45
Kate
What the hell was that?
Did I just sort of offer myself to him?
And he answered with a resounding no?
And it sounded a lot like he gave me an ultimatum.
My shoulders curl over my chest and my face—no, my entire body flushes with heat and tightens. My dumb eyes well with tears and I wipe at them furiously. There’s no way in hell I will let myself cry over what that asshole just made me feel.
Rune joins the others, who graciously gave us privacy for that little humiliating situation. I blink back more tears. I don’t even know what just happened. I can’t believe I wanted him to kiss me. I can’t believe I got up on my tippy toes to try to meet him halfway. I’m not even wearing those brainwashing helmets, so how is it possible that at the worst time in my life, with my sister and father in danger and me stuck up in this spaceship, I am thinking about some guy kissing me? And get humiliated when he chooses to keep his lips for someone else?
A sniffle slips out. Rune stops pacing in front of the others and turns his head toward me.
The expression that falls over his features sends shivers down my spine.
Fine, asshole. I’ll get dressed. His attention drops away as I slide my foot into the alloy bottoms and let the burn that seeps into my skin comfort me. I just need to plug into the ship and update my health, or whatever it is that this ship does, and make a plan to get home to Claire. Forget Rune.
But what about all the other women trapped here? I want to help them. But how? And how do I do that and save Claire at the same time? I angrily shove the rest of my body into the Caelum armor and slam my back into the uploading dock. Fire rips into my skin and surges through my veins. Right before I pull the faceplate over my eyes, I see Rune slowly raise his head and bring his gaze back to mine. He squeezes his eyes shut and hangs his head. I press the metal to my face and grind my teeth from the pain.
I’m not choosing death over him. I’m choosing life. My sister’s life. My life.
I can’t stay here with Pious around. I belong on Earth to live out the last few years it’s got left. And how do I know Rune is even telling me the truth about humans becoming extinct? I don’t. All I know is that’s where I belong, so that’s where I need to go.
My viewfinder darkens and neon blue digital numbers race across the screen. A swirl of colorful light flickers and pulses. My body goes completely numb and the pain, fatigue, and hunger I feel just slip away.
Earth needs these contraptions. Instead of visiting a doctor’s office we could just plug into one of these and immediately feel better. Stronger.
I wonder if they could cure diseases.
I guess if they could, they wouldn’t have left Earth in the first place.
With a loud swoosh, the machine detaches from me and I’m able to step away from the wall. The first thing I do is yank the faceplate off my head and my eyes lock with Rune’s. And Jex’s, and Tore’s, and Sarah’s. All of them are standing in a semi-circle closely around me, intently watching. Startled, I stumble back a step.
“What is wrong with you people?” I snap, throwing my hands up.
The two little Caelum I mistook for children before scramble away and press themselves into a dark corner. Shit, I scared them again. “I’m sorry, please.” I lower my hands and hold them out in front of me. “I keep forgetting these are weapons. I promise I won’t use them on you, really.” Not unless they attack me first.
Rune sighs heavily. “They’re awed by you.”
He can’t hold my gaze and rubs at the back of his neck as he looks away.
“Awed by me?” I ask, looking at Sarah.
“Grounders are supposed to be riddled with plagues. Extinct. Yet you stand before us now with skin that has felt the sun and lungs that breathed Earth’s oxygen,” she says.
“Rune has too,” I say, pointing to him. He’s still staring at the floor. “And nothing happened to him, either.” Except, he’s not naked anymore. He’s wearing body armor. “How did you get armor? How long was I in that thing?”
No one answers me, because of course they wouldn’t.
I’m surrounded by a bunch of alien jerks.
“Can someone explain to me why you’re all just standing around staring at me?”
“You’re in optimal health,” Sarah says. My eyes flash toward hers. “We were fearful of the bacteria and diseases you might be carrying. General Rune ran a full diagnostic scan on your anatomy.”
“That’s what Pious did too,” I mumble.
“What did Pious do?” Rune barks, fists tightening at his sides.
“Hey, wait a minute,” I say, ignoring his question. “How dare you run any tests on me without my permission.”
His nostrils flare. “I am the general of this ship and I do as I want.”
I step closer to him and lower my voice. “You’re not my general, Rune. You have no rights to me.”
“Yes, female, you made that perfectly clear.”
Sarah bows her head next to us. “General, may I speak freely with her?”
I step back, realizing Rune and I were standing a little too close to each other. I don’t even know how we got that way. “Sarah, you have my permission to speak freely to me.”
Her face pales. “General Rune has told us you would like to leave here and go back to Earth.”
I glance at Rune and wish he would have just kept his mouth shut. It’s none of anyone’s business what I wish for. “My sister and father are there and they both need me.”
Sarah pauses and eyes me curiously.
“There are also women up here on this tin can you call a home that were taken against their will. They’re to be used for their eggs to help repopulate your people.”
Sarah presses her hands to her chest. “That is such wonderful news.”
“But it’s not. Not for the hundreds of girls frozen in goo-filled tubes somewhere. It’s not wonderful to them. They don’t want their eggs to be taken.”
“Kate—” Rune starts, reaching out to touch my arm.
