Inside the vault the glimmering threads of Sybil tower above the cot. Are you ready to resume your studies, Konstance? Our voyage continues, and it is paramount to maintain a daily—

Are people dying thirty feet away in their compartments? Are the corpses of everyone she has ever known waiting to be jettisoned through the airlock?

“Let me out, Sybil.”

I’m afraid the door remains sealed.

“But you can open it. You’re the one controlling it.”

Because I cannot say whether it is safe for you outside the vault, I am not capable of unsealing the door. My primary directive is to tend to the well-being—

“But you didn’t. You didn’t tend to the well-being of the crew, Sybil.”

With every passing hour, I become more confident that you are safe where you are.

“What if,” Konstance whispers, “I don’t want to be safe anymore?”

Rage next. She unscrews one of the cot’s aluminum legs and swings it at the walls, scratching and dimpling the metal. When that proves unsatisfying, she turns to the translucent tube that surrounds Sybil, beating it until the aluminum shears and her hands feel shattered.

Where has everyone gone and who is she to be the one who is still alive and for what reasons in the universe would Father ever leave his home and doom her to this wretched fate? The diodes in the ceiling are very bright. A drop of blood runs off a fingertip onto the floor. The tube protecting Sybil remains unscratched.

Do you feel better? asks Sybil. It is natural to express anger from time to time.

Why can’t healing happen as quickly as wounding? You twist an ankle, break a bone—you can be hurt in a heartbeat. Hour by hour, week by week, year by year, the cells in your body labor to remake themselves the way they were the instant before your injury. But even then you’re never the same: not quite.