White Space

41

 "Wake up, sunshine." Yemon gently nudged the giant sleeping in the second row. He really looked like he'd seen much better days. Or nights. Whatever it was. Yemon knew that the info was barely a tap and a glance away, but he couldn't be bothered to check. His mind was elsewhere.

First, there was the problem of the ease with which they'd left the cavern system. Nothing disturbed their journey. There was nothing around them. Quite literally. After a few minutes of staring at complete blackness, he'd thought maybe they'd forgotten to turn the reconstruction back on, but it was there. There was just nothing to reconstruct. Yemon even went so far as to question whether they'd seen anything in the first place, but even the assumption was too crazy. Of course they had. The school of fish was real. Never mind what they'd experienced in the caves. But then, where were they?

Then there was the creature in the cave. Right after Jaleel had climbed inside in the extremely low temperature of the cave, Yemon kicked aside just enough of the carcass to let him push the sub back into the water. But the thing was, just before doffing his possibly contaminated suit, he'd checked the carcass for signs of life. After its repeated resurrections Yemon felt he had to double-tap, just in case. But there was no need. He could see no movement, no shifting black patterns or goo or whatever, none of that. It was just a melting white slab of meat with some brown liquid oozing from it, but even that wasn't a huge amount like you'd expect from a creature of its size. What gives?

And lastly, there was the issue of the shape. An enormous signal appeared on the radar just when they'd left the caverns. They couldn't see it on the reconstruction as it had probably been directly below them at the time, and when he reoriented the boat to check it out, it vanished. That, he was almost ready to dismiss as some kind of fluke, a glitch in the system. Jaleel was certain it couldn't have been like that, but he had all but passed out by then, so Yemon decided not to take him too seriously.

 His contemplation was cut short by the proximity alarm. They were nearly there. He was supposed to go to sleep too, but his mind couldn't wind down. The darkness didn't help either. Everywhere he looked, he only saw pitch black beyond the transparent canopy. This far above the actual rocky surface of Europa, there was nothing that the reconstruction could show him. It was just the cyclopean ocean, completely devoid of movement, devoid of life. Or so everybody had thought.

 His mind, however, conjured one thing up from time to time, just when he was ready to fall asleep. The familiar orange glow was always out there in the distance, not getting closer, but not disappearing, either. When he'd spot it, it had always been right in the center of his field of vision, like it was moving with his gaze. Which, he knew very well; it was. He remembered worse, darker episodes when the apparition, the burning girl, would come closer. Just like in the caves, where he would see her almost constantly. He didn't even try to shake it anymore. At least that's what he told himself. But who knows? Maybe it was a lie. Maybe he wanted to be punished. Either way, he didn't have time for that now.

 The alarm was not nearly loud enough to wake Jaleel, but a bit of nudging finally got a reaction out of him. Even then, he wasn't fully awake, Yemon could tell. He was extremely groggy at first as he slowly sat up, rubbing the dreams away from his eyes.

 "I'm up." he said.

 "How's the structural integrity?" Yemon peeked back to check for himself as Jaleel wasn't wearing a t-shirt anymore. He took it off during his sleep, while mumbling something about being strangled. His body was full of bruises, but Yemon knew that there could be worse things hiding under the bruised, dark skin.

 "I'm good. I can still wrestle a bear if need be." Jaleel said, pricking one of the bigger greenish bruises on his abs, groaning. Yemon had some trouble understanding why anybody would do that, knowing full well that the only possible result was pain, but to each their own. He'd been seeing a burning child for the past few years, nobody else could see, so he wasn't in any position to judge.