I just need to find her and find a way home.
The walkway we’re on now is brightly lit. There are closed doors to the left and right of us, all the way down as far as I can see. It’s a cold, metal gray industrial straight line. I decide to keep my mouth shut. This isn’t the sort of place I want to die. And dying won’t help Claire.
I think we walk somewhere in the margin of fifty-six bazillion hours, passing the same identical doors over and over again. Whoever designed this ship had to be the coldest, most uncreative corpse in the world.
Pious pushes me forward until we reach another hallway that branches off to the left. As we round the corner, we’re met with a set of massive steel doors, five times larger than all the others. “Are we there yet? Is this the preservation lab?” I ask. Trying to stay silent for so long is draining me.
The double doors swish open before us.
Through the doors is an enormous room filled with rows and rows of rectangular metal counters. Thick, black tubes run from the ceiling to each counter. The walls are a slate gray, a little lighter and bluer than the rest of this place.
It’s a calming color, honestly.
A nice tranquil color for the women Pious said are inside. At least I hope it is for my sister, if she’s truly here.
But other than the counters, the room looks empty.
I whirl around after we cross the threshold as the double doors swoosh closed behind us. I stare up at Pious and ask again, “Is this the lab? Where’s my sister?”
“She’s here, somewhere,” he sneers.
I move away and grip the top of the closest counter. It’s the coldest surface I’ve ever felt, so cold it burns. Yanking my hand away, I get a glimpse of what I touched and I freeze. At first I don’t understand what I’m seeing. The top of the counter is made of clear glass. Underneath is filled with a milky white, shimmering liquid. And there’s something bobbing at the surface.
Still and lifeless, there’s a woman floating at the top.
I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing.
I stumble back, “What? What is that? What is this place?” This doesn’t make sense. None of it does. The last few weeks—they all must have been a horrible nightmare. I need…I need to wake up.
Pious laughs darkly behind me, “This is the preservation lab.”
“This isn’t real. None of this is real,” I mumble. It feels like something splinters in my brain, and I can’t breathe through the panic. “The preservation lab? The preservation lab?” My voice gets higher and higher until it cracks.
“Of course, Kate, where else would you think we would cryofreeze and preserve all the females?”
“C-cryofreeze? Preserve?” It’s like I’m standing in front of the devil himself. “Why? Why would you be cryofreezing women?”
“Because, we only need them for their reproductive system, they’re worth nothing more.” His voice turns harder, colder. “And when they’re frozen, they can’t put up much of a fight when we take what we need.”
38
Kate
Pious’s words slam into me like a freight train. I recoil, stumbling over my feet, and quickly shift my position so there are a few counters between us. My armguards are on, I need to remember that. How quickly can I raise my hand and zap him with something before he does it to me?
I force myself to stand as still as I can, even when my insides are screaming for me to run. Running isn’t going to end well for me right now. I don’t even see any other exits out of this room. There are just the sliding doors we walked through before, and Pious is looming over them like a guard dog ready to bite.
“So skittish,” he says with a faint trace of laughter in his tone. “You’re like one of those little scurrying rodents from Earth. What are those called? Mice?”
“Where is my sister?” I ask as steadily as my voice will allow.
“You may look for her, if you like,” he says with a smirk and a wave of his hand.
I stiffen at his offer. Is this some kind of a trick? Will I walk around these icebox things until he shoves me into an empty one? “What game are you playing?”
The steel expression on his faceplate turns down into a frown. “Are you refusing the opportunity of looking for your sister?” He takes a step forward, and even though there are three rows of freezer boxes separating us, I take a step back. He cocks his head and barks out a laugh. “Is all of your gender as weak and pathetic as you?”
The feminist in me sees red, and I want to shout about how strong and brave all women are, but I know he’s goading me, trying to make me break.
And the truth is, in this situation, I do feel weak. I am frightened. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be trapped here, frozen with a bunch of idiotic men extracting eggs from my lady parts. But none of that is as important as me finding Claire and making sure she doesn’t feel like that.
None of these women should feel like that.
I reach up, leaning a hand on the icy edge of the freezer nearest me. Floating inside is a girl my age with ink-black hair and skin the color of caramel. “I’m not refusing.” I shift my hand slightly as I talk, trying to aim my fingers at him, but it’s hard to tell with my hand at waist height if I’ve targeted him correctly.
“Your weapons have been disabled.” His words seem to weigh like a threat. I’m not sure if he’s lying or not. If he is, I shoot and hope I can hit him, and on the good chance I miss, he’ll retaliate and I’m dead. If he isn’t lying, I shoot and nothing happens, he punishes me.
Either way, I end up no help to my sister or any of the other girls stuck here floating in frozen goo.
“Your words don’t mean much to me, Pious. Whether you’re lying to me or not, but it doesn’t matter because I wasn’t going to do anything to you,” I lie.
“Lies. And forgive me for admitting this again, but I do like how your skin turns pink when you’re flustered. I’m beginning to see the appeal.” He traces a finger over the counter in front of him. I’m not even sure he realizes he’s doing it, but it’s creepy as hell.
