Out of Sight (Progenitor Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Umm.” She stared at the fluttering, swaying tube. Her stomach bottomed out, sliding deeper into her gut. “Uhh…”

  “Almost there,” said Officer Bäumler with a big smile. “This is your new life.”

  Sima crept up to the end of the boarding tunnel. The elevator behind them squeaked. She hesitated at the edge, watching the tunnel bounce in the wind outside, which sixty feet off the ground, roared like a tornado. Worse, much of the tube consisted of transparent panels, giving her a horrible view of exactly how high off the ground she was.

  “Umm, I dunno about this,” muttered Sima. Earth, its grimy streets, high likelihood of death, and gangs, seemed like a not-so-bad option all of a sudden. “Heights aren’t really my thing.”

  A pair of male officers entered the observation deck with a group of six preteen children, four boys and two girls, all in similar blue jumpsuits like Sima’s. The smallest, a barefoot little blonde girl of five or six, clung to the man carrying her, wheezing and coughing. If they’d given her foam slippers, they’d fallen off somewhere outside. She looked barely awake, but couldn’t stop smiling. With Sima standing there in petrified fear of the swaying hallway, the other group went around her and into the boarding ramp.

  The smaller kids didn’t have an issue with the tunnel, running into it whooping and cheering.

  “Go on, girl,” said Officer Eke. “If those little ones aren’t afraid, you shouldn’t be.”

  Sima whimpered, but managed to step into the first segment. As soon as it bounced under her feet, she jumped back. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t do this. Can I change my mind and stay on Earth?”

  Officer Bäumler put an arm around her back and spoke in a gentle, motherly tone. “Going forward, you’re a Citizen with a family, an education, and a good life. Going back, you’re a street kid doing ten-to-twenty for theft.”

  “Umm…” Sima closed her eyes, swallowed hard, and stepped into the boarding tunnel.

  Five steps later, it bounced up and down hard enough to lift her off her heels for a second. In a panic, she twisted around and bolted, but barely took a full step before both officers caught her by the arms. Eke held her down while Bäumler secured her wrists and ankles with handcuffs. Sima thrashed and struggled, screaming, crying, and begging them to let her go as the women carried her down the boarding tube. She flew into a panic, convinced that any second, it would break apart and send her plummeting to her doom.

  When they reached the airlock door at the ship’s hull, she calmed enough to stop screaming, but continued trembling and whimpering. This close, the ship appeared more like the side of a mountain than anything people made. Peering out the clear tube at the massive vessel made her feel like a flea on the side of a dog. She didn’t get much chance to gawk at the ship as the EGSF officers carried her inside and down a hallway with rounded walls, flat only on the bottom. Hanging by her arms in the women’s grip, Sima stared past her dangling feet at black floor tiles gliding by. Light rings embedded in the tube-like passageway passed every twenty feet.

  “I’m okay,” muttered Sima between gasps for breath. “I’m just terrified of heights. Forget what I said about not wanting to go.”

  They carried her toward a bulkhead. Many voices emanated from the other side ranging from the deep timbre of men to the high-pitched giggles of small children.

  She squirmed, pulling at the restraints. “Please let me outta these cuffs. It’s really embarrassing. I’m good now that we’re inside. I promise.”

  The officers carried her past the bulkhead into a huge chamber with white walls. EGSF officers in dark blue uniforms and a handful of kids stood around some of the pods along with men and women in white jumpsuits holding electronic pads. Some kids sat on the edges of pod beds in their underwear while others took their jumpsuits off as officers stood watch. A few peered over at Sima being dragged in like a criminal. None laughed or made fun of her, but they all stared.

  She looked away, and wound up mesmerized by a row of coffin-like pods going by on her right. Each had a clamshell type lid, transparent except for where metal spars divided it into four panels. Teens and children inside some of them had already gone to sleep, eerily still as if they stopped even breathing.

  “Please let me out of these,” whispered Sima, sniveling quietly. “I’m okay now. I swear I’m fine.”

  Officer Bäumler sighed and stopped walking.

  “Really,” whined Sima. “It’s the heights. I hate heights. I thought that tube was going to break.”

