Mars

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Chapter 1

Zoë

My hands were bone dry. My knuckles in particular - they weren't visibly flaky, but when I ran my hands one over the other the rough skin tickled the palms and the pads of my fingers. When I made a fist and looked very closely in the harsh light of a bathroom I could see the hairline cracks across my skin there. I found that I liked the new texture - it was nice somehow to have a physical manifestation of the changes that my work wrought, something beyond my aching muscles and the dawning realisation that day by day I was growing stronger and hardier. For a supposedly leading crop specialist I'd been laughably inexperienced, I was beginning to realise, completely removed from the backbreaking labour that made food happen in environments like these. Not so now.

For weeks now I'd been working the soil myself - along with my team, of course - digging my hands into the dirt, poring over the tiny seedlings, trying out this or that fertiliser and trying to find the perfect mix to optimise growth with sustainability. This was, of course, when I wasn't in the aeroponics tent, monitoring the sturdy racks of plants and the delicate equipment that maintained them in a fine mist of water and nutrients. Every moment of my day was taken up with growth schedules, seed banks, equipment maintenance and reports, always the incredibly detailed reports they expected me to keep. I understood why, but after a full day at work the last thing I wanted to do was to spend several more hours staring at spreadsheets and forms, documenting each small success, or, more usually, failure.

My job producing the bulk of the food we were eating entirely exempted me from catering and maintenance duties, and over time this had made me feel a little isolated from the rest of the team. Even the engineers, with their intensive rota of system checks and tests, were on other task rotations alongside their work, and so a rapport had begun to form among my fellow explorers that I felt somewhat removed from.

I'd observed this to our live-in counsellor at one of our weekly sessions. Sometimes I felt as though he and I had more in common than I did with the rest of the team - after all, he was by necessity isolated too. He'd been interested and - I discerned - a little troubled by this, and had informed me in our next session that he'd expressed concerns about the isolation resulting from my 'double' task allotment to the mission co-ordination team. It was on-file, he said, and they would re-examine the arrangements for the next mission phase. Of course, that was at the six month mark, fully another four and a half months away, and I was already starting to feel a little stretched and anxious. Still, that was what test runs were for, I supposed.

Still, so far no one had starved (though we _had_ started with a cache of food, some of it to get us going and some in case of emergencies), which meant what no matter what the setbacks I hadn't failed yet. The rest of the group had kept up their end as well, ensuring we had breathable air, potable water, and temperatures which, while on the warm side, were still within tolerable parameters.

I finished washing up - my usual post farm shift shower - and dressed for my evening in the lab running tests and doing paperwork. Now I would be covering my dried-out hands with gloves - really I ought to wear gloves in the field too but I just couldn't face keeping my skin covered up all day long like that. After all, why did I leave research if it wasn't to get my hands dirty - it might as well be literally as well as figuratively.

I wasn't the only one there with an advanced degree; there was Dr Costas, our physician, and I was sure at least one of the engineers had mentioned something about Caltech, which made sense when you thought about it.

The rest of the team seemed like smart, motivated individuals, mind you, don't get me wrong - I'm not a snob, and by no means wanted to limit my contact to fellow doctors. In truth I would've been happy for any contact at all, really, those first few weeks. Still, in any group cliques were bound to form, and just by dint of being supremely busy I missed out when they were passing out memberships.

I'd stopped going to the mess at mealtimes - I'd go later on and eat dinner cold, which I didn't mind so much. If I went at mealtimes some group or other would politely make space for me, would try to make conversation. They meant well, but it just made me feel more alone, somehow. And all we had to talk about was the field - most people had a rotation there - and I did that all day and night without having it at mealtimes too. No one ever asked me about anything else I did or liked or was interested in. I guess I had never given them reason to, either.

I wasn't always like this. I know that's cliché to say, but in my case it's absolutely true. I was sociable once, back in university and even afterwards, with friends and lovers and hobbies outside of work. But I guess on a level I'd left a lot of that behind even before I signed up for the mission training, what with one thing and another. This was just the nail in the coffin.

And with that cheerful thought I headed off to the labs, content in the knowledge that if everything went to plan that in a couple years at least I'd have an excuse not to socialise ever again.

Sorry I can't come to your party. I'm on Mars.

 

Jonah

"Hey, Jonah! Over here!" My head snapped up just in time to catch the motion from across the room, and my reactions saved me from getting a football to the face - barely. Honestly, people think just because I'm big and muscled that I must want to play sports all the time, which just isn't the case.

I do have good reflexes and fast reactions, though, and I did catch the ball and send it flying back in Rick's direction at top speed, me not far after it as I headed over. "You could've just called, y'know," I admonished him. "Didn't need to throw shit."

"Hey, you know, was just for fun," Rick said with a grin and a shrug. "Plus, that's kind of what it's for. Throwing."

"Not for any distance around here - can't believe they could only manage an indoor basketball court," Rick's companion trotted out the tired old complaint with a grunt. The two of them - Rick and Keenan - had been joined at the hip pretty much since day one, firm friends brought together by their obvious shared passions - football and pretending they hadn't graduated high school.

Well, that was a little unfair, I reminded myself - they were also quick-minded, genuinely decent guys, obviously chosen for 'strong moral fibre' or whatever. They were the kind of jocks who'd curbed the worst behaviour of their friends in high school, who'd fished the nerds back out of the dumpsters and left their prom queen date for three minutes that night in senior year and asked the lonely fat girl to dance, just one dance, and made her night. You know the guys. It wasn't in their interests to rock the boat, but they were decent enough and cool enough to get away with throwing the occasional lifebelt to those less fortunate. Anyway, those kinds of guys.

They'd taken one look at my short back'n'sides and my sportsman's physique, and assumed I was one of them. I wasn't; I like taking care of myself, and the no-fuss of a short hairstyle, but sports - at least team sports - really aren't my thing. Which is sort of funny, given where I've ended up. This is pretty much as close to a team sport as you can get, except instead of a football field there's a big dome (about the size of three football fields, actually) and instead of cheerleaders there are hawk-eyed scientists watching our every move.

And then there's Rick and Keenan, just doin' their thing like they're here on a football scholarship. Bless 'em. I collapsed down onto the long couch beside them.

"What're we watching?" I asked, squinting a little at the screen. All the 'non-essential' screens at the dome run on low brightness by default - you can turn it up if you really want to but you're expected to show discretion and save it for, I dunno, special occasions or whatever. Mostly your eyes adjust pretty quickly and you learn to sort of work by impressions. We watch with the subtitles on a lot, just to help us keep up, 'cause you don't appreciate how much you watch people's mouths moving 'til you can't see 'em as well.

"Die Hard," Rick said, then, "classic."

Keenan grunted his assent. I had to take their word on it, since I hadn't ever seen it before. I waited until the explosions had stopped before trying another question.

"So, how'd today go for you both?"

"Farm," Keenan said with a shrug.

"Me too," said Rick. "Streisand's a fuckin' slave driver."

I fought the urge to wince. Dr Sarkis bore no resemblance to Barbara Streisand whatsoever barring a slightly prominent nose and (allegedly) the ability to hold a tune when she thought she was all alone in the aeroponics tent - she wasn't even Jewish, as far as I knew; I'd assumed Greek. But one of the younger kids had coined it in week one and somehow it had stuck.

She also wasn't a slave driver, particularly. But she was solitary and dedicated and so the idea had grown up around her. Largely I reckoned she worked so hard herself that it made people push themselves to keep up, which isn't really the same thing at all. I liked her instinctively, with her sure manner and her sharp eyes, but she didn't seem to want to get to know anyone, really, and I wasn't about to interfere with that.

Besides, I had enough work on my hands between my duties and trying to make nice with the rest of the group when their idea of 'bonding' was throwing things at my head and watching old action flicks. Oh, listen to me, sounding all superior again. Hanging out with these guys was good, a real change from before, and isn't that why I had signed up for this?

 

Adrian

I sighed. I tried not to - I was just trying to breathe out, really, exhale normally, but it came out as an audible sigh and I pondered not for the first time that it was a pretty shitty counsellor who couldn't stop himself from sighing at his clients.

"All right," I said, keeping my tone even and friendly. "It's good that we got to this place so quickly. I'm afraid that due to the nature of the trial we can't check you right out - it's your prerogative if you want to leave without the project leaders' say-so of course but technically you'll be in breach of contract. I'm sure you'll remember that from orientation."

The drawn-looking young woman nodded quickly. "Uh huh," was all she said. She was clearly done talking.

"But as soon as my paperwork's processed by the mission co-ordinators they'll get your discharge forms back to me and we'll debrief you."

"Do I... do I have to keep following the roster?" she asked then, looking about as weary as I'm sure most people felt at the end of most days.

"Well, you're already breaking your contract so... technically there's not much they can do to you if you don't." I knew I should've encouraged her to keep going, since it was only going to make more work for everyone in the meantime, but I felt for her and couldn't see the use of trying to guilt her into doing work she obviously wasn't up to doing any more.

"Right." She nodded. "Right, okay." She - Jane - glanced up at me with big, damp eyes. "I'm really, really sorry," she said.

"Don't worry about it, Jane, these things happen. You have to do what's best for you."

When she was gone, I settled back in one of the stupidly plush leather chairs they'd provided - the principle of the dome was that one shelled out for quality pre-mission to make the shoe-string subsistence part less of a toil during, which I guess made a sort of sense. My head throbbed, my mind buzzing, but I had about ten minutes for write-up before my next appointment.

Jane was the first to go, but she wouldn't be the last. They knew this, the people who had made the selection, though of course everybody was suitable for the mission in their own way. It sounded like a bit of reality show ghoulishness but no one was voting for anybody to go home - already people were starting to form into a cohesive team. Well, almost everybody.

There were still a few people who hadn't quite found where they fit yet. Part of my job was to evaluate whether they ever would and, if not, to sign the papers that would kick them out for good. It was a lot of responsibility.

There was a knock at the door. Had it been ten minutes?

"It's open!"

"Heya, Doc."

I found my usual smile widening as the door opened fully to allow entrance to all six feet three inches of Jonah Morgan. Jonah was a desperately unfair combination of an unassuming, sweet-natured personality and a quick, analytical mind with the body of an Olympian, and for all that he was exactly the kind of person the mission most needed I had yet to figure out what on earth had made him sign up for it - another thing that made me feel like a pretty terrible counsellor, incidentally.

"Not a doctor," I reminded him as he fell into the chair in front of me. "How was your week?"

"Productive," he told me with a wry smile - that's what he always said at the start of each of our sessions. "Learning new skills left and right - today was caulking with oakum. I didn't even know anybody still used that, but I suppose growing hemp is easier than vulcanising our own rubber."

"And how would you describe your state of mind this week?"

"A little restless, but overall quite sound, I think."

"Restless how?" I probed. Restless was normal, of course - everyone was restless. But this was my job.

"Well, I've already made it through most of the books I brought," Jonah said with a chuckle. "I'm not looking forward to having to beg around the rest of the group for reading material when I'm done."

"Well, there's the digital library," I observed. "You could sign out an ereader." I waited for Jonah to say that it just wasn't the same.

He nodded. "Maybe I will."

I smiled and I felt like an idiot, yet again, for failing to guess what was about to come out of my charge's mouth. "How are you getting along with everyone? Any worries?"

"No, I don't think s-- actually, I'm a bit concerned about Dr Sarkis."

I felt my eyebrows raise, and I tried to school my expression back into one of polite professional interest. "Go on."

"She's not making any friends here. I mean that literally and colloquially. She doesn't even come to the mess for dinner any more."

"She's not making any friends here. I mean that literally and colloquially. She doesn't even come to the mess for dinner any more."

I nodded. I knew this, of course - and why. "Have you tried chatting to her, making friends?"

"Not really," he admitted, somewhat sheepishly. "I know I really ought to, but there never seems to be a good time."

I had to fight the urge to just lunge at him and hug him like he was, I dunno, a puppy or something. Instead, I smiled what I hoped was a pleasant but somewhat enigmatic smile. "Well, do you know when she does eat dinner?"

"Late in the evening, after some people turn in."

"Is that a bad time?"

"Not for me, no, but it seems like someone who goes out of their way to avoid eating with people wouldn't welcome being pounced on, no matter how well-meaningly it was meant."

I could feel my head tipping to the side in the classic 'listening' pose. "Well, you don't know why it is that she eats alone," I said carefully. "It may not necessarily be quite what you think."

"No, I guess not," Jonah agreed.

"It's not very often that people come in here to express worry for other people," I commented then. It happened of course - though usually it was because someone was worried someone else was gonna crack and cause havoc of some kind. Jonah certainly wasn't worried that Zoë Sarkis was going to cause _him_ discomfort.

Jonah didn't seem to know how to answer this, at first - I suppose most of what I said seemed in sessions to be aiming to provoke some response. This was just an observation. _Be honest, Ade; it's a compliment is what it is._

"Well," Jonah said eventually, "it'd be a shame to lose our crop specialist. I don't really want to be stuck on MREs for the next four months."

Even when he was trying to sound self-interested he wasn't convincing. "Let me know how you get on," I said. Then, just to change the subject back to him, really, "Are you still keeping physically active?"

He nodded, and started detailing his workout routine, which frankly was enough to make me feel exhausted just hearing about it. And then, just like that, we were done, and I was nodding, and Jonah was standing to leave.

"Same time next week, then," I said with what I hoped was a suitably professional smile.

"I'll be here," he said congenially, nodding as he stepped away from his chair. "At least that's the plan, anyway."

 

Avery

It was almost midday and I was still in bed when the phone ringing woke me up. Because y'know, that's who I was now: I was a person who lay in bed 'til almost midday; longer some days. I pushed into a sitting position, and retrieved it from the cradle by the bed. I didn't used to have a phone by my bed but one or two wake-up calls like these had sent me tumbling out of bed onto the floor, half-asleep and forgetting myself, and so I had been forced to rearrange things so that half-asleep Avery didn't forget she was missing half a leg and end up sprawled on the carpet after stepping out onto thin air.

"Yep." I didn't even bother to try to sound perky.

"Mrs Field?" The voice sounded distant, the line crackly - this was clearly not a local call. "Am I addressing Mrs Avery Field?"

My mouth flattened to a line. "Ms. Yes."

"Ah, yes, of course, of course, my apologies. Ms Field, I'm calling from the Mars One Programme. We have you on our records as having gone through basic training last year."

I frowned. I'd done a lot of things last year and yeah, that was one of them, but like almost everything else it had been a total non-starter. "Uh huh. You decided you preferred your explorers with two legs, I seem to remember."

The poor bastard on the other cleared his throat loudly, suddenly flustered. "Uh, that's not... final selections were made based on a complex metrics framework, of which physical, uh... physical capability was only one," he managed. "I, uh..." He'd lost the thread, now, but I wasn't really in the mood to throw him a bone.

"Well, look, I filled out your exit questionnaire and feedback survey and whatnot so..."

"Um, yes, that is to say that's not why I'm calling. Ms Avery, you were very nearly selected for the trial phase of the mission."

"So they told me."

"Well, we've had a drop-out. The mission's a member short, and, well, it's a little irregular since we could hardly send extra people up to Mars, but I mean, also people couldn't _quit_ Mars so after careful consideration the mission co-ordinators have decided, given we're only six weeks in, to replace her, and from our reserve list you're the candidate with the closest matching skill-set and knowledge base, so..."

I didn't say anything. Eventually the poor guy felt the need to fill the silence.

"There are four and a half months left on the phase one dome programme," he offered.

"Wait a minute, hang on, let me get this straight. You... want me back on the programme after all?"

"That's right. If you, er, need some time to think..."

I let my head rest back against the headboard. What was there to think about? It wasn't like I had anything better to do.

"When d'you want me?" I said. Now it was the other guy's turn to fall silent. Eventually, he gathered himself together again.

"Under the circumstances... as soon as you're able."

 

Zoë

The kid was wearing a big well-meaning grin as he came up to me, all white teeth and dimples. I say 'kid' - I guessed he was probably only a few years younger than I was but he always carried himself with this utterly implausible lightness in his step like he was full of the joys of spring. When he asked, "Is it okay if I sit here?" I almost laughed at him - I was the only person in the mess, so he was sorely lacking in plausible deniability if he thought he was going to pass this off as a chance encounter. Still, I nodded to the chair opposite and let him do his thing.

"So, uh... do you usually have work to do over normal mealtimes, then?" he opened, pulling out his decoy granola bar.

"There's always work to do," I said dryly. I didn't mean to shut him down entirely, but nor was I entirely sure of the motives behind this sudden overture of friendliness. Plus, I'm just not a very nice person sometimes, especially after a twelve-hour work day.

"Sure, sure," Jonah replied with a nod of his head and that frighteningly symmetrical smile. "So, uh, I was reading the spec documentation for your aeroponics lab the other day," he went on. "That's some space-age stuff right there." His smile widened a little at the gentle joke. "How's the atomizer prototype performing?"

I shrugged, looking down at my meal, which sported the remains of a salad composed of the very plants I monitored day in and day out. "Not bad, could be better. Unfortunately the best nutrient mix seems to make it more prone to clogging up, so I'm trying to figure out a way around that at the moment."

"Oh?" Jonah looked interested at this. "Mechanical or chemical? Your way around, I mean..."

"A bit of both, though neither's proven fruitful yet."

Jonah nodded thoughtfully. "Would you like me to take a look?" he suggested. "I've done a little microengineering."

I don't know why I was surprised; just because he was built didn't mean he didn't have a brain to go along with it. "Sure, if you like. Any help's appreciated."

The boy beamed from ear to ear like I'd given him a medal. "Great," he said. "I'll head over your way after my testing shift tomorrow."

"I'm sure I'll be there," I told him, somewhat bemused. The offer of help was appreciated, of course, but I still wasn't sure where it had come from. Unless... "Is this because Jane is leaving?"

Jonah blinked. "Jane's leaving?"

Oh, shit. "Yeah." How had I heard that before him? I'd probably gotten so good at blending into the background that people didn't really think not to gossip around me. "Sorry, though it was more or less common knowledge."

"I, uh..." Jonah shook his head. "Hey, no worries," he said, his slight Aussie twang showing through momentarily. "But, um, no. I just... I guess I like the look of you?" he said, sounding a little doubtful that this was going to be seen as a good excuse. "That, uh... came out wrong..."

I couldn't help it, I cracked a smile. "It's okay. I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound so suspicious, I just... thought you were in with Keenan and Rick and them."

"I... guess I am?" Jonas raised his eyebrows, his lips twitching in amusement. "Is that mutually exclusive with associating with you?"

"No, I just..." Don't see why you'd bother with me when you already have friends. "I guess I don't see how there are enough hours in the day to cultivate that many relationships," I said with a brief smile. "But then I'm pretty serious with my plants, so."

"Well, I suppose I'm not very serious with Rick and Keenan," Jonah said lightly. "I didn't realise you were going steady with your lettuce, though, I guess I should back off about now..."

I laughed, but at the same time had a flash of near-panic, or something close to it. Dear God, was he flirting with me? That was a recipe for disappointment, in more ways than one. "I don't think there's anything wrong with eating together, though you might get a stomachache, eating this late in the day."

"I never get stomach aches." Of course he didn't. "But I don't wanna freak you out either," he said in that teasing-but-also-not-really sort of way, and he pushed to his feet. "So, uh, I'm gonna go, and I'll see you tomorrow after my shift?"

"Mmhmm. I mean sure, see you then."

And then he was gone, just like that - the room around me felt instantly larger somehow - it wasn't just that Jonah took up a lot of space physically, though he did. But he also had a strange intensity about him, almost as though he was just more _alive_ than normal people. I decided he couldn't have been flirting with me - I'm not insecure about my looks but I was pretty sure I was down around the middle of the pack in there, and Jonah was most definitely the cream - even I could see that.

 

 

Avery

I spent most of the next day in transit - I didn't live anywhere near the 'training facility' and they wanted me there as soon as possible. It wasn't like I had much of a life to wrap up, so I hopped on a train (have you ever tried flying with a prosthetic leg? It's a pain in the ass) and spent the journey reviewing the documents and contracts they had emailed over the night before. Some of them, I'd seen before and signed already - the various disclaimers about personal safety and facilities provided and all that. Others related to the trial phase practices - contact with the outside world or up-to-date media and so on. Basically warning me that I'd be in breach of contract if I tried to keep in touch with current events or people outside the dome in any way. No fear of that.

Between the screeds of paperwork and occasional bouts of dozing the time just flew by, and before I knew it I was lugging my suitcase off the platform and lifting it into the trunk of a dark sedan, though the driver belatedly realised I might need 'help' and rushed to do just that. "I got it, thanks," I snapped, my general mood not having been improved by the day's travel. He settled for simply opening and closing the trunk for me and then (the perfect gentleman) opening the passenger door, though at my expression he did then let me close it for myself.

We switched at the last outpost (a small half-dead town) from the sedan into a four-by-four driven by a similarly bland and courteous young man, though this one was in cargos and a teeshirt rather than a suit, at least. The dome was out in the desert (of course) - only about ten miles from civilisation, which was almost far enough, I reckoned, over such hostile terrain. The air-conditioning was on full-blast in the jeep, and we kept the windows up. The poor guy tried to make conversation on the way out - how far had I come, was I excited, blah blah blah. I answered in monosyllables and it didn't take him long at all to shut up.

It wasn't really dome-shaped, 'The Dome', but more like two unequal eliptical shells that met in the middle, like a tortoise making-out with a slightly smaller tortoise.

I expected some cadre of bureaucrats and HR specialists to greet me when I arrived and run me through an induction of some sort, but according to my driver that would all be done by one of the 'team' already in the Dome. They really were taking self-sufficient to a new level.

I hauled my suitcase out of the trunk and made my way towards the airlock - this, at least, was familiar, as we had gone through similar procedures in the initial training phase. Keying in the personalised ID number they had given me, I waited for it to beep and slide open to admit me, wondering all the while if this was the craziest or merely one of the craziest things I had ever done. After all, Myanmar might be dangerous - I knew that better than most - but Mars was, well. Mars.

 

Inés

She looked grumpy and uncomfortable and I immediately wondered what on earth she was doing here.

"Hi. Inés Santiago," I said, offering my hand with a friendly - but hopefully not too chipper - smile.

She shook it with a tight smile. She looked pretty tired and it occurred to me that maybe she was just worn out.

"Avery Fisk," she said. "Good to meet you."

"So, I figured I'd take you to the living quarters first so you could drop your things and freshen up, and then if you're up for it we could do the grand tour of the rest of the facilities?"

"Um, sure, sure, thanks," Avery said, her walk stiff and a little limping as she followed me through the atrium. I tried to take it slowly, pointing out a few things as we went though there really wasn't much to see on this side of the Dome besides the quarters and rec areas. Everything was pretty self-contained in order to make it portable (in theory) and easy to maintain, so the modular rooms and corridors felt a bit like something out of a science fiction movie crossed with an IKEA catalogue.

"So Jane hasn't left yet, so I'm afraid your room isn't quite ready, but we've found you a spot in the medical wing for now," I said, taking a turn down another identical-looking hallway. "It should be pretty quiet."

A flicker of something-or-other crossed Avery's face at this and I found myself instinctively bracing - one look at her when she'd arrived had been enough to tell me she wasn't someone you wanted to piss off. She _shouldn't_ have been particularly physically imposing - a shade above average height, fit-looking but not out of the ordinary, light brown hair just long enough to be tied back into its current ponytail and even features with lightly freckled cheeks - attractive but not immediately notable in any way. But there was a hardness about her eyes that didn't just come from their steely grey colour and I had a feeling it'd be a bad idea to cross her.

Still, on this occasion, there was no explosion, just a sigh. "Fine," she said shortly. Then, in a softer tone, like she was deliberately catching herself, she added, "Fair enough." For some reason though she picked up her speed, then making us both quicken our step 'til we were back at a normal walking pace, the limp she'd had before now barely visible.

We reached the makeshift room shortly after; I had done my best to make it look 'homey' but it was still pretty obviously a hospital room, and there wasn't even a window to soften the blow. Avery rolled her suitcase to the wall and gave a cursory glance around before turning back to me expectantly.

"Uh, all ready?" She jerked a nod and I smiled back, turning to head out the door again. "So, we'll head through to the other dome, that's where most of the hard facilities are. I know this all seems really confusing but you get used to it pretty quickly, promise."

Avery raised her eyebrows slightly, maybe at my rude and shocking assumption that anything could confuse her, I dunno (my first impressions weren't great, I admit it). But she followed me out of the room and through the complex toward dome 2.

How had I ended up with meet-and-greet duty, anyway? It wasn't like I had any less to do than anybody else in the Dome, but I suspect that most of the men assumed they were automatically exempt from anything so 'touchy feely' and Jane and Sarkis at least weren't really in a position to schmooze the newcomer. I could've drawn lots with the rest of the female contingent but I had volunteered instead, taking time off from my shift at the computing core to show Avery around. Not that I minded, precisely, but even stuff like this fed into the wider group dynamics so it was a good idea to keep an eye on it if I wanted to stay a key member of the team.

Avery Fisk, at first glance, struck me the kind of person who had a rather distant relationship with both the word 'group' and the word 'dynamic', and I found myself wondering what she was supposed to bring to the table. Jane had been a civil rights lawyer, back in the real world, and presumably Avery was meant to slot in exactly where she had previously been.

"So this is the engineering wing - most of the mechanical stuff that keeps the place running is in here," I said, waving my hand as we passed a heavy, industrial-looking door. "You'll get a tour inside soon enough, I'm sure, but suffice it to say it's noisy and hot in there, and absolutely vital. Well. Everything is, in here."

"Right. Does everyone get trained and end up on rotation there, or just the engineers?"

"Most people get trained on basic maintenance, since that's really the bulk of what needs to be done day-to-day."

"Right." Avery smiled at this - another of those stiff, polite ones, but it was at least pure in intent and it occurred to me maybe she wasn't actively unfriendly, just... not at her best for whatever reason - understandable I suppose.

"And we're coming up to the computing core - that's where I call home usually," I joked. "You probably won't have too much cause to drop in - oh, unless you're a techy..."

"I'm not."

"Ah. Well, lucky you. Oh, and here's the most expansive section of the dome - agriculture."

"Right, of course." Avery seemed to perk up a little as we moved out of Dome 1 and through the broad corridor toward the second dome. I guessed that made sense - computer rooms and engine rooms are roughly the same everywhere. Dome 2 was something new.

"We all take shifts in here - without big farming equipment there's a lot to work to do, as you can imagine."

Avery nodded, eyes doing a big sweep of the dome as we entered. I always found the dome unexpectedly oppressive. I think it was the way you walked in and it was light, and green, with the fresh smell of soil and vegetation in the air, but then you looked up and there was no sky above; just the bright white panelling reflecting as much light as possible down on the crops.

The team on shift that day worked diligently in one of the far fields, the men stripped to the waist, Sarkis and Maddy, the only two women on the rota this afternoon it seemed, no doubt sweating through their tank tops.

"It's pretty warm in here too," I commented needlessly, though Avery didn't bother to make a face at my inanity. "Anyway, there's also the aeroponics tents," I added, pointing to the cluster of pavilions to one side of the entrance. "They're not fully up and running yet but once they are hopefully we'll actually get the bulk of our food from them."

Avery nodded, and she actually looked mildly interested. "Do we do shifts in there to, or..."

"Not usually... Sarkis - Dr Sarkis, that is - usually handles most of it on her own. She's the expert."

"Ah." Avery nodded. "I guess that makes sense. Must be a pretty intensive process, developing the techniques at the same time as trying to actually grow stuff."

"Yeah, I guess so." It probably explained why we never saw her around, either, but I didn't mention that to Avery. She'd find out soon enough everybody's little quirks and habits.

Avery turned back at last, looking expectantly in my direction. Clearly she thought this part of the tour was over.

"Oh, uh... all right." I tried to remember what else I had wanted to see when I had first arrived at the Dome. "Oh! The mess. It's probably getting close to dinner time, isn't it?"

"I suppose so," Avery said with a brief purse of her lips.

"Well, we can get there early and you can meet everyone as they arrive," I decided, because Avery wasn't really giving me much else to work with. "Sound good?"

The other woman nodded. "Sure," she said simply.

 

Avery

I sat in the mess and dutifully introduced myself to everyone who came in - and there were a lot of them. I mean, it was a pretty small community, small enough that I was sure I'd get sick of the sight of them soon enough, but right then meeting twenty nine other people all at once seemed like an awful lot. Well, I say twenty nine, but I know it wasn't - while I didn't actually count people in and out I know for a fact that Dr Sarkis didn't show at dinner.

