Page 8 of As You Wake, Break the Shell

And then—a gasp. A fighting gasp. Relief spread wavelike through the crowd. Sighs and groans. Scattered applause. Signy let out a breath as the man’s body remembered how to drag one in.

Another man standing across the way from Signy shook his head with scorn. “That’s why you never settle for a cheap mask,” he opined to no one.

His nearest neighbor took offense. “How does that help, asshole?”

“Who’re you calling ‘asshole’?” the first man said.

“You, I guess,” the second shot back.

Signy exhaled again, wearily, as two idiots wasted no time in making a bad scene worse. One shoved the other. Lazy insults flew. At last, a punch was swung. This go-round, Signy was the first to pull the emergency cord. She leaned back against the bulkhead, shut her eyes, and tapped her radiobuds on. Given the choice, she’d rather have the news.

Chapter 4 Cora, Fortune

Cora didn’t like Midtown. It was the oldest part of the Berth, and it acted like it. She lived in Flytown, where every dorm, shop, and dive bar was enclosed beneath a single bubbled dome. You could walk from place to place without ever going outside, which was great, because outside was where weather happened, and weather was balls. Wearing a suit and mask while planetside was also balls. If she was gonna dress like she was in space, she’d much rather be in space.

The mechanical wipers on her goggles worked hard as she navigated the brownish-grayish street. Everywhere she looked, Cora saw valiant attempts to make life less depressing: shop windows full of patterned indoor clothes, glowing signs advertising hot food and good air, wall murals painted by those willing to suffer the elements for art. But there was no material comfort that could fend off the four volcanoes constantly vomiting outside the crater—Tantrum, Clockwork, Pitchfork, and Bastard (that one was actually named “Bulwark,” but nobody except politicians and teachers called it that). Falling ash was in constant supply, and there was nothing in the Berth that wasn’t worn down by that nasty, glassy residue. The glowing shop signs were rendered ghostly smudges. The wall murals were bleached to varying degrees. Cora walked past one such piece being tended to by its artist, and she stopped for a sec to watch them work. She stood a respectful distance away from their drop cloth, marveling a little at the spread of paint canisters and brushes. A sweeper bot accompanied the artist, revealing strips of faded color as it hummed up and down the dirty wall. Cora couldn’t tell what the mural was of, given how much ash still cloaked the bulk of it. Fabric, maybe. Swirls of cloth. A tailor’s workbench? A dancer’s skirt? Something nice, in any case. Cora left the painter to it, throwing one last look over her shoulder as the artist applied a stroke of defiant purple to where its predecessor had been eaten away.

Cora passed her destination without noticing it, only doubling back once the map alert on her goggles told her she’d gone too far. Her mistake was immediately understandable, because all that greeted her when the map alert shifted from red to green was a nondescript airlock door. Cora’s brow furrowed. Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. The metal sign bolted beside the door confirmed that she was in the right place. J Street Plant Shop, read the font as uninspired as the name. Houseplants - Kitchen Starters - Tools and Supplies. Thick windows were installed on either side of the door, same as every other shop on this street, but unlike their neighbors, these were blacked out, painted over in solid matte. Other than the sign, there was no indication that this shop was selling anything. It didn’t seem to care whether you came in or not.

Cora shifted her weight and thought about leaving. Her reasons for being there were risky to begin with, and this scene felt sketchier by the second. She’d come seeking help, not trouble, and her skin crawled at the idea of some grungy den waiting behind the door.

A rapping sound rang out above and behind her. Cora didn’t pay attention to it at first—the Berth was nothing if not noisy—but the sound grew louder and more insistent. She turned, looked around, and finally spotted a man waving cheerfully to her through an apartment window on the second floor. Even at a distance, he was maybe the oldest person Cora had ever seen, gray and wrinkled to a degree that threw her for a loop. He had to be at least seventy, if you could believe in people living that long. His window was as clean as anything could be, and he was framed by warm light and cheery furniture. He looked like he was in a room that smelled good.

The old man continued to wave.

Cora raised her gloved hand and waved, questioningly.

The old man grinned, then pointed in Cora’s direction. Not at her. Behind her.

Cora glanced over her shoulder to the plant shop. She looked back at the man and jerked her thumb toward the door. This? she asked wordlessly.

The old man nodded up and down, exaggerating his gestures. He pointed at the houseplants filling his window, both resting on the sill and hanging from the ceiling. He then gave her two thumbs up.

Cora pointed at the shop door once more, then flashed him a reciprocal thumbs-up, cocking her head in question. Yeah? It’s good?

More nodding. More smiling. The man’s thumbs stayed up.

Cora returned his grin, even though it wouldn’t be visible behind her mask. She gave him a nod, a wave. Thanks.

The old man bowed his head. You’re welcome.

Cora turned around, had a brief thought about how weird the day already was, then opened the door.

The airlock she stepped into was standard for a shop front outside of Flytown. Her boots clanked against the metal grate as she positioned herself on the stenciled foot markers and raised her arms out to the sides. An indicator light glowed red on the adjacent wall. Cora held still. The fans activated with a mechanical trill, blasting the ash from the top of her head down through the slats in the floor. She turned her arms this way and that, slowly, habitually, letting the blown air clean her suit. Even after the fans turned off and the light switched green, she knocked the toes of her boots against the grate and brushed off her limbs with gloved palms, just to be sure. Always dust yourself off best as you can, her mom had told her once. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it’s polite.

Cora didn’t remember much of her mom. When she did, it was always funny scraps like that.

There were clunks and thunks, followed by the rush of bad air being sucked out and replaced with good. The inner door slid open, and with it, Cora’s jaw dropped.

The old man had been right. Two thumbs way up.

Cora forgot to leave the airlock at first, only startled into moving when the door hurried her along with a series of irritated beeps. She loosened her boots, leaving them in the airlock where they belonged. She took a step forward in her indoor shoes, then stood motionless, gaping. A few seconds passed as she tried to make more sense of her surroundings beyond the initial overwhelming impression of green.

The shop wasn’t huge. It wasn’t fancy, or at least not in a way that made Cora feel uncomfortable. But holy shit, she’d never seen so many plants in one place—not since field trips to the farms as a kid, and that had been at a distance, behind thick windows, and all she’d really paid attention to were the harvester drones. In her everyday life, plants just existed in a mug-sized pot or two in a friend’s bunk, or the small boxes in the kitchens and the recovery rooms. This shop was something else entirely. It was . . . it was a . . .

Cora scrounged memories for comparison, and what came to mind was a pair of childhood words learned from stories on the radio, words she’d never had cause to use.

This was a jungle. This was lush.