by Jessica Cole
Jana narrowed her eyes at him, but smiled. “Stealing my lines now?”
“Damn straight,” he smirked.
“What did you find in the lagoon? I saw you go back into the water.”
“What makes you think I found anything?”
“I know you better than you think I do.” He didn’t look so sure of that. I don’t know how sure I am of it, either.
“Bodies. Well, skeletons. Human ones. I thought I saw something when I went down there to help you, so I went back out there. That’s how I knew David was right.”
“That means that—“
“We’re not the only ones here. No way to know how long they’ve been down there or if anyone is still here.”
“Is that why you wanted to stay here with me while they went?”
“I wanted to make sure nothing would happen to you. Doc’s a good guy, but medics don’t fight. You were stable, so he could go along with them in case there were any accidents, or if there were any crash survivors.”
“What makes you think the people were bad? Maybe they crashed here just like the scientists.”
“I don’t think so.”
A twig snapped, ten meters away. Aeronth reached for his gun, but had taken off his belt earlier.
The last things Jana remembered was being grabbed and a rag pressed roughly against her face.
Darkness.
18. Ready, Aim
Tap. Tap. Tap. Jana felt the motion on her shoulder and lifted her head groggily. Her eyes widened, nose inches away from the barrel of a gun she was staring down. Instinct kicked in and she tried to move her arms in front of her face, but they were bound behind her back. The position made the pain in her chest unbearable, broken ribs pressing into organs. What the hell...she tried to kick her legs, but they too were tied to the chair she was on, ice cold steel against her skin.
“Well, well...look who’s decided to wake up. I didn’t want to wake you, but you were just sleeping the day away,” sneered a cold voice from behind the gun.
“Where am I?” Jana asked angrily.
“Well now, that’s the question of the hour, isn’t it?” He moved the gun and allowed Jana to get a good look at her captor. He’d a shaved head, but was otherwise forgettable looking. The man inspected the weapon, fingering it lovingly. “Beauty, isn’t it?” It was a rhetorical question. “Six shooter revolver. Do you have any idea how rare these are?”
A single overhead light lit the room, which was empty except for the single table to her right. This was the first time she’d noticed the second man, leaning against the table and saying nothing. I don’t see a door. It must be on the wall behind me.
“What do you want with me?” There’s no way I’m telling them anything. If they knew who I was, who I was connected to...I won’t let them use it.
“What makes you think we want something from you?”
“I’d already be dead if you didn’t.”
“Fair enough.” The man with the gun shrugged and stepped behind her. Jana heard the distinct sound of metal scraping against cement. When he came back into view, he placed a second chair opposite hers. He turned it so the back of the chair faced her, and sat with his feet on either side. He scratched the side of his head with the muzzle of the gun. He had golden eyes.
She would remember those eyes.
“So you’re military.” It wasn’t a question.
“I’m not telling you anything.”
The butt of the gun connected with Jana’s cheek. The blow snapped her head to the side. She tasted blood in her mouth from her teeth smashing into her tongue. He’s not going to get the satisfaction from me. Jana shook her head and blinked.
“Sorry, what was that?” Didn’t quite catch it.” He leaned in, turning his head slightly.
“I’m not telling you anything,” she spat defiantly. He made as if to hit her again, but stopped just short. To his obvious dismay, she remained unmoving. Fuck you. I’m not playing your games.
“No matter. It’s only a formality, anyway. We know you’re military. Colonists and scientists don’t carry guns to forbidden planets. And they don’t have matching uniforms.” The last bit was said with cutesy mockery. Aeronth. Did they get him, too? I didn’t see. The others...did they get away? Who do they have? “Ahh, you are a smart girl. He didn’t do that to you, did he?” Jana looked down at the angry looking purple and yellow bruises on her arms and chest from the crash. “Violent chap. Killed three before they subdued him.”
Aeronth...
“What did you do to him?” Jana growled.
“Oh, nothing!” He looked aghast. “Well, we had to rough him up a bit, to be sure. He’s still alive, though. For now. Poor Aeronth.” Oh god, what did I tell them? “You were muttering the name when we had you bound and drugged in the holding cell. Aeronth. What a dreadful name. No ranks...you look fairly weak, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, sergeant.” Jana wanted to claw his stupid gold eyes out of his stupid, smiling head.
