Second Earth

by Stephen A. Fender

“And we both know you are.”

  “You’ve been hiding, Shawn.”

  “Really?” he replied with honest surprise. “And just who have I been hiding from?”

  She smiled. “From yourself, Commander. I think that now…somehow, you’re starting to find yourself again.”

  Shawn’s face hardened, and he stepped back from her touch. “That’s one opinion.”

  “I’ve got more.”

  “I don’t doubt it. However, we don’t have the time, so how about we just get on with what we’re doing here.”

  She looked at him apologetically. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Well, regardless, you did,” he said harshly, then made an obvious effort to soften his expression. “Let’s just get what we came for, okay? We’ll talk it through once we’re not surrounded by death and destruction. Fair enough?”

  She nodded. “Fair enough.”

  Shawn scanned the street once more as he placed his hands on his hips. “So, Agent Graves, where are we going from here?”

  She took a deep breath and pivoted on her left heel. She was now facing the most battered building on the entire block. Although the tall white building was still in one piece, how long it would remain so was anyone’s guess. The center of the structure looked like it was bulging from the inside, as if it were expanding to dangerous proportions and would explode at any moment. Nearly all the windows on the upper five floors had been blown out, but most on the bottom three remained intact. Of the two large wooden double doors that offered access to the space, one was firmly shut and the other was wedged half-open, exposing the darkness within.

  Shawn’s gaze followed her, and he stepped a pace in front of where she stood. “You sure this is the place?” he called over his shoulder. “Its stability looks…a tad questionable.”

  “That’s the place, all right. And we’re going to need to get in there.”

  A gust of unwelcomed hot air blew down the street, causing the single cocked door to squeak heavily as it slid open farther. Without asking, Shawn knew he would have to lead the way into the structure. However, as soon as he began to shift his weight, Melissa walked off purposely, not stopping until she was through the opening twenty paces later.

  Someday, I’m really going to need to sit her down and have a heart-to-heart discussion on the meaning of the word “cautious.”

  Chapter 4

  As soon as Shawn was through the partially open door, the first thing that assaulted his senses was the overwhelming smell of decay in the dilapidated building. Years of neglect had left the structure suffering from damage that could only be remedied by a complete demolition. The floor was littered with the crumbled remains of the false ceiling that had once hidden a small maze of pipes and electrical conduits that snaked along the overhead, themselves hanging down in places like the long-abandoned spider’s web of some ghastly technological beast. Several wooden beams, probably more for decoration than function, had toppled and broken up, the fragments tossed around like some long-forgotten children’s toy. Two lofty beams that were supporting the roof, each about nine feet tall and two feet wide, were showing signs of serious rust. The paint that had once protected their natural surface had long since flaked to the floor and now surrounded the bases of the pillars like piles of large, flat snowflakes.

  In an effort to remain as clean as possible, Melissa reached into her pocket and withdrew a pair of light leather gloves. As she donned them, she watched Shawn do the same.

  The outsized windows that looked out into the street were so encrusted with a thin film of green mold that the duo could barely see through them. Flipping on their portable lights, the two would-be explorers waved them around the dark room, each of them looking for signs of why they’d been led to this place. Against a far corner of the room, Shawn noticed a toppled metal desk, not at all unlike the desk he had in his quarters on the Rhea. There were papers and discarded computer pads strewn around the floor near the desk, and Shawn assumed they had probably been on the desk’s top before it was tipped over. Behind the fallen desk was a single potted plant, long dead in its circular terracotta coffin. Beside it, springing up from between a series of cracked granite floor tiles was a fresh and lively fern that had begun to encroach upon the office in search of sunlight.

  Melissa was on the opposite side of the room, examining the contents of several file cabinets that lined that particular wall. It seemed all the documents that had been inside them were now strewn across the floor or had been removed prior to the office’s destruction. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a computer terminal, but when she turned the screen to face her, she saw that it was completely burnt out from the inside. The exposed circuitry of the device seemed to scoff at her desire to access its innards. She pointed her small light around the room and noticed two doors on the far wall situated between her and Shawn’s locations. Shawn followed her beam and stepped to the door closer to him.

  He attempted to turn the knob, but the door was either locked or the mechanism was frozen. He pushed on the wooden surface, but it failed to dislodge. Melissa tried her luck at the other door and it opened with ease. In fact, there wasn’t even the slightest squeak or complaint from a door that—supposedly—hadn’t been opened in years. As Melissa effortlessly pushed the door fully open, Shawn had a recollection of what had transpired on board the Icarus those few weeks ago, when a shadowy form had lunged from a darkened space to presumably attack him. He instinctively drew his high-powered sidearm to defend them against anything that might come out from within the space.

  Thankfully, Shawn could see that the small room was lit far better than the rest of the office had been. There was an overall yellow glow to the room, the effect of filtered sunlight through an undamaged skylight far overhead. In the small, eight-foot-square office, there was another wooden door directly ahead of them, and a winding staircase on their right that went to up to the second floor. Beside the closed door was a small, nondescript chair and a table, meaning this place probably served as a waiting area for whatever went on in the office beyond. After trying and failing to open the door, Shawn motioned to Melissa that he intended to take the decaying staircase.

