The Onyx Chronicles/Running Gag

She was five years, one month, and twenty-four days old.

Morgana Chevalier had kept track of it from the day she’d learned how to count. She’d liked knowing, because her mother told everyone it proved how smart she was, and because she always knew how long it was until her birthday. Now, though, knowing made her sob into a scratchy pillowcase on an unfamiliar bed, because knowing made her remember there would never be any birthdays again. No more parties, no more family she only saw on special days. All of them were dead.

A child couldn’t have imagined it in a more horrible way. They’d been torn apart by monsters, huge creatures she didn’t even have the words to describe, could have only dreamed of in nightmares. She was barely able to understand, never mind process, what had happened. And with nothing around her but the bare, windowless walls and dull, grey sheets of the room she’d been given, she had nothing to do but think about how they died. And when she thought of that, she cried.

It was a long time before anything interrupted her. When it did, though, it was so unusual Morgana had to stop crying and see what it was. A soft knocking was coming from the other side of the door to her small quarters.

People didn’t knock on her door. The dark-haired lady who asked if she wanted to leave the orphanage and the men in suits who’d brought her to the spaceship just opened the door with a code and told her when it was time for breakfast, or supper, or time to go to bed. So who was this?

She sniffled and wiped her eyes. If someone came in and saw her like this, they’d ask her what was wrong, and then she’d have to talk about it all again. But the door didn’t open, and no one came in. Just as she started to wonder if they were waiting for her to answer, the knock came again.

Now she was sure. Either whoever it was wanted her to answer, or they weren’t going to let her sleep. She slipped over the edge of her bunk, stretching to reach the cold floor below on tip-toe, then crossed to the door under the dimness of the room’s sleep cycle. Once there, however, she remembered she couldn’t do anything to open it. The keypad’s numbers glowed halfway up the wall, out of her reach, and even then she didn’t know the code used to open it.

Another muffled tap echoed from the door’s other side and Morgana’s nose scrunched up, annoyed. Didn’t they know she couldn’t do anything about it, and would they just keep knocking all cycle? “Hello?” she raised her voice, and waited. When the knock came again, she was sure it was too long after to be a response, and just wanted it to shut up and stop. She raised an open hand and slapped it against the door as hard as she could.

Silence again. Just as she was thinking of putting her ear to the door, it hissed as it always did before opening. She jumped back, and raised an arm to shield her eyes as the door slid sideways, unveiling the bright fluorescence of the hallway outside. When she let it down again, still blinking furiously, she found herself standing opposite a boy with deep tan skin and dark hair—the boy who’d talked to her the first day she was brought on board.

“Carlos?” she asked, then, noticing the other figures just hidden by the edge of the door frame, looked up to see another with lighter skin, slender green eyes, and brown curls with a finger on the door controls—riding on the shoulders of a heavier boy with skin as pale as hers and hair the same brown as his rider’s, only straight and shorter. Each wore the same gray pants and long-sleeved shirt as she’d been given.

“Morgan, hey!” Carlos whispered excitedly, drawing her attention just long enough to miss how the other pair lost their balance and sprawled in the center of the corridor. Carlos winced. “Ooh.”

The unseated rider tried to reach an arm behind him to rub a smarting back. “I wish you could lift me up for more than a few seconds,” he said.

“Stop stealing my cookies, then,” his partner replied, hand clutched to his head. “You won’t be so heavy.”

Carlos barely spared them a glance and asked her, voice still hushed, “Hey, do you want to—were you crying?”

Morgana blushed as it was blurted out loud in front of strangers, and swiped her sleeve over her puffy blue eyes. Her cheek felt hot against it. “I’m fine,” she lied. “Who are they?”

“Oh, um,” Carlos pointed to the small one first, “that’s Dyne, and he’s Kodiak. They’re kinda dumb, but they know how to open all the doors on the ship!”

“You’re dumb!” said the smaller, still on the floor. “We’re… well, we figured out the doors, anyway. How’s that dumb?”

Carlos only looked back to Morgana, smiling. “We can go anywhere we want!”

“But we’re only supposed to be one place. Bed!” she protested. For a moment, she thought they’d actually forgotten. It made no sense not to be where the grown-ups told them to go. Only then did Morgana understand what they were doing—they were disobeying on purpose.

“Carlos, go back to your room!” she urged, drifting to the doorframe’s side as if to hide. “You’ll get in trouble.”

He shook his head. “We haven’t met the new kid yet. I heard the guards talking at dinner, and they said we just picked up the last one. We want to meet her first. You wanna come?”

Her? The single word made Morgana give it thought. She’d been on the ship for a while now, but Carlos was the only friend she’d made. The only time she saw the other children was when the guards gathered them for meals, and there were so many she barely saw the same faces twice. She hadn’t tried approaching anyone else, and knew it was her own fault for being shy. She wouldn’t even know Carlos if he hadn’t started talking to her first. And he was nice, but she missed having other girls for friends, and it sounded like this was a chance to meet the new girl in a small group. She leaned a little less behind the door frame.

“Okay,” she said, “where do we go?”

