Edge of Nowhere Read online

  Dax slipped into the room, closing the door quietly. Of average height and build, pale, freckled, and red-haired, fairly shy and highly unlikely to start a fight, Dax Strickland was the youngest and least physically imposing member of the team. But Emil had never met anyone more brilliant, and that included the prize-winning, highly paid elite researchers at Facility 17. Dax would eclipse them all some day.

  Emil hadn’t known Dax before hiring them, but even before the interview, Emil had been impressed. Twenty-three-year-old Dax had answered the receptionist’s “Is that Mrs. or Mr. Strickland?” with a cool, unruffled “It’s Doctor Strickland.”

  Dax was imperturbable, which helped them get along with a team full of weirdos subjecting themselves to experiments in space. Emil appreciated their intellect and their easygoing nature, but their most valuable quality was an ability to explain physics to non-physicists without condescension.

  He’d once told Dax they were a goddamn genius, and they’d smiled and said, “Not thinking about sex or romance leaves me lots of brain space to solve problems.”

  Chávez had whooped, clapped them on the shoulder and said, “Dax, did you just accuse our fearless leader of thinking with his dick? That’s amazing, I love you, never change.”

  “And his heart, figuratively.” Dax was always soft-spoken and dry. “And not just him. You, too.” A perfectly timed look at Chávez. “Especially you.”

  Miriam and Lenny had lost it at that, and even Jake had snorted with laughter. Chávez, impervious as she was to mockery, had cracked a grin and said, “You are not wrong, my friend, not wrong.”

  It was one of the best things in Emil’s life, watching his team get along, knowing they could do great things together. He smiled at Dax as they came in and watched them look right at Kit and decide to say nothing. Miriam opened the door with Jake in tow a second later, and he looked even more solemn than usual. Emil gestured for everyone to sit down. Jake took his desk chair and the rest of the team crowded onto his bed. Kit remained standing.

  “A week ago, Dr. Lange blew up his lab. I was over there to remind him to feed Niels Bohr. I heard this strange noise and started pounding on the door to get his attention when the whole thing blew off its hinges and threw me backward. I got hit in the head for my trouble and didn’t manage to get him out. I’m sorry.” Emil said. He glanced at Jake, the only one of them who might feel personal sorrow about this, since he’d had an inscrutable understanding of some kind with Lange. Jake looked down at the floor.

  “I’ve been feeding the cat,” Jake said. Emil nodded. Maybe he hadn’t been friends with Lange after all. Maybe Emil had imagined those few times he’d seen them looking at each other. It would make so much more sense if Jake just liked the cat. That didn’t account for the hesitant rasp in his deep voice, but Jake was pretty damn inscrutable himself. Emil liked him, of course. He was just more complicated than the rest of the team put together.

  “Wait,” Dax said. “Is Lange dead? And if so, what does that mean for the mission?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” Emil said. “What did Heath and Winslow tell you?”

  “You had a ‘family emergency’ and Lange had a ‘minor accident’ in the lab that required him to shut down work for two weeks while Quint Services rebuilt. He decided to take those two weeks to return to Earth to visit his family. The transport that left the facility was carrying both of you.”

  That wasn’t even close to believable. Emil had no idea who Dr. Lange knew back on Earth, but the idea that he would voluntarily take two weeks off from work to socialize was laughable. Heath and Winslow ought to have said he’d shut himself in his quarters to read papers for two weeks.

  “What family?” Jake asked. “His dad’s a piece of shit.”

  So not just the cat, then. Emil glanced at Chávez, who looked keen to learn more about their tightest-lipped teammate. From what little Emil knew of Jake’s life before the Orbit Guard and their time at Quint Services, he was an expert on piece-of-shit dads. Jake had only brought it up once, and it was hard to imagine him sharing anything like that with Dr. Lange.

  “How’d you learn that?” Chávez asked, casual.

  Jake clammed up. Emil could see the tension rise in his shoulders. “Dunno. We talked. Once. Or twice. It was nothing.”

