“What’s—” I point at it. Levi immediately turns. “Is he okay?”
“The arm?” Levi’s brows knit. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“It’s similar to what would happen if we stimulated his motor cortex, but we definitely aren’t— Whoa.” The twitches get significantly larger. Guy’s entire body starts shaking.
Levi turns on the mic. “Guy. Everything okay in there?”
No answer.
“Guy? Can you hear me?”
Silence. And Levi’s deepening frown.
“Guy, do you—”
Guy falls out of his chair with a loud thud, his body at once rigid and slack. The control room bursts into chaos—everyone stands, half a dozen chairs scraping against the floor.
“Stop the protocol!” Levi yells, and a second later he’s out of the room and into the lab. I see him appear on the monitor and kneel next to Guy’s spasming body, taking him into his arms. He turns him to the side and clears the floor of nearby objects.
A seizure. Guy’s having a seizure.
Other people barge into the room—NASA physicians, engineers—and ask Levi questions about the stimulation protocol. He answers as best as he can, still holding Guy in his arms as the doctors work around them.
It’s because of Penny. Levi knows what to do because of Penny.
There’s mayhem everywhere. People running in the hallways, in and out of the control room, screaming, swearing, asking questions without replies. Some are directed at me, but I cannot answer, cannot do anything but stare at Guy’s face, at the way Levi is cradling him. I collapse back in my chair. After a minute or an hour, my eyes drift away.
The helmet is on the floor, rolled to the farthest corner of the room.
•••
“—IS KOWALSKY?”
“He was driven to the hospital.”
“—going to be okay?”
“Yeah, he regained consciousness. It’s just a checkup, but—”
“—they gave him a fucking seizure, what is—”
“What a disaster—”
“—the end of BLINK, for sure. God, the incompetence.”
I’m a fortress. I’m impenetrable. I’m not even here. I don’t look at anyone. I try my best not to listen as I walk to Boris’s office after he hissed at me to be there stat. It was four and a half minutes ago. I should hurry.
I knock when I arrive, but enter before being invited to come in. Levi’s already inside, staring at the pretty green of the Space Center outside the square window. I ignore him. Even when I feel his eyes on me, the prickle of a glance asking for a response, I ignore him.
I wonder what he’s thinking. Then I don’t wonder anymore: it probably cannot be borne anyway.
“Where was the error?” Boris asks from behind the desk. He always looks tired and disheveled, but if he told me he was just run over by a truck, I’d believe him. I can’t begin to comprehend the repercussions of today’s events. For him. For NASA. For Levi.
“Yet unclear,” Levi says, holding his eyes. “We’re looking into it.”
“Was there a hardware malfunction?”
“We’re ascertaining whether—”