by Rob Boffard
He has the presence of mind to take a single, deep breath. Then he clicks the catch open, and drops.
9
Okwembu
The water knocks the breath from Okwembu’s lungs
For one terrible moment it shuts her body down completely. She is entirely submerged, hanging upside down in her seat. Her arms and legs won’t move.
The need for air overpowers everything, short-circuiting every rational part of her mind. Okwembu throws her head forward, desperate to break the surface of the water, aware that she might not be able to. Her brain sends out a desperate signal to breathe, and she opens her mouth wide.
Air. Beautiful, wonderful, air. She can’t get enough of it, and she can’t keep it inside her. Her lungs can’t hold onto it, shocked into uselessness by the water. But she’s above the surface, and awake, and alive. Electrical connections short out in bursts of sparks, lighting up the pod’s interior.
A moment later, the water rises over her face. In a panic, Okwembu thrusts herself upwards, but she’s strapped in tight and can’t keep her head above the surface. The air vanishes, ripped away.
The other passengers are just like her, upside down, the water over their chests. They’re thrashing in place, fingers fumbling at the straps, desperate to get loose. Okwembu keeps her eyes open, forcing her body to cooperate. Through the dark water, she can see a huge hole in the back of the pod, edged with jagged, torn metal. That’s her way out.
She is going to survive this. It’s insanity to think otherwise. She is going to find the source of that radio transmission, make contact with whoever is sending it and continue her life. That’s all that matters.
Okwembu works quickly, unstrapping herself, pushing past the panic, working the buckles on the safety straps. They come loose, but she’s tangled up in them, her left arm pinned in an awkward position. She wrenches to the side, popping it free.
She doesn’t know how to swim. None of them do. Nobody in this pod has ever encountered this much water in one place. She has to work it out as she goes. The water makes fine motions impossible, the cold robbing her of control. But she can still move her arms and legs, and she propels herself towards the hole. She forces her eyes to stay open, even though it feels like they’re going to freeze in their sockets.
A hand claws at Okwembu. The face behind it is upside down, eyes wide with terror, like something out of a nightmare. The fingers are in her hair. For a horrifying second, she’s caught, stuck fast. Then she twists away, pushing through the jagged hole.
Her next stroke gets her clear. It takes every burning atom of energy she has to keep going, but she does it, breaking the surface.
And all she can see is fire.
It takes her a confused second to work out what’s happening. The surface of the water is burning, the flames licking against a darkening sky. The fuel. It’s draining from the pod, ignited somehow, burning hard. Smoke stings her eyes. Heat bakes the water off her face, but below her neck she’s almost completely numb with cold. Her clothes are heavy with water, holding her in place.
Movement, off to her right. Coughing and spluttering. A shadow, pulling itself out of the water, heaving its way up onto—
The shore. It’s visible through the smoke, close enough to get to. She can make it.
Okwembu starts swimming, winding a path through the burning fuel. But her movements are slower now. Underwater she could swim, but here it’s almost impossible. Every stroke feels huge, but seems as if it propels her no more than a single inch. Her vision shrinks down to a small, burning circle.
It can’t end like this. She won’t let it. But the circle threatens to wink out, and she tastes the water in her mouth, cold and sour.
Then she’s being lifted up. Hands under her arms, pulling her bodily out the water. She slams into the ground on the shoreline, mud spattering her face, tongue touching dirt. Her limbs twitch spasmodically. She rolls over, without really meaning to. Her clothing clings to her like a second skin, and her legs are still submerged in the water.
Mikhail Yeremin stands over her, breathing hard, his shoulders trembling.
10
Riley
What happens next comes in flashes.
The seat straps are digging into my shoulders, biting down through my jacket. They’re digging in because I’m tilted forwards, all the way, on the edge of my seat. My left thigh hurts, but it’s a distant pain, and it doesn’t seem important right now.