  “Okay,” Emil cut in, rescuing Jake from further questions. “Let me keep going. After the ex-slash-implosion, Heath and Winslow came running into the lab. They dragged me out. I was pretty out of it then, and by the time I woke up, they’d transported me to Franklin Station and put me in a pod. They took me to a Quint Services facility on the surface, questioned me, and then had a runner bring me back. Everyone, this is Kit.”

  Kit frowned, dismayed by the attention, and said “Hi” to no one in particular.

  “That’s Dax, Lenny, Chávez, Miriam, and Jake,” Emil said, hoping to elicit a warmer reaction. “They’re my team.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Chávez offered, smiling. “Again, I mean. With clothes on this time.”

  “I hesitate to ask how you met the first time,” Dax said. “In fact, before you explain, let’s forget I mentioned it.”

  “Right,” Emil said, taking control of the conversation. “Kit was assigned to bring me back here last night. Instead, we were knocked off course and briefly stranded.”

  “Knocked off course by what?” Miriam asked.

  “Stranded where?” Lenny said at the same time.

  Emil glanced at Kit. This was his story to tell. Emil hadn’t even been awake. Kit didn’t look happy at having to address Emil’s team, but he did it. “The thing that hit me was just… it looked like light. It felt solid when it hit me, though. I couldn’t really say how big it was. Bigger than me. I’ve never seen anything like that in the Nowhere and nothing has ever pushed me out where I didn’t want to be. That thing collided with us and knocked us into the ground somewhere we’d never been. A desert. Emil says it was another world. Maybe another reality.”

  His team erupted. He heard shouts of “holy shit” and “what the fuck” and “you went without us” among other wordless yelps and gasps. They quieted down, and Dax said, eyes alight, “What was it like?”

  Emil and Kit looked at each other in silent agreement to leave out some parts of their story. “Strange,” Emil finally said. “And not strange. It took me some time to put together that we weren’t on Earth. There was life, but I didn’t see evidence of sentience.”

  “Can we go back?” Miriam asked.

  “I don’t know,” Emil said. “The trip was taxing for Kit, and we encountered that thing on our way back. We took a detour to Kit’s apartment to avoid it. We were supposed to get here last night. But I think it’s more pressing that we discuss why Heath and Winslow are covering up—however poorly—what happened to Dr. Lange. I don’t like that they kept me from speaking with you until now, and I really don’t like that they lied.”

  “Did they just lie to us or do you think they lied to the executives, too?” Lenny asked. “That might help us figure out what their goal is.”

  “They might be scrambling not to get shut down,” Chávez pointed out. “With no Dr. Lange and no door, it’s not clear how we’d go on the mission.”

  “Heath and Winslow’s treatments?” Emil asked, mostly to get the conversation started. This was what he’d wanted all week, to brainstorm with this particular group of people. They’d get to the answers.

  “You of all people should know they don’t work,” Miriam said.

  “Not true,” Dax said. “Lenny’s trial was a success, and the rest of us—Emil excluded—have found it easier to be in the Nowhere, even if we can’t get there by ourselves. That’s a long way from failure. Given time and funding, Heath and Winslow could get the result Quint Services wants.”

  “There’s been tension between the two projects since the beginning,” Miriam observed.

  “Hard not to have tension with Lange,” Chávez said.

  “I think, from what we know of
Heath and Winslow’s recent behavior and from what we know of them generally, that they’re trying to avoid any trouble that might hinder their own work,” Dax said.

  “You think they want to sweep this under the rug?” Emil asked.

  “Yes. I think they’d like us not to ask any further questions, and they’re hoping to avoid any kind of investigation from corporate,” Dax said. “Best outcome for them is all of Lange’s funding gets funneled into their project.”

  “So they don’t want us to be scared off, thinking Lange got killed—we’re part of their research, after all—but they also don’t want us poking around,” Lenny said.

  “Fuck that,” Miriam said, and Emil heartily agreed.

  Jake spoke up in the silence that followed. “So they’re not going to look into what happened to Lange at all?”

  “I’ll look into it,” Dax promised. They’d worked in Lange’s lab, the single most thankless job at Facility 17.

