Chapter 8

They make record time.

Well, any amount of time getting to Proxima Centauri B would have been a record, since they're the first. But you know what I mean. With Reid and McQueary working together, they're over halfway there in about three weeks. It takes a lot out of both of them, of course, so they can only make a jump every few days. But in between, they get to rest a lot, and Yang brings them coffee and tells them stories and they all watch movies late into the artificial nights. Even the hologram. McQueary always makes sure to include the hologram.

I wish I could say that McQueary is getting less jumpy now that they're moving faster, but she seems more agitated than ever. I wish I knew what was wrong with her.

I think I want her to feel better. I think I want her to be happy. That's not weird, is it? I've been watching her long enough. Makes sense that I've gotten a little invested.

***

Sometimes, when she was feeling particularly out of her mind with post-training exhaustion or unresolved tension or biophilic deprivation anxiety, which she'd taken to calling by the much snappier name of The Deep Space Blues, Cleo fell into daydreams about how each of her friends would respond if she told them she had a whatever-she-had on Billie. She'd never had a crush to tell them about. Her longing tended to take other forms.

Abe, she imagined, would stare open-mouthed at her for a full six to eight seconds. Well, uh, that's. Thank you for telling me, he would stutter, rubbing the back of his neck and nervously smiling at a point just over Cleo's left ear. I mean, I guess I can see how you would—'cause you guys are always, you know—but, like. And Abe would take a deep breath, cringe with every muscle in his body, and look directly at her. Isn't Billie kind of... made of light?

And Cleo would say, Yes, Abe, you're right, and I'm made of dumbass. Crush discontinued, thank you for your insight.

But then Abe would get that twinkle in his eye that he got when he was thinking about Kaleisha. I don't know, buddy. You really like her?

I think so.

Then you gotta go for it, right?

Okay, forget Abe.

Kaleisha would sigh and do her absolute best not to laugh at her, for which Cleo would be grateful even though she would know she deserved it. What's the plan, babe? she would say, closing whatever book she was reading. How exactly are you going to be in a relationship with a hologram? I don't see that being enough for you.

And Cleo would say, You're so right, Kal, thank you for your wisdom. I'll stop fantasizing about climbing Billie like a beautiful, grumpy tree right away, because that's all it is: a fantasy.

But then Kaleisha would say, with that little smile she usually reserved for talking about Abe, That's not what I asked, babe. It's not just about wanting to jump her bones, right? She makes you happy.

Hey hey hey, you just said—

I know what I said. And Kaleisha would take a matter-of-fact sip of her coffee and say, Love should feel like sharing your whole heart with someone, not tearing it in half. Only you can decide which one this is.

So Kaleisha was off the table too.

(Once or twice, late in the night—"night," that is, there was no night in the space between stars—Cleo drew her dad's NASA jacket tighter around herself and imagined Neil. Faceless, dead Neil, who she couldn't help but picture as having dark, curly hair like hers, either because of a dim childhood memory of photos on the news or because of a vain, stupid hope that Billie had a type, and Cleo was it.

I feel like I'm not allowed, she would say.

Of course you are, he'd say, because by all accounts he was a nice guy. Just take care of her, okay?

I don't know how, Cleo would say, to herself or to Neil or to the empty space around her. I don't know why she'd ever let me—)

Ros. Well. Ros was a little harder to talk to these days. But if they were feeling up to it, they would probably say something like I don't know, Cleo. If anyone can figure out how to make it work with a hologram, it's probably you.

And Cleo would say, Thanks for your faith in my, uh, software engineering skills, but I think I must have missed the How to Make Love to Your Computer Girlfriend unit in Heuristic Programming.

And Ros would say, Listen, not that I'm not thrilled to be asked my aroace opinion on this very pressing issue, but some of us are a little too busy being slowly consumed by our extra-dimensional ice powers to really sink our teeth into a problem like this—

And Cleo would say, Come on, you know I didn't—

"Clo?"

Kaleisha was standing at the foot of Cleo's bunk, Abe hovering nervously behind her. Cleo sat up in her bed and put on her best "What, no, I wasn't just arguing with you in my head" face. "Hi, hey. Hello."

"Hi." Kaleisha's hand twitched at her side, and she thrust it into the pocket of her Providence-issue trousers. "Are you busy?"

"I had a pretty full night of just lying here and staring up at the ceiling planned, but I think I can squeeze you in."

