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It’s funny. The things you remember and the things you forget.
She’s begun to recall snatches of Germany. Not just the one she’d gladly signed onto a suicide mission to escape. Not the one you needed a gasmask to leave the house in, where bodies were left to rot in the streets, but the Germany of her childhood. Its windswept streets, the smell of cold in the air, before the extent of the rationing and fighting turned it into someplace she could no longer live. She can still see her mother’s blonde hair, the curve of her father’s shoulders, her brother’s knobby knees but she can’t put their faces together. It’s all a jumble of features: Thin lips, dark eyes and weathered hands she can’t match to the correct owner. Their names are caught somewhere in the back of her brain, close enough that she can’t stop trying to figure them out. Buried too deeply to ever resurface.
But the ship, the fucking Elysium, is branded on her brain. Its every hiding place, it’s trap doors and secret tunnels—she knows every nook of it like the back of her hand and dreams of it still listing beneath the oceans of Tanis. She remembers every rote application of her job. The daily checks, the government sanctioned way to clean her instruments, the sleep rotation she still has trouble breaking. She can name every plant she was tasked with bringing to this new world. All the different species of animal DNA she was to help the agriculture division clone on its surface and just when she was supposed to introduce them into the ecosystem.
She imagines that the 30% of her samples that were lost during their trip, her hyper sleep, and the months she was awake and trapped is somewhere closer to 50% now. Maybe even higher.
Like herself, most of them cannot recall much about Before but Bower can. He tells her most of the wild growing flora and fauna found there had been decimated by the time any of them came of age. (She watches him stare at the world around them with a mixture of amazement and curiosity and disgust and—he covers it well when one of the others is around but she knows him and she can see it—fear, and it’s never been more clear that Tanis, though closer to their home planet than any other ever discovered, is not Earth.)
Within three months of their evacuation from the ship, 92 of their 1213 survivors are dead. The lack of memory along with the unfamiliar terrain, plants with minds of their own and animals the likes of which she can barely wrap her mind around--hulking beasts the color of the rainbow, small slimey skinned creatures on three legs with sharp teeth, both lurking just beyond the edges of their camp—saw to the high number.
30 of their fellow travelers never made it to the surface, drowning as soon as the ship released them due to defective pods. 42 died within the first two weeks of stepping foot onto their new home planet. 19 have fallen ill and died from some strange illness. There’s no pattern to those that are affected--not age, race, food intake, nothing. Medical thinks it’s ecological, maybe something genetic, possibly an outbreak. Nadia just hopes she isn’t next.
One man—James, spouse of a cook who never made it off the ship, 33 years old, slightly balding, red head—was found floating face down in the bathing area early that morning. Another accident until it wasn’t. Until they turned him over and saw the blood wasn’t from a fall but a neck wound that slit him from ear to ear.
James is going to go down in the history books as the first murder recorded on Tanis. Its surface anyway.
Nadia eyes a group of the other inhabitants as she moves to stand beside Bower at the front of their meeting area. It’s just after sunrise and the heat is already heavy and wet. She can feel her shirt beginning to stick to her back before she plucks it away from her skin gingerly and frowns.
Bower never made a move to take on the role as their leader; the other inhabitants just gravitated toward him. The same way she and Manh decided to follow someone who just woke up when they’d been fighting to survive for months. The tattoo marking him as part of the flight crew is a part of it, but it’s something else, as well. A feeling you get when he speaks, an aura of genuineness that surrounds him, that made even a fucker like Leland believe that when Bower said something, he meant it.
He’d insisted on telling them immediately (it’s already out there, Nadia. We have to get ahead of it) so here she is. Standing in front of a group of people that could barely remember their own names a month ago, people who can’t hunt for themselves, who need someone to tell them what to do 24 hours a day, questioning them.
“I know this is a scary situation but I’m asking you all to try and be calm as we sort this out,” Bower starts. “We’ve—”
“There’s some killer out there and you’re telling us to just shrug it off? To just go back to our chores?”
“Yes,” Bower replies, looking the man in the eye wearily. He’s been looking that way more and more lately. “That’s all we can do right now. We don’t know much yet—”
“You don’t know much or you don’t know anything? Because there’s a difference...”
