“Harrison! Stop!” I cry out, looking to make sure Marcus is not watching. He is gone. They must have taken him on board already. Harrison puts me down, but doesn’t let go.
“Just one kiss,” he whispers. “Pretty, pretty please?” I repress the irresistible urge to slap him when I think about the danger he will be facing after we leave him behind. This may be the last time I ever see him. I tilt my face up to peer into his dark eyes. Then I brush my lips against his tenderly. Much to my delight, he doesn’t force it. He kisses me back chastely, when I’d imagined he’d be all tongue.
“Thank you,” he breathes against my cheek, before he kisses it and backs up to where Timber is standing behind him. I really will miss him and his reprehensible flirting.
“Pollen!” a voice calls out. I look up to the shuttle to see Myra signaling me. It’s time to go.
Timber hands back my son gingerly, and I say my final goodbyes before approaching the shuttle. I glance up at the monstrous contraption one last time, focusing on the title, “Earth.” Finally, I step aboard.
Inside, the shuttle is like nothing I’ve ever imagined. It’s one thing to see scenes from old science fiction movies, but seeing something like this live and in person is absolutely amazing. From the outside, I’d imagined it being tight and cramped. But as I step through, it’s quite roomy. Wide seats line the walls of the immediate area and just behind them are large windows. I can look down and see the crowd below, who are being directed by Watchers to back up away from the shuttle.
Marcus is lying on a thick foam pad across several seats, strapped in tightly with a web of seat belts. Evie sits at his feet. I walk over to him.
His foggy eyes focus on me.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
“I’ve been worse.”
“Really? When?”
“When I’d lost you.”
I kneel down next to Marcus and press my lips against his, wishing I could touch more of him.
“That will never happen again,” I say.
“Damn right it won’t” Marcus smiles painfully.
Myra approaches me from behind. She holds her arms out, gesturing for me to hand her the baby. I hand him to her delicately.
“We have a special seat for him. It’ll be safer than holding him; just in case you pass out from the lift-off.”
“Why would I—” I stop myself. It doesn’t matter anymore. In fact I probably don’t want to know.
I nod and watch as Myra inserts his body into an egg-shaped pod. She pushes a few buttons and a safety harness wraps him snugly in place. She presses another button and a clear lid lowers on a hinge, encapsulating the child. As Myra helps secure Evie to her seat, I sit next to Marcus’s head, buckle up with a contraption the fits over my chest and waist, and rake my fingers through his hair anxiously while we wait for takeoff.
***
The shuttle roars to life like the growl of an angry dragon ready to spit fire. Everything around us shakes violently as if we were in the middle of a level-ten earthquake. I imagine objects not bolted down toppling over, causing a wasteland of destruction and chaos. But there are no unsecured objects on the shuttle. Behind the noise I can hear a faint female voice, thickly accented, counting down.
59, 58, 57, 56 . . .
I glance down at Marcus. His eyes are closed and he looks at peace. Evie is gripping the armrests of her seat, her skin taut and pale against her delicate knuckles. She, too, has her eyes closed, but her face looks much more tense.
37, 36, 35 . . .
Suddenly the overhead lights shut off, leaving only the daylight pouring through the thick windows and some multicolored pin lights scattered across the ceiling, floors, and walls.
22, 21, 20 . . .
Across the floor, on the other side of the shuttle sit Myra, Curtis, Dr. Yipolis, and three others I don’t know personally, Rain, Patrick, and Wolff. I think Wolff is a lab tech, but I’m not sure the function of the other two. Maybe engineers or medics.
5, 4, 3, 2 . . .
I squeeze my eyes as the rumbling escalates and fills my ears with nothing but deafening turbulence. My insides vibrate and tumble around like they’re being shaken up in a can of spray paint. I can feel my body angling sideways toward Marcus and I grasp his shoulder for support and comfort, hoping that it doesn’t hurt him. A strange mixture of terror and exhilaration sweeps through my veins. My stomach drops out from beneath me as the shuttle rises and I get sick with dizziness. My last thought before I black out is how grateful I am to Myra for taking my son from me.