The corner of Abe's mouth twitched, but he didn't smile. Cleo wasn't sure she'd ever seen him go so long without smiling, and it had only been a minute. "It's Ros," he said. "I'm worried about them."

"Oh man, okay, what—"

"They're in the bio lab," Kaleisha said. "You should come see for yourself."

"Um." Dread settled heavy in Cleo's chest. "You got it. Lead the way."

***

The bio lab was a carefully organized disaster—beakers and bottles crowded on every surface, rows and rows of petri dishes arrayed in various states of incubation, concentric circles of test tubes spiraling around the centrifuge. Cleo had seen Ros in the throes of an obsessive project enough times to immediately recognize the signs. Usually, though, they told the other three about it before they got this deep, so Abe could bring them late-night cookies and Kaleisha could convince them to go to sleep occasionally and Cleo could be a sounding board for all their cluttered ideas.

But Ros had kept this from them all, as evidenced by the way they jumped and spun around when the elevator dinged open, arms spread like they could hide the entire lab behind them.

"What are you guys doing here?" they asked, eyes bloodshot and betrayed.

Kaleisha took a tiny breath and held it. "What do you think, love? How long did you think you could go without telling us anything?"

Ros's eyes flicked to Abe, whose shoulders folded in on themselves even as he maintained eye contact. "I saw you on the cams, Ros," he said.

"So you spied on me."

"No, not really, we've just been so—"

"So this is why you've been sleeping all hours of the day, I guess?" Cleo interrupted Abe, taking a step deeper into the lab and looking around. "Are you going to tell us what you've been working on?"

Ros watched Cleo out of the corner of their eye as she bent down to peer at a rack of test tubes. "You wouldn't understand."

Kaleisha shot a warning look at Cleo, but Cleo straightened up to look Ros in the eye anyway. She thought of Billie. She thought of how many times Billie had simply given her permission to tell the truth, and so she had. "Try me."

Ros's nostrils flared. For a long moment, Cleo thought they were going to refuse, kick them all out of the lab, and never talk to them again. But then they turned to rustle through a cabinet. And from it, they pulled a neatly folded crew member's jacket. It was almost the same as any other, as the ones they'd all been wearing themselves for weeks. But Cleo would have recognized that one anywhere.

"Halvorsen's jacket," she said grimly. "Ros, do I even want to—"

"I've almost replicated the compound in the lining that neutralizes the effects of dark energy." Ros squared their jaw, fixing them all with their ready-to-fight look, which Cleo would have found endearing under any other circumstance.

"Ros." Abe stepped forward, ready to—well, Cleo didn't know what, but she guessed that he was full of the same feeling that Ros was about to fall, and that one of them had to be close enough to catch them when they did. "You can't."

"Yes, I can." Ros's nostrils flared again. Cleo winced, bracing for a spray of ice shards, and hated herself for it. "I knew you wouldn't understand."

"We don't have to be doctors to understand that injecting yourself with some kind of untested dark matter medicine is a bad idea." Kaleisha's voice was getting louder than she usually let it. "You gotta at least check that you got it right with Billie, whose head I seem to remember you almost biting off, by the way, when you found out that she tried to slip this jacket to her brother—"

"Billie's not a medical doctor either. And that was different—"

"You don't even know if it'll work!" Cleo felt like pulling her hair out, and realized she already was. She loosened her fist from her scalp. "The lining was supposed to prevent the dark energy from affecting Elijah, and now that you've already been affected you have no idea what it'll—"

"You think I haven't accounted for that?" Ros's breath came in short bursts, like they were wounded. "You think I haven't taken every precaution—"

"Every precaution except telling us!" Kaleisha shouted. "Every precaution except letting us know what you were feeling, or letting us help you, or letting us at least be there to drag your unconscious body to the med bay when you go into convulsions!"

"I knew you'd react this way." Ros's eyes brimmed with furious tears. Their fingers tightened, white-knuckled, around the jacket, and Cleo could have sworn the temperature dropped a few degrees. "I'm going to do it whether you approve or not. I can't wait anymore. I need to cure myself."

"Ros." Abe curled a hand around their shoulder. Ros flinched. Cleo saw Abe's heart break a little. "It's not about—you're not sick, you don't need a cure, you just need to come back to training and—"

Ros shrugged him off. "Easy for you to say, when you don't have to deal with any of this—and you, Kal, with your phenomenal cosmic powers, and Cleo gets to see the future. You don't get it, any of you, you can't, because you can do amazing things, and all I can do is lose my mind and nearly kill us all."

