After Impact: After Impact Trilogy, Book 1

by Stark, Nicole

  Avalon stepped towards Ilium. His face moved towards hers. Her pulse quickened, but Ilium stopped short of meeting lips at the sound of his smartwatch beeping.

  He frowned as he checked the message.

  “Anything wrong?” Avalon asked.

  “No, I just need to check on something,” Ilium said. His jaw clenched tight, however.

  Avalon frowned, but let him go.

  “You would tell me if something was wrong, right?” Avalon asked.

  Ilium smiled before saying, “ I have to go. I will check on you again tomorrow. Buzz me if you need anything.”

  The next day when Avalon woke up, displayed across the wall screen was a message from the President.

  “Today is day one of survival training. It will commence at 1800 hours and end at 2000. It will be required once a week.”

  Avalon and the group were led by guards to a new much larger room. The room corresponded to the one Avalon saw in the blueprints when she went snooping. He stomach instantly tightened. There were several different centers—including one with a cardboard target on the wall, one with agricultural skills, and one for tent-making.

  Avalon headed straight for the gun center and picked up a small six shooter.

  “Why do we need guns?” Avalon asked.

  “Well most things were destroyed in the cataclysm, but we aren’t sure about smaller animals. Always better safe than sorry,” the instructor said.

  “They would have mutated though, right?”

  “Probably.”

  Avalon’s hand shook as she grabbed the gun. Avalon had never held a firearm before. The smooth metal felt cold in her hand.

  “Don’t worry. It’s rubber bullets,” the instructor added.

  The instructor stood behind Avalon and told her to use both hands to hold it by the handle, while pulling back the trigger. At first, the trigger was hard to pull, but finally, the gun fired. The recoil startled Avalon as her eyes closed briefly at the loud noise the shot made. When she opened them, she had missed the red circles on the target completely.

  The instructor shook his head. “Never close your eyes. Better luck next time.”

  The noise from the gun’s firing still rung in her ears.

  “Maybe I would have done better with earmuffs?”

  “In the wild, you won’t be wearing earmuffs. You need to get used to shooting a gun, feeling the recoil, and enjoying the noise.”

  Ilium walked up and confidently picked up a .380 handgun. Without hesitation, he fired and hit the target dead in the center.

  “Great job!’ the instructor said.

  “How’d you learn to fire like that?” Avalon asked.

  “I’m from the Midwest, remember? It’s what we do. Hunt and fish.”

  Hmph. Makes sense.

  “But, you were in an orphanage? So how did you get access to a gun?”

  “I didn’t enter the orphanage until age nine. My Dad had taught me how to shoot by then. Small things like squirrels and such. But I was always accurate.”

  Avalon wanted to ask more questions, but she was startled by loud applause. As she turned her head, Elena had fired a gun with deadly precision as well. Elena smiled her snake-like smile at Avalon.

  Scanning the crowd, Avalon noticed Brody was absent.

  “Have you seen Brody?” she asked Ilium.

  “No.”

  Everyone has to report to this. It is mandatory.

  Panic began to swell in Avalon’s chest.

  “Time to move to agriculture,” the instructor said.

  As Avalon and Ilium were ushered towards agriculture, Avalon continued to scan the crowd in search of Brody. She barely heard the instructor speak about how to plant the seeds, and water them, etc. All the seeds in the habitat were organic so they could save and re-use the seeds to produce new plants. It was quite elementary stuff, but still important to go over.

  The next day, as Avalon signed in, she noticed Brody was not there.

  “Where is Brody?” Avalon asked.

  “He stayed in bed today. Said he had a cold,” Xin said.

  A cold. Avalon began to panic. No. It has to be just a cold. Surely it can’t be the virus.

  Still, as panic rose in Avalon, she could not concentrate on her work queue. She videomessaged Ilium to meet her in the storage room.

  “So, how is it going with the virus thing?” Avalon asked.

  “Not so good,” he said.

