My mind was in a haze as the sound of voices around me started to become apparent. There were several people speaking with various levels of concern in their voice

  “Do you think it’s really possible?” I heard an unfamiliar woman ask.

  “I think with everything going on, I don’t know what’s possible anymore, I just know we can’t be too careful right now” I heard Abel say in response.

  My eyelids felt like they were made of lead as I tried to open them to find a bright set of lights on the ceiling above me.

  I was laying on my back, looking up at the ceiling as I tried to sit up but I felt like I was tied down to whatever surface I was laying on, unable to move.

  I tried to say something but the air got caught in my throat, making me cough.

  The talking stopped as several melodians came into view from all sides of my vision, looking down at me, my eyes starting to focus on them.

  “There she is” I heard Abel say as one of the figures stepped closer to me.

  “W-where am I?” I asked.

  “Better question” Abel said as she leaned forward, filling my field of view “where do you think you are?”

  “I… I don’t know. I was with Flint, we were riding down and… I don’t know what happened” I said.

  “Well, let me fill you in. We’ve been watching you for a while now Tess. At first you confused us. Walking around the surface with a flight suit, not talking to anyone and just wandering around. Until you met up with Nori. You two seem to be spending a lot of time with each other. We didn’t want to let you know we were watching quite yet but you left us without any other options after that stunt you pulled up at the party. So we brought you to where we could be outside of their view. We’d like to know what you’ve been doing with Nori” she said in a stern voice..

  “Nothing, she’s been really nice to me and she liked having someone to talk to” I said, still trying to get a handle over the situation.

  “Tess, we know where you’re from” she said in a more serious tone.

  I opened my eyes a bit wider, seeing there were a lot more melodians around me than I’d originally thought, some of which were still wearing their gravity games suits.

  I felt my hearts start to race, wondering what they knew about me, how they knew it, if they’d told anyone about me. I wanted to get up and run but I couldn’t move, my chest feeling heavy as I struggled to just breathe.

  Abel nodded “We know you’re from Lifeboat nine.”

  I blinked, my fear turning to confusion “I am?” I asked.

  “Don’t play dumb with us Tess. We’ve been watching you since you first arrived on the surface. You arrived at the same time we got to this planet. We know you were sent here from Lifeboat nine”

  “I was?” I asked, feeling like I was starting to get out of my stupor.

  “And we know you’ve been talking to Nori about us” she said.

  “I have?” I asked, genuinely confused about the accusation.

  “We just want to know why you’re working with her” she continued “We know you’ve got plans and we want to know what those are.”

  “I do?”

  She scowled, reaching out and grabbing the front of my shirt with a firm grip.

  “Tess, do I sound like I’m playing games right now? What are you here for? What have you been telling Nori and why did they send you here?” she asked.

  “I… What?” I asked.

  Abel was about to say something when I heard Flint’s voice speak out.

  “She doesn’t know anything. I told you. Whatever happened during the transfer made her forget.”

  I looked to my left to see Flint looking at Abel as he talked.

  “How would you know that Flint?” Abel asked.

  “I’ve tried to tell you but you didn’t believe me” he said “there’s SO MUCH you could learn from me if you could just listen to me for once.”

  “Flint” she said in a stern, unwavering voice “I need you to be quiet right now. Tess. I need you to start talking.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what you think I’m doing with Nori but we’ve just been talking about life… things. She’s been going through a lot and she wanted someone to talk to” I said.

  Abel suddenly lurched forward, punching the spot next to my head with a loud metalic thump, sending it ringing through my ears.

  “Enough!” I heard an unfamiliar voice from behind Abel.

  A male melodian stepped forward, his fur white under his brown and blue loose fitting clothes. He didn’t look as aggressive as the others but his presence seemed to cause the other melodians to shrink a little.

  “I’m sorry my colleagues are putting you through this stress Tess. We don’t mean you any harm, we just wanted to know what’s going on and how you’re involved. I feel the answer is likely a lot less nefarious as everyone else has been suspecting, so I’ve called everyone here so we could get some answers.”

  I huffed.

  “Was it necessary to tie me up like this?” I asked.

  The crowd turned to each other with a confused look on their faces as the man spoke up again.

  “We haven’t tied you up Tess, we’re just on one of the bottom floors of the ship” he said.

  Flint leaned forward, placing his hand behind my head and started lifting me up. To my surprise, he was right, I wasn’t being held by anything, but I felt like my body was impossibly heavy.

  As I sat up on the table I started to feel light headed for a moment, but Flint’s hands found themselves on my shoulders as I steadied myself.

  With a better view of my surroundings I could see where I was a lot better.

