Page 41 of The Mars House

Fine.

January seemed to be a very manageable, polite person, if you could get past his sinister sense of humour, and when Sasha saw the footage of him going down on one knee to give Gale his cage key, it had been a relief, mixed up with a strange kind of sorrow. Seeing chivalry always made them sad.

But, however chivalrous and gentle, a giant polar bear was still a giant polar bear, and an Earthstronger was still an Earthstronger, but more nerve-racking than a bear, because you couldn’t shoo a Senator Consort out of a room with a broom. The background checks had shown that January had never had so much as a speeding ticket, been respectful and quiet since nursery school, and nowhere, at all, had even the most diligent searches managed to come up with anyone who had anything bad to say about him, except a dancer called Terry. Terry said January was a right prick who had fat-shamed him for eating too much cake. Not out loud, obviously, but he gave you looks, and managed to wear support bandages on his wrists for the overhead lifts very conspicuously.

After that call, Sasha had to have a bit of a sit-down in order to get past the horrible image of January trying to lift Giant Terry, who wasn’t fat, but was built like a water buffalo. It gave Sasha a new fear of the strength of January’s bones. Somebody who could lift Terry over their head could probably break a normal person in half if they breathed too heavily.

Anyway, looking annoyed was clearly the worst thing January had ever done. It didn’t matter. He could still do something bad, if he hated the Senator enough, and Sasha wasn’t convinced that he had magically forgotten being torn apart on a live broadcast and then sent to prison.

So, Sasha walked the night watch, zigzagging up and down the residential floors, and trying not to fret.

Early on in the night, there were still people around, mostly drunk from the party. But once two o’clock came around, the stragglers were less frequent, and after three, the place was quiet, apart from the last of the really determined drinkers still in the dining room on the ground floor.

Sasha passed the Senator’s door every hour, for no particular reason except to quiet down their own nervy thoughts. It wasn’t as though January could go on a rampage from inside a locked cage.

As they sometimes did on the fifth floor, doors opened and closed by themselves. There was a hint—this was normal too—of a smell that didn’t belong. Nothing bad at all, they were never bad smells. Sometimes it was wine. Sometimes it was laundry powder. Today, it was an outside scent—cold, dust, the leather of a heavy-weather heat suit. If Sasha had had their eyes closed, they would have assumed someone had just come in from the frozen night outside and walked straight by them, but of course they hadn’t.

It had started a couple of years ago, and since then Sasha had investigated every draught and circuit in the house, and scrutinised every camera feed, to no avail. Quite factually, Mx Francis said Songshu was haunted. It was easy to scoff at, until you were in the corridors in the witching hours.

Sasha had always tried to crush any ghost rumours. It would only fuel speculation about Max. But right down deep in their skeleton, it was unnerving, however loudly they said to other people it was just a weird old house with a funny airflow.

So it made them jump when, at five, the Senator half fell out of their bedroom door, ashen.

“Senator! Are you all right?”

“What? Yes. Yes, I’m fine. I, er . . .” Gale sighed. “I have trouble sleeping.”

“Trouble,” Sasha echoed. It was one of the things they loved about Gale, but which was also terrifying when it was your job to look after them: that Gale was one of those people who would call being murdered “inconvenient.” They shied away from grand words like “terror” and “tragedy.” If you watched a news broadcast about anything bad with Gale, it could be quite funny. The victim wasn’t viciously shot; they were shot, shooting in itself is vicious, and no, they didn’t die tragically, death is tragic, show me someone dying untragically if it doesn’t involve a selfie and the precarious bit of Machu Picchu. And so, when they said things like “trouble,” Sasha was inclined to interpret that as “blinding horror.”

“Sleep paralysis,” Gale said unwillingly. Even in hospital, before the prosthetic, they had hated admitting to being in any sort of pain. Sasha had had to threaten to force them to watch a dubbed edition of an American superhero movie19 just to make them use the morphine drip. “I wake up in the night and I think something’s kneeling on my chest, only when I turn on the light there never is.” Kasha hurried out of the open door, looking purposeful. “Not the dog,” Gale added, reading Sasha’s mind.

Kasha, who had always been peculiar, sat down facing the wrong way, looking up at someone who wasn’t there, pretending with her whole being to be pleased to see them.

“She works hard, she’s allowed imaginary friends,” Gale said, but they both paused as Kasha shot off after something invisible.

Sasha wished Kasha wouldn’t do that on the nights with the doors and the strange smells.

“Let me take you up to the infirmary, Senator,” Sasha pleaded, knowing the answer would be no. “Dr Okonkwo must be able to give you something. It’s a special sort of hallucination, isn’t it, sleep paralysis?”

Incredibly, Gale hesitated. They looked much younger when they did that.

“Please. Something’s not right, if you’re waking up scared at five in the morning.”

Neither of them said, Well, marrying an Earthstronger after being ripped in half by an Earthstronger will probably do the trick.

“Dr Okonkwo already knows, they think I just need therapy,” Gale said, as though Dr Okonkwo had suggested essence of powdered rhino horn. And then, very quiet, “Good night, Mx Martinez.”

“I wish you’d call me Sasha,” said Sasha, feeling painfully, helplessly protective.

“You’ll have to call me Aubrey, then.”

“No.”

Gale gave them the ghost of a smile, tipped a very slight bow, and pressed the door closed.

19 Gale thought that people who were too lazy to read subtitles should be disposed of and made into nutritious mulch for crops.

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