  A few seconds passed listening to the constant mechanical thrum of the starship around her.

  Officer Eke removed the restraints, but kept a grip on her arm.

  Sima shot her a ‘gee I guess I’m still a prisoner’ look.

  “There’s nothing here for you anymore, child,” said Eke. “We want you to have a better life.”

  Head bowed, Sima walked with them to a set of pods all the way near the back by the wall. A grey-haired man in a white jumpsuit stood by the foot end, holding an electronic pad and smiling. She managed a feeble wave of hello, grateful to be out of cuffs. Even if she remained a detainee, at least she didn’t feel like one.

  “Hello, Miss Nuvari,” said the man in white. “Please remove your footwear and jumpsuit, then hop in.”

  She eyed the pod, gazing at the row of rectangular loaf-shaped cushions forming the bed, and a squarish ‘pillow’ at the head end. Black letters marked 0137B-C1 on the side. “Umm. Do I have to get undressed?”

  “Cryonic suspension may inflict injury if the temperature over your skin is not properly regulated. Ideally, subjects should not have any fabric at all, though the risk factors for the minimal interference from undergarments does not outweigh passenger discomfort at a complete lack of clothing. Feel free to remove everything if you are concerned about your health.”

  “Umm.” Sima leaned away from the pod, which had started to feel a whole lot like the coffin it resembled.

  Officer Bäumler leaned close and whispered, “There’s nothing to be afraid of dear. However, I must tell you that I would much prefer not having to use a neural stunner on you. This is for your own good. I can’t in good conscience bring you back to face made up charges.”

  Sima got lightheaded from fear. She’d wind up in the pod willingly or stunned. No turning back. I can’t get out of here…

  Tears leaked from her eyes as she opened the front of the jumpsuit with shaking hands, gasping at the rush of frigid air leaking in. At least they didn’t force her to take her underwear off. The foam shoes made sense now, since the officers must’ve known she’d only wear them for a little while. A teenage boy shouted obscenities from a good distance away. Two large EGSF officers hauled a dark-haired kid about her age along the row of pods. He kicked and thrashed, fighting the same full restraints the cops had initially put on her.

  “No way! I said I don’t wanna leave the goddamn planet! Get off me!” shouted the teen.

  Transfixed, she stood aghast and staring as the men dragged him to an open stasis pod.

  Officer Eke collected the jumpsuit from Sima’s hands and bundled it up.

  She looked up at the cop. “Umm. What am I supposed to wear when we land?”

  Bäumler pointed at a cluster of storage compartments on the wall opposite the foot end of the pod. “All in there. You’ll have everything you need. You don’t want a prisoner jumpsuit.”

  “Please, have a seat and try to relax,” said the older man in white.

  Six pods to her left, a woman in a white jumpsuit tried to coax a girl of maybe nine into climbing in by calling it a ‘special bed’ that would give her wonderful dreams. On the other side of the room, a dozen or so pods away, a female officer stuffed a shrieking little boy into a pod. It took two cops and two people in white jumpsuits to hold him down.

  Sima approached the pod and gingerly lowered herself to sit on the surprisingly soft cushion. As soon as her butt touched fabric, the inexplicable sense that this thing would kill her
came out of nowhere. “Is it gonna hurt?”

  “Not at all, dear.” The man held a small silver device up to her face, shining a light in her eye. It chirped and beeped. “All right, looks good.” He attached a few sticky, white pads to her forehead and chest. Each had little blinking lights. “Now, just need to give her the stabilizers.” The tech hummed to himself for a few seconds, while administering three injections. Each one made a loud pfft, but she didn’t feel a thing. “There. Those shots will keep you nice and safe. No one likes ice crystals in their blood, right? A little grogginess is normal when you wake, so don’t be alarmed if you’re a little loopy right after the ship arrives. You’re all set. Just lie down and relax. You’ll get tired in a moment, and the next thing you know, you’ll be home.”

  “New family, new life,” said Officer Eke with a big smile.

