A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe)

by Leicht, Martin

  “Those with mutual enemies make for good allies,” Zee says. My baby grabs for a lock of hair at the base of my mother’s neck, and my heart pounds. “Someday you’ll understand.”

  “You’re going to trust him?” I shriek in disbelief. “The guy who just tossed someone to his death in cold blood?”

  “Tossed an Almiri,” she says. “I’ll make sure Livvie’s safe. Take care of your father.”

  And as she turns toward the hovercraft, preparing for the jump, I make a dash for my baby. Fuck the gunmen. But Marsden, of course, is too fast. With one quick flick of his arm he knocks me down on my ass. The soldiers across the way lock their weapons on me again, but Marsden raises his hands.

  “No!” he hollers at them. “No need for that.” He places his hands on Zee, sheltering Olivia from the wind and guiding my traitor mother as she makes the jump across to the hovercraft.

  With what is probably the last of the strength he can muster, Dad inches across the floor and takes me into his arms. And I curl up in his lap, like the powerless child I am, and begin to weep. Marsden looks down at our pitiful little scene, that goddamn smile plastered on his face like he just gave us a great deal on a car lease.

  “I’m truly sorry, Elvie,” he tells me. “I’d take you with us, but we both know that our objectives are in conflict.”

  I look past him at Olivia. She’s crying in my mother’s arms, but I can’t hear it, thanks to the wind.

  “My problem is, I always put my faith in the wrong people,” I say.

  Marsden smirks at that. “Perhaps, given the opportunity, we could have come to an understanding,” he tells me. “But there’s no time for that now. They’re coming. And we need to be prepared.”

  “Hey, Dr. Marsden?” I say. He lifts his eyebrows. “I’ll be seeing you again. Real soon.”

  “Please, Elvie,” he says, still smiling. “It’s Ken.”

  Marsden leaps easily across to the hovercraft, which is starting to tremble and shake as it struggles to maintain a matching speed with the accelerating elevator. Then he turns and gives me a wave as the hovercraft’s door closes and obscures my view of Olivia.

  The ship—and my daughter—pull away from us. Tears are streaming down my cheeks, but I don’t even have the energy to sob. I’ve never felt so hollow in my entire life. So enraged and yet so helpless.

  “No, don’t!” Dad shouts in my ear. I don’t know what he thinks I could be doing from my place on the floor, but quickly I realize that it’s not me he’s yelling at.

  Alan—bleeding out but not dead—has dragged himself on his stomach toward the door and is aiming his blaster at the hovercraft. But he’s a split second too late. As the hovercraft tethers disengage from the elevator, whatever overrides our Jin’Kai attackers had in place go offline, and the elevator door slams shut.

  Just in time for Alan’s shot to blast it right off its hinges.

  The explosion is loud—leaving a large gaping opening out into what is quickly going to be space. The Jin’Kai hovercraft must have been using some sort of pressure regulating field while it was attached, and with it gone, the instant pressure drop immediately sucks Alan out of the elevator, without so much as a peep.

  No sooner do I witness Alan’s quick and silent death than I begin skittering across the floor myself, but Dad grabs me with a fierce grip and pulls me in. He’s braced himself along the wall. The dead Almiri, who do not have quick-thinking fathers on board, fly out the hole in the side of the elevator right after Alan. I watch them float on the air like macabre kites without strings as my father clutches me tighter to him. The air is incredibly thin, and I’m getting light-headed.

  “I can’t breathe!” I shout.

  “We need to get out,” Dad hollers back. “We’re about to cross into the atmosphere and get pulled up into space!” His hold on me still brace-tight, he motions with his elbow to the wall above our heads, where the red emergency sign is blinking. Directly beneath it sits the release lever.

  God, I hope the Almiri keep this thing up to code.

  With Dad bracing me, I lift myself up the meter and a half or so toward the lever. It takes every ounce of strength I have, but at last I’ve got a grip on the lever. It sticks when I try to pull it, so I reach up with my other hand, and using all of my weight, I yank it down hard. The emergency panel pops off, revealing a bright yellow package behind it. The Velcro riiiiiiiiiiips as I tear the package from the wall, clutching it to my chest against the pull from the opening behind me.

