Chapter One: Six Months Ago
Bella
“This cannot be right,” I grumbled, reading the reports about the oxygen recyclers while in my quarters. I swiped on the tablet, putting more dates for more data. “No!”
“What is it, Bells?” Rosalie Hale asked. She blinked up at me, her hazel eyes swirling with concern. She was my best friend. Her hair was long and blonde, shimmering like liquid gold. Her body was slender, but sexy. She did not look like an engineer, a trained mechanic, her job on the Ark. She looked like a … what were they called? Oh, right, a supermodel from before the bombs. “You’ve got that look.”
“What look?” I asked.
“That look where you’ve got the furrow between your brows and you look like the world is about explode,” Rose snorted. She arched a perfectly sculpted brow. “Talk to me.”
“Take a look at these oxygenation levels across the Ark,” I said, pushing the tablet to Rose. “Not to mention the CO2 levels in engineering section.”
“These numbers are not good,” Rose muttered. “Have there been an increase of … what’s that called where you don’t get enough oxygen?”
“Hypoxia,” I answered absently. “When I’m on shift with Dr. Cullen or my mom, I haven’t seen any increased patients with hypoxia. But, I’ve been working in the lab with Alec. We’re working with farm station to improve fertilizers, increasing the yield of the crops.”
“Can you access the medical records? You are a doctor in training,” Rose said, scowling at the reports.
“I am, but I cannot access a patient’s records without their expressed consent and only while I’m working on them. The only people who have access to everyone’s medical records are my mother and Dr. Cullen because they’re in charge of the medical ward,” I explained. “Do you have any ideas why the numbers are so shitty?”
“The oxygen scrubbers are nearly a hundred years old, Bells,” Rose said. “They need massive repairs and overhauls, but we don’t have the means to fix them. We need to space walk in order to fix them, but the suits are falling into disrepair. The best suit has an oxygen supply of about an hour. The walk would take at least twenty times that length to repair the scrubbers. To put it simply, there are too many people on the Ark and the Ark is falling apart.”
“If you had the materials to repair the oxygen scrubbers and we increased our production of crops, could this be fixable?” I asked, biting my lower lip. “I mean, this is our home.”
“This place is a rust bucket that was on its last legs when the stations linked together on Unity Day,” Rose deadpanned. “We’ve been putting band aids on bullet holes. This place is hemorrhaging in broken systems. We don’t see it much here, but on the lower levels and in the prison ward? Environmental systems are working overtime to keep the corridors heated and artificial gravity functioning. It’s in those sections that … people are dealing with low oxygen in their systems. What is called again?”
“Hypoxia,” I frowned. “What can we do?”
“We don’t have to do anything. This is for your father and counsel to figure out,” Rose argued, swiping my tablet from my hands. “We have bigger fish to fry … like the Unity Day celebration with all of the council members and their families. I’ve been eager to lay my eyes on some fresh meat.”
“I thought you were with Tyler Crowley,” I said.
“We broke up,” Rose huffed. “I caught him with that skank, Jessica Stanley. If she didn’t have the birth control shot, she’d be pregnant a hundred times over. He was pounding into her like an animal, and she loved it.”
“Ewwww,” I shuddered, wrinkling my nose. “This is why I’m single and plan on staying that way.”
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