  Shivering from the frigid air as well as nervousness, Sima scooted her butt back, rotated, and lay flat on the cushion. A heavy, mechanical whirring shook the whole pod as the lid closed down on her. Sudden claustrophobia made her scream and raise her arms. She kicked at the lid. “Let me out of here! Wait! No! Don’t lock me in!” Sima burst into tears, wailing like a child. Leaving Earth had been such an abstract thing, she couldn’t fully process it until people tried to trap her in a coffin with a glass top. Again and again, she kicked at the closing lid until she no longer had the room. Screaming and pounding on the glass, she continued begging to be let out, lost to her panic.

  “Oh, I almost forgot.” The tech hit another button, which caused the lid to open again.

  Sima tried to dive free as soon as she had the room to get out, but Officer Eke pounced on her and held her down.

  “Might as well sedate her,” said Bäumler.

  The man in white nodded. “Mmm. All right.”

  Sima struggled to get away from the two women, but they overpowered her easily. Within a few seconds of a sharp prick at her shoulder and a faint hiss, everything got blurry. She wanted to keep fighting, but her arms and legs stopped listening to her brain. Dizzy from the injection, she could only look wherever her head pointed. The boy who’d been in restraints stripped down to his briefs with a neural stunner aimed at him. They shoved him in the pod. As soon as the lid closed, he, too, lost it and had a panic attack. Wails of distant terrified children mixed with giggles of others who seemed not to know what these people wanted to do to them.

  She struggled to turn her head, but couldn’t move the rest of her body, couldn’t get away from the killing machine they wanted to put her in.

  “There, there,” said the man, his voice seeming to come from everywhere at once. “You’re perfectly safe.” Something emitted a faint chirp. “Assignment mode. Sima, Nuvari. Female. Passenger Record E9207.”

  Another chirp followed.

  Something cold touched her left wrist.

  “Dream happy things,” said Officer Eke. The woman’s deep brown face and broad smile filled Sima’s vision. “You’re no longer a street kid. Welcome to real life, hon.”

  Sima couldn’t figure out how her body worked. Unable to get her limbs to move, she lay there like a loaf while the muscular woman lifted her legs back onto the bed, tucked her arms at her sides, and gently brushed her hair off her face.

  “Oh, I’m jealous,” muttered Officer Bäumler. “Good on her getting off this landfill of a planet.”

  The tech laughed. “We still have a few bunks left.”

  “Heh. Not that jealous,” said Officer Bäumler’s echoey voice.

  Mechanical thrumming vibrated Sima’s bones as the pod lid came down over her. The chamber sealed with a faint hiss, and a shockingly cold wind blasted out from behind her head.

  Sima opened her mouth, but her attempt to cry out for Mommy never left her brain.

  12

  Omnicomputer

  Discarded plastic boxes lifted from the floor of Sima’s featureless cell. Her hands and bare feet stood out as dark against the perfect white walls, white cushioned bed, and white ceiling. The stink of the street clung to her dense black hair while her new outfit—a bright pink jumpsuit with the word Juvenile down her left arm in black block letters, Inmate on the other—reeked of detergent.

  Nine eight-inch clear cartons ascended from the floor like helium balloons trapped in syrup, gliding past her bunk toward the ceiling. The glint of the overhead light on the rising plastic transfixed her, as did shadows from the crumbs of former meals stretching over the walls.

  Boxes shouldn’t fly.

  She squeezed her fingers into the firm foam cushion as the empty meal cartons neared the top of her holding cell. Surreal fear pressed heavy on her chest, making her heart race from the inexplicable dread something bad would happen if they touched the ceiling. At the instant of contact, she cringed, expecting pain, loud noises, or destruction.

  Nothing happened.

  The cartons gathered at the ceiling for a short while before sinking toward the floor at different speeds. Locked in her cell, she couldn’t escape the increasing sense of terror radiating from the wrongness of watching plastic boxes rising and falling. She tilted her head back to stare at the featureless white door that trapped her, not even a knob on this side, and sucked in a breath to shout for the guard.