  We were in a small room with windows looking out on three sides at what looked like a massive warehouse. For the first time since arriving, I saw several of the robots outside the windows a few hundred feet away moving boxes and piloting vehicles around the massive storage facility. In two directions I could see the landscape dramatically change from the warehouse to a storage facility with a familiar hallway layout I’d been used to seeing on the lower floors of the ship. In the third direction I could see the ground curve upward and out of sight, but with the tall ceilings of the warehouse and with how far from the center of the ship we were, I could see at least a mile until everything disappeared around the curve.

  The room we were in was at least a few thousand square feet and reminded me of a mechanic’s garage with tools all over the walls and giant lifts dotted throughout the room. I couldn’t see much of anything else as my new view allowed me to see there were hundreds of melodians standing around me as I sat up on a small metal table in the middle of the room.

  “Why…” I tried to ask, my breathing becoming all the more difficult from my seated up position “Did you bring me here?”

  He cleared his throat.

  “We wanted to bring you to a place where they couldn’t monitor us. I had a feeling we wouldn’t be able to ask you anything of substance with them around. So, now that we’re in a more private setting. We’d like to know why you’re here.”

  “I’m sorry” I said, speaking slowly as I remembered what Nori had said earlier “I think you’ve made a mistake. I didn’t come from Lifeboat nine, I live right here in sector five.”

  The melodians in front of me smiled, the old man putting his hands on his hips.

  “Yeah okay that’s much more believable” he said with a chuckle.

  “Funny enough” Flint spoke up “She’s not lying. But I don’t think she knows what she’s saying.”

  “Flint that doesn’t make any sense” Abel said.

  Flint leaned in a bit from behind, his hands still on my shoulders.

  “Tess, just tell them. They’re gonna figure it out anyway” he said.

  I was at a point where I didn’t know who thought what or who I was but I had a feeling Flint something the others didn’t.

  “Flint can you stop wasting our time?” Abel said, stomping her foot.

  “Abel, please” the man said “let’s hear what he has to say.”

  She grumbled but didn’t say anything else.

  “I don’t think she remembers anything and I think you’re all worried about nothing” he said.

  The old man looked to everyone in the room, then back to me as he said “My suspicion is that you were sent here as an ambassador of sorts, but something went wrong and you lost your memory. Maybe there was an accident, who knows? The question I have for you is: have you been watching us?”

  I decided not to correct him about what he was saying and simply shook my head in response.

  “Have you been talking to Nori about us?” he asked, his eyes locked to mine as he spoke.

  “No. I don’t even know who you are…” I said.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  He smiled, turning to the others in the room.

  “I believe she’s telling the truth. We have no reason to fear this person, she is a guest aboard this ship and we should treat her as such. Does anyone object?” he asked the crowd.

  Abel crossed her arms but said nothing, the rest of the crowd seemed to relax a bit. It was clear how much trust they put into this melodian.

  “Very good!” he continued “now that your fears should hopefully be resolved, I’d like to speak to our guest in private for a bit.”

  The other melodians all looked back at me for a few seconds, making me feel incredibly small, but they eventually turned around and began filing out of the room.

  Flint let go of my shoulders, making sure I was steady before turning around, but the old man cleared his throat, grabbing his attention “you stay, but close us off if you could” he said quietly as the others all filed out of the room, congregating on the other side of the windows.

  Flint nodded, making his way to the door after the last melodians filed out, closing the door behind them, then pressing a button next to the door.

  The windows all began fading to black, taking just a few seconds to completely cut us off from the other side.

  I felt like I should have been nervous, or thinking of some excuse for why I had to leave, but the old man’s demeanor felt calming, he didn’t seem like he meant me any harm and Flint was one of the few people I felt like I could trust on the ship.

  Despite feeling confident that I was safe, I was still nervous about what they wanted to talk about.

  “Sorry about the theatrics” he said as he reached underneath the table I was sitting on, pulling out a small stool “I wanted to have this conversation in private from the beginning but they needed to hear it from you.”

  “Sorry but who are you exactly?” I asked.

  “Oh! My apologies, how rude of me! My name is Gron. As for all of us, we call ourselves the listeners.”

  “The listeners?” I asked.

  He nodded “Correct. As you can probably guess, we find our members based on how well they understand the music that plays at the gravity games. Most of us are members of the games, but we pay attention to those in the crowd who seem to understand it. We’re not entirely sure what sets us apart or why, but those who use the assembler less than others tend to have the gift of understanding better than others. Aside from your attire, we noticed you were different because we never saw you using the assembler.”

  “Oh” I said, trying to think on my feet “I think mine broke during the transfer.”

  He smiled as I heard Flint laugh from behind me.

  “That’s good” Flint said “You can tell that to the others if they ever ask.”

  “What are you…” I started to ask.

  Gron shook his head with a knowing look as he interrupted me “Tess you don’t have to lie to us. Flint figured you out right from the start. He came to me shortly after your first uh… Encounter.”

