A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe)

by Leicht, Martin

  “Would you rather Marsden was the one with the escape craft while we were off on some wild baby chase?” I ask. “At least this way he can’t run off without us.” Not that the idea of running off without him hasn’t crossed my mind—he’s already given me his top-secret files, which apparently fill two heavy-duty hard disks. I’ve got them tucked safely in the inner pocket of my thermal. If it weren’t for the fact that I gave him my word, I would have very few reservations about blowing this popsicle stand without him.

  “Yeah, we’ll just get our faces eaten by monsters,” Cole adds cheerily.

  “Not if Oliv—sorry, Zee—has anything to say about it,” Dad puts in. “Assuming those explosives that Ken gave her are functional.”

  Yeah, consider me not so thrilled that Marsden and my mom set off together to play their roles in this little Mission Impossible: Freaky Alien Edition. Not that I think Zee is gullible by any means, but when Marsden was going off on his whole rant about how hybrids hold the key to saving the planet, he knew exactly what audience he was playing to. And I worry that maybe Mom simply heard “hybrids good; Almiri baaaaaaad” and turned off her thinking beanie after that.

  “I still say it stinks,” Cole says, letting go of the last rung and sliding down the final meter to the ground. “Marsden obviously had a lot of this plan already worked out before we showed up, so why didn’t he ever try it on his own?”

  “I imagine it’s a happy coincidence that he found himself with four partners,” Dad suggests. “Being able to put every action into play concurrently eliminates a lot of the risk of being discovered and having your later actions countered by a cognizant opponent.”

  “Dad, please don’t call us his ‘partners,’ ” I groan as I slide down the last stretch of the wall. Cole catches me as I land. “This is still Dr. Marsden we’re talking about.”

  “After what he’s told us, Elvie, there isn’t even a sliver of a crack in your picture of him as a villain?” Dad follows us down to the ground, and both Cole and I brace him as he lands. He grunts, then tries to play it off like he’s totally fine as he rights himself. “Your view of him is so intractable?”

  “Dad, he tried to kill me,” I reply. “How tractable do you expect me to be?”

  “I’m not saying you should love the man. Or trust him completely. But it seems to me, the more we learn about the reality of this invisible war and all its factions, all these densely layered moving parts, that things might be more complicated than just good guys and bad guys.”

  “Good guys don’t leave a trail of bodies in their wake,” I tell him, with perhaps slightly more conviction than I feel. But now is not the time for philosophical debates. Instead, I gesture down the walkway to the maintenance hatch that leads to the hangar. “Let’s see what we’ve got down there.”

  We cram into the maintenance staging area, and I am overcome with a nauseating sense of déjà vu. It’s okay, I tell myself. There’s plenty of oxygen in here this time. Plenty of breathable air.

  And freezing water.

  And, possibly, killer bad guys.

  I seriously hate this hangar.

  “I can’t see anything,” I say, trying to peek surreptitiously through the small window on the door. “It’s all foggy.”

  “Here,” Cole replies, and he reaches up and starts wiping the window with his thermal sleeve. The reaction from my father and me is nearly simultaneous as we both grab Cole’s arm and yank it down away from the window.

  “What is wrong with you?” I hiss. “What if they see you?”

  “Oh,” Cole says after a moment of letting the thought register. “Right.”

  I roll my eyes. “Well, now that it’s done, you might as well check if you can see anything.”

  Cole grimaces at me, then slowly slides his head into the window to take a look.

  “I see . . . something . . . ,” he says, squinting. “Could be them. Three of them, looks like.”

  I poke my face in next to his to see for myself, but the window is already mostly fogged over again, and all I can see is a few dark blobs that could just as easily be giganto penguins.

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  “Pretty sure. Yeah, there’s definitely three of them.”

  “Well, let’s hope those Almiri eyes of yours are sharper than your noodle,” I say.

  Cole leans back, arms over his chest. “What now, then, oh captain, my captain?”

