The Living Among Us (white x pink)

Chapter 4

"So, if you're a Reactor Scientist then why do you just work the downloads?"
Peony and I were walking to Admin to complete the last task of the day and it was only noon. She was telling me about what she did on the ship- before she had died.
"That's a fair question-" she floated backwards in front of me, her back to the direction we were going so she could look at me while we talked, "see- you can't actually do anything in the Reactor room. On Initiation day they gave me all the codes just in case something goes wrong with the Reactor. Then I know how to shut it down or restart it. But nothing has ever gone wrong and since the Station runs so well it's expected to never go wrong, so Commander Reeves assigned me downloads that way I wouldn't be sitting around all day." She said it in one congruent breath and gasped in harshly when she was done.
I guess that made sense- "Wait a minute you've actually talked to the Commander?"
"Ha! Yeah- scary isn't he? Even scarier than me!" she threw her arms over her head to emphasize her point then turned back around to watch where she was going.
Weirdo.
I sighed and stopped walking in the middle of the hall. After a moment, she noticed, whirled around and cocked her head at me.
I stared intensely at the floor.
"Thinking about the trashes again, garbage boy?" she floated up to me.
"No," my ears turned pink but I didn't look up at her, I'd put it off long enough.
"I wanna hear how you died", I said and frankly I felt guilty for not putting her problems first when she put my tasks over her own death.

She squinted menacingly at me like she was trying to figure out if I was tricking her or something.
"Alright-" she said delicately, "I don't remember".
My head snapped up to see if she was joking, "You don't remember... how you died?"
She grinned at me, "Nope- that's why I needed your help in the first place, if I remembered who killed me I'd just have told you by now. No, everything around the time of my death is all fuzzy. I can't even remember where I was or what I was doing."
'Okay..." I said slowly trying to process what this meant.

"Cause of death is pretty obvious" she gestured to her red-stained torso, "Apparently, someone stabbed me, I just need help figuring out where, why and most importantly who."
"Well that's a piece of cake" I said sarcastically.
"Glad you think so cause you'll be doing most of the work" she replied enthusiastically. I wondered if she had caught on to my sarcasm. We paused in front of the admin door, "I need you to read files, go through my schedule and talk to everyone else on the ship. We have a lot to do to narrow this down."

My hands suddenly got clammy as I realized how much this was going to entail, getting access to files? And actually talking to other people on the ship? I was starting to second guess my decision to help her.

She was continuing to explain something but through my panicking I had ceased to listen,
"And that brings us to our first item of business, while I do the last download for today, you need to convince Phoebe to give you my task list."

I began to panic even more, "Wait- sorry what? Who am I talking to? And why?"

Peony sighed and looked at me like I was the most incompetent person she'd ever met, "Phoebe is the lady with the purple suit, you remember her?'
I shook my head 'no' vigorously.

Peony rolled her eyes, "She works in admin", gesturing to the door in front of us, "she's the one who drops off our task lists every morning"
I guess I'd never really thought about who was in charge of our task schedules, all I knew was they appeared on our doors every morning and I performed them.
"I know that I died seven days ago so all you have to do is ask Phoebe for my schedule from that day and then we can narrow down the location of my death, makes sense?"

"No," I said, "Listen- Peony, I'm no good at talking to people- why can't you just-"
But it was too late, Peony had already flown through the door and it slid open after her.

The room was relatively small compared to those on the rest of the ship, computers lined one wall and a big control table sat in the center, a figure was sitting at it. I stared at her awkwardly from the doorway.
She was older than Peony and I, maybe about in her thirties, she had long dark hair and glasses perched on the bridge of her nose.She sat with her back straight, her lips pulled in a serious thin line. As Peony had mentioned she wore a dark velvety purple spacesuit and was sipping a steamy cup of what I assumed was coffee.
"Ah White Astronaut," she said not even looking up from the papers she was studying, " I was wondering when you would show up for the download."
"Yes.. hello" I said, awkwardly slinking into the room. I walked over to the computer Peony was working on and pretended to do something on it. Peony waved at me angrily to go talk to Phoebe. I shook my head furiously.
"Something wrong with the computer?" Phoebe asked, still not looking up at me.
"Wha-" crap she cant see Peony, I realized, "Uh no, sorry nothings wrong"
Peony snickered, glowering at me when I looked at her.
I wanted to cry.
"I apologize, White, I usually complete this room's download myself but I have been swamped with other tasks as of late" Phoebe said absentmindedly, she didn't sound very sorry at all.

"Uh, it's not a problem, the downloads aren't too bad," I lied and heard Peony chuckle to herself as she worked on the computer.
"Speaking of which, " I continued carefully, "It's weird that someone dropped their tasks all the sudden like this, right?"
Phoebe nodded, "Yes, I thought the same thing. Very odd."
"Do you know anything about what was wrong with them? Like are they sick or something?"
"No, no I haven't been told anything I simply reassigned the schedules to make up for the absence, I'm sure everything will go back to normal soon" she seemed actually not concerned at all but I noticed as she spoke she carefully moved her hand to cover a stack of papers on her desk. Weird.

I nodded and pretended to turn back to work on the computer but I was actually turning back to Peony, pleading with her to not make me talk anymore. All she did was fix me with a stone cold stare and wave her hand towards her torso, attempting to remind me that she had in fact, been murdered. I groaned inwardly, closed my eyes for a moment and turned back to Phoebe who was continuing to sip her coffee and read her papers.

"Oh he-y" my voice cracked awkwardly as I started the sentence. Nice. "I was wondering if I could possibly have the - that persons' uh- old schedules? Like her- his I don't know- old tasks list...?" my voice trailed off, getting quieter and quieter.
Peony facepalmed and mouthed 'real smooth'. My face went pink.
Phoebe raised an eyebrow, "For what reason, might I inquire?"
I cleared my throat, my hands were starting to sweat, "Well, like you said, we don't know what is wrong with the uh- this person. I just wanted to make sure they didn't miss any past tasks... just in case they got sick and missed something, I was just gonna go through their old schedule and make sure nothing was wrong- you know to keep everything running...smoothly"
I glanced at Peony, her eyebrows were raised in surprise.
Phoebe nodded, "Yes I suppose that is a reasonable idea, if this person missed one of their tasks that could possibly be catastrophic" Phoebe shuffled through some paper on her desk and pulled out a thin folder, "Here are the Pink Astronauts task lists from the past week".
I blinked in surprise at how quickly she had found them and the fact that she had actually given them to me.
"Th-thanks" I stuttered as the computer blinked green behind me. Peony had finished the download, she gave me a thumbs up and flew out of the room. Phoebe glanced at the green computer quizzically, "that was fast" she muttered.
"Uh, yeah i'm uh- good at the- good at what I do..?" I nodded another thanks at her and ran out of the room.

Peony was waiting for me on the other side. The door clicked closed behind as she said, "That was actually pretty good, garbage boy, consider me impressed" her arms were folded proudly across her chest.

"Why thank you," I mockingly bowed to her, my ears turning pink as I did so.

Peony brushed off my bow and said "Weird that she already had them out on her desk right? I wonder what that means."
I shrugged, "That she's good at her job?"
Peony bit her lip, "Yeah maybe," but she didn't seem convinced.
"Alright let's take a look at these" I said, pulling the papers from the folder and catching her attention. She watched over my shoulder as I sorted through the papers. After a painful moment I found exactly one week ago, "This is the day right?"
Peony nodded as we both looked down at the paper.
I let out a low whistle, "I guess we found the location of your death" I said as I looked up into her darkened eyes.
There was only one task listed that day and it was in Electrical.