Cleo reached a hand toward Ros, as if it could make any difference. "Buddy, I—"

"Stop." One of the tears finally fell from Ros's eye onto the jacket, where it fractured into ice crystals. "Don't make me lose control and hurt you. Don't you dare."

And they shoved the freezing jacket into Cleo's hands, and her vision went black.

***

ARCHIVED: Notes on the Conterminous Dimension, 06/15/41 by Dr. Kristoff Halvorsen

***

It took longer than usual for the darkness to loosen its grip on her. Almost like she was wimping someplace farther or deeper or more forbidden. Almost like she had to swim through more layers of the universe.

Eventually, Cleo opened her eyes. She was in a small, empty room flooded with flat, golden light. Empty, that is, except for the chair next to the window, and the young man with blond hair sitting in it.

He turned to look at Cleo—no, through Cleo. Because she was wimping, and he couldn't see her, because she wasn't there.

"What are you doing here?" he said. His voice was clever and kind, and his eyes were a bright, familiar green.

Cleo twisted around to look for whoever he must have been speaking to. There was nobody there. Just a closed door.

"I'm talking to you."

She whirled back around to face the man. "You can see me?"

He inclined his head curiously, and his eyes narrowed in thought. "Should I not be able to?"

"No. Usually this is a one-way-mirror deal." The eyes. The searching expression. "Are you Elijah?"

The man frowned, like he had to think about it. "I think so." Then his frown lifted, and he beamed at her. "No, you're right, I am. Thanks for reminding me. It can be easy to forget, and it's been so long since—I haven't spoken to—"

He glanced toward the door, like he had suddenly remembered that he'd lost something.

Okay, what?

Cleo stepped closer, trying to gauge exactly how old he was, when in his life this might have been, and whether Billie would have told her if Elijah had ever had some kind of amnesia situation going on. Or a psychic connection to the fucking multiverse situation.

"What do you mean, Elijah?"

"I mean, I think it's been a long time. Time works differently here." Elijah blinked at her, whatever he'd lost behind the door forgotten again. "Do you know how long we've been gone?"

Cleo's heartbeat kicked into overdrive. "Who's ‘we'?"

Elijah also had the same you're an idiot, McQueary face as his sister. "The crew of Providence I, of course. You guys have noticed we're gone, right?"

No.

What?

No way.

Cleo blinked, trying not to betray how much she felt like she'd been blown apart into particles and poorly reassembled. Her insides were scrambled. It was like jumping to sub-lightspeed all over again.

Breathe through it, McQueary.

"You mean..." Her mouth was so, so dry. "You mean you're all—"

"We're all here, yeah." Elijah glanced distractedly out the window, then toward the door again. "The others are around, somewhere. I have to find—"

The others. If Cleo let herself contemplate the full implications of that, she was not going to be able to stay on her feet. "Elijah," she said slowly, urgently, "where's here?"

He fixed his eyes on her again. "It's hard to explain."

"Can you try?"

Elijah chewed the inside of his cheek. "You found me. So you already know, even if you don't realize."

Cleo breathed in. Breathed out.

Billie, in the med bay: Dark matter exists somewhere else. A conterminous dimension that occupies the same fourth-dimensional manifold as our own.

In, out.

Ros, in the eye of the storm, looking through her at something only they could see. They're angry. And tired, and hurting. The others are safe. But they're still angry.

In—

Halvorsen, facing that chorus of voices from everywhere and nowhere, voices like thunder and hurricanes and the rush of dark matter past her ears—

WE CANNOT ALLOW YOU TO CONTINUE.

"This is the Other Place," Cleo exhaled. "And it—it took you. It took all of you."

Elijah nodded slowly, like he was trying not to disturb something. "They had their reasons," he whispered. "But—"

And then Cleo was struck by lightning.

That's what it felt like, anyway, as her vision crackled apart into painful white shards, as her whole body fizzed like a radio tower in an electrical storm, as she felt her mind being squeezed in the fist of something big and angry and broken—

And she thought she might have been back in the lab, and Ros was standing over her mouthing something terrified that she couldn't hear over the tempest in her head—

And she might have been back with Elijah, who was scrambling from his chair to reach out to her—

And she might have been somewhere else, where the air was cold and glistening with all the colors of the rainbow, and a deep, discordant voice was growling in her ear:

Good. You're on your way.

