Piece Simul ✔

Chapter 29-Russ-A Good Mystery

Russ knew what she had to say, but didn't. The Captain was holding back, and she was unsure as to why, but the ship was under his command (for now), and she planned on respecting his decisions. For those like Tiptree and Samuel, autonomy was valued over orders. Russ loved orders. They were so...orderly. The only thing better than following orders was unraveling a mystery.

She credited herself with lack of imagination. Without people telling her what was what, she'd be lost. All the same, she couldn't shake a bad feeling, but she buried it, as she did most things.

Like the others, she marched to the airlock, Forster heading up the bunch. Well, everyone else marched and she shuffled because hey, her body still exuded an overall wrecked shittiness. Every time she tried recalling the journey through the anomaly, her muscles screamed, and her mind shut down.

Repress, carry on, repeat.

She kept shuffling.

The ship's interface announced the depression of the rear airlock. Guin, or a figure as tall as Guin, lumbered into the sterile corridor. Forster edged to the front, but Tiptree pushed until positioned next to the unknown guest, who stumbled on the next few steps.

"Guin?" Tiptree caught the figure by the shoulders.

They shrugged off the help before removing their helmet, revealing Guin's black tangle of hair.

"Hi guys," she said, voice husky.

Tiptree and Forster both ducked backward, alerting Russ to check the physicist over.

For the most part, she looked normal. Then there was her eyes, which burned an incandescent shade of green, so bright they appeared to flicker.

"What's with your eyes?" Russ asked, more curious than afraid.

It was similar to the Green-Eyed faction, but different somehow. Instead of a crude covering, or the appearance of green eyes, Guin's eyes seemed changed on a molecular level. Every part, from the iris to the cornea, exuded the new color, burning brightly.

"What do you mean?" Guin reached for the pack at her side, holding up a reflective circle intended to signal over long distances. She stared into the mirrored surface. "Oh!" she breathed, patting the area around her eyes. "I...don't know." She squinted, blinked, and rubbed her lids, reassessing her appearance again before continuing. "Could be I absorbed some of the proliferating pigment native to the environment."

"Then how come we didn't?" Samuel wondered.

Guin favored him with her classic snooty expression. "I was down there longer than you."

"How scientific," he replied.

Everyone else just watched as she stepped out of her starsuit, handing it to the bots to be hung next to the others.

Forster broke up the long pause: "We have other questions for you, like why the hell you commandeered the life raft, and where you were. And eyes like that beg to be quarantined."

She smiled, her lips pulling up to the corners of her eyes and stretching taut. "Sure."

The available bots, under new orders, flanked Guin on either side, urging her to follow their lead.

"Is that necessary?" Tiptree gestured at the bots.

"I'd say so," Forster grumbled.

"I'm okay," Guin said, her assurances closely conflicting with her hell-fire gaze.

After her departure, Russ noticed a slight bulge from the side satchel of Guin's suit, something too large to be a tool. She thought about informing the Captain, but instead held in the words, lest he quarantine the find.

Mysteries almost always trumped orders.