White Crystal Butterflies | Wattys 2021 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Seventeen

The wind picks up outside as we get cozy in the common room, eyes pinned to the two small screens on the coffee table. There's a bigger screen in the lab that we could use, but everyone agreed that if we're going to be here for a while, we'd rather stick to the comfier seating. Kwon soon slips out, returning with fuzzy blankets and two throw pillows that managed to migrate elsewhere during the ecliptic cycle. She then takes to the kitchen and flicks the kettle on. I don't think I've seen it run empty since we lost the Isoptera.

The scientists take turns getting food and drinks in the kitchen, neither wanting to leave the data feeds. When it becomes clear that nothing is happening immediately, I head there myself.

"You not coming to watch?" I say, finding Kwon eating at the table, ebook in hand.

She shakes her head. "I will just get one of them to explain it to me after. This old brain cannot make sense of all those graphs."

This coming from the engineer reading what looks like an advanced aeronautic electrical systems manual like it's a novel. I fill my bowl and return to the common room, saving my chuckle for the hallway where nobody will hear me. Knowing Kwon, she probably genuinely believes that.

Fifteen minutes pass with no anomalies, then half an hour. Liu and Krüger remain glued to the data feeds like they're watching the world's most riveting telenovela. I find my eyes wandering. By an hour in, I'm done sitting still. Clearly whatever Mahaha has to unleash upon us is taking its time.

I excuse myself and gather everyone's bowls. Liu is on dishes, but I do them myself, then wipe down most of the kitchen for good measure. There's still residual red marker on parts of the table. I pull out the cleaning products and ignore the twitch at the corner of Kwon's mouth as I take to the stains with a vengeance. She pushes her chair back to let me work. I scrub the table spotless, look around for other things to clean, and find none.

"I am sure you will hear it when they see something," says Kwon, glancing up.

I run a hand through my hair. "Fair point."

Sitting on a snowmobile for most of the day hardly counts as exercise, even if I kept getting off to help plant mini-probes. I change into running clothes and take to the gym, roping the door open with a stray resistance band. The treadmill's hum is quiet enough to hear any commotion in the common room over. It doesn't even muffle the strengthening lash of the storm outside. This blizzard is a brutal one. Worse than any we've had so far.

There's a faint beep from the common room. I pause the treadmill and trot to a halt as it slows. With the door open, I can see all the way down the hallway. After a long pause, Krüger crosses the common room to the screen on its opposite wall.

I hop off the treadmill and join him. "What's up?"

He points to the screen. Where we once had weather data from outside—wind speed, wind chill, temperature, humidity, radiation—there is now blank space and floating units waiting patiently for numbers. An error icon flashes in the corner. Krüger clicks it, revealing an itemized list of instruments we've lost contact with. All our station weather readings gone in one fell swoop.

My internal alarm bell starts up. "When and how?"

"I don't know." Krüger's face is a new kind of serious. He taps buttons on the screen, scanning quickly for connection issues that might have caused the abrupt and complete loss of data. "I can't tell if it's a computer glitch, or an actual problem with the instruments. It normally beeps when one goes out, so it must have been a simultaneous loss..."

That sounds like a computer glitch, but the timing is suspect. My skin crawls at the prospect of going out to check the instrument panel. I keep reimagining the butterfly over Krüger's head.