  I cock my head to the side. “Did you just finally learn about snark?” I ask, a small smile creeping across my face. Cole simply shrugs, but I can tell he’s hiding a smile too. “Well,” I say in response to his earlier question, “now we wait.”

  We wait what seems like a long while, although that could just be because of how small the staging area is. But at last we hear our “go” sound—clanking noises from far away, somewhere past the hangar in the promenade.

  “Is that them?” Cole whispers.

  As if in response, loud metallic voices suddenly reverberate all around us. “You cannot cele-brate until you AM-bu-late!”

  “That sounds like a pretty enthusiastic yes to me,” I say, smiling at my dad. He’s grinning ear to ear, incredibly pleased with himself that he was able to rewire the fit-bots in the health and wellness center and get them up and running in a matter of hours. When Marsden brought up the need for a distraction, my mind immediately went to the insane training droids that nearly killed us last time around. I figured that a band of overly zealous Japanese-designed aerobics machines would be a far more clever distraction than running around shouting “Ooga booga!” and hoping the Devastators would chase us.

  “Is it working, though?” I ask Cole. “Are they moving?”

  Cole takes another peek. “They’re moving to the promenade,” he says, and then a moment later nods and turns to me. “They’re gone.”

  “Gone?” I ask. “Or just out of sight?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  Cole eases the long handle on the hatch, which opens without the normal hiss-pop, since there’s no pressure differentiation between the staging area and the hangar when the ship isn’t in space. But Cole has only cracked the hatch a few centimeters when water starts seeping in.

  “Shit,” I whisper. “It’s flooded.”

  As Cole continues to open the hatch slowly, the water streams in more quickly, pooling around our feet. When the hatch is wide enough, Cole pokes out his head to get a better view. I half expect some crazy weapon to lop his noggin right off, but he pulls back inside, head safely in place.

  “This end is flooded about half the way up,” Cole says. “We’re going to have to swim ten meters or so.”

  “That water is freezing,” I argue. “We can’t swim in that.”

  “Sure we can,” Cole says. I make eyes toward my Dad. Naturally, Dad picks up on the subtle gesture more than Cole does.

  “I’ll be fine,” Dad assures us. He pulls the hood up on his thermal and tightens the zipper under his chin. “Waterproof,” he reminds me, slapping the chest of his thermal. “Keep your hood on, and try not to get your head wet.”

  Cole is the first out, dropping into the icy water, completely submerging. He comes up, hood down, hair wet, and shakes himself like a dog.

  “Brrrr! Bracing,” he says. “It’s pretty deep—careful coming in.”

  I find the submerged half ladder with my foot and use it to ease slowly into the water so that I don’t splash Dad like laser-brained Cole just has. Even in my thermal, the water hits my system like a shock. I’m thankful that my hybrid DNA has helped me adapt to the cold, but right now I could go for a little of Cole’s seeming imperviousness. I push out a few strokes and tread water. The hangar is only half-flooded, but thanks to the tilt of the ship, all that water is pooled on our side. On the far side of the hangar I can see the makeshift skiff, floating at the edge of where the water meets the slanted floor like the surf of the beach. It looks like a long skeletal speedboat with a duel-pronged prow, a large rough steel s
hield covering the front like a backward clamshell. For being cobbled together from spare junk pulled from the wreck, it’s pretty impressive. Whether it will work or not, however, remains to be seen.

  Cole makes sweeping broad strokes toward the skiff while I wait for Dad, who is very gingerly lowering himself into the water. I can tell from his face that the cold is biting at him as much as it did me, probably much more so. But I know we can’t go slowly here. Dad won’t be able to stand the chill for long before risking hypothermia and frostbite.

  “Come on, Dad,” I say encouragingly. “It’s just like when you taught me to swim at the public pool in Belmont Hills. You just have to jump in.”