The bottom of the Lyssa is gone. The space where it should be is filled with rocks and dirt, jagged and uneven, the shadows falling in strange shapes. The rocks are speckled with ice, painted in a dozen drab shades of white and grey and brown. Here and there is a flash of colour: dark purple, like a plant clinging to the surface.
When I open my eyes again, there’s movement. Hands. Feet. Someone falls, their body plummeting past me.
I don’t see them hit the ground. My eyes are already closed. All I hear is the hard thud, and the piercing scream that follows it, trailing off as I sink into darkness.
I come back when something grips my shoulder. A hand. Syria’s hand. His face is taut with concentration. He’s hanging off the side of the Lyssa–the pod has been torn to pieces, the metal shredded and pierced. Torn wires spit showers of sparks.
“Come on, Hale,” Syria says. His voice sounds like it’s coming from another dimension. “You’re the last one. Don’t make me wait here any longer than I have to.”
I close my eyes again.
Just before I go away, I feel Syria fumbling at my chest. His fingers are caught on something.
The buckle, I think. It’s connected to the straps, and the straps are—
My eyes fly open just as Syria pops the catch.
I drop, tumbling head first out of the seat. Syria grabs me around the wrist, holding tight. I can see the muscles in his arm straining, the drops of sweat pouring off his brow. I swing in place, clutching at him with my free hand, holding on with everything I’ve got.
The Lyssa is tilted at a sharp angle. What I thought was the floor was actually the wall opposite my seat, and there’s a fifteen-foot drop from where we are to the ground below. The dark purple things on the rocks are the shredded fragments of our parachute.
There’s a body on the ground. A woman, writhing in agony, clutching her leg, her blue jacket spread out around her like angel’s wings. She’s half lying in a pool of water. It stains the rocks, creeping up their sides.
“Just drop me,” I say to Syria.
“What?”
I don’t wait for him to get the idea. I shake loose of his arm and drop, tucking my legs.
For an instant, I get a clear view past the edge of the Lyssa. More rocks, some the size of the pod itself, resting in a sea of dirt. The ground is steeply sloped. A giant gash has been ripped out of it, the Lyssa tearing up the hillside. We must have come in at an angle, crashing across it. I catch a glimpse of grey sky, the clouds low and dark.
I hit the ground. Hard.
My muscles aren’t primed for it. It’s uneven, nothing like the hard, flat surfaces on Outer Earth. I land at the edge of the pool of water, try to roll, channelling my vertical energy at an angle, twisting so the impact travels across my spine, but my feet sink into the dirt. It absorbs the energy, trapping it, and the precise roll I was planning turns into a clumsy tumble.
I somersault, landing face first, a dagger of rock jabbing into my cheek. My thigh is screaming at me, as if someone stuck a hot knife in there and is slowly twisting it back and forth.
I ignore it, forcing myself to get up, shouting for Syria before I’m on my feet. He’s halfway down, clambering past the bottom edge of the Lyssa. The pod itself is almost torn in two, resting up against a boulder. There’s a smell in the air I can’t place, thick and pungent.
“Come on!” I shout at Syria. My words form puffs of white as I speak, and I suddenly realise how cold it is. The dry air scythes deep into my lungs. I’m aware of my fingers straying to my thigh
, aware of them brushing something hard that sends little sparks of pain shooting through me. I look down, but my vision is blurry, unfocused. I can’t see anything.
Whatever it is, it isn’t slowing me down. It can wait.
The woman in the blue jacket is still on the ground. She’s passed out, and two more Earthers are dragging her to safety. Their faces are smeared with dirt and blood.
I run in, intending to help, then stumble to a halt.
The ground on the side where the woman lies is churned up, with dozens of depressions formed by everybody dropping down. Depressions filled with liquid that I thought was water.
It isn’t water.
It’s fuel.
Highly volatile, flammable fuel. So unstable that it’s not even supposed to be exposed to air.
There’s a steady stream of it trickling down the large boulder. That’s what the horrible smell is. And, above us, shredded wires are raining sparks.
