A man with a scarred face and puckered eyelid stood on the other side of her front door. He looked anything but friendly, and she was extremely hesitant to even talk to him. Certain she was safe behind the locked door, she tapped the square again to activate the technology that allowed her to communicate with him. “Hello? Can I help you?”
The one-eyed man lifted his head and addressed her through the screen. “My name is Terror, and I’m a friend of Hallie’s. She suggested I come to you for help.”
“What kind of help?”
“My son won’t sleep.” Terror wiped a hand down his tired face. “I’ve done everything I can to help him and my mate. I don’t know what to do. Hallie said you have a natural touch with children.”
She felt sympathy for his situation. “Swift is gone. I’m not supposed to leave with strangers.”
“I understand. Just hold on a minute. Please?”
“Okay.” She watched as he lifted his watch and spoke into it. She shouldn’t have been surprised their technology allowed them to use something as small as a watch to communicate.
A few moments later, the control screen in front of her blinked twice and then Hallie’s face appeared next to Terror’s. She had a dish towel in one hand and waved. “Hello, Alys!”
“Hi, Hallie.”
“I should have contacted you before I sent Terror to your door,” Hallie said with an apologetic look. “I didn’t realize Swift was gone.”
“He was called in to work. It seemed serious.”
“It usually is,” Hallie remarked with a knowing smile. “So, Terror is my husband’s best friend. He’s a good man, and I would trust him with my life and the lives of my children. You’re perfectly safe with him.”
Alys doubted anyone was perfectly safe with this man. He had the look of a killer, but if Hallie said she would trust her children with him... “Okay. I’ll see what I can do to help.”
“Thank you so much, Alys.” Hallie seemed relieved. “They’ve had such a hard time, and I’m all out of ideas.”
“I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try my best.”
“You’re a saint, Alys. Thank you! Oh—and don’t forget our lunch date tomorrow! I’ll message you before I come down to pick you up, okay?”
“Okay.” Alys turned her attention to the image of Terror as he waited patiently on her doorstep. “I’ll be right out.”
“There’s no rush, ma’am.”
She didn’t believe him. From the haggard expression on his face to the slump of his shoulders, Terror looked like a man who was ready to admit defeat. She grabbed her messenger bag from the closet and stuffed her tablet and a sweatshirt she had stolen from Swift’s drawers inside. The few places she had been on the ship were colder than she liked, and she figured having something warm on hand would be useful.
When she stepped into the hallway, Terror scrutinized her. Finally, he said, “You’re very tall for a Calyx woman.”
“Everyone in my family is tall.”
He gestured toward the elevator in the center of the hallway. “I heard that you have a dozen siblings.”
“Fourteen,” she said. “Well, fifteen if you count the one Mother’s currently carrying, but only ten of us are still living.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Alys shrugged. “It’s not that unusual where I’m from.”
“Illness?” He stepped into the elevator first, and she followed.
“Only Colleen,” Alys replied, remembering her younger sister. “She was eight when she passed. She started coughing late one night. Four days later, she was gone.” She could still remember the silky softness of Colleen’s blonde hair under her fingertips as she brushed and braided it every morning. “She was a wild little thing. She would have loved it up here.”
“Only Colleen? What happened to your other siblings?” Terror asked as the elevator began to move.
“Lindy was a cradle death.” Her mother’s anguished wail upon finding Lindy blue and cold in her cradle echoed in Alys’ memories. “No one knows why those babies stop breathing. It’s no one’s fault. It just...happens.” She glanced at Terror, suddenly wondering if it was different up here. “Do you know why it happens?”
Terror shook his head. “It was discussed in our prenatal course. It's very rare here, but I suspect that’s because we have monitors on our babies from the moment they’re born. It makes it easier to catch health problems.”
“What about stillbirths?”
“Extremely rare. Pregnant mothers wear a monitor at all times.” He touched his stomach. “The first hint of any sort of irregularity in either the baby or the mother triggers alarms.”
“I wish we had that down on the farm.” How much suffering could her mother have avoided if she’d had access to that kind of technology? “Mara, the last baby Mama delivered, was born sleeping. Absolutely perfect and beautiful but she never breathed.”
“Your mother must be a very strong woman,” Terror remarked. “To lose three daughters?” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”
“And a son,” Alys interjected. “Anders, one of my older brothers, he died in an accident when he was seventeen. Grain silo,” she clarified. “He was walking down the grain on a neighbor’s farm, and he hit a pocket of air and down he went.”
“Down? Where?”
“Into the corn.” She realized he didn’t know what a grain silo was. “Some farms store grain in these big buildings. Big enough to hold twenty, thirty, forty thousand bushels of grain. Sometimes the grain settles and pockets of air get caught in the layers. If you’re walking down the grain, and you hit one of those pockets?” She shook her head. “It’s all over. You’ll suffocate or be crushed or both before anyone can even try to rescue you.”
Terror seemed taken aback. “I had no idea farming was so dangerous.”
“Most people don’t.”
The elevator stopped, and they stepped off and onto a floor with only a handful of doors. The housing units here were apparently much larger. She glanced at Terror’s rather plain uniform and wondered what the black color of it signified. Whatever it was, he clearly was someone very important.
“I forgot to mention,” Terror said as they drew near a door, “my mate is deaf.”
“Does she sign? Or use paper and a pencil? Or read lips?”
“All three, if necessary. Do you sign?” He seemed hopeful.
“Only a few words,” she said with an apologetic look. “Bonnie’s sister-in-law is deaf, and she taught me a little, but not enough to carry on a conversation.”
“It’s fine. Maisie has other ways to communicate.” As soon as he opened the door, the high-pitched squall of a fitful baby pierced her eardrums. The poor thing was wailing incessantly, and Terror stiffened at the sound. “The pediatrics team has tried everything to help us. They even suggested a sedative.”
“They probably meant for you,” Alys remarked, realizing a moment too late she had actually said that aloud.