“I won’t tell you anything,” she insisted firmly.
“Fine. We’ll see about that.” He stood, turned the chair around, and walked behind her. A draught swept in, the freezing air coiling around the nape of her neck and brushing against her clenched fists. There were scuffling sounds, and yelling. As they struggled to tie Aeronth down, Jana was relieved to see that he wasn’t hurt too badly. He didn’t seem to notice her.
“Aeronth?” Her voice faltered. It was harder to conceal her emotions now. Instantly, Aeronth stopped struggling.
“I thought they’d killed you, Reconstructionist bastards. Did they hurt you?” He looked her up and down, brow furrowed. All Jana could think about was how badly she wanted to feel his arms around her, keeping her safe and telling her it was going to be okay. No one can hurt me there.
“I’m fine.”
“While I hate to interrupt this touching moment, we have business to attend to.” The man against the table spoke, and it startled Jana. I’d forgotten he was even there. ”Do what you have to. Get me that information and dispose of them when you’re through. We can’t have them telling everyone what they’ve seen here.” He left.
“Before you go on again about how, ‘I’ll die before I tell you anything’, the circumstances have changed.” The man with the gun’s imitation of Aeronth was high pitched and annoying. “You see, my friend, now when you refuse to tell us something, we hurt her instead of you.”
“You bastard! Let her go!” Aeronth hollered, straining against his bonds. The muscles in his arms bulged, and Jana was pretty sure the steel chair would bend before he gave up.
“You are certainly in no position to be making demands of any sort. Now tell me what you’re doing on E-1.”
“Don’t tell him anything!” Jana’s outburst ended abruptly as she was backhanded across the face. Jana grit her teeth against the pain.
“I won’t tell you anything,” Aeronth repeated. For this, Jana received a heavy blow to the abdomen. She could almost feel the jagged, fractured ribs puncture her organs.
“How many others are there?” Aeronth sat still, tight lipped. Jana wasn’t afraid of the pain. I can take it. Please...please trust me. What scared her was the look in Aeronth’s eyes as he watched. She could see the pain behind them, and was afraid he’d crumble.
Two broken fingers. There was no stopping the outcry of excruciating pain this time. Tears welled up in Jana’s eyes while she tried to will them away.
“Stop hurting her!”
“Tell me what I want to know!”
Aeronth didn’t break eye contact with her. Jana wasn’t sure she could go on any longer if he did. She nodded, eyes watering again in grave anticipation.
“No.”
The man brandished a knife. He held it to her throat, pricked the skin lightly. Blood dribbled down her neck. She shuddered; he held the knife tighter to her skin. Aeronth actually looked away. He can’t stand this.
“Wait!” Jana pleaded. The blade was removed.
“I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
The man smiled evilly, eyes wild. “That’s my girl.”
“Fuck you. I’m not your girl,” Jana snapped. “We were sent to bring back the survivors of a crashed stip. We crashed our speeder. We were way off course. There’s a ship on its way to pick us up.” Jana threw Aeronth a meaningful look.
“You should have just died!” he yelled.
“Shh!” the man glared at Aeronth. “The lady is talking.” He turned back to Jana. “See, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Now...how many were in your crew?”
“Just the two of us. I was the pilot, and he was there for protection. It was supposed to just be a simple pickup of some crashed colonists who had to make an emergency landing. We got caught in an electrical storm and lost the use of our instruments.
“Just let us go, please!”
“I’ll tell you what. Let’s play a game.” The man grabbed the revolver off the table. He opened the cylinder and showed Jana there were no bullets in the gun. From the table, he grabbed four and placed them haphazardly in the six-shooter. “You have a choice. Play or don’t play. Put the gun to your head, pull the trigger. If it goes off, you die. If not, you go free. If you win, you have the option of saving your friend here. Put the gun to his head, pull the trigger. He lives, you might both go free. Don’t play at all, you both die anyway. What’ll it be?”
