I was still trying to catch my breath as the two melodians dragged me through the hallway. I was facing up toward the ceiling, watching the lights going by as they held my arms.

  Despite being out of earshot of the music area, I could still hear the ringing in my ears, the instruments getting smashed, crushed, torn apart by the mechara. I hated them. I hated all of them. They would take music from the melodians just to keep their control over them. It was probably why they didn’t have music in the first place. It made me wonder how long it had been since the mechara had taken it.

  Through my daze, my wheezing and my lack of strength, everything was becoming so much clearer. The mechara were as terrible as the listeners had told me. They’d taken everything from them just so they’d have the convenience of willing slaves. They were monsters.

  As the anger boiled up inside me I pulled at my arm, thrashing as I tried to throw the melodian next to me off balance, but he held firm. Despite my rage, they were too strong to overcome.

  I heard a sound from behind us. I looked down to see a mechara had been following us. She had the familiar flashlight in hand, looking like she was ready to turn it on if I tried to escape.

  “Why?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

  She looked upset, confused, but most importantly, afraid.

  “Basa, we’ve got her secured, there’s no need for that” the melodian next to me said.

  He was the one with the visor up so I could see his eyes. It was Artemis.

  I clenched my teeth, looking up at him with a scowl.

  “I thought you were on our side. I thought you were Aaah!” I screamed as he squeezed my arm harder, digging his finger tips into my muscles.

  I was shaking. I needed to escape. I needed to find a way out.

  Flint I remembered, he’s out there somewhere. He’s saved me before. He’s probably following us, waiting for his move.

  I took a deep breath, it was a comforting thought. I looked around, trying to see a melodian slinking in the distance, diving between rooms as he followed us, but I saw nothing. There were no other melodians in the hallways, they’d been made completely empty, leaving little to no room for Flint to blend in.

  It was possible he knew where they were taking me. He could be waiting there already, planning his next move, figuring out what to do next.

  The mechara behind us spoke up.

  “Where are we going? Weren’t we supposed to be going up to the assembler room?” she asked.

  The melodian responded “For a subject of this age we’ll need extra preparatians. In the meantime we’ll be bringing her to her quarters and keeping guard until the assembler is ready.”

  “No!” I screamed, pulling at him again but to no avail “Just leave me alone! I don’t want Aaaah!” I screamed out again as Artemis squeezed my arm harder.

  The mechara looked uncomfortable at the sight before her. It was good she at least had some semblance of, for lack of a better word, humanity.

  “Is there anything we can do to calm her?” she asked.

  I was about to scream again but Artemis spoke next.

  “No need, we’re already here” he said as the two melodians pulled me up to my feet and turned me around.

  I was in a large hallway filled with metal doors going down as far as I could see before the curve of the ship cut off my view. In front of me was a large glass door leading to a room lined with metal walls.

  Something strange occurred to me. Artemis had mentioned that he was taking me to my room, but as far as I knew, I didn’t have one. At least I was never told I was assigned one.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  In response, Artemis grabbed my cuffs, taking them off and pushing me forward in one swift movement.

  I stumbled, tripping over my feet as I fell into the room, the sound of the door closing a moment later along with a latching sound.

  “Wait!” I screamed as I bolted up to my feet, slamming my body against the door.

  I couldn’t hear anything through the door, but Artemis was talking to the mechara as the other melodian stood there silently. It looked like Artemis was saying something about how the mechara needed to go back up to the surface. The mechara to her credit looked concerned about me, but she didn’t do anything to stop what was happening, she didn’t step in to let me go.

  They talked for a few more moments before Artemis and the mechara turned and started walking away. They were still talking as the other melodian stood at the door like a guard.

  “Let me out!” I screamed, banging my hand to the door, but the melodian likely couldn’t hear me.

  I turned around, looking for any chance of an escape. A back door, a ceiling vent, a hatch of some kind. But there was nothing. It was a small metal room, about the size of my treehouse. It had a sink, a pantry for food, a bed and a desk area along with a mostly empty closet with nothing but…

  My thoughts froze for a moment as I saw a familiar looking box, the kind we had found on the escape pod, the one that read from the shard. I hadn’t realized it, but since I’d gotten on the lifeboat I hadn’t seen one of them.

  As I thought about it, the sound of the door unlatching caught my attention. The melodian who’d been standing outside was entering the room.

  I didn’t hesitate. I turned around, leaping forward as I tried to body slam him against the wall.

