Orpheus

17

Riley took brisk steps as she strode through the sectors. She didn't know where she was going, nor did she care. She just wanted to be alone, process her emotions.

'Why were they talking about me?'

She was now brushing past the greens of the onboard cultivation area; the smell of the soil bringing back poignant memories of Earth. In a small heartache, she realized that she'd never feel natural soil again, never have her skin brush against the light of their sun. She soon thrust that thought train aside and kept pushing forward; she always did that.

'Why did you freak out? You're behaving like a teenager; they might have just been casually talking about you.' she asked herself.

'I don't know' came a meek, distant reply.

Her steps quickened in pace, each one landing with greater force than the next.

'You're just too scared Riles; too scared about the past repeating itself.' she told herself.

'Maybe I am, but is that irrational?'

The greens now transformed into hues of grey and white as she found herself hastening through the corridors of Sector 1: the supply room. Box after box whisked past her in strokes of grey as she walked through the narrow passage. She didn't pay much attention to it though; her mind was fixated solely on her thoughts.

'But why would Connor talk about my past?' Anger spread through Riley, like a flame growing in a dry field. 'Why did he have to go ahead and tell Owen about it?! This is MY thing to tell, MY story, and I should be the one to choose how people know about it!'

The passage seemed to widen as the number of boxes decreased. Riley's pace began weakening.

'What he did was wrong, and it hurts me. God knows why, but it hurts me.'

The room around her changed again, as she now found herself in the sickbay, in all of its harsh white lighting. Her footsteps chomped into the silence of the open space.

'Maybe Connor's sad about us, about how things ended...'

On instinct, she looked where the cryopods were kept.

'Or maybe he thinks it never did.'

At that thought, Riley stopped. The glass on pods glistened in the light, almost beckoning her. Without any concrete reason as to why, she found herself walking towards them. She stopped at the first cryopod on her left and looked in; she could see the face of Connor through the frosty glass. He looked sickly and pale in the cryofluid, almost as if he were dead.

'Maybe it's because we ARE cheating death, in cryo. Funny: how poetic the universe can be...'

Part of her wanted to yank Connor out and question him, but the rest of her mind didn't want to; she never really liked confrontations, and this was one she didn't want to confront any time soon.

'He looks so... serene.' she thought. 'Was I wrong? Was I wrong to break up with him? He was kind and sweet; a good boyfriend, and even after our break up he's been pretty cordial. He's respected boundaries.'

'Then why did he tell Owen?'

Riley's head throbbed; she had far too many questions than answers. She squeezed the bridge of her nose.

'Maybe I just need to work it off... yeah I'll do that.'

She walked past the cryopods, onward to the door on the left; she decided she'd rather go check on the embryos than overthink her mind off.