Off Planet

by Aileen Erin

  “Okay. We’ll start with that.” Audrey started opening drawers. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to say hello this morning. I was out before you were up.”

  “Oh. Uh.” Of course. She must live in the same bunks as I did. “Yeah. No worries. I was wiped after the travel.”

  “Really?” She looked back at me, and her gaze narrowed as she took a closer look at my face. “Most people have the opposite effect.”

  Shit. I was going to give myself away. I took a breath and held it for eight. “It’d been a crazy few days before I went into cryo sleep. Maybe it was the stress?”

  She tilted her head as she watched me, considering my answer. Her gaze slid all over my face, taking in every feature. She looked down to my feet, taking in my build and height. “Maybe.” The way she said it made me think she didn’t believe that answer for a second.

  My face looked Aunare. My thin frame was typical Aunare, but at five feet, seven inches, I was a little short to be mistaken for full-blood Aunare. That had saved me so many times, but it wasn’t enough this time. Not after I’d refused nanos and brought up my wonky experience with cryo sleep?

  This was amateur hour.

  The monitors beeped as my heart rate quickened, and I needed to calm it down.

  Four out. Six in. Six out.

  Audrey glanced at the screen and then back to me. She held my gaze for a second, trying to tell me something but I didn’t know what, and then went back to gathering her tools. “I’m Audrey, as Tyler said. Been here for six months so far, but it’s not so bad. The girls here look out for each other.”

  I wasn’t sure that was accurate. “The woman in the mess hall didn’t seem too keen on me.”

  Audrey snorted. “That’s Della. She doesn’t like anyone or doesn’t seem to, but then she’ll horde treats for us, so—”

  “What?” Tyler cut in. “Like, what kind of treats?”

  “Shut it, Ty. You get plenty.”

  Tyler grumbled a bit, but quietly.

  “Anyway, we’ll get you all healed up, and then you’ll meet the rest of us tonight.”

  “Sounds lovely.” But even on the chance that I’d be healed by then, I wasn’t sure that I’d be fit for company.

  Audrey stood up, putting the last of her tools on the countertop. “One sec.” She slipped out of the room, coming back with a little metal rolling cart. She rolled it next to me, and I glanced down at it. A few types of laser scalpels, plus some pliers, and a vial of gray liquid.

  My breath caught.

  Nanos.

  Shit. Shit. Just shit.

  I couldn’t let this happen. I wasn’t going to let it happen. It wasn’t happening. Full stop.

  “Okay,” she said, finally looking up at me. “So I’m going to try to cut off these boots as best I can without hurting your feet. I’ll use a laser cutter, which should cover most of this, but some of the clamps on the suit which would normally release easily look melted. So I brought pliers. I’m worried about your feet. I brought the nanos, but if it’s a mild burn, we’ll skip. Okay?”

  “She’s got another pair of shoes under there,” Tyler said.

  She waved him off. “We’ll deal with those when we get to ’em. One step at a time.” She grabbed one of the scalpels and flicked it on. The blue laser extended an inch beyond the tip of the metal.

  She glanced at me. “Hold still. I don’t want to nick you.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  It ended up taking her an hour to get my suit off, boots and all. The soles had melted into my shoes, so we ended up cutting around them. I didn’t care. I was just glad to be rid of the suit. I wanted to never, ever get into one again, but I knew what I wanted didn’t matter. Not here.

  I was left lying on the exam table in my tank top, shorts, and what was left of my shoes with their foam and outer soles melted together. I was exhausted, sticky with sweat, stinky, and I just wanted this to be over. To take a shower and go to sleep. To be anywhere but here.

  Tyler and Audrey were muttering in the corner about how to get them off, but there was no way around it. They were going to have to come off, and some of my skin might go with it.

  “Just pull them off.” I was so done. Exhausted and in pain. I wanted this to be over. I wanted everything to be over.

  “No,” Audrey said, coming to stand beside me. “I refuse to harm a patient when it’s not necessary. I’m going to cut around the canvas of the sneakers. I’ll leave the soles alone until it’s clear what’s going on there.”

