Beyond the Light

2. The One where I Finally Snap

       

I  didn't know a lot of things. But in those long hours when I sat in the empty astrophysics lab starring up at the sky or in my own room, starring at the wall, I tried to focus on what I did know.
Gret was gone. I had somehow found my way back, but I didn't remember much of that. I was found within close sensor range, uncontrollably shivering and clinging to the empty chair beside mine. The officials of the science outpost had questioned me, but when I had told them what I knew, they had decided I should be put on monitored rest for a few days.

The second questioning went better at first, with them listening intently and ended with me on the floor, shivering and hyperventilating so hard that I was given a mild sedative.
The last time something like that had happened, I was ten and supposed to go on a school excursion to a memorial site for the Second Colonization War.
One of the other students had told me that the spirits of the dead freedom fighters still lurked around and thirsted for vengeance against the colonizing powers and humans in particular. I was excused from that excursion. Gret was, too, after she had threatened to tie the young Zacadien's antennae into a bow when he slept.

The thoughts of my sister made bile rise in my throat, so I swallowed, concentrated on the stars above and on the things I knew as opposed to the terrifying possibilities of where exactly my sister was right now.
I knew they were looking for her. But now, after my little episode at the questioning, nobody told me anything anymore. I was to recover from the shock first. But I doubted I would ever get over what I had seen a few days ago.

The door chimed, telling me that I was about to have company. Maybe one of the Knot's scientists that wanted to actually do his job, gathering data about the edge of the known universe that seemed to stretch endlessly in all directions but this one. But when I looked up, it was my mother that walked in, a cup braced in her hands. The knot of red hair atop her head looked uncharacteristically messy and beneath her grey eyes were dark circles that even the meticulous makeup couldn't fully cover. The dark green of her uniform made her seem even paler than usual.

"I brought you something."

I reached for the offered cup, but before I could take it, the smell of peppermint tea hit my nose and I pulled my hand back as if I'd been burned. She didn't ask and I didn't offer an answer. After a moment she just set the cup down next to one of the consoles.

"How are you?"

I shrugged.

"Fine,I guess."

We both knew that it was a lie, but there was nothing she could do about it except bring Gret back. As if on cue, she straightened her shoulders.

"I actually came to tell you," she began, her voice strangely distant,
"that the latest retrieval mission came back unsuccessful."

After three earlier mission trips with the same result, I came to expect this. It still stung, though. I waited for her to say something more, but she didn't. She just looked at me, gauging my reaction.

"They will shift the search towards the Center. Maybe she went near one of the newer settlements. It seems more promising," she said very carefully.

I had anticipated this; it shouldn't throw me off so much.

"But she isn't there. She went over the Rim."

My voice was steadier than it had any right to be. She flinched.

"I know, dear. That's what you saw. But maybe..."

She didn't finish the sentence. What would she have said? That it was all just one of Gret's elaborate jokes? But we both knew that if it was, I would have been involved. That's just the way things were. Anger bubbled up in me, so fast and strong it surprised me.