by Greg Boose
Paul kicks the dead snout’s belly with a resounding thump. “They stopped looking? Because it was dark out? That’s insane! That’s unacceptable. There could easily be survivors down there. Maybe dozens of them.” The cadet takes a deep breath and licks his purple lips. “Okay. All right. I’ll organize a team right now.” Jonah flinches at the vision of stomping through the jungle at night, especially with Paul. All he wants is to find a tree and sleep under it until someone comes up with a plan. The Fourth Year looks him up and down before scoffing. “Yeah, right. I think I’ll take a couple Third Years. Cadets who can handle it.”
“But Thetis is expecting us in twenty-four hours, right?” the boy with the sling asks. “When they can’t come in contact with the ship, they’ll just track our last position and see we’re on Achilles and come and pick us up.”
“Distress beacons are dead. All of them.” Paul spits. “Whoever killed the captain and the rest of the flight crew also sabotaged a lot of other stuff. The navigator and that Garrett guy just checked it all out. Totally worthless.”
“Wait. What? Somebody killed the captain?” the long-haired girl asks.
The woman sitting up in her sleeping container stares at Paul. “Say that again, kid. What happened? Who was killed?”
The professor quickly makes intense, unexpected eye contact with Jonah, causing the boy to look away into the darkness. “Before the crash, it seems the flight crew was shot and murdered. That’s why we crashed.”
Everyone conscious in the makeshift hospital, save for Dr. Z, Paul, Jonah, and the professor, blurts out questions with no answers. Paranoia creeps up Jonah’s back and wraps itself around his shoulders. He wonders if any of these people could be the traitor, putting on a show of how surprising this news is right now. How can he trust anyone?
After a moment of silence, the girl says, “If the distress beacons are broken, they should let the academics take a look at them. Some of us are actually really good at repairing things, if you didn’t know. Maybe we can fix one.”
“Be my guest,” Paul says. “I’m telling you, though, it’s hopeless.”
“Well, still, I’d like to see,” she says.
Paul clicks on the flashlight attached to his rifle and walks toward the truss. “Follow me, then. I’ll show you, and then I’ll go assemble my team to find Module Eight.”
“I’m coming, too,” the boy with the sling says. He limps after Paul and the girl, and the professor follows.
Dr. Z picks up the launch seat and wipes it clean, then motions for Jonah to sit down. He hesitates, but Dr. Z takes him gently by the arm and looks into his eyes. “You okay?”
He looks down at the snout. Of course, he’s not okay. None of them are okay. Someone hijacked the ship and killed over half the passengers, and there are wild beasts with mushroom noses and two rows of teeth. “Yeah,” he whispers. “I guess.”
“It just doesn’t stop, huh?”
“Not yet, I guess.” He’s exhausted and shuts his eyes as the doctor begins to disinfect his wounds and injects him with a local anesthetic. Jonah tries to clear his mind, to bury the vision of those swinging teeth coming at his throat, to forget the beast’s sour breath, but he can feel his skin being pulled this way and that way by the stitching needle, and it constantly brings him back to reality.
Some of the wounded at his feet moan and beg for water or drugs, and Jonah peeks open an eye to watch Sean Meebs, a muscular Second Year cadet wearing rectangular night-vision specs, attending to their different needs. He works diligently, pouring water in a young boy’s mouth while touching the forehead of a babbling Third Year girl nearby. Sean skips over each and every adult to help the kids first. A man grabs Sean’s ankle, but the cadet kicks and shakes the hand off violently so he can get to a boy wheezing and mumbling in his sleep.
When all the kids have been attended to, Sean drags an empty seat over and sits right in front of Jonah, facing him. He doesn’t take off the thin specs, and their green shimmer gives the fifteen-year-old boy a ghoulish look. Jonah squirms from his closeness, from the colors of his specs, from the lack of sleep. He’s never had a problem with Sean. Back at the academy, he was the only cadet who seemed to work harder than Jonah to get to Thetis.
“This is pretty much like a nightmare, huh?” Sean asks.
“It’s worse,” Dr. Z says from over Jonah’s shoulder. Jonah nods, hoping she’s almost done.