  As he was about to place his foot onto the first step, Melissa reached out and hand and stopped him. “Wait,” she said softly as she bent down to examine the step. She gingerly picked up a scrap of paper and found nothing but dust.

  “Did you find something?”

  “Not yet.” She continued to inspect small bits and pieces of waste material from the first few steps until she came upon a discovery. On the second step, near where the stairs met the wall, was the distinct impression of a soft-soled shoe. She withdrew her vid-recorder and snapped an image of the print, then moved up to the next step. When she found nothing, she proceeded to the subsequent step and found a print of the opposite shoe. “Whoever was here, they definitely went up.”

  “So someone has been here recently.”

  Melissa nodded. “I’d say within the last few months, based on the quality of the impression and the surrounding materials. Regardless, it was well after the building had fallen into disrepair.”

  Shawn looked to the top of the stairs, but the ninety-degree angle of the next run obscured his view of the second floor. He held his pistol tight in his hand, distinctly feeling the rough surface of the weapon’s grip on his palm. “But the question is, if they went up, then how did they come down?”

  Melissa knelt down and examined the rest of the first few steps but found nothing. “Well, they didn’t come down this way. There’s only one set of prints here.”

  Shawn stepped close her, pointing his gun toward the top of the stairs, and inched his way past her. She understood the gesture and crept up behind him. The dry wood of the stairs creaked and groaned under their respective weight, and Shawn thought briefly that if the stairs decided to give way at this moment, he wouldn’t be able to turn and save her in time. He pushed the thought aside, focusing instead on his ascent,
one step at a time. When they came to the twist near the top of the first run, he quickly craned his weapon over the ornate composite banister and pointed it directly at the center of whatever was waiting for them on the second floor.

  As it was, the abandonment of the second level wasn’t unlike the first. The floor was covered in the same detritus that had decorated the lower level. Bits of the ceiling hung precariously from overhead beams suspended six feet above them. With Melissa close behind, Shawn walked cautiously up the last of the stairs and looked for any recent signs of life in the vacant hallway. The long corridor before them was dark, lit only by the ambient daylight from the skylight that had illuminated the staircase. They flashed their beams down its length, but only encountered more deterioration. The paint of the walls had flaked off in large chunks that now littered the floor. The entirety of the space smelled of wet laundry and mold. When their beams converged at the end of the hallway, they illuminated a similarly rickety door. Both Shawn and Melissa privately hoped that opening the closed door would afford them some cover from the onslaught of smells they were encountering.

  As they walked down the narrow passage, Shawn could hear the distinct sounds of liquid dripping from some far-off burst pipe. The floor complained under the weight of their bodies, threatening to give way with each step they took. He and Melissa each took separate sides of the hallways, knowing that the space where the floor met with the walls would be the safest to travel.

  Twenty paces down the hallway, just as Melissa took a tentative step forward, the floor beneath her left foot gave way. Shawn lunged over to grab her, but she caught herself in the intervening seconds.

  “I’m okay,” she panted.

  “You sure?”

  Melissa wiped a bead of sweat from her brow. “Yeah. Really.” She pulled her boot from the newly formed hole, and then the two continued cautiously down the hallway at a slower pace.

  When they came to the large, closed wooden door, Shawn reached out an uncertain hand to see if it would open. Unlike the door that had led them to the stairwell, this one was decidedly locked. Melissa looked around, seeing if a clue of some sort might have been lying in the dark for them to discover. She moved around bits of debris on the floor, but found nothing that could help them decide on their next course of action.

  “Now what do we do?” she asked aloud, her voice echoing down the long-dormant passageway.

  Shawn could only shake his head. “I don’t know. Do you think this is the way to go?”

  “I’m not sure of anything around here, Commander,” she said, giving the offending door a perplexed look. “All I do know is that I want to see what’s behind it.”

  Shawn flicked off his light and placed it into his pocket. “Hold this for a second,” he said, offering her his sidearm.

  She grabbed it cautiously, wondering what his next move was going to be. As soon as she had a firm grip on the weapon, he leaned back and kicked out with his left leg. While his intention had probably been to knock the door open, he only succeeded in putting a hole in it big enough for his foot to fit through.

  Despite the gloom of their surroundings, Melissa couldn’t help but stifle a laugh at his predicament as she watched him try to extricate himself, only one foot free and his body slightly off-balance.

  With a final tug he pulled himself free, then proceeded to knock several more holes in the door until its hinges finally gave way and the remains fell open. Due to the thin air of the space, Shawn was slightly winded, and he could only motion to the open door with a grand wave of his arm.

  “After you, my lady,” he breathed laboriously.

  She smiled and walked into the space, patting Shawn on the chest as she passed him. “Good boy.”