  “Hehe” I heard Flint laugh in a nervous tone as he made his way next to Gron “Yeah I wasn’t supposed to do that. I got tired of waiting. I’d been sent to follow you for so many kilorots and I didn’t want to wait any longer.”

  “Curiosity got the better of him. He wanted to know what you kept pulling in and out of that bag of yours. I didn’t believe him at first, but shortly after we started getting the first shipments of items from earth and they were just like the ones you carry with you.”

  I sat up further, suddenly realizing I didn’t have my bag with me any longer.

  “Don’t worry it’s right here” Flint said as he reached under the table, pulling it out and setting it next to me, letting me relax a bit.

  “Can you tell me what you think you know?” I asked, not wanting to give anything away in case they were bluffing.

  He smiled “I’m glad you asked. Well, we know you came from earth, which is why you didn’t talk to anyone at first. You must have been young when you arrived, which is why you didn’t remember our language. You found your way back here somehow and we suspect you’re a survivor of lifeboat seven. Is that all correct?”

  “Uh… Wow. Okay so… You’ve known about me all this time, why didn’t you reach out to me?” I asked.

  The old man crossed his arms, his eyebrows furling a bit “We would have. But your proximity to Nori is… Let’s just say it’s problematic. I’m sure you don’t know any better, which is why I don’t hold anything against you, but the others don’t trust you. If they knew you were a survivor of lifeboat seven, they wouldn’t want to let you go.”

  “It looks like I wasn’t as invisible as I thought…” I said half to him and half to myself.

  “Very little gets past us Tess. We have eyes everywhere” he said.

  It made sense, but one part of what he said felt off to me, “but what does lifeboat seven have to do with any of this?” I asked.

  The old man sighed “There are… Disturbing rumors going around amongst the mechara. Currently it’s only those at the top, but the word will get out at some point or another. Which is what I wanted to ask you about.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, unsure if I’d have any information he didn’t already have.

  He looked sad, his ears slumping a bit to the side “My son Maercob, he was a member of the listeners. He was sent down there shortly after we arrived, but he never came back. You arrived shortly after that. Did you see him? Was he kept on earth for some reason?” he asked.

  I felt as though my breath was taken away as he finished his sentence. I hadn’t even thought of the melodian who had died before I got on the ship. Everything was so new and so different that I didn’t think about the encounter at all.

  “I’m so sorry to tell you but… He… Was killed…” I said, trying to keep my composure.

  He looked down at the floor, a frown on his face “That’s what I feared… May… May I ask how that happened?”

  I sighed “Before you all arrived I was being hunted by a woman named Sloan” I said, causing both Gron and Flint to suddenly look up at me with wide eyes.

  “S-Sloan? She’s alive?” Flint asked as a look of terror came across his face like I’d never seen from him before.

  “So the rumors are true…” Gron said quietly to himself before continuing “Did you speak to her? What happened?” he asked, his demeanor changing in an instant as I felt the intensity in his voice.

  “I… I never spoke to her, no. She was hunting me, she tried to kill me but I didn’t know who she was or why she would be after me. After the ship arrived they got into an argument…”

  “What did they say?” Gron asked.

  “I don’t know, I didn’t remember this language until I spent time on the ship, I just know it sounded intense, they started yelling at each other, then… She killed him…” I said, my voice trailing off.

  He nodded “Then what happened?”

  “Well, while all of that was happening, the door started to close and I ran out from where I was hiding and got in. She tried to stop me but I managed to get past her. Then… Well, I showed up here” I said.

  “This is terrible news, but I had a feeling this was the case” he said quietly as he rubbed his forehead.

  “I’m sorry” I responded “But who exactly is Sloan?” I asked, causing Flint to shiver at the sound of her name.

  “Oh right, you must have been so young when it all happened” Gron said, an exhausted sadness in his voice as he spoke “She’s the melodian responsible for the destruction of lifeboat seven.”

  My eyes went wide as he said it “She’s… the one who did it? But why?”

  “It’s so hard to say. One of the reasons we’re able to find out so much about what goes on in this ship is because the mechara think so little of us. We can go anywhere, listen in on just about any conversation and they don’t think twice about it. We believe Sloan noticed the same thing and used that invisibility to get involved with some very bad people. Hatred. Hatred fills her thoughts and guides her choices. She’s done terrible things and has always put herself in places where she could have more power, more control and to hurt more people. We don’t know why she started on that path but when the opportunity presented itself, she decided to take the entire lifeboat down.”

  “So she’s been down there the whole time? She didn’t even die with the ship?” Flint asked, pacing back and forth as he continued “what if she’s not done? What if she wants to do the same thing to us? Do they even know she’s down there?”