“How could you let this happen?” A woman suddenly yells from the back, the others go quiet and turn to watch the spectacle about to unfold. “How could you let a killer—"
“I’m not letting anyone do anything,” he replies, visibly taken aback by the accusation. “I’m trying—”
“Well try harder,” another man shouts. “We trusted you to—”
“And you can keep trusting me,” he cuts in. “I got as many of us as I could here this morning so we could all make a decision on how to handle the situa—”
“What about someone else taking the lead this time?” Daniel—last living member of the three-man Cultural Survival Division, solid looking with a shock of white blond hair and a thin mouth that’s always smiling at some inside joke—pipes up suddenly. Bower tenses and it’s obvious. No matter how much Nadia tries to teach him, he’s got no poker face and she reaches for his elbow surreptitiously, trying to be a comfort, before dropping her hand.
“You have so many responsibilities already. Too many, really. It might be better if—”
“It wouldn’t,” Nadia finally speaks. She never raises her voice but the crowd immediately gives her the floor. She knows what they think of him (Bower: is Father, the idealist, a weakling, too kind, their inevitable downfall, their only salvation) but she knows what they think of her, too (Nadia’s whispered nickname is Mother, she’s the muscle, the disciplinarian, ruthless, simultaneously the idiot Bower is supposedly fucking and the real power behind the crown).
She uses it to her advantage.
“Since Earth didn’t send any policemen with us, unfortunately, who do you think would be better equipped to solve this than a member of the Flight Crew? “
“Well,” he starts then stops. “I just—”
“Think you’d do a better job?”
“Not necessarily but—”
“So it’s settled then.” She remarks, voice flat and brooking no arguments. “Bower will keep his position and you’ll stay in yours.”
The area is silent as everyone watches her, cowed. She keeps her eyes on Daniel for a moment longer and sees that smirk, his ever present grin, spreading wider.
—
“What were you doing back there?” They’re alone now, everyone else having gone back to their duties. Bower’s obviously upset with her but she’s not happy with him either.
“Saving your job, since you didn’t really seem interested.”
“You railroaded that guy!”
“I did what I had to do. Did you really think that man could find the murderer?”
“How do you know he couldn’t? You never let him finish and it didn’t have to be him anyway. We could’ve found someone else—"
“By having another meeting and wasting even more time? You’re in charge here, why don’t you act like it? None of those people back there know what they’re doing!”
“How do you know that, Nadia? You never talk to them.” He’s right, she doesn’t, and she crosses her arms over her chest defensively. “Is it because they weren’t on the ship? Because they didn’t see...” he trails off before picking up his thought in another location. “That’s not a good enough reason to shut them out.”
“It doesn’t mean you have to run each and every decision by them either.”
He stares at her until she looks away. “You hate them don’t you?”
It doesn’t surprise her that he might think so and no matter if they’re arguing, she wouldn’t ever brush his concerns aside. Nadia actually considers the question before answering truthfully. “I don’t hate them and it’s not that I don’t think they can do it. It’s that I think you’re better. They don’t know—" She stops short before meeting his eyes. “Why won’t you tell them about Earth being gone?”
He looks off to someplace beyond her. “Because life seems pointless enough already,” he says and he’s got that look on his face. The one he wore while breaking up her fight with Mahn, the one she saw as he tried to talk Leland out of making them into his next stew. Like he knew it was hopeless, but he’d give it his best shot anyway. “People need something to look forward to. Even if it’s not real. Especially if it’s not real.”
“If you had a choice between knowing and the truth and being like them, what would you choose?” She asks and he reaches toward his hidden pocket, the one he keeps the picture of his dead wife in, and she knows his answer. If she’s being honest, she always knew. It’s the fundamental difference between them. “Do you want to lead them?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want.”
And she’s suddenly angry. Furious about his need to be a martyr and her inability to leave him to it. “You’re right, it doesn’t. It’s about survival now and you’re the best person for the job. You can’t let them—"
“I’m not going to be a dictator, Nadia.” he states firmly. Back from wherever his mind just took him. “If they wanted me to step down, I would.”
At times like this, some dark part of her—the one she needed to survive the ship—thinks it would just be easier to get rid of him. To take the reins herself. He remembers more of the old world than she does and Nadia thinks that’s more of a curse than a gift. He wants the sort of community that will be impossible to build in their lifetime. The sort he remembers from a textbook because it never existed during their tenure on Earth.
She takes a deep breath and begins to move away from him. “I need some air. I’ll see you at camp tonight.”
He only hesitates a moment before leaving her to her thoughts.
—
Strangely enough, the smell has been the hardest thing for her to get used to. Moldering earth, the stench of sweat and hundreds of filthy people crammed into one small area, of shit under the heat of Tanis’ suns makes her dizzy.