“Well, right.” Sean runs a hand through his wavy blond hair and spits through his two front teeth. “Because it’s real and we’re not just all asleep dreaming some stupid dream together. But damn, it’s almost like we were all dreaming this amazing dream where we were all this close to living in this supposed paradise, on Thetis, where everything is supposed to be all great and shit, and then BOOM, we’re in a nightmare, dropped in some kind of hell.”
Dr. Z draws the needle through Jonah’s skin and then pulls until edge meets edge. “This place is the furthest thing from hell,” she says. “I have read some about Achilles. There’s fresh water. There are beautiful plants and mountains. Exotic animals that are absolutely harmless, not to mention gorgeous. But what we just went through, this moment right here, this is definitely some kind of hell. But it would be hell on Earth, too.”
Sean moves his chair even closer to Jonah. “If it’s so great here, then why didn’t we colonize Achilles or the other moon Peleus instead of Thetis?”
Jonah is about to ask him to leave them alone when Dr. Z says, “Good question, cadet. You’ll have to ask the Powers That Be when you get the chance. And hopefully, that will be possible very, very soon.”
“Whatever. I bet Thetis isn’t even that great. Probably run by a bunch of asshole adults who order the kids around like slaves.” Sean removes his specs and sticks them into the collar of his shirt. His left eye socket is yellow and purple with bruises, and a cut runs across the top of his nose, as if he’s been punched or met a snout head-on.
Dr. Z places a hand on Jonah’s neck and pulls another stitch through. “If you feel that way, why did you volunteer, cadet?”
The Second Year plucks the specs from his collar and puts them back on. With straight lips, he says, “Kind of hate my family, doctor. At least those that were left, I guess. What more can I say, other than my life was majorly depressing on Earth and that I was looking for the exact opposite thing? It sounds lame, maybe, but I was kind of hoping that I could maybe be happy in another galaxy, on another planet.”
The doctor laughs. “No offense, cadet, but I think that is the most ironic thing I could hear right now. No one is happy in this galaxy right now, I assure you. Everyone on Thetis was counting on our supplies. They’re in a lot of trouble without us.”
Jonah actually perks up on hearing Sean’s explanation, and he offers the cadet a quick smile. Sean’s sentiment is one of the driving forces behind Jonah’s interest in Thetis, aside from dodging the war in England. To have the exact opposite life in this galaxy is his plan, too. Maybe here he could have a family and study to be a biologist or even a painter. He hears the snipping of scissors, and the doctor dabs at his wound with something soft.
“That takes care of that.” She sets both hands on Jonah’s shoulders, pats him, and then moves to one of the open medical kits. “But there’s more to do and something I really need to talk to you about, Jonah.”
“Sure.” He’s completely depleted of energy and it’s hard to sit up, but he’s grateful to be taken care of.
“He going to make it, doctor?” Sean asks.
Dr. Z squeezes some solution on her hands and then dips her head in front of Jonah’s. She gently prods the bones of his nose with her fingers. Jonah growls; the pain is excruciating, and he pounds the armrests with his fists, completely awake again. “Well, you won’t need surgery. Which is great because I don’t have the equipment, or the team. You will have a lot of swelling, though.”
When Jonah opens his eyes, tears spill just an inch down his cheeks and then stay there.
Jonah exhales through his mouth, trying to regain some composure. “Yeah.”
Sean adds, “From what some dorky demic told me earlier, it’s a little less than a third of the gravity on Earth. So, I’m like, sixty pounds here or something. And if you could jump, like, two feet high off the ground on Earth, like me, then you could now jump, like, six feet. Which, considering everything else, I think is pretty damn cool.”
Dr. Z grumbles, “Pretty damn cool. I need to talk to Jonah about something. Cadet, would you give some privacy?”
“Sure,” he says, adjusting his specs. “I’ll see if I can find any more blankets for the kids.”
Once Sean leaves the light, Dr. Z spins Jonah away from the rest of the patients. “Jonah, when I was cleaning your eyes earlier, I saw something I didn’t like. Something I’ve seen before, unfortunately.” He sits up straight, pushing sleep away. “The backs of your sockets were rimmed with a bluish color.” She clicks on a small flashlight and tugs on his upper and lower lids. “Right. They’re still like that. To me, it looks like you have what is a relatively new blood disease called Sepsis Bimorphyria, or Sepsis B.”
