Page 6 of Tethered

Miraculously, she pauses, tilts her head towards me but doesn’t look back.

I don’t bother trying to convince her again. It’s clear that she doesn’t believe me, but—and I don’t know why—I get the sense that it’s not hopeless. I’ll try again later. For now, there’s only one thing I need to know.

“Can you at least tell me he’s okay?”

She does glance at me then, an appraising look. It’s brief but I feel scoured raw when it’s done.

“He’s safe,” she says impassively. Her words are heavy with the unsaid. He’s safe...from you.

I wait until the door closes before my legs give out and I sink to the floor. My whole body throbs but hearing that has at least loosened one of the knots in my spine. What I’m feeling isn’t relief, not quite, but it’s oddly reassuring that she won’t let anyone near Harvey, even if it’s me.

Falling back onto the soft rug, I look up at the overhead and mull over the interaction.

I’m inspace. If I let myself dwell on it, I’ll fall into panic. Even now, my breathing speeds up and my muscles tense. But I think about Vee, how much he used to love the adrenaline rush of soaring high on the swings, and I centre myself. Mostly, I think I’m just too exhausted to spiral. I sit on my fear for another time.

It doesn’t look like I’m getting out of this cabin anytime soon. But the captain—and that’s an assumption—can’t keep me in here the whole journey, not if she doesn’t want a crazy person on her hands by the time we land on Mars. I have no idea how long this journey will take.

Maybe if another crew member comes by, I can persuade them to let me out.

Mostly, I just need to know who the captain is. If she’s a decent person, I might be able to convince her. There must be some kind of emergency vessel I could use to get Vee home.

The thought of relying on someone else’s compassion makes me shudder. Maybe if I’m approachable and honest with the captain, she’ll be open to listening. I don’t know what Dominik has told her, the crew. She seems unfriendly but I expect this is how anyone would treat an apparent stowaway. I just have to convince her of the truth. And, coincidentally, all I have is time.

My eyelids start to feel heavy. By now, my body is nothing but a tenderised meat sack. But the painkillers are finally kicking in and aches are starting to settle. I still feel unsafe, but I’ll need sleep if I’m going to function properly.

I let my eyes close.

Sweet Gaia

I’m prepared for the ache in my bones. What I’m not prepared for is the face hovering over mine. The shriek that rips through the cabin forces it to pull back.

The captain. It’s just the captain.

Flopping back onto the rug, I press a hand to my haywire heart. “For all that is cosmic,” I hiss.

“I called out three times,” she says, her voice softer, maybe even slightly apologetic.

I turn my head to the side, where I end up staring at her boots. They’re immaculately kept, straight-laced, symmetrical, and polished to a shine. I need a few more moments to gather myself before I can even think about getting up. The exhaustionfeels bone-deep and even after that nap, I’m groggy. Still, I have questions.

“Are you the captain?”

“Yes.”

“And your name is...”

“Tanisira.”

She says it liketuh-niss-urah.That piques my interest, and I finally force myself into a sitting position, suppressing a series of winces as I do. The name is Suryavan, traditional and rolls off her tongue beautifully. Her accent is negligible in speech, though I can now attribute the melodious lilt of her words to Surya-Vaani. I hadn’t taken note of her features before, but I do now, searching for the colony in her appearance.

Her skin is the shade of copper; not because of the red soil, as some people believe, but as a result of generations of intermingling. Racial divides are a thing of the past in the colony, but Tellurians are somehow still hung up on them—proving that, soon, racism will be older than the name of our planet itself. Renaming the Earth was supposed to usher in a new era; as the Mars colony was being established, as the globe turned away from environmental damage, as society made an effort to do better.

My own dark skin still occasionally invites discussion from older generations, even in Neo-London, a city that has always been a melting pot. When the Thames flooded and the capital was moved further north, the diversity came with it. But with society’s advanced healthcare, life expectancy is longer. Those grouchy fuckers still have voices, but we might shed our bigots yet.

It would be difficult to peg a Suryavan by their features alone but the one thing a lot of their people have in common is epicanthic folds. And Tanisira’s almond-shaped eyes do have these folds, as well as veins of olive green that streak throughamber and stand out against her skin. It’s an uncommon enough combination to draw attention, and it’s ridiculously pretty. Each of her earlobes is threaded with a tiny hoop, the metal shimmering iridescently in the light with hues of deep red and purple. It’s unlike any material I’ve ever seen before. It could be Martian.

She must realise what I’m thinking because her mouth softens, infinitesimally, in one corner. It makes her broad face look a little less harsh, even with the fierce slash through her left eyebrow. In any other circumstance, it might have mellowed my opinion of her.

“You recognise the name?” she asks, giving me a quick once over.