Kane didn’t need to check the recycler numbers to know they’d dropped again Callie’s face told him before he’d crossed half the command deck.
Four weeks ago that number had been stable.
Three weeks ago it had started to drift.
Two weeks ago Engineering had filed a repair estimate six months, maybe eight, if they could scavenge the parts from somewhere the Ark still had parts to scavenge.
One week ago Kane had stopped asking when and started asking how many.
The command deck smelled like old coffee and sleeplessness.
Abby Griffin stood at the telemetry wall, arms folded, staring at the wristband grid like she could will the signals to hold.
Jaha sat in the commander’s chair, still, hands flat on the armrests.
Callie Cartwig from Engineering hovered near the oxygen readout, her clipboard held against her chest like a shield.
Eighty-three signals.
Down from ninety-one yesterday.
“They’re taking them off,” Kane said.
Abby turned.
Her face was drawn, older than it had been a week ago.
“You don’t know that.”
“Bellamy Blake told them to.
We heard him on the comms before the radios went dark.
He told them the Ark would think they were dead and stop watching.” Kane crossed to the grid.
Tapped a dead zone.
“They listened.”
“Or they died.”
“Eighty-three alive is better than none.”
Jaha’s voice, quiet from the chair: “My son’s signal is still transmitting.”
Kane looked.
One dot, steady.
Wells Jaha, vitals normal, still breathing, still wearing the one piece of machinery that tied him to a station that was running out of air to give him.
“He’s a good kid,” Kane said.
Jaha said nothing.
Abby stepped closer to the grid.
Her finger traced a cluster twenty signals, tight together, then a scatter, then another grouping.
“If they’re alive, we need to know what they’re breathing.
What they’re eating.
Whether the ground can hold them.”
“The ground can hold a hundred kids,” Callie said from Engineering.
Her voice shook.
“It can’t hold twenty-four hundred.”
The room went silent.
Kane turned.
Looked at her.
She was young, maybe thirty, and she’d run the numbers six times because he’d asked her to and every time the numbers had come back the same.
“How long,” Kane said.
“At current population, current consumption” She swallowed.
“Forty-two days before we hit minimum sustainable.
After that it’s a curve.
Livable drops to critical in a week.
Critical to” She stopped.
“To suffocation,” Abby finished.
Flat.
Callie nodded.
Jaha stood.
Walked to the viewport. New chapters come out on g.com first.
The Earth turned below, blue and white and green, a planet that had tried to kill them all and failed and was still there, beautiful and merciless, while the Ark died slow in the vacuum above it.
“We could send another dropship,” Abby said.
“With what fuel,” Kane said.
“With what functional landing systems.
We used the one we had.”
“Then we go down in the escape pods.
We”
“Seventeen pods.
Fifty people, maybe, if we pack them past safe launch weight.
Fifty out of twenty-four hundred.” Kane’s voice stayed level.
Someone had to.
“The rest stay here and suffocate so fifty can land in a forest we know nothing about, surrounded by kids who might already be dead.”
Abby went very still, the kind of still that came right before she started fighting.
“So what’s your solution.”
Kane met her eyes.
Held.
“We buy time.”
“How.”
He didn’t say it.
Didn’t need to.
Callie’s breath caught.
Jaha turned from the viewport with nothing left in his face to read.
“No,” Abby said.
“Forty-two days isn’t enough to build a rescue.
It isn’t enough to retrofit the pods.
It isn’t enough to confirm the ground is livable or to make contact with the Hundred or to do anything but watch the oxygen curve fall and hope we’re all unconscious before the panic starts.” Kane’s hands stayed at his sides.
Steady.
“But if we reduce the population”
“You’re talking about killing people.”
“I’m talking about math.
If we lower consumption by ten percent, we buy another two weeks.
Twenty percent, a month.
Thirty”
“Stop.” Abby’s voice cracked.
“Stop talking like people are percentages.”
“They are,” Kane said.
Quiet.
“Up here, they are.
We’ve been rationing water, power, food, space every breath for ninety-seven years.
We’ve done the math on everything else.
This is the same equation.”
Jaha spoke, and his voice was ash.
“You’re talking about a culling.”
The word landed.
Kane let it sit.
“I’m talking about buying the time we need to save the people we can.”
Abby turned away.
Her shoulders shook once, then stilled, and when she turned back her face was a mask.
Who chooses who dies so the rest of us get another month.”
“The Council.”
“The Council.” She laughed, bitter.
“We draw lots?
We pull names?
We float the old, the sick, the ones who” She stopped.
“No.
I won’t.
I won’t be part of that.”
“Then you’re part of everyone dying,” Kane said.
“Because that’s the choice.
Some now, or all soon.”
Callie’s clipboard hit the floor.
Jaha walked back to the commander’s chair.
Sat.
His hands on the armrests were white-knuckled.
“How many,” he said.
Kane pulled the slate from his jacket.
He’d run the numbers himself, checked them against Callie’s, checked them again in the small hours when the recycler alarm had pulled him awake and he’d stared at his ceiling and done the cold accounting that no one else wanted to touch.
“Three hundred and twenty,” he said.
“Volunteers first.
Then the registry.”
Abby made a sound.
Not a word.
Jaha closed his eyes.
Opened them.
Looked at the telemetry wall eighty-three signals, one of them his son, alive on a ground the Ark couldn’t reach and couldn’t confirm and couldn’t save.
“We’ll take it to the Council,” Jaha said.
Kane nodded.
Slid the slate back into his jacket.
Abby walked out without another word.
The command deck settled back into its hum machines tracking vitals, recyclers laboring, the distant thrum of the Ark’s spine holding pressure against a vacuum that didn’t care how many people breathed or didn’t.
Callie picked up her clipboard.
Left.
Jaha sat in the chair, staring at the wall of signals.
Kane stood at the viewport.
The planet turned.
Clouds crossed a coastline he’d only ever seen in files.
Somewhere down there, a hundred kids were breathing air the Ark had forgotten how to make.
“If they’re alive down there,” Kane said, “we have somewhere to go.”
Jaha didn’t answer.
Kane didn’t say the rest.
Didn’t need to.
To get there, some of us have to stop breathing first.
Behind them, under the deck hum, under the telemetry scroll, the recycler alarm ticked its rhythm.
The sound the Ark had learned to ignore.
The sound that was counting down.