Chapter 39
“Pollen.” The sweet seduction of his voice is both comforting and saddening. I know he’s gone, but part of me wants to believe Glenn is here with me.
“Pollen,” he repeats. But it’s not Glenn this time; it’s Drake. I try to scream, but no voice comes out. Then I see his face, translucent against the blackness behind my eyelids. Like a ghostly apparition, his outline wavers and fades, in and out. I want to reach out to him; grab him and tell him how sorry I am. Could he ever forgive me? Is he real?
“Pollen,” the voice says again, but this time there’s a hardness to the voice, less ethereal. It’s Marcus.
I awaken to his beautiful, burned face, blurry as I blink the sleep away. He is standing over me, leaning one hand on the back of my seat. We are alone in this section of the shuttle now, just Marcus, Evie, the pod carrying our son, and me. The rumbling has simmered down to a slight vibration, which feels like nothing more than sitting in an idle running car.
“Where is everyone?” I ask as I rub my eyes with the backs of my hands. I wince, having forgotten the minor scrapes and burns I’d sustained from the explosion. I can’t believe Marcus is already up and moving around. “How long was I out?”
“Just a few hours. Myra is keeping communications open with Ceborec until we get news from Sage. The others are just wandering the cabins. You know they have a fully stocked kitchen and the bunks in here are huge. It’s like an RV in outer space!” Marcus’s eyes light up like a twelve-year-old kid whose dad just bought him his first motorbike.
“You shouldn’t be up and walking around, should you? How are you . . . feeling?”
“Hurts like hell, but the doc gave me some good meds. And the derma-whatever injection they gave me is working wonders. Check this out.” Marcus lifts a bandage on his arm and reveals fresh new skin firmly adhered to the old. You’d never guess he’d just had a skin graft earlier today. Other than the scarred outlines it looks like it’s been there for years. “He says I need to rest, but I can’t. This is just too exciting. And you know I can’t be still for too long. It’s driving me crazy.”
“Auntie Pollen, look at this!” I unbuckle and move down a few seats next to Evie, who is turned around, kneeling in her seat, staring with fascination out the long window. “It’s our planet.”
I follow her gaze to the massive sphere that can’t even be viewed in full yet because we are still too close. It looks so different from the pictures in the textbooks when I was in school. I remember seeing a beautiful marble splotched with deep blue and rich green, swirled with white ribbons. Now, the green has turned to a muddy brown, the blue is dark maroon and the swirls, which were once the purest of whites, are now a hazy shade of coral. What have we done to our planet?
There’s a commotion in the neighboring cabin. I latch on to Marcus, helping to support him as we make our way to the bustle next door.
“Stay here, Evie,” I call back to her. She still stares out the window as if she hadn’t heard me.
The room is filled with monitors, blinking lights—something straight out of a sci-fi film. I couldn’t even begin to know what everything does. I suck my arms tightly to my body, afraid to touch anything for fear I’ll cause a nuclear meltdown or something. It looks like the celebration of the year in here. There must be at least twenty people, exchanging hugs, cheering and high-fiving each other. Myra stands in the center, holding what appears to be a communicator in her ha
nd.
“Myra!” I call out. I stand at the edge of the crowd with Marcus, not wanted to risk furthering his injuries by pushing our way through the crowd. Myra weaves her way toward us.
“Great news, guys!” Though her hair and clothes are still plastered with sweat, her face reveals the cool, collected Myra I’m familiar with. “Granby said Sage has returned to Ceborec with Trident in custody. The engineers have studied the failsafe device and they think they can deactivate and remove it without any further damage.”
About a million pounds has just fallen from my shoulders. I nearly faint in relief at the thought that my friends will be safe. Timber, Harrison, Granby. They’ll all be joining us soon. I release Marcus for a moment and hug Myra, happy tears flowing from my eyes. I turn back to Marcus, but stop myself short. He surprises me when he delicately winds his arms around me and pulls me to him with a feather-light touch between us. I slide my hands up his back, as gently as I touch my baby boy.