I didn't really have time to wonder about it, since I was deluged with people eager to tell me what life 'in the Dome' had been like over the past six weeks and what I had to look forward to - 'lots of hard work', apparently, mixed with 'the boredom, oh my god'.

There were about three men for every two women, I figured at a glance - I suppose with them looking for techies and engineers it just worked out that way. The guys were a pretty diverse bunch, mind you - few buff high school jock types, some skinnier bespectacled guys... most were arranged into their little cliques and the place looked like nothing so much as a school lunchroom - albeit with a little less gender segregation. The women, particularly given the universally practical clothing worn here, were harder to immediately 'pin down' in the same way, leaving me to make blanket generalisations based on make-up and hair-styles as I tried to fit everyone in the room into little boxes that I would no doubt feel guilty for putting them in later once I got to know them. Inés led me over to sit with her for today with a group of three men - one of the skinnier contingents and, I assumed, her fellow computer programmers.

"So, Avery," Inés said over an uninspiring pasta dish, emboldened perhaps by being around 'her' people, "you didn't mention what you did, before coming here."

"I was a humanitarian analyst," I said, picking the last real job I had, I guess, rather than the more accurate but rather less true 'I pay the bills by collating news for Reuters'.

"Okay, I know what both those words mean, but together..?" said one of the men - Alex, I think.

"It's an intimidating term for someone who works to get an overview of how aid works, how humanitarian crises pan-out, and looks at how to improve responses to them. I mostly did contract work with the UN and the OECD." I paused, and shot Alex my best attempt at a friendly smile. "It's what you do with a geopolitics degree, some time in the Peace Corps, and no other ideas."

"Wow, sounds really... worthy," he commented, a word I _hate_. I kept smiling.

"So you must have travelled a lot, right?" Inés asked then. "I mean, geopolitics, kind of a waste just sitting at home..."

"Um, yeah," I said. "I mean, not places you would wanna go on vacation, mostly, but I've been around."

"Well, good. We're gonna need some interesting stories to keep us entertained," Alex said with a grin.

I felt a twist in my stomach - how did it _still_ hurt like that, even now? I shook my head. "Yeah, I dunno," I said. "I didn't really come here to look to the past."

"No, no, 'course not. Still, you gotta pass the time somehow, eh?" I never did like Canadians.

I glanced Inés's way, and she looked evenly back at me, her expression a little calculating, and I got the idea then that 'techie' or not, she had a decent grasp on how people worked, because she changed the subject, then, to our rotas and how they worked, and I had at least a temporary reprieve.

 

Jonah

I hadn't realised that Jane's replacement would arrive so soon - they must've had a list of people just waiting in the wings, a thought which was both practical and a little depressing. As much as I wanted to meet this new addition, I had promised to meet Dr Sarkis after my shift in engineering finished, and I intended to honour that promise.

Sarkis was bent over her microscope when I arrived, switching between two samples. I cleared my throat as I entered the tent, making sure to do so at a time when she didn't have a petri dish in her hand. She straightened up suddenly, glancing over at me in surprise before her features settled. "Oh, Jonah, it's you. Sorry, I had forgotten you were coming by."

"Oh, um, well, I don't have to look at anything right now if you're busy," I said. "The last thing I want to do is get in the way when I'm trying to help..."

"It's fine. In fact, one of the units has been acting up today, if you wanted to take a look."

"Sure thing, just point the way."

I was soon dismantling an atomizer on a cleared patch of bench, my little microtool set unfurled beside me as I picked the prototype to pieces. I felt Sarkis's eyes on me at first, obviously breathing down my neck worrying that I was going to destroy her equipment, but before long I heard her heading back over to her microscope - apparently I looked like I at least wasn't going to do any damage.

The problem was pretty obvious: the nutrient mix that the atomizers sprayed was liquified, of course, but the minerals were bound to clog up the pores sooner or later. I didn't know exactly how long each plant needed to be sprayed for, or if there was some kind of maintenance that could be done on them to prevent the problem, but I didn't want to insult Sarkis by bringing up obvious ideas she had probably already thought of and dismissed.

"Would it be possible to swap around your mixes?" I suggested eventually. "Use a denser nutrient mix and then alternate with just a neutral mist?" I made a face - I knew squat about plants. "Hard to say, but it's possible that the plain water would flush the pores clean, sort of like a running maintenance..."

"That wouldn't work. Much denser than this and the roots would burn, at least on the more delicate plants." Her tone was matter-of-fact but not unfriendly. "There are easier ways to get out of eating your spinach."

I chuckled, and felt myself blushing. I glanced about the room at the equipment dotted about the place. "So... they're not all at the same angles, are they? I mean, they're positioned differently - I take it that's intentional?"

"Experimental," she said, nodding. "Trying to optimise all the variables. It's a lot of work."

"Have you been charting how often you need to clean the pores out against the angle it's sitting at?"

"Mm... no, not exactly. That is, I have both sets of information, but I haven't plotted them out against each other. Do you think I ought to?"

I shrugged. "Couldn't hurt. I mean, if you can afford the time - or find some poor hapless statistician to do it for you. Not me," I added quickly with a sheepish grin.

"Don't know how many of those we've got kicking around just now. I'll add it to the list."

I shot her a sympathetic smile and turned back to begin reassembling the atomizer.

"So, it looks like you were right - they've got a replacement in for Jane already," I commented eventually, wondering if she would be more or less relaxed in the familiar environment of the aero tent. "Didn't take them long."

"Oh?" Just that, and it was hard to tell if it was an interested query or a polite acknowledgement.

"Mm. Scuttlebutt says she's an aid worker or something. Was, even."

"Well. I hope she settles in all right."

"Mm." I realised I'd just more-or-less grunted in response, occupied with a particularly fiddly bit of assembly - honestly I appreciated that they were trying to innovate and reinvent with this stuff but these things seemed totally over-engineered to me. Anyway, I cleared my throat and upgraded my grunt to a, "Me too."

"I'm sure you'll make her feel welcome," Sarkis volunteered after a moment. "You seem to have an affinity for waifs and strays."

"Little early to classify her as a waif or a stray just yet, I think," I said carefully - not least because I didn't want to lose the thread of what I was doing any more than what I was saying. "Or anyone else for that matter," I added.

"Some of us have a long history of waifishness," Sarkis replied with a shake of her head. "More than enough for diagnosis. Don't worry, Jonah, you're not going to offend me if you think I'm a bit solitary. I am."

"I just think that you have a lot to do," I said. "I wouldn't want to assume any more than that."

"Well then." And that, it seemed, was that.

 

Chapter 2

Adrian

I had nothing to do with the selection process, of course - they had other psychologists for that, and I was just a selectee just like everybody else. Still, I reckoned I might have skipped on past a woman who'd lost both her husband and her leg to a landmine about three years previously. Call me alarmist but that just seemed like an awfully big liability right there.

Still, the woman in front of me seemed cool and calm enough, answering my opening questions frankly and without hesitation.

"I suppose I felt as though I'd done what I could here," she was saying with a wry smile now. "So y'know, I figured I'd see what I could do on Mars."

"And what do you think you can bring to the mission? What sort of skills?"

Avery leaned back in her chair while she thought about this. "Well, I've got plenty of survival and first aid skills, so I'm generally a good person to have around in a pinch. I'm in pretty decent physical shape - even with the leg. And I dunno, I'm good at... spotting emergent trends and patterns. I tend to see how situations are panning out before other people do. Though I guess that's your territory, really," she added with a slight smirk in my direction.

The only 'trend' I was really picking up on was the fact that everybody seemed to love Taco Tuesday, but I smiled neutrally. "It's always good to have another pair of eyes on the lookout. Especially in a situation like this."

Avery shrugged lightly and smiled. She was putting on a pretty decent performance for someone so utterly done with the world around her and everyone in it. "Well, I guess I'm sort of generic 'ground team', really," she said. "I'm looking forward to learning how everything works."

"It's certainly a great opportunity. Now, I'm sure you read all the fine print, but just to check: you know that there are mandatory weekly check-ins with me, yes?"

"Mhm?" Her tone had the studied casualness of someone who knows they're going to be doing a lot of deflecting.

"Though of course you're welcome to come see me any time outside of that, for any reason."

Avery nodded thoughtfully. "You must do, what, about fifteen hours of scheduled check-ins per week, then, right?" she said. "And presumably you have write-up time, and then standard rotations on top. Get much time for drop-ins?" Her lips curved into a lopsided smile, the asymmetry to my mind adding quite a bit of appeal to her otherwise unassuming features, though I'm not much of a judge.

"I always have time if I need it," I said seriously, hoping she'd take me at my word and actually come to me if she needed it, especially in the first few difficult days.

She nodded, still that tiny smile in place. I suddenly got the feeling as I was much observed as observing and I had to fight the sudden urge to ask her what she was thinking about me.

_Because you didn't already feel insecure enough._

"So," I said briskly, "have you met everybody else? I'd imagine it can feel a bit overwhelming at first."

"Well, a few people introduced themselves at dinner - everyone seems pretty friendly for the most part," Avery said. "Oh, and Jonah came to sit with me at breakfast - I think he was actually waiting for me so he could come say hi."

Of course he was. I smiled. "Well, it's good to hear you've managed to take it all in your stride." Not that I could imagine this woman in a state of panic - she seemed far too dedicated to her cool façade to let it break over something as minor as a few introductions. "And have you been put on the duty roster yet?"

"They're still working it out - and I would assume they'll be waiting for your sign-off," Avery said, one eyebrow raising slightly.

"Well, I doubt they would've asked you all the way here if they thought there was any chance you were unsuitable," I gulped, trying to save face. "So I wouldn't worry too much. Enjoy the free time while you have it."

"So you won't be exercising a veto, then?" Avery replied with the tiniest hint of a smirk, and I realised that despite her deadpan tone she was teasing me.

"Hah. I like to give people a chance."

Avery nodded slowly. "Fair enough," she said evenly, not joking now.

"And I'm here to help," I reiterated, "any time."

Avery nodded again. Then, in a light enough tone, "Are we done, then?"

"Yes, you're free to go." I wondered what would happen if I insisted on keeping her longer - would the cracks start to widen, or would she just retreat? No point in pushing now, though, we'd have plenty of time to explore the pressures of her new situation soon enough.

 

Avery

I got out of the medical wing and into my 'pod', as they called them around here, on my third day. Jane had made her exit largely without fanfare, though there was a small gathering in one of the rec rooms the night before, about as staid and quiet as you'd expect for a place like this. The dome was dry, of course - there were actually no rules on the topic, but our starting supplies hadn't included alcohol and I couldn't see Dr Sarkis prioritising fermentation or distillation among her many tasks. I wondered idly how long it would be before someone - Rick or Keenan maybe - decided to take it upon themselves to make some bathtub hooch.

Sarkis didn't come to the 'leaving party', of course, though she did make sure to show up to see Jane off the next day. We - Jane and I, that is - had had a chat the previous night about stuff - I guess she felt the need to check in with me as her replacement, felt like she owed me some sort of explanation.

"It's just... it just sunk in all of a sudden, how permanent it all was," she had said, fingers nervously plucking at the ends of her sleeves. "And I realised I just couldn't do it. There are things I haven't done yet..."

I'd smiled and nodded along. Jane was younger than me, I reckoned, and certainly a little less world-weary. "That's fair enough," I said. "I'm sure no one could blame you."

"I hope not. I feel like I'm letting people down... people here, I mean. But I'm sure they'll get on fine without me."

"I'll try to fill the gap as best I can," I said with a nod. "It'll be okay. You'll make it count, yeah - leaving, I mean? Get all those things done you haven't done yet?"

She had looked a bit terrified, and I wondered what could be more intimidating than a one-way mission to Mars. "Yeah. I will."

The pod was small but not too small - it had a double bed that you could walk around without banging your leg, and there was an ingenious use of space to present far more storage than you initially expected. There was a small portable computer provided, though everything that used power had labels all over it reminding us to conserve energy and think very hard before using any. I wondered how long it would take before I ceased to see them, my eyes just grazing blankly past the warnings.

I unpacked my suitcase then, storing away the clothes and few small personal effects I had brought with me, though they were more tokens than anything else. I didn't need pictures or knick-knacks to remind me of the past; in fact, the less that called my memory back, the better.

As I pulled out the one picture of Danny I'd brought - the two of us standing side-by-side in front of a water-pump in a little village in north Senegal, ten years ago. It was one of the few pictures I had where he was in front of the camera rather than behind it. I stuck it in a drawer for now. It wasn't that I didn't want to see him, to remember him sometimes. I just wanted to be in control of when.

A knock on the door shook me out of my reverie; how did anybody even know I was there? After closing all the drawers that I could I made my way to the door and opened it to find Jonah standing there, beaming. "Oh good, I guessed right. How's your room shaping up?"

I rearranged my face into a smile. "Great," I said. "Take some getting used to, but I think I have everything I need."

"Good, I'm glad to hear it." He actually sounded genuinely pleased. "If you find you need anything, just let me know and I'll try to track it down for you."

"You the fixer around here, then?" I said, and I could feel myself smirking. The guy's mood was infectious - it would be pretty hard to be moody around him.

"Oh, one of them. Plenty of people will be able to help you out if you need it, though."

"Good to know." I paused. "So tell me about yourself, Jonah. What did you do before you became an explorer?"

"Before this I was in the Army." I wonder if the psychiatrist, Adrian, had picked up on his momentary hesitation. Of course, he probably had a full dossier and didn't need to ask questions like that.

"Huh. Did you see active service?" I couldn't get a read on Jonah's age - he could be a buff twenty one or a baby-faced thirty, easy.

"Yeah, I saw some action," he said with a congenial nod. "Nothing that exciting, I'm afraid."

I felt my brows draw together reflexively as I shook my head. "That's good," I said. "It's good to be there and not be needed. Better than being needed by far. I'm glad you didn't see anything too 'exciting'."

Jonah's expression grew sympathetic and I wondered suddenly if he was telling me the whole truth. "Indeed. Now, speaking of being needed... I wondered if you'd do me a favour."

"Yeah?" Ah, that kind of fixer - I'd been here ten minutes and already he had a little job for me - and then he'd shoot that big dimpled smile, and I'd agree to it, no question. So what would it be?

"Well, it seems like someone with your skkill set should be pretty comfortable with graphs and statistics, yeah?"

"Sure, I know my stats," I said with a nod.

"Perfect. There's a little job Dr Sarkis needs completed and I bet you'd be able to finish it in no time."

I raised my eyebrows. "Dr Sarkis can't recruit her own helpers?" I was more amused than annoyed but at that point I'd still to say a single word to the woman.

"She's a busy woman, and I'm a nosy so-and-so," Jonah said with a rueful grin. "I'm sure she'd appreciate your help."

"I take this is extra-curricular?"

"...yeah?"

Not that it mattered really, I wasn't about to refuse to do something to help out. "'Kay. When's the best time to catch her?"

"Any time, as long as you're looking for her in the labs."

"Fair enough. Any other little jobs you want me to do?"

"No," he said with a grin, "I think that's probably enough for now. Thanks, Avery."

"No problem." And just like that, it wasn't.

 

Zoë

Once again I was alone after a hard day's work in the fields. Save for the little blip with Jonah's visit a few days back I had been given uninterrupted time in the evenings to try and figure out what was going wrong with the units - not that it had yielded any positive results yet.

People didn't come by the aeroponics tent very often, but when they did, the lack of a hard door to knock always made for some interesting behaviour. Some knocked on the nearest hard surface they could find - a bench, a support rod. Some cleared their throat. Some just announced themselves.

"Dr Sarkis?"

It was the newest arrival - something Avery, the replacement for Jane. I nodded to her, curious why she would have come by now, of all times. "Ms Avery. What can I do for you?"

"Uh, Avery's my first name," the other woman replied with a wry smile. "Avery Fisk. Um, Jonah came to see me..."

Why did that not surprise me? "Oh?"

"He said you need some numbers crunched."

"He said... oh, right, the flow rate," I said as everything clicked into place. Of course I hadn't gotten around to plotting out his suggestion, not because it was a bad one but I still had lots of other stuff ahead of it on my to-do list. "Well, if you're keen to crunch them I've got the numbers, but you really shouldn't feel obliged, I'll get to it eventually myself."

"Seems like you have enough on your plate," the other woman said with a light shrug. "Want to put them on a memory stick or something and I'll take 'em back to my roo- pod?"

"Yeah, sure, just a second. Um, take a seat," I said, waving to one of the less-cluttered benches. "It'll just be a minute."

"So, uh... what exactly d'you need me to do?" Avery asked as I hunted through the supplies and junk in my filing cabinet for a memory stick.

"Just, um..." I trailed off - I don't multitask incredibly well (shocking, I know). "Oh, um. The units there are clogging, I'm looking to optimise their performance against that. Jonah suggested that I take a look at the angles of the legs against how often they were clogging. I have a couple other things that might be useful to look at in addition to that, if you're up to some multivariable differentiation."

"Sure," she said, and I could hear dry amusement in her tone. "I mean, who doesn't love multivariables?"

"They are incredibly useful," I agreed, though I knew she was being sarcastic.

"I dunno what sort of analysis software the computers have," Avery warned then. "I'm sure there'll be something I can use but it might take me a while to figure it out. Just, y'know, it's not gonna be an overnight thing."

"That's all right. This is just one of many avenues of investigation, so you won't be holding anything up. Aha!" I finally located a USB stick and scooped it up. "Let me just download that data..."

It was just numbers, hardly took up a lot of space, but the files were here and there all over my system and I hadn't even begun to pull them together, so there was a few minutes of waiting during which Avery began to move row by row through the tent, bending now and then to examine something that caught her eye. She also looked across at me from time to time, which I guessed made sense - I wasn't exactly around a lot for people to get the measure of me at their leisure.

There were a couple of other folders on the stick and I considered going through them all, but it had already been a couple minutes and the back of my neck was beginning to itch with Avery glancing at me every so often. "Okay, so. I've labelled them as clearly as I can - just let me know if you have any questions."

"Will do. I'll drop by when I'm done - or if I see anything interesting I guess."

I brightened. "Oh, are you a botanist as well? I didn't know, I assumed someone would have told me."

"Huh?" She blinked. "No, I just meant if I spotted any correlations. I know a bit about crops but I'm nowhere near a professional."

That... made more sense. I tried not to look too embarrassed. "Right, of course. Sorry, I suppose I just got a bit giddy at the idea of someone to share the load."

Avery glanced up from the lettuce root system that she had been staring at. Her eyes were clear and grey and utterly unreadable, but she smiled, mouth upturning a little more at one side than the other. "Well, anything else I can do, just let me know - I'm on the Dome 2 rota for later this week, I think, so I'll see you then either way."

"Great. Well, thanks in advance for your help."

"No problem."

 

Avery

So that had been Dr Sarkis. Personally I didn't know what all the fuss was about - I mean, she was pleasant enough, and certainly seemed smart, but she hadn't struck me as particularly... mysterious, which is what I had been expecting, given the way people seemed to talk about her.

Then again, she _was_ lonely. I understood lonely instinctively, so I guess maybe that made her more mysterious to other people than she was to me.

In any case, I was happy to help with the calculations, and it would probably look good on my assessments if I was seen to pitch in and do extra work to support the team, or whatever. There was statistical analysis software on my laptop, but it wasn't anything I was familiar with, and I had to spend the best part of the evening figuring it out before I could even begin to put Sarkis's figures together.

There was a lot of data to go through; I was glad I had told her it might be some time, especially since I wasn't sure how exhausted I was going to be at the end of my first proper day's work. I had been pretty fit, once, but after I got rejected the first time I had just kinda given up my gym membership and devoted myself to being a full-time couch potato. The physical they'd given me on entry had been cursory at best - they weren't exactly looking for reasons to kick me back out after shipping me over, and though I reckoned I'd've passed anyway, I was pretty glad to avoid seeing how far my physical capabilities had fallen.

I wasn't sure if putting me 'in the fields' as my first shift was an intentional move to see if I was up to manual labour, but either way I was actually kind of relieved. I knew my way around a shovel, so it would give me a nice mindless way to settle in, maybe give me the time to process that I really hadn't had yet.

I wondered how many other people were going to have the same realisation that Jane was - that this was forever. Not the dome itself, obviously, but the end game, the goal, the rocket at the end of the tunnel. How many of them would realise that this was it - there would be no more contact with family, no chance to climb the career ladder, no more normal life. And how many of them would step back from the edge and return to their homes, their lives, their families?

Not Sarkis, I thought. And not Jonah either - for all his friendliness and congeniality the young man had an emptiness in him that I recognised, the same as I recognised Sarkis's loneliness. I supposed that over time I would figure the rest out, or see their stories play out at any rate.

I lay awake a long time those first few nights. The pod was unnaturally quiet, the temperature just a shade too warm for comfort even in the cold desert night. I hoped that Dome 2 would do its job and wear me out.

 

Inés

I hated Dome 2. I enjoyed physical exercise, but the repetitive activity, the temperature, the humidity, the smell of earth... after a while it just got to me.

The thing with something like a racquetball game was that eventually it ended. But working with the crops never seemed to end. Even though it was a closed environment and there shouldn't have been any pests, there still were, and weeds, and no matter how much we did there was always another row waiting.

Plus there was Sarkis. She never commented on our work - speed, quality, whatever, she only really spoke if we looked like we weren't sure where to go next, or to outline the day's goals. But the way _she_ worked, the sheer fucking diligence and energy she had, well, you just had to pitch in just as hard or you felt like a slob.

And today it turned out she had a twin in the form of the new girl. Avery still moved a little stiffly, I thought - I guess 'cause I was looking out for it having seen it on the first day - but _man_ did she put her back into the work. The two of them covered more ground individually than the rest of us did together, and by lunchtime I heard a few people grumbling that we should just bunk off and leave them to it. We wouldn't, of course, but that didn't mean the temptation wasn't there. When lunch rolled around and we all downed tools to eat, Sarkis headed off to her aeroponics tent as usual, and I saw Avery watching her leave with raised eyebrows.

"So... she doesn't even eat with the field workers, then?"

"No... I mean, not because of any sense of superiority or anything." Depending on who you asked. "I guess she's just really busy."

"Right." Avery nodded thoughtfully, eyes still on Sarkis's retreating back. Then she turned back to her bean salad, digging in hungrily and without another word. I'd been right in thinking she seemed fairly fit on that first day - her shoulders were square and solid and her arm muscles shifted under her skin as she moved, but she still looked pretty worn out - her face was red from exertion and she was sweating at least as much as I was.

"How're you finding it out there?" I asked then, more to be polite than out of any real sense of curiosity. There was only so many answers to that question and I knew them all.

"Not bad," Avery said. "Hard going, but it's nice to just... work."

"Yeah? Plenty of that around here."

"Yeah." Avery glanced up at me. "You're not a fan of the fields?"

"Oh, you know, they're okay. Just not my favourite."

"What do you like? I mean, the server and control rooms, presumably, but other than that?"

"You mean here? In the Dome?"

"Yeah."

"I dunno, maintenance is okay, I guess. I don't mind Mess duty, though I think it'd get old if I had to do it every day."

"Sure, sure." This seemed to be enough conversation for Avery's liking because she shot me a polite smile and stood, then, a little stiff again, and she seemed to feel it too because she began to walk a couple of leisurely circuits of our eating area, occasionally reaching to pinch at the thigh of her cargos like it was itching her or catching something.

Most of the clothes they provided us were pretty comfy, but then again she was wearing full-length trousers while the rest of us (even Sarkis) were wearing shorts out there. I wondered if maybe she hadn't gotten a full complement of the t-shirts, tank tops and other sponsored clothing they had provided most of us upon entry, and the next time she passed I caught her and asked.

"Hm? Oh..." Avery glanced around, obviously only noticing now that she was the odd one out. "Nah," she said. "I have 'em. Just wanted to keep dirt off the leg." She lifted a few inches of her left trouser leg to reveal smooth, white plastic between it and her sock. "The joints are a total pain if they get gritty," she went on as I stared in spite of myself.

"Oh, uh, right," I said, tearing my eyes away after a good few seconds. I couldn't help but puzzle over the fact that they had sent a cripple in as a replacement. Jesus, not a cripple, Avery was totally pulling her weight. I realised I hadn't said anything in a while. "Uh, well, cool. Was just checking you had everything you needed."

"I'm good," Avery said, that careful smile still in place. I wondered if anyone else had seen what she had just shown me.

"Well, we should probably get back," I said then, standing and picking up my tray. "Are you gonna be okay to go back out there?"

Avery raised her eyebrows. "Would you have asked me that question a minute ago?" she asked. Her tone was even, but there was a slight flicker of flint in those grey eyes.

"Yeah, of course," I stammered, feeling like an absolute tool. "I mean, it's your first day, it's hard work, and you looked a little sore. Besides, I don't know if _I'm_ up to going back out there, I mean, not that you and I are any different, it's just, I mean..." I trailed off, not sure how I could save this trainwreck. "Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything like that."

"Right." Avery smirked a little - maybe happy to put me on the ropes after I insulted her capabilities or whatever. "Well, I'm good."

"Okay, good. Well, uh, let's get out there, then." Suddenly a silent afternoon plucking bugs sounded really good.

 

Zoë

Whatever else you might say about her, the woman could certainly work. She put her back into it like no one else, even back at the start when the activity still had some novelty value. She worked like she had something to prove - to whom, I wasn't sure. Sweat was pouring off her when we finished up that afternoon, but she actually looked the most content I'd seen her - not, of course, that I'd seen much.

I caught her eye as we returned the tools to the shed and gave her a nod - nothing too familiar, but a friendly acknowledgement of her hard work, or so I hoped. Her gaze caught mine, and she held it for a little too long before looking back to what she was doing.

"Still getting to grips with that data," she said by way of conversation. "Gonna be a few days before I've got anything."

"That's all right. Not like I'm going anywhere." Was that a joke? God, I was rusty at this whole 'making conversation' thing.

Avery nodded. "Well, see you tomorrow."

"I... yeah. See you." I finished tidying the tools away and turned towards the aero tents; I had checked in on them at lunchtime and everything was fine, but a lot could change in the space of a few hours. I hoped I wouldn't be disappointed.

 

Jonah

"Guys, I've barely spoken to her, honestly, I can't tell you much more than you already know from meeting her."

"Aw, c'mon," Rick said. "You know just about everyone in this place better'n any of us - you must've picked up _something_ about her."

I frowned; I didn't like gossiping and I didn't like being put on the spot, and I especially didn't like prying into people's personal lives very much. "I'm telling you, I don't know anything more than you do, I've only spoken to her a handful of times. Why this sudden interest, anyway? Yesterday she was just another face in the crowd."

Rick glanced at Keenan. "Kee was in the field with her today. Apparently she's a _machine_. Like, Sarkis Mark 2."

"Okay, well... good for her?"

"Hey, any woman with that much energy deserves a second look," Keenan chimed in, nudging his friend. "Well, one that isn't Streisand, anyway. She only loves plants."

"...I'm really not sure where you're getting that from, but okay. Listen, if you're interested why don't you go ask _her_ about herself? She seems pretty friendly, I'm sure she'd be happy to chat."

"You could at least help me out with a conversation starter, J," Rick protested, though he didn't seem overly distressed. "C'mon, at least tell me what a humanitarian analyst _is_."

Of course. As patiently as I could muster I explained what Avery herself had told me, though I didn't think it would do him much good. Conversation about international affairs wasn't really Rick's strong point.

"Right. So. How 'bout them Yankees it is, then," he said with a grin, pushing to his feet and grabbing his bowl to head over to the far table where Avery sat - alone, this afternoon, though that wasn't as far as I'd noticed becoming a habit to worry about the way it had with Sarkis.

I thought about checking back on the botanist, maybe bringing her something to eat and seeing how she had gotten on with Avery, but it might've seemed a bit too... well, I didn't want her to think I was trying to babysit her or anything. Besides, I was perversely interested to see how Rick performed - it wasn't like there was anything better on TV.

He wasn't speaking quite loudly enough to be overheard, but he got a polite smile and nod to his first question and Avery pulled her tray a little closer to herself as he took the bench opposite her. Not seeming to take the hint, he continued to talk, and from what I could tell she gave as many one-word answers as she could between bites of her food, finishing her meal at a truly astounding rate.

Then she was nodding and smiling, and getting up, and leaving, and Rick was left sitting there like an idiot while Keenan chuckled away in amusement. "Aw, man. _That_ right there, that's striking out."

"Probably for the best," I commented quietly. "I know it's not in the contract, but relationships of any kind beyond friendship probably aren't a good idea here, don't you think?"