Jonah tries to focus on the name of the disease, but all he can picture is his eyes turning blue, from back to front, until they look like marbles. Why would they turn blue?
“Are you listening to me, Jonah? This is very serious.”
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I might have a blood disease. My eyes are turning blue. But that’s still okay, right?”
“I was able to find a blood meter in one of these kits and I tested some of your blood from before. I hope you don’t mind. You have what I think is Sepsis, but it’s not regular Sepsis, and it’s not Sepsis B. It’s something else, something that isn’t good.”
Jonah just stares at her, his mouth open. He thinks about running away so he doesn’t have to hear whatever else she is going to say.
“You might have a newer, mutated form of Sepsis B. Either that, or my blood meter is broken. But I have to say, with the blue rims and the results I’ve seen from some of the others…Jonah, I’m sorry.”
He thinks back to his recent vertigo and nausea. “Is it from the wormhole?”
“That’s my first guess, yes.”
Jonah doesn’t mean to ask the next question, but it slips out: “So, what? Am I dying?”
Dr. Z pulls back her maroon hair. Her face grows grim. “Without antibiotics, intravenous liquids, and a few other things that I don’t have with me, or things that were destroyed in the crash, I would say, in my professional opinion, that you have about a week until you start to feel sick, maybe sooner. And then you have less than thirty days until you go blind and things become irreversible. And yes, then you would most likely die.” She pauses. “I’m sorry.”
Jonah slips off the chair and lands on his knees. His fingertips circle around his eyes while Dr. Z apologizes further. What is she talking about? He’s dying? And not from hunger or a street fight? Not from the crash or an earthquake or from some abusive foster family?
“Now, the good news is that if the guys on Thetis are able to find us and take us to the Athens colony, then you should get everything you need and you’ll most likely be fine. So let’s just pray Thetis finds us.”
“What about the homing beacons? They’re destroyed,” he says.
“Well, let’s pray for that, too. That they can fix one.”
“Help me,” groans a man behind Jonah. “Doctor. Please.”
“I have to help the others, Jonah. We’ll talk more about this tomorrow morning, okay? I have some ideas I’d like to try. Maybe I can stop it. But try to get some sleep tonight, and I’ll see you in the morning.” She moves toward the man and peels back his blanket. He has no legs.
Jonah stares at the man’s two stumps wrapped in bloody bandages and can’t comprehend what he’s looking at, or what he just learned. Then, after a few seconds, he floats to his feet and walks clumsily to the perimeter of the light. He doesn’t know which way to walk. He has a fatal blood disease and might die in thirty days, and he doesn’t know which way to walk.
“Where are you headed?” a voice in the darkness asks.
Frightened, Jonah turns to see the green shine of Sean’s specs. “I don’t even know. It doesn’t even matter.”
“Well, if you want to sleep, follow me.”
At first, Jonah doubts he’ll ever be able to sleep again, not after what Dr. Z’s just told him, but then it’s as if he’s been run over by a truck. He needs to lie down.
“Grab my arm,” Sean says. The two walk quickly across the dark plain. Jonah feels a sense of relief to be blind at this moment; he doesn’t want to know if he’s walking on stones or bones, if what’s sticking to his foot is blood or oil.
“Let’s hurry up,” he says.
“Thirty seconds away. Calm down, Firstie.”
Jonah moves his hand to the back of Sean’s shirt and allows the boy to lead him through an opening in a broken module. A young girl with a terrified voice asks who it is. The cadets don’t stop moving until they’re lying next to each other on the cold soil. Finally, Sean says, “It’s Sean and Jonah, two badass cadets. We’re going to sleep, so don’t worry about it and shut up.”
“That’s it, then. Nobody else. Getting too damn crowded in here.” It’s a different girl’s voice; it’s Vespa’s, and it’s the last thing Jonah hears before he falls asleep.
