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And then the lights went off around us.
Elle let loose a cry of surprise—and I had her out of the ship before she could finish it. She teetered as I set her down outside, and she gave a short laugh. “That must be how Lois Lane feels.”
I sorted through her mind rather than asking her who, and only wound up more confused. Elle shook her head at me. “Don’t worry about it—I’ll explain it to you some other time.” She was looking back at the ship—all of its external lights had gone off as well, and the stairs we’d entered by were retracting.
“Maybe it’s in power-saving mode?” she guessed, and it was yet another thing I didn’t understand.
chapter 32
ELLE
“Let me go and get your bag for you,” Ceph said, leaving me alone outside the spaceship.
I still couldn’t believe I’d been inside of one. It’d looked so different from all the spaceships I’d ever seen, but why shouldn’t it be? All of those were made up, of course, and created for things like human hands, human sizes, and gravity.
Whereas the room I’d just been in, down could’ve been up. There was nothing helpful to orient us inside of it, not even a viewscreen. But come to think of it, why should it have any? Those were just there as narrative devices in TV shows—maybe the aliens didn’t have eyes?
Who the fuck knew!
And . . . where were they?
Had they come out of the ship eons ago?
Or were they frozen somewhere safe inside of it, waiting for an intrepid explorer and her trusty kraken?
“Here you go,” Ceph said, returning into the beam of my suit’s lights, holding the bag out. “I already put all of your things in it—and the rest of the gifts I made you. I realize you do not want them now, but I did not just want to leave them lying on the sea floor.”
“Oh,” I said. I hadn’t realized there were more stages to his courting ritual. “Thanks.”
“Shall we go back?” he said, gesturing me forward.
“Please.”
I felt his mind in mine, hovering closer than he was, present but quiet for our entire return, until we were close.
“Are you safe in there, Elle?” he asked me.
“I don’t really know.” I turned toward him. “I mean, they leave me alone, but?—”
Marcus and Donna had to have known that the others died. Hell, they’d put me up in Haberman’s old room—he was a little older than me, with long blond hair he wore in a ponytail.
“Will you be able to pretend with them that you do not know the things you now do?”
“I guess I’ll have to.” It wouldn’t do me any good to come at them about it, and I still needed them on my side—I couldn’t operate my suit by myself.
When I arrived in the dock room, Donna made a lettuce joke, but didn’t try to look in my bag. She helped me out of my suit, and then followed me down the short hall. “Will we be seeing you at dinner tonight?” she asked me, with a smile.
“Elle,” Cepharius warned, sensing the words that were going to come out of my mouth.
“Were you not going to tell me that everyone else on this mission has died?”
Donna groaned. “Oh, fuck.”
“Did you know?”
She held up both her hands. “They were here for awhile, and then they weren’t. We didn’t know what happened. They just didn’t come back. But that’s why we figured Mr. Marlow gave you the kraken. And look, you’re still alive, right?” She made a face. “Did you...find them?”
“If she did, she couldn’t tell you,” Marcus said, appearing behind her in the hall. “It’s classified.”
