Ashes in the Sky

by Jennifer M. Eaton

  Spending the night? Yeah, I could imagine that phone call. It would take all of three seconds for Dad to scramble NASA to fly up here and get me. Nope, that was not going to go over well at all.

  “But I’m supposed to be home for dinner.” I stood, but my sight wavered, and I eased back down to the couch. Three Nematalies stared back at me.

  “I suggest you continue to rest for a short while.” She stepped to the door. “I need to speak with Falen, but I will return in a few hours. Then we can discuss returning to Earth.”

  I shrugged. “I guess.”

  She nodded and disappeared through the door.

  Rest. Easy for her to say. I rubbed the burning skin beneath the pocket of my jeans.

  Although the look and scents of home surrounded me, Doctor Doom and his vial from Hell showed me that I was far from safe. They could do anything to me here. Anything.

  And there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  My backpack lay at the base of the couch with Old Reliable propped up against the worn canvas. I grabbed my camera and turned over the lens. A few scratches, but none the worse for wear. I pressed the power button and scanned through the photographs.

  My stomach flipped. The agony on David’s face, the bubbling of the artificial skin as it took form …

  “Why did you do this?” I whispered.

  Dread. Sorrow.

  I sprang to my feet and reached for the couch when my head did another tilt-o-whirl. I held on until the room stopped spinning and turned to the wall beside the stairs.

  Guilt. Shame.

  “David, I know you’re there. Please don’t hide from me.”

  Nothing.

  “I am not going to sit here so you can look at me through a wall. I am not some sort of freak show, so get your ass in here, or so help me—”

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  I spun toward the sound coming from the front door. The realism of the dust on the molding, the chipped paint, the worn door handle, all mocked me. I blinked hard, forcing my mind to come to grips that I wasn’t in my living room, and no one had ever knocked on that fake door before.

  Yet little invisible fingers pulled me forward, gently tugging me through the living room until I faced the entrance, and the man I knew was waiting for me on the other side.

  I straightened the picture of Mom and Dad on the wall beside the door before reaching for the handle.

  David leaned against the frame, his eyes lowered. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I never meant … ”

  I pulled him in the room and slammed the door shut. I grabbed his face, running my fingers along his features. His human features.

  Perfect. Flawless. Stunning. But not him.

  “Why did you do this?”

  He closed his eyes and walked to the couch. “I needed to.” He sat, folding his hands.

  I eased beside him. “I told you I didn’t care what you looked like. You didn’t need to do this to yourself.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You didn’t. You’re beautiful. I don’t need you to be something you’re not. I’m sorry I flinched when we touched. I didn’t mean it.”

  Moving like lightning, he grabbed my head, immobilizing me. He lightened his grip, running his warm palms across my cheeks. I closed my eyes. My body vibrated, drinking in his caress.

  “Am I hurting you?” he asked.

  Huh? My eyes shot open. “No, of course not.”

  David released my cheeks and took my hands. He ran his thumbs over my red, inflamed palms. “But I did hurt you earlier.”

  “You didn’t mean it.”

  His gaze returned to mine. “I couldn’t live like that, Jess, having you here and not being able to hold you.”

  I combed my fingers along his perfectly cut jaw. “But putting this on, it hurt so much. The pain, it was horrible. How could you … ”

  He slid his fingers into my hair and dragged his hand down my neck. His skin was hot, but not burning. I pulled him to me. Warm. Definitely warm, but no pain.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I’d do it ten times over just to touch you once.”

  I leaned on his shoulder. His perfect, creamy-bronze human shoulder. “I felt your pain.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “But why?” I eased back so I could see his eyes. “Why could I feel it? I mean—” I shivered. “I don’t understand.”

  His mouth twisted as if holding back a sob. “I projected the pain into you. I didn’t do it on purpose. That’s why I tried to get you out. I’m not strong enough to hold my emotions in.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You weren’t supposed to be there. I left you in this room and lulled you to sleep. You shouldn’t have even been awake. I swear I never would have … ”

  I placed a finger over his lips. “I hate you for this, you know that, right?”

  The crook of his lip crinkled up. “Probably just as much as I hate you.”

  I smacked him. “You scared me, you jerk.”

  He stifled a laugh. “I never meant for you to see any of that. I was hoping you’d be happy.”

  Stinking, stupid, selfless, alien boy! I hugged myself. “It hurt. God, it hurt.”

  “I know.”

  He pulled me to him, and I rested against his chest. David’s heartbeat soothed my anger, my fear. I didn’t want him to be someone he wasn’t, but I’d missed this. His skin vibrated against me, pulling, stroking, kneading—but not burning.

  Maybe this was the only way we could be together.

  His forehead stroked mine. Such a simple touch, but so real, so meaningful.

  “You can’t imagine how much I missed holding you,” he whispered.

  His words coated me like icing on a cake. I’d felt off since he left, as if part of me was missing. Now that part was back, and I felt whole again. Complete. It was scary and exhilarating all at the same time.

  David retreated. A speck of uncertainty passed across his face. Did he feel the same way I did? Did it scare him?