  Boxes don’t fly. Air hissed out between her teeth. I’m dreaming. That means…

  Sima sat up fast, cracking her head on plastic. She fell flat upon soft padding, bright spots dancing across her vision. Whimpering, she rolled to her right, grabbed her face, and curled up. Once the blinding pain faded, she opened her eyes to a close-up view of her forearms. A glimmering band of silver as thick as her finger, rounded on the outside but flat against her skin, encircled her left wrist, while a hint of bruise adorned her right. She no longer wore the garish detainee jumpsuit, only a basic sports bra and panties.

  Her breathing fogged on the clear barrier two inches in front of her nose, echoing loud inside the coffin-sized compartment. Pale grey metal formed a cross overhead, dividing the transparent cover into four equal quadrants. She stretched out on her back, gazing up past the lid of a stasis pod. The room had been too bright to look at when she arrived, but now, a foreboding arrangement of indistinct boxy shapes and shadows surrounded her, too dark to perceive much detail against the strong light inside her capsule. Panels in the ceiling hung askew, with the occasional dark wire dangling from gaps where tiles had buckled downward. The roof was taller when the cops dragged me in here. A continuous stream of cold air fell over her from vent ports behind her head, causing her teeth to chatter and her body to tremble.

  She sat up as much as she could, twisting half onto her side and propping her weight on her elbow. A tug at her skin made her look down at a pair of white pads; she plucked two sticky sensors from above her heart and two more from her forehead. She didn’t remember anyone putting those on her, but that man had given her an injection that made time feel funny. Fluttering lights on the foam discs announced whatever wireless connection they used still transmitted. Her muscles had become stiff and difficult to move. As her eyes adjusted, her heart thudded with fear. She curled up, trying to breathe warmth into her fingers to fight off creeping numbness, and strained to make out the room around her capsule.

  A plain white wall stood two feet to her right, where there had been a long row of stasis pods before. She looked past her toes and yelped at a six-foot slab of metal jutting through the ceiling like the sword of a giant, piercing the floor between her pod and a wall of storage cabinets. Sima twisted around and crawled to the foot end, rolling onto her back to get a good look up at the damage. A hint of sunlight filtered from the gash, fluttering with the motion of branches bearing blue leaves. Wisps of fog curled around the hole, like a cloud trying to squeeze inside. She gulped, fearing the gory sight possibly waiting behind her. Eventually, she forced herself to glance over her left shoulder at the only other pod that still existed, which sat mercifully empty.

  Sima closed her eyes, shivering at the haunting memory of h
er surroundings as they had been: a room hundreds of feet long filled with blaring light, the antiseptic smell of a hospital, and the voices of children, some happy, others terrified. She’d caught sight of one or two, all quite a few years younger than her. Most of them didn’t fear the ‘special beds.’ There’d been only one other teen she could remember; like her, he’d been locked in binders up until they’d made him strip to his skivvies next to his pod. The little ones didn’t know enough to be terrified. She curled up again, teeth sounding off a staccato rhythm from the air conditioning. Before she had slept, the chamber outside had been cavernous, glaring, and full of people. The tiny room beyond the transparent shell over her head looked dark, scary—and freezing. Sima blushed, thinking back to the pathetic, terrified version of herself who had wailed like a five-year-old, begging not to be shut inside.

  “What happened? This isn’t right. Why’s it so dark?”

  A beep came from her left wrist. She uncurled enough to look at the thin silver bracelet snug to her skin. Three points of blue light flashed from within the mirrored surface at the underside of her arm.

  When did they put that on me?

  “For ‘protective custody,’ this sure feels like I’m in jail.” Sima grunted as she grabbed the metal band, twisting and pulling in an effort to slide her hand out. When she gave up, the bracelet projected a five by seven inch holographic screen along the underside of her forearm. “Whoa.”

  Her answer came in the form of text, typing out with a faint fluttering noise: ‹Stasis pod 0137B deployed in lifeboat mode. 1/1 passenger survived. Pod 0137A empty.›

  Sima looked around, imagining the ceiling coming down and the walls moving in as the giant hold full of stasis pods sectioned itself off into escape capsules. “Lifeboats? Oh, no… Why isn’t this thing opening? If I’m awake, that means we’re here. How long was I sleeping?”

  The bracelet’s text changed. ‹02Y 08M 11D 14H 27M›