Carlos grinned and turned to the pair getting up and brushing themselves off.

“This way,” the larger, Kodiak, answered, and started down the hall. Dyne ran after, and Morgana slipped through the door and fell into a run beside him. Carlos darted behind, right on the heels of whoever lagged as if shepherding the group. She tried to ignore how her lungs started burning after a short while keeping up with the boys and spoke up.

“How much further?”

“Not much.” Dyne, the smaller one, said.

“How do you know?” Talking made the burning worse, but just to prove it didn’t bother her, she added, “And how do you know you can open the door, anyway?”

The boy smiled open-mouthed, and Morgana could hear his own muted gasps for breath between words. “It wasn’t so hard when you realize every button on the keypads makes a different tone. Just had to listen and match the sounds, and we found out every kid’s door is the same when we tried it on the next door. That’s how we met Carlos.”

“And every door has a number on it between zero-zero-one and three-three-zero,” Kodiak continued, “so it figures the last kid is in the last one.”

Morgana nodded and fell silent as they ran, but not just to save her breath. The grown-ups who’d brought her here told Morgana she and everyone else she’d meet would be special, but she hadn’t realized how special. If Kodiak and Dyne were the dumb ones, they were still clever enough to figure out things she hadn’t even thought of, meaning there could be kid as smart as she was, or even more. Being head of the class, getting the special treatment grown-ups gave their favorites, wasn't going to be easy anymore. It worried her.

At last, Kodiak trotted to a stop, and the rest behind him, all puffing quietly as they looked up at a door marked “330.” A glowing keypad just like the one outside Morgana’s door sat beside the frame three-quarters up, out of their reach.

“Okay, here we go again,” Dyne clapped and rubbed his hands together. “Give me a boost, Kody.”

“Uh-uh.” His friend shook his head. “You shake too much. Someone else this time.”

“Me!” Carlos jumped to volunteer, and the pair crowded at the foot of the door. Kodiak pressed his back to the wall and cupped his hands, giving Carlos a step up to start. It was a short hop to his shoulders from there, and they froze a moment, finding their balance.

Kodiak’s shirt twisted a lot under Carlos’ boots. “This is really making my shoulders hurt,” he complained. “This is the last time I do it.”

“That's fine. It’s the last new person anyway, remember?”

With nothing better to do, Morgana stood back with Dyne and watched. She was suddenly conscious of her arms dangling idly at her sides while they struggled into position, and began fidgeting. The boys didn't need her to help, so why did they want her here? Did they want her here at all? Hoping they wouldn't start asking it themselves, she looked away, tracing the corner of the wall and ceiling down to the far end of the hall, and by mistake glanced straight at Dyne as he was glancing the other way past her. She jerked away from the unanticipated eye contact, wincing as he did the same. Just as the silence between them was turning awkward, he asked,

“Wanna hear a door joke?”

She nodded, grateful for anything to break the space between them.

“There’s these two spacers trying to open an airlock to save their friend, but they’re too late, and the friend gets sucked out into space. One punches the walls and says they could’ve saved him if they’d only pulled harder. The other one says, ‘Oh. Pull.’”

Without even waiting for her reaction, Dyne’s expectant grin opened into a fit of laughter that shook him from belly to shoulders. It was striking to her. Laughing unashamed at his own joke for the same reason he’d told it: because he thought it was funny. And it was. Between the joke and the boy already enjoying himself in her company, Morgana felt invited to laugh along, and found, as a breath forced its way up from her lungs, she already was. The convulsions rolled out of her mouth, and she inhaled through her nose in short, desperate gulps to replace the air lost, each one sounding with a sharp, squelching snort.

Dyne paused, looking to her with wide, surprised eyes, still smiling. “Your laugh is funny.”

She stopped laughing.

She would've felt frozen, were her cheeks not suddenly flushed hot. She'd felt safe, for just a moment, to think they would like her, and now she would've given a lifetime to have the last five seconds back and avoid embarrassing herself.

The heat was creeping up towards her eyes, threatening to push tears over their brim when the door suddenly startled her with a hiss, drawing both their attention. Carlos jumped down from Kodiak's shoulders as it rolled aside, and they all struggled to peer into the dimness after so long in the corridor's light. A dark-haired girl, no older than Morgana, sat up in the room's bed, staring back at them in confusion.

Just as she dared hope she'd been forgotten, Dyne glanced back to her with a widening smile. “Wanna hear another one?”

So he wanted to make fun of her? Morgana's eyelids tightened and narrowed, driving the heat back down where it settled in her jaw, making her teeth clench. Fine, she wasn't going to stop him, but she didn't have to be here to listen. Turning around, she stormed past Dyne, ignoring the look of surprise her glare gave him and headed back the way they came without a word.

She never looked back, ignoring the hushed questions about her leaving the others asked in her wake.

Forget crying. She was mad. Mad like she’d been when the dark-haired woman came to the orphanage and told her she could make the monsters pay for killing her mom and dad.

She was mad at Dyne, now. And one day she’d make him pay, too. She’d find something to shut him up, and stop his jokes for good.

She was eight years, five months, and fourteen days old.