Jana’s mind reeled. There has to be some way out of this...if a way existed, she didn’t see it. The man untied her right hand, giving her the six-shooter. For a moment she considered shooting him. But we have no idea how many others are with him. These walls are cement. They’d hear it. They surely weren’t going to make it out alive with nothing but a pistol with four shots. Worse...what if it’s one of the empty chambers? Be smart, Jana. She looked at the gun in horror and realized what she had to do.
“Jana, just do it. You have to.”
Slowly, inch by inch, she raised the gun to her temple. She felt the metal pressing into her. The fear in Aeronth’s eyes broke her heart. She shut her eyes tight. A full two minutes passed without any movement or sound. The longest two minutes of her life. It was as if all time stopped, the only thing in motion her frantic mind. If only I could have said goodbye to Joey. She thought of him, David, Gordon, even Lexi, and especially Aeronth. Aeronth...
CLICK. Shaking, she dropped the gun.
“Careful, now.” The man picked it back up for her, wiping the barrel with his fingertips. “Now, will you save your friend?” Jana nodded once, not taking her eyes off Aeronth. “Alright.” Opening the chamber, he added another bullet, spun it, and closed it once more. She looked at it loathingly when he handed it to her.
“Aeronth, I can’t—“
“Do it. You have to.”
“I can’t!” she cried, pretense be damned. Tears streamed down her dirty cheeks. “I’ll kill you!”
“Do it!” he bellowed at her. Jana raised the gun, pointing it between Aeronth’s eyes. Her hands began started to shake. The gun rattled as her hand convulsed violently.
“I c-can’t!”
“Jana, NOTHING is going to happen to me!”
“What if I s-shoot you?!”
“Look at me.” She started into his eyes. “I promise, it will be okay. We are going to walk away from his.” Jana’s gaze shifted from the man, leaning against the table, watching the scene with blatant amusement. “Jana, look at me.” Aeronth’s eyes locked onto hers, her hand shaking tremulously. His expression was unreadable. “We’re both going to walk away from this. We’ll go home together. I promise.” Jana shut her eyes tight and squeezed the trigger.
BANG! The gun clattered loudly on the floor. Jana kept her eyes shut tight; afraid of what she would see when she opened them.
19. Fire
The sound echoed off the concrete walls and pierced Jana’s eardrums. It was hard to hear anything at all over the ringing in her ears, which was barely drowned out by the resonating thump of her heartbeat in her temples. Against better judgment, Jana opened her eyes.
“Jana?” Aeronth was still, left ear blackened from the gunpowder. The bullet had grazed the top edge of his ear, and blood trickled down the lobe.
Rage boiled up inside her. “You said it wouldn’t fire!” she screamed. “I could have killed you!”
“I’m okay. See? It’s okay.” He said quietly.
“Oh no, this won’t do at all. You cheated. Here, let me help you.” The man put the gun back in her hand, keeping his own there to steady her. Jana noticed the bullet hole in the wall behind Aeronth. Something clicked in her, and she knew without a doubt that she couldn’t go through that again. The moment she’d pulled the trigger, something inside her died.
Jana thrust her full weight backwards. The chair tipped over, and she brought the gun back over head, her captor’s body caught in her momentum. She gasped in pain as the chair landed on her broken left hand. He cried out as the gun pulled free from his hand. He crashed down next to her. Jana saw the panic in his eyes. Aiming, back on the floor, Jana fired a single shot into the man’s head.
His blood seeped across the floor, pooling in spots where the floor was uneven. Carefully, Jana held the barrel of the gun under her chin and reached with her free hand to untie her legs. Her left hand, still tied behind her back, was being crushed under her weight. It took a little force, but soon enough Jana was on her side. The chair clattered against the concrete, and she cringed. They are going to storm through that door any second. By some miracle, she finished untying herself. Her poor left hand was useless, fingers broken and mangled, then crushed under a steel chair.
With one hand, she frustratingly untied his bonds. The adrenaline pumping through her veins almost made the pain disappear. She helped Aeronth up and planted a firm kiss on his lips that left him rooted to the floor. She took him by the hand, releasing it only for a moment to grab the box of ammunition out of the small black bag on the table. Jana reloaded the revolver. Aeronth managed to find a second gun, this one from the man’s body.