Keenan snorted in renewed amusement. "Jesus man." When I looked blankly at him, he clicked his tongue and shook his head in amazement. "I sweartagod you're some kind of robot. Of _course_ they aren't a good idea, but you can guaran-fuckin'-tee they're gonna happen - only reason we haven't mostly fucked each other senseless already is 'cause we're all too worn out most days. All of us, I mean," he added quickly. "I didn't mean you an' me. Obviously."

"Well, it sounds like a recipe for disaster, if you ask me." I made a mental note about his quick retraction - homophobic, or closeted? "But you're probably right, I imagine it will happen anyway."

"Mm. Though not with Rick and Avery, apparently."

"Plenty more fish in the sea. Dome. Whatever."

"Mm, he really digs his fit older women, though," Keenan said. "I think he must've seen Terminator 2 at a really formative age or something."

I chuckled; he may have been a bit of a meathead, but Keenan had a pretty good sense of humour. "That would explain a lot."

Keenan grinned and looked back to his food quickly as Rick came back to sit with us, clearly not wanting to look too amused by what had transpired. I hoped he was the type to take a hint and give up early; the last thing Avery needed was someone hounding her every step while she tried to settle in to life in the Dome.

 

Adrian

"So, how do you feel like you're getting on?"

Avery tipped her head from side to side in an easy-going 'so-so', though she smiled too. "Not bad," she said. "Still adjusting. But I'm sleeping properly now that the work's started for real, so that's good."

"Ah, right, you've been out in the field mostly, is that right?" I asked, rifling through the papers on my clipboard to check the rota. "Crops, I mean, not... well, I suppose we're all 'in the field' right now, aren't we?"

Avery tipped her head in acknowledgement of the joke rather than actually laughing at it. I guessed this maybe didn't seem like 'in the field' by comparison to stalking the Myanmar border.

"Yeah, I've been in Dome 2 all week. It's been pretty hard going. Good, though."

"Good in what way?"

"Y'know. Straightforward, satisfying, kinda invigorating. It's good to just work and not think about it too hard while I find my feet."

I nodded, hoping it looked more knowing and less 'stalling for time'. "Do you find yourself overthinking things too much, generally?"

"I think it's safe to say the way I overthink things is pretty specific," Avery deflected dryly.

"And what way is that?" I pressed, hoping to get her to open up at least a little. It was only our second session, but I wanted to try and get a hold on her, and it had eluded me so far.

Avery sighed. "I just mean that overthinking is never really 'general', is it? It's always pretty specific. Getting bogged down in details and specifics isn't good for you. I've found. I like to try to get an overview if I can."

"And what's your overview of this situation?"

"It's been a week, Ade, gimme a little longer, huh?"

"Of course, of course. How are you sleeping? I know it can take some getting used to."

"Better now I'm wearing myself out."

I nodded again, scribbling a note on the paper in front of me. "Any concerns? Fears? Apprehensions?"

"Only what you'd expect. Oh God Mars We're All Going To Die. Nothing particular."

"Right." I gave her a smile. "I see you've been putting in a little overtime to help Dr Sarkis out. How's that going?"

"Slowly. Statistical analysis."

"Are you finding it satisfying?"

"I like being helpful."

"And how are you and Dr Sarkis getting along?"

"Fine I guess," Avery said. "We haven't really spoken a great deal, why?"

"No particular reason." In truth I was incredibly curious - Sarkis and Avery struck me as being at once very similar and quite different and I found it hard to predict how they might relate to one another. "I'm sure she appreciates your help."

"Once I've been of some help I hope so. Thus far I've just bothered her for data and then disappeared."

"Well, these things do take time."

"Yep."

I realised that I had made the cardinal mistake of not asking a question and kicked myself; obviously Avery wasn't going to fill the silence herself. "Well. Is there anything else you'd like to discuss today?"

Avery seemed to give this a cursory amount of thought, and then shook her head. "Don't think so," she said.

"All right, well, you know where to find me if anything comes up. Otherwise you're all set."

"See you next week," Avery said, rising to her feet and shooting me that usual lopsided smile.

I smiled back and looked down to my clipboard as she left; there was a form to fill out, of course, monitoring what the mission leaders had decided were the important things - sleep, satisfaction with work, relationship with other team members. People were welcome to 'use' me as a more traditional therapist if they wanted, but really all I was required to do was to fill out these forms and submit them every week. Well, that and I represented the only form of contact with the outside - any communication to or from the mission control went through me, and even that was only meant to happen in exceptional circumstances. Even things like the death of a family member would not be passed on until the end of the mission. People were well and truly isolated.

That had been a short session, and I had about fifteen minutes to write-up (which I didn't need) before my next appointment - an easy-going engineer called Dave who rarely took any longer than Avery just had. Then there was the woman herself: the 'mysterious' Dr Sarkis.

 

Zoë

"Hello, Dr. How are you doing today?"

"Please," I said, "it's Zoe. I'm fine, thank you."

"D'you want to tell me about your week?"

"It's been more of the same, really. Work in Dome 2, overseeing the aeroponics..." I shrugged. There was nothing particularly exciting or noteworthy about my week.

Adrian raised his eyebrows at me in what I gathered was mild surprise. "All... right," he said, looking to his notepad and jotting something down. "What about the feelings of isolation we're talked about this past few weeks?"

"Better, actually." At his expectant look I went on. "Jonah came by to offer his help, as did Avery. So I've had some human contact."

The young man nodded, then, pushing his glasses up his nose. This obviously had been what he'd been looking for, and that made me a little suspicious.

"I'd like to think my isolation is not quite so pronounced as to make this a noteworthy occurrence," I said then, a little sharply.

Adrian's eyebrows winged up, perhaps of their own accord, because he stumbled a little when he replied, "Um, sure, absolutely not, I'm just glad to hear it's been a better week for that. Have they eased your workload any?"

"Not really. Jonah tried, but I don't think he accomplished much of any use."

"Ah. Well, it's good that you feel less isolated. Do you like them? Jonah and Avery, I mean? Do you get along?"

What an odd question. I considered pointing this out, but then, he was probably just going off of whatever was on his little sheet. "They're nice enough."

"Do you think they like you?"

"Excuse me?"

Adrian blinked, and repeated his question in the same even tone.

"I think they can certainly co-exist with me perfectly well in a situation like this," I said, too surprised to inject more than a small amount of sarcasm in to my reply. "As to whether they 'like' me... I don't know, do you want me to pass them a note, ask them to mark 'yes' or 'no'?"

Adrian gave me a long look. Then he glanced back to his pad and scribbled something. "All right," he said evenly, "is there anything else you'd like to talk about today?"

"No," I said with a curmudgeonly sigh. I couldn't help it; these 'counselling' sessions were an interminable mixture of boring and awkward. "I think that's all."

"All right," Adrian said again, and then he launched into the standard questions he had to ask each week to tick his boxes, not even trying to make them sound connected or spontaneous. It was easy enough figure out what the 'right' answers were; I wondered if people were truly honest, or just said what they needed to to get another week's pass. Luckily my sleep had been fine and my appetite healthy, and besides the odd question of being 'liked' by my teammates I'm sure I had done all right.

"See you next week, then," Adrian said at length, glancing up from his pad and smiling at me as I stood to leave.

"Yeah... listen, I'm sorry for snapping earlier," I said, pausing by my chair. "I know you have to ask those questions."

The young man looked up again, eyebrows raised. "Many of them, yes," he said. Then, "It's quite all right, don't worry about it."

"Mm, okay. I'll see you next week."

 

Chapter 3

Avery

There was rain on my face, warm and thick and dusty, but I felt freezing cold and as much as I told myself to get up, over and over again, I couldn't, couldn't even open my eyes. Somewhere far away someone was yelling my name...

I opened my eyes; the room was completely dark - back home there'd be the little 'charging' blink from my phone, the eerie glow from the wireless router. Here we were encouraging to shut things down completely at night and there was nothing. A thin film of sweat covered my skin but then, that was normal even on good nights here in the slightly-too-hot pod.

I had lied to Adrian about my sleep - I wasn't being kept up by the temperature or the silence, now, but it was still a rare event that I had a completely unbroken night's sleep. It was probably to be expected, after such a big change in circumstances, that my head would be all jumbled up and spitting things out of my subconscious, and so I didn't feel it warranted mention to the psychiatrist. Especially since I'm sure he would've pounced on it and I had absolutely no desire - none at all - to walk him through my mental landscape.

I got up, turning to sit on the edge of the bed and reaching for my water bottle. My mouth was dry - I'd been sleeping with it open - and my neck ached. Still, I was still exhausted from thisi weeks field work, and I knew that I'd at least get back to sleep pretty quickly and easily.

It was only because I was already awake that I heard the sounds coming from the corridor - just the noises of someone walking past my room, but given the hour it was a bit odd. I waited until the footsteps had passed and then got up, hopping over and opening my door quietly and peering out in time to see the unmistakeable figure of Jonah turn the corner and disappear.

It took me a minute or two to get my leg on and hobble after him, still barefoot and in my pyjama shorts and vest, my hair, no doubt, a tousled mess.

I found him in the mess, hunched over a steaming mug. I wasn't the stealthiest person, especially after just waking up, but he was already looking up when I entered, his eyes narrowed. He seemed to relax a little when he saw it was me, and his eyes flicked over me - all of me - before finding my face again. "Couldn't sleep?" he asked with a wry smile.

"Just woke up. You?"

"Same." He nodded towards the bench across from him. "Green tea?"

"Um, sure," I murmured, moving over to grab a mug from the crockery stand before joining him, and he poured me some of the steaming liquid from the little teapot he'd made.

"I don't really like the way it tastes," he commented then, wrapping his hands around the mug. "But it's supposed to help with sleep, so."

"It can," I offered. "Though I've always found good sleep is all about your state of mind."

"Hah. Well, I don't know any teas that help with that, I'm afraid."

"Oh, I do, but I don't think Dr Sarkis is growing quite what we'd need," I replied with a throaty chuckle.

Jonah looked briefly surprised, though he was soon joining me in a laugh. "Something to note in the mission reports, I guess."

"Mm. Well, anyway." I glanced up at him. "Anything in particular keeping you awake tonight?"

"Oh, just old memories," he said, a shadow briefly falling over his features until he shook his head to clear it. "You?"

I shrugged. "Same," I said.

He nodded sympathetically, sipping at his tea. "That's tough."

"Mm." I glanced down into my tea. "Man, anti-oxidants taste terrible."

"They really do."

"So." I glanced up at him. "I went to see Sarkis, picked up that data."

"Oh?" he said, brightening a little. "Made any breakthroughs?"

"Barely got everything fed in yet. But we'll see."

"Well, fingers crossed. We'd all benefit from getting that figured out."

I nodded. "I'll certainly do my best."

"If there's anything I can do to help, let me know. Though the whole reason I passed it on to you was because I'm terrible at math, so..."

"You know, statistics aren't just... right, um, fair enough," I said with a grin. "It, uh... seems like you put a lot of effort into making people feel welcome here."

"Well, I just... know what a strange situation this is, and I want everyone to feel all right about being here. We're only as strong as our weakest member and all that."

"Here I was thinking you were just a really sweet guy."

"Just as well I managed to enlighten you before it was too late," he said with a wry smile.

"Indeed, calculating and pragmatic it is," I said with a chuckle. "Shame."

"Why's that?"

I lifted my shoulders in a shrug. "I dunno," I said. "Chalk it up to tiredness."

Jonah raised his mug in a weary salute. "Amen to that."

"So... Australia by way of where?" I asked now. There was no question where Jonah was from originally, but his accent was a strange, quite pleasant mix that I couldn't otherwise place.

"Oh, here and there."

I smirked a little. "For someone so friendly you don't like talking about yourself much, do you?"

"I guess I just prefer to talk about more interesting things," he said with a shrug. "I already know my life story, there's no need to retread it."

"Okay, okay, I can take a hint. But if you don't want to talk about you and I don't want to talk about me, that doesn't leave us much."

"I'm sure there's plenty we can still find to talk about. For example - what's the last book you read?"

"God, um... something by John Le Carre? ...Cannot for the life of me remember the title..." I read a lot, but some stuff I sleepwalked through rather than really absorbing.

 

Jonah

It had taken a little doing, but eventually our sleep-deprived fumblings had turned into a real conversation, and we sat up for some time long discussing books before Avery decided to give sleep another go. I knew I probably ought to as well, so after busing our mugs back to the kitchen sink I followed her down the corridor to our respective pods.

"Well, can't say I hope we meet again this way, but it was still a nice way to pass the time," I told her at her door. "Thanks for taking pity on me and sticking around to entertain me."

Avery nodded, looking up at me with a slightly calculating expression. She seemed for a moment like she was about to say something, but the she just nodded. "See you around, Jonah."

"Almost assuredly."

I wondered what sort of dreams had woken her up - something to do with the loss of her leg, or something more mundane than that? Still, she hadn't been any more forthcoming than me on herself and I supposed that was fair enough.

I didn't immediately go back to my own room - instead I found myself wandering over to Dome 2. I didn't go in, but I did stare through the door at the light, green space for a while. I suppose I thought looking at plants might still my thoughts. Eventually I had to admit that even the plants couldn't work miracles and I would be better off in my quiet, dark room. As I turned to go, I thought I saw a flicker of motion out of the corner of my eye in the aeroponics tent. It looked like me and Avery weren't the only ones enjoying sleepless nights. On balance, though, I decided that while my presence during one of her late-evening dinners might have been tolerable for Dr Sarkis, my barging in on her in the middle of the night almost certainly wouldn't be.

Still, I made a note to keep an eye on her - and Avery - to make sure they were coping all right. I wondered if telling Adrian would be a breach of whatever tenuous friendship I had managed to form with each woman, and whether that mattered. I really had meant what I said to Avery earlier - we were only as strong as the weakest among us.

 

Zoë

I was incredibly grateful not to have to work the kitchens - I have no particular culinary talents and don't do particularly well in 'serving' roles, a fact I had discovered during an ill-fated attempt at waitressing in college that had lasted all of three days. As such, I only saw the inside of the kitchens when I had a delivery to make, though even that was rare since usually other team members manned the trolleys that brought our hard-grown grains and vegetables from one dome to the other.

"Anybody in here?" I called, backing through the double doors, trolley in tow. "Veg delivery coming through..."

"Hm? Oh..." The head that stuck out of the pantry doorway was an increasingly familiar one - that of the recently-arrived Avery Fisk. "Well, hey there," she said. "I thought you weren't allowed to leave Dome 2," she teased.

"They let me out on parole for good behaviour," I joked back. "Think you can help me make a run for it?"

"I dunno. I have very important soup to make."

"Oh yeah? Could that soup use any carrots, by any chance?"

Avery smiled. "Well, I was doing great with a stone and an onion, but I guess I could find a way to make use of some, sure."

"Hey, stone soup, I remember that," I commented with a grin, thinking back to my mother's soothing voice reading me the story as I burrowed under my blankets on my bed. "I'm sure Martian rocks will give it an extra _je ne sais quoi_."

"Here's hoping," the other woman replied, moving into the prep area from the pantry where she'd been loading up on other root veg, by the looks of it. "Thanks," she said as I unloaded the carrots onto the counter.

"Benefit of aeroponics - you don't need to scrub them after harvesting," I told her. "But you'll probably want to give them a rinse before throwing them in."

"Noted." Avery paused. "I might chop them, too. Just, y'know. For kicks."

I laughed again. There was something about her deadpan humour that tickled me. "Yeah, sure, if you want to be _weird_ about it, go ahead."

Avery turned to lean back against the counter, wiping her hands on her apron before reaching to untie and retie her hair back. "How's the field? I admit I miss it a bit, though I was ready for the break..."

"It's actually coming along quite well... maybe thanks in part to your hard work."

"Oh..." Avery shook her head. "I'm just a labourer. You're the brains."

"Don't say that - these brains _still_ haven't figured a solution to the clogging problem."

Avery shot me a wry smile, then seemed to remember something. "Oh! I've finally got your data in incidentally. I've started running some basic tests."

"Oh yeah? Great. Probably too soon to ask if you've got any results yeah..." I raised by eyebrows hopefully anyway.

Avery shook her head. "'Fraid not. But I mean, that doesn't mean anything - I don't have _anything_ because I really haven't run enough numbers yet."

"That's cool, I understand that progress takes time."

"And hey, I mean, this is the trial phase, right? So I guess we have all the time we need. As long as it isn't more than another four months."

"Yes but." I blew out a breath. "Well. I'd like to get it sorted out sooner than that, obviously."

Avery nodded and smiled. "Just gimme another week. I'll have something for you then."

"Sure, of course, no problem. And I'll... probably have some more carrots for you by then."

The other woman tipped her head to one side. "D'you ever wish you had some other duties?"

"Honestly?" Avery nodded. I grinned. "Hell no."

The other woman laughed. "Fair enough. It's good that you enjoy your work. I admire that."

"Well, that's probably the nicest thing that's been said about me since this whole mission started," I said lightly. "Thanks for that."

Avery's expression grew sober at this, but she didn't say anything other than, "Thanks for the carrots."

That sounded like a dismissal, so I nodded and finished unloaded before turning to wheel the cart out. Part of me wouldn't have minded staying to chat for a while longer, but I knew better than to overstay my welcome.

Just before I left, though, Avery cleared her throat. "Um, Dr Sarkis?"

"Mmhmm?" I asked as I turned back to face her, curious.

"I won't be eating with everyone else tonight - I'll be cooking and then clearing up. I know you eat late. I figured we could... I mean," she added, "unless you prefer the time to yourself."

The offer surprised me - first Jonah, now Avery. What had I done to deserve such sudden interest? I realised she was still looking at me expectantly. "No, uh, yeah, that'd be good. Keep some soup warm for me."

Avery did that lop-sided smile, and nodded.

 

Avery

My first dinner service went pretty well, all told. We were pretty much free to make whatever we wanted from the supplies we had and me and the other two on duty managed a pretty tasty meal, if I do say so myself. It was all vegetarian, of course, and I knew if the complaints about lack of meat hadn't started yet, they would soon. No way guys like Rick and Keenan were vegetarians.

Still, nobody looked askance, so I was happy enough. My fellow cooks, Dave and Mo, ate right after, but I cleaned up and then opted to head back to my pod for a shower - I didn't really need to eat as late as Dr Sarkis did, so there was a little time to kill.

Back in my 'old life' there was nothing I liked more than a long, hot shower, especially when my muscles were aching with a day's exertion. Unfortunately water usage in the dome was tightly monitored, so the stream that issued forth from the small shower head was a pitiful excuse for a spray, and hardly hot enough to count.

Still, I was free of cooking smells, my damp hair tied neatly back, when I returned to the kitchen and began to reheat some soup for both Sarkis and myself.

I wasn't sure exactly when she would show up, but apparently my guess was pretty good, because she appeared a couple minutes later, still in the tank top and cargo shorts she had presumably been working in while in the fields. She had a streak of dirt across one cheek that made her look a lot younger, as did the grin she was wearing.

"Hey, that smells great. Anything I can help with, keeping in mind I'm pretty unskilled when it comes to cooking?"

"Well, you could've washed your face," I said in a mock wounded tone, though I couldn't hide my smirk as I looked back to my work.

Her hand flew up to her cheek (the wrong one), scrubbing at it ineffectually. "Oh, sorry, I haven't even looked in the mirror today."

"Other one." I grabbed a clean cloth and dampened it (nothing so disposable as kitchen towel around here) and held it out. "Just here," I said, indicating the spot on my own cheek.

"Thanks," she said, leaning her elbows on the kitchen hatch and watching me ladle up our soup as she cleaned her cheek. "How did dinner go?"

"Well, I think? No one complained, anyway."

"That's a good sign. It was probably the carrots."

"Almost certainly... here - can you grab both of these and I'll get us some water?"

"Sure thing."

Soon enough, the two of us were sitting down to eat, and as a silence fell I wondered not for the first time why I'd felt compelled to suggest the meal together. Sarkis was apparently wondering that as well, as after a few minutes she broke the silence to ask, "So... what's up?"

"Oh, y'know." I shot her a grin. "Stuff." I was pretty hungry, I found once I started to eat, and I commented as much, and Sarkis agreed, and that kept us occupied a while.

I was glad she wasn't a babbler - I mean, I had thought as much or I wouldn't have asked her to eat with me. She seemed okay with the silence, and I was too, though I caught her looking my way sometimes, her expression curious, or maybe a bit suspicious.

"So I'm in the field the second half of next week," I offered as my soup began to run out. "I will not be sorry to be done with the engine-room by that point I suspect. That is no fun at all."

"It'll certainly be quieter, out in the field. Easier to think out there," she commented.

"Is that a hint that I should be working harder on your stats?" I teased, shooting a smirk at her over my water glass.

Sarkis shook her head. "There's no rush on those. Well, I mean, don't drag your feet, but don't worry too much."

"Don't worry, I'm on it."

"I'm not worried," she said primly. "Contrary to popular belief I'm not _that_ tightly-wound."

I raised my eyebrows. "Do people actually think that about you? Or do you just assume they do?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said, shaking her head, her dark, curly hair tickling the tops of her bare shoulders. Despite the fact that she spent most of the day under the UV lights in the dome her skin was surprisingly pale; I wondered if she used sunscreen. "I'm sure _someone_ thinks it."

"_Someone_ could think anything." I shook my head. "Well, I don't think you're tightly wound."

"High praise indeed," she said, her generous lips curving into a smile. Why was I looking at her lips and skin anyway?

"Don't let it go to your head," I said dryly. I nodded to her now-empty bowl. "You want more?"

"No thanks, I think I'm good. Though I might steal an apple before I go..."

"Scandal."

"Hey, the scandal makes it taste all the better," she quipped, though her grin faded so fast that I thought for a moment she was going to be sick. "I mean... nevermind. Thanks for the soup, it was really nice."

Confused now - and intrigued, I'll admit - I nodded dumbly. "I'll fetch you an apple," I said, rising and gathering our dishes. When I returned Sarkis was peering at her reflection in the shiny chrome of the mess door, though she turned to face me almost immediately.

"Great, dessert, thank you."

"Any time," I said, pocketing an apple myself, too as I held hers out. Our fingers brushed briefly and then she was stepping back, apple clasped in her hand.

"G'night. Sleep well."

Some hope. "You too."

 

Adrian

I smiled as Jonah settled himself into the chair. "So, Jonah. Tell me about your week."

"Well... I had all the usual shifts, but you've got a record of those, don't you?"

"Sure - wanna tell me how they went?"

"Oh, they went fine. The machinery doesn't seem to be running any more smoothly than when we first started here, but at least we've gotten better at fixing it."

"How's Mo getting on with his calibrations?"

"Oh, you know Mo. He'll be calibrating even after the whole thing's running perfectly."

"Mm." I was smiling in spite of myself - Jonah seemed to have a fond streak for basically everyone in the dome and it just made him yet more impossibly perfect. "How're you sleeping?"

I thought I caught a hint of hesitation before he was nodding and smiling amiably. "Yeah, fine, fine." I thought about pushing, but I figured maybe we'd talk back around to it. "And you're eating all right?"

"Yeah. The food's been great lately, don't you think? Maybe it's just knowing we've grown a lot of it ourselves, but I really think it tastes better."

I knew I was grinning from ear to ear and I couldn't help it. "Maybe," I said. "I maybe haven't been paying attention, but I will now."

"I'm sure the cooks will appreciate the mindfulness," he said with a kind smile. I tried to think of a sensible question that would lead into the ongoing saga of Dr Sarkis - I knew that he'd drafted Avery in to help and that Zoë was feeling a little less isolated as a result, and we'd touched on it last week, but I wanted to see Jonah talk about it again, see his eyes light up with that little note of pleasure at a job well done, at seeing people benefit from his effort. Of course, confidentiality prevented me from talking about what Zoë or Avery had told me.

"So, er... how are things going for your otherwise? Any new projects?"

"No, not particularly," he said thoughtfully, shaking his head. "I was thinking I might bring my guitar out at some point, see if people would enjoy some music one evening."

"Do you play and sing much by yourself? Just now, I mean?"

"No." Jonah's expression was serious, though he soon lightened it with another smile. "It's a good point, actually, I should probably practice, otherwise that'd just be a cruel thing to inflict on everyone else."

I was interested now, though. "When you first got here you talked about how important music was to you. Do you have any thoughts on why you haven't really played since you got here, even for yourself?"

"Well, the walls of the pods are pretty thin," he joked.

I just raised my eyebrows. I was gonna stop letting these people run circles round me if it killed me.

Jonah would have been a good poker player - he let the silence stretch out for a while, his expression unreadable, before finally sighing and shaking his head. "To tell the truth, I don't know. I suppose I was adjusting to the new situation."

I nodded. "I'll be interested to know how it feels to play again."

"Yeah," he said, "me too."

We talked a little more, going over the standard ground we always did. At the end Jonah hesitated, fixing me with those guileless blue eyes.

"Hey, I just wanted to know... do _you_ have someone to talk to in here?"

I smiled a little. "I get by," I said. "I try to be mindful of myself, and I fill out the same questionnaires I talk you guys through every week."

"All right. I mean, I'm sure you do fine, but if you ever need someone else to talk to, even just for a little bit, I'm here."

I smiled and nodded, knowing that unfortunately, if there was going to be anything that preyed on my mind enough that I wanted to talk about, Jonah was likely the last person I could discuss it with.

 

Inés

The thing about being in the Dome is that it didn't feel quite real. We all knew that it was Earth under our feet, not Mars, which meant that no matter how much we claimed to be adjusted to the idea, there was some small part of us that knew we weren't detached from the world quite yet.

It also meant that when things inside went wrong, there was always a sneaking suspicion - on my part, at least - that it had been manufactured by mission control to see how we dealt with the fallout.

As such, it was mission control I blamed the day I woke up and the air circulation wasn't working.

"We should count ourselves lucky," Alex commented at breakfast. "If this was Mars we'd all be suffocating, not just hot."

"Yeah, well," I grumbled, shifting stickily on my bench, "I still hope they get it sorted out sooner rather than later. It's only gonna get more uncomfortable." I felt a drop of sweat trickle down my back and grimaced; this was really gross.

"Maybe you just need to wear less clothes," Alex teased with a waggle of his eyebrows. He had a massive crush on me and liked to 'hide in plain sight' with it by being as lecherous as possible. He was a decent guy but it was getting old.

"Fewer," I corrected him; not that I really cared but anything to knock him down a few pegs. I sat back and collected my tray with a sigh. "Well, they're not gonna cancel shifts just because it's hot. Time to go to work."

Alex chuckled. "Well, enjoy the server room in this heat."

"Yeah, enjoy the fields," I said, smiling sweetly.

Alex's face fell. "Ugh, don't remind me. I'm on with Sarkis Mark Two, as well - I swear they're both androids."

"Yeah, in more ways than one," I commented, though I immediately regretted it - I mean, it wasn't like Avery had made it a _secret_, exactly, but nor had she gone around flaunting her prosthetic leg either.

Alex raised his eyebrows. "What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Uh, nevermind. Anyway, gotta go." I hoped my exit had been quick enough to keep Alex from thinking too hard on what I said. Last thing I wanted was to be responsible for outing someone and getting in trouble for it.

The server room was hotter than hell - even with the air circulating properly it was uncomfortable, and now it was almost unbearable. Still, at least the work itself wasn't physical, mostly sitting around watching the lights blink. I fantasised about opening a window - not that there were windows, so I would've had to find a hacksaw and sawn through the exterior panels to let in some fresh air. There were warnings on the AC systems but I knew people were working on it so there wasn't much I could do but instruct the computer to ignore it for now.

Generally server room days were days I spent either reading or daydreaming. I suppose it I was a writer it would've been an ideal place to write, but there ya go. I had some daily tests to run after lunch but this morning there was nothing to do but wait and watch.

 

Zoe

Work on the fields that morning was slow, all except for Avery Fisk, who kept up her usual breakneck pace even when the back of her tank top grew dark with sweat. Everyone else seemed to have no problem taking plenty of water breaks but Avery pushed herself, so much so that I was afraid she might keel over. Midway through the morning I went back to my makeshift office in the tents to pick up two water bottles, and after downing half of one in one long gulp I carried the other back out to the fields, where Avery was working.

"Hey. You should make sure to stay hydrated out here."

"Hm? Oh..." Avery patted the heavy pocket of her cargos. "I am, don't worry - but thanks," she added, taking the water anyway and popping the nozzle. "Nice to have some that isn't warm." Tipping her head back and opening her mouth, she squeezed some water into it, and then closed her eyes and sprayed some over her face for good measure.

"I know we shouldn't waste water," she said as she looked back at me, rivulets of water running down her skin to soak into her top, "but I hope you'll overlook it just this once."

I raised my eyebrows, trying to ignore the way the water was rendering it easier to see the outline of her bra through her top. "I suppose I'll allow it, but only because I'm feeling generous."

