by Jodie Kobe
Chapter twenty-three
R I A N
Vivian goes slack in my arms, and all I do is stay crouched in my current position. The orders and gibberish words are screaming through the communication radio. They are so loud that I can’t pick out one sentence from the next.
I am dreading the answer to this question: Is Vivian dead? I don’t know. The only thing I can do is take her hand and squeeze it.
A layer of ice has formed on the outside panel of the glass shielding her face. I try to wipe it away, but it has already formed into something hard.
There are no visible cracks on the glass, so I don't instantly think the cold seeping in through the glass is responsible for doing this to her. Why did this happen to her?
Fox needs the chip, but I don’t want to leave Vivian’s side to bring it to him. But what can I do for her since I am staying by her side? Nothing.
The indistinguishable voices yelling from the radio stop as soon as Jack Welds’ voice yells out. “Enough! Fox, you’re almost there, but you can’t accomplish anything without the chip.”
From the radio, Fox sounds out of breath as he says, “There! I see it. I see the deposit spot.” He lets out a laugh and continues, “Man, I thought...wait...how’s Vivian?”
I shut my eyes. My voice cracks as I say, “S-she’s collapsed. She’s unconscious. I don’t know how long she’ll hold out.”
There are a few seconds of silence and a few grunts from Fox. Then he says, “Okay...the machine is in place. I need the chip.”
I take a look at the screen of the GPS. There is a green dot marking Fox right next to the destination point. He’s made it.
“I need the chip, Rian.” Fox’s voice is desperate and loud. He starts breathing heavily, as if he’s running. “I’m coming to get it from you.”
A few more voices say something from the radio, but I have long since drowned them out. They are distant so I don't think they are talking to us. I drop the GPS onto the dirt and start searching Vivian’s suit pockets for the chip. When I find it, I pull it out and bring it as close to my face as I can without touching the glass covering in front of me.
Vivian stays limp and unconscious, but her chest is still rising and falling. I search for her heartbeat and find it, relieved. It’s beating faster than normal, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.
A hand clamps down on my shoulder and I snap my head back to find Fox standing there in his large suit, breathing heavily from the run.
“Dude,” he says quickly, holding a hand out. “Give me the chip. You stay with Vivian. I’m almost done.” As soon as the chip leaves my hand and lands in his palm, Fox breaks into a run back in the direction where he had just come from. “I’ll help you carry her back when I finish,” his voice breathes out tiredly from the radio.
My uncomfortable and stiff suit prevents me from carrying anything large in my arms, so Fox's help would be appreciated.
“Rian, she’s at twenty-three percent,” a voice from my radio tells me. “It’s continuing to fall.”
“Can’t you increase the shield?” I almost yell. “Or increase whatever is holding this stupid heart together?” I don’t want to call Vivian’s heart stupid because this is the very thing that is keeping her alive. It’s Rob who I’m going to call stupid. Didn’t he say he designed this heart?
Well, it failed. Vivian is slowly freezing to death while...while I’m doing nothing. God, I’m doing nothing. What is there I can do?
“Got the keyboard,” Fox’s voice yells out. “What’s the code?”
Four voices start talking at the same time, but I do not understand a word they say. “Fox code Rian your...a27b...percent...58...82...a578...code...move.”
“Whoa!” Fox exclaims. “Slow down. One at a time.”
A voice quickly replies, “Rian your battery is at seventy-eight. Fox, yours is at eighty-two.”
Then, it’s silent except for the sound of breathing.
“The code!” Fox suddenly yells. “I need the code!”
“Oh, oh, oh...okay!” Jack’s voice says hastily. “You there, he needs the code again.”
“Jeez,” Fox mutters. “This is really disorganized.”
“We’ve gotten this far haven’t we?” Janelle’s voice startles me. When did she arrive? Her voice is calm and steady as she says over the radio, “The code is 9a—type this in, Fox—27b…”
She pauses every three or four letters and numbers to make sure Fox gets it. Once they both finish, Fox yells, “It’s loading! I’m done!”
“Not yet.” Janelle’s voice is still calm. “Once it’s loaded, you' will have to find a small button on the side. Press it. The machine should activate.”
Fox grunts. “Alright. Hold on, it's gonna take me a while to find—oh, wait...here it is. Don't press it 'til it has loaded, right?” He lets out an unexpected and amused laugh, seeming to have forgotten the seriousness of the situation. “Look, about this thing. I might have had hope once, but now that I’m taking a look at this cube, I can’t imagine it having any potential whatsoever. Face it. It’s a failure, just like Vivian’s heart. She’s dead meat. Sorry, Rian.”
My grip on Vivian’s hand tightens and I want to yell out, “What is wrong with you?” But I stay quiet.
