We Leapt Into the Sky

Chapter 30

Kendra slept uneasily, shifting in her makeshift bed tucked away in a corner of the ruins. The pink light of early morning filtered in through the cracks in the stone ceiling, casting shadows across the floor. She sat up and brushed the sand from her clothes. The sensation in her fingertips was deadened, and her feet tingled with diffuse pain. When she pressed her hand to her stomach, it came away covered in dust and chips of clay.

She crept to the fuel room and found it deserted. Crouching over the vat of viscous liquid, she downed handfuls of the fuel and then poured more onto her abdomen. The deep gouges knitted together, but the hairline fractures remained, forming spiderwebs across her body and snaking up her neck and across her face.

As she stared into the surface of the liquid, it was hard to avert her gaze. Her hair hung in her face, limp and dirty, and dusty chips fell from the place hidden in her hair where the machines had repaired her skull. Her eyes were sunken, surrounded by lines worn deep into her cracking skin. The fuel wouldn't sustain her, and even now her body was failing to heal. Her chest constricted, and the air was thick, as though the room were a tomb, and she was sealed inside. Kendra pulled herself away from the pool.

There was something else, a presence in the room. It wasn't Aster, no, but in the corner there was a small patch of crystals growing from the wall. She held her palm over them and felt a dread that did not belong to her, and as she touched the glassy surface of the crystals, Seph's memories bled into her mind. It was disorienting to be dropped into his memories, and yet comforting to have a brief respite from her situation.

Seph walked through a busy college town with a pit in his stomach. Rivers of students flooded the streets, and people zoomed by on small scooters. Anxiety buzzed in his chest, and he fidgeted with the strap of his messenger bag as he dragged himself up the stairs and into a lab. He made a beeline for a cramped office in the back. Heaving a sigh, he sat in an old office chair and rested his head on the pile of papers strewn about his desk.

"Oh my god, what is wrong with me?" he said to himself. "I am a professional researcher who had his own lab, for goodness' sake. Why is this so hard? I've got to start those experiments today. It'll be fine—it'll be fine."

The memory skipped forward, and he was working at a bench in the lab, trying to mind his business, when voices rang out in the break room.

"I wouldn't pay too much attention to that lab's data. Their work is barely science," said a woman.

"What do you mean it isn't science?" a man asked.

"That lab has no true academic affiliation. It's a mobile lab on a research vessel," the woman said with obvious disdain.

"Some research vessels have academic affiliations, though. Like the one Seph worked on."

"That vessel was an anomaly, both for their academic affiliation and the surprising quality of their research," she said.

The dread in his gut turned to irritation, and Seph popped his head into the break room. "Research vessels with academic affiliations are becoming a lot more common," he said. "And for the record, even on vessels that aren't tied to a specific university, many researchers themselves have academic affiliations."

The woman stood and shrugged. "And yet the research quality still isn't there in many of those environments. I have a few examples I could send you." She paused and then sighed loudly. "I have a meeting to get to. I expect I'll be in the lab late to make up for lost time."

Then she was gone, and Seph tried to keep the scowl off his face in front of Bria's grad students.

"Well, that was fun," the man said as he rolled his eyes.