I laugh. “I know. Anyway, Holden’s firing up the engines and we should be out of here relatively quickly.”
“Alright.” Sylvia settles back against the pillows on her bunk, computer in hand. “I’ll be here.”
I head back out and go to the cockpit. Normally, I would have been bunked with Sylvia, holding onto the bed poles and pretending we were taking off on some extravagant mission while Dad piloted us out. Things keep creeping up on me and shocking me because they’re no longer Dad’s duties, but mine. I thought I would miss him less when I got out here. I thought the stars and the planets and the hum of Hourglass beneath my feet would fill the gaping hole in my chest. But it almost makes it worse. I’m back home, but I’m back here without Dad.
I reach the cockpit and sit in the Captain's chair, running over all the controls. I stare at the engine light, waiting. There’s really not a whole lot of preparation needed to take off. Especially in a space where there are no buildings or hangars to bump into. And Holden should be ready by now. I flick on the com link. “Holden?” I say over the line. “How’s it going?” I know he hasn’t ever worked on a spaceship before, other than simulations and all the research he’s done. After all, an engineer was the job he aspired to. I might have to go down there and help him out. I’m just about to do just that when his voice crackles back at me over the line.
“Um...I’m having a few problems.”
I frown. “Explain them.”
“It’s...not working.”
“What do you mean it’s not working?”
“We can’t take off.” The surety in his voice makes my heart plummet, but I’m not going to take no for an answer. I jump up from my chair, suddenly feeling angry. I jog down the hallway, throw open the hatch to the engine room, and climb down the ladder.
“What are you talking about?” I snap at him, striding towards his control panel.
“It’s not going to work,” he defends himself. “Something’s wrong—the switches aren’t working, nothing is turning on. It’s like the engine is completely dead.”
I brush past him and begin flicking switches and pushing buttons myself. I’d never spent much time in engineering. I knew the basics, after all I grew up on Hourglass, but it was never my main focus. I realize now that Holden probably knows best. That’s why I hired him.
And he’s right. Nothing is working.
My heart is beating alarmingly fast. “What does this mean?” I ask hollowly. His eyes grow wide as if he was just about to ask me the same question. “You’re the engineer,” I say, calmer this time. “Can you fix this?”
Holden stares at me for a long moment and then swallows. “I don’t know. I don’t...know what’s wrong. I...” Frustration clings to his every word and I can see tears welling in his eyes, glazing over and shining. Tears of fear because he saw the footprint, he saw me freak out, and now it’s up to him to fix the entire ship. I run my good hand through my hair and close my eyes for a minute, trying to calm my breathing that seems to want to speed up with every passing second.
He’s a kid. I’m a kid. This whole thing was stupid, so unbelievably stupid.
I sigh, forcing myself to calm down. “Try to figure out what’s wrong,” I tell him slowly. “You can do it.”
Holden nods, but I can see the tears still swimming in his eyes. “Holden,” I say. “We’re going to be fine.”
But just then, my words are trailed by a small noise—so small I barely notice it. So small, I’m about to turn around and go back upstairs, to the cockpit, to Sylvia. But then my attention is grabbed and yanked in the direction of the hull, because something small but rhythmic is playing out against the ship’s metal exterior. Like nails on a piece of glass.
Tapping.
I freeze and turn around to glance at Holden. Because maybe I’m imagining it, maybe I’m crazy. But Holden’s eyes widen in raw fear and he stares at me in the exact way I know I’m staring at him. We both face the hull, our eyes following what we can’t see.
“What is it?” Holden whispers.
But I don’t wait for fear to catch every part of me, paralyzing my limbs and numbing my mind. I turn and race for the ladder, scrambling up through the portal. I glance down the hallway and see the window of the cockpit through the open door. My heart sinks and I’m beginning to feel sick. The sun has set. It’s dark outside.
Just then I notice that the tapping has changed. I whirl around, realizing it’s coming from every direction, every surface of the ship. And it’s getting louder. Poking, prodding, banging, smashing.