“There is no pain in this life that will ever keep me from holding you again.” I close my eyes, in love with the feeling of his firm lips against my cheek. I want to pull him hard against me, to feel his body conform to mine, but I don’t, and allow him to control his own pain.
Marcus moves his hands up to each side of my face, his bandages scratching at my cheeks like the tips of a fir, and parts my lips with his. I let go of his back and allow my limbs to go limp out of fear that I may hurt him. He pulls me closer, deepening the kiss and I feel like a wet noodle in his arms.
“You’re stuck with me now,” I whisper, my forehead resting against his.
“There’s no one else I’d rather be stuck with than you Pollen.” I sink into his deep blue eyes, drowning in his ocean. I can’t imagine how anything or anyone can hurt us now.
***
The little boy nips at my breast, but it feels awkward and clumsy and exposed. After I gave birth I had used a pump to provide milk to him, but this is the first time I’ve ever tried to breastfeed. Myra insisted that I try, in case something ever happens and it’s the only option.
We’ve been flying for four days now. They expected the journey to last about five. Sometime tomorrow we will be landing on A1D3. Earth, they are calling it now. I was excited before, but now I’m just anxious. It’s supposed to be very similar to A1D2. The atmosphere is the same. The terrain is the same. It’s even speculated that some of the plant and animal species are the same. And if it’s not, Myra brought a vast collection of seeds, and DNA to transplant to the new planet. I guess my anxiety spawns from the unknown. There is no civilized life on this planet. How are we going to survive? If it’s really as cold as they say, how will we build shelter to stay warm? What if there is not enough food, or the seeds don’t grow as they should? What if I lose Marcus? I can’t go on alone.
Marcus sits next to me on the bunk, fastening his bandages after changing the dressing.
“How does it look?” I ask.
“Much better. It’s healing really fast.”
“It’s the dermatogenic inoculation. I can’t believe how much science has advanced in our lifetime. Regrow skin. Regrow bones. They can fix just about anything except death itself. And now we’re backtracking. Going back to pre-civilization.”
“Going back to simpler times. Starting over. And it will be better this time. I’m sure of it.”
“I wish I could be.”
“Don’t be so nervous.” Marcus slides behind me, and rubs his fingers deep into the tight muscles around my neck.
“I can’t help it. Marcus, promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“Don’t leave me.”
“Of course I won’t leave you. How could you—”
“No, I mean stay with us always. We don’t know what kind of dangers await us on the new planet. Don’t go off and play hero. At least, not without me. Okay?” I twist to look him in the eyes. To let him know how serious I am. He smiles.
“Okay. We’ll always be together. You, me, Evie, and . . . I think it’s about time we give him a name.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Haven’t really put much thought into it,” Marcus confesses.
“Neither have I,” I admit.
“We could call him Desmond, you know, in honor of our new start.”
I scrunch up my nose like I just smelled a case of rotten eggs. “I’m not really crazy about Desmond.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Marcus sighs.
I take a few minutes to contemplate. First I think of naming him after Drake, but knowing what I did to him, it would just break my heart every time I called my child’s name. Then I consider calling him Glenn. But that would be a constant reminder to Marcus of the mistakes I made, and I don’t want him to have to live with that. After another minute of deliberation, I decide on the perfect name.
“I think I’d like to name him after my father. He was a good man. I resented him while he was alive, but I know now just how much he really meant to me.”
“What was his name?”
“Adam.”
“Adam Stygma. I like it. Adam it is.” Marcus reaches around me and caresses Adam’s soft, smooth cheek, flushed with color from a good feeding. His tiny lips fall away from me, fast asleep.
Marcus follows me as I take Adam back to his pod and fasten him in to take his nap. Evie kneels on the seat next to him, staring enraptured at our former planet, now a small rusty marble in the distance, and moon, which looks like a white bead on a necklace.
“Evie, are you hungry? Do you want some breakfast?” Marcus asks.
“Can I have waffles?”
“Hmm . . . I’ll have to see if we have any.” Marcus disappears through the doorway to the next cabin and I take a seat next to Evie, watching the wonders of outer space with her.
