good. Very not good. We attacked her, and she knows you set it up. She took it… personally. I’m sure she’ll tell you herself.”
“She will, huh? She told you so?” A part of me, one with which I’d become very familiar in the last couple of hours, raised its head and flicked its tongue at the scent of an opportunity to talk my way out of something.
“That’s the impression I got. She made it very clear that she doesn’t want you to go anywhere.”
“I figured as much,” I said and gestured at the metal frame around my neck. “Quite an overkill, if you ask me.”
He looked at me for a second, perhaps wondering why I was still trying to keep an upbeat tone. “If it was just about your escape, sure, but I don’t think that’s it.”
“What is it, then?”
“I think… Well, I think she’s afraid you’ll kill yourself. You’re unpredictable, to her, and for that reason dangerous. She saw you risk your own survival more than once. She probably believes that you’d get out of the airlock without your helmet on, if she didn’t chain you. She probably thinks you’d do it just to spite her.”
Despite myself, I smiled. She wasn’t wrong. “So why did she let you in here?”
He shrugged. “Maybe she expects me to turn you to her point of view, or maybe she expects me to explain to you what happened, so she won’t have to waste time on the details. Maybe she’s doing it out of kindness to me.”
“I find that difficult to believe. So, barring divine intervention, I’m pretty much fucked. But what about you?”
He eyed his boots. “From the way she talks, it seems like she wants to make some changes around here, and she wants me to be a part of them. It’s not like I can escape, or fight her. Might as well stick around and see what’s up. Maybe I could actually help someone—really help someone, this time.”
“You shouldn’t be here.” I groaned, rubbing both cheeks with my one good hand. “You don’t have much time left, and you shouldn’t spend your last hours humoring an old man.”
He coughed nervously. “So, about that…” he said, as if beginning another confession, then stopped.
Despite the numbness and pain, that strange way in which he said it, the guilt in his voice, were enough to tell me what I needed to know. “These aren’t your last hours, are they?” I said. “She’s giving you oxygen.”
He still couldn’t look at me. “I can’t help anyone if I’m dead. And if she listens to me; she knows she has someone to trust…”
“She trusted me.”
He raised his eyes to mine then. For the first time, his tone was accusatory. “Yeah, and who knows how long it’ll take me to fix the damage that did.”
I blinked. When had he grown a spine? Under any other circumstances, I would have been proud of him. “You can’t convince her to give up immortality.”
“Maybe not, but taking her down with force didn’t work either.”
“Because you wouldn’t let me kill her!”
“Would you have? Really?”
“Maybe, maybe not. But Rachel would, for sure.”
He raised an eyebrow. He knew that I knew something about her that he didn’t, and it hurt him. I wanted it to, I realized. I felt so tired, so deflated, and not just because of the blood loss.
David was silent for a moment, and when he finally spoke, there was no anger in his voice. “I didn’t want you to spend your last hours alone in the dark. Not after all that you’ve done. All that you’ve tried to do. I know you hurt us, and that if you had talked to her, like I asked you to, I might still have Rachel. She didn’t want to die. That’s the first thing she told us, that she didn’t want to die. You and I didn’t mind as much, and here we are now, and she’s gone.”
“I didn’t want it to end like this,” I said. “You know that.”
“I’m not sold on the idea of Last Day Town,” he said, a little abruptly. “The names, the ‘roles’. I believe that you’ve seen it in action, but I still have doubts that this place could become something so peaceful, when everyone has to endure such intense stress. But I don’t think that’s the point.”
He turned quiet again, but I didn’t urge him on.
“I think,” he continued, “that the point is that we can’t afford to be alone. We can’t afford to be unkind. Even here. Especially here.”
“And yet you won’t fight.”
He took a deep breath. “I tried your way. Now I’m asking you to trust me and try mine.”
“Seems very convenient, that your way leaves you in a position that doesn’t involve choking to death.”
I’d wanted the words to draw blood, but he seemed more sorry than offended. Saddened that I’d lowered myself so much. “I came here to bring some comfort, to hear you out. These may be your last words; is this what you want them to be?”
“These are your last words, too, whether you choose to admit it or not.”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Listen,” he said. “No one really knows what—”
His suit comm crackled to life. I didn’t understand what was being said, but I recognized the smile in the rasping voice. He waited for her to finish and nodded, then realized that she couldn’t see him nod and said, “Right away.”
He looked at me, and his face twisted. He reached out and grabbed my gloved hand. A soft grip, which I felt through layers of bag. The first time anyone had done that in a while. I expected him to look away, ashamed to leave me alone with her, but he didn’t. He looked at me, without fear or apology. He was just there.
I slapped his hand away with my good hand, but it still hurt, the movement bothering the fresh wound.
He took a shuffling step back, his lips pursed. Without a word, he turned away and climbed into the airlock. He closed the zipper behind him, then fumbled through the layers for the next. I realized that I would probably never see him again. That I might never see anyone again, except for Vempress. I searched for something to say to him, to make him turn back or, if nothing else, to leave another piece of myself with him, but there was nothing to say. The cell was suddenly very cold.