I yank it out of his grasp. “Fuck off, asshole. What’s the story, Rune? Now you suddenly think harvesting eggs from innocent unconscious girls is a great plan?” My heart is drumming, my pulse pounding loudly in my ears. “I thought that was all your brother’s plan? Are you on his side now?”
“Kate,” he growls. “Mine will be the last generation of humans if I don’t do anything.”
“Hey, fucknut. Join the club. You’re looking at the last generation of my people as well. And I want to save them.”
Jex steps forward, shifting his frame between me and the others. “General, forgive me for interrupting. Show her the footage. Show her what her world is going to become and have her make the choice after.”
“What footage?” ask.
Rune cranes his neck around Jex and lowers his head close to mine and whispers, “Will you watch, Kate?” This close to him, I see a glossy shine in his icy blue eyes.
“Is it real, Rune? Or is it something Pious edited to make me believe something I shouldn’t?”
He reaches out and entwines his fingers through mine and gently pulls me back to the docking station. “I thought you didn’t want us touching,” I snap bitterly.
His movements still. “No, Kate. What I want is for you to become my mate. What I want is to be able to touch you whenever, wherever I want for the rest of our existence. But you’re choosing to leave.”
I swallow back the knot in my throat. “And now you’re going to show me something that’s going to make me want to stay in this rinky-dink flying saucer.”
“I hope so. With everything I’m made of.”
Rune takes my faceplate and softly presses it to my cheeks. “I’m right here, Kate,” he breathes. “Try to remember you’re observing as a viewer. You’re only virtually there.”
That’s a little too ominous for my taste. “Rune, wait—”
“I can’t wait any longer, Kate. I need t
o take you to get Claire and come back here or I need to get you back to your family and leave you.” My vision clicks to a soft, blue sky. “Please, don’t make me leave you there,” his voice whispers. “Please, Kate,” his voice breaks.
Up above the sky is beautiful. I can feel the warmth of the sun on my shoulders and I turn toward it, letting it heat my cheeks. Gray buildings stand tall around me, reflecting light beams from window to window. Enormous jumbotrons plaster the sides of the buildings with darkened screens. I don’t need to wonder where I am, it’s the most iconic place in the world. I’m standing in the middle of Times Square in New York City. Broadway theaters and giant retail stores and the world’s best pizza places stretched out before me.
But there’s not a soul around.
And the world is on mute.
Mounds of trash litter the street. A giant crane juts up over one of the buildings, dangling a long thick chain in the wind. Okay, I get it. Rune wants me to see the world with no humans on it. But that’s exactly how we’ve been living for the last few weeks. So far, I don’t see a difference from when I lived there.
I shuffle around the garbage and my eye catches a pile of feathers. There are a few piles of them, strewn through the filth on the ground. Squinting my eyes, I try to get a clearer view.
They’re birds. Pigeons. A few squirrels here and there. But there are hundreds of them, some lumped together in heaps, others alone, with their little bird claws reaching up toward the sky, where they once flew.
I don’t like this.
I back away and walk quickly down one of the side streets. Dead birds litter that street as well. When I reach the corner there are more dead things besides animals lying in the streets.
There are people.
Bodies withering and decaying, their faces stuck in expressions of the most excruciating pain I’ve ever seen. Bloody wounds pockmark their arms and legs, their eyes glazed and sunken back into their sockets as if the muscles and tissues behind them just melted away.
I rush into a store, but no one’s inside. Glass doors are broken, glittering shards of multicolored glass over the floor. Shelves are toppled over, dried blood cakes the walls where advertisements of a ‘60% off everything sale’ hang.
Stores, restaurants, theaters; I enter every building but see no one alive. Hurrying along, I find a sidewalk newsstand and grab for a paper. Worldwide, Flu Pandemic Hits! Coronavirus 2.0! Tell Your Loved Ones Goodbye, the headline reads.
A worldwide pandemic? Coronavirus 2.0? That’s what causes the extinction of humans?
The display on my faceplate blinks out.
Is Rune taking the armor off me?
I slap my hands up to my face trying to keep it on. I’m not done looking. I want to run uptown. I want to go to our apartment and see if my family is there. I don’t believe the entire population of the world can just go extinct. There has to be people still there. Plagues can’t happen in the 21st century, can they?
My cheeks and lips go numb as the alloy detaches from my skin. I blink my eyes open and Rune is in front of me, holding my helmet.
I ball my hands into fists. “I wasn’t done. I want to go back and see my apartment. I need to see if my father or Claire are still alive. I want to—”
“You can’t. That was a virtual tour, recorded by planetary rovers three months after my ancestors launched into space,” he says steadily.
I rake my hand through my hair and it gets tangled in the knotted strands. “That was in 2056?”
“Yes,” he whispers, tilting his head. “That is your future.”
I force myself to smile, but end up pinching my lips together in annoyance and rubbing my temples. Rune is giving me a headache. “Listen to me clearly,” I say, in a high-pitched voice. “2056 is a future over thirty years from my now. Don’t you get that? I’ll be old by then, or, my demise could have been from a bus accident in my late twenties. Maybe,” I huff. “Maybe I die in my thirties from an aneurysm or car accident.”
