Page 48 of One Adult, Please

Beck pulls two sleeping bags from the supply pile in the corner. He resettles on the bench, which is long enough for him if he bends his knees. Joel takes the floor next to the desk. He doesn't use the sleeping bag at first. Just sits against the wall with his wrench across his lap and his eyes on the porthole.

"You can sleep, Joel," I say. "I'm on watch."

"I know."

"So sleep."

"I'm adjusting."

"To what?"

"To there being more people in the room." He says it like it's a thermostat setting, a pressure reading, a thing that needs calibration before the system can settle.

Beck is already out. One moment his eyes are open and the next they're closed and his breathing has shifted into a slow, steady rhythm.

Joel takes longer. He sits with his eyes open, watching the porthole, watching the cabin, watching nothing and everything with the steady attention of a man who doesn't know how to stop monitoring. Then his eyes close, his breathing changes, his head tips sideways, just slightly, and he's asleep against the wall with his wrench still in his hand because Joel even sleeps like he's on duty.

The thinking box is quiet, the crime boat is still, and the park outside the porthole is dark. Really dark, the kind of dark that doesn't happen in cities because cities have streetlights, traffic, and the ambient glow of ten thousand screens.

My eyes are heavy. They weigh approximately ten thousand pounds each, which isn't a real weight for eyes but my eyes have never consulted medical science before making decisions and they're not going to start now. My body, which has been running on adrenaline, sugar, and the stubborn refusal to stop moving since yesterday afternoon, is finally sending the bill.

I'll just close my eyes for a second. Just to rest them. I intend to open them again in approximately three seconds and resume my watch with the sharp-eyed vigilance of…

I wake up and the thinking box is pale gray with early light and I'm not in the captain's chair.

I'm on the bench, there's a sleeping bag over me that wasn't over me before, and the rain poncho pillow is under my head except it's been folded into an actual pillow shape instead of the crumpled ball and I'm warm. Sleeping-bag warm, the kind of warm that means someone put this over me and tucked the edges and made a decision about my comfort while I was unconscious.

First night. First watch. Eleven minutes, probably. Maybe less. The Glue failed.

I sit up, slowly.

Joel is in the captain's chair. He's not spinning. He's sitting in it facing the porthole with his wrench on the desk and his eyes on the pre-dawn lagoon. He's awake in the way that suggests he's been awake for a long time, possibly the whole night, because Joel's idea of "I'll sleep when you take over" was apparently "I'll sleep never and take your watch too."

Beck is on the floor. He's sitting with his back against the bench frame, knees up, axe across his lap, head tipped back against the cushion. He's awake too. His eyes are half-open, his body is relaxed but his reflexes are still filing their nails and waiting for something to happen.

They watched me fall asleep and instead of waking me up, instead of shaking my shoulder and saying "Grace, you had one job," they just... took my watch.

"Morning," Beck says. His voice is rough. Morning voice.

"You let me sleep."

"You needed it."

"I was on watch."

"You were on watch. Then you were on nap." He tips his head to look at me. Upside down, from his angle. His eyes are warm, tired, and amused. "You snore, by the way."

"I know. My cat told me."

Joel turns the chair. Not spinning. Just a quarter-turn, enough to face me. His eyes are the same as always, steady, measuring, but the bruises under them are darker.

"You should have woken me up," I say.

"You needed to sleep."

"That's not... you can't just decide that."

"I'm infrastructure," he says. "Keeping things running. You're a thing."