Sometimes she can still conjure up the smell of the ship, of blood and rotting flesh, the same stale air circulating, the chemical, almost caustic scent of those… things. Sometimes she’ll catch a whiff of it on her own skin and realizes now it must be the accelerant. The magic they pumped into the pioneers of Tanis’ veins. The very same stuff that turned some of them into monsters.
“Bower never asked about you.”
He gets a charge out of startling her and it takes everything she has not to react to his sudden presence. Nadia waits a beat, stands tall and turns slowly to see Gallo standing behind her. She knows he’s not actually there—that he’s an hallucination, that she’s losing her goddamn mind—but he feels real. As real as the man who came this close to killing her. “What do you want?”
“To know why he never thought of you. Why can’t you be the one to lead them?”
Because she knows, from her months on the ship, that it’s better to be alone. Then, if you’re killed or caught or hamstrung, it’s because you’ve made a mistake. Because you weren’t good enough. She thinks of Manh dying trying to save them. She thinks of how Bower still touches his pocket “Because he knows I miss the people I left behind, but that I don’t need them.”
Gallo stares her curiously but doesn’t ask anything else.
—
There’s another murder three days later. A woman this time, dumped high up in the woods where no one would’ve found her for days if a couple hadn’t stumbled over the body. Her name was Patricia, engineering division, blonde, younger than the last victim but found with the same ragged neck wound.
The panic at camp has evolved into all out terror.
Bower calls another meeting that devolves into shouting matches and placing blame.
Nadia can only sit back and watch.
—
“‘Nother lonely walk?”
She’s decided to stop acknowledging his presence but Gallo doesn’t care. He likes it better when she doesn’t speak anyway.
“I understand. People like us, we need to have time to ourselves.”
“Is that right?” She blurts, disobeying her own mandate and turning toward him.
“Oh yeah. Because, we really know what it takes. Better than those idiots who just came out of the pod and better than the Boy Scout, too. He only lived through a day on that ship.”
“Most didn’t survive an hour.”
“But we made it for months.”
She can feel her disgust for him climbing into the back of her throat and swallows thickly. “I don’t think our situations were that similar, Gallo.”
He shrugs, “not then anyway,” and she pushes she her hair back off her forehead. It’s hot today, hotter than normal, and the accelerant feels like it’s beginning to boil beneath her skin. Its molten asphalt stench clogs her nose. The ring finger on her left forearm is shaking so she shoves her fist in her pocket.
“Doing okay there?” He asks, casual. Barely getting the words out before she’s responded with a quick, “just fine, thank you.” Nadia doesn’t miss the irony in trying to convince a figment of her imagination that she doesn’t appreciate his concern. She’s beginning to learn to live with it though.
“You sure? We’ve both seen symptoms like—”
“I don’t have that,” she responds quickly, beginning to lose her cool and give him the upper hand but she doesn’t care what he thinks of her. “We’re not in space in case you haven’t noticed.”
“We weren’t in space then either,” he says coyly and she looks away. “But, technically, I guess you’re right. It wouldn’t still be called Pandorum if your feet are on solid terra firma so you can call it whatever you’d like. We’d both know what was really happening though.”
She shakes her head, rubs her right temple and begins to pace. “You don’t know anything.”
“Getting the shakes yet?” he continues, as if she hasn’t spoken at all. “We already know about the hallucinations...”
“What do you care? Why are you still talking?”
“I guess that’s a yes then,” he says, faux concern written all over his face. “What a shame, too. You’re losing it girl,” he accuses, a flat smile spreading across his face and she can’t stand it. Can’t stand to look at him when he’s the cause of all of this and knowing that his only punishment was death when there are worse things. Things he’s forcing all of them to live through. That he won’t get out of her head.
“Shut up!” She shouts, scrambling to catch her breath and failing. Her heart feels like it’s trying to squeeze its way through her ribs and straight out of her chest. “Shut up!” she yells again, turning on her heel to run back to camp, only to find Bower watching her. She stops short, her mind suddenly quiet. They stare at one another for a beat, then another.
“I didn’t see you this morning and I came to—” he narrows his eyes and drops the explanation. “Are you alright?” He finally asks, voice calm and even.
Nadia turns toward the ocean, squeezes her eyes shut and takes a breath, then another, before answering, “yes, of course.” When she looks back though, he doesn’t seem convinced. His mouth keeps opening and closing. Like he’s trying to settle on whether or not to ask her something and she quickly goes on. “I’m just thinking about... home, I guess.”
His whole face falls at that, questioning look replaced by worry as he steps forward into her space and she ought to feel badly for it. She’s just told him a lie after all. One specifically designed to stop him from asking her questions he doesn’t really want to hear the answers to anyway.