His gaze drops from mine.
“The point is, Rune, I need to get back to my time on Earth and find my sister. And the women here need to be brought back where they belong.”
“And when you find your sister? Is your plan to live out the rest of your life the way you were before you saved me? Scrounging for food and aluminum foil. In a world torn apart and ravaged by Pious?”
How did he know about my father’s obsession with aluminum foil? “How do you know about the foil?” I hiss.
“Do you think mine were the only memories that could be revealed from these faceplates?”
“If you did, if you can know what’s in my mind…then you already know how frantic I am to get back to Claire.”
“Yes, Kate. I do.” He steps forward and lifts my chin up with a finger. “I also know that you’re not completely opposed to mating with me.”
My breath hitches. It’s not like I can even deny it. Obviously, he’s seen my private thoughts. And I’ve seen his.
He lifts my chin up higher, so I can’t look anywhere but into his eyes. “Just promise me when I get you back to Claire, you will seriously give thought to coming back with me.”
“Are you promising to get me back to Claire? And my father?” I say, shifting closer to him.
“I thought that was the mission,” he whispers.
“Say it. Say you promise.”
“With all that I am, Kate. I promise that I will reunite you with your sister and father and try to mend all that Pious has done.” He rubs his thumb softly over my bottom lip.
“Well, okay then,” I whisper.
46
Kate
“We can get to the hangar without being seen, General. That I can ensure you.”
“Undoubtably, Sentinel. The question is, how do we get the pods out and re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere without being seen?” Jex and Rune sit on either side of a three-dimensional digitized map of the spaceship.
It looks like the Death Star from Star Wars. This thing is huge. “What’s that, right there?” I ask pointing my finger to a large open area in the middle of the sphere.
Neither idiot acknowledges me, instead Tore comes up from behind me and points alongside my finger. “That is the arboretum.”
“Is that an alien thing?” I ask, repeating the unfamiliar word in my head.
“It’s a botanic garden,” he says with a smile. “Not an alien thing. Grounders have them as well, do they not?”
“Yeah, I guess we do,” I say, taking a step back and folding my arms across my chest. Tore’s eyes follow my movements.
“Why do you want to return to Earth?” he asks.
“My sister and father are there and they both need me,” I say quietly.
His eyebrows scrunch up and squish together. I have to keep on reminding myself that these men have not had any interpersonal relationships until now, it’s got to be hard for them to comprehend why I need to get home.
“My sister, she’s my twin sister, you know?” I sigh and stammer a bit. “And uh, she’s special, well…she has special needs, she and my father always need someone to help them and take care of them,” I say, finding it hard to come up with the right way to explain it all.
“What is a twin sister?” he asks.
Oh wow, okay. “Uh, we were born at the same time, together.”
“Understood. Sentinel Jex and General Rune and I and the others are all twins then,” he says, nodding.
“Well, no. Not really. You have to be born at the same time from the same mother,” I try to explain.
“We have no mothers here,” he says quietly.
“Somewhere you do, Tore. Somewhere there is a woman whose egg was used to create you,” I say, softly.
“It matters not, I guess. But this twin needs you? And so does this father you speak of?”
“Yes, they both need me,” I say, fighting the tears that are threatening my eyes.
“We need you here as well, don’t we?” he asks, innocently. “Or ou
r species will face extinction.”
I flash my eyes up to where Rune stands and he’s already staring back at me, listening for my answer. Listening to our whole conversation. I drop my gaze and turn to Tore and take a deep breath, “Let’s not talk about any of this, okay? Why don’t you tell me about the garden?” That’s a safe conversation that won’t make me feel awful.
“Would you like to view it?” he asks with a smile and a gleam in his eyes. How in the world are all the men on this ship gorgeous? It doesn’t seem very fair.
“Yeah, I guess,” I sigh, still thinking about Claire and Dad and how terrified they must be. I don’t even know how long it’s been since I’ve seen them. I don’t even have a clue as to how much time has passed since I got up here.
“Reapply your faceplate and plug in to the docking station,” he says, stepping toward the machine behind us. As I follow him, I sneak a quick glance over my shoulder. Rune is still watching me. I wonder if he’s worrying over his promise to me. Listening to him and Jex discuss exit strategies doesn’t give me any hope for there being any exit strategies that won’t alert Pious of our escape. And everyone here is positive Pious with disintegrate any and all pods that leave the ship.
Even when I break eye contact with him again, I can still feel his gaze lingering on me. My cheeks heat thinking about it, about how much I honestly like when he does it, and I quickly cover them with the armor, disregarding any pain.
I plug my armor into the docking station while Tore swipes at the dashboard next to me. Through the faceplate’s viewfinder I can sneak another glance at Rune without him knowing.
He’s still staring. The same warmth from my cheeks tingles down my neck and across my breasts. God, this is the worst time to be attracted to someone. What the hell is wrong with me?
Instantly I’m standing in the middle of a garden with trees that canopy over my head. Light beams fall softly through the leaves and spread a glow on hundreds of flowers that line the small pathway I’m on. I’m momentarily dizzy from the abrupt scenery change.
Here Page 22