  He was unfortunately prepared for me as he turned out of the way, causing me to slam against the wall as he grabbed both my shoulders, pinning me to the wall as he reached over, closing the door and pressing a button that turned the glass door black, blocking all view of the outside.

  “Well that’s a fine ‘hello’” Flint said in a slightly mocking tone.

  “F-Flint?!” I exclaimed, turning around as he let go of my shoulders.

  He pulled the helmet off and to my relief, his eyes weren’t glowing.

  “Sorry about all that, we needed them to think…” he started to say before I wrapped him in a hug, picking him up from the floor a little.

  “But, what? How? What did you do?” I asked as I set him down.

  My fears were fading away from me, turning quickly into relief.

  He smiled, “It was Artemis’s idea.”

  “How?” I asked, confused about how everything had just come together.

  “Well, you were running back to the place. I was about to chase after you, but Gron… Well… Artemis stopped me. He told me that he needed my help and that he had a plan to get you out of the trouble you were about to get yourself into. He told me that when I ran down there, he’d have one of the melodians give me their helmet. He told me to lower the visor to keep my eyes hidden and when he made the signal, I had to do what he was doing. He said he’d bring you to my living quarters.”

  “And you trusted him? I never thought I’d see you working with Artemis after everything you’ve been through” I said.

  He nodded, looking a little nervous. “I was desperate,” he said.

  “So you weren’t using the assembler then?” I asked.

  He shook his head “Me? Never. I’d rather die than go back into that thing.”

  “But, the others didn’t seem like they had a choice” I said as I thought back to how they seemed like they were forced into it.

  Flint nodded “I’ve been with the listeners for a long time, I’ve been watching the mechara and trying to figure out what they were up to. We’ve suspected for a long time that they were making what they called a ‘contingency plan’ with the assembler. They’ve been putting out these changes to the assembler, the ones we all use, the built in ones, but each time it updates, nothing changes. The listeners thought it sounded like the next iteration of the assembler, but we weren’t sure of it until we saw the SLOAN project on lifeboat seven. They’ve been planning this for a long time.”

  “But that doesn’t explain why it didn’t effect you” I said, tilting my head a little.

  He nodded “Well, you can’t get the updates if you never go into the network. I kept telling the other listeners not to use it, but they kept telling me that in small amounts it was fine. But that meant they were getting the updates. I wasn’t.”

  “Ah… Well… Thank you Flint, for working with Artemis this time. I appreciate you being there… Hey wait a second, was that you that slammed me on my back?” I asked, giving him a glare.

  “The tail grab? No that wasn’t me that was Artemis but I WISH I could take credit for that one, that was awesome! He grabbed you and just… WHABAM!” he yelled out as slapped his hand on the bed, “Flattened! You couldn’t breath for at least two rotations!”

  I crossed my arms, staring daggers at him.

  “Well maybe next time he can try it on you then” I said.

  “Haha! Maybe!” he said, paying absolutely no attention to how I was looking at him.

  “Ugh” I sighed, putting my hands on my hips as I gave up.

  “Well anyway, we should probably stay here at least until we go back to regular gravity. Can’t be sure there aren’t any mechara out there until then” he said as he sat up on his bed, laying his back to the wall.

  “Ah right, I guess they can’t be here if we’re at normal gravity” I said partially to myself as I started looking around the small room, “So this is your place?”

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  “I guess you could call it that. Technically this is where I live as far as the lifeboat records go but I never come down here. I haven’t been here in a very long time” he said.

  “Why’s that? Isn’t it nice to have a place to rest?” I asked.

  He shook his head “I prefer being on the move. This lifeboat is massive, I could spend my entire lifetime exploring the lifeboat and never settle in the same place twice. I can always find unused rooms, both for the melodians and the mechara. Did you know some of those tall buildings have unused apartments? Heck, for a while I lived in the same building as Nori and nobody even noticed me.”

  I sat on the bed next to him, looking around the room as something didn’t feel quite right to me.

  “What’s wrong?” Flint asked, looking at me a little confused.

  “Uh… Nothing it’s just… This place feels so familiar…” I said.

  “Familiar how?” he asked.

  “Oh! I know where I’ve seen this place!” I said excitedly as I reached into the collar of my shirt, pulling out the shard “I saw it in one of these memories!”

  Flint nodded, not looking quite as excited as I was “That makes sense. All the melodian quarters look pretty much the same. That’s kind of why I don’t like staying here.”

  “Okay but… It’s gotta tell us something, right?” I asked, looking at the shard.

