Orpheus

43

Riley sat by the window, watching the ground whizz past her in a blurry haze of grey. It had been a few days since "the talk", and she wasn't sure what she felt about it yet; she'd spent most of her time inside the base moping, whilst Connor spent them outside. Riley thought they were done for good, that every worthwhile crevice to be explored had been done so, yet here they were aboard the Destiny, flying towards Sector 64: a bleak sector on a barren planet.

'Connor: day by day he's changing. He's hardly the man I knew...'

She turned her head and looked at him; his face seemed to be set of stone, his gaze piercing the rudimentary map on the console.

'Maybe that's what he's become now; maybe this is him.'

'But he was a better person before...'

'People change, Riley, people change...'

It was true: Connor, who once treated Riley with kindness had now been reduced to something else entirely. The man once had taken her choice to end their relationship with the utmost respect. The same man had simply barked an order to Riley to come on-board that morning.

She felt uneasy.

'Is he sore about me breaking up with him? No, no... he said he was fine with it.'

'People tell lies all the time Riley; dark and white ones.'

"Connor, why do you need me?" she asked him.

Riley waited a few seconds for his reply; he didn't. She wasn't hurt, only disappointed; he'd been like this for a while. She turned her gaze back towards the planet whizzing under them.

'Is he jealous, about how close me and Owen became?'

Riley thought about it for a while: could it be? She deduced it was a real possibility, and that made her guilty; she did not know why.

'Well it doesn't matter; we're stuck here now, on this forsaken planet; our planet.'

She scoffed at that. 'This is just a husk: cold, brutal, and distant; a heart of a cruel woman.'

Suddenly, she felt the Destiny veer a sharp left; Connor was making a rapid descent. Behind her, she could hear the thrusters whine and complain as they flared into a new octave.

'I thought I was prepared for this, but I'm not... I'm so not...'

Within a few moments they were standing on a small hill on the surface; the hydrogen cyanide crystals crunching under their feet. Riley looked onward and saw the same sight that they always saw: hills and valleys of black and grey rolling into the distance. Above, the sky was an amalgamation of densely packed clouds; a nimbus that stretched on and on, like the terrain.

"Connor, what are we doing?" she asked again.

Connor didn't reply immediately; he just kept staring into the distance, unmoving.

"Probing." He replied a few seconds later; he didn't look at her. "I need you to drop five probes in this sector; you know the drill. I'll be scouting the terrain ahead." Without waiting for a reply, he picked up one of the probes and walked away.

'People change, Riley, people change, and always for the worse.'

White; Riley had begun to despise that color. Everywhere she looked was a monochrome; a picture in greys, whites, and blacks.

'This is pointless... why don't we just stop?'

She scanned the horizon until she found what she was looking for: a fissure; a wrinkle on an old face. She turned around and headed towards Destiny. Outside, Connor had placed the five cylindrical probes on the ground. The man himself was nowhere to be seen.