  “What do you mean, not so good? Maybe now is the time we should warn the others?” Avalon asked.

  He fell quiet as he contemplated the answer. He looked at Avalon for several seconds.

  Ilium shook his head. “No, not yet. I don’t want to cause alarm if it is unwarranted.” Ilium answered.

  “Well, what have you found out?” Avalon asked, crossing her arms in front of her. “ I can tell by your answer you know something.”

  Ilium let out a puff of air. “ It is mutating.”

  Avalon’s eyes grew wide. “Mutating…into what?”

  “I don’t know. But it is mutating, and I believe it now has the capacity to infect us all.”

  Avalon sat down. “This changes everything.”

  “I know. My original hypothesis was that the universal shot the Compatios received upon waking up from the cryochambers contained a retrovirus. While the one the Accipios and Fulcios received did not contain this retrovirus. So I believed the other classes weren’t in danger.”

  “Ilium. Brody didn’t show up to work today. Do you think—?” Avalon couldn’t finish the words.

  Ilium patted her on the back. “ No, I don’t think so. It is probably just a cold.”

  “But if he does have the virus...we cannot afford to lose him. Or anyone else for that matter,” Avalon remarked.

  “I know.”

  Tears formed in the corners of Avalon’s eyes, stinging them. Her thick lashes clumped together as her lips trembled. Avalon tried wiping them away with the back of her hand.

  “I have been working non-stop on trying to fix this,” Ilium said placing one hand on her shoulder.

  Some of the tension melted from Avalon as she held his gaze. He moved his hand from her shoulder and placed his arm around her waist, moving her in for a side hug.

  Her tears stopped their flow as he gave her a real hug. His heart was beating fast, and her eyes closed.

  “A girl as beautiful as you should never cry,” he said, looking down into her face.

  Avalon’s eyes met Ilium’s and a silence grew between them. It was not awkward, like most silences.

  “Do you think the Council is behind this?” Avalon asked, cutting through the silence.

  “I am not sure,” Ilium answered. “I definitely believe the President is involved.”

  Avalon gritted her teeth. “We can stop him. Together. But this is teamwork. I can’t do it alone,” Avalon said. “I need your help.”

  “You have my help,” Ilium answered. “I think we have come as far as we can with the knowledge we currently possess. We need more data on the immunologic biometrics.”

  “So, how do you propose we get that?” Avalon asked.

  “I don’t know. But I think the answer is in Viggo’s lab,” Ilium said.

  “Why his lab? Viggo hasn’t done anything to us. Besides, he worked with my father. My father handpicked him.”

  “Who else could orchestrate these events?”

  Viggo’s lab was the logical place that the virus would have originated. But she hoped it wasn’t him.

  “Anyone. The President. The Council. But I refuse to believe Viggo has anything to do with this.”

  “I think you are blinded,” Ilium remarked.

  “Blinded by what?” Avalon asked.

  “The desperate attempt to hold onto anything related to your father.”

  Avalon’s eyes stung and her face turned red.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Ilium said trying to grab Avalon’s arm. She jerked away.

  “Listen,
I take it back. I only meant we need to look at everyone. We can’t be biased. Remember what your father said. Trust no one,” Ilium stated.

  Avalon took in a deep breath and calmed down. “Well, if we need to enter his lab, we will need to break in,” Avalon answered.

  Ilium looked like he was about to choke on something. “Do you mean trespass?”

  “Yes. Trespassing should be the least of your worries with all we have been through. I don’t have a way to trick the system with his biosignal. So we only have one way in.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Later that night, Ilium and Avalon entered a huge room full of microscopes and lab equipment.

  “Are we sure about this?” Ilium asked as they entered.

  “Yes,” Avalon replied. She had mentally calculated the odds of being caught, and what to do if they were countless times. She was ready.

