That evening, Ava and Captain Jones walk into the ballroom together arm in arm for dinner.

What is she doing?

We sit in silence at the table, waiting for Gunther and Cooper to arrive. The table's been moved to the middle of the ballroom where Cooper's suspension system can reach us, and caregivers and workers surround us. A vase of multicolored chrysanthemum blooms, probably from the garden outside, sit in the center of the table. I guess it's officially fall now.

I turn my attention to Ava. Her hair is still perfectly slicked back, her eyes still lined in purple to match her tightly fitting gown, and her lips are still the color of her skin. But now she's wearing heavy pink blush, probably to cover up the mark from Jones's hand. I wonder how many Comforters are abused by their assigned men without anyone knowing. I wonder how many times make-up is used for something more sinister than beauty.

Still, Ava sits quietly, staring with pursed lips at the glass of water in front of her. I look over to Nina, who meets my gaze, and subtly shrugs. Phoebe laughs at the painted butterflies on the china.

Mitchell sighs deeply, and we all turn to look at him. "Tomorrow I will start going through all the files from Nathan," he offers the group, but no one responds. "I thought Ava and Isla might like to know."

"Dr. Harper," Ava starts, "I haven't cared much about my cousin for a long time. His computer files are the last things I'd want to know about."

I wonder what happened between them. Nate only mentioned her once, when he told me I joked with him like she used to.

"How can you go through his files? He died in the bunker," Daniel asks.

"All information is collected on a drive that you can access behind an implanted person's right ear."

I remember Nate's birthmark. How much of him was a lie?

"His hard drive was removed before... you know...," Mitchell mumbles, as if he is just now realizing he shouldn't have said anything in the first place.

I try to control myself, but after today it's no use. My stomach twists, and I have to sit up and exhale so it can uncoil.

The doors at the top of the staircase open. Gunther emerges and descends the stairs, and Phoebe begins clapping wildly at the sight of him. Two Caregivers hook Cooper into the suspension system along the ceiling and escort him behind Gunther. No one says a word as Cooper floats toward us, hovering just inches above the stairs. It's only now that I realize how old and how feeble he truly is. A monster who could be taken down by a snip of some strings.

Cooper lowers himself into the seat at the head of the table, and Gunther waits to sit beside him, like an old fashioned gentleman, but his face is red with frustration. I wonder what they were meeting about.

Cooper is out of breath, probably from the strain that his suspension system put on his ribs and lungs. He can hardly speak, so he lifts his hands toward the platters to silently instruct us to eat.

Caregivers lift the covers from the trays, revealing colorful mountains of food, into which all the men dig. Phoebe is too busy playing with her hair now to notice there's food, and I'm not hungry. Not after today. Nina, Ava, and Celia don't move their arms from their sides either.

"Serve yourself, Ms. Blume," Cooper pants.

"I'm not hungry."

"And your friends here? They aren't hungry either?"

Celia hides her face behind a glass of water as Mitchell piles some fruit on her plate for her. Nina shakes her head. O'Neil furrows his eyebrows in concern, rubs her back, and feels her forehead. "Are you getting sick, love?" he asks.

"I'm fine. Thank you, Flynn."

"That's all you're eating, Mr. Crowley?" Cooper asks.

I look at Daniel's plate, nearly empty except for a few scoops of green peas, which have scattered haphazardly around the china. He pushes them into a pile at the center of the plate before answering, "I don't have much of an appetite."

"Hm," Cooper grunts as he moves food mechanically into his mouth, chewing it as a cow chews cud. "On to business then," he begins, food particles shooting from his mouth. "Now that Mr. Crowley's gamma ray detectors are set up throughout the surrounding area, we will begin preliminary tests of energy storage capacity."

"Why wasn't I part of this discussion?" Flynn asks, removing his arm from around Nina.

"It doesn't concern you, Dr. O'Neil. You have known for months that we would be going in a different direction with our energy collection, as we will be expanding, and unable to use the current geothermic source for any alternate settlement locations. Your input is no longer needed in matters of energy collection. In fact, you will need to start weening our system off from your machines, so that we can begin incorporating the energy from our gamma ray collectors."

"You're kidding."