  “If we’re going to find out what happened to Dr. Lange, that means running our own, unsanctioned investigation. In that case, we need to stay here,” Emil said. He wasn’t surprised that they all seemed to want to stay, but he’d been prepared to say goodbye if anyone didn’t have the stomach for subterfuge. “And we need to be careful.”

  “What about you?” Lenny asked, looking at Kit. “Are you in on the secret plan?”

  Kit looked amused and disdainful at this offer. “Hell no. I’m just here because I’m too hungry to go anywhere else.”

  Instead of being offended, Lenny laughed. “That, my friend, is a problem I can solve. Let’s go to the kitchen.”

  “Wait,” Emil said. “If anyone sees Kit, they’ll wonder why there’s an unauthorized new person wandering around Quint Services’ ultra-secret asteroid facility. And if Heath or Winslow see Kit, they’ll want to examine him. ”

  “Well, he did lead our first mission, accident or not,” Dax said.

  “You might have consented to be science experiments, but I didn’t,” Kit said. Emil’s whole team frowned at him. Their goodwill to strangers only extended so far, and everything about his posture and his tone conveyed scorn. “I’m out of here the minute I can be.”

  “That’s fine,” Emil said. Kit couldn’t explain to Quint Services why he’d been so late with his delivery, not unless he wanted to become part of their investigation. And that meant Kit couldn’t pick up the fee for this job. Emil had kept him from earning money for two days now, in addition to putting him in danger. “Let’s disperse. We’ll coordinate something later. Lenny, if you wouldn’t mind meeting us in the kitchen in fifteen minutes?”

  “Sure,” Lenny said easily. “I wouldn’t foist your cooking on anyone. That’s got to be against some law.”

  “Cruel and unusual punishment,” Chávez agreed. “We’ll never know how Professor Singh, purveyor of cashew delights, raised such a culinary failure.”

  “Those come pre-packaged from the grocery,” Emil said. His father did most of the cooking. And his sister, when she was around. His mother would never look up from her books and remember to eat if his father didn’t remind her. The care packages had three names on the return address, but they were from Zora. It was absurd to send special-occasion sweets as often as she did, but she remembered him as a kid with a sweet tooth and she got a kick out of mailing things to space. Emil wished she could visit, as complicated as that would be. “And I’m not that bad.”

  Jake left the room during this conversation, and Miriam slipped out a few minutes later. Dax remained, watching Kit. They gave him a beseeching look. “I get that you don’t want to be part of this, but would you at least talk to me about breaking through? It might give me insight into Lange’s notes.”

  Kit sighed. “Fine. But I’m not talking until I get to eat something.”

  “Go with Lenny and meet us in the kitchen,” Emil suggested to Dax. The two of them left together.

  That left only Chávez in the room with them, who scratched the back of her head. “You’re not gonna… tell the others, right?”

  “No,” Emil said. “It’s your story to tell or not tell. But Heath might well be hiding something from all of us. The more I think about it, the more concerned I get. Please tell me if you need anything. If you want out, I’ll help you however I can.”

  It surprised him when it was Kit, not Chávez, who spoke next. “Isn’t the fact that she might be hiding things a reason to keep sleeping with her? If she doesn’t trust Chávez yet, she might come around. Maybe she’ll let something slip.”

  Emil had been horrified when Dr. Heath encouraged him to lure Kit into her grasp. Was it irony for Kit to suggest something so similar? And why didn’t Emil feel as scandalized? He sighed and opted to gloss over Kit’s comment. “Clara, this isn’t an area where I can tell you what to do. Just… be careful.”

  Chávez nodded and walked out the door, leaving Kit and Emil alone.

  “It’s late, so there shouldn’t be many people up,” Emil said. “Follow me.”

  7

  Look Out for Each Other

  This whole damn place made him uneasy. Kit could have named a dozen reasons: the awkward arrival, the scientists eager to examine him, the tight-knit group of strangers he’d managed to offend, the attractive man who wouldn’t even look at him… but it was the Nowhere that troubled him. Not just those things, whatever they were, but something about the void itself. No matter where he was, Kit could feel the Nowhere, and it felt the same everywhere—except here.

