CAUGHT

12440 CE

Puzzled at the garbled words, Doug forced his heavy eyelids open. The veils of plastic drew back; receding clots of preservative fluid melted off into sucking crevices as the warmth came to him. He reached up, found a suit, and unlocked the door at his right to drift out into a corridor lighted by a dim phosphorescence that flowed through a tube along one side. How had he gotten here? Where was he? And when was now? A deep breath, and his nostrils filled with the familiar Hive-prison claustrofunk of re-recycled air, water, sweat, and excretions. He stood, confused, as something clanked, rhythmically, far off. A distant voice echoed and faded.

He remembered Nye, and Geordie, and… there was a gap, like hard vacuum in his mind. And there was Jan. His wafer! He reached down, and found it. This was what he’d left behind, for all time. He fanned the images; there was Jan smiling back at him, that relaxed and open sunshine grin she gave him when they’d been together for an afternoon, thousands of years ago.

Holding the image between two fingers, shivering alone floating barefoot in the ship’s night-dimmed corridor, he clenched his jaw and his hands, and fought back the tears.

Doug‘s grieving was interrupted by a furtive click. He tensed. A shadowy figure drifted toward him, looking back: a man, wearing a coverall, his hair grimy and tangled. His breathing came in slow spasms.

Doug looked back. No place to hide, and no time to worm his way back into the refreezer. He braced himself, his old Hive reflexes coming awake once again. He was caught.

The man’s back was to Doug as he drifted free in the dark corridor, and pulled himself to a stop. The man’s hands fumbled at a waist pouch, then withdraw a soft plastic bag. Slowly the man drew the bag down over his own head, then tied shut the neck of the bag and let his arms relax. He was suffocating himself.