"Extra carrots for all, huh?"

"I don't know about 'for all' - Keenan's definitely spent more time slacking off than working this morning."

"Ah, I assumed that was normal."

"It is. He never gets extra carrots from me."

"Noted. Work hard, get all the carrots."

Mmhmm. Don't work hard..." I smacked my thigh with the flat of my hand. "Get the stick."

Avery just raised her eyebrows, face comically impassive. Apparently she was going to make me work for my smiles today. "Speaking of which, I should get back to work. Might motivate the slackers to join in for a bit."

"Hah, fair enough - back to the grindstone, then."

"Yes indeed. Don't work too hard."

 

Avery

I couldn't help working hard. I was used to manual labour in hot, humid conditions - though it did bring back some not-so-happy memories, and that just made me work all the harder.

Mind you, last time I had both legs, and today, my... well, I was feeling pretty swampy by the end of the day's work, put it that way, and I was off like a shot at the end of my shift back to my pod to wash and change. Even the paltry dribble from the showerhead felt amazing after a day with no air conditioning and I stayed underneath it for twice as long as the 'recommended shower time', water rationing be damned.

I had nothing else to do that day, so I sat down to get stuck in, once more, to my number crunching. I was finally getting some figures out of Sarkis's data, though nothing conclusive yet, and I didn't want to give her any false hopes.

The more I talked to her, the more I liked her - I really didn't understand the things people muttered about her when she wasn't around. Of course, they were probably muttering things about me too when I wasn't there. It didn't really bother me, but I resolved to say something next time they brought Sarkis up.

I was slowly starting to get to know some other people on the mission, too. Though I didn't really take to Inés's 'crowd', she herself was bright and friendly and a good conversationalist. Jonah and I had formed a pretty strong rapport - though I suspected everybody got along with him I felt as though he and I had an unspoken connection, though it could've been in my head. And Mo, the engineer who'd shown me round the machine room and who I'd also been on catering duties with, was a really nice, genuine guy.

All in all, I was actually starting to settle in, a fact which both comforted and surprised me. I though about reporting this fact to the psychiatrist and smirked to think of the praise he'd give me; he was a nice boy, but terribly earnest. He was technically a crew member just like the rest of us, except that he couldn't be, really; even though he took the standard shifts just like everyone else some of the time he had to maintain a professional distance from us. I couldn't help feeling he must be awfully lonely, and I wondered whether this was really an arrangement the mission coordinators thought was sustainable longer term.

 

Chapter 4

Adrian

"This seat taken?"

I looked up to see Jonah towering over me, tray in hands, and tried to bite back a silly grin. "No, go ahead." He smiled back and settled himself on the bench opposite.

"Some weather we're having, huh?"

I definitely laughed too hard at this. "Uh, hm. Yeah." I shook my head. "I always say I'd rather be a little too hot than a little too cold but... I dunno, I think I might be revising that. I guess it just makes you think of back home, huh? Home home, I mean, Australia."

"A little, yeh. Doesn't mean I don't miss the AC though."

"I'd be interested to see the water-use readings over the past day."

"I'll see if I can grab them from engineering the next time I'm in there," he said, seeming to take my musing as some sort of personal project.

"Oh, um... I wasn't really... I just meant that I know I've used about twice as much as I should've today. Y'know? You?"

"Oh, right." Jonah grinned and shook his head. "Me too, I'm sure. Hopefully they'll get it all fixed soon."

"So, uh..." What did people talk about normally? "I would ask how your day went, but then we'd have nothing to talk about on your appointment," I joked weakly.

"Well, we never get to talk about your day," he pointed out then. "So why don't you tell me about that instead?"

"Me... I was on cleaning today. So that was riveting. And... warm."

"I've not done much on the cleaning rota. Do you have a set path you follow or is it more free-form?"

"To be honest the layout of the dome sort of leads you in a logical path," I said.

"What's logical to some..." he said with a grin.

"I'm sure we'll end up on duty together at some point," I said. "I'll show you all the secrets then."

"Great, I look forward to it," he said, and I suddenly found myself looking forward to it as well.

"So what's this evening for you?" I asked. "My plans extend about as far as soaking a teeshirt in cold water and wearing it, so far."

"I was thinking I might get the guitar out... people could probably use a distraction, don't you think?"

My plans suddenly shifted. "Yeah? I mean, yeah, that sounds like a great idea."

"So I'll see you there?"

"Wouldn't miss it," I said immediately - then caught myself. "I mean, I do have some writing-up to do tonight but that should only take an hour or so, so I'm sure I could stop by the red rooms later."

He smiled and gave an easy nod. "Well, I'll be sure to keep the music going 'til you get there."

"Yeah, just don't play anything good before I get there," I said with what I hoped was a casual, teasing tone.

"Oh, no worries about that - I'm so rusty I'm sure everything'll sound pretty poor."

"I doubt that very much."

"Well, I guess we'll see."

So now I had something to look forward to, I guess. He was smart, Jonah, waiting for something like this before getting his guitar out. The situation was special - people would be in the mood for something different.

 

Zoë

I could tell something was different as I approached the mess - something more than just the heat, which had made my evening in the aeroponics tent even moister than usual. I was looking forward to something light and cool for dinner, a salad maybe, but when I heard the guitar chords coming from the rec rooms I had to pause and then detour to see what was going on.

One of the rooms had gathered a small gang - mostly women, it had to be said, sitting around while Jonah was proving that not only was he bright, congenial and handsome but he could also sing and play guitar. When I arrived he was playing Hotel California, a pretty apt choice if I do say so myself, and I smirked, leaning a shoulder on the doorframe and looking around to see who was there.

The trio of women I always thought of as 'the cheerleaders' were front and centre - they were all cute, perky and blonde, perfect for trotting out for publicity photos and interviews. The scene reminded me of nothing so much as the blonde girls swooning at Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, and the childhood (well, teenage-hood) memory made me smile. Mind you, Jonah might have been 'burly and manly' but he was otherwise about as unlike Gaston as it was possible to get. Some others were sitting around the edges of the room - mostly with other activities like their laptops or books, but they were clearly enjoying the music too. I was a little surprised to see Adrian, our resident counsellor, sitting quietly in a corner, trying to pretend to work on his computer, though his eyes flickered up often, betraying where his attention really lay, and also Avery - again with her computer propped on one knee. She seemed rather more concerned with her work, though I could see her mouthing the words from time to time.

I made my way over to where Avery sat and took the seat next to her; it took her a moment to notice me. "I dunno about you but I could really go for some champagne on ice," I said quietly, so as not to disturb the other people listening.

Avery glanced briefly in my direction, then back to her screen, though a little smile fell across her features. "Well, unless you've been hiding an awful lot in that aeroponics tent, I have to assume you're just teasing me now. Very unfair."

"I know, I'm terrible," I acknowledged with a chuckle. "How's it going?"

"D'you know, we might be getting something," Avery murmured, skipping through a few screens on whatever piece of software she was using. "No firm correlation in terms ot orientation, but I _think_ I'm seeing a correlation dependent on crop. I didn't ask you for data on your nutrient mixes, but if you can give me that I might be able to figure out what solutions are the most prone to clogging. Which at least tells us more about the problem."

"Sure, no problem," I said, leaning to look over her shoulder at the data on the screen. I realised belatedly that I smelled more than a little ripe and sat back with a self-deprecating shake of my head. "Sorry. Should've stopped in for a shower before I came here."

"Hm? Oh... don't worry about that," Avery said with a chuckle, shaking her head. "Nothing wrong with good clean sweat. I've spent too much time in hot climates to notice."

"Ah, I can see why they selected you - good with statistics and not too picky about personal hygiene."

"D'you know, _neither_ of those factors were cited during my evaluations and interviews," Avery marvelled. "But you may be right."

"I knew it. They should've put me in charge of recruitment." I liked her, though it was hard to put my finger on why - she was practical, but then pretty much everyone here was. She was funny, but a sense of humour isn't the rarest thing in the world. She didn't seem to treat me like some sort of complete weirdo for being a bit slow to warm up to people... maybe that was it.

She chuckled, now - quietly, still, beneath the volume of Jonah's pleasant singing. "So, uh, is this our first concert?" she asked. "Or just the first since I showed up?"

"First ever. Funny, usually guys with guitars are eager to whip it out any excuse..."

"Why am I not surprised the lovely Jonah is the exception to the rule," Avery commented with a slight smirk, her eyes drifting across to the young man behind the guitar. Even he was a little dishevelled by the heat, hair curling slightly and falling across his forehead - though the cut was too short and neat to look really tousled. I shouldn't have been surprised that Avery had succumbed his charms just like everyone else, but for some reason it stung a little.

"Mm, well. Now that they know he can do this I'm sure we'll be getting serenaded at every possible opportunity," I said, nodding at the cheerleaders in the front row.

"I dunno," Avery said. "I suspect he'll strike a balance."

"Anyone else want a go?" Jonah was asking now, holding the guitar up easily as he looked around the room.

Avery glanced my way with a small smile that looked half way between wry and amused. "D'you play?" she asked quietly - more conversationally than as though she expected me to do so if I could.

"God, not for _ages_," I said with a shake of my head. "You?"

"A little. So you did?" Avery's eyebrows raised and now there _was_ a tiny measure of challenge to her tone. "Think you remember anything?"

The last thing I wanted was to be drawn into some sort of guitar-off with Jonah which I would invariably lose, but something in her eyes made it impossible for me to back down. "Maybe one or two things, yeah. Why, tired of Jonah's singing already?"

"I could stand a change..."

And so it was like some sort of grade-school camp fire thingie that I cleared my throat and put up my hand, making half the room turn to stare at me. "Uh, I'll give it a try, let you have a rest."

Jonah was unflappable enough that his face didn't change, but a small gasp went up among everyone else in the room. He stood, though, and approached to pass his guitar across.

"Great, thanks. Uh, gimme a minute," I said, pulling it into my lap and strumming my fingers across the strings. Now that I had it, of course, my mind was drawing a complete blank over what to play. Avery had put her laptop aside and turned a little where she sat to look at me, now, which didn't help.

Eventually a song popped into my head; I prayed my fingers wouldn't let me down. Taking a deep breath I began to pick, staring down at the floor in front of me as I concentrated.

_"Blackbird singing in the dead of night, Take these broken wings and learn to fly..."_

 

Avery

And just like that, she was playing and singing and it wasn't just a four chord singalong like I would've played but delicate picking and a lovely, smooth voice. Just like that, she had my rapt attention.

It seemed like most other people were as shocked as I was, at least, when I tore my eyes away from her to glance around the room. Only Jonah didn't seem surprised, though he caught my eye and smiled warmly when he saw me looking around.

_You were only waiting for this moment to arrive You were only waiting for this moment to arrive..._

The song seemed to be over almost as soon as it had begun, and then Sarkis was lifting her fingers from the strings, and after a long silence, Jonah led a round of applause. I didn't join in - it wasn't that I hadn't liked it. I just didn't quite gather myself together before everyone else had stopped.

"Uh, thanks," Sarkis said, pulling the strap over her head and passing the guitar back towards Jonah. "It's a nice instrument."

"Hey, play another," Jonah suggested gently, "go on."

"Y'know, Avery said she could play too..."

"Ohhh no," I said, holding my hands up, "I'm not following _that_..."

"C'mon," Sarkis said with a grin. "It's only fair."

I sighed. "I really don't remember much," I warned them, taking the guitar. "This is gonna sounds pretty shitty after you two." I strummed the few chords I knew, and eventually sort of slipped into a familiar pattern.

"You guys should join in if you know this one," I said, "drown out my crappy singing."

_And old man turned ninety-eight He won the lottery and died the next day..._

I suffered through the first verse alone; luckily Sarkis joined in on the chorus, and then a few other people, and by the end of the song you could barely hear my pitiful attempts at Alanis.

I handed the guitar back like it might explode, and I knew I was blushing furiously. I was very glad that not too many people were actually here for this particular ritual humiliation.

"That was really nice," Sarkis said, leaning over to bump my shoulder with hers.

"Um." I chuckled, shaking my head. "Thanks. But I'm not really in the same league as you two." I spotted a pair of eyes watching me through stylish spectacles from across the room. "Hah, we put on quite the show for our resident head-shrinker, though, I think," I added in a murmur, glancing back at Sarkis and indicating with my eyes in Adrian's direction. She followed my gaze, pulling her lower lip between her teeth momentarily before nodding.

"Well. It'll give us something to talk about at our next session, at least."

I chuckled and leaned back, reaching once more for my laptop as Jonah began to strum quietly again, more to himself now than to anyone else.

"I'll leave you to it," Sarkis said after a moment, shifting in her seat. "I can bring by the rest of the data tomorrow, if that's okay."

"Oh, you're-... um, sure, absolutely," I said. "If it's like this again I'll be wherever's coolest."

"In the walk-in freezer. Check."

I felt myself grinning as Sarkis pushed to her feet. "See you around, then."

"See you later, alligator."

_In a while, crocodile._ I thought it, but I didn't say it, and soon Sarkis was leaving and Jonah was sinking down beside me with a broad grin.

"Wow, who knew we were hiding such talent in our ranks?"

"You and Sarkis, maybe," I said. "We should get you two singing duets."

"Maybe, maybe. Or some more crowd sing-alongs. People really enjoyed that, I think."

"People enjoyed drowning me out, and well they should," I said wryly. "But it was nice," I added. "Took our minds off the heat for a bit."

"Well, if I can't fix the AC that's the least I can do," Jonah said with a shrug. "Feel free to borrow it if you want," he said then, gesturing to the guitar. "I'm happy for anybody to use it."

"Maybe I'll get back in practice once I've finished this data analysis," I said, though I doubted that I would.

"Oh yeah, how's that coming along?" In most people it would've looked completely devious, but somehow Jonah made it seem nothing more than an innocent inquiry, as if he hadn't been the one to set it all up in the first place.

"Slowly. But I might have found a correlation. Sarkis is going to give me some more data to follow it up."

"Great, glad to hear it. You'll crack it between you, I'm sure."

"Well even if it pans out it doesn't actually tell us how to _fix_ anything," I said. "But here's hoping we're heading in the right direction."

 

Adrian

The filters still hadn't been fixed the next day and everything was even hotter and stickier than before. I had a full morning of appointments and the heat made everybody cranky, meaning I got my fair share of complaints and short, sharp answers to my relatively innocuous - and mandatory - questions. Only Jonah was his usual breath of fresh air - it amused me to think that my mother would probably have described him as a 'tall drink of water' - particularly appropriate today.

"So I see you took the plunge and got your guitar out," I commented. No point in pretending I wasn't there, after all. "How d'you think that went?"

"Pretty well, I think. Not everyone was there but those that were had a nice time - yourself included, I hope."

I smiled - to be honest I couldn't help it. "It was great," I said. Then, "You have a lovely voice." I cringed inwardly at my words. The compliment wasn't too unprofessional under the circumstances but it _did_ suddenly feel like an embarrassingly camp way of putting it.

"It does the job," Jonah said with a minimising shrug. "Dr Sarkis was the real star of the evening, I thought."

"She certainly showed a side of her we haven't seen," I agreed. Secretly I was very much looking forward to Zoë Sarkis's next appointment after her showing last night. I was hoping it would have given her a fresh outlook on things.

"And Avery as well. It feels like things are starting to gel a little bit, don't you think?"

"I'm not really allowed to talk about what I think, I'm afraid."

Jonah gave a sad smile that made me want to spill every thought in my head to him. "Of course, sorry. I wasn't trying to pry."

"Not at all," I said. "I have a bit of a line to walk." Impulsively, I added, "Come find me off-duty and I can do a bit better. Though not much."

"I'll hold you to that."

_We'll see._ I just gave a tip of my head. "Right, let's get the rest of the standard questions out of the way, hm? We won't pretend that _anybody_ slept well..."

 

Inés

So I'd been in my bunk, as it were, trying to stay cool, while apparently not just golden boy Jonah but unbelievably Sarkis and her bionic twin had treated everyone to an impromptu jam session.

"Seriously," Rick said, "I mean, I was just passing, didn't go in 'cause I was worried about getting estrogen poisoning - _ouch_..." he interrupted himself as I smacked him on the arm. "...but anyway, I can confirm: it happened."

"Huh. That's nice, I guess? Weird, but nice."

"Scary is what it is. People aren't supposed to surprise you like that."

"Yeah, God forbid you have to update your opinions or anything like that," I said, rolling my eyes at him.

"Seriously," Keenan agreed, clearly both mocking Rick to some extent but also rather shocked himself. "Wonder if there'll be any more Kumbayas or if it was a one-time thing. I'd like to request some Beastie Boys."

"I'm sure Jonah'll know it, just like he seems to know everything else."

Rick rolled his eyes. "Yeah, is there anything that guy _can't_ do?"

"Hey, we need good all-rounders," Keenan said, somewhat defensively I thought.

"What _I_ need right now is an ice-bath," Rick deflected.

"Yeah, I think we all could," I agreed. Tempers seemed just a little bit shorter in the heat, and I wondered if the shrink was worried yet. "Any word on when it's gonna be fixed?"

"It's fixed when it's fixed, last I heard. Mo and Sarah have been round the clock on it."

"Poor bastards." Rick and Keenan nodded in agreement. The heat was a problem, but there was also an unspoken knowledge that if the problem didn't get fixed eventually we might be shut down, and who knew what that would mean for our prospects. Nobody wanted to fail; Mo and Sarah had a lot riding on them right about then.

"Well, some good will come of this in the meantime, at least," I offered then. "When I did a systems check earlier our heat storage cells were at ninety per cent. After this we're going to be on zero night-time power consumption for weeks."

"Look who's the optimist now, eh?" Rick said to Keenan, smirking at me. "I think the heat's started to go to your head, Inés."

"You're probably right, what on earth am I doing hanging around you two."

"Better get out soon if you're having second thoughts - otherwise you'll be stuck with us for good!"

I laughed. "Well, there's always Alex."

"Hey, I'm sure he'd be _thrilled_ with your company. Thought you weren't too fond of his drooling over you, though."

"Believe me, I am well-equipped in putting up with years of being friends with geeky dudes with Nice Guy syndrome."

"Aw, well, if you need any help getting the message across you can come to me," Rick said, flexing his arms in a way I found somewhat disturbing.

"Oh yeah, _and_ jock dudes with White Knight syndrome," I added.

"Whatever. I'm offsky - gotta do my time in the fields. Hope this heat wave clears up soon or we're gonna have to put up with the sight of Streisand's hairy legs every day," he said with a mock-gagging noise. "Kill me now."

"You're a pig."

"Just as well I'll be rooting around in the dirt today then, eh?"

"I mean it, Rick. Be nice. We're supposed to be the creators of a brave new world, try and shed the old world prejudices, huh? Body hair is not your enemy."

"Yeah, whatever," he said in that sulky way that meant I was actually making him _think_ about stuff. "I'll see you guys later."

 

Rick

I didn't really care about that shit - the hairy legs or whatever. But Inés was right; I was still carrying around all those 'old world' prejudices, the stuff I grew up saying. I mean, does anyone really think that stuff? I always assumed no one really did, but we all said it anyway.

I didn't even mind Sarkis, really - I mean, she was kind of a hardass but I admired how hard she worked, even if it did make the rest of us look bad sometimes. But it was just something people did, picked on the odd one out, the 'weird' one, the one who didn't make an effort to fit in as hard as the rest of us did. I didn't know why we needed to separate off like that, but people always seemed to one way or another.

So Sarkis got the short end of the stick. Today she and Avery were on usual form, even the heat not stopping them from working like they had to do the whole field themselves before lunch. I thought back to what Inés had said the other day, about them being robots in more ways than one. Honestly I had no idea what she meant, but she had looked embarrassed enough by it that I knew there had to be something to it. Certainly the worked like the heat wasn't touching them, even though the sweat soaked through their tanks just like everyone else - Avery had to be especially hot since unlike Sarkis she was never out of cargo pants, and yeah, I'll admit to a little secret disappointment at that. I wasn't sure what it was I liked about her, even after I totally struck out with her that time. I guess there's no real logic to that stuff.

I liked her enough to saunter over during one of the breaks and say "Hey. I heard you sang last night," which, trust me, I'm not that excited by campfire singalongs.

Avery's eyebrows winged up a little. "Yeah? Nothing good I hope," she said, "wouldn't want to hear there are any dishonest types around."

"Eh, I heard you did good enough."

"That sounds about right."

"So, any more hidden talents we should know about?" I asked then, trying not to sound _too_ lecherous.

"I like to retain an air of mystery."

"Well, you're doing pretty good at that," I said with a grin. "I don't even know what you're spending all that time on your computer for, but I guess it must be pretty intriguing stuff." She seemed to _always_ be on it, when she wasn't working on chores or in the mess - and sometimes even then.

"Data analysis."

"Wow, exciting..."

Avery raised an eyebrow at me.

"Well, it _could_ be exciting. What sort of data?"

"It's data on the prototype atomizers in the aeroponics tent."

"Okay, nope, not exciting."

"Well, just as well it's not you analysing it, then, huh?"

"Better you than me, that's for sure."

"No doubt."

"So..." That had been pretty much all of my conversation topics exhausted, but I didn't really want to go back to work quite yet. "How are you holding up?"

"Hm?" Avery looked a little confused at this, looking around as though there might be some evidence that she wasn't holding up somewhere.

"With the heat and stuff? Everybody's on the verge of melting."

"Oh... Oh, I suppose I'm doing all right," she said with a shrug. "I'm used to hot climates."

"Oh, right, 'cause of your job. Well, you've got a leg up on some of us."

Avery surprised me by bursting out laughing at this. "Is that supposed to be funny?" she asked - though clearly she _did_ think it was funny, whatever I'd said.

"Uh... not particularly?"

"A leg up? Aw, man..." Avery shook her head. Then she glanced back at me. "Oh, you don't know, do you? I suppose I haven't exactly flaunted it..."

"Flaunted what?" I asked, thoroughly confused now.

Avery turned a little toward me and lifted her pants leg to reveal... well, she didn't so much have a leg-up as a leg _less_. She knocked it lightly as if to emphasise her point before dropping her cuff again. I blinked, a little taken aback, though I tried to hide it.

"Oh, I get it. I, uh, didn't know. Probably wouldn't have said that if I did."

She shot me a one-sided smirk. "Shame," she said. "I like a guy with a black sense of humour."

Well, shit. "Right. Uh, anyway, I should probably get back to work. Looks like Sarkis is already back out there."

Avery looked up quickly at this, and she soon caught the good doctor in her sights, working harder and faster than anyone else as usual. "Me too," she said then, shooting me a polite smile and rising back to her feet.

I gave her a quick nod and hurried back to my row, cursing Inés silently. It was obvious she knew about that and didn't tell me, and thanks to her I had made an ass out of myself. Hopefully I'd be able to make it up eventually.

 

Zoe

By the time I reached my pod that evening I was dripping with sweat, and the first thing I did was strip off my frankly disgusting clothes and step into a cold shower. I'm not ashamed to admit I actually groaned aloud at how good it felt, though I was glad there was nobody around to hear it.

The water wasn't even particularly cold - tepid, really, but it was colder than the air and colder than me, and that was what counted. I stayed under it for a while, though not as long as I wanted to, and then emerged and dried off and threw on a new set of clothes, though they'd only be gross by the end of the day anyway. I had new data to share with Avery and I wanted to be presentable - well, as presentable as I got nowadays.

As I made my way along the corridor to her pod it occurred to me that I should have just kept her back after we finished in the field earlier in the day, but she'd seemed a little distracted and I suppose I just hadn't thought. Still, I was here now.

The pod doors were a little space-age - there was no Star Trek style buzzer, but they did slide rather than being on a hinge, and the gentle swooshing sound always reminded me of the sets of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which I'd watched avidly as a kid.

Avery was standing on the other side of the door looking about as comfortable as I felt - her hair was dripping wet, a towel still around her shoulders, damp spots soaking through her teeshirt, and I realised as I took her in that she must have pulled it on in a hurry to come to the door.

"Hey," she said with a grin, stepping back. "Come on in."

"I didn't get you out of your shower, did I? 'Cause I know for a fact how nice one of those is right now," I said, nevertheless taking a step into her pod.

"Not quite," Avery said. "I was at the lying on the bed trying to get up the guts to put some clothes on phase."

"Oh, well I'm glad to provide motivation, though really you shouldn't feel obligated just for little old me." Had I really just said that? Jesus, as if my mouth hadn't gotten me into enough trouble for one lifetime. "Er, anyway. I just wanted to bring that data by. The stuff on the nutrient mixes."

"Right, yes. Hang on - let me fire up the laptop and I'll get it off the stick for you, save you having to leave it behind..."

"Sure, if you like." I amused myself by looking around the pod; there wasn't much to see. Either Avery hadn't bothered unpacking yet, or she hadn't brought much in the way of personal effects.

We had to wait for her computer to boot up - it wasn't more than a minute or so but time seemed to stretch out. Eventually, she said, "So your singing was really lovely last night."

"Oh, thanks," I said with a genuine smile. "Like I said, I haven't done it in years, I'm pretty rusty. But I'm glad you liked it."

"I did. Love that song. I mean, I know, I know, _everyone_ loves that song, but... well, I do too."

"Yeah. So do I. It's really... soothing."

"Even to play? I remember trying to learn it; it was _hell_."

"Oh, well, play it enough and even that becomes calming."

"I guess I should get back in practice."

"Well, if you've forgotten any chords I'd be happy to remind you. If there's one thing I don't have trouble remembering it's useless information like that." I had a very good memory, as a matter of fact, and was grateful for it. I wasn't sure why I was playing so modest.

"Good to know," Avery said with a grin and a nod. "Thanks."

"Least I can do after you've done all this work to help me," I pointed out, nodding at her computer.

"Oh, don't worry about it, I was just glad to help," Avery said, reaching for me to hand her the memory stick as her desktop finally appeared. Something perverse in me (I've always had a perverse streak, it's gotten me into plenty of trouble) made me brush hands with her more than was strictly necessary, just to see her reaction. There wasn't one - and I wasn't sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. Avery didn't even seem to have noticed anything amiss, and soon she was pulling the crop data off onto her hard drive, the work of seconds.

"Well. I guess that's that, then," I said, pocketing the USB stick after she handed it back. "Anything else you need, just shout."

Avery nodded. "D'you want..." She trailed off with a chuckle. "I was about to say d'you want to grab a coffee but there are so many reasons why that isn't a good plan. What I meant was, I guess, d'you want to take a break before you go back to your evening's work? Could make it a glass of cold water instead of a coffee."

"Yeah, sure," I said, sounding about as surprised as I felt, both at her offer and my instant desire to take her up on it. "Why not?"

 

Chapter 5

Avery

I wasn't even sure why I'd asked her to hang out. I guess I just thought that no one should be sweating in a humid environment for longer than they have to at a time like this. We eschewed the mess or rec rooms in favour of grabbing our water bottles and heading along the corridors in search of somewhere, anywhere, that might be a little cooler than the rest of the dome right now.

We ended up near the computer wing - sounds weird until you remember that they have to keep the banks of towers from overheating, which meant there was a vent with a constant stream of air - hot air, but air nonetheless - blowing down into one of the corridors. If you dripped water on yourself the evaporation gave the impression of being cool, if only for a minute, so that's exactly what I did once we had settled down. Sarkis snickered, but then tried it out herself, tipping her face back and giving it a liberal splash with her water bottle.

"Oh geez, that's much better..."

"Who's laughing now, huh?"

"Yeah, yeah, if everybody jumped off a bridge, etcetera etcetera..."

"God, don't talk about jumping at a time like this..."

"Too much effort for you?" Sarkis smirked.

"Definitely."

"But think of how nice a swim in the river would be."

"Aw, man, what I wouldn't give for an endless supply of cold running water right about now..."

"Okay, now _you_ need to stop, you're making me melt..."

I laughed, and there was something about the way Sarkis looked at me then that made me ask, "Your first name... Zoë, right? Do you just... not go by it, or do people just not use it?"

She shrugged and took a swig of her water. "The latter, mostly. I don't really care, though, one's as good as the other really."

"Oh." Oddly deflated by this, though I wasn't sure why, I found myself falling silent, lifting my water bottle to drip a little more water over myself.

"I mean, obviously I'd prefer Zoë," she said after a moment. "But I'm not going to chase people to get them to call me something else. That wouldn't be _cool_."

"Ah. Okay. So... Zoë it is, then, I guess."

"Only if you like. I mean, I can understand if you want to call me Barbara," she said, grinning and putting on her best New Yorker accent.

"God, you _know_ about that?" I said, looking over at her. "Doesn't it piss you off?"

