Tomas watched Pia leave her transport cylinder. She moved with a purpose like no other. Tendrils of her soft hair fell around her face and she brushed them away, annoyed at their insubordination. Tomas couldn’t help but smile. She tried to control everything and God help anyone or anything that got in her way. The smile dropped from his lips. If only she would let go they could have a chance. If only he hadn’t sketched her image.
Pia frowned in concentration at what could be left behind and what was essential to take. She turned at the sound of gears crunching. Max was clumsily operating a transport to her left. Pia never let Max too far out of her sight. Her lips curved into a soft smile. Max fought with the machine to manoeuvre an empty cylinder over to the dump pile. He brought out a side in Pia that no one else could, one that she preferred to keep hidden.
The others laughed and joked their way through the supplies from their cylinders. Yet, there was a weight to their shoulders. It had emerged days before when the explosion on the Before Age Sickness or BAS ship they’d been travelling on killed two of their friends. Tomas felt it himself and shuddered at the memory of the thunderous noise and throat-searing smoke. To find out after the explosion that Age Sickness vaccination equipment and information was destroyed made that weight all the more unbearable.
Tomas’ eyes searched for Renka who stood staring out at the ship; he couldn’t let it go. The Age Sickness vaccination equipment was gone and there was nothing to be done about it. He wondered if the Committee would think the mission to The Refuge was a failure now that the volunteers had failed to protect the sacred vaccination equipment. He didn’t think so, not if they knew or even suspected that Pia was immune. To think! She would live, even if the rest of them withered away from the Sickness before they could get out of their teens. She would live! The thought brought another even wider smile to his face.