  It’s the funniest-looking parachute I’ve ever seen. On closer examination I realize that’s because it’s not a parachute at all—it’s an air raft, essentially a large inflatable cube. I’ve seen vids of them, of course, but usually on the same kind of sites where you go to watch idiots trying to ride their bikes down a handrail and breaking their faces in the process. I did not know the things were used as emergency escape devices.

  Velcroed to the wall behind the raft are at least twelve smaller packages, presumably jumpsuits. I rip two down and hand one to Dad before tearing open the flimsy package. It’s not a jumpsuit.

  It’s a flipping gliding cape.

  Good thing Ducky’s not here.

  “There’s no way these things will work this high up!” I cry.

  “It’s just a precaution,” Dad assures me weakly, already slipping the half jacket/harness on awkwardly with his free hand. He pulls the hood and goggles down over his head. “In case something happens with the raft.”

  Like I’m so sure that thing will work either.

  But there’s no time to argue. The elevator is still climbing higher and higher, and it’s getting more and more difficult to struggle against the pull from the opening, and the blast marks around where the door blew off the hinges are fizzling dangerously. Braced firmly against the wall, I toss off the papoose with the goddamn book of maps and pull one arm, then the other, through the sleeves and zip up the front, the long nylon drapes flapping out toward the gap.

  “Ready?” I ask Dad, positioning my hand over the pull string on the side of the raft.

  “As I’ll ever be!” he shouts back.

  I give a sharp tug. Something pops, and the raft starts to inflate. Only problem is, I neglected to unfasten the bindings holding the folded-up contraption together.

  Note to self: always read the instructions.

  Dad and I wrestle to pull the bindings off the swelling raft, which pinches and rips at our fingers as it expands beyond our control. One binding does pop off, due less to our efforts than to the sheer pressure of the rapidly inflating raft. But it’s unfortunately no cause for celebration—the force of the popped binding sends the raft shooting away from us, across the elevator floor, where it is promptly sucked out the window.

  Shit.

  Looking out the opening, I can see the raft below us, which is—rather infuriatingly—inflating just fine now that it is several dozen meters away.

  “Aim for the raft!” I hear Dad cry, and before I can even turn back to look at him, my hypothermic father lets go of the wall and is sucked out into the open air.

  “Dad!” I screech after him as I clutch tighter to the bench—the only thing between the certain death of the void of space and . . . well, certain death. The elevator is rocking violently side to side now.

  I don’t have a choice.

  I jump.

  I’m not sure exactly what I thought the sensation of flying out into near space would be like, and I’m still not sure, because for the first few seconds I’m pretty certain I’m passed out. As soon as I come to, I’m hurtling downward at terrifying speed. My nylon cape is flapping behind me, seemingly doing nothing. I look around frantically, the wind brutally fierce against my neck, before spotting the raft below. Sure enough, the giant contraption is fully inflated, more spherical than cube-shaped. A few seconds more of searching and I lay eyes on Dad, whizzing nearby. He’s soaring like a flipping bird, arms outstretched, his cape filling and falling as the sensors in the ma
terial adjust automatically. It’s hard to hear much of anything, but it definitely sounds like the noise he makes as he goes past me is “Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

  Trying to follow suit, I extend my arms, and the nylon under them catches the air—which has the effect of violently jolting me backward, as if I were attached to something above by a string. It takes a little getting used to, but soon I find myself flying in slowly descending circles. Too slowly. The air is incredibly thin, and I’m still way too high up—much, much higher than Dad has managed to get. I’m not sure why I haven’t passed out again, but perhaps it has something to do with the time I spent in the zero-grav hangar bay on the Echidna. Could it be possible that my hybrid physiology took the opportunity to adapt to low-oxygen environments?