“You know, you are the first little girl to travel into space, Evie. They’ll write about you in history books.”
“Will I be famous?”
“Yes, I think we all will.”
“Auntie Pollen?”
“Yes?”
“Remember when you said that my dad might still be alive?” Oh god. I’d hoped she’d forgotten about that. What do I say? I can’t lie to her. But I can’t tell her that I killed him either.
“Um . . . yes, I did, didn’t I.”
“Where is he?”
“Well, he’s . . .” I avert my eyes away from her pointed gaze and stare back at the planet behind us. Something strange catches my eyes. There seems to be a rippling effect across the surface. It looks like when I was little and Drake and I used to toss pebbles into the muddy creek in the woods behind our house, only this is happening in slow motion. There’s a commotion behind me, but I can’t take my eyes off the sight. Marcus’s hands grip my shoulders tightly. Somebody is leaning over the other seat next to me and I can feel the energy of a crowd gathering behind me, yet I can only process a few of the words they are saying.
“. . . electromagnetic . . .”
“. . . nuclear explosion . . .”
“. . . Trident’s failsafe . . .”
“. . . no survivors . . .”
The next thing I see is completely unbelievable. An image I’ll never erase from my memory. The moon, the tiny bead revolving around the ruddy marble, plummets to the surface. It crashes into the planet, leaving an indentation—a crater—visible from all the way out here. I don’t even realize my mouth gaping or that I’ve stopped breathing until the turbulence hits the shuttle and I begin to gasp for breath. I see Evie’s terrified expression and Marcus’s calm and determined face just before I black out.
Chapter 40
(Marcus)
“Holy—” I begin, but no expletive could even come close expressing the feeling of seeing your home planet annihilated before your eyes. It’s like someone reached into my stomach and ripped my intestines out. Our home is gone forever. Everyone we left behind is gone forever. Granby. Timber. Sage. Marley. All of them. Gone.
A
s the shuttle begins to quake, I reach one hand up to the window to stabilize myself. That’s when I notice Pollen’s head wobbling and she’s mumbling incoherently. Next to her, Evie starts to lean backward. I leave Pollen to slump against the window while I dive to catch Evie. Holding her in my arms, I look up in amazement at the people clamoring over each other to steady themselves, staring out the windows. Only Pollen and Evie passed out. Whatever just happened back there on A1D2, just released a deluge of electromagnetism into space.
“Is she okay?” Myra shouts, pushing through the crowd to kneel by us. One of the engineers, a woman with short golden hair, tumbles backward toward the other side of the ship. An overhead compartment opens and boxes come crashing down on top of her. My eyes dart to Pollen, who is being held in place by the herd of people behind her.
“Yes,” I respond, raising my voice over the din. “Can you take her back to her bed? I’m going to get Pollen.” Myra nods and snatches Evie from me.
The lights flicker and go out, leaving us in virtual darkness. I shove people to the side, having no concern for their welfare. I only care about Pollen. A body thumps back against my chest and I fall back with it as the shuttle jerks sharply. A net of hair gets caught in my mouth. The feel of her body against mine, the sweet floral scent of her hair—it’s Pollen. I bundle her up in my arms and try to stand. A body thrusts against me, pushing me down to the floor again. With Pollen in one arm, I reach out and paw around for something to grasp, to pull myself up with. My hand meets something hard and rigid. Small indentations touch the pads of my fingers. I pull and push, testing its strength and as I realize it’s the arm of one of the seats, I hoist myself up, keeping Pollen safely close to me.
“Turn here,” Pollen whispers lazily into my ear. “This is the way home.”
Finally, I manage to stabilize myself and stumble back toward the bunk. As my eyes adjust to the darkness I realize there are tiny pinpoint lights sprawled across the floor and up every surface of the fuselage. Dark patches cover some of the lights and I nearly trip over one—a painful moan drifts up as I do. I turn around briefly and find that some passengers have secured themselves in seats, while others still struggle for safety, and yet others have given up, lying limply on the floor.
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