"Honey I was a professor. I know all about stupid nicknames and bitching behind people's backs. You get used to it after a while." She made a face, as if there was something else she wanted to say but couldn't.

I felt myself smile at the 'honey'. "A professor, huh?"

"Mmhmm. University of Vermont."

"Huh. Interesting."

"It was mostly staring at dirt, just like now, with even more administrative duties. That's wh--anyway. I don't know if I'd call it 'interesting'."

"I just meant... I dunno, I guess I saw you as a hardcore research scientist or something."

"Hey, I did research!" she said, looking aghast.

"And you moulded young minds. Don't misunderstand, I'm impressed. Teaching's important. Not enough people do it."

"Yeah, well. Not doing it now," she pointed out, lifting her water bottle. "Probably for the best."

"Yeah?" I turned to glance at her. "How so?"

"Because I... because it's a big responsibility," she said with a funny sort of smile.

"And representing the human race in a new world isn't a bit responsibility?"

"It's a... different kind."

"Fair enough." I didn't really get it, but it didn't sound like Zoë much wanted to talk about it.

"What about you?"

"Me? Oh..." I shook my head. "I was a journalist. Of sorts, I suppose. I did news aggregation work."

"And is this a continuation of your life's work? Or an escape?"

"Neither, I hope. It's... a new chapter."

"Hell of a plot twist," she remarked, grinning.

"Oh, there've been one or two of those along the way already," I said with a chuckle and a shake of my head. "This is just the most surreal."

"Oh yeah? Well, too bad we don't have any booze on us. I'd love to hear the whole story sometime."

"Yeah, um." I shook my head again, feeling a tiny twist in my stomach. "You wouldn't, I think, in retrospect."

"If you wanted to tell me, I'm sure I would," Zoë said with another small smile, "but I'm not going to press you, don't worry. I'm sure you get plenty of that from the shrink every week. I know I do."

"Yeah, he... He's an interesting guy, isn't he?"

"Yeah. Not who I would've expected them to send."

"What would you have expected?"

"I don't know. Someone a bit..."

"...Pushier?"

"I was going to say older," she said with a smirk. "But that too. I guess maybe he doesn't need to get inside our heads as long as we're getting the work done."

"I also wonder if it's about longer term maintenance. I mean, maybe it's more about checking in and making sure we're not about to go crazy and sort of leaving us to sort our own heads out unless we ask, y'know? Like, most people, most of the time, they have issues from time to time and they get through them without counselling, y'know? Like, any given week if you put somebody in front of a counsellor they'll have something going on for them, but that doesn't mean they actually need therapy." I frowned. "If that makes sense."

"Yeah, sure. They wouldn't have picked people with big issues to bottle up in here - it'd be a recipe for disaster. So I guess that's reassuring."

"Mm." I pondered my own situation again. "Yeah, I guess. I mean, certainly I assume I wasn't the only one who had a psyche eval during training."

"Can't speak for everyone, but I did. So you're not alone."

"So I can at least be reassured that you're considered as potentially crazy as I am..." I narrowed my eyes at Zoë, trying not to smirk. "I guess that's good...?"

"Great, if you don't mind consorting with a nutcase," she replied, not bothering to suppress her own grin.

"Well, now, 'consorting' is a strong word - I mean, what's a little data entry between friends..."

"Hey, I sang for you!"

"Just for me, huh?" I laughed.

"Well it certainly wasn't for any of those other ingrates," she protested, making a face.

"Not even the lovely Jonah?"

"Only if he had asked really nicely."

"I'm sure he would have."

"Yeah, probably. He's like a giant Boy Scout."

"Oh, my god. That is _exactly_ what he is. All fearless and cheerful and bright and creative. And dimpled."

"We should make him badges," Zoë said then, her face lighting up. "A Going to Mars merit kit."

"And it must be worth another level on the explorer badge - I can't remember the colours but we'll need to make a new one... sadly I think red's the first one..."

"I wonder if there's anywhere we can get him a kerchief..."

"And a woggle."

"Right. Well, at least we know what we're doing after we get this clogging problem sorted," she told me with a grin.

"Forming a scout troop?"

"Mmhmm, exactly."

"I suppose we could be doing worse things with our time. Though right now I can't think of anything better to do than just to sit here and keep pouring water over myself," I said, doing just that.

Zoë didn't respond right away, and when I looked over at her she had a peculiar expression on her face. "Well, uh, you can keep doing that if you want... _some_ of us have work to do," she said, straightening up in preparation for standing.

I chuckled, but there was something off about her expression and for a moment I thought she was seriously offended. Recapping my bottle quickly I pushed up to my feet myself - a little too hastily, actually, and I stumbled as the knee of my prosthetic locked and sent me pitching forward.

"_Shit_..."

"Watchit!" Zoë grabbed my arms to steady me, herself steadied by bracing against the wall behind her. I fell heavily against her, and one of her hands slipped to my waist as she tried to keep from being squashed. "Whoa, hey, are you all right?"

"Yeah, I..." I chuckled. I shook my head. "I can't feel my leg," I said. Man, these jokes were a lot funnier when everyone knew you only had one. I blushed, flustered, stomach flipping over as I met her eyes with a sheepish grin, and she made no move to release me, just giving my arm a squeeze.

"Take as long as you need. I'm not goin' anywhere."

"I'm okay, it was... kind of a joke, I, uh... actually d'you know what it isn't that funny," I said, the words coming out in a jumbled rush. "'Nother time," I said, pulling back and taking my weight back on my feet.

"Sure, no problem," Zoë said, understandably looking a bit bemused.

"Right. Well. I should get back to work too," I said then, mainly to fill the silence.

"Don't push yourself too hard. Wasn't trying to guilt you or anything."

"No, no, I know, but I should - I want to."

"Right, well. Good luck?" she offered with an uncertain smile. "I'll see you later."

"Sure, absolutely," I returned with a nod. "Later. Well, tomorrow, I guess, in the field."

"See you then."

 

Adrian

No one was more relieved than me that Mo and Sarah had managed to sort out the ventilation system overnight. It wasn't exactly cool yet, but nor was it sweltering, and hopefully that meant everybody's attitudes would be cooling off as well. This morning I had four people in for their appointments and everybody was palpably less tense now that they were less physically uncomfortable. Well, almost everybody.

"So. How have things been going?"

"Fine, fine," Dr Sarkis said briskly, fidgeting in her chair in a way I knew meant she was eager to get out of it as soon as possible. "Same as always, really."

"How've you been coping with the heat?"

"Oh, you know. Sweatily."

"All right." There really wasn't much more I could say on that topic. I began to go through the standard questions - it wasn't really my job to pry if people didn't want to talk, not unless I thought there was some impending problem. "How've you been sleeping?"

"All right."

"All right, good. And eating?"

"Hard to stomach eating when you're dying of heatstroke, but I managed to stuff things down."

"That's the important thing, then, as long as you're staying hydrated, but you know that."

"Yeah. Danger's past now anyway."

"Mm, absolutely. So, er, state of mind otherwise? How are you getting along with Jonah and Avery?"

"Yeah, pretty well." She furrowed her brow. "Surprisingly well. With Avery, at least. I don't see much of Jonah."

"That's great - so you two are working closely on that data analysis?"

"Well, that. And a bit of socialising." She said it carefully, like she was afraid I'd pounce on her for it - and I admit, I had to fight to hide a massive grin. Good old Jonah had somehow known that the two women would hit it off - something I couldn't have begun to predict, or at least, not at the point he did.

"So I suppose you're feeling less isolated?"

"Mmhmm. Things are fine."

"Good." I watched her for a moment, looking in vain for any route into further conversation, but it seemed pretty clear that I wasn't going to get anywhere and in the end I fell back on the standard question sheet once more. "So, er, would you say you're feeling happier or sadder, or about the same, on balance, than last week?" I asked, making my usual apologetic face as I asked the inane question for the ninth time - well, ninth for her anyway.

"Hm." She actually seemed to give this some thought, and nodded a little with her answer. "Happier."

I blinked in mild surprise. This was he first time she'd noted any change. I tried not to grin. "All right," I said. "Good."

"Mmhmm. Is that all?"

"I, uh... guess so, for today. Thanks."

"Sure." Sarkis smiled politely and stood, and for a moment seemed to war with herself before suddenly saying "this must be a difficult job. But you're doing it very well."

I found myself utterly thrown again, and I know I opened and closed my mouth at least once before forming a proper response. "I, uh, thanks. I... there's a balance to strike. I'm glad if I'm striking it."

"I wouldn't worry too much."

"I'm sort of a professional worrier."

"Ah, well, if you're _qualified_," she said with a grin. "Guess I shouldn't try and stop you."

I felt myself smile again. I could get used to this happier Dr Sarkis. "Quite."

 

Jonah

"C'mon, man, over here!" Rick flailed his hands in just about the most un-subtle way possible - I wasn't passing the ball to _him_. After a moment I pivoted and threw it to Steve, who neatly dribbled around his blocker and executed a perfect lay-up.

"Aw, _man_..." Keenan threw up his arms in comic dismay as his team fell ever-farther behind. Rick, Steve, Jen and myself were comprehensively outmatching Adrian, Keenan, Tenzin and Peter, and I held back my 'I told you so' following his mocking us for getting 'the girl' - Jen being the one woman who'd shown up in time for this particular pick-up game.

"C'mon, Jonah, you've been ignoring me all game," Rick groused as we broke for water and to mop our foreheads with the rags that passed for towels.

"You're drawing too much attention to yourself," I told him, stating the blindingly obvious - though apparently not obvious enough. "You're a good decoy but way too loud."

"Are you serious? You're not throwing to me 'cause I'm asking you to throw to me? Man..." Rick shook his head.

"Whatever, you guys are still kicking our asses," Keenan said with a roll of his eyes.

"Shuttup, man, you love it rough," Rick shot back without a moment's consideration. I noticed Keenan's flinch, though I don't know if anyone else did, though Adrian seemed to be looking at him as well.

"Let's get back to it," I encouraged them, and soon we were back on the court. There had been a moratorium on matches during the heat wave but people were glad to be back at it, it seemed, and were putting their all into what was supposed to be a friendly match.

I should've known it was coming; I felt antsy and sweaty, and not just from the exertion, but I guess it had been long enough that the idea just didn't occur to me. Something about the slap of the ball on the court, the shouts from my teammates, the vaguely hot and dusty feeling of the air all put me into a strange sort of state, my limbs moving without even thinking about it, and when the screech from somewhere else in the dome sounded - probably just some protesting machinery - it hit me, and suddenly I was _there_ again.

 

Rick

I don't know what happened, man - one minute everything was fine, just a normal ballgame, and then suddenly Jonah just seemed to... snap. He made a noise I still don't want to call it, something between a shout and a roar, and dove at me, knocking me to the ground like I was just some rag doll. I fought back, obviously, landing a few good punches before I realised he wasn't fighting _me_. It was like he was in some sort of freaky-ass trance, but the worst part was when he started crying.

Course before that point I'd wrestled him under me and got hold of his forearms - man that guy was strong - and he'd stopped struggling, although his body was totally rigid, like her was paralysed, and then I felt another body beside me and it was Adrian, and he was wrapping his fingers over mine and he prised me loose, gently, like _I_ was the one freaking out and I guess by that point I kinda was. I shook myself, got up, and I realise I'd bloodied Jonah's nose and I could hear this muttered apology and I realise it was me talking. Adrian was knelt over Jonah, curled over him like he was trying to shield him or whatever, and he'd grabbed one of Jonah's hands and he was talking quietly to him, and when he reached to touch his face I couldn't look any more and I turned away.

It was really awkward - none of the six of us knew what to do, but it felt weird just _leaving_ them there, so we all kind of loitered around at the far end of the court, to give him privacy, y'know? Eventually he seemed to come to, and I could hear him and Adrian saying stuff, and then Adrian helped him up and escorted him out of the room without even looking at us. Only then did people start talking; we had all been pretty silent before.

"Total panic attack," Steve said, nodding as if he was agreeing with himself.

"Yeah but _why_ though?" Jen said. "I mean, nothing _happened_."

"Did anybody hit him? Like accidentally, I mean," Keenan asked. We all shook our heads.

"He's traumatised." Tenzin's quiet, lightly accented voice nevertheless cut through the room, his tone certain. "There was a noise from the dome and it triggered him." He paused. "I've seen it before. _Momo_ - my grandmother, she was in a camp for a year when she was young, she sometimes got that way when she heard us cry as kids - just normal stuff, if we hurt a knee or whatever. Not always. Just sometimes, like on days the house was noisy."

"Well shit," someone said, and once again I realised it was me. I mean, don't get me wrong, I didn't feel bad about defending myself when I thought I needed it, but still. "Poor bastard."

Everybody else nodded, though no one really knew what to say. Eventually we all picked up our stuff and headed off, back to our pods and stuff. I thought about going to check on Jonah and Adrian but I didn't know where they had gone, and besides, I sort of needed some time to think of what I was gonna say. "Sorry" didn't seem to really cut it.

 

Adrian

He sank down onto his bed without protest, took the water glass I gave to him and sipped from it obediently, those big, broad shoulders hunched round, like he was trying to make himself small (a hopeless task). I dragged the desk chair over by the bed and sat beside it.I didn't really know what to do. I'd had all the training, done all the practice care, knew all the facts, but seeing Jonah Morgan falling to pieces like that... that I wasn't prepared for. That tiny footnote in his medical file, the short course of medication, years ago, it had been buried deep beneath the impressions I'd formed in the time I'd got to know him. It was like in a single moment all of that had been wiped away and I was starting at the beginning all over again.

Eventually he looked up at me, his face pale and his eyes bloodshot. "Is everybody okay?"

I swear I felt a sudden physical ache as my heart contracted. Not a complete reset-to-zero then. I smiled weakly, shook my head. "Everybody's fine," I said, "Though might have hurt Rick's fist with your face."

"Yeah. I've got a hard head," he muttered.

"Mm. Well, at least your nose isn't broken." We'd got here via the medbay, where it had been confirmed that Jonah was going to have a bruised jaw and a swollen nose, but nothing had been badly damaged. Rick had clearly been pulling his punches, even in his panic.

He nodded, eyes drifting away from me to fix on a point on the wall past my shoulder. I wanted to catch his gaze again, tell him everything was going to be okay, but I knew that was a bad idea and so I let him sit in silence until he decided to speak again. "I'm sorry. I should've been more forthcoming in our sessions."

"D'you mean you felt this coming?" I asked, my brows drawing into a slight frown.

"No, I... I didn't." His features contorted and I realised he was fighting the urge to cry again. "I didn't know. And that makes me dangerous."

"Hey, not necessarily," I said in what I hoped was a soothing-but-not-patronising tone. "Look, what you went through is on record - and so is your period on medication. You were chosen not in spite of that stuff but because of it and I really shouldn't tell you this but you're not alone here. In that."

"No," he said again, and his voice was stronger this time. "I don't belong here. I need to leave."

That twinge again. "Jonah, _please_," I said, and I knew as I said it I was speaking not as a counsellor but as me, as just Adrian, and I was pretty sure 'just Adrian' shouldn't talk to Jonah, ever, and particularly not now. "Give yourself some time, okay? If mission control decide you're a liability, they'll take action. Don't second guess them."

Jonah shook his head, shifting, drawing even more into himself. "This isn't about mission control. This is about me, making sure people are safe."

"You do so much good here," I insisted. "You hold this place together. We can work with you on this, make sure it doesn't creep up..."

"Adrian, you don't understand." It was the first time he had used my name. I desperately wished it was under different circumstances. "Or... you _should_. You know how PTSD works."

"I do. And I know that it can be managed, if you want to. And it seemed like you wouldn't be here if you didn't want to. Don't give up yet."

"I think... I think I need some time to think."

"'Course." I was chewing my lower lip - not sure when I'd started. I realised that was probably my cue to leave, and reluctantly, I stood to go.

"Adrian."

"Yes?"

"Thank you for helping me. And for not... for making me feel wanted."

There was a lump in my throat, and I felt hot behind my eyes, and I realised I had to get outta there pretty fast. "Everybody wants you. Here. Everybody wants you here," I said.

"Yeah, well. That was before. They might change their minds now."

I was pretty damn sure he was wrong about that, but then, I was biased. "Give them a chance to surprise you. Just... take some time, like you say. To think. Message me if you need me, okay?"

"Yeah. I will."

"Right." I nodded. Then I fled.

 

Zoë

Being stuck out in the aeroponics tent had its advantages and disadvantages. I could work uninterrupted, but at the same time, I was the last to hear about any big news.

The first sign of anything being out of the ordinary was when Avery was late - she'd sent a message earlier that day saying she was going to stop by with some results, but the field shift (with its new team) finished and the afternoon stretched out and it was about an hour after I expected her that she finally arrived.

"Hey, uh, sorry," she said. "Everything's a bit weird today." She made a face.

"Weird how?" I asked, worried that we were due another equipment malfunction or something.

"Well, y'know, with Jonah... actually you might not've heard..."

"What do you mean, with Jonah? What happened?"

Avery hesitated, but only for a second. "He had an attack. Um, PTSD, I think. Assume."

"Oh, shit." I blinked, put down the samples I had been messing with. "Is he okay?"

Avery lifted her shoulders. "Dunno. I'm gonna go see him after this, see if he wants to... talk. Oh, um..." She retrieved a memory stick from her pocket. "Here."

"Right, yeah, thanks..." I stood and took the stick from her. "If there's anything I can do... Jonah's always been so sweet."

"He has, yeah." Avery sighed, nodded, looking a little distracted. "Oh, um. So... I've charted your mixes against your clogging rates, and I think you've got some correlations to look at, but I'm about as far as I can go with my knowledge, I think. Down to you to see if any of what I've found tracks with the chemical properties of your minerals and nutrients, I think."

"Sure, thanks. I really appreciate the help." I hesitated; Avery certainly was acting a bit funny, but I didn't know if I was really in a position to pry. We had only really chatted a few times, and no matter how much I liked her I had no idea if the feeling was mutual. "Hey, d'you want to grab dinner together later, or something?"

"Huh? Oh... um, sure. I mean, maybe. Yeah, yeah, I should be good to do that," she said eventually, nodding.

"Well, just, y'know, let me know. S'cool either way," I said, hopefully nonchalantly.

"Will you be back at your pod before? You could give me a knock?"

"Sure. I'll be a while yet."

"'Kay. So, um. I... guess I should leave you to it?"

"Mmhmm. I'll see you later."

Avery nodded. Hesitated. Then nodded again. "'Kay, um. Yeah. See you."

 

Avery

Jonah's door was closed, and I almost didn't knock, since I could only imagine that he probably wanted to be alone right now. I also knew, however, that being alone with your thoughts wasn't always a good idea. I knocked.

There was no response, and I cleared my throat, leaning in. "Hey Jonah? It's me, Avery."

"...come in, the door's open."

Jonah was stretched out on his bed as I entered, though it was obvious I hadn't woken him. "Figured I'd... I dunno. Can I sit down?"

"Sure," he said, nodding at the desk chair. He looked like hell, or maybe it was because I was used to him looking like some Greek god just descended from Olympus and now he looked... well, human.

"How you feeling?" I asked unnecessarily. His reply was still of interest.

"Wrung out."

I nodded, sighed. "Yeah." I hesitated. "You want to talk about it?"

"Not much to say," he said with a heavy shrug. "It was a flashback."

I nodded again. I waited. He dropped his gaze to his hands, which he kept balling into fists and then relaxing, palms facing up towards the ceiling.

Eventually, I cleared my throat again. "My last one was about eight months ago," I said quietly. "Blistering hot day. I was crossing the road, nothing special, and a car pulled up nearby and its tyre blew, just like that. I hit the ground and couldn't get back up. I don't even remember it - I mean, I didn't lose consciousness, but I still can't remember anything from that sound 'til when I looked up from the ground and there's this massive crowd of people all staring down at me."

Jonah nodded, looking less surprised and more... relieved? "I said before that I hadn't seen much action. I lied to you. I'm sorry about that."

"Yeah." Then. "It's cool," I added.

"I think I attacked Rick. Or at least jumped on him. I was trying to shield him, I thought... I hope he's not too shaken up."

"He's fine. He wanted to come apologise to you actually, for punching you. He's pretty embarrassed."

"He shouldn't be. I'll tell him, when I apologise. I just..." He winced and shook his head. "I can't face everybody just yet."

"'Course. Don't worry about it. Just... take the time you need."

He gave me a smile that was almost heart-wrenching. "I wish I knew how long that was."

Impulsively, I scooted a little closer to the bed on his chair and reached for one of his hands, pulling it into both of mine. "Doesn't matter," I said. "You're the backbone of this place, you know that? We can wait."

"A backbone's no good if it's crooked. Besides, you can't wait. The clock's counting down the time."

"If we were halfway to Mars right about now we wouldn't have much choice in the matter. We'll work things out."

He looked at me for a moment, brow furrowed. "Aren't you worried?"

"Sure," I said. "I worry about loads of things. But here's the thing, Jonah. You've been to hell and back already. We may be damaged, you and me, but at least we're tried and tested. We survived once, and we have the capacity to do it again, even if we have the occasional blip. Rick, Keenan, Inés, Sarah... there's no way of knowing how they're doing to deal when the time comes. As broken as we may be... do you really think we're any less safe in a crisis?"

"It doesn't take a blow to knock me out, just a sound, or a memory. You can't remember anything between the car and the crowd. I'm bruised and bloody and I don't recall being hit once. That's not safe. That's not someone you can rely on," he said, his voice trembling just the tiniest amount. "We made it through but we - _I_ am weaker for it. Not stronger."

I sighed. "So... what does that mean? Does it mean you're gonna quit? Leave?"

"Yes. No. I don't know."

"Look, Jonah..." I was smoothing my hand over his, and his skin was warm, and dry, and I wondered idly how long it had been since I'd touched another person this much. "Maybe you're not the guy who holds it together in a crisis any more. But not everyone here has to be that guy. You're the _only_ guy who makes everyone feel wanted and appreciated. You're the _only_ guy who reached out to Zoë, who saw that she wasn't scary or weird, that she just needed a push to make connections."

"It would've happened without me. You would've reached out."

"You don't know that. _I_ don't know that."

He gave a heavy sigh, shaking his head, though I got the feeling it wasn't to refute my point but rather to express a bone-deep weariness that I certainly understood. "What would you do?" he asked then, looking up at me.

"I don't know." Then, "I think I'd stay, let mission control decide when or if to dump me. They took me on with this leg. I don't think they're looking for perfect machines. You're not here to be immune to pressure and calm in every situation and mentally rock-solid. If that was what they needed from you, they'd've chosen someone else."

"Yeah. Maybe." It was as hopeful as I'd heard him sound since I got there.

"Have you, uh... do you do anything to stay in a good place? Like, mental exercises or whatever? I could show you some stuff that's helped me..."

"Therapy helped me before. Talking. I just... need to get it out of my head, you know?"

"How d'you find Adrian? To talk to, I mean?"

"Adrian's wonderful. I'm not sure I ought to burden him with this, though..."

A bemused frown fell across my face. "Why not? Isn't that his job?"

"His job was to keep an eye on us, not provide PTSD counselling, I'd wager."

"Again, though, they put us in here with him. That says to me that they consider it to be within his remit."

"You're not going to let me weasel out of this, are you?" he asked with a pained smile.

"If you really want to go home, I think you should." I squeezed his hand. "I just don't believe you really want to."

"I don't _want_ to. I just.." Jonah sighed. "I don't want to put anyone in danger."

"I know. But you won't again. If that happened again, it would go differently."

"Hopefully. You can't know that."

"No, I don't know. But I'd like you to give it a chance. You'd be missed."

"I can't make any promises, Avery. But... I'll try."

I nodded. "Good. And I'll be here. Any time. I mean it."

"Thanks, Avery. And I know this might sound pretty pathetic coming from me right now, but I'm here if you anything too." The unspoken words were still easy to read. _We've got to stick together, people like us._

I shook my head. "Not pathetic at all. And I appreciate it."

"Thanks for coming by to see me."

"Any time." Finally I pulled my hands away to stand. "Rick wants to come see you, and, uh, I think Keenan too. What should I tell them?"

I could see him squaring his shoulders, pulling himself together, and wondered if I shouldn't put the other guys off for a bit longer. Jonah nodded, though, and looked me straight in the eye. "Whenever they want."

"'Kay, let me know if you want me to come by again later, yeah?"

"Sure, I will. Thanks."

 

Chapter 6

Zoe

I worked even later than usual, wanting to give Avery plenty of time to spend with Jonah before showing up on her doorstep, and having plenty of results to pore over from her statistical analysis. Though there was plenty to digest I eventually had to admit that my growling stomach was getting in the way of my critical thinking and quit the tent, making my way down to the pods and knocking at her door.

There was a longish pause. "It's open."

Avery was at her computer, perched on the edge of her seat. She glanced round as I entered with a smile, and that was when I saw the pink rims round her eyes.

"Hey."

I felt a sudden twist of worry. "Hey. What's up? How's Jonah?"

She shrugged. "Um, yeah, he's... I dunno. Hard to say."

"Right. Could he use another visit, or do you think he'd rather be alone right now?"

"I think Rick and Keenan are both gonna go speak to him this evening. Maybe best leave it?"

"Okay, yeah. Um, d'you still want to do dinner? It's cool if not, I can grab something and go back to work."

"No, no, I mean, yeah, I do, just, uh... yeah." Avery stood a little stiffly, looking around herself as though checking for personal effects, though she then just grabbed her water bottle and checked her pocket for her ID before turning back to me. "'Kay."

I led the way to the mess in silence; Avery didn't seem like she was in a very chatty mood and I had no idea what to say. I didn't want to pry - well, I _did_, but I knew I shouldn't - and I couldn't think of much else to fill the void.

Once we had our food and sat down she looked up at me with a smile and I could almost see her mentally steeling herself. "So." She smiled, and it was a real smile, though hard won. "How're you getting on with my numbers? Anything?"

"Yeah, yeah, they look good. Not that it means I can _do_ anything about it, but."

"No? Aw, I'm sorry. I guess I'd hoped that if you could isolate the problem mineral maybe you'd be able to look at, I dunno... grinding it smaller or something," Avery finished with a sheepish look.

I couldn't help it; I grinned. "I don't know how much smaller I can make some of the compounds, but we'll see. At least this gives me a starting point."

"Right. Well, good." Avery smiled in return, then looked down to her food, working her way methodically through it.

"So, um," I said then, feeling a bit nervous. "How are you doing?"

"Yeah, y'know. Bit pensive. The whole shellshock thing... got me woolgathering I guess."

"Yeah?" I left the question hanging, trying to keep my expression open and friendly.

"Mmm." Avery glanced up, obviously conflicted. "Uh." She shook her head. "'Nother time," she said. "No secrets, I just... not today."

"Yeah, of course. No pressure, just... if you wanted to talk. And Adrian's busy." I smiled to show I was joking.

"Hah, heh. Yeah."

"Hey," I said then, "I think I saw Jonah's guitar in the rec room. D'you want to have a go at practising Blackbird, maybe?"

"Oh, um..." It was obvious that Avery's first instinct was to refuse. But after a beat, she nodded firmly. "Sure," she said. "If you can spare the time, I'd like that."

"Okay, great. Let me just wash my hands, then we can give it a go?"

"Sure thing."

Avery washed her hands too, and refilled her water bottle before we headed along to the rec rooms. She was moving stiffly, still, and I wondered whether she'd worked herself too hard these past few days in Dome 2.

Jonah's guitar was still there, but I suddenly realised that doing it in the rec rooms would mean that anybody could wander by and hear and, horror of horrors, join in. I suggested we return to one of our rooms, and Avery hesitated again before suggesting mine.

It couldn't have worked out better if I had planned it, but actually, I hadn't. Whatever small crush I had simmering away in my brain - and other parts of me - was mostly removed from my concern for Avery, my desire to provide a distraction from what were obviously troubling thoughts. I just wanted her to be okay, like I wanted Jonah and everyone else to be okay too.

"So, um. D'you want me to show you the pattern again?" I asked after I had settled cross-legged at the end of my bed, Avery straight-backed in my desk chair.

"Sure, um, actually talk me through the finger positions and picks for the first phrase? I think maybe in the absence of tab drilling is going to be what works..."

"No problem. Let's hope I don't fuck up."

"I'm sure you won't."

She really did mean 'drill', too. I played it through slowly a couple of times, and Avery took the guitar and ran through the finger positions for those first four chords over and over again until they were happening almost by themselves. And then the same with the picking pattern, where she got totally tangled up at first and we have to slow it right down and then gradually pick the speed back up.