  Well, if I have rapid adaptation on my side, my father has sheer ingenuity—and at the moment, his seems to be the greater gift. Still struggling with my own stupid suit, I watch as, farther and farther below me, Dad flattens his arms against his sides and shoots toward the raft with uncanny speed, until an instant later he penetrates the surface through one of the collapsible side openings and disappears.

  So Dad’s safe. That much is a relief.

  But I’m not safe yet. Mimicking my father’s body positioning, I straighten out and aim myself as best I can at the raft. And all at once I’m zipping downward, air roaring in my ears as I cut through it like a goggle-wearing knife through butter. I’m focused on that raft, nothing else even entering my thoughts, until I hear the boom, so loud it resonates through my entire body. I feel a tremendous push from behind me, as though the very air is attempting to escape from something.

  The elevator has exploded.

  Right on the cable. A glance above tells me as much. The damage must have been more serious than it seemed. The spray of debris spans wide above me, but that’s not the scary part. The scary part is the large, thick cable, which has been severed and is snapping down so fast that I barely have time to roll out of the way. My roll sends me spinning out of control, and even when I extend my arms again, I’m rolling too fast for the materials sensors to determine which way is up. The fabric tenses and relaxes erratically, sending me flipping end over end. As I am bounced around in the air, I watch in dizzy horror as the cable comes down and slices right through the air raft.

  Dad . . .

  The raft immediately deflates, two halves flapping flaccidly down toward the ever-approaching ground. The cable whistles past me, crashing into the train depot far below, creating a dozen more explosions that pop one after the other in rapid succession. I focus my attention on one half of the deflated raft. The half that seems considerably chunkier than the other.

  I pull my arms in, a human arrow once more, and soon I’m righted and heading toward my father. What I hope is still my father. I speed down until I’m just above the tattered raft, and reach out to grab it. Doing so causes my cape to reengage, pulling me up and away from the raft, so I clamp my arms down again until I crash right into it, and I make hard contact with what is pretty clearly my father’s gut. Now the raft, my father, and I are spiraling down to the Earth as one, so quickly and loopily, I’m surprised I haven’t pulled a Ducky and spray-barfed everywhere, but I manage to gather my senses enough to pull at the folds of the raft until I find my father. He is half-conscious, but as far as I can tell, still alive.

  I would cry with sheer relief, if I weren’t, you know, otherwise occupied.

  Using my last reserve of strength, I yank the folds of the raft away from my father, and soon we’re both in freefall. I’m clutching Dad between my knees, like he’s a flipping pony, and my cape is struggling against the weight of two people.

  “Come on, Dad, wake up!” I shout into the wind. But the words are only flung back into my face. I kick my father in the side, and—I’m not sure I’ve ever been so happy—I feel him stir. He lifts his head, looks around, and then seems to sense that I’m holding on to him. With one reassuring squeeze of my leg he wiggles free from my grip and extends his own arms.

  Crisis averted. Now all we have to worry about is smashing to itty-bitty bits on the ice.

  As we near the surface, I’m keenly aware that even with my cape, I have too much velocity. I have to either create more drag or—if I can’t lessen the speed of my impact—try to find a way to level out my trajectory, and land as close to parallel with the ground as possible. I lift my arms out and slightly over my head and pray that the sensors don’t bug out again.

  Thankfully, they don’t, and I reach about thirty or forty meters above the ground before I level out. Beneath me the train depot is gone. The cable has smashed it to smithereens, and fires are scattered around the ruins.

  Fire in the snow.

  I circle down, closer and closer. Soon I’m only a few meters above the surface, but I’m still traveling so quickly, I know that I’ll break every bone in my body if I touch down. I arc instead toward one of the larger fires. The heat has melted a good deal of snow, creating a slushy surface. My feet touch down and scrape along the ground before I drop completely, hitting the mush hard and plowing through it like, well, like a plow.

  I come to a stop, breathless, and it’s several minutes before I can convince myself to move. I’m afraid I might be in shock and not even aware that I’m now a cripple for life. But as I lift one trembling arm, then the other, and push myself up, I realize to my very great relief that I am, in fact, still in one piece. I probably have the world’s worst case of snowburn, but hell, considering that I just flew down from space, I think I did all right.

