Pitch Dark

by Courtney Alameda

I eye him, turning on my heel. Unsure of his loyalties. “What do you want?”

  He lifts a hand parallel to his chest, palm down. It looks like a handshake—it’s got to be a handshake, right? “I just wanted to shake the hand of the guy who broke Sebastian Smithson’s face,” he says.

  A tick before things get awkward, I clap my hand into his. His grip’s firm, warm.

  If he’s not a friend of Sebastian’s, he’s a friend of mine.

  “Alex Mello,” he says by way of introduction. “Can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted to hit that güero.”

  “Not going to lie”—I chuckle, dropping his hand to look at the new cuts on my knuckles—“it felt pretty good.”

  “It’s Tuck, right?” he asks. When I nod, he glances around, dropping his voice low. “Laura sent me looking for you—”

  “She what?”

  “Cállate, yeah?” he says, putting a hand on my back and guiding me away from the dining room. I flinch at the touch. “She said you could vouch for her in front of the crew and the capitana, but…”

  “I covered it back there?” I ask, jerking my head in the direction of the dining room.

  His laugh’s short. “I’m sure that’s exactly what she intended the capitana to hear.”

  “You on her side or theirs?” I ask.

  “Hers,” Alex says. “Laura’s my hermanita, she’s a little sister to me. As for the Smithsons? They can go screw themselves.”

  Shouts barrel out of the dining room after us, angry, loud. I pause, glancing back.

  “We need to find her,” I say, motioning to the front doors. Alex follows me outside. Dappled solarshine from the park’s grav-rings falls through the dense trees. I take a deep breath of fresh air—never quite like Earth’s, but close—and shake my fist out a second time. Hard to believe anyone would want to end this place. But like Mom used to say, Radical isn’t rational.

  “Any idea where she’d go?” he asks.

  “None.” I flex my fist. The fresh scabs on my knuckles tear and bleed. The pain’s good. Real. Easy to understand, unlike people. “You?”

  Alex chuckles. “If I know my Laurita, she’ll try to save the day.”

  “Then we’re going to need some EVA suits. It’s cold enough to shrivel your balls in the deepdowns,” I say. “Got any?”

  “Balls, or EVA suits?” he asks.

  “Both.”

  When he grins, I see the kindred spirit of mischief in his eyes.

  I think we’re going to get along just fine.

  We lift a pair of EVA suits from the Conquistador’s crew quarters at Half Dome Village. Their EVAs are black tightsuits with a lion roaring across the left shoulder in green, white, and red. The suit’s multilayered, with a compression core and light armor around the important bits of you. Slender cells along the back hold liquefied air. The patch on my left breast reads Delgado.

  Hope the guy’s still alive.

  Sorry for stealing your suit, bruh.

  The Conquistador’s registration number and Panamerican flag are stitched on my right arm. I run my fingers over the patch, which isn’t made of thread but of tiny, light-sensitive particles that shift to the touch.

  “Do you know how to shoot?” Alex asks, pulling his boots over his feet. They self-seal themselves to his legs as he pulls gloves over his hands.

  “Guns?” I ask.

  “Rifles.”

  “I know the basics.” As in, point the barrel of said weapon at whatever you want to die. Pull trigger. You know, the basics.

  Alex goes to a closet and pulls out a pair of sleek, long-barreled rifles. They’re made of pearly white metal, with bright blue lines of light down their sides and black rubber on their grips and stocks. He extends one to me by the handguard. When I reach for it, he pulls it back. “Don’t shoot me with it, comprendes?” he says.

  “Yeah, I comprendes.”

  Alex chuckles, then hands me the gun. “You’re going to have a lot to learn when we get back to the Colonies.”

  “What?” I ask as he turns and walks out the door. “What’d I say?”

  “Let’s go, gringo!” he calls over his shoulder. The cabin’s screen door bangs closed in his wake.

  “All right, all right!” I grab my helmet off the table. And under my breath, just because I can’t help it, I say, “All right.”

  * * *

  We’re halfway to the Big Valley bulkhead when an alarm rips the air in two.