  The anxiety of lying there waiting to find out what the hell was wrong with my feet was starting to get to me. I needed something to happen or I was going to go out of my mind. “Honestly, whatever these drugs are, they’re good. I can’t feel my feet. Just do something.”

  “The fact that you’re awake at all means that you’re in a lot of pain. I took an oath, and I intend to stick to it. So—” She wheeled her chair over to my feet and sat. “Here goes.”

  It took another thirty minutes for her to carefully laser off the top part of one shoe, but it wasn’t going to do any good.

  “I can see blisters already. We have to get the shoes off, and I’m worried that when we do, your skin will come with it,” Audrey said. “I’d like to give you nanos before I do that.”

  “How in the hell did she not feel that?” Tyler was turning a nice shade of green.

  “Heat exhaustion. It can do all kinds of things. She might not have been feeling her surroundings correctly, and with how hot her core temperature was already and how hot the suit was, I’m sure she was miserable. Right?”

  “Pretty much. Except on the walk back. I could feel it then, but it was too late, and I was almost inside.” I glanced at Tyler, then back to her. “You were a doctor on Earth?”

  She nodded. “Because of my arrest, I’m just a medic now, but I still abide by my oath. I won’t go against it.”

  “I don’t want any nanos. I don’t consent.” Any legitimate doctor had to listen to their patient.

  “That’s not advisable.” She put the scalpel down on a tray table next to her. “You might not heal right. You could have a limp forever, be crippled. And for what? You could be healed in a matter of hours.”

  Yeah. But the nanos would torture me for days. Still, I was probably being stubborn about this. Burns were serious. A broken arm would heal. I’d been lucky with any illnesses, except that one time… But I recovered pretty quickly. Still, I’d never had something like this.

  “Tyler?” Audrey said, not taking her gaze from me.

  “Yeah?”

  I didn’t look at him. I kept my gaze on Audrey. She knew. I wasn’t sure how she knew, but she knew.

  “Can I have a sec with her alone?”

  “Uh. Yeah. Sure.” He patted my arm. “I’m going to head out. I want to check on the suit and talk to Matthew. It should have warned us there was a problem.”

  “Okay.”

  As soon as the door closed, Audrey rolled the chair so she could look me in the eyes.

  I swallowed, wanting to avoid the exact conversation that Audrey was going to insist on. “He’s nice.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Ty?”

  I nodded.

  “The best.” She gave a warm grin.

  I wondered what exactly was between the two of them. They seemed like good friends. Their back and forth reminded me of how Roan and I talked to each other.

  A tear ran down my cheek, and I slapped my hand over my mouth as a sob slipped free.

  Roan. God. I missed him. So much. My chest felt like it was imploding. I needed him here with me. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t breathe. I—

  Audrey grabbed my arm, hard. “I need you to breathe. I need you to stay with me because I have to ask you a question, and I don’t want you to freak.”

  Six in. Three out. Three in. Six out. I swallowed down the sobs and blinked the tears from my eyes. “Okay.”

  “Are you—” She mouthed “Aunare.” My eyes widened, and sh
e squeezed my hand. “Okay. I can deal with this. I’m going to give you the nanos, but I’m also going to give you a neural inhibitor, okay?”

  “That will help?” I hadn’t heard of that before.

  “Not with everything, but it’ll be manageable.” She moved her hand to hold mine. “Sort of. With very few side effects.”

  Very few didn’t mean none. “You won’t tell—”

  “No, and we don’t allow monitoring in the rooms. Aside from the bunks and bathrooms, this is the one place you’re not watched.”

  “Why would you help me? Why not turn me in?” She had no reason to help me out like this. If anyone in the company found out that she’d covered up for me, she’d be just as dead as me.

  “Because we have to look out for each other.” She gave my hand two quick squeezes. “I understand completely what’s at stake for you. For both of us.”

  I took a second to really look at her again. Tall. She was at least a few inches taller than my five feet, seven inches. Slightly pointed chin. Eyes a little too big. The freckles and red hair threw me off. Plus, I’d never met another halfer before. And yet here—of all places—I’d found someone like me.