Eventually, though, she seemed to have gotten it, and I started humming along as she made her way through the song. She seemed a bit more relaxed now, though still concentrating hard, and I hoped that whatever had been bothering her earlier was at least at bay for now. Once she had the picking pattern down she seemed find the chord positions far easier, and she was soon fitting each section together, her left hand shifting meticulously from one shape to the next, her strong, capable fingers moving like machinery. Music didn't come easily to her, I didn't think - though she obviously had an ear and her quiet, husky singing voice had been pleasant to listen to a few nights previously, she was not a natural guitar player; her skills had come with effort and repetition, and I felt strangely privileged to be party to her process now.

"That sounds really good," I said when she finally seemed to come to a stopping place, smiling over at her. "I think you've got it now."

"Will you sing it?" she asked. "I want to see if I can get all the way through without stumbling."

"Yeah, sure, if you like. Just whenever you're ready." I loved singing and never got to do it any more; this was a nice change.

Avery ran through a couple of transitions again quickly, then, after a deep breath, began to tap her right foot lightly, and played the song's intro for me. I felt a shiver run down my spine - I loved this song, it was just one of the prettiest pieces of music I'd ever heard. When my turn to sing approached I straightened up, folding my hands in my lap. I know we were just messing around but I still wanted it to sound good.

_"Blackbird singing in the dead of night..."_

 

Avery

It was somewhere in that last chorus that I actually felt the tears spill over to run down my cheeks. I wasn't generally the sort to take meaning from songs, or really listen to lyrics much, to be honest, but somehow that song on that day, with its melancholic, symbolic talk of release - any kind of release - from a place that was broken and twisted, sung in Zoë's smooth, calming voice... she wasn't looking at me as she sang, and I thought I might get away with it, but then I played the final chords, and I looked her way right as she looked at me, and her expression went from surprise to sympathetic so quickly it almost made me cry harder. She scooted along towards me down the bed and reached out to put a hand on my knee - my good knee, thank God - and gave it a little squeeze, still saying nothing.

"Sorry," I muttered eventually through a weak grin. "One of those days, I think."

"We all have 'em. It's okay."

"I just... you can go so long, and you think everything'll be fine, now, like, if it's been that long and there's been nothing... And then, out of nowhere..."

"The brain's a bastard like that." Zoe made a face, maybe realising that it wasn't a particularly reassuring thing to say. Funnily enough, I didn't really mind. "I mean... yeah. I can see how that would throw you."

"But, I mean... if we have that on record, and they brought us here anyway..."

"Life doesn't stop just because you've been through something traumatic. If they knew about it and they brought you here then they thought you'd be an asset to the program."

I nodded. "Tell Jonah that."

"I will, when I speak to him."

I sighed, letting the guitar slip gently from my lap and leaning to rest against Zoë, our shoulders touching.

"I bet you'd struggle to find anyone who hasn't had something... compelling driving them to be here," Zoe murmured. "In a way, that might be something that'll make us a better team."

"Mm. I suppose. I mean, yeah, probably."

She shifted to put her arm around my shoulders. "Hey. We are, you know. A team."

I sighed again, and with the exhalation I felt a little of the tension leeching from my body, and I leaned into the hug. "Yeah. We're getting there, aren't we?"

"Yeah, I think so. And it only happened after you got here."

I chuckled. "Flattery will get you everywhere."

"Wasn't flattery. Just an observation."

"Hmph." I shook my head. "Well, I'm sure it would have begun to pull together with or without me."

"Well, I'm still glad you're here."

"Me too. I mean, that you're here," I said. "And I'm glad we're working together - spending time together. And it's Jonah we have to thank for that."

"Mmhmm. I haven't yet, but I will."

"I'm sure he'd like to see you. I mean, tomorrow. Think he'll have had enough today."

Zoë nodded, arm tightening around my shoulder briefly and then relaxing again. "How about you? Want me to get out of your hair?"

"Hm? Oh..." I turned to glance at Zoë but when I looked round I was caught in her gaze, a little surprised to find her so close. Her eyes were polished chestnut, warm and shining. "I, uh. Don't mind. I can leave if you like..."

"No, no," she said, shaking her head a little. "You're all right. Stay as long as you want."

"D'you want to teach me something else?"

"Yeah, sure, good idea." She pulled away and my side felt cold. "Here, gimme that. Let's see what else I can remember..."

 

Zoë

She stayed as I note-bashed my way through song after song, sometimes singing along with me, sometimes declaring that the chords or pick patterns were too difficult and sometimes getting me to show them to her. She was a fast learner, with a good left hand even on Jonah's fairly harsh steel-string acoustic, but she got easily lost with more complex rhythms or picking patterns unless she did them over and over again. Strangely enough I didn't mind watching her go through them again and again, watching her nimble fingers move over the strings, biting back a smile at her scowl of concentration.

I don't know where all that talk of teamwork and unity came from - God knows I wasn't the best team player, but I had thought it would reassure her, and it seemed to, a bit. I was glad of that... seeing her crying had been a shock, and I wanted nothing more than to banish her tears and hold her until she felt better. Among other things. Other than that one moment, though, when she'd turned to look at me and just stared for a moment, eyes wide, like she'd never seen me properly before... other than that, there were no signs that she was feeling what I was, that she was reacting to every touch between us that way I did, no sign that my crush was reciprocated. And I told myself that that was just as well. After all, that was not why we were here, and besides, I was in no position to be involved with anybody.

It was late when she finally returned Jonah's guitar to me for the last time and pushed shakily to her feet, bending her knees a couple of times as though to check they still worked before turning to smile down at me.

"I should get to bed," she said. "I'll... see you soon, though. Tell Jonah I'm thinking of him when you see him."

"Yeah, I will," I assured her, nodding as I set the guitar aside. "You take care, okay? Take it easy tomorrow, whatever you're doing."

"Oh, I'll be fine; I'm just sitting around in the server room with Alex. Most strenuous thing I'll have to do is not slap him."

I chuckled. "Well, good luck with that."

Avery grinned. "G'night, then."

"Goodnight."

Once she had gone I considered staying up to do more work but I found I didn't really want to, so after a quick shower I slid into bed, the cool sheets still a delicious novelty after the heat wave. As I lay there my thoughts drifted, as thoughts are wont to do, and I let them. I'm sure I was smiling as I fell asleep.

 

Jonah

It was late - past when I'd usually be asleep, though I wasn't tonight - when the knock came.

The lights in the corridor outside the pod were dimmed, making Avery's usually light eyes look unusually dark, hooded by her slightly furrowed brow.

"Um. Hey," she murmured, eyes anywhere by my face at first.

"Hey," I replied. A moment later I stepped back to let her in. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I just..." She sucked in a breath and released it slowly. "I didn't know if... maybe you wouldn't want to be alone tonight. I thought... if you wanted company."

I was pretty sure that three syllable word - 'company', had never felt so long or been quite so carefully enunciated. Perhaps she realised this or discerned it from my silence because she added quickly, "Just a warm body, not... I'm not coming onto you."

"Yeah, sure," I said, sensing that maybe she could use the company as much as I could. I felt a stab of guilt - it was my fault she was feeling anxious and keyed up. Having her stay the night was the least I could do. "That'd be good."

She was wearing long pyjamas rather than the shorts she'd been in last time I'd seen her at night, I noticed, though one leg was cut short and pinned up, her prosthetic strapped on on top of it, obviously just a temporary measure to get her here. She moved toward my bed without further preamble, sitting on the side with the best access without question and bending to undo the straps around her thigh.

I returned the other side of the bed and pulled the covers up to slide in, leaving her to take care of her business without scrutiny. Soon enough she was joining me beneath the blanket, and if I'd worried that we were going to be lying awkwardly trying not to touch one another that was quickly forestalled, as she immediately turned to lie facing me, slipping an arm around my waist. I shifted to a more comfortable position, curling my arm under my head and putting the other under her pillow. "Are you comfortable?"

"Long as you are, yeah."

"Mmhmm."

"'Kay." She was a little cooler than me, at first, perhaps I suppose because she'd been up and making her way along the corridor. She soon warmed up, though, and I felt myself start to relax as the minutes ticked by and my busy thoughts slowly began to still. I could hear Avery's breathing growing shallower, though she wasn't asleep yet, I didn't think - I could feel her fingers curling and uncurling in a gentle stroking motion at my waist, light and absentminded, her arm was growing heavier and her movements slower as she began to drift off.

I wondered if there had been someone she could rely on like this outside the Dome - had she left them behind? It seemed unlikely. Whatever the case, I was happy to be here for her now, and it was reassuring to me as well.

 

Avery

I woke up and I'd turned over, Jonah's large, warm body behind mine. The room was a little too hot, and so was he, but I just reached with my leg to hook a heel behind the covers and get some air on my skin rather than pulling away. His breathing was slow and steady, and I realised he had put one hand on my waist at some time in the night; I could feel the rough skin on the pads of his fingers though the fabric of my shirt. Satisfied that he was still asleep I shifted, up a little and then down again, so that my shirt eased from beneath his hand and his skin slipped against mine. It had been a long time.

I didn't know what time it was, but I was happy enough to lie there like that as long as I could, even if I didn't think I'd be falling back to sleep. I had been lucky enough to avoid any bad dreams and I didn't want to chance it. So I closed the gap between us, shifting back a little into his arms so that we were pressed together, letting his hand fall around me to rest on my stomach, and closed my eyes again.

Apparently I _did_ fall asleep, as I jerked awake to the sound of someone knocking lightly on the door some time later. Jonah stiffened behind me, then pulled away to roll out of bed. I saw a slice of light fall across the bed as he opened the door

"Oh, I'm sorry, I know it's still early," I heard a familiar voice say. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"That's all right," Jonah murmured. "What can I do for you?"

"I just wanted to come by and tell you that I hoped you were feeling better. I've been really grateful for the support you've given me, and if there's anything I can do... well. I'd like to help if I can."

Zoë. I wasn't sure what it was about the sound of her voice that gave me a guilty little twinge. I had nothing to be guilty about. Jonah and I hadn't done anything, and for that matter if we had there was nothing particularly wrong with that, was there?

"Thanks, that's very kind of you. I really haven't done much."

"Well, you've made a big difference for me, at least - you pushed me and Avery together and I... that's something I'm very grateful for. So. I just wanted to say thank you. And reiterate that if there's anything I can do to help, just say the word."

Jonah nodded, and after a few more murmured words Zoë departed. He closed the door and turned back towards the bed, pausing when he realised that I was awake. "I'm sorry I woke you up," he said, reaching up to rub a hand over his hair.

I shook my head, smiled, pushed into a sitting position. "S'fine, I woke up earlier anyway. Must've dozed off again."

"You can go back to sleep if you like."

"Are you getting up?"

"Maybe. Maybe not," he said, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. "I'm going to the bathroom, I'll be right back."

Maybe? What was that suppose to mean? I settled back for now, running my hands through my hair and trying to smooth out the tangles that had formed with sleep. I heard the sound of a flush, and then water running, and then Jonah returned, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. He looked down at me somewhat curiously. I returned his gaze - steadily, I hoped.

"Thanks for last night," I said. "I know I made it about you but... I guess I needed it too."

"That's okay. It was nice having someone here," he said with a nod.

I nodded. "Good. I mean, I'm glad." I didn't move yet, reaching to cover his hand with mine, curling my fingers around it.

He smiled, squeezing my hand. "Avery, it's good that we can be here for each other like that, and I hope we always can be. I should say, though, that I don't think anything more than that would be a good idea..."

I blinked. "I, um. That's fine," I said. "I mean, I hadn't necessarily..." I shook my head. "That wasn't what this was about." Necessarily.

"I know," he said, smiling reassuringly. "It's fine."

"I, uh. Guess we'd best get up, though, then," I said.

"All right." He squeezed my hand again and then let it go, rising to tower over the bed. I finally pulled the covers back and turned to sit on the edge, reaching for my prosthetic.

"Dr Sarkis seems quite fond of you," he remarked then, turning to rummage through one of his drawers.

"Yeah, we, um. We get on pretty well."

"Good. I'm glad."

"She, um. She was really concerned about you. She wanted to come and see you last night but I wasn't sure if Rick or Keenan were going to be... did they come and see you in the end?"

"They did. It was... awkward, but very nice of them."

"Did they visit together or separately?" I asked, testing a hunch, I suppose.

"Separately."

I nodded. As I'd expected, though I wasn't sure why yet. "Hope Rick isn't beating himself up too much."

"He seemed to be pretty pragmatic about it by the time he got to me," Jonah said with a smile. "But also pretty apologetic."

"Well, he did give you a bloody nose," I said, tightening the straps and pushing to my feet. "And that jaw..." I reached for him without even thinking about it, and he was there, one muscled arm under my hand as I got my feet underneath me. "...thanks." I'll admit that I looked up and met his eyes deliberately, then. I wasn't short, but he still had a good six inches on me, so I had to crane my neck to look at him. His smile tightened just a little, his muscles clenching under my hand.

"Steady on, there."

"I'm good," I said. "I'm fine. I'm... pretty good at this. Now."

"I can tell. You're a pro."

"Mm." I knew I should disengage myself, and I did, then, though I confess I did take my time, my hands smoothing over Jonah's toned arms as I stepped back. He moved back towards collecting his clothes out of the dresser, and I had to admit that if anything _was_ going to happen the moment had passed now. I wasn't sure whether to be disappointed or relieved - but certainly if I'd really been sure what I wanted, I would have been more assertive about it.

"Right, I'm gonna get back to my room. I'll... see you around? And y'know. Come see me any time. No strings. I promise." I was pretty sure it was a promise I'd keep. Up to a point, anyway.

 

Inés

So as quickly as things had gotten weird in the Dome they got back to normal pretty fast - maybe it was that no one liked gossiping about Jonah behind his back, or maybe we were all working too hard to have the time. We'd lost productivity during the air con problems, both due to the extra time required on maintenance and repair and due to the fact we were all too hot to work as fast as usual - or most of us, anyway. There was no 'boss' on the team, but the general feeling was that we all needed to double down and get back up to spec as soon as possible.

And then there was the day that Sarkis gathered us all up before our shift in the field started, looking like shit but grinning pretty wide all the same. "So this is just to let you all know that we can probably start cutting our shifts down to five or six hours - barring any major disasters I'm going to start transitioning us over to the aeroponic crops over the next few weeks so I'll be running training sessions on that in the downtime."

Jonah, of course, was the first to speak up. "Wow, Dr Sarkis," he said, his face lighting up with that big, genuine smile of his. "That's just great - good news for everybody."

"Yeah, I know this is no one's favourite duty," she said with a rueful shake of her head. "Aeroponics is still a lot of work, but a lot less grubbing around in the dirt, so."

Nobody seemed sure what to say or do about this - everybody was pleased; I knew they would be and I was too, but what should we do? We didn't really know enough to ask questions. Was a round of applause appropriate? The silence stretched out, with everyone sort of looking between one another with these goofy, uncertain smiles.

"Anyway," Sarkis said eventually, "that's not to say we don't still have work to do, so... have at it."

Everyone scattered - apart from Avery, I noticed, who loitered behind to talk to Sarkis, although she wasn't in Dome 2 this week. I had noticed them being chummy over the past few weeks - really everyone had - and wondered what they were chatting about now, just in a kind of idle, bored way. I had noticed her looking at Avery when she didn't think anybody else was looking, the same way most of the women looked at Jonah though they rarely tried to hide that. Avery was... well, everything Avery did seemed careful, subtle - to me, anyway. She had obviously studied coming across as casual and easy-going, but she was always very self-contained and underneath it all I sometimes caught little glimpses of the weary, brittle woman I'd met on the first day. I had a feeling neither version was a true picture of who Avery actually was. Either way, I'd never caught her staring at Zoë - but then, I'd never caught her staring at anyone else, either.

 

Zoë

"...so yeah, I think with some careful management we should be able to cut down on clogging by almost forty percent, meaning we can up our production. And it's all thanks to you." I grinned at Avery, knowing I probably looked pretty manic, since I had been up for almost thirty-six hours at that point.

"Hey, don't thank me, I just crunched the numbers," she said. "You did the science stuff."

"Well, I wouldn't have gotten to it for weeks, at least, so you moved the timescale up significantly."

"I was glad to help." Avery grinned, nodded, stuffing her hands into her pockets and hunching her shoulders a bit in what I was beginning to come to recognise as bashfulness.

"You'll have to let me thank you for it at some point," I said, emboldened by her adorable response. "I'd offer to make you a meal or something but that's probably not an act you'd appreciate, with my culinary skills."

"I'm sure you're a perfectly good cook. But really, it's okay," Avery said. "You've thanked me now."

"Right, yeah, okay," I replied, realising I was probably laying it on a bit thick. "Just... I owe you one."

"I'll remember that," Avery warned jokingly. "I, uh... suppose I should let you get back to doing stuff - will I see you later?"

Jonah was having another 'music night'; I had tentatively agreed to come, though the idea of trying to play the guitar as ill-slept as I was did not appeal. "Yeah, I'll be there."

Perhaps Avery sensed my hesitation, because her brows drew together, then. "Would you rather do something else?" she asked. "We could hang out somewhere else if you liked, take the opportunity for some peace and quiet while everyone else is being musical..."

"Oh, I don't mind. Either way's good with me."

"How 'bout I stop by later on and you can decide then?"

"Okay," I said, the grin growing on my face. I knew I was being pretty obvious but I couldn't help it; I liked spending time with her, and it would certainly give me something to look forward to at the end of the day. If I could stay awake that long.

 

Rick

So they were being pretty subtle about it, but I was pretty sure Avery and Jonah were sleeping together. Not every day or anything, but I had definitely seen Avery disappearing into his room once or twice late at night (I wasn't stalking her or anything, our rooms just happened to be near one another) and Keenan said that he had seen Jonah leaving her room once, early in the morning.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised - I mean, Jonah was pretty much every woman's dream man so it made sense that Avery would go for him if she could. And I was the last person to ask what Jonah might see in Avery - there were prettier women here, no question, but none of them had Avery's... energy, her sort of quiet _brightness_, like she was just a little bit more alive than other people.

So yeah. I knew I shouldn't care, but I did, of course, though there wasn't anything I could do about it but mope a bit and gripe to Keenan when we were alone, though even he was acting a bit weird about it so I didn't bring it up much. Last thing we needed was to get into some competition about Avery, especially when we were up against Mr Primo Specimen himself.

That was why I was a little bit surprised when we swung by Jonah's little musical get-together one night and there was no sign of Avery yet. I mean, he hadn't been going long, I don't think, but there were plenty of other people hanging around.

I wasn't really into all that fruity Kumbaya shit but it wasn't like there was much else to do, so me and Keenan found ourselves seats and listened while Jonah took requests from everybody. He seemed to know pretty much any song somebody mentioned and so me and Keenan decided to see if we could come up with stuff to stump him, just for fun. After a rousing acoustic version of Enter Sandman we gave up, and I decided I was gonna go for a run round the corridor circuit instead. Working in the fields was a pretty good workout, actually, but sometimes at the end of the day I still had some pent-up energy and given that I wasn't gonna get to burn it off in my _preferred_ way a run was the next best thing - and besides, after today's announcement that we were transferring to aeroponics, I was going to have to figure out another way to burn off steam sooner rather than later.

It was passing Avery's door on my way to change into workout clothes that I noticed it was ajar, and heard the sound of another familiar voice drifting out.

"...don't even know why I'm telling you this, I guess I'm pretty loopy from sleep dep. You don't mind, do you?"

"No, of course not, it's fine."

I knew I shouldn't be eavesdropping, but I couldn't help it, not with a juicy lead-in like that. Sarkis continued. "It's just, I... well, I said a while ago we all had reasons for being here, right?"

"Uh huh?" There was the sound of water being poured and I could almost imagine the two of them sitting in one of their no-doubt perfectly appointed apartments, sharing a bottle of wine and talking about work.

"And I also said that I had been a professor. But, well, I'm not any more. I mean, obviously, but... I was fired."

Avery didn't say anything, but I had to assume that she didn't look too scandalised and nodded for Sarkis to go on or something, 'cause after a beat she kept talking.

"For, uh... sexual harassment." My eyes widened; there was no way I was leaving now. "Of a former student." Well, shit.

There was another long pause.

Then - and seriously, all credit to Avery because her voice was still totally steady. "I assume there's more to that story."

"Mm. I mean yeah, of course. I was, um... I fell for an undergrad student of mine a couple years ago, and we dated in secret for almost a year," Sarkis explained, quietly enough that I had to lean closer to the door to catch her words. "And eventually she broke it off with me, but I was still infatuated with her, and when she got tired of my attempts to get her back she... reported me to the administration. And, well, say what you like about academia, its wheels turn pretty quickly when you've been thrown under them. Not that... I know what I did was wrong, an abuse of power. But I really did love her. I wasn't trying to take advantage of her."

Avery sighed. Then she said exactly what I was thinking. "_Jesus_, Zoë. An _under_graduate?"

"I know, I _know_. It was stupid, but she was so bright, and mature, and I just... I couldn't help myself."

"Bullshit, you can always help yourself." Another pause, more pouring water. "So did it go on your permanent record? I mean, for you to be here..."

"There's no one under twenty-one on the team," Sarkis replied dryly, though I could tell she was feeling a bit emotional. "This is probably the 'safest' place for me to be, all things told."

"Well, it's not really about her age, is it? I mean, obviously then it was, to an extent, but I mean... do you always have that kind of trouble letting go? If you got involved with someone in here, and it went badly..."

"I'm not going to. Get involved with anyone, I mean."

"Right. Well, I mean. I guess that's probably sensible."

"Yeah. Yeah... 'sensible'. Anyway, I... just wanted you to know. In case you... didn't want to be friends, or whatever."

"What? Oh, Zoë..." I heard a whisper of rustling sheets and realised they must be sitting on the bed together. "That's not... I don't think you're a bad person. We've all made stupid mistakes. We're good, I promise."

"Yeah?" I could hear Sarkis sigh, probably in relief. "Okay. Cool. I'm glad."

"Although just to be clear, as 'stupid mistakes' go, that was... Jeez..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, okay? Trust me, I've learned my lesson on that one."

"Mm. Well. D'you ever wonder if when they were going through the selection process they deliberately chose people who'd fucked up so interminably that we had nothing left in the real world any more? Like, if that was one of their criteria?"

"The thought had struck me. Though you can't convince me you've done anything of that calibre, you're far too normal..."

Avery gave a bark of a laugh. "Oh, man, you have no idea... I need to start wearing shorts..." There was a pause, but I could picture what was happening - just as she had to me, Avery must be showing Zoë her leg.

"Huh," Sarkis said after a moment. Then, "well, unless your leg sexually harassed someone, I still think I win."

Avery chuckled. "Fine, fine, I guess being fucked up is a little different from fucking up. But still, my point basically stands: we're broken - all of us, I'm beginning to think, in some small way. So I really wouldn't worry about people being too judgemental around here."

"Yeah, I dunno. I guess I'm just so used to being the pariah that it's easier just to fall into that role than make an effort any more, you know?"

"Yeah, I know, I know. Well, you've still got me."

"I guess that'll have to do."

I realised I'd been listening at the door for a while, then, and backed off, heading over to my room, mind buzzing with what I'd heard. Even if what Avery said was true, that everybody here had to be a little fucked up, Sarkis was still head and shoulders above the rest. At least, that I knew of. I wondered what was wrong with all the others...

 

Chapter 7

Adrian

Jonah had been coming to see me two or three times a week since his episode at the basketball court; I felt guilty about how much I enjoyed seeing him, given the circumstances. He was mostly over 'the attack' itself - back on his usual even keel and even, I think, beginning to believe my reassurances that it could well be a single, unexpected aberration rather than a sign that he wasn't able to cope. He was still worried about other people - about whether they would be able to trust him, whether he was still a valuable member of the team.

"So the music night seemed to go well, and it was very well-attended," I pointed out at the session following.

He nodded and smiled. "I guess so. I'm glad everyone enjoyed themselves."

"D'you think that's something you'll be doing regularly?"

"Maybe, though I'd like to get more people involved. Like Dr Sarkis and Avery, though they weren't there last night."

"No?" I hadn't noticed, and I cursed myself for it. When Jonah was around it was increasingly hard to pay attention to anything or anyone else.

"Not that that's a problem. Just... it would be good if it wasn't just me organising it. If it was a group thing."

"Right, of course."

"But I can understand why they might not want to get involved." I could tell when he was about to go on another spiral of self-blame and knew I needed to counter it quickly.

"Jonah, do you generally consider yourself to be a good judge of character?"

"I... suppose so, yes."

"Has anyone given any indication that they think less of you or trust you less as a result of this?"

"Not outwardly, no."

I sighed quietly, shooting him a tiny smile. "Well, there's not a lot I can say beyond that, Jonah, except that it seems as though you're overlaying a lot of assumptions on these people."

He sighed as well, shoulders slumping a bit, and I remembered how he had looked after the attack, so fragile and lonely. "I know. I know I should trust that they would tell me if there were any issues, but... people don't always work that way."

"It's true, they don't. But usually you would expect to pick up on those sorts of cues, wouldn't you?"

"Usually."

"Is there any good reason why you wouldn't see them now, when you're actively looking for them?"

"...bad luck?"

"Or..."

"Or there's no reason and I'm just making trouble for myself?" he hazarded with a sheepish grin.

"Bingo."

"Right. Sorry." Jonah shuffled his feet underneath his chair, looking adorably contrite.

"Don't apologise," I said with a grin and a shake of my head. "Just... try to remember it. Look, this is hard for me to navigate because of confidentiality and the fact that everyone in this damn building has an unspoken contract of secrecy with me - which I have to maintain off-duty as well as on, realistically, but... you really don't need to worry about this. Honest."

"Thanks," he said with a nod. "I do trust you, Adrian. You saying that... means a lot."

Jonah's hesitant little smile as he said this quickly banished any uncertainty I felt at the tiny betrayal of trust I'd been guilty of in saying what I had, replacing it with a warm flush of butterflies in my stomach. "Right, well, good. So, er... let's get through the standard questions, yeah?"

"Fire away."

 

Avery

I couldn't get what Zoë had said out of my mind. I dunno what had got to me about it, but for whatever reason I just couldn't stop thinking about it. I guess in part it was that it had forced me to think about it in a whole new way, as someone who made mistakes just like everyone else. The idea of Zoë as an emotional wreck, jeopardising her career over a girl, was really hard to fit in with the picture I'd previously had of her. Maybe it was just because she was the epitome of the driven scientist since she had been there, but I guess this was a very different environment for her, and a lot of the rest of us too.

Things didn't really change between us, at least - we were a little awkward for a few days I guess but not unfriendly, and soon enough it was more or less forgotten, I thought. Besides, I had other stuff on my mind too, with Jonah.

We had started sharing a bed a couple times a week, now, despite the fact that neither of us had had any panic attacks or night terrors in some time. Most of the time I was the one to initiate it, showing up at his room late at night in my pyjamas, but once or twice he came to me, so I knew it wasn't completely one-sided. It hadn't escalated - we were no closer physically than we'd been that first night. I had half a feeling that I could probably push things further, but I also reckoned it would be the last time we shared a bed if I did, and I valued his warmth and proximity too much to spoil it for the sake of some sexual relief.

We didn't talk - I mean, we _talked_, of course, about inconsequential things, usually in the morning before we went our separate ways - but we didn't talk about the things that had brought us there or where 'we' might be going. I was mostly okay with that, seeing as I had no idea what I would say if we _did_ discuss it, but it didn't keep me from thinking about it and even sometimes fantasising what it might be like to be close to someone in that way after so long alone.

In the end, I caved and talked to Adrian about it - I wasn't sure Jonah wouldn't have said something already anyway, and, well, even if he wasn't our official counsellor I was pretty sure I could've trusted him with anything.

"So you and he are sleeping together-- ah, I mean, sharing a bed several times a week?" Adrian looked a bit flustered; had no one else shacked up together by this point? "I see. How are... I mean, how do you feel about that arrangement?"

I shrugged, at first, blowing out a long breath. "All right, I think? I mean... I don't think I want more than that from him. Or at least, from him in preference to anyone, really, like, it's been a while so sometimes I want... but mostly I really think that the companionship, the platonic closeness, is what it's about really... I mean, it's not like I'm lying there... buzzing... y'know?"

"And how do you think he feels about it? I mean, it sounds like you haven't really discussed it, per se, but you must have an impression of his feelings on the matter."

"I don't think he thinks of me that way. I mean, I'm sure he gets frustrated here like anyone, but the guy's a rock, y'know? I think he'd end what we're doing if he thought it was going to go badly. And I think if he had feelings beyond... well, I think he'd have the guts to talk about it, even if I didn't."

