Chapter 3

That very afternoon, I got a call from my former mentor.

There was an opening for a key director post at the North Atlantic polar deep-sea station, and since I'd taken part in building the early models, they needed someone pulled in to fill it temporarily.

My mentor was silent for a long while on the other end, his voice careful.

"Eve, this assignment runs three years, fully sealed off, with strict limits on communication, and conditions far harsher than at the college. Think it over carefully."

I looked at the resignation letter I'd just printed out on the desk and signed my name without hesitation.

"I'll go, professor."

After hanging up, I drew a red circle on the calendar.

Seven days left before departure.

Maybe afraid I'd keep pressing about the smell on the gown, the next day Adrian pulled his connections and booked out the planetarium downtown.

It was a dream I'd always had, to watch a man-made meteor shower meant for just the two of us.

Inside the vast domed hall, the starlight was dazzling, silver points drifting slowly down from overhead, as if the whole night sky were bowing down for us.

Watching the light rain down across the sky, I suddenly thought back to that year in college.

To catch a winter meteor shower, we'd frozen an entire night on a mountaintop in fourteen-degree cold.

Back then he wasn't yet the Professor Hall everyone looked up to, just a poor but proud young lecturer.

Aching for me, he'd tucked my frozen feet against his chest to warm them, and with the pull-tab off a soda can, his eyes red, he proposed.

"Eve, I'll never let you suffer even the smallest wrong again."

Now, as the meteor shower poured down, he took a velvet box from his pocket.

A custom diamond ring lay inside, our names engraved on the inner band.

Tenderly, he lifted my hand and slid the ring toward my ring finger.

The cold of the metal against my skin sent a shiver through me.

I didn't resist, just quietly watched him finish acting out this loving little scene.

Just as he stood, cupped my face, and was about to kiss me, the backup phone in his pocket suddenly rang.

It was the ringtone set specially for Selena.

The instant he answered, his face changed.

He didn't even notice the panic that broke across that ever-composed face.

He suddenly tightened his grip on my hand, hard enough to hurt.

"Eve, there's been a reagent leak at the research center. Selena might be trapped inside. I have to get over there right now."

He spoke fast, giving me no time to react at all.

"Wait for me here. I'll be back as soon as I've dealt with it."

I watched him rush out of the hall, straight into the pouring rain outside.

He even forgot to leave me the car keys.

He'd once said I would always come first.

But that night, he forgot to even ask how I'd get home.

I didn't keep waiting at the planetarium. I walked home through the storm on foot.

The rain soaked through my clothes, and that night I came down with a high fever.

Aching all over and drifting in and out, I opened my phone.

On my feed, a post Selena had just put up loaded in.

It was set so only I could see it.

The photo's background was the ghostly white of a hospital bed.

A large hand was gripping a girl's slender wrist tightly.

That familiar vein on the wrist, I could have named whose it was with my eyes closed.

The caption was a single line:

[Professor Hall says if I die, he won't go on living either.]

I stared at that photo for a long time, long enough that the screen dimmed on its own.

In the black screen my face was reflected, flushed with fever, my eyes frighteningly empty.

Later I saw from the duty log that the so-called leak that night was just Selena knocking over a bottle of low-concentration reagent.

The ventilation alarm cleared in under three minutes, yet Adrian still stayed with her at the hospital until dawn.

I lit the screen again, opened the chat with the polar project director, and sent a message.

"Can the ship ticket be moved up to three days from now? I want to leave early."