“Let’s go.” Jana edged her way towards the door.
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?”
“No.” The door opened with an indistinct scraping sound. Jana poked her head out to check the hallway. “Empty. Come on.” Left? Or right? They looked pretty similar; both directions were lit by ugly overhead bulbs with steel casings to protect them. Equidistantly, both made a sharp turn in the same direction. Left. Left looks good. At the end of the corridor, it forked off. More of the same concrete, ugly lights, and scattered doorways. Still, no one else in sight.
A faint glow at the end of the hallway gave Jana a moment’s pause. Sunlight? Rounding the corner, Jana was relieved to see the brilliant glare of sunlight ahead of them. There was no door, only a gaping archway that opened into a cavernous room with a dirty glass dome for a ceiling. The humidity hit them like a force field. A vast majority of the room was taken up by what appeared to be a square pool, but it was filled with milky green water. Around the edges of the room, trees with chirping birds and potted plants engulfed everything but the narrow pathway of dirt and stone that surrounded the hundred meter long pool.
Aeronth slid past her, urgency forgotten. “What is this? Some kind of greenhouse?” He approached the edge of the pool, the water still. He leaned in close, narrowing his eyes. Jana peered over his shoulder. What is he looking at?
Something shifted under the water; its shadow caressed the wall of the pool and twisted back around as if sensing it was being watched. It was at least half a meter long.
Jana shook her head and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s just a fish pond.”
He shook his head. “Look at the water. It’s the same color as the lagoon.”
“So they got the water from the lagoon.” Jana cradled her mangled hand. The adrenaline was wearing off, and it was throbbing uncontrollably. She fidgeted, tapping her foot and checking the doors. “We don’t have time. We have to find the way out. I need
Gordon.”
Aeronth turned his head and saw her standing behind him, bloody, dirty, bruised, and disfigured. The corners of his mouth turned down in a grimace. “I’m sorry about this.”
“None of this is your fault. Let’s go. Please. It looks like there’s another door at the other end of this room.” From here, she could see the shadow of a doorway, the walls around it covered with the same ivy that crept up the inside of the glass dome. They almost made it to the other side when Aeronth heard something. He grabbed Jana and yanked her between the trees. Her back hit the gritty cement wall and searing pain tore through her chest cavity. She doubled over, gasping and trembling.
Jana silently prayed whoever entered the room hadn’t heard her over the birds.
“I’m sorry!” He whispered quickly, cradling her tiny body. She threw a hand up to silence him. Is he crazy?! He’s going to get us killed. Jana struggled to get a line of sight through the thick foliage, trying not to make any rustling noises.
It was a single man in a white hazmat suit standing near the pool. He bent down. The mask of the suit was pulled down to his chin, the hood scrunched up at the base of his neck. From her vantage point she could see his close cropped haircut and the slick sweat covering him. The suit looked suffocating, and it was unbearably muggy in the greenhouse. He took some sort of reading from a sensor that was pulled from the pool, marked it down on his tablet, and set the sensor back in the water with a plop. Thermometer? Or something else? It was impossible to tell from here. More so, Jana was hesitant to go sticking her hands in the fish pond. Aeronth’s comment about the color of the water gave her chills. No thanks.
Aeronth raised his gun. Jana glimpsed it out of the corner of her eye and, shocked, used her good hand to force his arm down to his side. She glared up at him. “He doesn’t even have a gun. We’re not going to just shoot him.”
The suited man turned around suddenly as though he’d heard Jana talking. She cringed, huddled against the damp wall and wishing she could just hide inside it. Breath caught in her chest, and she didn’t release it until he shook his head and turned back to the pond. He took another reading from the far end of it, this one from a little metal ball that he called to the surface via the tablet in his hands. It sailed towards him, water rippling out in its wake and stopping harmlessly at the edge. This one he picked up, the size of a grapefruit, inspected it thoroughly, and inserted something inside. When he finished the second reading, the man in the hazmat suit exited the room through the door they’d come in through. What if he finds the room? How did they not hear the gunshot in the first place? Or did they just assume it was him disposing of us?