"Right. Okay." Adrian scribbled something on his notepad; were his fingers shaking? "Well, then, that sounds fairly... positive, for both of you. It's understandable that you'd be wanting some comfort in this new situation we're in. People are not generally solitary creatures."

"You don't think it's, like, y'know..." I made a face. "Playing with fire or whatever? Two people sharing a bed in a place like this? Like..." I sighed. "Here's the thing. It feels - mostly anyway - mostly it feels totally platonic. But... I feel like Jonah could make just about anything feel wholesome. I worry that I'm fooling myself. Like, that there's this timebomb just waiting to explode. Y'know?"

"Well," he said carefully, "what do you think is the best way to handle it?"

"Keep an eye out, I guess? Stay careful, keep communicating, and nip it in the bud if it starts to go in a way we don't think would be safe?"

He nodded slowly. "Communication is the lynchpin of any good relationship, platonic or otherwise. You can't go wrong there."

"Mm, easier said than done though. So... you don't think I'm being an idiot?"

"I think you're both consenting adults with good heads on your shoulders."

I smirked a little. "Very diplomatic."

"My job here really isn't to approve or disapprove of your choices," he said then, his tone surprisingly sharp. He seemed to catch himself then and shook his head. "I just mean... it sounds like you're being as mature as you can, under the circumstances. The rest is up to you two."

"I... right. Sure, sorry, I was just being flip." I tried not to look too disconcerted, as Adrian seemed about as thrown as I did now.

"That's all right. Now, let's see, that covers how you're sleeping... how about your appetite?"

 

Zoe

I'd never seen Adrian looking so despondent. He'd also never eaten dinner so late before that I'd seen, hunched over a plate picking at his food when I got there, well after everyone else had gone.

I considered letting him eat alone, since he clearly wanted to, but something made me set my tray down beside him. "Hey."

He glanced up - surprised to be disturbed, though not, on reflection, to see me, it seemed. "Ah, Dr Sarkis," he said with a careful smile. "Still burning the, er, evening oil, I see. Still a lot to do in spite of your breakthrough, I suppose?"

"No rest for the wicked," I replied with a shake of my head, picking up my fork. "Late day for you as well?"

"Mm, lots to do," Adrian said, tone deliberately vague and a little guilty, which got me immediately suspicious, as he was always vague but didn't usually seem so... antsy... about his vagueness, as if this time he really was hiding something.

"I like keeping busy - means I don't really have to think about anything except what I'm doing," I commented then. "Great for avoidance, I've found."

"Mm." Adrian didn't even look askance at me for this one - now I knew he had something on his mind.

"Hey..." I waited until he glanced up at me, then lifted my eyebrows quizzically. "What's up, doc?"

Adrian gave a short laugh at this, shaking his head. "I can't," he said. "But thanks."

"I can't imagine being stuck here and not having anyone to talk to. That's... kind of perverse, actually. Really unfair."

"Well, I'm pretty sure I was selected because they reckoned I was up to it," Adrian said with a sigh. "I guess we'll find out."

I felt bad for him; it made sense that they had chosen someone who they didn't think would have a lot of 'issues', but he was only human. "I'm sorry," I offered, though I know it wasn't much. "If you ever did want to talk, you can talk to me. It's not like I'd have anybody to spill it to."

"No, but..." Adrian stopped himself, glanced up at me, his expression conflicted, and I knew that if I pushed him, he would probably tell me everything. Then he smiled weakly. "I appreciate the offer," he said. "Really. It means a lot. Thank you."

"Yeah. No problem." A little awkwardly I reached over to pat him on the shoulder. "S'the least I can do."

Adrian nodded, smiled quickly again, on and then off, and went back to his food without another word. Seeing as that was about the extent of my counselling ability (hey, I went into the sciences for a reason) I fell silent too and concentrated on my food, hoping that at least he would know he wasn't alone. I really was terrible at helping, though. He needed someone like Jonah to help him feel better.

 

Jonah

Avery opened the door quickly, knowing of course who it would be on the other side, and she stepped - well, sort of hopped - back out of the way to let me in.

"Hi," I greeted her, still unsure what the right sort of etiquette for this situation was. "How are you?"

"I'm good," she said, neatly making her way round the edge of her room to the bed - back of chair, desk, end of bed, a neat and economic shuffle - and she was sitting back on the bed. "You?"

"Mm. I mean, good." I had already brushed my teeth and changed my clothes - there was literally nothing left to do but slide under the covers and fall asleep. And still I prevaricated, hovering between the door and the bed.

"Yeah?" She looked a little doubtful as she observed me.

"Mmhmm." Resolutely I made my way to the other side of the bed then, sitting down and twisting a little to plump the pillows.

"...'Kay." Avery climbed beneath the covers herself, immediately turning toward me and snaking an arm around my waist as we settled. I smiled and moved my arm beneath her neck, as was our usual position. There. Everything was fine. She put the light out, and then relaxed down against me with sigh, nuzzling a little against my neck, her good leg shifting up to lie over mine.

And there we were. Avery had been increasingly affectionate as our time together had progressed - nothing overtly forward, but on more than one occasion I had awoken to find her wrapped around me - and, to be fair, vice versa. As our familiarity increased so did my confusion. What were we doing? Usually I would have said something - I was an up-front kinda guy. On this occasion I didn't, and I kind of hated myself for it. But talking meant defining things, and defining things meant either stopping them or admitting that we were becoming more than just occasional snugglebuddies, and it seemed like neither of us was ready for that.

Tonight Avery slipped off to sleep quite quickly, her breathing growing shallow and slow, breath tickling my neck. I wasn't that tired, but it was nice to be there with her all the same. The rooms had been a little less hot at night since the air conditioning was fixed, though it was still warm sharing such a close space with another human being. I didn't dare take my shirt off, though - that felt like it would be crossing a line, or opening a door.

Eventually I began to drift off, and I felt Avery move closer still, hand snaking beneath my shirt to flatten against my side. It wasn't an overture, I knew - she did it often in her sleep and it hadn't led to anything. It suggested - to me, anyway - that she'd once shared a bed with someone for long enough to become very familiar with them. I wondered how long ago, and how long for, and not for the first time had it brought home to me again how little I really knew about her.

 

Avery

I woke up to find Jonah propped up on one elbow, looking down at me.

"Um... hey," I murmured, my voice husky from sleep. "What's up?"

"I was just wondering if you wanted to... get dinner together."

I smiled a little. "Bit early for dinner, don't you think?"

"Well, I guess it could wait..." He smiled back at me. "Will you?"

"We often eat dinner together," I observed - deliberately coy, I suppose, but I was playing for time.

Jonah raised his eyebrows, looking down at me for a moment longer before rolling over and pushing out of bed.

"Jonah..." I sat up, turning toward him.

"It's cool," he said, shaking his head. "Forget I asked."

"Hey, hey..." I pushed up a little, reached out a hand. "C'mere..." A frown flitted over his face as he stepped towards me, his broad hand barely fitting into mine. He let me use his solid weight to pull me up, and when we were face to face I reached to press my hand to his cheek, slightly rough beneath my palm.

"What we're doing here..." I murmured. "Do you want it to change?"

"I just want to get to know you a little better, Avery. Before we... change anything."

"And if I don't want anything to change?"

"Then... that's okay. But I'd still like to get to know you."

I nodded, relaxing a little then, my hand stroking gently across his cheek as I lowered it. "All right, then," I said with a smile. "We can do that. Tonight?"

"Sure, that sounds good," he said, nodding and giving me a sweet smile.

 

Rick

"I guess they're getting serious," I murmured as I joined Keenan in our usual corner table. I nodded toward where Avery and Jonah were sitting opposite one another, chatting over their meal, off by themselves in the other corner of the mess. Keenan was the only person I'd told about seeing Jonah and Avery, and he'd been pretty sympathetic with me in his own asshole sort of way.

"Yeah, well, you know..." He pushed his french fries around his plate with his fork. "They'll probably get bored of each other eventually and then you'll have a shot."

I snorted. "Some chance. I'm sure he's got moves I haven't even heard of. Or can't pronounce, anyway, fuckin' Aussies..."

"Yeah. Maybe." Keenan didn't seem to be very interested in bitching about Wonder Boy so I cast my gaze around the room, noticing that it was more than just him and Avery who had hooked up, it seemed. Alex and Inés were sitting together and he had a cocky look on his face that just screamed 'I got some' and even Sarkis and the shrink were sitting close together like they were whispering secrets over their veggie burgers.

"Well, had to happen eventually, I guess," I muttered, mostly to myself.

Keenan jerked his head up and looked around a bit before scowling back down at his plate. "Whatever, man. Why don't you go for Sarah or Jen or something?"

"I don't _need_ to go for anyone," I snapped. "I _wanted_ to get to know Avery. It wasn't about getting off."

"Yeah okay, whatever. Chill the fuck out."

"Whatever." I picked up my nearly-finished meal and left the table, heading to the waste bins and then out of the mess, ears burning - though I doubted it was because anyone was thinking about me.

 

Adrian

I had almost turned around and walked out of the mess when I saw Jonah and Avery in the corner, heads bent over their meals as they chatted away, but that wouldn't have been very professional of me. I think I might still have done it had I not spotted Dr Sarkis among the crowd of eating people, and on filling my tray I made a beeline for her.

"Not like you to eat with the masses," I muttered as I sat down with her.

"I guess maybe I'm trying to turn over a new leaf," she replied with a smirk, though it faded when she saw my expression. "Everything okay?"

I shot her my best attempt at a smile. I was pretty sure it was pathetic. "Yeah," I said. "Yeah, everything's fine. Everything's... normal."

She smiled back at me and changed the subject, running on about her experiments and progress in the aeroponics lab in a way that didn't need much input from me. I almost thought I was going to get away with my moping, but as I finished my meal I realised she had been waiting for me, and she reached out to put a hand on my wrist. "C'mon. Follow me."

"I, uh..." But that was as far as my protestations got, and I let her lead me out of her mess. We headed not to the bedroom pods but down the corridor towards Dome Two, eventually ending up in the aeroponics tent. It was warm and humid in there and covered in a riot of green growth everywhere you turned.

Sarkis turned towards me then, folding her arms over her chest. "Okay. Spill."

I shook my head. "I really can't."

"Yeah, you can. Listen, I'm not going to tell anybody, and you need to get it off your chest."

"Look, I really don't need t-..." I broke off with a sigh as I realised that wasn't going to cut it. What could I say without betraying anyone's confidentiality? "I... am attracted to another team member. And it's preying on my mind."

"Ah." Sarkis nodding, not looking all that surprised. I wondered how transparent I had been over the past few days. "Are you not allowed to... I dunno, date people, because of your position?"

"I don't know about 'allowed', but it would certainly impede my ability to provide objective monitoring. Besides..." I shook my head again. "It doesn't matter. It's not going to happen."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that," she said, surprisingly supportive. "If it helps, I've got a bit of an unrequited thing going on too. They can be almost fun, if you don't let them get to you too much. Or, y'know, you spend all your free time buried in your work," she added with a smirk.

I raised my eyebrows. "Oh, I, uh... that's... you've never mentioned that," I stalled, immediately running through the very short list of potential people who could be the object of Sarkis's affections. At first I thought it had to be Jonah, just like me, but then I remembered her case file details. Avery. How ironic.

"I guess it's not something I thought was necessary to talk about in our sessions," she said with a shrug.

"That's, uh. That's fine, if it's not, it's not, no problem. Sorry, I didn't mean to sound churlish."

"No, it's okay. I just mean... it's not something I need to discuss with a psychiatrist. But I _did_ feel like mentioning it to a friend."

"Psycholo-... sorry. Thanks," I said, managing a smile. Then, "I'm sorry that you're going through that."

"It's okay," Sarkis said easily, shrugging and reaching out to finger one of the plants suspended from its complicated-looking framework. "Like I said, I'm just enjoying it for what it is right now. Trying not to get too, y'know... invested in the idea."

I heard myself sigh. "Yeah, that's what I thought I was doing. Turns out it's a lot easier when no one else has them either. Now it... hurts."

She raised her eyebrows. "Oh, so they're... oh. Shit, I'm sorry. That sucks."

I shrugged. "I don't know for sure," I said. "But I know they've become close, and seeing them having dinner together tonight, I suppose... well, it might be nothing. But it might not."

I could see her narrow her eyes as she tried to run through the 'couples' in the mess; it was somewhat cruel of me to draw her attention to it, I suppose, but misery loves company. I could tell exactly when she realised who it was when the corners of her lips twitched into a frown. "Right. Well. I guess it's only human nature, eh?"

"Mm. I guess." I shot her a somewhat guilty look, and she knew that I knew. At the small flash of jealousy in her eyes I realised, however, that she thought my 'crush' was identical to hers, but there was no way I could set her straight without betraying myself even further.

"Well," she said then, "aren't we a pair of sorry fools."

"Mm." Another guilty smile. "Anyway. I should probably... get going." I wanted to reassure her - at least that it was only Jonah vying for her affections and not me also - but I didn't think I could look even Sarkis in the eye and tell her the truth.

"All right. Take care, Adrian."

"Yeah. You too."

 

Avery

So we'd had dinner together now, and I still wasn't quite sure what Jonah was thinking. He had been as polite and interested to me as he was to everyone, and we had said goodbye at the end of the meal in a perfectly congenial way, but I wasn't sure what would happen if I showed up at his door that evening. Would we be able to fall asleep as usual, or would he be expecting us to do more? And which would I prefer?

He'd certainly taken getting to know me seriously, and I'd returned his questions in kind - we'd covered our upbringings, our education, our likes and dislikes, hobbies... We'd left our more recent careers for another time by mutual silent agreement, but I found that actually, if he'd asked about the leg, or about what I'd been doing a few years ago, I think I'd have been okay with telling him. I suppose knowing that he had some measure of the same pain in his own past meant I knew I could talk to him without seeing that shocked sympathy in his eyes, without watching the way he saw me change in front of me.

The thing was, while I was enjoying getting to know him, and our shared sleeping sessions, I didn't feel that _spark_ between us that came of instant, mutual attraction - both emotional as well as physical. I'd only felt that a few times in my life and I didn't know if maybe I was spoiled for it now, my ability to form a lasting connection gone in one freak explosion. Did I really want to get into a potentially messy situation when I knew perfectly well that, when it came down to it... I really didn't have to?

I wandered through the corridors as these thoughts ran through my head, and found with surprise that my feet had led me towards Dome Two, possibly more out of habit than anything else. While I was there I figured I might as well check in with Zoë, who I had seen briefly at dinner but who had undoubtedly disappeared back into her work soon after.

Letting myself in, I headed over to the aeroponics tent, picking through the now dwindling ground crops toward it and knocking on the doorframe as I reached it. "Anyone home?"

"Back here." I could just see Zoe's curly dark hair over the tops of the racks in the far corner of the tent; carefully I made my way back towards her. "Hey, Avery," she said as I approached, giving me a cool smile before turning her attention back to the strut she was dismantling. "What's up?"

"Just... wanted to stop by, see how stuff was going."

"Mm, fine, same as always really."

"Fair enough. You, uh... I saw you were at dinner on time tonight. Not like you," I teased gently.

"Well, there's a first time for everything. I wouldn't get too used to it, though, I'm not sure how much free time I'm going to have even after we make the switch."

"Yeah?" This didn't surprise me, exactly - Zoë was the sort of person who would always find a way to fill all her time. But something about her tone, the way she was telling me almost as a challenge, set me immediately on edge - and I'd learned to trust my instincts. "Zoë, are you okay? You seem... have I done something wrong?"

"Self-centred much?" she joked, though I could tell it wasn't really a joke. "You haven't done anything."

I blinked. "I, um. All right. Sorry," I muttered, and I could feel my face starting to burn, my pulse picking up a little. "I'll, um. Sorry." Why was I apologising? She was the one who was being all cold and short all of a sudden. "I guess I'll leave you to it, then," I said, slightly louder and more sharply than I'd meant to, and I turned to go before I said anything else - and before she saw how red I was sure my face had grown.

I heard a sigh behind me but didn't stop - as a matter of fact I didn't stop until I had reached Jonah's door and knocked insistently on it, though I realised belatedly that it was still early and he might not even be in. A moment later he opened it, however, looking somewhat surprised to see me. "Avery, hi. What's up?"

I stepped forward and reached for him, hands sliding up across his chest to cup the back of his neck, my intention obvious, and he blinked, slipping his hands around my waist and pulling me gently into the room. The door slid shut behind me and Jonah leaned down, putting his lips well within range of mine, though he didn't kiss me yet. "Is everything okay?"

"Not really," I said, and I could feel myself frowning as I realised that it really wasn't, and I wasn't sure why, except that I wanted to think about anything but Zoë's cold stare and sharp voice. "Is that a problem?"

"D'you want to talk about it?" he offered, his tone infuriatingly gentle.

"No. I don't know, I... don't know what there is to talk about, I just-" I closed the gap then, crushing my lips against his. Thankfully he didn't pull away, returning my kiss as he steadied me with his hands at my waist. I felt feverish, almost, dazed, as if this wasn't really happening, but I didn't stop, my kisses growing increasingly urgent and insistent as I backed him toward the bed. When we reached it he obediently sank down onto the mattress, and I moved to straddle him as best I could, keeping my prosthetic braced on the floor and gripping his shoulders tightly for balance. I realised I hadn't done this since the accident and that thought was almost enough to pull me out of the moment, but I closed my eyes tightly and ground against the bulge in his trousers which, gentleman or not, he was unable to hide. I knew I was probably ruining everything - our friendship, the connection we'd shared, anything that might have grown naturally from our tentative forays into getting to know one another properly, and I didn't care.

Eventually I pulled back, but only to pull Jonah's t-shirt off, and then my own, reaching behind myself to undo my bra clasp when he didn't immediately deal with it. Bending down, he pressed a kiss to my bare shoulder, his hand smoothing up my back, and I began to feel the stirrings of real arousal, where before I'd been running on the sheer, urgent desire to feel something other than whatever I was feeling at that moment. Perhaps he sensed the shift, because he pulled back then to meet my eyes, his fingers tracing a line down my spine that sent a shiver rushing through me.

"Are you sure you want this, Avery?" he murmured. "We can stop, go back to the way things were..." And perhaps if he'd asked the question just a few moments before I would have, but the long-forgotten sensations running through my body had rendered that sensible little voice of doubt and protestations almost inaudible, and I just shook my head, my own hands running down his chiselled abdomen to fumble with his fly as I leaned to kiss him again.

 

Jonah

I lay in bed next to Avery awash with feelings of guilt and confusion, though my body was more sated and relaxed than it had been in some time. Though I knew she had been a willing party to what had happened - indeed, she had initiated it - I couldn't forget the look on Avery's face when I had opened the door - lost, upset, perhaps a little desperate - far from what I wanted to see in someone's face before we made love.

She was curled against me in silence, now - I could feel the unyeilding presence of her leg digging into mine - she hadn't removed it and it was a strange, jarring sensation to have it in the bed with us, far odder, in fact, than the absence of a real leg had been before. It made me feel like she was about to get up at any moment and run away, and I certainly didn't expect that she would be staying the night now. The thought upset me a bit, but I pushed it away, knowing that she was hurting for some reason and my selfishness wouldn't do a thing to help. Eventually she stirred, pushing into a sitting position and twisting round to look down at me. Then, after a moment's hesitation, she surprised me.

"Can I stay?" she asked. "Doesn't have to be all night, I just... I'll understand if you'd rather I left."

"No, it's okay, you can stay," I told her. "I'd like that."

Avery nodded, smiling briefly, and reached to unstrap her prosthetic. She had on a sort of... sock, I suppose, underneath, presumably one designed for the purpose. I'd never seen it before but then she'd always been wearing pyjama bottoms when she'd come to see me before - tonight she'd been fully clothed and now, of course, she wasn't wearing anything at all.

Soon enough the false leg was propped by the bedside, and Avery was settling back down beside me, arm slipping around me, and if it wasn't for the ache in my body, the scent of sweat and sex that pervaded the room and, of course, the sensation of her bare skin on mine, I could almost have believed it was just any other night. Eventually, she spoke again.

"Sorry," she murmured. Then, as if she was worried that hadn't sounded sincere enough (which it had), "I'm so sorry, Jonah."

"It's okay," I said, hugging her close with the arm I had slid around her. "Just... you know I'm here for you, yeah? If you want to talk about it."

"I'm not even sure what 'it' is."

"That's okay too. We don't have to talk."

She took me at my word, and didn't say any more, and before long I heard her slip into a fitful sleep. I turned to curl around her, hoping that my nearness would provide a comfort that my words couldn't. I knew I had my own stuff to deal with but for now it was far easier to concentrate on Avery and what I could do for her.

 

Avery

That should've been it - after that one time I think we both knew our hearts weren't in it, for all that our bodies were willing enough. But it was a lot easier to listen to our bodies. We didn't share a bed every night, and we didn't have sex every time we shared a bed, but over the next couple of weeks it did happen again, a couple of times. It didn't come close to making me feel anything approaching normal the rest of the time, but it was at least a distraction.

I'd been avoiding Zoë, and as much as I wouldn't admit to myself much less anyone else why, I did know. The nature of my coping strategy was not a coincidence. Had it been brewing since I found out that she had had a relationship with another woman? Or had it even been before that - those tingles at her touch when we'd played guitar together, when our hands brushed past one another, were they really because I'd been starved for human contact for so long, or were they a sign I just hadn't known to look for? Had _she_ known? Had she figured it out? Was that why she was angry with me? Or had it really just been my imagination and she was just busy? If she hadn't been upset with me then she would be now, of course, after a couple of weeks of avoiding her entirely. We entered our fifth month in the dome (well, for everyone but me, anyway) with an increasingly well-oiled aeroponics lab run by a woman who as far as I could tell no longer associated with anyone, ever - I didn't even see her talking to Adrian or Jonah as she once had from time to time.

And then came the blackout.

Things had been running more or less smoothly since the ventilation system broke down, with a few minor hiccups here and there. No one was expecting the massive power failure that plunged everything - the computing systems, the A/C, the power - into a non-functioning state. What's worse was that the backup generators were meant to be used in case of a partial failure and couldn't cope with the load of the whole system, meaning that our hope was short-lived when they too failed spectacularly after a few hours chugging away. The edict from mission control was short and to the point. _Make it work._

To their - our - credit, _everybody_ leapt into action. Everyone with fixed jobs immediately went on duty to see what they could do to diagnose what had happened, and the rest of us spread between tasks as required, running constant manual system checks and doing what we could to make everything as comfortable as it could be. Since the dome was completely without windows we were getting around with tiny, dim torches and headlamps, sharing light whenever we could to save it for where it was really needed.

After a few more hours it had been confirmed that the issue was with 'corrupt firmware', according to Inés, whatever that meant - we hadn't run out of power and indeed given where the fault was we wouldn't even have lost stored energy; the issue was getting the central computer to recognise it. Worse still, we were told, they would only have a couple of tries to get it right - if fixing the issue took more power than we could squeeze out of the one back-up generator that Jonah had managed to get working again (which was now slated to be used only for that purpose), we were finished - permanently. So we had Mo and Sarah working on a bypass for the central computer that would let us manually run systems, and Inés and Alex simultaneously doing a lot of blind diagnosis and occasionally firing up computers to run tests. And the rest of us were mostly trying to make sure we limited any lasting damage, included damage to our food supply, which was now almost entirely dependent on technology. Somehow - I don't know how - I ended up back in the aeroponics tent with Zoë for the first time since that night all those weeks ago, this time in the dark.

She was even more curt and cold than usual, quickly running through the instructions for setting up the hydroponic backup systems that were our only hope of saving the massive crop of wheat and vegetables that had been steadily growing away for months now. "Just get the basics in line and then I'll come by to check them," she told me, her face barely visible beneath her blinding headlamp.

"Right, okay."

The work would have been fiddly enough in good light. With my insipid head torch it was all I could do to get everything hooked up and working as it needed to. Unspoken, of course, was the fact that even this could only work for so long before water of the right quality was no longer available.

It was a little eerie, working among the rows of plants in the dark, nothing but the sound of my own breathing and the whisper of the leaves to break the silence. Eventually I spotted a beam of light at the end of the row; it grew larger as Zoë approached.

"Okay... yeah, this looks all right. You can move on to the next one, I'll cap this off," she said after looking over my work.

"Right. Thanks, I'll... do that."

She nodded briskly and bent over the makeshift tray, into which the roots of the plants now trailed. She looked worn out in the dim light of my headlamp and I knew she would have been working as hard as anybody to get the backup systems up and running. She also looked - as always - beautiful, and I wondered yet again how I had gone so many weeks not acutely conscious, as I was now, of her presence, and of the draw I felt toward her. She knew I must be staring at her, of course, and raised her head to look back at me, lifting her eyebrows expectantly. "Something the matter?"

I hesitated. There really wasn't time for this just now, and even if there was she probably wouldn't want to talk about it. But...

"What happened, Zoë? To us?"

She frowned, gloved hands stilling around the tubing she had been uncoiling. "Nothing 'happened'... I thought this was how you wanted things to be."

"You thought I wanted us to be strangers?"

"That's usually the conclusion I would draw if someone stopped hanging out with me and speaking to me," she said, her tone growing a little harder.

"You avoided me too. You were unfriendly with me first."

"I'm sorry. I... you caught me at a bad time."

I closed my eyes as they began to burn a little. "Jesus, it was me," I muttered. "It _was_ me. You were a little weird one time, and I just went off the deep end, didn't I? I'm so sorry, Zoë, I just... I didn't know what to do."

I felt the light from her headlamp dart over my face as she shook her head. "It's fine. I just... I have a bad track record of not leaving people alone when they want me to, and the circumstances are pretty weird. I didn't want to pressure you to remain friends if you had decided you didn't want to."

"I don't think I knew what I wanted," I said quietly.

"Okay, well. I'm sorry if I upset you. That wasn't my intention."

"I'm sorry I fucked things up. I've never done this before."

"Never... Avery, I'm really sorry, I need to get this work done," Zoe said, sounding a bit funny. "If I don't all these crops are going to die off, like, now. Can we talk about this later?"

"Right." I shook my head to clear it, the light bouncing around. "Right, yes, of course, sorry, I'm sorry. I... yeah."

"Okay. Thanks." With that she looked back to her work, hurriedly connecting up the tubing and then turning to make her way back down to the end of the row again.

Getting everything running smoothly and out of danger took five hours, and even then Zoë said she was fairly sure some of the plants weren't going to make it. She looked close to tears as she said it; I could only imagine what it felt like to have so much work threatened by something out of our control. I began to ask if she would come with me to the mess for some food and a chance to finish our talk but she cut me off, shaking her head and explaining that she had to stay and monitor everything until the power came back on.

"Then I'll come back with something for you to eat," I tried, "and stay with you, do what I can to help."

"I appreciate that, but I'm sure you're needed elsewhere."

I could feel a lump in my throat. I knew we weren't going to talk any further, not now, and that the chances were that when the lights went back up, assuming they did, the chance would be gone. "All right," I said. "But at least let me bring you some food."

She sighed but nodded, turning away almost immediately to stalk off down one of the rows of plants so quickly that I didn't even get to say goodbye. I trudged off towards the mess, my mood low and my heart heavy. Why had I waited so long to bring this up? And, more importantly, how was I going to cope with missing my chance - possibly my only chance - to find out if we could actually be together?

 

Chapter 8

Zoe

As soon as Avery had left I sat myself down among the rows of _Zea mays_ and had a good cry - it had been building up for weeks, and the blackout and talking to her again had just been the icing on the cake. I wasn't even sure what had just happened - she'd apologised, sure, and acknowledged her part in our recent coolness, but what did that mean, really? Did she want to be friends again? I wasn't sure I could, particularly not since I'd noticed Adrian's gradual downturn in mood, which suggested that in spite of a lack of any concrete proof that I'd seen, Avery and Jonah continued to be involved in some way.

Not that I had the mental energy to contemplate _any_ of that - my work was in jeopardy and there was almost nothing I could do about it. To have it come down to this, a mere fluke, an accident, was almost heartbreaking. Nevermind that if this happened on Mars we'd just be dead, period. Somehow this failure was even worse than that.

I was barely cleaned-up and back to work before Avery was back - to her credit, she'd made me a wrap for maximum convenience. "Are you sure there's nothing I can do?" she asked, hovering around. "It's not like I'm the best person to go crawling through ducting or running around corridors anyway..."

"Um. I guess if you aren't needed elsewhere you can help me monitor the troughs for leaks," I told her.

"No problem."

