Neon Sands Trilogy Boxset: The Neon Series Season One

by Adam J. Smith

  “Jax!” they shouted, and ran to him. They turned him over, and he began removing the helmet. “You did it! You did it!”

  “Remind me never to leave the house again.”

  They moved to hug him but he warned them off. “The suit could be contaminated, let’s leave the hugs for later.”

  “Are you okay?”

  He sat up. “I’ll need help getting out of this thing; I think I’ve dislocated my shoulder.”

  “So… do we touch you or not?”

  “Just…” he said, achingly, “let me stand and I’ll try unzipping.”

  They gave him some distance, watched him struggle, and then went in anyway, each taking an arm. “Argue all you want. Can you turn that light off though, it’s blinding?”

  Five seconds later and it was off, and the containers, still attached to the walls although in some cases, the now-floor, retreated back to their shadows.

  “You’re limping.”

  “I may have broken something too, I’m not sure. Thank you for activating it just in time, I’d have been toast otherwise.”

  “We’d all have been toast.”

  “How are you so cold?” asked Lani, taking Jax’s arm from the sleeve of the suit.

  “Freon in the suit.”

  “Was gonna say, we look like peaches but you’re white as a ghost.”

  The suit dropped to the floor, and they could see the dark bruising around his shoulder and down his rib cage. He tried moving the arm but it remained stiff and steadfast to his side. He used his other arm to roll it around, a grimace on his face.

  “Can we help?” they asked with trepidation, not really relishing the prospect. When he instructed them to flank his shoulder and force the joint back in, they grit their teeth and got on with it, screaming as they not only heard the crack of it popping back in, but felt it. Sweat steamed from his skin when they laid hands on him. Even their hands were red.

  “Thank you. Have you checked the child?”

  “Not yet.”

  He nodded, hobbled over towards a medical supply chest, and retrieved a crutch.

  “Where you going?”

  “To see her.”

  They followed the boy who had found himself a father; surprised by how much affection, care and attention he seemed to be showing, as normally he remained aloof. Unaffected by the relationships of others and caring only about study – and reading. It wasn’t that he was particularly a cold person, he just looked as though he was always deep in thought, and interrupting him might mean some great loss.

  “So do you have a plan to get out of here?”

  “We have power – which is good. I doubt we can contact Arcadia, but we can try. I’ll take a look at the magna-inertia diagnostics to see if we have the power to lift off. As far as I know they still worked okay. The one good thing to come from the storm is it disintegrated everything around us, meaning we’re no longer trapped.”

  “We can fly home?” They envisaged flying over the dome and seeing the hundreds of bodies below looking up at them; imagined landing in a cloud of dust at the front door and rushing out to meet their parents in an embrace that would never end. They pictured all this and knew it couldn’t be that easy.

  “Perhaps – I’m not promising anything. The other option is we all put suits on and try and walk home, but that wouldn’t be my preference.”

  Because of the baby?

  “Whatever it takes,” they said.

  It felt odd walking into the lab the way nature intended – that makeshift staircase on their left as they walked through – and the lab itself looked in complete disarray. Tables and unbolted chairs were piled in the corner where gravity had thrown them, and shattered glass crunched underfoot. Cupboard doors hung open, and electrical equipment lay smashed in pieces.

  None of this seemed to register with Jax. He beelined straight for the artificial womb attached firmly to the one immovable row of cupboards, and appeared to fawn over the glass, touching it all over. They finally realised he was checking for cracks. He then checked upside-down readouts and hmmed in satisfaction every few seconds.

  “She okay?”

  “For now. The solution she’s in acts as a cushion if any two surfaces come close; molecules compressing and forming a harder barrier than pure liquid. I’d like to run more tests but I guess we have other priorities at the moment,” he sighed.

  “You think? What is it with her? Why is she so special?”

  Jax whirled on them and may have been about to shout, loudly, like he sometimes did when someone didn’t understand the ‘simplest’ thing and he got frustrated. Instead, he groaned and clutched the underside of his arm, where the ribs were almost black.

  “Just…” he looked miserable. In pain and dejected. “Help me to the cockpit.”

  “You okay?”

  “I think I’m drowning,” he said, and coughed, and blood splattered on the floor before him. “Help me to the cockpit.”

  The twins gasped, tears immediately brimming. They cried “No,” but he shouted at them to not make him shout and “For the third time, help me to the cockpit.”

  They filed in beside him and he dropped the crutch. He glanced over his shoulder as they helped him from the lab – a sinking feeling in their gut that it was for one last look. They kept repeating “You can’t die, you can’t die – what will we do without you? What will we do?”

  He was silent. They knew how it sounded – what will we do? No regard for the fact that he was the one dying.

  “We don’t mean it to sound bad – we really don’t. We can’t control the ship though. We don’t know our way home from here. Oh, Jax – you can’t die!”

  “Ssshhh,” he whispered, settling into the forward command chair. “I know you’re scared, it’s okay. Let me take a look at the systems.”

  They sank to their knees either side of him and buried their heads in his neck, allowing tears to fall on his shoulders. He was so cold. Horribly, horribly cold. They stretched arms across his chest until they met each other, embracing him, warming him up, warming him up. They felt the vibration of his words as he spoke, their ears against his skin.

  “Okay, this looks promising. What we have here,” his voiced sounded strained, as though withholding a cough. “We can work with this. Now, let me see.” A few seconds of silence passed while they listened to him using the controls on the dashboard. “Fingers crossed.”

  The ship lurched, and their grip tightened on him with startled yelps.

  “I’ve set course for Arcadia.” He barely made it through ‘Arcadia’ before the coughing fit began. They sat back and watched his blood paint the dashboard red.

  “What –”

  “Ssshhh. Listen to me.” He took a deep breath before continuing, face contorting. “The baby. I’m… sorry. I… did something... wrong. So wrong. I shouldn’t have. She is yours. Both of… yours. And… mine. And… so much more. She is the mother of immortals.”