  His hands fell to his lap. A word may have formed on his lips, but he didn’t speak it. He ran his thumb over one of his fake, human pinkies, keeping his gaze down.

  Dad’s voice whispered in the back of my mind. He’s on Mars. The words hung like a solid wall of truth. But that wall had been broken. I’d never questioned where David had been for the past two months, or I might have tried to wiggle my way back into his life earlier. “I thought you’d be a few million miles away by now.”

  He nodded. “I should be. There was a solar flare storm. It was too dangerous to proceed, but we expect it to be over in the next several lunar cycles.”

  And then he’d be gone. “Oh.”

  “There are three research vessels similar to this one. All are focused on the terraforming project. We’re keeping on schedule.”

  He sounded funny when he talked about work. So formal. So adult. So not him.

  His eyes searched through me for a moment, before falling on my mouth. Erescopians didn’t kiss, but I knew he liked the feeling of my lips against his. I inched closer, but he pulled away. Why?

  “Have you taken any interesting photographs?” David asked, still not meeting my gaze.

  I blinked, startled by the sudden change in his demeanor. “Umm, yeah. I wish I could show you.”

  “May I see your camera?”

  Handing him the case, I said, “Looking through the view screen doesn’t do them much justice.”

  He popped out the memory card and stood.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking at your photos.”

  He thumbed the card into the brick along the fireplace, and the plastic chip seeped right into the mantle, almost as if it had sunk into water. Standing in the middle of what looked so much like my living room, I’d forgotten a liquidic ship surrounded me.

  The memory card reappeared, and David h
anded it to me. I slipped it back into the camera. “What was that all about?”

  He poked the bricks a few times and then made a movement like throwing something into the middle of the room. Hundreds of photographs appeared in midair.

  Hol-eee-crap.

  David spoke a word in Erescopian, and the lights dimmed. He scrolled through the pictures hanging around us by waving his hands in the air.

  I’d seen cool before, but this had to be the icing on the proverbial cool cake. I needed to get me one of these hang your photos in the air thingies, like, yesterday.

  He tilted his head, looking at a few pictures of bare walls, and shots that appeared to be of people’s shoulders. So much for me trying to catch a Steven Callup magnum opus.

  The photos faded away, and the Earth appeared before us—the picture I’d taken this morning with Nematali. The blue glow of the ocean lit up the room.

  “Very nice,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  He flipped forward. I recoiled as three Erescopians filled the air around us, throwing fists at each other. It was like watching a movie without a screen.

  “Where were you when you took this?”

  “I got lost. I ran into these guys. Well, almost. I decided to get out of there, and the ambassador found me.”

  He turned to me. “The ambassador?”

  “Yeah, you know. Good Will Guy.”

  He scrunched his brow and made a pushing motion with his palms. The movie zoomed in. “Re-pixelate,” he said. The picture sharpened.

  “You can speak English to the computer?”

  David grinned. “Only using this kind of interface. It’s actually reading my thoughts. I don’t need to say the word aloud, but it helps me to focus. My mind translates what I want to the computer.”

  Whoa. Add extra icing on that coolness cake.

  “Suspend,” he said.

  The three aliens froze in place, hovering before us.

  David tapped a point on the screen between two of them. “Enlarge.”

  The photo zoomed in. A doorway stood open behind them. I hadn’t noticed it during the commotion.

  “Re-pixelate and enlarge twice,” David said.

  A clear view of the room, or at least the visible part, zoomed before us. A cylinder, partially filled with a brownish, yellowy something or other sat on the edge of a table.

  “What is that?” David asked.

  “I don’t know. Looks kind of like mustard.”

  He leaned closer to the photo. “That color isn’t natural where I come from.”

  “So, what, you think it’s something from Earth?”

  His gaze remained fixed on the picture. He rubbed his chin as he concentrated on the image before us. What could be so important about that flask?

  David took a deep breath, and a new set of pages appeared in the air. Scrolling, calligraphy-like writing rolled past us. The images blurred, until David raised his hand, stopping the motion. A photograph appeared beside the original—a small amount of mustardy-colored powder in some sort of metal dish sat beside a wilted, splotchy-looking red plant.

  “Is that the same stuff?” I asked.

  His cheeks paled, tinting slightly with the violescence beneath. “I certainly hope not.”

  I sooo didn’t like the sound of his voice.

  “That color is rare in my culture. It’s used to frighten children, and just the mention of it terrifies most adults.” He turned to me. “If that flask contains what I fear, we have a very large problem.”

  “Okay, now you’re scaring me. What the heck is it?”

  “A mistake. An abomination.” He closed his eyes. “It was engineered to bring life. But it didn’t.”

  A shiver crept down my spine. “What does it do?”

  “It kills planets.”

  “What?” My shiver traded up to an all-out panic attack. The picture of Earth exploded before us, overlapping with piles of killer powder. Had I done that? Had the computer triggered off my thoughts and pulled a photo of what I feared most at that exact moment?

  It didn’t matter where the picture came from. Earth hung before me, lush, beautiful, and completely unaware of the danger looming above her.

  Maybe General Baker was right to still be on the defense. Maybe this thing with the aliens wasn’t over.