  “Flint, please let’s not get worked up. I’m sure they have that under control. We have our own problems to deal with, let them deal with the monster” Gron said.

  “But what if… What if she does something? She’s done so many unspeakable things, she probably never stopped! We have to tell everyone, we have to…” he started to say.

  “ENOUGH” Gron said in a scolding tone.

  It felt like the room got colder for a moment, an overwhelming silence filling the air.

  Gron cleared his throat.

  “As I was saying. There’s no need to alert others. The high command will have that under control and we have our own problems to deal with. For now, this stays between us. Understood?”

  Flint and I both nodded to him, causing him to smile and letting the tension out of the air.

  There was one part of his story that didn’t make any sense to me.

  “Your son, he was a listener too?” I asked.

  Gron sat back a bit “He… Was. Yes. One of the best actually. That’s why they decided to send him. They wanted to send someone strong, someone who could be independent in case something went wrong. By the sounds of it, he may have been a little too independent.”

  I turned to my bag, pulling open the side pocket and revealing the iridescent patch I’d had with me when I first landed “Did he have one of these too?”

  The old man tilted his head, looking confused.

  “How did you get that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I landed with it. It’s a long story, but I thought this represented me being an orphan? So, why did your son have one? Why do all of the listeners have it?” I asked.

  He nodded “Ah, that makes sense. Back in your day, before my time, those patches signified orphans. But when lifeboat eight became the primary ship in our fleet, the patch took on a new meaning. It symbolizes the listeners. I don’t know why it was chosen, but we’ve had it for a long time.”

  It was confusing to hear the old man refer to ‘my time’ as an era so far in the past that he didn’t remember it, but I had to keep in mind that the disaster happened a long time ago, I was more or less frozen in time for a large chunk of it.

  “So you weren’t always the leader of the listeners?” I asked.

  He smiled “I’m still not. I’m just a messenger that seems to command enough authority to keep this bunch of folks in line” he said, gesturing toward the blackened windows.

  “If you’re not the leader, then who is?” I asked.

  “Ah, I’m so glad you asked” he said “That’s actually why I’ve been so willing to tell you all of this. We need your help Tess. In all honesty, we have no idea who our leader is. We started recruiting people from the gravity games as a way of seeing who had these abilities and who didn’t. We’ve had instructions passed down on who to follow, where to avoid, where to go to find information. The only thing we know is that it’s someone near the top. They’re helping us with our mission, but we don’t know who it is.”

  “And what exactly is your ‘mission’?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately I can’t tell you everything Tess. I’m sure you understand” he said “But that brings us to our current issue. As of late, they’ve gone silent and we need to figure out who it is. That’s where you come in.”

  “Me? How am I supposed to help with that?” I asked.

  “That’s why I kept Flint here. We have a suspicion of who it is, but the answer unfortunately lies in a place where we haven’t been able to go” he said.

  “I thought you said you guys could go anywhere” I said.

  He bit his lip, looking over to Flint, who nodded and looked at me.

  “Using the supplies we’ve been getting from earth, the mechara have put a sort of… bubble around lifeboat seven” Flint said, “They’ve filled it with nitrogen and with the help of the assembler they’ve been sending melodians into the lifeboat to start the reconstruction project. It’s the entire point of stopping here around earth. They needed the supplies to make it happen. It’s taken a while to get to the point where they could get the basic electrical systems back up and running, but it looks like they’ve gotten there.”

  I crossed my arms, surprised they hadn’t mentioned the black shard, whatever that was. It seemed like they had no intention of stopping at earth until they saw that Sloan was alive and likely had it with her. They didn’t seem to want to stop at earth before that.

  I was about to mention it but thought better of it. If they were going to keep secrets from me, it would probably be best to keep something to myself in case I needed the leverage later.

  The old man spoke up, continuing where Flint had left off.

  “As soon as we were able to send people inside, we got Flint on board, disguised as an assembler user, to find some information. It was a risk. In fact, it nearly didn’t work out. Thankfully Flint is a bright kid, he figured out how to talk his way through the security, however it’s not something we can count on again. Frustratingly though, as he got onto the ship he realized that he was blocked. Whenever he tried to open a door, it simply wouldn’t recognize him. It would act as though he wasn’t even there. This seems to be happening to all of the melodians they send in there. It’s the same thing that happened to you Tess, when you tried to scan your hand here on lifeboat eight. The fact is, you’re not registered in this lifeboat’s system. So when you try to scan your hand, it doesn’t recognize it. The same is happening to Flint on lifeboat seven. If your identification hasn’t been transferred, that means it’s still on lifeboat seven. So we’ll need your help getting through to where we need to go.”

  “Wait… Sorry” I said as I was processing what they were telling me “So you’re saying…”

  The old man nodded, “We’re asking you to return to lifeboat seven.”