  They found themselves suddenly standing in a small corner office with a wide, shattered window that looked out onto the street below. The stench that permeated the hallway was blissfully absent from this area, and they were both glad for it. In the center of the office was a desk, still sitting where it had last been placed. In one of the far corners of the room stood a beautiful dogwood tree, vibrant and full of life. It didn’t take a botanist to tell Shawn that it was made of plastic. In the other corner of the room was a bookcase, full of the dusty remains of unknown tomes. The humidity of the place had taken its toll on everything not hearty enough to withstand it. As Shawn and Melissa rounded the desk, they were confronted with the remains of the office’s last inhabitant, grinning up at them with its skeletal stare from the office floor. The clothes had long since disintegrated, leaving only the bones to be discovered. In a dozen years or so, not even those would remain.

  Melissa stepped cautiously around the body, kneeling down to get a closer inspection. She saw, on the bony left hand, a thin gold band with a single diamond rising from its surface. Having seen an engagement ring or two in her life, she felt a sudden pull of sadness for the woman on the floor who would never know the fate of the loved one who’d bestowed it upon her. Removing a small towel from a utility pocket, she unfolded it and gently placed it over the silent remains of the fallen woman.

  “Melissa, I think there’s something you should see,” Shawn called from above her.

  Offering the victim a silent prayer, Melissa gave the body one last glance and stood up next to Shawn. He motioned to the desktop surface with a nod and she followed the beam of his flashlight.

  The top of the desk was relatively uninteresting. On the left were a stained white coffee mug and a plastic container holding a plethora of multi-colored writing utensils. Beside them was an older model computer tablet. When Melissa’s eyes scanned past the tablet her jaw nearly dropped. There, amongst the dusty and moldy artifacts on the desk, was a comparatively clean and somewhat recent picture of her father, Admiral William Graves. He was in his dress uniform, smiling and looking as happy as Melissa had remembered the last time she saw him. She reached out cautiously and grasped the picture, holding it to her eyes for a closer inspection.

  “Daddy,” she whispered to it. She ran a delicate finger over the image’s face, then turned to Shawn and frowned.

  Recalling the story she’d told him about her mother, Shawn took notice of the concern on Melissa’s face. “I don’t believe it means what you’re probably thinking it does.”

  She pursed her lips, nodded solemnly, and then regarded the photograph once more. “I hope not.” She looked at the lines on her father’s face, the ones she had long since memorized, wondering if there was something different about this image.

  William looked happy. He had a wide, toothy smile that stretched nearly from ear to ear. Her father’s head was tilted slightly to the right and, even thought it was only an image from the chest up, his body language suggested he was leaning on something. It was then that Melissa realized she’d seen this picture once before. Now it was here, in a different frame and dozens of light-years away from her father’s desktop on Thress. This had been taken at her graduation from the Unified Academy on Third Earth, but it was missing something: her face.

  Her curiosity piqued, Melissa turned the image over and removed the back plate of the frame. Once the plate was off she could see her younger, familiar face smiling back at her. Why did he fold it to hide my face? If anything, he would have hidden his own.

  She withdrew the picture from the frame and, before she got a chance to unfurl it to its proper dimensions, a small object that had been nestled safely inside the fold fell to the desktop with a rattle. Melissa reached down to retrieve it, handing Shawn the photograph in the process.

  Shawn looked at the attractive young woman in the photograph, her long red hair cascading over her shoulders, its vibrancy highlighted by the bright blue and green of her academy graduation gown. In her hand was a gleaming silver rod, about a foot long and capped on the ends with gold crowns. The rod was banded in the center with ribbon dyed in the colors of the Unified Academy. The entire assemblage denoted that she had graduated from the academy with high honors. He could see the look of pride
on William’s face as he held his child close to his side, and Shawn silently prayed the admiral would be given the opportunity to do so again. He turned the photograph over, and inscribed on the back were the words, “My life’s greatest work.”

  In the meantime, Melissa had retrieved the fallen object, which was wrapped in a thin, foil-like material. Shawn carefully placed the photograph in his flight suit pocket and stepped up beside her as she opened the item. Shawn reached for his flashlight and aimed it at her palm, the gleaming gold of the article coming into view. It was a micro-sized computer cartridge, perhaps no bigger than half a fingernail. She looked into Shawn’s eyes and they both knew what they had to do.

  “We need to get this back to the Rhea,” they whispered to one another in unison.

  * * *

  When they had safely exited the building and were back in the open air of the street, Shawn contacted Raven and told her that they were ready to be picked up. Lieutenant Commander Brunel informed them that she and her pair of Marines were collecting the last of the samples, and that they would be arriving shortly.

  “I still don’t get it,” Melissa offered as she sat on a lone bench near the entrance of the building.

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t get how someone could have gotten into that building without making a single track when they departed.”

  Shawn nodded. “Remember that shattered window in the office up there?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I took a look, just to be sure: it’s three stories, straight down to a pile of jagged marble and overturned debris. I don’t care what species you are, you wouldn’t make it through a fall like that without a scratch. You gave the entire area a second look on our way out, and you didn’t find anything, right?”

  She shook her head and slapped her palms lightly against her thighs. “Nothing. I found nothing. It’s as if they just…disappeared.”