And then Cleo gasped back to the golden room. She was on her hands and knees, and Elijah was indeed kneeling by her side, his panic making him look even younger than he was. When he tried to touch her face, his hand phased through her.

"Come find us, Cleo." His voice echoed softly in her head, in her chest, everywhere. "I think you're the only one who can."

***

Ros was already in full doctor mode when Cleo crashed back to awareness on the floor of the bio lab.

"Oh, thank God," they said when they saw her eyes fly open. "Can you hear me?" Cleo nodded, blinking hard. "You collapsed during your wimp and went into convulsions. Your nose—" Cleo automatically reached up to touch her face. Her fingers came away covered in blood. Ros ran a hand over their mouth and gestured to Abe and Kaleisha, who were also leaning worriedly over Cleo. "Help me get her to the med bay. It could have been a seizure, and I need to rule out an aneurysm—"

"It's not any of that." Cleo sat up, surprising Ros enough to knock their fluttering hands off of her chest. Everything hurt. She didn't care. "I need to talk to Billie. Right now."

Ros made tense eye contact with Kaleisha. "Cleo, what you need is to—"

"Trust me." Cleo gripped Ros's shoulder hard, shocking them into silence. "I'll meet you in the med bay afterward. Just—just don't make any major decisions without me, okay?"

A frown creased Ros's forehead. They let out a trembling breath, and nodded. "Promise."

And Cleo trusted them with every particle in her body, even if that made her a fool.

She let Abe and Kaleisha pull her to her feet and staggered into the elevator. As the door dinged shut, she leaned against the wall to stay upright. She wiped at her nose, and blood smeared darkly all along the sleeve of the uniform she was wearing. She made sure not to get any on Elijah's jacket, clutched safely in her other arm.

The elevator deposited her on the flight deck, and Cleo gripped the back of the captain's chair for support before calling out.

"Billie."

Pop. "Hey, what's—"

Billie froze at what must have been the deeply upsetting sight of Cleo's bloody, sweat-drenched face.

"What in the hell, McQueary? Are you—"

"I'm fine." Billie's mouth flattened into a skeptical line. Cleo made herself hold Billie's gaze, suddenly unsure if she could handle what was coming. "There's something I need to tell you. I thought you might not want all the others to be around when you heard it."

"Jesus." Billie crossed her arms like her hands would have vibrated away if she hadn't. "Spit it out, then, so I can get you to the med bay."

Cleo held up the jacket. She could still feel it resonating faintly with all the strange, golden frequencies of the Other Place. "I wimped Elijah."

Billie's face fell. "I was present for most of his life, McQueary, I don't need you to tell me—"

"Listen to me, Billie." Cleo inhaled as deep as she could, air rattling through her blood-choked nose. "I wimped where he is now. He's alive."

Cleo saw the exact moment when Billie stopped breathing. She went so still that Cleo might have thought one of her projectors was malfunctioning, if her eyes hadn't been raking desperately over Cleo's face.

"Don't." Billie's voice was barely any louder than the thudding of Cleo's heart in her ears. "You can't—you're not allowed to say that to me, unless you're sure."

"I'm sure." Cleo was sure of so few things. This, at least, was one of them. "He's in the Other Place. Him and the rest of the Providence crew."

Billie pressed a hand over her mouth and stumbled back like Cleo had shoved her. Cleo heard the exact moment when she started breathing again, big, wracking, sobbing breaths that bent her double. Cleo dropped the jacket and fell to her knees in front of Billie, and through a series of gentle but firm hand gestures got her to lean up against the pilot console. Cleo settled against it too and let Billie cry, wishing there was literally anything else she could do.

After a long while, Billie sniffed loudly, pressing the heels of her hands under her glasses and into her swollen eyes. "Is he, uh." She swallowed thickly. "Is he older? Older than me?"

"No." Cleo brushed a sweaty curl out of her eyes. "He still looked the same age as he would have been on Launch Day, anyway. He said time was weird in there."

Billie nodded, then lowered her hands. Her ponytail was coming undone, pieces of golden hair falling in tangles around her face and shoulders. And her eyes, the same eyes Elijah had, were shining with tears, but she didn't look sad, exactly. She looked like she had never seen the sun before, and Cleo had just thrown the curtains open and given it to her.

"Tell me everything," Billie whispered.

