Borealis Burning by Sechrest Audrey

Author:Sechrest, Audrey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

Lost somewhere in the SERVICE HALLS, ESAA SELTENTA SPACE STATION & RESORT, Geosync - QUO

15 | Bones and Glory

LANGSTON

Langston was on minute thirty of meandering through the squeaky-clean service hallways and felt confident that he could write a two-thousand-word epic poem about sanitation practices on space stations. Traversing through the endless maze of pristine corridors, Langston would be more than happy to eat a five-course meal off these floors. They were that clean. Everything smelled distantly of forests in far-off lands and disinfectants.

But no matter where he turned, each turn in the endless hallway looked identical. Not just uniform, but horror-movie level identical.

In all honesty, most hallways in space stations looked pretty similar, but there was something nightmarishly indistinguishable from every square inch of this section of the ship. Seamless, curved white walls pocked by portholes without a doorway insight. While the familiar peaks of the blue-black expanse of space outside should’ve given him a sense of ease and relaxation, it proved to unnerve him and enhance the overwhelming sense of… limbo. He’d been walking in a variety of directions in an attempt to find some staff people for what seemed like an hour. This hour had been fifteen going on twenty minutes, and he would know cause he was checking his watch religiously. Based on the basic map posted along the hallways, he should’ve been able to walk right into the staff barracks from where he exited the Santos Hall’s lobby. But nada.

He wouldn’t call himself lost (though that was a realistic assessment of his situation).

Langston could’ve sworn that he had heard a door closing several times as he walked through these halls. However, the click and swish of the door were always right beyond the next turn and out of reach. Each time he arrived near where he thought he heard the sound, there was neither a door nor a person anywhere in sight. Limbo.

Another five or so minutes of directionless walking and the clock said that he had to ping his locowear with his location. This moment wasn’t necessarily a breaking point for Langston, but it was clearly not a high point. He was half certain that he might be hallucinating the sound of doors closing and, despite his seventeen years on the force; he wasn’t able to locate the damn staff quarters. So, he wouldn’t say that he had quite reached the point of just comm calling Liya to get a GPS-guided map uploaded to his compad, but he was close. Of course, using the compad was impossible because of the authorized access lockout courtesy of Dean. But he kept on walking. He was an intelligent human and he could figure this out himself.

Because it wasn’t like his entire career was on the line here. Seven or eight minutes more minutes of searching wouldn’t kill him. Langston laughed out loud at his own internal dialogue cause damn if his sarcasm didn’t annoy himself sometimes. Again, he couldn’t emphasize to himself enough that this wasn’t a breaking point, and he wasn’t laughing at lame jokes while contemplating the nature of purgatory.

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