  I can’t quite muster the strength to stand. My legs feel a bit like wet spaghetti. So I merely sit in the snow, looking around me. I spot Dad, walking toward me from a short distance away. For a dude who nearly bit it numerous times in the past twenty-four hours, he’s looking pretty good.

  He’s even smiling.

  “Landed in the slush, right?” he asks, as if we were discussing our preferred shortcuts to the mall. “Used the softened surface to your advantage?” I nod rapidly, smiling back like a loon. Too much adrenaline. My dad is okay. I’m okay. My whole body is vibrating.

  “Smart thinking,” Dad says as he reaches me. “You are your father’s daughter.” Then he gets a weird look on his face and turns his gaze skyward, where tiny bits of debris still trickle down like burning sleet. “Huh,” is all he says. And he collapses into the snow, unconscious.

  After checking to make sure that he’s still alive and well, and finding the answer to be yes on both counts, I push myself up onto my knees and try to get a lay of the land. The train depot was a several-hour dogsled ride to the camp, but there are no sleds remaining in the wreckage strewn around us, so we’re not getting to shelter that way. I shiver suddenly, and I realize that the skin on my face is covered in ice crystals. Not from when I landed but from the way down.

  And it’s getting colder.

  I might be able to survive the dropping temp for a while, but I don’t know if I can make it all the way to the camp, and that’s if I even knew which direction the camp was. And Dad, in his state, definitely won’t make it. There’s no shelter anywhere—the best we can do to offer us any protection against the chill is to stay close to one of the fires until it burns out, which probably won’t take very long. But I won’t die. I will not.

  I have a little girl who’s counting on me.

  “Elvie?” Dad’s voice calls out weakly from beside me in the snow.

  “You still with me, Dad?” I ask, trying to sound cheery. My voice, though, is incredibly hoarse. No doubt a result of all the screaming I did on the way down.

  “I fear I have concussed myself,” he tells me.

  I try to laugh, but nothing comes. I feel completely empty. All I can muster is a cynical exhalation. Dad, still lying on his back in the snow, reaches out and pats my knee reassuringly.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “We’re okay, Elvie.”

  “I know, Dad,” I reply. But I don’t know. Literally the only thing we
’ve got going for us right now is that we’re alive. And when you add up everything that’s against us, it really doesn’t seem like much at all.

  “Maybe that penguin is coming to help us,” Dad says wistfully.

  I look at my dad. His head is turned to the horizon, a dazed smile on his face. His ruddy windblown cheeks offset the slight-blue tinge that still remains on his lips.

  “Unless the penguin has a sled, Dad,” I say, choosing to humor him just for the moment, “I don’t think it’ll be much good to us.” I stroke his face gently. It’s starting to snow, but the heat from the fires is causing some of it to melt on the way down, and the drizzle blurs my tears. This is it, I think. This is where I’m going to lose him.

  “Elvan Sabeth Nara, I did not raise you to be a quitter,” my father replies stubbornly. “Did I?”

  Stay brave, Elvie. Stay brave. “No, sir,” I say, and I even manage a smile. “I’m not giving up.” I squeeze his hand tighter. “Not ever.”

  “Good, then.” He focuses past me into the distance again. “Because it appears that the penguin does have a sled.”

  Um, zuh?

  Sure enough, there is a single black speck on the horizon, waddling toward us.

  No, not waddling. Mushing.

  I stand up, my legs unsteady underneath me, and wave my hands over my head. “Over here!” I screech. “Over here!” I don’t care who this person is—friend, foe, Almiri, Jin’Kai, human, hybrid, or Jehovah’s Witness. I just care that they see me. “Over here!” In this moment I could not care less about the genetic race war between warring alien factions. I am not concerned with the potential invasion from some even scarier force that Marsden seemed so freaked about. An armada of those Devastator chumps? Get in line.

  I’m getting my goddamn baby back.

  “Over here!” I continue, shouting like a maniac against the wind as the sled looms ever closer. “We’re alive! Here!”