  “It tells us she’s just like all the others” he said, crossing his arms.

  I shook my head “I don’t know. I don’t think so. She seemed different. There has to be a reason I have this.”

  “I mean, I could just look her up” Flint said, gesturing to the box.

  “Wait, you can?” I asked, my eyes going wide as I looked at it.

  “Sure, I mean, I haven’t used the assembler node since that one time when I was a kid but it should still work” he said as he hopped off the bed and grabbed the box, bringing it up to the desk on the other side of the room.

  He pressed a button on the side, causing the screen to open out and start booting up, presenting the familiar symbol of the lifeboat as it started up.

  He reached out for the shard which I happily gave him as I stood by his side, watching it boot.

  Once it booted he started flicking through the menus. I sadly still couldn’t read any of the text but Flint was navigating it without issues. I still remembered the sequence of button presses I had to use to get to the memories. It must have been how the young melodians felt when they were going through the mp3 players.

  A flash of anger rose through me as I thought about them but I closed my eyes, shaking my head. It wasn’t the time for that. We had to wait.

  “Huh” Flint said, looking puzzled.

  “What? Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “Well yeah, there’s no name on here” he said.

  “Oh, maybe it’s because it’s from seven?” I asked.

  He shook his head, “No it should be on here. It looks like it was erased.”

  “Why would they do that?” I asked.

  Flint looked more confused as he went through more menus, scrolling through a few pages of text.

  “It’s not just the name. Nearly everything about this person is erased. There aren’t any personal details or anything that would tell us who she was” he said as he tapped the desk.

  I frowned, looking at the screen despite not knowing what any of it meant.

  He started scrolling through more files, going back through the menus some more until he eventually started going down the familiar path I was used to, going down into the memories we’d created for me to view.

  “Huh, well this is different” he said, leaning in.

  “Those were from us” I said, “I told you before, we translated some of the memories so I could play them back for myself. These are the ones we created so that I could view them.”

  “What’s up with this one?” he asked, pointing to the second to last file.

  “Uh, I don’t know, it’s one of the ones we made but I don’t know which one it is” I said.

  “Right. I just ask because it says how many playbacks they’ve each had. It looks like they’ve mostly just had one, this one up here has two” he said, pointing to an earlier memory.

  “Oh! Yes that was my own memory! The second time we played it we discovered the whole star map thing. It’s how we started to figure out the lifeboat’s locations” I said.

  He nodded “Yeah well, what about this one?” he asked as he pointed to the second to last file again, “it says it has zero playbacks.”

  I blinked, stepping back for a moment as I tried to think of what events had led up to that file being created.

  “Oh… I remember. My friends and I were on the way to this big satellite array thing. My friend told me that the next file was ready to view, but… Well, a lot happened. When I eventually got back to his house the computer ended up being able to compile the last memory on the shard. I never actually went back and watched this memory, only the last one, which was from my dad” I said.

  “It’s probably not important. Likely just a shard that one of you found. I don’t think it’s worth trying to look at it” he said.

  “Is there a way to view the memories without going into the assembler?” I asked.

  Flint shook his head “No, it works by stimulating parts of your brain. The memories themselves aren’t stored on here, just pathways.”

  “Ah, right…” I said as I looked at it.

  A rumble went through the ship as we started feeling ourselves getting heavier.

  “Oh! The mechara must have gone back up!” Flint clapped his hands.

  “Ah that’s good! We should see what’s going on back…” I started to say.

  “No, no, you stay here. They might still be looking for you. Artemis said you had to stay here for a while. I’ll go back and see if they missed anything. If anything I hope the music players weren’t destroyed” he said, looking a bit worried.

  “So you want me to just stay here then? Come on, I can help” I said.

  “Tess, please, I don’t want you getting into any danger, not right now. Just… Please stay here, I’ll be back soon, I promise” he said as he grabbed my hands, pleading with me.

  I sighed.

  “Fine, but get back here soon okay?” I asked.

  He nodded, grabbing the helmet from earlier and putting it on as he left the room, closing the door behind himself.

  I didn’t like the silence, I didn’t like being alone, not after everything that had happened.

  I found myself laying on the bed, looking up at the ceiling just like I remembered from the memory in the shard. The room looked exactly the same, I could practically picture that woman in the room with me, throwing the ball up at the ceiling and catching it, accidentally hitting it into her little ceramic like figures she’d made.

  I looked down at the assembler node, wondering what her final memory could have been.

  No, no I shouldn’t I said to myself, shaking my head as I looked back up to the ceiling.

