//Don’t you dare!// I yell to Vallon through our link, but it’s no use.
Although the herd has thinned, those remaining waste no time pouncing on Comier. His cries of ‘I didn’t do anything’ die down as he’s crushed under them.
In the stolen moments, Vallon barrels down the corridor, in the opposite direction from where Marshall pushed him.
Marshall turns to the empty hallway where he’d ordered Vallon to go, to gather his men. “Ratnik, come with me!” he screams over the crowd and Comier’s weakening pleas.
I push off the wall as quickly as possible, forcing myself to pick up speed as I sail through the air. Weaving through the mass of people, I dodge arms and legs and pieces of smashed furniture.
When I reach Comier, he’s barely breathing. Someone’s foot catches me square in the back of the head and the orange flashing lights dim to near black. I shake it off and claw at Comier’s sleeve, the only piece of him I can get my hands on.
“Toss him out!”
“Toss him out!”
The growls and snarls of wild animals turn to one cohesive chant.
“Toss him out!”
Kicking off the ground, I wrap myself around Comier’s limp body and try to squeeze us through a narrow opening between his attackers. Someone seizes my leg while another swipes at the tentative grip I have on Comier. Searing pain shoots through my wrist as one of my bandages rips free. The stitches holding me together pop one by one and my sleeve dampens.
Somewhere deep inside me a beast roars to life. My throat fills with fire that startles me as much as the people shrinking away from us. With my one good hand I pull Marshall’s ZapStick from under my jacket and wave it in the air.
“Step back!” The voice coming from my chest is raw, carnal, opening a wide berth for me to drag Comier to safety.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Vallon. The commotion must have lured him back. For a moment, I foolishly think he’s going to take Comier from me, help me get him to a pod, relieve me of my burden. After all, he’s part of our battalion, too. Marshall’s orders…
But in the next orange strobe of light, I know better. Vallon’s eyes flitter over my head and I turn to see Marshall staring back. //Drop the kid and run!// Marshall chips as his wide eyes jump back and forth between me and Vallon.
//If that’s how you want to play it, Rat. Let’s dance!// Vallon chips at almost the same time.
//Don’t do this! You don’t have to be that person!// I beg Vallon, even as I watch him pound on his chest to psych himself up.
//I warned you, kid. If it’s me or you… I choose me.//
Sour fingers curl around a knot in my stomach and it’s everything I can do to keep from retching.
Marshall and Vallon both lunge for me, with opposite intentions in their eyes.
###
I’m ashamed to admit that I almost use Comier’s lifeless body as a human shield. The sight of Vallon charging at you would cause the even the most honorable person to consider it. Rage boils under his skin and his black eyes bore a hole through me. I cower with Comier and wait to be tossed out of the airlock with the rest of the passengers. Part of me feels it would be fitting after what I let happen.
Their muted screams still echo through the ship as the tiny old woman and her new friends decide who lives and dies.
Before I can think of something to do that isn’t sacrificing the one person who’s been nice to me, Vallon’s on me. Or rather, his fist is. Dead center on my nose. I feel it crack under the force of his punch, his entire body mass barreling into that one point. The flashing orange lights around me instantly blur under water and the high pitched grating alarm is drowned out by my own screams.
Vallon rears back to land another blow, and Marshall tackles him from the side. They tumble away, long enough for me to finish dragging Comier toward the hallway Marshall had pointed to, begging Stone to help me find two empty cryo-pods.
Something jerks me backward and I sail weightlessly through the air, past Vallon’s beastlike snarl. He makes a grab for Comier as I collide with Marshall, who’s clinging to Vallon’s leg still trying to hold him off.
With his prize, Vallon shakes Marshall loose and glides back toward Airlock seven. He’s going to feed Comier to the wolves.
“Get in a pod!” Marshall pulls me into the hallway. “That’s an order!” For a moment we’re back in that tiny interrogation room. Marshall’s face has Guard One written all over it.
Clawing at his fingers, I try to dig my heels, but I’m still floating above ground. “Please, we have to help him.”
“He’s not your problem.”
“No, he’s yours!” It flies out of my mouth.
“Right now, you’re my problem. So stop being one.” Marshall gives me a strong shake for good measure.
“We can’t let him die.” Tears fill my words.
“Almost every person on this ship is going to die, Ratnik. Except for you. Let me do this one thing.” Tears fill his words, too. And I stop struggling.
Comier’s name adds to the long list of people I’ve lost in the Glitch. I stop struggling.