• • •
Vespa’s voice is also the first thing Jonah hears when he wakes. She’s upset, whispering loudly in his ear, her spit covering his cheek. Jonah tries to focus on her, but his foggy mind can’t make out what she’s saying. Then she’s silent. Then she boots him in his shins and growls, “Cadet. Get up. Get the hell up right now, Firstie. It’s an order.”
He opens his eyes. He feels nauseous. His body begs for him to go back to sleep. “What time is it?”
A beam of light hits his face, and then a fist bunches the front of his shirt around his neck. He’s pulled viciously to his feet and shoved into someone else’s arms, but he’s too tired to resist. Jonah wobbles a few feet forward before a hand pulls him back and holds him in place. Normally, he would fight back. Normally, if someone touched him like this, he would panic and swing blindly until he got his bearings. But not tonight. Tonight he’s just too tired. He opens his eyes just as Vespa kicks a sleeping Sean in the ribs.
“I said, get up, cadet,” she seethes.
Sean groans and spits, and finally Jonah turns to see that it’s a Third Year named Portis who’s holding him up. Beside him stands a stocky girl cadet named Steph, with a close crop of bleached white hair. Jonah’s never cared for either of them.
“It’s still night out,” Griffin says with a yawn. He stumbles to his feet and then purposefully slams his thick shoulder into Jonah’s, knocking both him and Portis back a few steps. “This is horse shit. Just let us sleep.”
Sean finally rolls onto his knees. “Please tell me we’re not doing some kind of night training exercise. Because that would be pretty stupid.”
Vespa leans down and growls in his face, “Just hold on, cadet.” She then turns to the six cadets who grumble and sway around her. “Follow me. Right now.” Vespa ducks out of the module, and the cadets file after her. Jonah notices that one of them, a blond boy with a short red beard, a seventeen-year-old Third Year named North, is trembling with absolute terror. Tears cover his cheeks and sweat clings to his beard. He is mumbling incoherently, letting everyone exit before him.
“Over here,” Vespa orders in a loud whisper. “We have a major situation.”
“That’s an understatement,” Sean mumbles.
“No, this is something new. Something worse.”
The cadets all stand up straight at the same time. Even Jonah is fully awake now.
“How major? Like, can we deal with it in the morning?” Griffin asks. “I feel like death, ma
n.”
Vespa’s voice lowers an octave. “No. I don’t think this situation can wait until morning.”
“They’re all gone!” North bellows and then covers his mouth with his dirty fingers. He wheels around and stumbles a few feet into the darkness before falling to his hands and knees.
“Who’s all gone?” Sean asks.
Vespa rubs her neck, and Jonah notices she actually looks scared, like a helpless little girl. Her light falls on North’s back. “North was in Module Two last night, still in the truss.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” he whispers. “I just couldn’t, you know. My head’s all messed up from the crash.”
“He says there was a meeting called by some of the adults a couple hours ago…” Vespa trails off. “I think maybe you all should just see this for yourselves, like I did. North, I need you to get the hell up right now. Right now. Lead the way. Let’s go.”
The boy pushes himself off the ground and a small flashlight appears in his shaking hand. He scratches his beard. “This way.”
“Wait,” Steph says. “Stop. You’re freaking me out. Just tell us what’s going on first. Where are we going?”
Vespa shoves Steph in the back, harder than Jonah thinks is necessary. “Shut the hell up and just move.”
The girl snaps her body upright, and then she marches after Vespa and North. “Screw you, Vespa. You’re not my commanding officer. I don’t have to take orders from you.”
“Yeah,” Sean mocks. He tries to slap Jonah in the stomach with the back of his hand, but Jonah’s on high alert. He didn’t like that shove from Vespa. He doesn’t like the look in North’s eyes. Something very bad has happened. His reflexes tighten and he blocks Sean’s hand before dropping down into a fighting position. Sean and Griffin burst out laughing, and his skin grows hot. He feels like a fool. He straightens up and follows Vespa, not caring where she’s headed.
“Well, I don’t,” Steph mumbles.
Portis walks next to Jonah with his wrist in his teeth, chewing on his skin. He drops his wrist from his mouth just long enough to shake his huge head of black hair like a wet dog and says, “Shut up, Steph. Jesus Christ.”