Suddenly I hear running footsteps and the others tumble into the hallway, Sylvia in the lead. “Jude, what is that?” she asks loudly, as if I’ll know. Holden climbs up from the engine room and I notice how closely we’re all standing together. Far too close for comfort, far too close for normal interaction, but for some reason we’re turning into sheep, huddling together because...what? We think that will keep us safe? More questioning murmurs run through the rest of them.
“It’s whatever I saw,” I say, having to shout over the metallic sounds of banging and booming. “Whatever I saw last night is doing this.”
“But, what...?” someone asks.
“I don’t know,” I hiss.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sylvia snaps. “Now.” Murmurs of agreement rotate among the rest of them, and my heart sinks.
“We...can’t.”
“What do you mean we can’t?” Sylvia shrieks over the roar of banging and smashing, her eyes laced with fear.
I hurriedly recount the last few minutes with Holden in the engine room, each of their expressions tightening with lurid terror.
“You mean we’re stuck here?” Angelica barely whispers, and I have to practically read her lips to make out what she’s saying. I nod grimly.
But suddenly, just as quickly as the tapping had started, everything falls silent. And I notice how my heart races faster. This almost terrifies me more than the initial raps. We stand in the silence, our breathing, our very existence, seeming too loud. Nothing. We hear nothing.
“Where did they go?” I hear Gregory whisper.
I swallow slowly, trying to calm my panic. “I don’t know.”
After about a minute we begin to step away from each other and I decide that the hallway isn’t the best place to discuss anything, so I lead them to the diner down the hall. We all situate ourselves around the table, and I notice how much closer we’re all sitting than normal. There’s a long, tense silence.
“Holden is going to work on fixing the engine,” I tell everybody. “Angelica, you’re going to help.” She nods from across the table. “Everyone needs to stay calm and we’re going to get off this planet.” I say it like I mean it, like I’m explaining what we’re going to have for lunch, or how something played out earlier in the day—something set in stone. I only wish that I was as confident as my voice sounded. I see the shoulders of those around me begin to relax, and I, too, feel slightly at ease. At least I’ve succeeded in calming them down.
“If anyone else has ideas about how to fix this engine, don’t hesitate to speak up. This is our first priority and no idea is stupid.”
“What if they’re trying to communicate?” I hear someone say, and turn in the direction of Gregory. I raise my eyebrows, asking him to continue. He shrugs his shoulders. “What if...” he trails off. “I just thought they might be communicating, that’s all.”
“You think the tapping means something?” Angelica asks him.
Gregory shrugs again, and I can tell he’s starting to feel embarrassed.
“It could be true,” Holden chimes in. “And maybe they just want us to say something back.”
“We should go try to talk to them,” Jackson interjects.
“Wait,” I say loud enough to stop any further conversation. “You want to go out there?” My voice is flat.
Jackson puts his hands into the air helplessly. “Maybe all they want to do is talk.”
“We don�
��t know that,” I refute.
“Maybe they could help us,” Holden interrupts me. “We don’t know what’s wrong with the engine, maybe it has something to do with the planet. They might know that.”
I’m staring at them all incredulously. I’m surprised Sylvia hasn’t spoken up by now. Usually she’s the one disagreeing with anything risky. But she shocks me by suddenly speaking up in favor of the idea. “Let’s think about this rationally,” she says slowly. “They’re most likely an alien species or we would have picked them up on the monitor as human. We don’t know how they communicate; they might not be hostile at all.”
“But we don’t know that,” I repeat.
“Well we don’t know anything else either. That engine is sitting down there, dead.”
I’m silent for a pause, the idea beginning to sink into my mind. She’s right. I have no idea how to fix the engine, and Holden’s barely an engineer himself. We’re marooned on a planet and something is out there. Only we don’t know what it wants.