She doesn’t though, she feels relieved.
“I know it—” he stops short, hand reaching up to the pocket on the inside of his jacket before falling away. “The memories, they can suck you in sometimes. They make you wish—” he stops again and laughs a little but there’s no humor in it. “Just try to appreciate them for what they are and live your life like they’re still in it.”
That woman left you, she wants to say. She’s dead now, it’s not like she cares either way, Nadia wants to snarl. Let it go, she wants to yell at the very top of her lungs but he wouldn’t be him if he could just get over it and as much as she hates to admit it, she doesn’t want him to change.
Bower puts his hand on the side of her neck, with a smile. Pulls her into an awkward hug and he stinks like they all do—of unwashed clothes, the ripe smell of bodies gone too long without soap--but she doesn’t push him away. She holds him tighter.
—
Daniel disappears two days after Patricia's murder and the mood in camp has gone from bad to worse. They think he’s the third victim in as many weeks until they realize his knapsack and extra uniform are also gone.
The rumor spreads like wildfire and no matter how much Bower tries to talk them down. Tries to remind them that they don’t know anything yet and it’s not good to jump to conclusions, as far as the settlement is concerned, they’ve found their killer.
“And what do you have to say about it?” A woman asks, crowding close to Bower. “About this man, this murderer, who you and your people allowed to escape.”
“Ma’am, there’s no—”
“It just keeps getting worse,” she yells over him and a crowd is beginning to form around them. “You haven’t got a goddamn clue where he is have you?”
“We’re searching. There’s a lot of unmapped land here. You have to give us—”
“I don’t have to do anything, do I? We’re stuck here. Our ship’s crashed and we’re never going home. What’s the point—”
“We—” Nadia begins, before he quietly cuts her off with a gentle touch. He waits for her nod before starting.
“You’re right,” Bower admits and the murmuring crowd goes quiet. “Our families are out there but we aren’t going home. Not anytime soon, anyway. That’s why we have to stay the people they loved and start trusting one another. Start trying to work together because for the foreseeable future,” he opens his arms wide. “We’re all we’ve got.”
He puts his hand on her shoulder and all of the rage on her face melts away into something much harder to witness. Nadia looks off over Bower’s right shoulder as the woman continues. “I’m scared.”
“All of us are, but believe me. I will do everything, everything, in my power to make sure you’re all safe.”
The people around them have gone completely still, staring at him with wide, warm eyes instead of the downward cast glances she’s used to receiving. Nadia watches them, thinking.
--
By the end of the week, Bower’s issued a warning for all people in the camp to travel in groups but Nadia sets off early that morning on her own. Her usual path takes her down to the beach they washed up on that first day but she turns the other direction and goes up into the mountains instead. Out here on her own, she can see the beauty of this place. The thick, almost rubber like leaves of the trees, the feathery pastel flowers, the small neon hued creatures that scatter when she comes too close. Nadia closes her eyes and takes it in for a moment.
When she opens them and sees their fugitive staring back, it’s a complete surprise to both of them. She starts at his presence, a million things going through her mind—five different exit routes, several moves she could use to incapacitate him—but she makes sure her voice is steady when she says, “everyone’s looking for you.”
“I’ve heard.” he visibly begins to relax and pulls his knapsack up higher on his shoulder. “Don’t think I’ll be letting them find me though.”
“You’ll be treated fairly,” she goes on. “They're just rumors—”
“And that’s all people need to grab the rope, isn’t it?”
“Not here,” she says, ignoring his scoff. “Not with Bower in charge.”
“He’s been in charge.”
“But things are different now. They’re changing. He won’t let anything happen to you but you have to come back to camp and sort all of this out.”
“Why should I bother when I could just stay here?”
“It’s dangerous to be alone in the woods. The animals—”
“Camp’s dangerous, or haven’t you noticed?” he leans in, “people are getting murdered.”
She thinks of Bower’s question to her. “You hated them?”
“No.”
“Why then? Why would you do this?”
“To make them see the truth. He can try all he wants but he can’t protect us. No one can. We are on our own and it’s time to let the rest of it go. To stop thinking about families we’ll never see again, to stop living by the old worlds rules and make new ones.”
(There’s no law or order, no good or evil. Just us)
She goes cold at that even as she understands the attraction of what he’s saying, can already see the how easily he’ll sway the group to his side. When all Bower has to offer is work with the hope of a payoff for the next generation, anarchy might not seem so bad. But she can’t, won’t, accept it.