I don’t say anything back. I don’t even move. I can barely breathe.
“When Rune was general, do you know what his plans were?” He drifts closer, slowly easing his way past each frozen container.
“No, I don’t.” My voice is barely more than a whisper. I want to know Rune’s plans. I want to understand what he wanted to do, what he tried to do. Mostly, what I think I want is for Pious to come closer to me. If he’s talking about my blushes, maybe I can talk him into taking off his helmet.
Or maybe I could just try and see if my weapons work and hope I blow it clean off his face.
He’s two freezer lengths away now, and still closing in.
“We needed eggs to fertilize. We needed to create another generation, and another after that,” he says.
There’s only one freezer between us, now, and he stands on the other side of it from me. “He wanted to mate.” A growl chokes out of his throat in disgust. “With one of you parasites. Procreate the vulgar way your people did. Exchanging their fluids and bacteria and diseases.”
Okay, that rules out trying to get him to let me take off his faceplate or the hope of me ever feeling like I wanted to have sex again. “I’m not a parasite.”
“Yes, you are.”
I don’t want to play his head games anymore. “Which container is my sister in?”
“I’ll negotiate with you. You tell me where Rune is hiding and I’ll freeze you in the same preservation unit as your sister.”
“Never,” I growl.
He leans over the counter, menacingly. “You would forsake your life, and that of your sister, for him?”
That’s definitely not what I was going for. It’s not at all what I meant. I meant he would never get to freeze me. Never in a million years. And I’m seriously starting to think Claire isn’t even here. Wouldn’t showing me Claire, frozen in a box, be a better way of persuading me to do something?
“I
wonder, female, if you would change your mind if you knew what was in his?” He lunges across the one container that stands between us and whips out both his hands, grabbing the faceplate I’m holding and slamming it across my cheeks. Again, I can’t get out of the goddamn way fast enough.
At first I don’t feel anything. I’m stunned stupid with his hands gripping both sides of my face, holding my entire body in place with his superhuman strength.
“Let’s see what you think of your pathetic general after you live inside his mind,” he grunts.
That’s when I feel the pain, like fire slicing through my forehead and down the bridge of my nose. The metal casings of Pious’s fingers seep through the skin of my cheeks where he’s crushing the faceplate to my temples. Then he yanks me close to the armor on his chest, sending scorching heat through mine.
“Maybe,” his voice whispers in my ear. No, it’s not in my ear. His voice is inside my head. “Maybe I’ll show you mercy when this is through, female. Then when I capture him, I will torture him with you and your pink blushing skin.”
A low-pitched humming fills my ears. I want to reach up and cover them, but my arms are useless lumps at my sides.
This is it.
This is how I’m going to die.
I try to struggle free but I can’t.
I have to get away. I have to get to Claire.
The humming rises into a harsh screeching sound that grates over the gums of my teeth and brings tears to my eyes. I want to buck and scream, but I’ve lost all ability to move. Panic sparks over my skin and bubbles up through my veins.
There’s a sudden sensation of floating, of a rush of air, then metal clicks into metal. My eyes are half slits. They’re too heavy to hold open.
Against my eardrums the screeching pitches to an impossible teeth-jarring noise. It triggers my gag reflex and I heave and retch, but my stomach is too empty to expel anything.
Then everything goes pitch black and the pain and noise come to an abrupt stop. For a few moments nothing happens. I wait for the icy-cold liquid to get poured in around me. For the rip and tear of my clothes. But only a low hum of electricity begins to crackle and whir around me. I can feel it under my skin. It feels the same as when I first put on the armor, it’s the same heated feeling as when the metal moves through your pores and sets itself up beneath your flesh, deep inside your organs and bones.
Out of nowhere, a bright blue light flashes across my face. To the left of my vision, a small, green light blinks spastically, then a display of words and numbers flashes quickly before my eyes.
This is a faceplate. I need to remember Pious put a faceplate on me.
I’m just encased in a Caelum suit.
I’m not being frozen under milky oatmeal-like ice. I need to keep control of my own thoughts.
The armor vibrates over my skin, buzzing and rippling. In front of my eyes, a circular scope appears with a bull’s-eye in the middle. Numbers and names and colors whip and scroll across my view.
BEGIN CALIBRATION. The words flash across my line of vision. They pulse quickly then stretch out into a straight horizontal line and expand to fill my vision. Pain sears through my retinas.
A blurry digital image appears and sizzles with static. The display blinks on and off. Data rolls and flickers up the right side of my view and all my nerve endings feel as if they are shattering into millions of tiny pieces. The pain is worse than anything I’ve ever felt before.
Then it’s instantly gone.
REPLAY.
Replay? What the hell is he going to replay for me? The word hovers for a moment then blips out to a still shot of me and Claire, crouching in the small space between two buildings. Our faces are covered with dirt and debris. My old baseball cap is pinned to my head; next to me, Claire is frozen in a horrible expression of complete and utter terror.