  I wanted to believe that she had a way around the effects nanos had on Aunare, but I wasn’t sure. I was in pain, and if there was a choice, I wanted to be able to walk. So I really only had one option.

  “Okay.” My voice shook. “Let’s do it.” That came out a little better, but not much.

  “Thank you for trusting me.” She gave me a sad smile. “You’ll be okay. Promise.”

  I hoped she was right. Otherwise, I was up for a seriously rough night.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Audrey loaded the vial of nanos into the injector. She’d already given me the neural inhibitor and waited thirty minutes for it to take effect, but I didn’t feel any different. I wouldn’t know if it worked until it was too late.

  “Ready?” Audrey held the flat head of the injector against my skin.

  I stared at the gray liquid. It held tens of thousands of nanos that would rush through my body, healing me as they worked. But was I ready?

  No. I wasn’t ready for what I would feel if the inhibitor didn’t work. The dread in my stomach felt like a swirling pit of lava.

  She said I was going to be okay, but I didn’t know that. I’d barely survived the nanos the first time I had them, and now I was tired and hurt, and I wasn’t sure how much I had left in me.

  “Maité?” Audrey asked again.

  Trusting someone—especially a virtual stranger—went against the grain for me, but there was nothing else I could do.

  Audrey had used a handheld MRI scope to look through the shoes. I hadn’t looked at the screen—I didn’t want to know what was under those shoes—but from the way her hand shook as she put down the scope, I knew my feet were basically garbage under those half-melted soles.

  I had to have the nanos if I wanted to walk again.

  And I wanted to walk. More than that, I wanted to fight. If I couldn’t fight, I wouldn’t know who I was.

  I took one last calming breath and gave her a slow nod. “Do it.”

  Audrey pushed the button. My arm ached as a pressurized stream of nanos entered my system, and I wanted to throw up.

  The problem with nanos was that they worked to repair anything in the body. Not just whatever was recently harmed. They’d keep repairing any damage to the body until they ran out of juice and processed out of the body. Sometimes that took months. I knew that from the one time I’d been injected.

  I’d gotten pneumonia when I was eleven, and the antibiotics weren’t working. When I started coughing up blood, my mom flipped. Jorge and Roan’s mom pitched in for a single dose.

  The nanos fixed my pneumonia quickly, but they’d stayed active. I spent six weeks writhing in bed before the damned things ran out of juice. My mom had to strap me down to keep me from trying to claw them out of my veins.

  I would’ve done anything to make the constant crawling and burning under my skin to stop. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t hold a glass to drink. I couldn’t do anything but scream.

  They’d given me an IV to keep me alive. I only slept with the help of sleeping pills, and those only worked for a few hours at a time. By the end of it, I was nearly insane. It’d taken me months to fully recover from the whole ordeal, and sometimes I still had nightmares about it.

  After that, we all agreed it was never an option. Unless I was dying or severely injured, I was never using them again.

  But I was severely injured now. I needed to be able to walk, and Audrey said these inhibitors would work.

  Less than a minute after she injected me, the familiar burn started.

  “I thought you said the inhibitor would keep me from feeling the nanos?” It felt like little fire ants were crawling through my veins, biting me as they moved through me. It wasn’t unbearable, but they hadn’t found my feet yet.

  “You can feel them?” The alarm in her voice was almost comical.

  The burning buzzing in my veins moved up my arms, down my chest, heading for my feet.

  Thirty more seconds. If that. And then…

  “Oh God. I can’t do this.”

  I closed my eyes and started focusing on my breaths—not caring about counting. In and out. In and out.

  “I can’t do this again.” My voice was a whisper, a plea, to what I didn’t know. But I needed help or… “I’ll go crazy.”

  Audrey’s hand gripped mine, and I opened my eyes to see her sitting next to me. “Listen to me. I’m going to get you through it. I didn’t give you many. I was very conservative. It’ll be barely enough to heal your feet. They’ll be done by the time the night is over.”

  “Did you lie? About the inhibitors?”