  “As I recall,” Dad says, gritting his teeth as he eases his way down, “during your first swimming lesson you clung to the edge of the pool until I bribed you with the promise of doughnuts.”

  “If you get in now, I’ll buy you a chocolate-frosted Boston cream. Promise.”

  “I’m moving, I’m moving,” he tells me when I try to urge him forward. “The spirit is willing, but the body has testicles.”

  Dad finally manages to get all the way into the water without getting wet above the neck, and we swim over to the edge, where Cole waits with the skiff. He’s not even looking at the skiff, though. Instead, he’s examining the walls of the hangar.

  “Look at these dents,” he says. In truth they’re more like deep gashes or violent puncture wounds. They pierce at least thirty centimeters deep in some places, and travel one over the other from about waist-high until they reach the hangar exit. The long docking nozzle that used to be situated over the exit has been torn away (in fact, I can see some elements of it repurposed on the skiff).

  “They’re handholds,” I whisper. And then I gulp. “Jesus, do you think they made them with their fingernails?”

  “More like claws, I’d wager,” Dad puts in.

  “Well, they’re convenient for me, at least,” Cole says. Silver lining and all that. “Good luck with the skiff.”

  Just as Cole begins to place his hands and feet in the lowest-lying grips, I touch his shoulder. He pauses and turns around.

  “Don’t worry,” he tells me. “I’ve got your back. Can’t warn you if they’re coming back if I don’t go up there.”

  “I know, it’s just . . .” I touch his beautiful face with my hand, and then I lean up toward him and let the surprising warmth of his body lure me closer.

  And then I kiss him. He kisses me back.

  I want to stay in that kiss forever, where nothing’s confusing at all. No murderous baby docs with shifting alliances. No angry mothers or sad-sack fathers. Not even any boyfriend-girlfriend conversations waiting in the wings to be had. In that kiss there’s just Cole and me. The two of us, together.

  But a girl can’t live inside a kiss.

  Pulling away, I unzip my thermal and reach inside, removing the ray gun that Marsden handed over to me. I offer it to Cole, but he refuses it.

  “Keep it,” he says. “If one gets by me, you’ll need it. Besides, if I run into them, I’m supposed to just lead them to one of those charges your mother’s setting all over back there, right? Boom goes the dynamite.”

  “Be careful,” I say, putting the gun back. “Don’t do anything that, well, you would normally do.”

  Cole smiles and shakes his head. “Have that motor running when I get back, ’kay?”

  My chest clenches, and I have to breathe deeply to work out the tightness as I watch him scurry up the wall and disappear through the exit into the promenade.

  Toward the monsters.

  “Elvie, come look at this,” Dad says behind me. I turn around, and he’s already nose-deep in the skiff, poking around the covered interior. I climb into the craft and sit next to him. He’s squatting on the ground, fiddling with some loose nylon tubing that’s running from the area that appears to be the cockpit back under the “floor,” which is built from catwalk grating. The tubing ultimately leads into a jumble of gears that resembles the inner workings of an old clock or something, which I can only assume is the motor.

  “They must be using these as the sensor relays,” Dad muses of the tubes. “Perhaps in lieu of traditional pedals. They look like kitchen hosing, like from a sink’s handheld sprayer. Outstanding.”

  Dad’s voice is filled with excitement, but it also sounds a little shaky. I bend my head down to look at his face as he continues examining the ship. He’s incredibly pale, with a faint bluish color in his cheeks. He’s gritting his teeth together, barely managing to keep them from chattering.

  “Dad, you’re freezing,” I say. “We need to warm you up.”

  “Now, now, Elvie,” he replies. “There’s no time for that. We must stick to the task at hand. Can you look behind me to see if there’s a power flow to the engines? Since they don’t seem to have installed any buttons, I’ll just tug on some of these wires and see if we get a response.”

