Seven laps and still no sign from Nick; Leru pushed herself into number eight. She leapt up the ladder in the flickering light of the cargo bay, to the catwalk that followed the three walls opposite the two-story bay door. The dented, jagged grating rattled in its frame as she made her way to an open man-door in the wall to her left, darting sideways into the ship's maintenance halls.
The tactical programming on the interface implanted between her central nervous system and her brain did its best to outline the darkened hall based on whatever information it could gather from the rest of her senses, providing ghostly blue surfaces hovering in her vision, jerking about with each heartbeat or particularly heavy footstep.She closed the program with a thought -- navigating Perseverance by memory alone would be easier at this point. She bounded off the far wall where the hallway abruptly angled right, thundered past the kitchen and flight deck on her left and right respectively, spitting on the grating to keep from breathing it into her lungs. It wasn't like anyone was going to be doing maintenance down there anyway.
Well, Hep might.
She blinked hard, shaking sweat from her eyes as she pushed right down the opposite maintenance hall; the final stretch. She focussed her breathing, measured and slow enough to absorb the maximum amount of oxygen according to the interface readout floating in the darkness below her eye. She leapt through the man-door opposite the first back onto the catwalk in the cargo bay, legs shaking.
She jumped at the end, kicked off the wall to her left, and vaulted over the railing, grabbing it on her way down to the cargo bay floor. She fell face-first, letting go of the handrail then catching herself on the catwalk floor with shaky fingers and burning forearms.
She landed with her arms out to her sides and chin on her chest, flexing the muscles in her abdomen out of startled habit to avoid having the wind knocked out of her as her. Her fingers were sore, but she'd avoided tearing her pale-blue skin though she could feel the beginnings of deep grey bruises on her back.
She rolled over onto her stomach and pushed off the floor, still heaving in breaths as she held her core rigid between her shoulders and the tips of her toes -- her heart rate was still dangerously high according to stop cold, and she wasn't about to risk arrhythmia. After thirty-some repetitions she collapsed onto her back, heart slowly returning to a resting pace.
Sweat dripped down her face, soaked the sleeveless white shirt she wore tucked into her baggy, multi-pocketed pants. She looked over her heaving chest at the man-door by her feet and imagined Nick stepping through with his natural, lanky swagger, looking her over with mild surprise under his shaggy black hair -- no, scratch that. She gave her fantasy-Nick a haircut, imagining him sweeping his bangs over his left ear as he shut the man-door behind him.
He would approach slowly before kneeling down by her side. He'd run a hand over her cheek and she'd bite at it, forcing him to move to her collarbone and soaking, white shirt.
"Hi Leru," Hep mumbled as if checking off a to-do list.
She snapped her knees together, still panting, "Hi Hep."
His booted feet tapped softly past her through the man-door, grey eyes fixed on the air somewhere between himself and the floor as he rolled it loudly open and closed; The silent, hairless mechanic came and went as was his way.
"One more broken thing on the good ship Perseverance," Nick's voice rang out in her head. "She attracts them like a magnet. Sometimes I wonder who saved who."
Leru sat up, running her hands over the shaved sides of her head and down the dark silver, shoulder-length ponytail. She was breathing normally by the time she stood, eyeing the catwalk on the opposite side of the room and chewing her lip. She let out a breath, turning instead to the man-door directly opposite the large bay door and making her way to the crew quarters beyond. She found hers near the end of the short hallway beyond and undressed as she transitioned the one-by-two-meter compartment into a shower -- Nick called Hep broken, but it was only thanks to Hep their water purifier replenished itself with ice-particles from the void. Nick hadn't even known the ship was capable of such a thing, none of them had.
She stared with her eyes closed into the stream that spat from the seam where the wall met the roof, letting the water wash away her doubts about Nick before cascading over her skin and into the grating below. She'd long since grown used to the mettle grating digging into her bare feet, but it kept the experience from being entirely comfortable.
Nick's voice echoed through the rushing water, "Broken people, in a broken ship, in a broken society, in a universe that wasn't built."
Leru turned the knob on the wall and increased the pressure, angling her eyes down away from the stream. She placed her hands on the segmented walls around her as the wide jet splattered off her head onto them, careful not to pull any of them open as she rested her fingers on their latches.
Nick was too far away to emphatically feel, but she could still remember the feeling of his determined resignation. She punched the wall beneath the shower, gritting her teeth and growling beneath the rush of the water.
The intercom by her door sputtered something inaudible from beneath the rushing water. She turned the knob and set the flow slowly sputtering to a halt and stood dripping in the dim LED strip over the door behind her, watching the water disappear down the smooth panel beneath the grating.
"Leru? Hello, Lary?" Their pilot called over the buzzing speaker.
Leru opened one of the small, square compartments with a satisfying clunk that reminded her of the lockers at her old private security firm. She removed a threadbare towel barely big enough to wrap around her torso from the compartment beyond, and began drying her hair as she pushed the wobbly button beneath the speaker. "What's up, Jarett?"
"We're starting to see some activity in Estermere's security system, I think they might have flagged your fake ID."
"Great," she replied through the towel as she dragged it from her face down to her breasts. "Keep me updated for when I actually need to do something."
"Yikes, someone's antsy. You want to talk about it?"
Leru leaned her head against the wall, tossing the already soaked towel over her shoulder. Finally she pushed the call button. "Yeah, alright. Give me a few minutes, I'm just getting out of the shower."
"Oh, lucky you. I'm in the bath."
She shook her head with a smirk. "Gross, Jarett."
"Yeah, you're telling me. I'll see you in a few."