  “No. The inhibitors work fine on me, but…”

  “But?” I croaked out the word. They were almost to my feet. The readout on the machine started beeping, warning that my heart rate was kicking up, but there was nothing I could do. Nothing anyone could do.

  “I can’t do the things that a full Aunare is capable of. Is your other half strong?”

  “Yes.” The word came out garbled. A wave of pain rose up my legs. I screamed and jerked on the table.

  No one would ever dare to call the Aetes line weak.

  When I was a year old, my parents took me to Sel’Ani to have my bloodline confirmed. I was much more Aetes than I was human. My mother did her best to tell me what she knew about it, but I knew that my skin could glow, and I was faster and stronger than a human, and tech bothered the hell out of me and—

  The burning started, and I gasped. The pain was stealing away my breath, and I bit my lip to stop myself from screaming, tasting the copper of my blood.

  “Breathe. You have to breathe.”

  I sucked in air in fits and starts, but I couldn’t get enough. It was like I was walking on the surface again, only this time, my bare feet were on the lava.

  “You focus on the feel of my hand squeezing your hand, and you breathe.”

  A tear rolled down my cheek, and I nodded. I was trying—I really was—but I wasn’t sure I could promise anything.

  The fire ant bites had turned into blowtorch-level pain. This time I could smell my skin melting, and all I could do was scream and writhe.

  Audrey shoved my shoulders into the table when I started to fall off of it.

  The door opened and slammed closed, but I didn’t care who’d come in. I wanted up. I wanted to be gone. I was going to cut off my own feet. Screw walking.

  “What the hell is happening in here?” Tyler yelled, but I could barely hear him over my own screams.

  “Help me,” Audrey said. “I need to get her strapped down, but I can’t hold her still enough.”

  A heavy weight slammed me back down, and straps shot out from the sides of the medical bed, slid into place, and secured me to the bed.

  “No! No! Let me go. Let me go!” My skin started glowing.

&nb
sp; “Jesus. She’s one of them.” Tyler started cursing, and Audrey grabbed him, pulling him into a corner.

  She shoved him down into a chair. “Sit there and shut up. We’ll talk about this later.”

  I blinked through the tears to see Tyler. He looked from Audrey to me again.

  My pain was all-encompassing, but the fear was there, too. Fear of what he would do to me now that he knew what I was.

  Another wave of pain hit me, and I screamed. I didn’t give a shit about Tyler anymore.

  This was so iced. “Make it stop! Audrey! You said this would work! You promised!”

  Audrey was suddenly hovering over me, grabbing my chin hard with one hand. “You focus on me. Focus on my words. On my hand in yours.” She squeezed it, but I couldn’t find the energy to squeeze back. “I got you into this, and I’m not leaving your side until it’s done.”

  I screamed as the fire turned into thousands of pinpricks coming from within my feet. Sweat rolled down my forehead, and Audrey wiped it away with a cloth.

  “You focus on my voice. I can’t use any drugs to knock you out yet. It’ll just make this whole thing take longer. The nanos will split time between healing your feet and processing the drugs out of your body, and it won’t help you. Once your feet are mostly healed, I’ll put you to sleep. The second I can, I promise I will. You hang on until then.”

  I couldn’t help crying. I hated it. I hated feeling weak and right now, I was weaker than I’d been in a long time. But the sob slipped free, and I couldn’t help it.

  If there were a hell, then I was in it.

  The burning faded and then it was like needles sewing my skin. The twitches under my skin made the burning from the implant I’d had seem like child’s play.

  “I swear, the nanos will burn out with this job in a few hours, tops. Your feet are that bad.”

  “It-t’s o-ok-kay.” It came out half-sob.

  She patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry about talking. Focus on breathing. This first hour will be the worst. Then it’ll get better. You ever had them before?”

  I nodded, and I’d swore I’d never to have them again.

  “If it was because you were sick, then they probably stuck around for a while. But they only last that long with illness, especially common illnesses. With an injury, they burn out much faster. It’s more work for them. I know I told you that you’d be fine and I was wrong, but I’m not wrong about this.”