I glance over at Holden. “You, Jackson, and me. We’re going out now to investigate. Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be around in the daytime, so we’re going to try to...” I trail off for a minute, exasperated. “Talk to it?” I throw my hands into the air irritably and get up from the table. Everyone else jumps up as well, but waits for my direction before going anywhere. I notice Gregory seems a little down about not getting picked. But he’s fifteen—the youngest. I’m not letting him go out there now. I order Holden and Jackson to get ready—coats and shoes or whatever they need, while Angelica makes sure the weapons are loaded, and Sylvia readies medical supplies. Just in case.
I already have my shoes on, so I grab a coat and begin strapping a holster around my waist. Even though Angelica already went through them, I insist on checking the guns over again before we go outside. I think I see Jackson shaking a little as I hand out the flashlights. I wonder if he regrets voicing his idea.
“Okay,” I say and everyone turns, their complete attention glued to me. For a split second I’m awed and then terrified that this group of people have placed their trust in me. A seventeen-year-old child. Sylvia, Angelica, and Gregory are standing next to us in the hallway, seemingly with the intention of staying the whole time. Sylvia is armed and ready to watch the ramp while Angelica and Gregory are simply too curious and wound up to go anywhere else. “Here we go.” I reach out to press the button beside the ramp and watch as it slowly descends.
We’re all completely frozen until the ramp collides with the solid earth and then we cautiously make our way out. The cold wraps around me like a coil so suddenly, I take in a sharp intake of breath. It squeezes me tighter, stinging. I ignore the sensation and flick the flashlight on, illuminating the darkness before me. But not enough. Not nearly enough to feel safe.
“Hello?” I call, but immediately feel silly. If they were able to talk, they would have by now. Or at least, I would hope so. Just then I notice that Holden and Jackson are practically glued to my back and I turn around to face them. “Look around,” I say. “But stay close enough to see each other’s flashlights.” They nod and slowly move in opposite directions, leaving me alone.
I glance around. I feel more exposed now. Vulnerable. I grit my teeth, trying to clamp down on the jitters in my legs and arms, the urge to run. It’s only dark, I tell myself. Everything is exactly the way it was in the daytime.
Only now, you can’t see it.
I shove the thought out of my mind, like a stray dog wandering into a stranger's home, and slam the door. It doesn’t matter. I can still deal with whatever it is that’s out there.
Suddenly I see a gleam of something in the darkness—the shadowy figure of something about my height. Humanoid, watching me. I spin my flashlight in the direction, but it’s gone. My heart rate is spinning out of control now. Whatever it is, it doesn’t want me to see it. And that can’t be good. It’s here and it sees us and it’s not coming out. Why?
“Jude?” The word is whispered, hissed—it floats through the air, barely reaching my ears, but when it does, I start. I gasp for air, spinning around just in time to see a flash of pink fabric disappearing into the trees.
The girl.
My heart stops. It has to be her. But my brain isn’t wondering why, or asking why, or trying to figure out how it’s even possible. It’s too confused, too worried, too high strung, screaming, to see anything except that flash of pink cloth. I scramble through the underbrush, pushing tree branches out of my face, seeing glimpse after glimpse of the small figure darting away from me—a second of blonde hair, bare feet, faded pink. I hear a giggle, but for some reason I don’t stop, even though my heart is beating me to death from the inside out, warning me of what I’m doing, wandering away, wandering into danger. And finally I hear the footsteps stop, she’s right ahead of me, hiding behind the trees that obscure my view. I take a step forward, and another one. And I pull the branches out of my way.
But it isn’t the little girl who’s standing in the clearing. Not the little girl with the blonde hair and the pink dress. Not the little girl I’d followed into the woods. My breath catches in my throat, clawing its way down my air pipe, sucking the oxygen away from me, suffocating me because of what I’ve done. My head races, a million memories tearing their way back into existence, clawing out of the hidden chambers of my brain, leaving trails of pain and blood scattered across my mind. It aches, my mind aches with things I’d thought I’d forgotten.
It’s him. Standing before me—my height, his eyes glaring into mine, only I remember him so much taller. My prosthetic hand seems to ache and sting, even though I know that it can’t. Him. He did this to me. Living alone in the wilderness, running through the woods, flashes of children, the little girl, the boy from my dreams. And then everything else comes crashing back, so loudly, so forcefully, breaking the walls of my home, my heart, and smothering them to pieces.