  “Ah, crap,” I mutter under my breath. The solarshine bleats red, bathing the park’s terrain in nightmarish light. The evergreen trees turn black. Clouds gather like blood blisters against the terrarium’s hard outer shell. Shadows stretch their limbs, reaching for us. The ground shakes as the smaller bulkhead doors close in unison, sealing the park off from the neardowns. Fear grabs me by the throat.

  I told Dejah red emergency lighting would be traumatic, but did she listen to me? No-o.

  Alex pauses in the road, turning, looking around. “What’s going on?”

  “Neardown breach,” I say, trying to maintain my cool for his sake. “Mourners have gotten past the Ingress bulkhead and are in the neardowns, so most of the crew will flee to the park for safety.”

  “This happen often?” he asks.

  “Only never.”

  He curses under his breath. “Laura.”

  We sprint down the road, headed for the Big Valley bulkhead. Of the fifteen bulkheads connecting the neardowns to the park, only the Big Valley will remain open for evacuation after the alarms sound. Upon the sounding of the siren, anyone in the neardowns has five minutes to drop what they’re doing and run like hell for the park. Several areas—like the medbay—have reinforced blast doors to keep their occupants safe in the event of a breach.

  A roar tears into the park as Alex and I round the final corner. The trees give way to a large clearing. Up ahead, the Big Valley bulkhead rears high, mouth open, throat dark.

  I catch glimpses of the growing chaos as we run past:

  People flee into the safety of the park. A girl drags her father off the road, the man’s chest a mess of gore. Gunfire lights up the bulkhead interior. Alex steps off the road to avoid the nurses running by with a gurney. I dodge a mother hurrying past with her screaming toddler in her arms. Thirty meters away, near the bulkhead’s mouth, a flash brand explosion rocks the ground.

  I thought my time in the deepdowns was a horror story, but it was nothing compared to this.

  “Faye!” Alex slides to a stop, calling out to a dark-haired girl in the crowd. When she doesn’t hear him, he fumbles with something on his helmet, making the face pane on his helmet retract. He calls her name a second time: “Faye!”

  She turns her head, face crumpling when she sees Alex. She runs to him, throwing her arms around his neck. Alex puts an arm around the new girl’s shoulders. I follow them to the edge of the path, where we duck behind a large boulder.

  “I—I didn’t know what she was doing,” Faye says, tears glittering on her lashes. Her hands tremble. “I swear, she promised me she wasn’t doing anything wrong!”

  “What are you talking about?” Alex says.

  “L-Laura,” Faye replies, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles. “She used my bioware to knock me and her guards out and escape. H-how was I supposed to know she could do something like that?”

  “Cálmate,” Alex says, pressing a kiss into her forehead. “It’s going to be okay. Did Laura mention where she was going?”

  Faye shakes her head. “She said something about ‘finishing a job’ and that she’d ‘made a mistake” … what if it’s all my fault and she blows up the ship and we all die because I trusted her with my bioware and—”

  “That’s not our Laurita,” Alex says, taking her face in his hands. “Faye, you know that’s not our girl.”

  “You weren’t there!” Faye shouts, pushing him away. Alex stumbles back a step. Tears gush out of her eyes. “Not when she left, not when I woke up to one of those lloronas screaming in the me
dbay. You didn’t see a man explode like a piñata, Alex!”

  I shake my head, fiddling with my helmet until the faceguard releases. “Laura isn’t going to harm the ship—”

  “Don’t try to defend her!” Faye snaps at me. “You don’t know her the way I do.”

  “Laura saved my life out there.” My voice rises as I point at the bulkhead. I don’t like this girl. Something’s off about the way she’s acting. And that’s when it occurs to me, she’s acting. But why? “If you have to question where Laura’s loyalties lie, you don’t know her as well as you think you do.”

  “You listen to me, chico,” she says, stepping forward and shaking a finger in my face. “I have known Laura Cruz since we were—”

  A roar rocks the tunnel up the road. Faye claps her hands over her ears. My EVA helmet protects me from the worst of it, but screams abound in its wake:

  “What the hell is that thing?”

  “Oh god, oh god—”

  “Shut the bulkhead! Shut it down!”

  “Run!”

  “Get to the park bunkers!”