So there we found ourselves, roaming up and down the rows of plants, stooping underneath to check for telltale puddles on the floor and fishing the feeding tubes out of the water to check they didn't have any kinks in them. I felt a little bad - the crouching and kneeling couldn't have been easy with her leg, but Avery didn't complain, only summoning me when there was something that needed fixed or adjusted. It did go faster with the two of us, and with someone else constantly monitoring for issues I even managed to work my way through the wrap Avery had brought me.

Eventually we met up at the door of the tent - ideally we should've started back through all over again but I felt bad asking that of her. "Thanks for helping with that."

Avery nodded. "'Kay. Is there anything else I can do?"

"Mm, no. I don't think so."

"Okay. Well. Good luck."

"Thanks."

"I'll see you..." Avery tailed off. She'd tipped her headlamp up out of the way to talk to me, though mine was still trained on her, and that gave me a rather stark view of the mix of emotions that seemed to pass across her face, then. She leaned closer and reached for me, then, though she dropped her hand at the last moment and it just brushed across me, fingers grazing my shirt-covered collarbone as she pulled back, then stepped back, and managed. "Later, I'll see you later." She turned away quickly. "G'night."

"Avery, wait..." I swallowed heavily as she swung back around to face me. "I'm gonna take a break in an hour or two. We could... I mean, I know we didn't get the chance earlier so if you want to, we could talk then?"

Was it a flicker of hope I caught in her expression then. "If you like," she said. "I mean, that would be good. We're in a quiet patch elsewhere, people are mostly keeping out of the way if they're not needed to save flashlight batteries, so, uh, I'll be in my pod I guess."

"Okay. I'll come find you."

 

Rick

I'd done my bit crawling through ducting with a torch and checking machinery, and now I was in the 'stay out of the way and don't breathe too hard' part of my day, making my way back to my pod in the dying light of my flashlight. I had a spare battery, but I was hoping to avoid using it just yet.

I passed a couple of people along the way - Dave and Steve, who had been in charge of lugging stuff around the loading bay so that people could get at the generators and transformers, and Alex, who looked like he could use a drink after hours of computer-wrangling.

I saw Adrian, too, as I headed for my room, looking his usual sad-sack self as he usually did lately, and something made me stop to say hi.

"I guess morale's not doing so hot right now, huh?" I asked after we had exchanged the usual pleasantries.

"I'm sure everyone will get through this just fine," Adrian said. "I haven't seen any signs of anybody beginning to crack."

"Yeah, I guess we've got pretty good at the whole teamwork schtick."

"Mm." Jesus, the man looked so miserable these days you really worried for him. "You okay, man?"

"Yeah. I... have to go." And then he was off, scurrying out of my flashlight range down the hall. I frowned to myself as I walked along, so caught up in my thoughts that I nearly ran straight into Jonah, who loomed up out of nowhere.

"Shit, man, sorry..."

"No, I'm sorry," he said, shaking his head. "Is everything okay? You seemed pretty preoccupied."

"Oh, uh... actually, you know Adrian? Just ran into him - he looks like shit."

Jonah frowned. "Yeah, he's been... where'd he go? D'you know?"

"Yeah, just off that way, towards his room or whatever," I said, pointing.

With only a nod in my direction, Jonah was soon off down the corridor the way Adrian had gone. I felt a little better; he was way better suited to deal with that kind of problem than me. The last person I ran into (this corridor was getting more action than me tonight, that was for sure) was Sarkis, who looked about ready to drop. She gave me a distracted nod as she passed, her headlamp bobbing in the darkness. She stopped not at her own door but at Avery's, knocking lightly and being let in a few moments later.

I sighed, and made my way back to my own pod. Alone.

 

Adrian

I was just about to start on my nightly breakdown when the knock came at the door. Thinking it was some stressed-out teammate who needed a pat on the shoulder I sighed and heaved it open only to find the very subject of my tears standing there with a concerned look on his face.

"J-jonah. What can I help you with?"

"I came to see how you were doing. Can I come in?"

"I, uh... it's not really... sure." I stepped back from the door. He stepped in, instantly filling the room with his presence.

"You've been withdrawn lately. Very quiet," he commented then. "I've been worried about you."

"Yeah?" I almost laughed. "Well. I'm okay," I said, putting basically no effort into the lie.

"Adrian. I'd really like to know what's going on with you - I'd like to help if I can."

I smiled tightly, shook my head. "I can't," I said simply. "My job."

His brow furrowed. "What part of your job is eating you up so badly that you don't even come to the music nights any more? You used to love those."

"No, I mean... I can't talk about it, even if I wanted to, I need to... I need to maintain a professional distance."

"So this is about someone in the Dome?"

"N- Wh- It's not important."

"Adrian," he sighed, and even with all the problems I was having I wished I could hear him say it again. "Your happiness _is_ important. I wish you knew that."

I sank down onto my bed, my shoulders slumping. "There's nothing to be done about it. I'll get over it."

"Well, in the meantime," he said, sitting down next to me, "you should tell me if there's anything I can do. I care about you, Adrian, and I want you to be happy."

"_Jesus..._" My words came out thick and shaky and I knew I was going to cry, and I turned away a little, shaking my head again. "Please. There's nothing you can do."

He reached over, placing his broad, warm hand on my knee. "I can still be here. If you'll let me."

I didn't start or flinch - I was too numb, really, to be shocked as he touched me, even though I don't think I'd been touched by anyone in weeks, really, certainly not in a gesture of kindness. The moment stretched out, and I stared down at his hand, and then I don't know what came over me but I dropped my own hand over his, and turned to look at him, and right then I saw the recognition in his eyes, the realisation, and I knew that he knew.

I shook my head again. "It's okay," I said. "It's okay, you don't-"

"Adrian, please." His other hand came up to cup my jaw, thumb brushing over my cheek. "I do..."

It didn't seem like things could get any clearer than that, but still I couldn't quite believe it. I leaned into his touch a little, just staring in disbelief. His eyes were so blue, even in the dim light of the emergency lantern, and then he closed them and leaned closer, and his lips were on mine and any doubt I had fled in the face of my utter amazement. It was a long moment before I even managed to kiss him back, though when I did it felt as though months of pent-up tension left my body through my lips, filled with his warmth and calm. He pulled back far too soon for my tastes, smiling and stroking my cheek with his thumb.

"Um..." I chuckled, leaned in to touch my nose to his. "God, Jonah..."

"I've been so worried about you these last few weeks. I should've come to see you sooner, I'm sorry..."

"No, no, it's okay, it's not your fault, I wouldn't've... it was just, with Avery, you and her, I just..."

"You knew about me and Avery?" he asked, looking surprised. "Did she tell you during her session?"

"Yeah. Well, I mean, she told me some... I sort of guessed it had...escalated. She's..." I smiled a little bitterly. "She's not as good at non-disclosure as she thinks she is."

His lips twitched downward, though he didn't stop stroking my face reassuringly or gazing unflinchingly into my eyes. "I'm sorry that hurt you."

"Don't, it's... there's nothing to be sorry about."

He leaned in again then, kissing me tenderly, and I knew that whatever was going on with him and Avery it didn't change what was going on with us, here and now.

 

Zoë

Avery was sitting on the bed, and I was sitting in the desk chair. It was almost completely dark, just a single lantern glowing on its dimmest setting to save power. The darkness should've made things easier, but it only made my mind go places it shouldn't.

"So. I... I'm sorry, again, for snapping at you that day," I said, clearing my throat. "I should've apologised earlier."

"It's okay," Avery said, shaking her head. "I... shouldn't've disappeared."

"Right, okay. So. That's out of the way now." I summoned up a smile. "I've missed our chats."

"I've missed you. Zoë..." Avery hesitated. Then she sighed. "I've been such an idiot."

"Don't worry about it. We all have our moments."

Avery nodded. She paused. "I... I've been thinking about you. A lot."

I wasn't sure exactly what to make of that. "You were?"

She nodded again.

"Oh. Well, I mean... I thought of you too." Which was true, if not the _whole_ truth.

"Yeah?" Did she sound... hopeful?

"Yeah. I thought... like I said, I missed our chats. It was always the high point of my day, seeing you." Okay, now we were skirting dangerously close to territory I didn't want to be setting foot in.

"Right." Avery nodded. "All right. Okay. I... miss those too."

And now was the point when the old Zoe, the Zoe that couldn't keep her emotions under wraps, who made an idiot out of herself every time she opened her mouth would blurt out that it hadn't just been the talks she had missed, but the chance to watch Avery smile, to be near her. I wasn't that Zoe any more. I smiled, letting my eyes drift away to the darkness while I tried to think of what I _could_ say next.

"I think we should both get some rest," Avery said then, breaking the too-long silence. Her meaning was clear. "I'm... glad we talked." She didn't sound glad at all.

"...right. Okay." Cheeks suddenly burning, I stood, my headlamp tumbling from my lap and onto the floor. I swore and bent down to retrieve it, groping around in the darkness, trying to find it by touch.

"Hey, hang on, hang on, I'll just get the lamp..." Moving surprisingly quickly, Avery was soon kneeling beside me with a slight grunt of effort, planting the lamp on the floor and beginning to run her own hand about to look for the torch.

Even with the lamp I couldn't see it and I realised it must have fallen under the bed so I leaned down to run my hand beneath it. Finally my fingers brushed the strap and I grabbed it, pulling back suddenly and clocking my head on the metal bedframe. Everything went fuzzy for a second before the pain kicked in. "_Fuck_!"

"Jesus, Zoë, you okay?" Avery's hand was on my shoulder in seconds, the other resting gently against my head as she guided me out from beneath the bed. "Here, give me the flashlight, Let me look..."

"Fuck that hurts," I whimpered, leaning against her as I tried to master the nausea that threatened to overwhelm me. "Is it bleeding?"

"No, no, you're not bleeding, but I think you're gonna have a helluva goose egg... C'mere, sit down, I'll approximate a cold compress and go get Dr Costas..."

"No, it's fine, don't bother him, I'll be okay..." I hauled myself on to bed, holding one hand to my throbbing head.

"You sure - you could have a concussion..."

"I'm okay, I just need a minute to get myself together and then I'll get out of your hair." Because if I didn't I'd definitely make a fool out of myself, moaning and asking her to hold me just until I felt better...

"No, no, you're not going out in the dark with a possible concussion," Avery said firmly, "that's just not gonna happen. Settle down - don't lie down, we'll need to keep you awake for a bit. I'll make you a compress."

I knew I didn't have a concussion but I did as she said anyway; I couldn't have planned it better myself if I had wanted to stay. And of course I did. The compress duly arrived, and it was actually pretty nice, particularly pressed gently to my head by Avery as she sat down beside me, her warm body close to mine, her breath warm on my face as she leaned close to look at me in obvious, genuine concern.

"You have gum?" I wondered aloud - okay, maybe I was a _little_ woozy still. "Have you been holding out on me?"

"What? Oh... No, I just brushed my teeth before. Um." Avery looked a little embarrassed now, inexplicably.

I chuckled. "Very practical. Smells nice. But then you always do..."

Avery smiled weakly, shook her head. "Don't tease," she muttered.

"M'not. I always - ouch - thought so. Missed that too."

The sigh she gave was a little shaky, then, and for a second I was possessed with the sudden conviction that, for whatever reason, she was about to burst into tears. But then she just turned the compress over, and shifted her weight to get a little more comfortable on the bed. "So the hydroponics are working okay?" she asked lightly.

"Mmhmm. Not that it'll matter much if we can't get the lights running," I told her then.

"No, no, but... well, at least we're not beaten quite yet. When're you going to need to check on them again?"

"Couple hours. I got Steve to promise he'd look in on things in the meantime."

"Okay, right, well. You can stay here 'til then."

"You sure?" I asked, though I had no intention of leaving if she wasn't inclined to kick me out.

"'Course. Would you like some water?"

"Um, sure. Thanks." I took over holding the compress and she got up to fetch us drinks; I felt the sudden urge to lie down on the bed and press my nose into her pillow and only the realisation that I might smell Jonah there stopped me.

Soon enough, she was back, pressing a bottle into my hand. "You should drink plenty," she observed, "you must be so dehydrated..."

Still processing my sudden memory of what I had learned from Adrian I just sort of grunted, though I realised what I was doing a moment later and shook my head to clear it, which just started it throbbing again. "Ow. I mean. I'm okay, really. But thanks. And thanks for bringing me food earlier. You didn't have to do that."

"'Course I did," Avery said with a chuckle. "We're here to take care of one another, particularly at times like these."

"Yeah, of course. All in this together and whatnot."

"Mm. Though I don't really need the extra incentive, with you."

Again I wasn't sure exactly what this meant - if she didn't need incentive why had she ignored me all those weeks? "That's... sweet."

Avery gave a hoarse chuckle. "Yeah. Um. Thanks. Sorry, I... don't mean to make my feelings your problem. I promise I won't, or I'll keep trying not to, anyway. It'll be nice to be... friends... again."

"Yeah," I agreed, thoroughly confused at this point.

"And I mean, this wasn't exactly how I'd've envisioned getting you into bed with me anyway," she then joked weakly.

"I, uh... what the hell, Avery?" I couldn't stand it any more, and I turned to stare at her in disbelief. "Is this about what I told you? About me and Julie?"

Avery just stared at first, like a deer caught in headlights. "No," she said then. "No, I mean, I just- I would never assume, just because..." She sighed, and looked away, shoulders slumping. "I got it," she said. "I _did_ get it. You just want to be friends, and that's... It's fine. I can do that. I shouldn't've joked about it, I'm sorry." She hesitated, then added, "Like I say, I've never felt like this about a woman before. I don't really know how to... read stuff. Apparently."

"Wait, _what_?" This was getting weirder and weirder, and I wondered if maybe I really did have a concussion. "Felt what way about a woman?"

Avery looked back quickly, her face registering her surprise and bewilderment, and she didn't look away, either, her grey eyes meeting mine in the dim light, holding my gaze, and I could see her mind working through something, her expression shifting slightly from confusion, to calculation, to something else. And then she kissed me.

She kissed me decisively, hand lifting to cup my jaw briefly as she did so, as though holding me in place, though she sat back and released me just as suddenly, before I even had a chance to gather myself together to think about responding. She exhaled in a rush as she met my eyes again.

"Sorry," she said, though she didn't sound particularly sorry. "Just... couldn't quite face letting the lights go back on without doing that. If you want to leave it here in the blackout, I will too. I really will."

"And waste a good teeth-brushing?" I joked, feeling light-headed with relief and anticipation. Somewhere in all that had been Avery trying to tell me something, and I had been too caught up in my own denials to hear it. "But Avery, what about you and Jonah? I mean, aren't you guys an item?"

"I don't know what we are. But I know neither of us feel any more than..." Avery shrugged, frowning as she grasped for the words. "I dunno, comfort? Fondness? Not... we're not an item."

"Okay. And the way you feel about me, that's more than fondness?"

"I... I mean, yeah, I've been trying to parse how I felt ever since we met, I think, and by the time I figured it out, it seemed too late, but also... I won't pretend I'm totally sure what I'm doing here Zoë. I'm pretty damaged. I just know that the way I want to be close to you - you specifically, not just anyone with a pulse... I know that it's different."

That was frankly more than I was bargaining for, and I must've grinned reflexively at her words since she seemed to relax a little at my expression. Impulsively I leaned in to kiss her again, wanting to take advantage of this sudden revelation to show her how much _I_ wanted to be close to _her_. This time she didn't pull back at all, tipping her head and leaning closer with a quiet sigh, her lips parting against mine. Eagerly I mimicked the gesture, slipping my hand to her waist and smoothing my fingers over the curve of her side. Eventually we parted for breath, and she managed, "Your head..."

"Is in the clouds right now," I finished for her with a laugh. "God you're amazing, Avery."

"Don't," Avery said. "I'm an idiot. I should've come to you - should've made you talk to me that night instead of running off and... I should've been honest."

"Yeah, maybe," I agreed, "but better late than never."

"Mm." Avery smiled, leaning to brush her lips across mine. "I'm so sorry," she said.

"Don't be. Good things are worth waiting for."

 

Avery

Zoe didn't stay for much longer - she wanted to, but I could tell she was also anxious to get back to checking the crops and I really couldn't blame her. We filled the time with kissing, mostly, and promises that we would sit down and talk about 'stuff' properly when the emergency was over, and by the time she left I was feeling pretty good - a bit scared, and worried, but good. Except I knew I had to speak to Jonah, and soon.

I thought at first that I'd nap, first, catch some sleep while we were in an activity lull, but with my mind and body both simmering, I eventually just tidied up a little and left my pod to head over to Jonah's, knocking on his door. He opened it with a grin, which strangely enough faltered a little when he saw me. "Avery, hi. How are you?"

"Um... hey. I'm... good, actually - can I come in a minute?"

"Oh, um, I don't know if tonight--"

"That's, um... I really mean a minute," I said, determined to do this now that I'd worked up the guts. I didn't _think_ he was going to be hurt, but...

"Right... okay." He nodded and stepped back and soon we were alone in his room with the door shut. "So... what's up?"

"I, um. Hm." I smiled in spite of myself at the thought of the news I was about to announce, even though I wasn't sure how it was going to be received. "Jonah, I really like you. You're a great guy, you're sexy as hell, and the time we've shared together has been genuinely special to me. I feel like... I feel like you've helped me find my own body again. I didn't even know that I'd lost it." The words spilled out by themselves, really - but it was true. Jonah's openness, his easy physicality had had a profound effect on me, even though my affection for him wasn't romantic.

"That's... I'm really glad, Avery." Somehow he looked even more apprehensive - God, he knew what was coming, didn't he? "I'm glad you're happy. I'm glad I could help."

"Jesus, don't put it like that, please..." I reached for his hand. "I'm glad you could too, but you weren't... please, don't make it sound like a _service_..."

"No, of course not," he rushed to say, shaking his head. "I didn't mean it like that. I'm sorry, I just... Avery, I really like you too, you're very special to me..."

There was a 'but' hovering at the edge of his tone, and I realised it was going to be okay. "And you are too. And I know we're friends, and I will always be here for you. But there's someone I... think I have feelings for. Know, not think. It's taken me a while to get to grips with it and I've been a total idiot about it, and... I guess I let you get caught up in that a bit."

He stared at me, then blinked, then all of a sudden he grinned, as if this was the best news he had ever heard. "Oh Avery, that's fantastic!"

"I, uh... yeah? I mean, it is, I just... so we're okay, right? I would understand if you were pissed at me."

"No, no, I'm not pissed at all. I think we both were there for one another when we needed it, and that's a wonderful thing."

"Right." I nodded, and then my own grin grew a little. "Man, Jonah, you're... you're a really great guy, you know that? I mean, you _do_ know that, right?"

He shook his head bashfully, reaching up to wave a hand between us. "Don't, please."

"Well, whatever. Just... you're great. And if you need to... I'll still be here if you need a warm body. I mean, unless I'm elsewhere I will and I'm probably totally jumping the gun on that, so if we stopped the, uh..."

"Yeah. I mean, thanks. It'll be okay, I think."

I nodded. "Should we, uh. Seal things with a hug?"

"Sure," he said, breaking in a grin and opening his arms. It was as they wrapped warmly around me that there was another knock at the door. "Oh, um..." I let him go, and he gave me a sheepish smile before crossing the room to open the door. On the other side was Adrian, who shot Jonah a warm smile, holding up a hand containing a couple of bottles of water, gripped at the neck.

"Got 'em," he said, stepping inside as Jonah moved away from the door. When he saw me, he gave a slight start. "Um... hi..."

"Hey." I lifted a hand in greeting.

"Avery and I were just finishing up a chat," Jonah said. "But I think we were just about done?" He turned to me with a quizzical look; I knew if I said I had more to say he'd find a way to gracefully give us some more time to sort things out.

I nodded. "We're good," I said. "I'll, um. I can get going."

"I'll see you soon," he assured me, reaching out to give my arm a squeeze. "Thanks for coming by."

 

Jonah

Adrian turned to look at me as she left, his expression... not quite wary, but not just curious either. I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile and then moved to sit on the bed, patting the mattress beside me. "That was a pretty well-timed coincidence. Her coming to talk to me, I mean."

"Yeah?" He sat down, passing me one of the water bottles. "How so?"

"Well, we were going to need to talk, sooner rather than later. And it turns out she came to do my job for me." I twisted the cap off and took a swig before continuing. "It seems that she's... found someone, I guess. And wanted to let me down gently."

"I, uh..." Adrian's brows drew together. "Oh. Right. Well. I'm glad. Who?"

"I don't know, she was very discreet. Your guess is probably better than mine."

"Man, nobody tells me anything around here," Adrian said, frowning. Then his eyes widened... "Shit..."

"What?" I asked, intrigued despite my best efforts to play it cool.

"I really shouldn't say."

"Well, okay. I don't want to make you compromise your ethics for the sake of some good gossip."

"I'm sure we'll all figure it out soon enough."

"Yeah, probably. So." We had taken a break in the middle of our conversation when someone had knocked on Adrian's door for some advice. I was keen to get back to it. "Where were we?"

"I'm pretty sure I was angsting about how I could do my job properly after this."

"Oh well, that's easy. You're a great counsellor, I'm sure you'll be able to find something that works."

"I am really not a great counsellor. If I was, I wouldn't be in this situation."

I felt a flush of sympathy for him. "To be fair, this is hardly a normal circumstance. Who was to know what would happen, cooping all these people up together like this for so long? I don't think you should criticise yourself too harshly."

"Unfortunately that's pretty integral to my pathology," Adrian said with a dry chuckle.

"Adrian. You know that whatever you need to do now, I'll support it. Even if that means... well. Whatever you need."

A flicker of pain crossed Adrian's face. "You're right, of course," he said. "That's what I should do. I should leave."

"That's not what I meant," I said, reaching out for his hand. "That's not what I want. I just... don't want to see you tearing yourself up over this."

"Sorry to report that you might need to get used to me tearing myself up," Adrian said, turning and leaning in a little, though he didn't kiss me, more feinting in my direction, as though he might nuzzle my cheek - though he didn't.

"Hey, if that means you'll be sticking around..." I leaned in, bumping my nose to his and grinning.

"I don't think I could leave now."

"Good!" I wrapped my arms around him. "I'm very glad."

"I... can't believe this is really happening. I mean... whatever this is..."

"What... do you want it to be?" I asked gently, unsure exactly what he was expecting - or me, for that matter.

"I, um." Adrian shook his head. "I feel like I should be clever enough to turn that around on you."

"You're very clever. But I asked you first."

"I guess I'm... happy to be here with you. And for us to be in a place where we've kissed, and we might do that again," he said with a tiny smile. "If we're agreed on that, I guess any further analysis can wait."

"See? What did I tell you? Very clever."

"So... we're on the same page, then?"

"Yeah," I said with a smile, "we are." The way he was acting, the things he was saying... this wasn't the first time he'd ever done something like this, was it? There was no way of finding out right now that wouldn't embarrass him, but I resolved to take things as slow as he wanted to, so as not to overwhelm him. So I was a little surprised when he took the initiative and leaned in to kiss me, lips warm and seeking against mine. Surprised, but not upset. With a sigh I kissed him back, my hands gently stroking his sides and back. Giving a quiet little sigh he pressed closer, his hands finally reaching for me, running across my stomach and finding my waist as his mouth opened and his tongue gently, tentatively touched mine.

I couldn't help the small gasp that escaped me, nor the shiver that ran through me, my fingers curling against his side before I forced myself to relax. _Slowly, slowly,_ I told myself, though it was hard to remember as he tugged a little at my t-shirt, pulling me closer.

It was different from Avery - in all the obvious ways, of course, and in other ways too. Right from the first time we'd kissed Avery had felt almost... familiar. Perhaps it was just her ease with my body; the fact we were already familiar with one another's bodies - shape, texture, temperature, scent - where with Adrian everything was a discovery, everything was brand new. His hand slid beneath my teeshirt and up across my side, now, and I felt my muscles flex under his touch as it skated over my skin. Tipping my head to one side I deepened the kiss, reaching up to cup the back of his head with my hand, his fine curls tickling my palm. I heard him give a little whimper against my mouth, and his fingers dug into my flesh a little, his kisses growing a little more urgent.

"Jesus..." I hadn't realised I had said it aloud until Adrian pulled back, his expression quizzical and a little bruised. "No, hey, I just... this is really good. _Really_ good. The things you're doing to me..." I saw his gaze flicker downward momentarily, perhaps checking my assertion for himself, a little shy as he met my eyes again.

"I, um. Well, that... good, right?" he asked, reaching for me again, his hand this time finding its way to my thigh.

"Yeah," I half-said, half-groaned. "It's good. But hey... this only goes as far and as fast as you want it to, 'kay?"

Adrian's hand inched a little higher. "Jonah, I'm not... this isn't new ground or anything. I mean, if that's what you're thinking. I've done... well, everything I want to do, I've done before."

"Right. Right, okay." That was a relief - not that I would've minded moving slow, but with his hand moving higher on my leg it wasn't the first thing that came to mind. "Good."

"Okay," he nodded, then echoed my, "good." And then his lips were back on mine, and his hand shifted that few inches over.

 

Inés

So, long story short, they got the power back on. I mean, I could go into all the long hours, the hard work, the moments when everybody's heart was in their throat because we thought it would fail, and the huge celebration that happened once it finally worked, but you've seen one inspiring movie, you've seen 'em all. They got the power back on and after a massive blow-out where everybody ate way too much and fell into bed, exhausted, things got back to normal. Or... sort of normal.

The first big change was that our esteemed counsellor appeared to have a thing going on with, of all people, our resident golden boy. They were theoretically playing it cool, but they were both such terrible liars - and so incapable of keeping their hands off one another, that basically everyone knew within about two days of the lights going up.

I thought it was pretty sweet, but Adrian had about half the dome glaring at him in abject jealousy and I wondered how it was affecting his job. Still, I guess he must've judged it was worth it, and even though Jonah's not really my type I could see why he would.

The second big change was more personal - I finished whatever had been going on with Alex. He wasn't such a bad guy and it'd been okay while it lasted, but after the crap we went through during the blackout and how much harder it was to work together in a crisis while also navigating one another's feelings... to be brutally honest I just didn't like him enough to deal with that crap. I think he liked me more than that, so he acted pretty pissy and stupid for about a week, but eventually he seemed to get over it, which was good because I couldn't pull my normal 'block them on all social media and get on with my life' tactic that I usually used to ride out breakups. I actually started hanging out with Rick and Keenan more; Rick especially had helped me a lot during the blackout and was surprisingly cool, and we could always find something to bullshit about when were were off-duty and bored.

The third big change came from Rick on one of said bullshitting sessions, and I wasn't entirely sure at first that it wasn't just him being weird and obsessive.

"So I'm pretty sure Sarkis and Avery are fucking."

I barked out a laugh, giving him a look across the table. "Yeah, uh huh, sure. Because that's a thing that would happen."

"I'm serious. And I mean, why not - did you see Adrian and Jonah coming?"

"No, but they at least like people. Sarkis only likes her plants."

"Her plants, and Avery. I'm telling you - I've seen them go to each other's pods at all-hours, and have you ever watched them at dinner or whatever? Plus, didn't you notice Sarkis usually eats with the rest of us now at the same time?"

I had, but I had put it down to some vague sense of comraderie after the blackout. _Did_ she and Avery have a thing going on? I furrowed my brow. "I guess I haven't made it my life's work to stalk them," I joked then.

Rick frowned a little, looking slightly shifty. "I'm not sayin' I have like a problem with it or whatever," he said. "I'm just saying'... it's happening."

"Okay, well... I'll take your word for it," I said, though I knew I'd be watching them closer next dinner time. What? Everybody loves a good soap opera.

 

Avery

"One month to go." I turned and slipped an arm around Zoë's middle, nuzzling her cheek. "One month, and the dome phase is done. Can you believe it?"

"Mm, well, the dream had to end sometime," she said dryly, in the tone I was learning meant she was distracted by something - some equation or experiment - in her thoughts. Often, I would let this go. Sometimes, I liked to poke and prod a little.

"What're you thinking?"

"Oh, just wondering what's going to happen next. I mean, we all know what's going to happen, but... well, some of us are going to be dropped, and the rest of us are going to be split into our groups, and then it's just a matter of time. It's a bit odd."

I sighed. "Yeah..." A little knot that had been tying and untying itself in my stomach for a week or so now began to tighten again, and I tightened my embrace around Zoë's waist.

"If money meant anything any more I'd form a betting pool - I'm sure some of the guys could be cajoled into playing along."

"Mm. I mean, yeah."

"Hey, what's up?"

I sighed. I guess I wouldn't've been so obvious if I didn't want to talk about it, really... "I just... I dunno. I signed up for this because I had nothing left for me on earth, y'know? I'd lost Danny, my job, any hope of the kind of life I used to have... I figured what the hell, go to Mars." I chuckled. "But now... I dunno."