“Did you miss me?” he whispers, a smile dancing across his lips.
The flashlight drops from my hand and I scream.
I’m still screaming when Holden and Jackson reach me. Guttural, animal noises, shrieking from my lungs. The flashlight is on the ground, illuminating the place where his feet stood only seconds before, but I’m not comforted by his departure—I’m terrified.
“Captain!” Holden shouts, but every part of me is still focusing on him, and trying to hold in the pieces of my mind. My fists are clenched, horror runs through my veins, and I can hear the boys shouting at me, calling to me, but I can’t make out their words. I scream again when I feel someone touch my arm, then a hand around my waist, dragging me back toward the ship.
My hands reach up to cover my face because whatever is out here, whatever this darkness hides, I don’t want to see it. Holden and Jackson pull me back to the ship were Sylvia is practically shrieking at them, demanding to know what happened. My feet feel the solid steel beneath me, and I sink to the ground against a wall, hearing the noise of the ramp closing up behind us. I’ve stopped making any noise, but I’m breathing heavily now, the image of what I’d seen only moments earlier still ingrained in my mind.
“Everybody out!” I hear Sylvia yell, and then the rapid pace of footsteps as people hurriedly exit the hallway. She sinks to her knees in front of me, peeling my hands away from my face. “Jude,” she whispers, like she doesn’t know what else to do. And then I realize how scared she is. She’s practically shaking. Because I’m always the tough one—it’s her job to do the worrying, to be terrified and let me know when something is a bad idea. I’ve always been the steady one, especially now that Hourglass is mine. And the fact that I walked into the darkness and had to be dragged back screaming and whimpering shows that whatever is out there is real. And more than that, dangerous. “What happened?”
I breathe in air, but it happens as more of a gasp. I’m shaking my head, the words aren’t coming. What am I supposed to say? Anything I think of sounds ridiculous, the words in my mind sound ridiculo
us—the whole idea is impossible. And yet, here I am, and here he is, and here is this planet...
“I saw someone,” I whisper.
Sylvia stiffens. “Who?”
I suddenly find that it’s hard to keep the oxygen in my lungs, hard to keep breathing. “He...someone...” I trail off. I close my eyes and swallow. “I’ve been here before.”
Sylvia leans abruptly away from me, her eyes narrowing, her mouth parting. “You’ve been here,” she repeats. “On this planet?”
I nod silently.
“Then why would you let us come down here? And Jude, that’s not even possible, I’ve been with you practically every day of your life.” She spits the words at me like she’s angry, but I know she’s just scared. Scared of what’s out there and even more scared of what I’m about to tell her.
“Before I met you,” I barely whisper, and Sylvia goes silent for a long, long moment.
“The planet,” she finally utters, like it’s the hardest thing she’s ever said. “The planet Sprocket found you on, the one he could never remember...”
I’m nodding and I feel sick.
“This is where your dad found you, this is where...”
Suddenly I feel the need to move so I shove myself up off the ground and lean against the wall. Sylvia shoots up beside me. “We need to leave,” I pant. “Now. As soon as possible. We need to get out of here.” I stop talking abruptly because I can feel my voice starting to slip into panic. Sylvia is nodding beside me as I make my way to the cockpit.
“Wait, Jude.” She catches my arm. I turn around and she stares at me for just a split second too long. “What did you see?”
The question hangs in the air for unnaturally long seconds, enough time for my heart to skip too many beats and continue pumping.
“The boy who cut off my hand.”
Chapter Eight
Sylvia’s face is white as I spin back around and storm into the cockpit. I flick on the monitors and begin scanning the area for signs of life, for what seems like the hundredth time, knowing that I’m not going to see anything. According to the computer, what I saw out there doesn’t exist. But my breath catches in my throat as lights on the screen begin to shimmer to life, like the monitor has suddenly started working again, teasing me with blinking lights.
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