True love, then? Gallo whispers into her ear but it’s not that. Not really. Part of it is loyalty. He’s the only other person who was there. The only who saw what it was like on that ship and lived to suffer the consequences of that knowledge. She won’t leave him now. Not after everything he’s done for her—It’s safe, when she opens her eyes, he’s the first thing she sees under another planets sun. It’s safe to wake up now—not after everything they’ve been through.
The other part of it is, even after everything, she actually believes in him. He can be blinded by his idealism but that’s why she’s here. To take care of the things he doesn’t have the stomach for.
Daniel studies her for a moment as a bright smile spreads across his face and she sees Gallo baring her throat for his blade. Face alight with the knowledge that the only law now was that doled out by those too strong to be challenged. (People need something to look forward to. To believe in, even if it’s not real. Especially if it’s not real.) “You understand don’t you? I knew you would. That you were different from the rest of them,” He turns to pull something out of his knapsack and Nadia watches him.
She understands many things in one moment. Why he would do what he’s done, how she can use it to protect them all and what she’ll have to do to Daniel to make sure there’s no blowback for it.
(Imagine yourself without the chains of your morality. You’d even surprise yourself.)
Her fingers twitch near her blade and she can feel Gallo behind her now, insistent in her ear. “You’re not crazy at all, are you? Too organized, too thoughtful to be crazy. You remember when Bower had it?” He lets out a mean little chuckle, “the kid was shooting at everything. Mean as shit but he had no clue what he was doing. Not you though, you’re perfectly sane.” He leans in close, so close she can feel his breath sweep across the side of her face. “Want to know a secret?”
She shakes her head as if that would keep him out. As if that would stop him. He lowers his voice and even though she can barely make out the words, she can still hear his smile. “I was too.”
“Nadia,” Daniel’s pulled out one of the few books they have left. “This is—"
The knife is out of its sheath and she’s on him before he can make a move to try and stop her.
--
He never sees it coming.
--
When Bower finds her later, she’s been sitting at the water’s edge for hours. “Nadia!” He calls sounding frantic and when she doesn’t answer, he grabs her, breathless. “I couldn’t find you! I thought—”
“You thought what?” Her voice is strangely empty to her own ears and he stops struggling with her at the sound of it, studies her face. “What’s wrong? Has something happened?”
“Haven’t we already been over this? Why don’t you ask me something else for a change.”
“Nadia..”
“I’m fine.” She meets his eyes then, sure of exactly what he needs to hear and feeling more steady than she has in as long time. “Honestly.”
He lets her go slowly, like he doesn’t really want to but he no longer has a legitimate reason to try and keep her close. “You left hours ago...” It sounds stupid and he knows it. She can tell by his sheepish expression.
“I can take care of myself, Bower.”
“I know.”
“There’s a whole settlement back there that needs you to look out for them. I’m not one of them.”
His eyes look wet. “I know,” he repeats almost soundlessly and she suddenly feels sick. Like she can’t look at him anymore without screaming so she turns back to the sea. “It would just be safer to stick close to the camp.”
“On account of our resident killer?”
“We don’t know that. We don’t know anything yet but it can’t hurt to be careful,” he says, sounding like somebody's dad again. “Daniel’s probably just—scared. We’ll find him and sort all of this out.”
Nadia remembers the way his head cracked against the rocks. The hollow sound it made as it echoed around her and the spray of blood that followed her knife’s blade. The low, wet sound of his last breath.
She looks up at Bower then with a nod. “I’m sure we will.”
--
Though they’re few and far between, she still dreams of the Elysium. She can see Manh, trapped somewhere in its depths. Gallo, still floating above the captain’s chair he’d destroyed everything to gain the right to occupy. She tries to imagine her teammates. Those first moments of awareness, how they’d pulled her free of her escape pod and explained the horror that now awaited her. How they’d protected one another. She tries to remember something more about them than the way they’d died, one by one.
She sees her room in the vault, their specimens dry and safe behind a waterproof door powered by the reactor they sacrificed so much to save. Bower says it should be able to withstand the water making its way into the hold. That it should power the ship for a good while yet. Maybe not another thousand years but long enough for them to begin evolving, long enough for the accelerant to turn them into something new, for the group to pass the story on and for the next generation to find a way back. Free from the firsthand knowledge of what happened there but well aware of the two people who made sure their grandparents survived their new planet. They’ll never truly know what happened or the lengths she was willing to go to but maybe that’s for the best. They’ll have a new Earth instead. A second chance. She considers that a fair trade.
Nadia looks down at the ocean that held her captive for a thousand years, still pinning them in on all sides. Thinks, it’s funny. The things you remember and the things you forget.