The Loneliness of Distant Beings

Chapter Sixteen

I've never seen the drill hall like this. Never. I guess none of us had actually noticed how many of us there are until now when we're all in here and there are about five or six people for every seat. Briefings are non-obligatory so mostly people don't come, but today, for the mid-orbit update, anyone who can be here is here, and that doesn't even account for all the people who are on shift and haven't been able to get away. There are kids and old people and everything in between and I swear for a while we are all just standing there and looking at each other and thinking how mad it is. I even see my dad and Olivia and the two little boys she has and my dad is carrying one of them, but none of them see me.

This is how much everybody cares; this is how desperate everyone is for something to actually happen to them for once in their life, something that's real, something that has meaning. We were basically born to die, and I guess we were all just pretending to be OK about it up until now.

I haven't seen Dom since the whole thing at the bar because he was working and then I was, but he's right where I arranged to meet him and at first we both talk at the same time and then we stop and then we start again and he says, 'I'm so sorry, estrellita. The other night, all of it, should never have happened.'

I shake my head. 'It was . . . I was so worried about you. I wanted to follow you but Mariana wouldn't let me. She . . . ' I study his face then, the way he bites his lip, wondering if it can be true that he's hiding something from me, and I'm just about to ask him when Ezra edges in behind us and takes hold of my ponytail.

'Hey,' he says, before looking sideways at Dom, then back at me. 'You're up there with me. Mum's orders. First family and all that.'

'I don't . . . I'm not . . . ' I say, but Dom nudges me a little.

'You should go,' he says.

'I want to stay here with you.' Down near my hip I hook his index finger with mine.

'You should do what you need to do, Seren.'

And though we're whispering all of this, the look of horror on Ezra's face when I turn around says it all, and for a while he doesn't move, just stares at Dom; stares at Dom who stares back.

'I know who you are,' says Ezra then, through clamped teeth.

'That makes two of us,' says Dom.

And right then I am so afraid of what could happen next that I say, 'OK, Ezra, let's go,' and though he stays there staring for a second, he grabs my arm suddenly and we're gone, me looking back at Dom watching me getting pulled away.

'Are you ever going to get tired of embarrassing me?' Ezra says, hauling me through the crowd with his fixed smile in place.

'Probably not,' I tell him, matching his grimace with one of my own.

'I mean, what the hell WAS that?'

'You wouldn't understand.'

'What does that mean?'

'Never mind.'

He pulls me up next to him but doesn't look at me. It's only now I notice the way he is sweating a little, shining with it, an actual drip appearing at his hairline and, I mean, it's not hot in the drill hall; it's never hot anywhere on this ship.

'Well, look, whatever it is with that guy, you had better start saying your goodbyes.'

'My goodbyes?' Fear passes over me then, steals down my neck.

'People are about to get some bad news, so Mum wants them to have something good to look forward to, to soften the blow.'

I don't even hear a lot of what happens next because everything is slowly draining around me, the colour, the life, all of it, twisting and melting and falling and sliding down a hole. I look for Dom then; I look for him in the crowd and I can't find him. It seems like there are a million faces and none of them are him. And there's nothing then except Ezra's hand pulling me on to the stage behind Captain Kat and we are following her, following her through a world of noise and chaos to the centre of the stage where she stops and we stop but we are in the wrong place so her two Security guys come back and position us. Jonah is there too.