“Get out of here!” I scream at the two Earthers dragging the unconscious woman. All I can think about are her clothes, soaked in fuel. There are two more Earthers beyond them, sprinting across the slope.
Syria is hanging, getting ready to drop. A thin stream of sparks rains down around him, and for the first time I see that he’s wounded, blood running from a huge gash in his shoulder.
He lands awkwardly, stumbling. I sprint towards him, pulling him away from the crashed pod, my feet catching on the uneven ground. I can’t seem to focus on any one object–the world is a mass of grey and brown, the freezing air slicing into my lungs. I almost fall, sliding down the slope a few feet, and have to use my hands to steady myself.
There’s no telling how long we have, or how big the explosion is going to be. I don’t even know if there’ll be an explosion, but I’ve seen fuel before and I don’t want to be around if it goes up.
“What about the others?” Syria shouts, looking over his shoulder.
“We don’t–watch out!”
I grab Syria’s shoulder, stopping him cold. What I thought was a pile of rocks concealed a short drop, the mucky ground sloping away at a steep angle. There are more rocks piled at the bottom of the slope, some as large as I am.
I hoist myself over, dropping down, telling myself to be careful. There’s a crack behind us, a big one, like the boulder holding up the Lyssa is giving way.
Whoomp.
For a split second the world is completely silent. There’s no air in my lungs–it’s been sucked away, pulled towards the Lyssa.
There’s no bang. No explosion. Just a sound that goes from a murmur to a roar in less than a second.
Syria screams. I’m looking up at him, and in that instant there’s a halo of white fire around his body. His jacket is burning. With a kind of horrified fascination, I see his hair start to smoulder.
Then the shock wave knocks him off the ledge. He collides with me and sends both of us tumbling down the slope.
Sky and dirt whirl around me. I roll end over end, screaming, fingers scrabbling at the ground, legs kicking out as I try to stabilise myself, my thigh sending up frantic signals of pain.
The tips of the fingers on my right hand snag something–a plant, growing out between the rocks. I don’t get a chance to make out the details–it snaps almost immediately, but it’s enough to slow me down a fraction. I’m on my back, my legs facing downhill. I spread them wide, my heels bouncing off the uneven ground. It’s crusted with ice, rock-hard, and I can’t break through.
Syria is just below me, still tumbling. For an instant, I see his back, a terrifying mess of red and black. Parts of his jacket are still smoking. Before I can do anything, he smashes into the rocks below, howling in pain.
I’m coming in way too fast. I lift my legs, using every muscle I have to get them off the slope. It looks like I’m doing a complicated stretch. I slam them back down, and this time my heels catch, smashing through the crust just enough to slow my descent.
I come to a stop, bumping up against Syria. Even that light tap is enough to jerk a horrified moan from him. He’s on his back, his face twisted in agony, breathing far too hard.
The fire has turned the top of the slope into hell. I don’t know how hot rocket fuel burns, but the rocks are blistered and blackened.
I get to my feet. I’m unsteady, off balance, but I pull Syria to his feet with a strength I didn’t know I had. He screams again, tries to push me away, but he’s too weak.
I don’t know if we can outrun the fire, but we have to try.
I wrap an arm around him. As I try to get a grip under his armpit, my hand brushes his shoulder. It’s baking hot, and the surface feels wrong: crumbly and soft, all at once.
No time to check. Moving as fast as I can, I pull Syria across the slope, away from the burning pod.
11
Riley
Gradually, the slope gives way to more level ground.
We’re on the edge of a vast, uneven plateau. Behind us, a peak rises to the sky, its tip buried in the clouds. The air is hazy, but I can make out smaller hills around us, their surfaces barren.
I have to keep my eyes on the ground. There’s plenty to trip over down there: slippery rock, patches of crusty ice, those weird scrubby plants with their brittle tendrils. Syria is almost a dead weight, barely conscious. I’m shivering–the adrenaline is draining out of my body, and it’s beginning to wake up to how cold it really is out here.