  Taking a knee, I peer around the boulder’s edge. Near the bulkhead, people dive behind the big rocks or flee into the trees. The Muir’s own guards scramble from the tunnel into the park’s red solarshine, carrying their injured and shouting at one another. The bulkhead door groans, its large, toothy panels starting to close like massive jaws.

  Seconds later, a wave of mourners slams into the door panels. Hundreds of them froth over the bottom partition, making the bulkhead look like it foams at the mouth. The panels keep closing, and the monsters fight one another as they try to scramble into the park. Those that succeed get shot by the park guards.

  Then, something big rams the bulkhead door, interrupting the panels’ closure sequence. One massive hand grasps the door’s upper partition, shoving it back into the wall and jamming the bulkhead open. The monster climbs over the lower partition and into the park.

  I swear, I’d piss my EVA suit if I had any fluids in me.

  The monster towers over the park guards. Rather than being built on a griefer’s muscular frame, this creature’s body wobbles like a rancid Jell-O mold. Putrid yellow cysts cover its skin. Two massive, flabby arms sprout from his shoulders—and it’s definitely a him—while a smaller, malformed set of limbs hangs below. It almost looks like the big bastard has T. rex arms, but before I can laugh at the image, the creature’s blistered chest begins to swell.

  Ah, crap! I drop behind the boulder again, motioning to Alex and Faye to get low. “Duck!”

  “What the hell is that, vato?” Alex shouts, hunching down and pulling Faye with him.

  “How the hell am I supposed to know?!” I snap.

  “You live here!” Alex shouts.

  “I don’t know if you noticed,” I shout back, “but it’s a glitching giant ship!”

  A scream splits the air. The boulder at our backs shudders and cracks. Alex rolls to his feet, rifle barrel pointed down. Faye sits on the ground, rocking back and forth, hands clapped over her ears. A thin trail of blood traces the side of her neck.

  “Hijo de puta, the guards are down,” Alex says, peering around the boulder’s other side. I turn to look, just in time to see the Muir’s version of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man crush a guard’s corpse underfoot. I’m real grateful for Dejah’s red light all of a sudden, because it masks the carnage on the road.

  Alex and I fire at the beast, driving bullet after bullet into its gut. The rifle kicks me in the shoulder. Black blood pumps out of twenty holes in the monster’s torso and belly, but it keeps lunging forward. Closing the distance between us. As it comes down the road, people flee for the bunkers under the Ahwahnee, almost a klick away.

  Let me tell you, killing monsters in video games is way easier than it is in real life.

  The bastard’s ten meters away now.

  All my seconds begin to slow down, as if the film reel of my life hit a snag.

  My heart pounds in every pressure point in my body.

  This is how it ends—

  That thought barely rolls through my brain when something big whizzes past me. It slams into the mourner, making the creature explode like a gory firework. What’s left of the body—and the projectile—tumble over the ground, sliding to a stop near the half-open bulkhead.

  It takes a minute for me to realize the object’s a skybike.

  Mom’s skybike.

  A woman lands in the middle of the road, crouching to absorb the impact. Wings of light retract into her shoulders. She’s wearing a black EVA suit that gleams like a metal skin. It’s got zero bulk, protected by a set of translucent blue neo-anion armored plates that glimmer down the wearer’s spine, chest, arms, and legs. Light glows under her toes, feet barely striking the ground.

  One shoulder’s stamped with the letters EDDA-02.

  My memory is jogged, catching on a moment, long ago, when I walked in on Mom playing with a handful of nanites. I’m going to build an EVA out of these someday, she said, dropping a bit of the dark material into my hand.

  The nanites spread out, coating my hand in an impenetrable layer. I picked at them.

  The EDDA suit will be an intelligent one, capable of mending itself while in use. Mom sat back in her chair, smiling at me. These nanites apply pressure directly to the body, and will protect the wearer from extreme temperatures, radiation, microwaves, and more. The suit will revolutionize the way we move around in the vacuum of space.

  In an age of bulky, awkward space suits, Mom sounded like a dreamer.

  I had no idea she’d built a working prototype.

  If I’m not mistaken, there’s only one person who could be wearing that suit. Only one person who would know how to operate it, one person who knew where it was located on the ship.

  I lunge out from behind the boulder and shout, “Mom?”

  The woman pauses.

  Turns.

