discovery

DMITRIY woke early. He usually did these days; a quirk of his anxiety combined with the vast unknown of space that made sleeping incredibly hard. He sighed, lying flat on his back with his hands at his side. He didn't even check the time on the alarm clock sitting next to his bed. He didn't need to. It was early, early enough that no light shone in from the hallway, but not so early that he felt really tired. Somewhere between four and six, he thought. The official wakeup call was at six-thirty, which gave him plenty of time to get to Paris' office before he ate breakfast.

Whether he wanted to go to her office didn't matter—Dmitriy needed his meds, especially if he wanted to be useful today. Which he did. He took pride in doing his job well, and after the chewing-out he'd heard that Bellamy got yesterday, he needed to be on top of things.

But for now, he stared at his ceiling, letting time tick by. One minute....two minutes.... Dmitiry hated this. He hated being woken up by anxiety in the middle of the night, hated the constant negativity inside his own head. It wasn't fun to live with; not even close.

The hours dragged on, slower than Dmitriy thought possible, until finally his alarm went off at six on the dot, and he rolled out of bed, literally, catching himself on the balls of his feet before he hit the floor. There was another long day ahead.

Twenty minutes later, he was heading towards the infirmary. From past experience, he knew that Paris would be in her office already, dressed, fed, and ready for the day. She was usually the first person in the mess hall every morning, though Dmitriy couldn't understand it. He stayed in bed as long as he possibly could. But then, Paris was weird as fuck.

It didn't take him long to reach the infirmary, and Dmitriy knocked twice on the door before pushing it open.

The room beyond was completely dark. That alone was enough to make Dmitriy frown. He squinted into the darkness, trying his best to see anything within. One of his hands groped at the wall to the left of the door, certain there was a lightswitch there. Why hadn't Paris turned the lights on?

There! His hand found the slick plastic of the switch, and he flicked it upwards. Light flooded the room—sterile, clean, and organized neatly, just as Dmitriy had seen it every other time he was forced to come in here.

Not everything was perfectly in place, though. One wheeled table was knocked out of place, the instruments arranged on its steel top scattered and jumbled. It wasn't like Paris to be so disorganized. Dmitiry navigated around the table, heading for the curtain dividing the room as he called, "Doctor Mays? Are you here?" There was no response. Dmitiry pulled aside the curtain to continue on to Paris' office, hoping she was working within.

She wasn't. In fact, she was lying at his feet, dark eyes staring upward, wide open in what looked like surprise. Blood stained her crisp white shirt, which was punctured in two places right next to each other—right over her heart—and spattered over her face. More of it spread beneath her, glistening, sticky, red. Dmitriy felt his head grow light, and his grip on the curtain tightened.

Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no.

"Paris?" Dmitriy asked, though his voice was more of a whisper than anything else, hoarse with shock. The woman sprawled at his feet didn't respond. All was still.

And then, it wasn't, as Dmitiry stumbled backwards, releasing the curtain, his trembling hands reaching to cover his face. Dead. The word kept echoing in his mind, louder every second, and Dmitriy closed his eyes to block out the sight. It didn't work. He still saw Doctor Mays' broken body splayed out on the floor even with his eyes closed.

He didn't know how long he stood there, hands over his face, broken body—corpse—haunting him behind his eyelids. All he knew was that he couldn't deal with this.

—

ARMIE hadn't expected to find Dmitriy in the infirmary, but the astronomer wasn't in his quarters, so this was the next place to look, according to Magda, who spent the most amount of time with Dmitriy and claimed he'd planned to come here. And of course, Magda was right, for there Dmitriy was, standing a few feet away from the curtain dividing the room. Dr. Mays was nowhere to be seen. Armie frowned.

"Dmitriy?" he asked, voice quiet enough not to startle him. The astronomer turned, hands falling from his face, staring at Armie with vacant, wide eyes. Armie's eyes narrowed, and he stepped closer to his crewmate, forehead creased in worry. "Dmitriy, what happened?"

Dmitriy shook his head, and Armie swore he saw tears gather in his eyes. Armie stepped close to him, put a hand on either of Dmitriy's upper arms, squeezing a little in an attempt to ground him. He wasn't good at this, didn't really know how to handle it, but he'd seen this done in movies before, so hopefully it worked. "What's going on with you?" Armie asked, making his voice as soft and hopefully comforting as he could.

Dmitriy looked right into Armie's eyes and whispered. "She's dead," in such a broken way that if Armie was actually good at this, he would have hugged him. Instead, he pushed Dmitriy towards the door and pulled back the curtain.