Should we go after the Earthers? Try join up with any that survived the explosion? But even the thought of trying to get Syria back up that slope is too hard to take in. As it is, each step is a small miracle. I try to push myself into a rhythm, the same rhythm I used when I was a tracer: stride, land, cushion, spring, repeat.
“Stay with me, OK?” I say to Syria. He doesn’t respond.
The fire might be burning hot, but it’s not spreading. After a few minutes, it’s a distant rumble, and the insane heat fades. I concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.
We’re on Earth.
The thought forms slowly. It’s hard to take in. A few days ago, I was on the station, the only home I’d ever known. Every second of my life had been spent inside a metal ring, and I never once thought that I’d step outside it. It wasn’t even something I took for granted. It just was, a fact of my existence that was never going to change.
I can’t even begin to understand how this place exists. The whole planet was meant to be a poisoned, radioactive wasteland. Humans were supposed to have been wiped out. And yet we’re here, out in the open. There’s sky and clouds and ground and a horizon, stretching out in front of me.
Fear starts to gnaw at me. Just because we’re walking around on Earth doesn’t mean it isn’t killing us right now. I could be breathing poisoned air, bathing in radiation, and not know until it was too late.
Of course, there’s not a single thing I can do about it. If it’s true, we’re all dead anyway.
The light is changing. I raise my eyes skywards, and the strangest thing happens.
I see low-hanging grey clouds, growing dimmer as the sun sets beyond them. They run from one end of the horizon to the other, flat and unbroken, featureless, capping a world of distant, snowy peaks and barren rock. But everything is much too bright. I can’t focus on things, and trying to do so plants the seed of a headache behind my eyes. I screw them shut, try a second time. Same result. It’s like I’ve put on someone’s glasses–someone with much worse eyesight than mine.
I decide not to look at the sky again.
We enter a shallow depression in the hill, bordered by more rocks, and that’s when Syria’s legs finally give out. For a moment we’re locked in a crazy dance, as if he’s my partner and I’m bending him over in a complicated move. But he’s heavy, way too heavy, and he goes down, thumping face first into the dirt. That’s when I get a really good look at his back
It’s as if an amateur artist tried to mix red and black paint to create a new colour, and didn’t quite manage. Most of his jacket
is gone. Parts of it are fused with skin, melted onto it, along with his shirt. There’s a large, undamaged section of it near his waist, flapping loose, but even that is only hanging on by a few burned threads. The skin itself is crusted black; the burned area runs all the way from his lower back up to his neck and across his shoulders. If I hadn’t climbed down onto the slope first…
Don’t think like that. You can’t. Not now.
I don’t know a lot about burns, but even I’m aware just how easy it is to get them infected. And we’re out in the middle of nowhere, with no supplies, and the sky growing darker by the minute.
I need help. But any Earthers who were in the Lyssa are long gone, and Prakesh is—
Prakesh. Carver. The longing I feel for both of them at that moment is almost indescribable. I don’t even know how to start looking for them–they could be on the other side of a hill, or on the other side of the world.
My thigh spasms. I bite back a scream, my fingers straying to it, finding the hard thing again. With the adrenaline draining away, I’m starting to feel more pain, and even touching my thigh sends a thin whine hissing through my teeth.
At first, I can’t figure out what’s wrong. I’m feeling a hard edge, but I can’t see anything, just—
Then I see. There’s a piece of metal embedded in my thigh. Shrapnel from the crash. Has to be. It’s two inches long, almost flush with my skin, hiding under a thin slit in my pants fabric. The wound is on the inner curve of my thigh, a few inches below my pelvis.
I can’t leave it in there. If it starts festering, it might stop me walking, and if that happens I’m as good as dead. I won’t be able to help myself, let alone Syria. My mind takes this thought and amplifies it. Take it out, take it out now.
I slip my pants down, the cold raising goose bumps on my flesh. The fragment is deep, but there’s enough above my skin for me to grip onto. It doesn’t look too big–I should be able to yank if out in one movement.