  Her helmet’s front panel dissipates. The other sections retract into a raised, armored ring around the back of her neck. A burst of breeze catches strands of her hair and tugs them loose from her ponytail.

  Laura?

  I remove my EVA’s helmet.

  “Tuck!” Grinning, she runs to me, hitting me like a sack of bricks. Her suit’s angles crash into my bones. Hugging her hurts. But bruises be damned, I drop my helmet to the ground and crush her against me like she’s the last human being on Earth, lifting her off her feet.

  “Where did you get the EDDA suit?” I ask, releasing her back to the ground.

  “From your mother,” she says.

  What? My stomach rattles around the rim of my ribs, making me feel like I’m falling. “My mom is dead.”

  “Yes, she is,” Laura says. “Dead, but not gone.”

  I take a step back. Behind us, the skybike gutters and shuts off. A low whine echoes through the park as its engine dies. Alex crosses into the road, removing his helmet and sweeping Laura into a hug. Faye hovers by the boulder, glaring at us.

  “How?” I ask Laura, gesturing to her suit.

  Laura taps her wrists. “There’s not much time to explain, I’m afraid. Your mother contacted me while I was in the medbay and has asked me to carry her connectome to the bridge, where she will function as an alternate AI—”

  “Laura, you can’t trust my mom,” I say, gripping her shoulders. “She was brilliant, a genius … but she would do anything to keep her work from being compromised.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” she says, clasping my face between her hands. The nanites in her suit shift against my skin. Warm. “Your mother loved you, Tuck. You were the only thing that ever mattered to her.”

  I turn my face away. My mother never loved me the way Dr. Cruz loves Laura.

  “No, escúchame,” Laura says. “Sometimes people make macro decisions for micro motivations.” She holds me fast, forcing me to look straight into her eyes. She opens her mouth as if to add something. Pauses. “Screw it,” she whispers, and kiss
es me. Full labial contact. No tongue. Still, I feel like she’s lit something in my chest on fire.

  Alex claps and laughs, but I don’t hear what he says. For the three seconds her lips are pressed to mine, Laura is my entire world.

  So dammit, I’m reeling as she steps back. Her cheeks turn the russet red of autumn apples.

  “There’s not much time,” she says. “I’m sorry, I have to go.” She pivots on the ball of her foot, moving toward the bulkhead. Which, you know, is now coated in mourner gore. I’m paralyzed for the space of two or three of her steps, confused by the emotions snarling in my chest: gut-checking anger blending with the rush of desire, the latter making my brain all sorts of promises that don’t make any sense. Anxiety and fear seethe underneath.

  Go after her, you idiot! they scream at me. Don’t let anything happen to that girl!

  I start after Laura, just as someone calls out, “Stop right there, Laura Cruz!”

  Engines roar on the road behind me. I turn to look back. The park rangers’ Jeeps skid to a stop, bringing the head honchos down to the Big Valley bulkhead, I’d guess. Armed park guards and mercenaries from the Conquistador pile out of the vehicles. Dr. Cruz leaps out from the back of a Jeep while it’s still in motion. But when she tries to run to her daughter, one of the mercenaries cuts her off, catching her by the arm.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Dr. Cruz snaps at him. “Let me go!”

  “Dr. Cruz, I think this situation has spiraled beyond your control,” Dr. Smithson says. “I’ll take it from here.”

  “Like hell you will!” Dr. Cruz says. “Or have you forgotten that I’m the captain of this mission?”

  “And I’m acting captain of this ship,” Aren says. “Weapons down, everyone. Nobody else is going to get hurt today.”

  Thanks, old man, I think. For once.

  “With all due respect, Aren,” Dr. Smithson says. “This girl is a dangerous criminal who needs to be contained—”

  “I’m the criminal?” The glare Laura throws Dr. Smithson has steel and edges and points. Laura rolls up onto tiptoe, engaging the thrusters in the EDDA’s feet and hovering a few centimeters off the ground. Feathery, translucent wings extend off her shoulder blades, lifting her higher. When the red emergency light spills across her, she looks like an avenging Valkyrie. Badass. Dangerous. Jaws drop. Alex backs up a step from her, his eyes wide. Faye bites her lower lip, rubbing one hand up and down her arm while she watches Laura.