"I assure you, I'm not," Cooper says, his voice finally back to him after a sip of tea one of the Caregivers has poured. "If there's a problem, I am certain that someone can do the work for you after we transfer you to the workers' ranks."

"No." O'Neil drops his fork onto the table. "I will do it."

"Are you sure that's not going to be a problem for your ego?" Cooper asks, taking another sip of tea.

"Sure," O'Neil huffs. Nina was right, I think. Maybe he can be convinced to switch sides.

Gunther continues, "So tomorrow we will leave the yard before dawn to make the most of our daylight hours. Flynn, you and Alexander will stay here to get everything set up for the new energy system. Phoebe will be along, as well."

Why Phoebe? I wonder.

Captain Jones clears his throat. "And just to be clear, you'd like me to transfer Dr. Fowler tonight?"

"Yes," Gunther says, "he'll be traveling with us to assist." And that's why Phoebe's coming.

"Any other questions?" Cooper asks the group.

Captain Jones takes a sip of his water and almost immediately begins coughing.

"Are you okay, dear?" Ava asks in a tone I've never heard from her before.

"Just went down the wrong pipe I think. I'll be fine," he says, still coughing. He takes another sip to mitigate the cough, but that only makes him erupt more violently, until a few of the Caregivers come over and help him to his feet.

"Take him to see Dr. Wilkes," Cooper orders them, and Captain Jones' cough echoes out of the room.

I look at Ava. Her eyes are still focused on her glass of water, her finger circling the rim, but now she's smiling.

Nina and I lock eyes. What did Ava do? I can't wait until tomorrow. I have to meet the girls in the drain tonight. There's too much to discuss now.

***

"Are you sure you want to sleep in the Comforter's quarters tonight?" Daniel asks.

"Positive. I really need to talk to the girls," I whisper, since we are standing in the hall outside our room, within earshot of buzzing drones. "You won't be gone for very long tomorrow, right?"

He nods, and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear.

"Then we will hang out when you're done testing the detectors. Find me when you get back," I say.

He leans his forehead against mine, and his hot breath tingles the back of my throat. Despite my decision to sleep in the Comforter's quarters tonight, his touch makes my body second guess my head. I want to stay in his arms all night, but I force myself away from him.

"Goodnight," I whisper, leaving his side, and walking down to the Comforter's quarters door, where Celia is awkwardly waiting for me. She's awfully strange. But she's kind too. She means well.

"Hey Celia," I say.

She smiles and opens the door for me. "You can be my bunk mate," she says, a little too excitedly. Goody, I think.

When we enter the room, I immediately see the separate bathroom entrance to the right, and rows of bunk beds ahead of me. The room is all white, like the Immortal's cafeteria. Even the bed frames are polished white metal.

Girls filter in and out of the bathroom, change into their standard grey and black pajamas, and sit on their beds talking. A group of girls gathers in the center of the room, where there's a circle of white sofas around a 360-degree holographic television that's playing some black and white film. A few of the girls are crying as they watch, but most of them just sit quietly with their hands pressed to their chests, as if that could keep their hearts from breaking.

Nina sits on a bed in the front corner, strumming a guitar and singing a folksy ballad I've never heard. Celia and I join the small audience around her, and listen as her raspy voice breathes emotion into the words.

The rocky coast swallows whole

Every drifting piece of gold

From ships that cross the choppy, panicked

Graveyard of the ole Atlantic.

Their ghosts I've seen.

Their ghosts I'll hold.

Their ghosts I've seen.

One day it swallowed up my love

Before we made a treasure of

Our brief and lovely life together

There among the sprawling heather.

Your ghost I've seen.

Your ghost I'll hold.

Your ghost I've seen.

Of all the graveyards now I see

Your tomb will always stay with me.

Until my soul joins yours once more,

I'll wait upon the rocky 'lantic shore.

My ghost I've seen.

We're ghosts, I'm told,

It's all a dream.

She strums the last chord, and we applaud, though it feels wrong to clap for something so sad. I wonder if it's just a song she learned over the years or one she wrote. Celia waves to her, and Nina smiles. She hops off the bed where she rests her guitar and hurries toward us. "Welcome to the Comforter's Quarters, Isla," she says.