—

THE captain paced up and down on the bridge, arms crossed. Riley watched along with the rest of the crew, gnawing on her bottom lip. Someone had died. Not only died, but been very clearly murdered, and no one but the killer knew who'd done it. Riley couldn't help but be anxious.

In the three short hours since Armie had informed the captain of Doctor Mays' death, her body was cleaned up and moved so the infirmary could still be used. The crew was gathered on the bridge for an "emergency meeting" as Captain Malik had called it, waiting to see what would be done.

Keegan slipped onto the bridge, closing the door quietly behind her. Riley stepped closer to her as the rest of the crew turned to look and took Keegan's hand in her own. Keegan smiled softly at her before saying, "She was stabbed," rather abruptly.

Captain Malik stopped pacing, facing Keegan with his arms crossed firmly over his chest. He raised an eyebrow at her as if asking her to go on. Keegan took a breath. "Someone stabbed Dr. Mays," she said, squeezing Riley's hand tightly enough to feel the pressure but not tight enough to cause pain, "More than once. And there was some blunt force trauma to the head, too. I don't- I don't know what she was hit with." She closed her eyes and took a breath before continuing: "It looked like she was stabbed with something blunt, though. Not a knife."

The Captain sighed. "And I suppose you can't tell me when this happened?"

Keegan shook her head. "I'm no coroner," she said, "and the cameras...well, they were turned off. At least five hours before she was found, as far as I can tell. Cameras were off for a while."

Captain Malik's eyebrow shot up, and he turned to survey the rest of the crew. His eyes landed on Armie—as communications officer, he was the one put in charge of ensuring the security cameras worked properly. "I imagine you didn't turn them off?" the Captain asked dryly.

Armie shifted, his head slowly shaking. Riley liked Armie, he was soft-spoken and didn't mind her bothering him. There was no way he had anything to do with this. His face showed it, too, eyes wide and nervously scanning the room around him. On anyone else, it would look like guilt. On Armie, it was anxious fear. "I didn't," he said, and Riley didn't know how anyone could disbelieve him.

The captain nodded and tapped his chin once, twice. "Then who turned off the cameras?"

He let the silence sit, watching each of them closely. Keegan, clutching Riley's hand, looked at the floor, and Riley resisted the urge to wrap her arms around her. She knew Riley wasn't as physically affectionate as herself. But that didn't stop her from wanting to.

Captain Malik let out a deep, disappointed sigh. "That's what I thought," he said, voice gruffer than usual. "Abernathy—get in touch with Command. Let them know what's happened. The rest of you: back to work, and if you have any idea who did this, you come to me right away, understood?"

As the crew nodded yes, Captain Malik huffed and waved them out the door. "All right, to work you go." He turned away from them, and Riley saw him rubbing agitatedly at his chin.

Keegan tugged a little on Riley's hand. "Come on," she said, turning her towards the door, where some of the others—Amine and Lily and Fen Jie—had already left. "Will you help me with the- with her body?" And when Keegan looked at her like that, with her eyes so worried and her body held so tense, Riley couldn't say no.

—

JIAN couldn't focus. He had spread on his desk several samples gathered from a nearby moon, but all he could think about was: who killed Doctor Mays?

He tapped his fingers against the metal of the desk. There was no one on board he could believe would be capable of murder, though clearly someone had done it. So the question was, at the end of the day, who?

Jian blinked, shaking his head a little. He wasn't going to solve this on his own, even if he wanted to. What he could do was focus on his work. So he turned to the samples, and the tools before him, and the computer he used to record his findings. He tried to push the death—the murder—of Doctor Mays out of his mind. It wasn't up to him to figure it out.

He'd been working, with minimal distraction, for about an hour when Bellamy opened the door to Jian's lab. They looked tired, but then, they always looked tired if you asked Jian. They ran a hand through their short hair. "Have you seen my trowel?" they asked, voice low and quiet, as though they were trying not to startle Jian. Which he appreciated, though he was already looking at them. "I can't find it in the greenhouse-lab, and neither can Amine."

Jian frowned. "No," he said slowly. "I haven't. I hope you can find it."

Bellamy nodded, teeth gnawing at their lower lip. "Thanks anyway," they said. The door shut behind them, and Jian returned to his work.

—

1822 words.
Surprise! Sorry it took me so long to get this chapter up, the start of my summer was very busy and then I was having writing issues.
Please do let me know your thoughts in the comments!