We pass a sign that says ‘STASIS’ in no-nonsense block letters and I can swear I smell their fresh paint. Vallon’s taunts about shoddy workmanship ring in my ears.
Gravity’s warm embrace wraps itself around me as we cross into the room, and Marshall releases his grip on my arm. He types a command into the control panel before him and one of the pods illuminates from within.
My head begins to pound as soon as my feet touch the floor, causing my vision to kaleidoscope. Instantly, the circular room of two hundred cryo-pod coffins has doubled to four hundred, still nowhere near enough.
Marshall’s urgency and Vallon’s viciousness are both crystal clear to me now.
He must have heard me think his name. No sooner has it flitted through my mind and he’s there, hot rapid breath on the back of my neck. I know it’s him by the musky stench.
Not waiting for him to attack, I jerk my head backward, connecting with the side of his face. It’s not as painful as his blow to my nose, but it gives me the momentary head start I need.
I take Marshall’s outstretched hand and he tosses me into the pod. Pale yellow lights flicker all around me as a blue holographic interface comes into view.
The lid slides into place over my head as Vallon bangs a bloody fist on the glass. I wonder if it’s my blood, or his, or…
He claws at the latch, screaming something I can’t hear over the whoosh of my pod sealing me in. My soundless bubble protects me from his wild blows against the thick glass.
The interface panel blinks, asking for permission to sync.
Marshall leaps over my pod, going straight for Vallon’s eyes.
The panel blinks again, turning from blue to red.
I don’t know what to do. What to type. If we’re not supposed to have chips, why is this pod asking to sync? How old are they? Again, Vallon’s comments about the ship come back to me. I imagine Brooks climbing into his own pod and wonder if this is the same terror he felt as the lid sealed his fate. Did he cry out to me? Did Howie stay with him? Was there time?
My fingers shake so bad I couldn’t enter a code even if the pod asked.
I bang on the glass trying to get Marshall’s attention, but I know he can’t hear me. Just like I can’t hear them clawing and punching and killing each other right on top of me.
They fall to the ground below and out of my view.
My peaceful yellow ambient lighting begins to flash a sinister red with the hologram panel.
I crane my neck as far as it will go, hoping to get a glimpse of Marshall.
Nothing.
//Howie, if this doesn’t work, please tell Brooks I love him… and… you.//
I stare at the ‘yes’ on my screen long enough for the button to glow, and a long string of DOS code scrolls past.
CHAPTER EIGHT
We should all be in this together
Un
ited in the common goal of recovery
One nation of Seven Sisters
- fmr Pres. Sturn
(Citizen Address following The Great Glitch)
Silence roars through my pod. Warm lavender scents wash over me and my eyelids succumb to the newfound gravity. The lines of DOS appear in my head as I begin to drift off.
LIFE SUPPORT ENGAGING flashes three times before a familiar prick sends a cool burning sensation up my arm.
SYNC COMPLETE. BRIEFING READY. PLEASE SELECT ROLE:
CONSULATE
CULINARY
DOMESTICATION
MEDICAL
MILITARY
OCEANIC
SANITATION
SUPPLY
TERRAFORM
My sightless stare hovers over ‘Military’, causing the interface to fade away. In its place, strange images fill my field of vision. I can’t turn my head in my current position, and I’m too serene to do so, anyway. But I know I don’t need to. I have a full 360-degree aerial view of… Gliese?
A disturbingly lifelike male voice soars through the sky with me, rattling off numbers and facts I can’t follow. I’m too mesmerized by the sights and… smells of my new home. Every time the voice tells me about some fascinating new location or event in the planet’s brief history, it moves to the corresponding space in my panoramic. This causes my attention to involuntarily snap into focus on the intended target.
Slowly the aerial shot zooms in and ice blue terrain rises up to meet me. It’s just as I’d pictured it, and yet, so much more vivid. Frigid air blasts my entire body. The calming lavender piped into my pod is replaced by crisp clean sea salt. I feel myself diving down, near to ground level. It’s a strange, unpleasant sensation in my stomach, the opposite of how lift-off felt. The unease tingles up my lower spine to rest between my shoulder blades.
As I watch, the bright aqua land shimmers in an almost imperceptible reflection. At first, I think I’m only looking out into the vast blue distance, until my own shadow crosses in front of me and bends before my eyes.