  Ilium tried to distract himself from the carousel of ways they could get caught, what might happen to them if they were caught, and more. Ilium’s life was normally very planned and did not feature many adventures or anything dangerous. Life in the orphanage where he grew up was very scheduled, military like in its regimen. What would my life have been like if I had grown up with a family? He didn’t care if the family was poor or rich, or middle class. Young or old. All he wanted was special people to hug and laugh with and share memories with—to do things that weren’t set to a time limit. All of a sudden, with the addition of Avalon, spontaneity was quickly becoming his new best friend. Furthermore, he was feeling a connection which was more than friendship. His heart beat raced and warmth spread throughout his body whenever she was near or he heard the pleasant sound of her voice.

  “Whoa. We have a huge comic book fan,” Avalon whispered as a section of wall was littered in various comic book pages. No one read comics on real dead trees anymore, and those pages would have been worth millions before they entered the habitat.

  She found everything highly organized—pipettes, pipette tips, test tubes, were all neatly tucked away and labeled. Beakers, well plates, cylinders, Petri dishes all sat neatly upon the table top. Her fingers brushed against a bottle labeled Acetonitrile in one of the drawers.

  It reminded Avalon of chemistry and biology labs in high school—of that one kid who almost set his face on fire by lighting methanol. Class was canceled the rest of the day. She headed home in the new electric car her parents had just bought her for her sixteenth birthday. It was top of the line and ran from solar energy. Sometimes she would set it in manual and drive it herself, but other times she liked to enjoy the autonomous feature while she closed her eyes and slept or read a magazine.

  Ilium searched inside a side closet, but quickly closed it, having found nothing suspicious.

  “It was just me and my dad against the world. We were a team,” Avalon added.

  Ilium bristled as he had always wanted a family like that. A team. A unique and special connection with someone.

  “I don’t think we’re going to find anything,” Ilium whispered as his hands ran across the smooth walls searching for anything suspicious.

  “We must continue to try. Something has to be here.” Ilium bumped the wallscreen.

  “Hey! He hasn’t logged off yet!” Ilium whispered.

  The feeling in the room immediately changed.

  “He just made this so easy!” Avalon whispered.

  “What’s this already on the screen?” Ilium asked.

  A folder called Contingency plan displayed. Double tapping it Avalon read the following:

  Harper Majors, age 18. Received 10 ccs of serum. Survived radiation exposure level for 30 minutes. Convulsed and died 2 days later.

  Annabelle Atkins, age 22. Received 100 ccs of serum. Survived radiation exposure level for 60 minutes. Convulsed and died 4 days later.

  Michelle Clue, age 20. Received 1000 ccs of serum. Survived radiation exposure level for five days. Patient exhibited improved breathing capabilities in carbon dioxide rich environment and improved strength and speed for Days 2-4. Died of unknown causes on Day 5.

  Avalon and Ilium’s faces glowed under the blue light from the hologram as they read the case files.

  “What are we looking at?” Ilium asked in horror.

  “They are Compatios. These are the ones that the rumors said were abducted.”

  “Michelle!” Ilium said.

  “It sure is,” Avalon said. “And all of these people are female.”

  “But what, what was Viggo doing to them?” Ilium asked.

  Avalon studied the screen a minute before answering. “It appears he was trying to build a race of radiation proof humans.”

  “Unsuccessfully,” Ilium said, looking at the death count.

  “My question is…why? This is unlike the man my father described and who occasionally came over to the house to discuss work.”

  “Maybe he isn’t doing it willingly. Maybe he is doing it for someone else,” Ilium said.

  Avalon shook her head. “His morals are too high for that.”

  “Maybe his morals used to be too high for that.”

  Avalon sighed. People changed. But still, she had to hold out hope that some things remained the same.

  “I have a different problem,” Ilium whispered. “These charts show people are dying. So where is he hiding the bodies?”

  Avalon’s eyes widened.

  At that moment, Avalon gasped at the sound of footsteps approaching. Quickly, Avalon and Ilium turned off the lights and ran inside of the side closet. Ilium crouched in front of Avalon, protecting her. Avalon found herself grabbing hold of Ilium from behind and trying not to breathe too loud.