"Thanks. I had no idea you played music."

"Oh, yeah. I never had any real lessons, so I'm not very good," she says, shrugging.

"Okay, c'mon," I scoff. "That sounded really good. How did you learn?"

"Well, back when I was traveling around with my tribe, if I found someone who didn't have any food or supplies for us, I made them give me music. I made them sing something for me and write down the lyrics, and then I'd go home and try to learn it. After a while, music became my currency."

"Was that one of the songs you picked up, or did you write that?"

"Oh, that one? I wrote it. For Terran." Her face tenses before she quickly changes the subject, "Anyway, do you need any help getting set up?"

"I think I'm bunking with Celia," I say, not really sure how else to answer. There's nothing here to really set up.

"Okay, well, let's show her where she's sleeping," Nina says to Celia, and they lead me to a bunk beside the bathroom wall. "No one wants these beds 'cause sometimes you can smell the stink from the bathroom, and if you're a light sleeper, the light from when people walk in and out might wake you, but it's perfect for us." Then she leans in and whispers, "We're meeting tonight, right? That's what that look at dinner meant?"

Nina gets me. "Yeah."

"I think I can get Flynn on our side. He's super pissed."

"I bet." I look around and notice someone conspicuously missing. "Where's Ava?"

"Who knows." She looks around to make sure the coast is clear. "Get settled, get ready for bed, and then at midnight we'll go down."

"Got it."

"Good," she says, smiling. "Well, go get changed and try to get some shut eye before tonight, okay?"

I nod, and Nina leaves us. Celia crawls up to the top bunk. "Most girls change in the bathroom," she says.

"Okay," I say, carrying my pajamas in one arm and pushing the bathroom door open with the other.

The mirror reflects a myriad of beautiful faces, each belonging to girls who try pushing their way to the front of the counter, moving in and out of the crowd with each swipe of their make-up remover. I make my way through the busily narrow passage way to a stall, latching it shut behind me.

I begin changing when I hear my name just outside the stall. "Isla Blume, the Deathless soldier, right?"

I vaguely recognize the voice, so I answer as I unzip the back of my dress, "Yep, that's me."

"You think you're brave?" the voice asks, and the surrounding chatter stops. I peek through the crack around the stall door. It's the brainwashed girl who answered all Cooper's questions this morning.

"Um, not really. I think I am braver than I have been, but I wouldn't call myself brave...."

"You know you're a terrorist, right?"

I wait until I am fully dressed in my pajamas and ready to leave the stall before I answer. I'll need to focus all my attention to handle this conversation like a leader.

***

Nina's song for Terran hopefully gave you an Annabel Lee feel, because I used that poem as inspiration. I chose to do this, because that poem is set around the Carolina coast where I imagine Nina is from (the Richmond, Virginia and northern North Carolina area). 

When I was writing Nina's song for Terran, I knew that since I am not a natural songwriter, I would have to find a song to write lyrics to. The song that is featured in this chapter is the song that I had in mind when I wrote Nina's lyrics. 

My husband is a songwriter, so I hope that one day we can both have enough free time to actually write an original melody to Nina's song. Until then, try out singing Nina's song to the melody in the YouTube video. 

Any brave souls out there can PLEASE share videos of them singing it! Ohhhh man, let's see if anyone is brave enough!

OR if anyone is amazing enough, they could write their own original melody to the song and share a video of them playing and singing. Oh man, that would be SO COOL!

https://youtu.be/RsJCz9YQrcY

The rocky coast swallows whole
Every drifting piece of gold
From ships that cross the choppy, panicked
Graveyard of the ole Atlantic.

Their ghosts I've seen.
Their ghosts I'll hold.
Their ghosts I've seen.

One day it swallowed up my love
Before we made a treasure of
Our brief and lovely life together
There among the sprawling heather.

Your ghost I've seen.
Your ghost I'll hold.
Your ghost I've seen.

Of all the graveyards now I see
Your tomb will always stay with me.
Until my soul joins yours once more,
I'll wait upon the rocky 'lantic shore.

My ghost I've seen.
We're ghosts, I'm told,
It's all a dream.