Teal gaped. She couldn’t help it. How could anybody have let this happen? This broke several billion regulations. What happened if the bulkheads had to be shut? Or even if one of the pipes sprang a leak? How would maintenance get to it? Where were the superiors? What had happened to all the warning alarms? Never mind that she had hated all such rules. Never mind that she had broken regulations whenever she could. She had still known they were there to keep the station safe. Everybody knew that. Everybody but the people living in the stairwell.
Who are all of you? What are you doing in my home?
A few heads turned toward her, revealing dirty, wrinkled faces that reminded her of the dormers on Pandora and the people from the docking ring. They eyed her sourly and she saw them mouth things at her, but their words were lost in the general clamor.
Teal closed the hatch, a little ashamed at how her hands shook. They were just airheads. No matter how many of them there were, they were just people who couldn’t afford a room. She remembered teasing their kind along with King and Eng, and even with Chena, before Chena decided she was the righteous one. But what was going on here? Why were there so many of them?
Doesn’t matter. Teal shook her head. The only important thing here was that there was no going up the stairs. She’d have to take the elevator.
Teal all but ran back to the elevator cluster. One of the doors had just opened and a crowd of drones, shippers, and harassed-looking dockworkers shuffled into the car. Teal slipped in behind them and squeezed into an empty spot in the front corner. The doors closed and the elevator began its ascent.
Teal scanned the tired and impatient faces around her on the off chance she’d see someone she recognized from before. But they were all strangers to her. Teal’s stomach tightened. Maybe she hadn’t come home after all.
The elevator door opened before Teal realized she hadn’t pressed a destination key. A dockworker, his green parrot bobbing restlessly on his shoulder, shepherded out a flock of small drones and Teal peeked into the corridor. An apartment level, one of the not-so-good ones. Its floor padding was scuffed and badly patched, and the walls didn’t even have amateur art to decorate them. But there would be a landlord outlet, and she needed someplace cheap anyway. At least it didn’t look like there was anybody living in the hall. Teal slipped out just as the door began to close.
The others hustled along the wall and disappeared around the curve. Teal, left alone, realized what else was wrong. There were not only no airheads, there were no people in the hall. She glanced at her comptroller, which she had reset for station time. Like the villages, the station ran on shifts, and it was time for the change from day to swing. That is, it should have been. The place should have been crowded with gossiping families, door-to-door merchants, and kids getting out of class.
Teal shoved her hand through her hair. What happened? she wondered for the thousandth time. Should she maybe knock on a door, try to find an actual person to talk to? Was the place quarantined or something? Had one of those dirty, naked people brought the Diversity Crisis to Athena? But there hadn’t been any alarms when she walked out. But then, who knew if the alarms were working anymore?
“Hey!”
Teal froze, her heart hammering in her throat. Running footsteps echoed down the hall behind her. She started to turn, but as she did, hands grabbed her and twisted her arms behind her back. Another hand shoved down on the top of her head, forcing her to her knees. The floor bit hard and she shrieked involuntarily.
“Thought you’d sneak out, did you?” growled a man’s rough voice. “Thought you’d try to set up one of your filthy little tents right here, did you?”
“No! No! I’m not…” She twisted in their grasp and managed to get her head forced up to see their faces, and she froze again.
King and Eng. There was no mistaking them. King Prahti had a huge, hooked nose and high cheekbones that made him always look a little starved, no matter how much he ate. Eng Dor, he was still built like a brick, only now it was a much bigger brick with a light in the back of his black eyes that chilled Teal down to her bones. They looked at her like she was worse than a stranger. They saw an intruder.
“Lying squatter!” shouted Eng, jerking on her arms until she felt like her joints were about to pop.
“No! Eng, it’s me!” she cried. “Teal Trust!”
That at least got them both to hold still for a second.
“You used to scrounge with my sister Chena.” She gasped against the pain growing in her arms. “And tell me lies to see if you could get me to set off the alarms. We used to rip off the dumpsters, and once we almost got thrown in the can because Crazy Mary actually got the superiors to listen to her about the blankets—”