  He had a stupid urge to tell Emil that something was wrong, but he didn’t think he could explain it.

  So he kept quiet and followed Emil out the door.

  Kit had a good memory for maps. He wasn’t sure if it was a cause or an effect of being a runner. Either way, he remembered the hand-drawn map and he knew Emil’s room was on the right side of the first floor, near the end of the asteroid that Emil had drawn at the top. The kitchen had been at the bottom of the map. Because there was only one hallway that wrapped all the way around, they could go left or right and still end up at the kitchen, but going left would be shorter. They’d pass the gym, the basketball court, and the common room on their way.

  But when Emil peeked out the door, there were people to the left. So they went right, which took them past a lab space in the center of the facility. Kit didn’t need a tour guide to know that it was the site of the accident. It had once had windows looking out into the hallway, but the glass had been replaced by brown paper.

  And it felt wrong.

  Kit hurried past the lab, around the end of the hexagonal loop of hallway. There was a storage room and more lab space on the right, followed by the massive greenhouse.

  They heard voices coming from down the hall. It was the same group of people Emil had tried to avoid earlier. They must have cut through one of the central rooms and come out the other side.

  Kit recognized one of the voices as Dr. Heath. The other belonged to an older man. The other scientist everyone kept mentioning?

  It didn’t matter. Emil grabbed him and pulled him into a closet before anyone could see.

  Emil pulled him into the small space so quickly that they rattled one of the metal shelves. It was too dark to see, but Kit heard… ceramics? Oh, they were next to the greenhouse. This must be a supply closet full of gardening tools. He sniffed—that was definitely the scent of potting soil.

  They stayed near the door, listening. Kit could feel space behind them, a corridor between shelves on either side, so he knew it wasn’t necessary for them to be squeezed together. If he were feeling spiteful, he’d point that out. But he wasn’t. He felt hungry, tired, confused, afraid, and tense, and having Emil next to him made him feel a little less of all that, which he liked. And if he said anything about it, it would end.

  As a rule, Kit didn’t like talking about these things. Especially not since his last talk with Emil had gone so badly. So for now, he was happy to pretend that circumstances had forced this closeness upon them and t
here was nothing to be done about it. So, apparently, was Emil. This moment of contact in the dark—his back to Emil’s chest, where Emil’s heart beat just a little faster than it should—was all they could have without talking about it. Was it wrong to enjoy it? Kit didn’t care. He wasn’t getting paid for this shit job, so he might as well get what he could.

  It wasn’t a crime to think about how their bodies fit together, or how big and warm and solid Emil felt behind him. It wasn’t wrong to take pleasure in the way Emil had gripped him and pulled him in here like he weighed nothing, or in the way that, even now, Emil had one hand on Kit’s hip and the other on his shoulder. Had Emil thought about where he’d put his hands? Had it been conscious? Or was it instinct? The touch was light, but ready. Ready for what, Kit didn’t know. To pull or push him out of the way of danger, probably, or to hold him still and keep him quiet if someone came close to the door. Rationally, Kit knew that was what Emil was preparing for, but his brain suggested all sorts of other possibilities. Emil could pull him closer, lean down, and drag his teeth and tongue along the side of Kit’s neck. He could let his hand wander down from Kit’s hip…

  They were both angled toward the door, listening, but Kit hadn’t heard a word. Dr. Heath and that other scientist could be out there talking about how they wanted to vivisect him for all he knew. They were in danger. He really ought to pay attention.

  Dr. Heath and her companion were still chatting out in the hallway. Kit heard a third voice in the mix. Another man. That one sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place it. Not any of the people he’d met in Emil’s room today. And he didn’t know anyone else up here, so how could he recognize the voice? Hunger was making him hear things.

  Dr. Heath and the older man were saying their goodbyes to this new person, wishing him a good night’s sleep and telling him they’d see him tomorrow. He said a few pleasantries of his own, and then at last, Kit heard their footsteps moving down the hall back toward the quarters where everyone slept.