Eden's electric voice came promptly at the waking hour.

"I require an extended rest period today," I said. It was a small miracle I kept the waver from my voice.

'Rest well, Lyra.'

There was no rest for me. I doubted I would ever truly rest again. After staring at the journals, I'd turned to the logs of the previous crew only to find nothing but standard reports. No personal logs on record. Nothing to reveal the secrets of the crew before us, or the person who left the blank journal in my room. Such a personal touch, I'd thought, but none of the others wrote in such an old style format. Why would they think to leave the journal for me?

What happened to the personal logs? Not even a captain's log, restricted or otherwise appeared in the ship's records. Weren't captain's require by some ritualistic code of conduct to keep a personal log? There were other details off kilter. The logs themselves only went back twenty years. Eden told us we were at the fifth cycle crew. Where were the rest of the logs? There should be at least fifty years of recorded activity but the rest was wiped clean, as if it never existed. It didn't make sense. 

After hours of pouring over the old logs, I pulled up the readouts of the sleepers again, looking at them from a fresh perspective. The answer was here, that was what that niggling doubt was trying to say. Like worrying at a fraying thread, I kept looking them over again and again, waiting for them to unravel. Normal, every single one of them normal. Nothing amiss. Nothing out of the ordinary. I pulled the day to day records up of the first pod in the row, staring at them until the readouts blurred together.

I fell back on the bed, rubbing my eyes. Maybe I needed to attempt a few hours of rest, dreams be damned. A few hours of actual sleep would help me see whatever pattern I failed to pick up on...

I stopped rubbing my eyes, waiting for the thought to finish to its end. I was looking for patterns. What patterns could I possibly hope to find when the damn read out was the same day in and day out.

No, not the same.

I looked at the screen again, at the daily readouts side by side. Not the same at all. Identical, down to the last digit.

The hairs rose on the back of my neck. The human body was a fluctuating creature. It was why vital signs were given a range of normalcy rather than an exact number. An identical day to day read out was impossible. I swallowed hard and pulled up the next pod. Unlike the journals the night before, I didn't need to go through all the read outs to realize they suffered the same impossibility. What did it mean? Were the sleepers in the pods to begin with?

The need to find answers was a physical itch on my skin. If I left my quarters I risked running into Eden, but I had to know. I didn't have to know alone.

Leo's voice sounded irate as ever over the comm. "Weren't you taking an extended rest?"

"I was going over the read outs from yesterday sir. I think I found something. Could you send Cass to the galley to join me?"

I don't know why I requested Cass instead of the captain himself. It must have been a matter of trust.

"Eden is already there. Why not ask for her assistance?"

"No!" I bit down before any more panic crept into my voice. "I just need Cass to help me verify a few things. I won't take her from her duties for long."

"No more than one hour," the captain snapped.

***

My body felt the effects of two consecutive nights without rest. The corridor wobbled at the edges of my sight. What if I was hallucinating everything? This was why I wanted Cass with me. She kept me grounded, and she understood me. She was the only crew member I'd managed to bond with in the past two years.

Was it really only two years?

I kept a brisk pace to the galley, scratching my arms as I went. We never met the crew before us. Only Eden was there to greet us when we woke. She told us they were already asleep in their pods. Were they? What was I hoping to find here? None of the working theories in my head ended well.

I wanted to be wrong.

"There you are," Cass did a double take when she saw me. "Lyra, you look awful. Are you ill?"

I shook off her greeting, pushing past her to the first row of pods. "I need your help," I said, lowering the pod from the wall. She eyed the capsule dubiously.

"Of course, but you know my expertise isn't with this technology."

"I need you to help me open it."

Cass gaped at me. "Are you serious? Why would you do that? Where's Eden?"

"We have to do this without Eden," I said, running my fingers along the input panel. The code was hard wired into my memory. Part of my training, or so Eden said.

Cass was shaking her head, taking a step back. "Lyra, that kind of shock to the system could kill the person inside. We need to do this in the medical bay."

"We need to do this now," I whispered, punching in the code before I lost my nerve.

Cass slapped at my hands, yelling my name as the pod hissed, the air pressure normalizing to the outside environment.

"What are you doing? Stop this! Have you lost your damn mind?"

Her hands pulled at me, trying to tug me back. I should have explained myself, but I wasn't thinking clearly. I knew I wasn't thinking clearly. What if I just killed someone in my self induced haze? What if I hadn't?

I lifted the lid.

Cass fell back with a scream, clapping her hands over her mouth.

I couldn't blame her. I might have done the same if it wasn't something I expected to find.

Inside the pod lay the sleeper, the body nothing more than a mummified husk. I didn't need to open the rest to guess the fate of t he others.

'You opened one,' said Eden.