I’m expecting Jack’s voice to shoot some comment back, but I hear a different voice instead. I don't know who it belongs to. “We still have time to save her.”
“It’s done loading,” Fox says quietly through the radio.
Several voices yell out from the radio, “Then press the button!”
“Press it, Fox,” Jack's clear voice says. “Do it.”
Fox scoffs. “How do you know I didn’t press the button yet?”
“The machine hasn’t activated on our screen.”
The sooner we get this done, the better. Why is Fox stalling?
“Just activate the machine, Fox,” I say loudly.
Silence. Then a slow, “Done. I’m walking over to you.”
I snatch the GPS from the ground and stuff it into my pocket. “Damn it, Fox. Just hurry.”
“Fox,” Janelle’s voice says. “Vivian's not dead yet. You can still make it back.”
Not dead yet?
I feel Vivian’s heartbeat again, and this time, the beating has slowed down. Is that a good thing?
In minutes, Fox appears out of the fog. He jogs over to me and the unconscious Vivian at my side. “Come on,” he says.
I jump to my feet and wrap Vivian’s limp arm around my neck while Fox does the same thing on Vivian’s other side. We pull her to her feet and drag her forward.
She lets out a soft groan, but I’m not sure if I imagined it. She’s still alive?
Fox catches the hesitation in my walk so he says, “Whoa. Move along now. I heard it too.”
So I hadn’t imagined it.
Welds’ voice says, “Her percentage just increased. It’s at thirty-four. Keep moving.”
Vivian’s arm lifts from my neck but drops down again. She lets out another groan and her feet take a few steps forward, only to go limp again. My grip on her tightens, and Fox and I continue dragging her along.
“Increasing,” someone says. “Keep going.”
At least it’s not dropping anymore.
“How long have we been out here?” Fox says with a few gulps of air. I can’t imagine how tired he must feel right now. He had to run with that machine, run back to us, run back to that machine, and now he’s helping me carry Vivian.
“Thirty-nine percent for Vivian. Move. You can make it.”
I struggle to pull the GPS out of my pocket to try to get a glimpse of the screen. Are we going the right way? The GPS has marked the location back to the building. We are heading the right way.
“How long have we been out here?” Fox asks again.
“Forty-five minutes.”
“Damn,” Fox whispers. “The way back should take us thirty.”
It does not feel like I’ve been here fo
r forty-five minutes. It seems shorter.
Vivian mutters something, but it's incoherent. A wave of happiness washes over me. She still alive and her heart percentage is rising. Maybe the heart isn't a failure after all.
Her next words are clearer. “Waz going on…?”
I hold my smile in. This isn’t the time for smiling. Just because she’s waking up doesn’t necessarily mean she’s going to live. There’s still a chance her heart could give up on her.
Fox and I continue to pull Vivian with us. She doesn’t wake up again, which rises fear in me.
“Shield decreasing quite rapidly again,” a woman’s voice says. “Hurry. You’re close.”
It’s decreasing? I'm right. I shouldn’t bring my hopes up.
“How close?” Fox asks. “I need the distance.”
I know I can’t answer that. The GPS doesn’t tell me.
But there's an answer from the radio. “One hundred seventy yards.”
They think this is close?
Fox sighs, saying, “Keep walking.”
That’s what I’m doing. Vivian feels like she’s getting heavier and heavier as we move. A few voices continue to talk to us but I don’t have the energy to answer. And just when I’m about to collapse, the small building we had come out of a couple of hours ago appears out of the fog. I let out a sigh of relief, trying to push myself to keep going. We’ve almost made it, but no one is telling us Vivian's heart percentage.
As soon as we walk through the metal doors we came out of, Fox collapses from exhaustion, bringing Vivian down to the ground with him. I nearly trip over from the sudden movement, but I use the wall to right myself and try to pull Vivian into a more comfortable position.
Fox is face down on the ground, his hands over his head. He’s mumbling something into the ground that I can’t hear.
“Oh, my god,” a female voice exclaims from the radio in my ear. “That actually worked! They’re alive! The machine is in place! Prepare the activation!”
Another voice, calmer. “Airlock.”
Fox grunts as the airlock doors begin to slide shut behind him. A loud buzz sounds and we stand in silence.
Then a voice. “Stand by for decontamination.”
Something clicks above us and I try to look up, but my stiff suit does not let me. There's a slight pull, but it's weak enough not to pull me up to the ceiling.
A man's voice sounds from the radio. “We added an extra feature to the suits. They are made with a special material where not many toxic gases can attach to it, but the decontamination process is still needed.” He pauses. A few voices mutter something, and the same man continues. “After you come here, we will have to pull the suits off immediately and store them away.”