  I tapped the side of my foot against the wall, thinking about the woman, thinking about what she’d meant by being ‘selected’ for… something.

  Flint doesn’t want to use it because it could update his assembler I thought to myself as I rationalized my intrusive thoughts, but I don’t have an assembler to update.

  I sat up, putting my back to the wall as I looked at the assembler node.

  Flint would be upset if I used it. But I had to know. I had to.

  I got up from the bed, moving over to the node and navigating to the woman’s final memory again.

  “Okay so how do you work?” I asked the node as if it could answer me.

  When we were using it, we had to use the flashlight while the node played the memory back, but I didn’t have a flashlight with me. So there had to be a way for the node to get the user into that state. It was possible that Sloan had removed the flashlight from it, which would explain why she had one back on earth. If there was one built in…

  “Hmmm” I said quietly to myself as I figured there wasn’t any harm in just trying to play the file.

  I pressed the button, starting the playback as two small lids opened up on either side of the node, revealing…

  The room around me disappeared as the world went white.

  I blinked, I was in a moving bed, there were two melodians on either side of me pulling my bed along down a long narrow hallway. I could hear two mechara talking behind me, but I could hardly hear what they were saying over the pain.

  My entire body hurt, every muscle was on fire, I could barely breath as every muscle was stiff. I gripped the bars on either side of the bed as I screamed in pain. By insides were on fire, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t think as the pain took over all my senses.

  I closed my eyes, seeing stars as I squeezed my eyes shut as tight as I could, trying to focus on anything else aside from the pain.

  After a few moments the pain started to subside, the fire dulling to a low roar as I opened my eyes to see one of the melodians injecting my arm with something. His eyes were glowing white.

  “Artemis… Please help me…” I begged him.

  “We’re doing what we can. Just hold on a little longer” he said as he started wheeling the cart forward once more.

  “Why weren’t you monitoring this closer?” one of the mechara asked.

  “I… We… Didn’t know it would happen so fast” the other mechara said. They’d been arguing since the moment the contractions started.

  “We’ve spent too much time, too many resources on this. You need to fix this” the mechara said.

  The bed rounded a corner, bringing us to a surgical room at the far end of the hospital.

  “I’m doing my best but…” the second mechara said.

  “But what?” the first asked, not trying to hide the anger in his voice.

  “I… Don’t think we can save both of them…” he said.

  I was wheeled into the room, the door closing behind us as I was turned around, facing the two mechara as they spoke.

  “Well then you should know what to do. Your mistake will not be the end of this project” the first mechara said.

  “But… Which one should I…” the second mechara was asking, his voice shaking.

  The first one shot the doctor a glare.

  The doctor nodded, looking at the floor as the first mechara turned and left the room, slamming the door behind himself.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, barely getting any sound out as the pain started to return.

  The doctor pulled a large curtain along a track in the ceiling and draped it over me so I couldn’t see my lower half. Artemis was still standing next to me, holding my hand as he was injecting something into me again, my pain starting to subside once more.

  My vision was blurring around the edges, making my thoughts feel fuzzy.

  “Artemis…” I said, looking at him.

  He looked at me as he showed sadness in his eyes, something I’d never seen from Artemis before.

  “I’m sorry” he said as he squeezed my hand again.

  I only knew he was holding my hand because I could see it, the feeling in my body had completely left me as the drug took its effect. I wanted to fall asleep, but I refused, I had to stay awake.

  I heard liquid pouring onto the floor beneath me as a pool of black blood went streaming across the floor out of the corner of my eye.

  “Artemis” I said again.

  He leaned forward.

  “Can… I see her? Please?” I asked as I started to feel cold.

  He nodded as the other melodian he was controlling walked around the curtain, holding the child that had just been cut out of me in his arms.

  With all the strength I had I reached out for her as he set her in my arms. Her fur was black, she was beautiful, the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  “Artemis” I said as I felt the last bit of strength leaving me.

  He leaned in again, one hand was helping to hold the child against me, the other was holding my hand. It looked like he was holding my shard in my hand, the crystal glowing a familiar faint blue.

  “Please Artemis, promise me. Promise me you’ll take care of her” I said.

  He nodded, his eyes looking into mine “I promise” he said.

  I looked down, my vision starting to go black as she slowly opened her eyes, looking up at me in my final moments.

  It was like nothing I’d ever seen. She was so beautiful, so perfect. I smiled as I saw the most unique eyes I’d ever seen. One blue, one green.