A stowaway, though she bears no semblance to anything besides a carving from mud, sits hunched on a bench. Her soiled fingers rub the underside, kneading through mounds of gum. She pinches a piece. She chews the artifact off her nails.

Lockers slam shut around her and two people stare into those, opened, in front of her. She slips her fingers into their waistbands, tugging twice. Their shoulders relax. They take a breath. The steel creaks as they close the doors and twist the locks with a slowness. She tugs again; her brothers sit down.

Puddles meet them there and goosebumps bristle their skin; silhouettes speak and sing behind the door to their left. The showers they sing under sing with them.

"Thank you for sitting," the steward says, pulling the strap of his visor.

The stowaway grunts. Her brothers say nothing.

"No one can force it on you tomorrow," he tells them, "but everyone showers on their first day aboard."

The stowaway, born from the mud, stares. Her brothers stare too. Cloths and bars of scented fats and oil rest in their laps. The scents swim in the humidity. The steward shifts his weight from one leg to the other; his gear slumps to whichever side the weight is on, too large for him.

"Everybody," he says.

"We'll wait," the stowaway tells him.

"The showers are virtually free. You won't be charged for the first day. We're on a schedule."

She shrugs. He sighs.

"Please just get the mud off your faces at the sink so I can scan you and go. It's been a long day."

"Hm?" She sits up some. Her nails press and dig into the soft of more gum, then she rolls the blobs into a bead. She holds it up as if it were a pearl. The steward shakes his head. She eats; he gags.

"We'll wait," she tells him.

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Steam plumes out of the shower-room from two places. On one side, at the end of a seeming infinity of tiles and pipes, are curtains separating the wetted tiles from halls housing the crew's dormitories. On the other side is the door to the locker room.

Vapor rolls under and upward on each side to the ceiling tiles, and those tiles sweat into a pan. The chrome of the pans leads back to the showers, where the shower floor dips on a decline, collecting wash into clogged drains.

"Finally," the stowaway coos; no one is near her, and no one is in the showers save her and her brothers.

She stands in this pool of brown which crests over her toes. She scoops the water with her hands. The cleansing oils mix and lather, and she wipes herself down in full.

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The gutter-pans brim, dipping into the spiral. She kneels into the rising high-tide.

She drags a finger up her shin, carving a path through the dust and mud, revealing skin. She looks at the panels, bolted beneath showerheads, above drains, and spread around the gutters. The panel reads, "DO NOT DRINK SHOWER OR PAN WATER." Her eyes roll over the words again and again. Cartoons are etched in the metal; the characters suffer a host of agonies ranging from stomach aches to parasites.

But coolness washes over the panel and laps her feet.

"Hella-Bait," she spits out. "All this water is Hella-Bait. I'm thirsty."

"Right." Soap rests on her brother's neck, and he sits beneath his raining showerhead. "Hella, are you listening to us?"

"The parasites," she says. "The water is bait to get us, Roman. Don't drink this water. Even if you're thirsty."

"Alright," he says. "I won't drink, but are you listening?"

She puts a thumb inside the mudded path on her shin and peels. Hairs tear with the mud, reddening the brown of her skin. She scratches off the excess weighing her remaining hairs. The hairs prickle as they rise from the mud—from the flatland of her body.

She stands. She walks to the shower; water sprays, turning the coils of her hair into spouts. "You asked," she says, "what will we do when we get out of the shower?"

"The steward is still out there," he says. "He wants to scan us to make sure we're registered."

"The steward is still out there," she says. "He wants to scan us to make sure we're registered."

She closes her eyes. Beads of water patter her shoulder and back, digging into the overlap of each muscle.

"And now she's repeating everything I say," he mutters. "She's not listening." He holds his washtowel to the left; Oren, their brother, is somewhere in this rising fog. He doesn't reach to assist his brother. He keeps his hands where they are: upon his own washtowel, lathered with lavendered cleansing oil, cleaning between the crevices of his bulk.

"Get my back," Roman says.

"You're not here," Oren tells him. "You're back at the settlement, not stowed away."

Hella stares in his direction. "Oren, don't drink the water."

"You're not here either," he tells her, stepping in front of her from the fog. "Because my sister is smart enough to wait. She's smart enough to follow the plan: to watch me work my way up through the corp's stewardship and then come back with actual power." And from the fog, he steps in front of Roman. "And my brother is smart enough to listen to my sister. My sibling would follow the plan: they wouldn't be stupid enough to stowaway."

The sound of a towel slapping a thigh echoes. More soap and water rivers into the drain, rivering from the small of Roman's back. "I listened to Hella."

"Hella," Oren groans. "It was you and me who made the plan."

"It would take too long," she says. "So Chief Regard and I made another. I did the math on water rations. I did the math on whose supply is getting cut off and when."

She pauses. There are a series of small hopes to account for, so she runs the numbers again, drawing numbers in the water running down the wall with her index-finger—numbers which can't be seen by anyone besides her, and numbers which wash away.

"Our sister works at the capital," Oren says.

Hella finishes her calculations.

"We're lucky for it," she says. "Our settlement has another two years, at maximum, before everyone we know there is dead."