  I shuffle out of the interior and around to the back end of the skiff to check out the engine. Here the Devastators have attached a series of eight beam loaders. Typically, people use beam loaders to single-handedly move large, heavy pieces of equipment around, but in this array it looks like the Devastators have upcycled them into makeshift repulsors—which, in theory, should help push the skiff over the ice, and also keep it afloat if it were over water. These suckers really are ingenious.

  “Okay . . . now,” Dad says. I watch, but nothing happens. “No?” Dad asks. “How about now?” Another few moments of silence.

  “Nothing back here,” I tell him.

  “They must not have gotten around to installing some of the power couplings yet. Do you see them anywhere on the ground nearby?”

  I scan the floor of the skiff, but there’s not much to see. We’re tilted enough that things could have rolled into the water, but I doubt the Devastators would’ve left valuable pieces lying around like that. And I seem to recall, from my previous time spent memorizing the layout of the ship at my father’s request, that there are several tool compartments lining the wall down here. Our buddies might have stashed some couplings in one of those.

  I locate the half-meter-wide panels just off the floor and start pulling open the closest one. Since these would normally operate automatically with sensor activation, there are no handles to grab, so I’m forced to dig my fingers around the edges and pull. Fortunately, the magnetic bonds are shot, but I still manage to cut up my hands pretty badly for my trouble.

  Plus, no power couplings.

  “How did they think they were going to get the skiff out of here?” I ask as I yank open the second, and then the third compartment. Nothing and nothing. “Even if they could open the outer door, it’s underwater. The whole compartment would flood immediately.”

  “I believe they’ve been worrying an opening over yonder,” Dad says, gesturing absentmindedly toward the front wall in the flooded area without ever taking his eyes off what he’s doing. Sure enough, along the wall just at the surface of the water there are huge score marks running several meters high and across, like someone has been slowly and deliberately cutting away at the hull with an energy cutter. Like, say, a ray gun.

  “That must have taken days,” I say, practically whistling through my teeth. “But what happens if they—”

  The sound of splashing water interrupts me, like something emerging from beneath the surface. I whip around to look at the water, expecting a Devastator ambush.

  Instead, what I find is something altogether different. A small, raven-haired boy of about six years old. Stark naked, and standing knee-deep in the freezing water.

  Zuh?

  “Dad,” I whisper. My father pokes his head up from the skiff and follows my gaze.

  “Oh my,” he says. “Is that the child Marsden was talking about? I thought he said it was a baby.”

  It’s barely been a month since Other Cheerleader gave birth to her little bundle of Jin’Kai joy, but the creature that Marsden implanted in her when he swap
ped out her Almiri child was engineered to develop quickly (according to Desi, our own personal Jin’Kai defector). I guess I assumed the baby’s growth would normalize after it was born. But either Marsden made some sort of mistake . . . or he hasn’t been telling anyone the extent of what he’s been up to from the get-go.

  One month old, and the kid looks ready for first grade.

  “Hello there,” I say, smiling. I take a step toward the kid, and he instinctively backs away, his face frozen in a look of wary curiosity.

  “Bok choy,” the kid hisses at us. At least, it sounds like “bok choy.”

  “I don’t think he understands English,” Dad offers helpfully. Because, you know, I hadn’t figured that out. I hold out my hand and take another step forward. The kid tenses up, crouching even farther into the water. I’m amazed that he can stand the cold. I’m not sure that even Cole could handle the temperature buck-naked like that.

  “It’s okay,” I coo in the soothing voice I used on the neighbor’s awful cat when I was trying to coax it out of whatever space in our house it had managed to steal into. “No one’s going to hurt you. Just come over here, all right?”

  “Bok . . . choy?” the kid says, cocking his head to the side like a puppy.

  “That’s right, bok choy. Sure.”

  I take another step, and then another. I’m only a meter or so away from him now, my feet just at the edge of the water. The kid holds his hand out toward me, more in a mimicking gesture than anything else. I reach the final gap to take his hand and . . .