Asher had broken free. Levi could see him — blurred, at the edge of his narrowing vision — on his knees beside the creature, trying to wrench it away from Levi’s head. Asher was yelling something.
There was a weight in Levi’s hands. A clipboard. Heavier than paper or plastic, heavy with what signing it meant. There was a nurse’s hand on his shoulder. The doctor explained what would happen when they disconnected the ventilator, the clinical language that existed to make the unbearable sound like a procedure. The clock on the wall ticked the way it always did, the way it would continue to tick after Levi signed his name and his brother stopped being kept alive by machines.
He signed.
The ventilator sound changed. The steady mechanical rhythm faltering. Slowing. Ethan’s chest — the rise and fall that had never belonged to him — stopping. The monitors making a different sound now, a sustained sound, a single continuoustone that filled the room the way water fills a space when a wall breaks — everywhere at once, no gap, no silence between the notes because there were no notes, just the one long line of sound that meant his brother was dead.
I killed him.
The flatline and the apertures merged into one continuous tone, the hospital and the ship collapsing into the same moment, his brother’s death and his own death becoming the same.
His vision was almost gone —the familiar narrowing tunnel, the edges dark, the center still holding. Asher was on the floor a few feet away, bleeding from a crushed nose and the bones of his arm protruding through the EVA suit...
Levi tried to say his name. His mouth moved. No sound came out. Just the shape —Ash— on his lips. He could barely form the thoughts he wanted.
“Levi — Levi, please — tell me what to do —” Asher’s voice broke on the secondLevi.The sealed gloves reached and didn’t reach. His face was wet, his breathing doing the thing it had done during the blackout, and his mouth was shaping syllables that weren’t quite landing as words. “You always say this is a game…it’s not a game…it’s not a—”
Something cracked open on his face, his jaw dropping as his eyes widened. “If it really is a game…” Asher’s lips quivered, blood and drool dripping down his chin. “...if it really is a game, I don’t want to play this anymore. I—I want to exit this game.”
Everything went black.
14
Overburdened
Leviheardhimselfgaspand his hands flew to his temples, making sure there was nothing pushing inside his skull. He felt down his face and neck, wincing as his fingers brushed the bite mark.
He opened his eyes to warm light, the sound of laughter at the far end of a table, sitting upright in a cushioned chair. A banner across a wood-paneled wall readMeridian Tech — Annual Retreat 2024. He clocked the tall windows, mountains in the distance, and a low fog at the treeline. The NPCs were all there, laughing and eating dessert. Elliot sat at one end of the table holding a wine glass and looking pleased with himself.
Why…? We’re not on the ship? Why did the game change before the end?
What about the white room?
What did I do wrong?
Asher sat beside him in a dark blue dress shirt that looked surprisingly good on a man who was usually covered in someoneelse’s blood, his sleeves pushed up to reveal his muscular forearms. His hand rested on Levi’s thigh beneath the table, tracing absent circles that meant Asher had been here for a while.
“Hey,” Asher rumbled with a gentle smile. “There you are.”
Ethan on the floor. The creature…
His chest stopped working right. The air went in too fast and didn’t reach anywhere it was supposed to. His heart was loud in his throat and his wrists and behind his eyes. The room was warm and full of people as his ribs were trying to fold inward around the place his lungs used to be. He couldn’t breathe. He needed to breathe.
“Levi?”
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
“Baby, look at me.” Asher grabbed his face, his hands surprisingly gentle as he turned Levi’s head. It didn’t matter. Levi couldn’t breathe.
He was going to suffocate at the table. He tried to tell Asher, but he opened his mouth and nothing came out between his useless, ragged breaths. He grabbed the front of Asher’s shirt, trying over and over to make a sound come out of himself.
Nothing.
Ethan on the floor.
Asher’s arm was around his waist, lifting him from the chair, and Levi’s legs shook with the effort of standing.