“Maybe we’re the interlopers,” DJ said. “We don’t know which of us was here first, so to her we might’ve been the strangers living on her ship.”
“How many other people are living on this ship that we don’t know about?” I asked. DJ looked away, and Jenny was quietly going through Kayla’s belongings. Neither had an answer.
It was morbid searching a dead person’s room to try to get to know them, but we didn’t have much choice. I kept hoping to find a journal where Kayla had written her innermost thoughts or the answer to every question I was carrying inside me. Who kidnapped us? What did they want with us? Why was I supposed to be dead?
I found nothing like that, though. Her room was spartan. Some clothes, a projector and screen, an entire case of Nutreesh. I was ready to give up when Jenny pulled something out from under the bed.
A sketchbook. Jenny set it on top of the mattress and opened it to the first page. Inside were watercolor paintings of the most beautiful landscapes that I had ever seen. Landscapes that could not have existed on Earth. A field of violet trees with a blue sun overhead. An ocean of starry night. Mountains cloaked by velvet orange clouds that rained fire.
“Good imagination,” DJ said. “I wish I could paint like that.”
“How do you know these aren’t places she actually visited?” I asked.
DJ tried to speak but stumbled over his words until he finally spit out, “I guess I don’t.”
“They were special to her,” Jenny said. “She wouldn’t have hidden them otherwise.”
“Hidden them from who?” I turned to the last page. It was the first and only painting that wasn’t a landscape. Staring back at us was the unmistakable image of Jenny Perez. “What do you think it means?”
“We should ask her,” Jenny said. I wasn’t sure it was the greatest idea, but Jenny was already saying, “Hologram! Get out here. We’ve got a few questions for you.”
Seeing the hologram’s photons assemble from nothing hadn’t yet grown so commonplace that it didn’t fill me with awe. But the wonder always vanished as soon as Jenny Perez began to speak.
“Hi! I’m your host, Jenny Perez, whom you probably don’t remember from a show that no one watched because it was awful and so am I. Sorry about it!”
DJ busted out laughing, and Jenny said, “That’s a scarily accurate impression, Noa.”
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” Jenny Perez said.
“In this case,” I said, “it’s not.” I nodded at Jenny. “This was your idea.”
Jenny cleared her throat. “Did you know this room existed?”
“Of course, silly. This room was created exactly three hours and nine minutes ago.”
“Created?” I asked. “How could—”
Jenny held up a finger to silence me. “And were you aware there was someone other than the three of us living aboard Qriosity?”
Jenny Perez cocked her head to the side. “There is? I detect no human beings other than my junior detective and her two perky sidekicks.”
“Sidekick?” I wasn’t sure how I felt about the hologram viewing me as Jenny’s sidekick, but it also wasn’t the time to argue.
DJ said, “How’s it possible that there’s been someone living on this ship since we woke up and you didn’t know about it?”
“It’s not,” Jenny Perez said. “Therefore you must be mistaken.”
“We’ve got a dead body in medical that says we’re not,” Jenny said.
Something had been nagging me, and it finally clicked into place. “She wasn’t part of the crew.” The others, including Jenny Perez, turned to look at me. “She couldn’t have been. There was no storage container with her name on it.”
Understanding dawned on DJ’s face. “Which means she was like us.”
“Not exactly like us,” Jenny said. “She was hiding here. She could have come out and talked to us at any time, but she didn’t.”
“I’m more concerned about how she was able to hide on the ship without the super detective over there knowing,” I said. “How many more people are secretly living on Qriosity that we don’t know about? Is one of them a murderer?”
“We don’t know for sure she was murdered,” DJ said. “We won’t until MediQwik completes its autopsy.”
Jenny Perez, who’d been standing quietly with her trademark smile plastered on her face said, “MediQwik has finished the autopsy of the unknown deceased human in the medical bay. Would you like the results?”
“Yes!” Jenny said
“MediQwik has determined that the cause of death for the unknown deceased human was heart failure due to a ventricular septal defect, a common congenital heart defect.”
“So she wasn’t murdered?” I asked.
Jenny Perez said, “MediQwik suggests the probability that death was caused by factors other than the heart defect is less than one percent. Looks like there’s no case here, junior detectives. Sorry about it!”
“I guess we should be glad there’s not a killer on board,” DJ said, but he wasn’t smiling. None of us were.
SEVEN
WE STOOD OUTSIDE THE INNER airlock door. Kayla’s body, wrapped in a shroud, lay inside the airlock, which was visible to us via a screen on the wall. Nothing in Kayla’s room had indicated what religion, if any, she followed, so we were left to muddle through. I hoped we did right by her.
“Anyone want to say anything?” DJ asked. He’d been hovering near me all afternoon like he wanted to be nearby in case I needed him, but the closer he got, the farther away I wanted him to go.
“Sorry you died,” Jenny said.
I just shook my head. I wasn’t going to pretend I knew her. I wasn’t going to pretend I’d miss her. I wished she wasn’t dead, but even my reasons for that were selfish. I only wanted to know what she’d been trying to tell me. I wasn’t sure if that made me a bad person, but I certainly didn’t like myself much right then.
DJ clasped his hands in front of him. “I’m real sorry you felt like you had to hide from us, and I wish you hadn’t died alone. Hopefully, you’ll find peace now.” DJ pressed the button on the touchscreen that opened the outer airlock door. Kayla’s body was hurled into space, frozen forever.
* * *
I was sitting in Ops, in front of the viewport, when DJ found me later. I hadn’t exactly been avoiding him and Jenny, but I hadn’t wanted to see them either. DJ sat beside me, and I could feel the warmth of him. I scooted away.
“Why do you do that?” DJ asked.
“Do what?”
DJ pursed his lips and eyed the space between us I’d created. “Move when I get near you, flinch or pull back when I touch you?”
“Maybe I don’t like being touched. Have you ever considered that?” My words had the bite of a frigid winter wind. “Anyway,” I added. “I don’t always pull away.”
I could feel DJ wanting to argue with me, but he kept what he was going to say to himself and we sat in silence for a while. It was nice to just be there with him. I wasn’t completely oblivious. I knew DJ was into me, but he didn’t ask for more than I was willing to give, which, in my limited experience, was a rare quality.