Pious is making me watch the day I took Claire and my father to look for food and help. The last day we were all together.
The day I met Rune.
But this time, I’m seeing it all through his point of view.
39
Kate
I’m overloaded with Rune’s subconscious. Overdosing on every feeling and thought he had. I want to tear the faceplate off and run. His brain is in my brain, I can’t tell our thoughts apart. They babble and pour over each other like a river rushing through my head. I’m inside his skin, or he’s in mine. I don’t know which, but it’s alien and untouched and crawling with rage and confusion.
Then I’m all Rune, every ounce of him seeping inside of me, traveling along with the dark gray alloy of the armor I’m covered in.
Earth.
Or is Hell the better name for it?
This was our first chance at making contact with grounders. The first time we saw life exist again on the planet. How did my men turn on me?
Why did they?
I don’t feel anything at first when they rip the armor from my face. No, that’s a lie. I feel the wind. The very air that carries all the viruses and bacteria which decimated this once-thriving planet. There’s warmth on my face, it drips down from my forehead and pools on the hard, black surface that winds around the groups of buildings and dwellings here.
The three Caelum that have committed treason and mutiny against me have vanished. I watched them take a small grounder, moments ago. Another one is left, watching me. I want to call out, but now all I feel is pain, as if my skin was sliced from off my face with pure molten plasma.
I can’t see very far and dark spots cloud my vision. The air must be pure poison here. The parasites and bacteria are probably festering on the open parts of my armor. Bolts of electricity cut across the sky, and drops of what most likely is toxic acid fall from where my people call home.
I’m abruptly aware of the grounder storming up to me, shouting. Its hair is long and mangled, its teeth are bared, ready to bite. Its hands—its fingers filthy with germs and deadly toxins—grab at me, slapping and scratching. “Where are they taking everyone?” it yells.
Heat burns through my organs. The grounder’s voice is soft and high, different than any I’ve ever heard. Again, I try to speak but my mouth is too dry. My body must be decaying from the inside out.
The grounder stumbles forward and heaves me by my armor, dragging me over the rough ground. It curses as it shouts. If I weren’t about to die from breathing the lethal pathogens that fester on this planet, I would probably find this comedic.
Something strange bubbles up under my chest plate.
Death is soon upon me.
The grounder drags me farther, slamming me against curves and craters that scar the ground here. Then it grunts and pushes me up into a metal rectangular box. I’ve seen these contraptions before, rolling about the blacktop veins of this world. Vehicles. Mobile units of transportation.
There’s a sharp bright beam of light that blinds me, and that foreign, musical voice asks again, “Where did they take my sister?”
This close to the grounder I can see clearly and what I do see nearly stops my heart dead inside my armor.
The grounder is a female. We found one. We found a female!
Her face is smeared with earth and filth, but underneath I can see the soft shell of her skin, and eyes the color of the laurel we grow in the arboretum.
My mind fights through the saturation of Rune in my head. My nerve endings feel things as he touches them, like it’s some sick virtual-reality game. I want to claw the metal off my face, but my muscles feel stiff and atrophied. The muscles in my stomach tighten to a sickening twist, my tendons coil and tremble like my body is fighting for its right to be free.
The metal I’m trapped in squeezes me and heats my skin to a painful temperature. A sudden, dizzying pixelated pattern streams across my eyes and zaps out in a loud horrifying pop. Something sizzles across my arms and I somehow gain control over them again. Electric-white noise bursts in and my hands claw at my jaw trying to find the release of the helmet, but it feels soldered on,
fused into my bones.
I have to find a way to break out of this tin leotard.
The left screen of my faceplate goes black then fades out into real-time view of Pious’s metal legs sauntering back and forth in front of me. His voice is strangely echoing out, tinged with sharp spikes of sound. Every time he paces to my left, he slams on the uploading dock like it’s busted and a good hard smack will fix it right up.
Typical. He’s an adolescent boy trapped inside a testosterone-infested flying saucer. I scream at him inside my armor, but no sounds come out.
Another hard punch out of Pious’s fist against the uploading station and my vision goes black, and a small red pinpoint flashes rapidly in the middle.
“Reboot!” Pious shouts.
REBOOTING.
“Replay!” Pious’s voice is louder now, full of rage. “Reboot and replay! For Solar sake, work!”
In that moment, it hits me, how absurdly funny it all is. Pious, the self-appointed general of the dumbass space pirates is having a complete meltdown and he’s throwing a tantrum.
The viewfinder that fills my vision is zipping through a digital recording in rewind. Explosions and flashes of metallic limbs moving and running in triple time, backwards.
And now it’s kind of lost its grip on me. I know I’m really just hooked up to the ship and it’s feeding me all this bullshit. Making me see things from someone else’s point of view. I’m aware of everything that’s happening in front of me, but it’s more like I’m watching a movie in a very sophisticated virtual theater now, and not like I’m actually living the nightmare over again.
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