  They listened as Viggo entered the room. Avalon’s heart thumped against her chest as she held her breath. Ilium placed one arm around her waist and held her tightly. Her eyes closed, and she began to think less about her fear of Viggo, and more about the slow rise and fall of Ilium’s chest.

  Viggo stood a few feet away from them, and only the flimsy door separated the two. Did I return everything to its place? Does he suspect anything?

  Avalon strained to listen by placing her ear to the door. Drawers opened and shut. Then her attention focused on how close she was to Ilium as they crouched together in the dark. It was a small closet. Her whole life was a series of being stuck in one box or another. But this box, here with Ilium, wasn’t so bad. Still, every time she listened to Viggo’s footsteps, her heart beat faster. Ilium wrapped his arms around her and held her close. A few funky smells wafted into the closet, but after a while, they heard the sound of Viggo leaving the lab again.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, Ilium whispered “I am going to step outside.”

  Avalon shook her head. “What if he only stepped out for a minute?”

  “True. But we don’t know how long he will take. It’s a gamble.”

  Although Ilium could not see Avalon’s face, he sensed her hesitation.

  “I will crack the door open first,” he said.

  “Ok,” Avalon said.

  Ilium carefully cracked open the door. No signs of movement. He crawled out and remained crouched inside the lab. Once confirmed clear, Avalon followed him outside of the closet and into the main corridor.

  Together outside of the lab, they stole away to her room without looking back.

  “I can’t believe we got away with it!” Avalon said breathlessly once they were inside her room.

  “I can’t believe we did it either,” Ilium said.

  Avalon let out a puff of air. Ilium stepped towards Avalon, gazing into her brilliant eyes which still held onto innocence in a habitat which didn’t deserve her presence. Like a flower growing in a desert, she did not belong and required constant vigilance and protection, even if she did not realize it.

  Ilium took another step towards her and held her gaze. With one arm, he pulled her close. Avalon closed her eyes and enjoyed the electricity which flowed between them until, without warning, Ilium took a step back. Avalon opened her eyes
and looked at him. His cheeks were red.

  “Now that we know that’s he’s experimenting on people, what do we plan to do with this information?” Ilium asked.

  Avalon liked the sound of the word ‘we’ from his lips. It wasn’t the first time he had used the pronoun, but this time it seemed to hold more promise.

  “We’ve got to find a cure,"

  Ilium nodded his head in agreement before the two parted ways. Avalon collapsed to her bed with her clothes still on.

  The next day Avalon entered the workstation and noticed one floor circle was unlit.

  “Is Brody still sick?” Avalon asked.

  “Yes,” Xin said.

  Avalon immediately left and hiked down the long twisting corridor walking towards the infirmary.

  This has to be more than the common cold for Brody to miss another day. For each day he misses, he receives fewer ration points for food. Ilium assured me it was just the cold.

  As she entered the room, there were seven people lying in beds, and the stench of sickness hung like a thick cloud in the air. Avalon’s stomach churned as patients vomited and coughed.

  Out of all the patients lying on their backs in the tiny metallic trolley beds, not a single Accipio was amongst them.

  Ilium stood in the middle of the room, giving one of the patients water.

  “How is Brody?” Avalon asked.

  Ilium shook his head. “I am sorry Avalon. It turns out he does have the virus.”

  Avalon did not allow tears to form. She was developing thicker skin by the day. Tears would not help this situation. Action had to be taken.

  “How close are we to something? A fix?” Avalon asked.

  His grip tightened around the stethoscope in his hands. “I have been working on a formula non-stop, but I can’t make it work. At this rate, it only delays the inevitable for a few days, but it is far from a cure.”

  Avalon took a deep breath to clear her mind. I came here to check on Brody. She strode over to him. Large black bruises were underneath his eyes.

  “Hey. How are you doing?” Avalon asked.