  David’s eyes hardened. “Where were you when you took that video?”

  Uh oh. “I don’t even know. I fell through a wall, and then through a floor. If I hadn’t met the ambassador, I don’t know how I would have gotten back.”

  “The ambassador found you down there?”

  I nodded.

  David’s nose flared as he shuffled the photo of Earth to the back and re-centered on his enlargement of my video of the guys fighting. “Recapture and reduce to original size.”

  The two photos of the mustard powder shifted to the side, replaced by the fighters again. David’s gaze panned the outskirts of the photo. “This is one of the storage levels. The ambassador wouldn’t be down there.”

  “Maybe he had to pick something up?”

  “The ambassador would not pick something up. Others would do that for him.”

  “So you’re thinking it wasn’t the storage area?”

  David wove his fingers through mine. It would have seemed tender if he didn’t look terrified. “I need you to show me where you fell through the wall.”

  Oh. Snap. It was in that hallway, the grayish one that looked like every other freaking hallway on this Godforsaken death ship!

  The picture of Earth remained below the others, stacked like a transparent deck of cards, but the photograph still spoke to me, tugged. Tugged like home.

  I steadied myself. “We had just left the Mars project room. We turned right down a long hallway that bent to the right. It was somewhere after that bend.”

  Turning to the pictures hanging before me, I waved my hands in the air. Under different circumstances, I would have been stoked that the photos scrolled at my whim. I stopped on the square etched block, and the other photos I’d taken just before I disappeared.

  “This is where I was.” I pointed to the block. “Does this thing help? It was on the floor.”

  David nodded. “It is a primary juncture. There are dozens of them on that floor.” He turned to the photos. “Seal and file, quilesec niam ghosest mioga est.”

  Earth was the last photo to fade into the wall before David grabbed my arm. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”

  14

  “Does anything seem familiar? Anything at all?” The desperation in David’s voice cut a hole through my heart.

  “I’m trying. It all looks the same.” I punched the wall. He was right. I should have paid more attention. If Earth died, it would be all my fault.

  But I wouldn’t give up. Not yet. Not ever.

  David tugged at his bangs. “Every few feet of this partition is dissimilar. How can’t you tell where you were?”

  “What are you talking about? They’re all gray!”

  Defeat flashed through his eyes.

  Dammit! All he asked me to do was find where I’d fallen through the wall. This guy branded a stinking human skin onto his body for me, and I couldn’t find a simple alien doorway!

  Something flashed to my right and spiraled beneath the surface of the wall. The stalker shadow. I turned, but like before, only a grayish molten barrier remained when I approached.

  David joined me in studying the wall. “Is something wrong?”

  I rubbed my arms to ward off a chill. Sweat beaded at my temple. “There was something there, but it disappeared when I turned around.”

  He shoved against the wall. Solid, of course. His face remained expressionless.

  “The same thing has been following me all day. It’s driving me crazy.”

  “It’s probably just a grassen.”

  “A what?”

  David’s eyes flashed with amusement as he pl
aced his palms against the wall and pressed. I snapped a few pictures as a dark, rotating shadow appeared within the shining surface. “Is this what you’ve been seeing?”

  “Omigosh, yes! What is that?”

  He continued to push, and a bubble appeared between his hands. A shape formed within, like a drenched tarantula rising out of a pool of molten tar. I managed five photographs before my stomach lurched. Not just a tarantula. A damn big tarantula, with a body probably a foot and a half long and almost a foot wide.

  I backed away. The deep-purple spider twitched its ten-inch legs as it continued to rise out of the molten metal wall.

  “Dedredeare colerin, est,” David muttered. “Welcome, shepherd.”

  David looked back to me, but I could barely take my eyes off spidicus giganticus.

  “What the Hell is that?”

  The spider’s disgusting, hairy body expanded and contracted as if it had mammalian lungs. I cringed as ten long, hairy legs stretched one at a time.

  “This is a grassen,” David said. “A motility shepherd. They are part of the biological make-up of the ship. They feed off a vessel’s metabolic waste, and the occasional rodent.”

  I rubbed my shoulders. “Well, why is it trying to shepherd me?”

  David shrugged. “Probably because you’re different. They’re curious. It may be attracted to the cool temperature of your body. Don’t worry. It won’t hurt you.”

  He drew his hands from the wall, and Giganticus jumped, landing on David’s wrist. David cried out and flailed, pitching Spidey across the hall. The giant bug splatted into the wall and disappeared within the swirling metal.

  Agape, David stared at three holes sliced into his human exterior.

  “I thought it wouldn’t hurt you. Are you all right?” I asked, grasping his hand.

  He puffed a laugh. “I’m fine.”

  David rubbed the holes with his thumb, and they disappeared. I guessed the grassen-thing didn’t bite deep enough to harm his real skin.

  “I certainly feel foolish,” he said.

  “You? I’m the one who can’t find my way around.”

  He rubbed my shoulder. “I’m sorry if I was short with you. It’s that powder.” He shuddered. “If it’s out there somewhere, I need to find it. Please understand how important this is to me.”