Cleo did. The creepy room, Elijah's apparent fear of saying too much, the Other Place having its "reasons," the mysterious interference that had broken her vision and the blood vessels in her nose. Billie listened quietly, the fluttering rise and fall of her chest getting steadier the more Cleo told.

When she finished, Billie swallowed again, and Cleo saw her sifting through all the infinite questions being generated in her head. "Eli looked safe, at least? Healthy?"

"Not a scratch on him."

"Good." Cleo got the distinct impression that, if she'd given any other answer, Billie wouldn't have let anything so simple as quantum physics stop her from challenging the dimension that had taken her brother to a fight out back. "Do you think the interference came from the Other Place?"

Cleo remembered the rainbows, and the voice that had sounded all too human. "No. It was from someone, somewhere else."

"Hmm." Billie's gaze fell to the blood on Cleo's lips. "Whoever it was, I won't let them hurt you again."

Cleo tilted her head at a teasing angle, but the smile that spread across her face was painfully genuine. "Big words, Billie."

Easy as anything, Billie reached for Cleo's face like she was going to wipe away the blood, or run her hand through her hair, or or or—but just before her fingers would have flickered through Cleo's cheek, she stopped. She closed her hand into a fist, pulled it back, and brought it briefly to rest on her mouth. She squeezed her eyes shut again and bumped the back of her head soundlessly against the console.

"You said—" Billie hissed in a breath like whatever she was thinking was hurting her from the inside. "You said the whole crew."

"Yeah." And Cleo was pretty sure she knew what Billie was asking, because it had also been her own first thought. Because how could it not be. But she had already decided not to think about that, because all the possibilities she knew Billie was considering had already slid, slippery and hazardous, through her own head. And she wasn't about to lose herself in that danger zone when Billie—this Billie—was right in front of her, being as real as she knew how to be.

"Hey," Cleo said. Billie grumbled an acknowledgment, not opening her eyes. Cleo tipped her head upward, for strength. "I'm not, um. Concerned. About that."

Cleo saw it in her periphery and felt it in her blood when Billie opened her eyes to look at her. She kept trying to burn holes in the ceiling with her own eyes as she continued. "Let's just figure out how to get back into the Other Place. How to get Elijah home."

Cleo faced Billie, who was looking at her like that again. And if Cleo had been worried about keeping her heart in one piece—well. She pictured twisting her hands in Billie's sweater and reeling her in as close as she could get. She let herself imagine, outside the confines of her insufferable dreams, whether Billie's mouth would taste like salt or sarcasm or something sweeter. How it would feel to breathe comforting words against her lips. Whether Billie would gasp softly through her nose when Cleo kissed the tear tracks off of her cheeks.

If some of that made its way onto her face, Cleo was past caring. She was tired of not letting herself want. And Billie—if Cleo was right, if she wasn't still imagining, Billie kind of looked like not wanting had never even occurred to her.

"Thank you," Billie murmured. "Cleo."

Cleo was sure of so few things. One of them was that it was too late for her torn-up, idiot heart.

***

It feels impossible, from so far away, to get a good look at her eyes. But, for one perfect moment, I'm basking in that kilowatt happiness she's directing at the hologram. And then, just as quickly, everything contracts, and I'm back.

I open my eyes, and at first I can't see anything but that damn golden light. I blink once, again, a few more times, and through the haze I can absorb two things: my old tape recorder pressing annoyingly into my leg through my pocket, and a face uncomfortably close to mine.

"Holy hell," Elijah says. "You're awake."

As disoriented as I am, I can't help but smile. "Yeah. Unfortunately."

I expect Eli's face to fall at that, but he pulls me to my feet, something even more manic than usual in his smile. "Something's happened," he says. "Someone was here."

"I know, shithead." I shove him in the shoulder, and he only grins wider. "I saw."

"You saw—"

"And I cannot believe you didn't come get me."

Eli waggles his eyebrows. "So that was the same Cleo you were muttering about."

I feel my face grow hot. Which is surprising, because it's hard to feel anything in this place. "Shut up."

"I think your girlfriend's going to need our help."

"She's not my girlfriend, Eli."

"And since you've been in some weirdo trance for who knows how long, it's lucky I have a plan."

Teasing forgotten, I pull him into a hug. If it's too tight, he doesn't say anything. "Not if I come up with a better plan first."

Eli laughs. "It's good to have you back, Bilbo."