Titans

[53] Atara

April 6th, 2122 [22:15]
Location: The Hermes Starship, Unknown

There is silence when I finish speaking, filling in the final gaps in their memories. Nothing moves. Nothing changes. Both within and without the ship, the universe is stagnant.

Then Lilith stands up, nearly tripping over in her haste to back away from me. Her mouth is open and I can almost see the thousands of angry, cutting remarks that cross her mind. But for the first time, she doesn't say a single one.

Instead it's Merc who finds his voice first, his eyes brimming with the weight of all this newly unearthed knowledge. If I look hard enough however, I can recognise the twinge of sympathy, the deeper understanding etched subtly onto his features. When he says my name, it sounds like forgiveness. He breathes, "Atara," and I hear, I'm with you.

Then Cal says, "We're still trapped in the portal." It's a general statement, but I know it's directed at me. So far he's the only one to have caught on - to have understood the true depths of what I've told them and what they've witnessed. He gives me a pointed look, and I know for sure: it isn't a statement. It's a test.

I look inside myself, feel the places where I'm holding on, where I'm dragging the cover of darkness as protection and work them loose. It's clear now why Cal had no good explanation for why we were stuck in the space-time rift. It wasn't a naturally occurring phenomenon - it was deliberate. It was engineered. And I was the unwitting cause.

"Have no fear," Lilith mocks, "Atara Brown is here."

And with a subtle whoosh, the curtain of darkness is swept away, revealing a hoard of stars - trillions and trillions of them, burning blue and red, orange and white. Constellations and nebulas and distant galaxies. And they're at once deeply familiar. I can locate star-systems with my eyes, spot and name all the rings of the Milky Way. We'd spent so long in darkness that I'd almost forgotten what a starry sky looked like. And it blows my breath away.

Merc looks at me. "What are these powers of yours, Atara, and where did they come from?" His voice is light, curious, full of awe. But I don't have an answer for him.

"What does it matter?" Lilith says, her anger momentarily eclipsed by wonder and excitement. "We're going home."

There's a pause. "We're going home," Cal parrots, only with less vigour. There's quiet as the implications of the statement settles on us, as the full weight of those three words presses down.

We're going home. Home to a USO facility lead by a dangerous and corrupt Commander. Home to a planet where we're no doubt wanted for the theft of USO property, the endangerment and successful sabotage of a billion-dollar intergalactic operation, and a dozen other - both invented and real - crimes. If we don't get the death sentence, we'll be interrogated and trialled and locked away for life.

And then there's still the issue of what we left Earth illegally to do - the mission we never completed. Who will complete it now? Commander Garen's crooked replacement team? I loathe to think what might become of the world in their dishonourable hands.

"We can't tell them what happened," Cal says, and the weight presses down harder, crushing our futures into dust like the slam of a gavel. "They'd never believe it."

"Or worse," Merc interjects, "they do, and Atara becomes a science experiment, a lab rat, a-"

"Right here, Merc."

Lilith, who's been abnormally silent, mutters, "Maybe she deserves it."

I shoot her a look but her eyes don't carry the heat I'm used to. In its place I find a fragile sympathy and a growing concern, like she knows something we don't. She seems to be trying to signal something with her gaze but its undecipherable. Meanwhile, the echoes of her words hang in the air, drawing us back into our recently-returned memories. I see a flash of all the crimes I committed against them while under the influence of the strange, alien powers ever-churning within me. I try not to dwell too much on what everyone else sees. Just the thought of it is enough to strike self-loathing deep within my heart.