Just as my mind adjusts to my disembodied form casting a shadow on a forcefield, I’m pushing through it. I brace for a shock or resistance from the clear wall, but none comes. Liquid electricity crackles around my… being… as I break the plane of the dome.
Instantly, the arctic breeze warms, eases its grip on my bones. Sea salt turns to smoke, machinery, hundreds of familiar human odors all at once. Many are so unfamiliar now, they seem brand new.
The bored male voice in my head betrays the growing sense of wonder at what it’s showing me. Then, as I’m thinking it, the voice adjusts, becomes more alert and alive.
I don’t have time to suspect that it heard me, because we’re zipping through crowds of well-fed, sometimes even plump, people. When is the last time saw a fat person? The conspiratorial part of my brain is telling me the government shipped our precious food to this planet, for these people, before we were even dead yet.
Smiles are plastered on every face, no matter which way the voice turns my head. People of all ages wander the streets around me, not noticing that I’m there. Kids toss a gravball on the side of a snow-white road. Grandmothers and merchants haggle over prices in a vast public square in the center of the dome. Along the periphery, hundreds of light blue bubble-shaped houses pop up wherever they can fit.
The voice explains it all as we go; the bartering systems, old-fashioned school houses, the military’s role – my new role – in keeping it all running smoothly. How honored I must feel to be chosen as a Peacekeeper in these trying yet historic times.
He’s getting excited as we reach the barracks. Even before he tells me, I can feel where my bunk will be. I can’t explain it, but I’m drawn to a small bed in the far corner, and my field of vision instantly narrows to that space. The set-up is eerily similar to the one I just left in Florida a couple days ago. The thought of it sends a burning sensation through my shredded wrists. Lavender wafts through the air and my heartrate slows. I’m glad my bunk is nowhere near the bathrooms, or the bed I recovered in after my accident.
After my tour of the sleeping quarters, I’m ushered deeper into the military complex. Walls and doors mean nothing. I find myself transported into a circular room, lined with vidscreens. In the center of the room sits a ringed table of the blackest material I’ve ever seen. Sleek, dark chairs with deep red cushions tuck neatly under it.
In the middle, a platform emblazoned with the image of the Sister Nations seal, a hoot owl, rises up to meet me. I stare into those majestic yellow eyes as I listen to the voice in my head grow somber. “Even the wisest of creatures shall fall extinct if they are unwilling to adapt.” He recites the mantra I’ve known by heart since grade school. Then says it’s my duty as a good Samaritan to protect our new land and its people.
The air suddenly changes, pushes in around me. I can’t breathe. More lavender chokes me but it does no good. My vision is swept toward an outer room. The man in my head rages against these creatures he calls Unrein, even as I beg for the monotonous disinterested voice to come back.
Unrein. I remember hearing that word. People were calling Comier an Unrein when they…
A hard click of heels against tile sends my attention to a tall woman in a stark white lab coat, walking toward me. She smiles and nods her head, but it’s slightly off center, her eyes falling just left of making contact. As she begins her speech, her focus remains on that fixed point in space that isn’t quite me.
“Despite our best efforts,” the doctor says, waving an arm toward a far door, then pushing a pedal on the floor with the pointed toe of her designer high heel shoe, “we weren’t able to keep our new home fully secured. That’s where you come in, soldier.”
A guard, roughly the mountainous size of Marshall, lumbers into the room holding a thick chain. Attached to that chain — on all fours — is a bald, snarling, filthy boy. He’s nothing but bones and sharp edges. Dark brown skin stretches tight over a malformed bulbous skull. At the base of that skull is the tell-tale mottled ooze of an infected chip.
The guard yanks his end of the chain and the boy is thrown into the air, landing with a sickening thud on an exam table that appeared out of nowhere. Dingy yellow tissue paper crinkles under the boy’s hands and feet as he tries to dig in and hold still.
“One silver lining,” she smiles, walking toward the boy, “is an abundant resource of test material.”
The doctor pulls a small metal box from her pocket that reminds me of Merch’s docking station and holds it close to the boy’s sagging chip. With the push of a button, the boy seizes. Thick white foam bubbles out of his wide-open mouth. Two distinctly opposite sounds come out of him at once. The first is a deep throaty gurgle, like he’s choking to death. But the other… the other is a high-pitched lilting tone of someone on the threshold of pain tipping to pleasure.
The doctor and guard both stand perfectly still, their faces smooth masks of indifference.
Eternal seconds tick by before the boy’s limbs relax. He looks around the room, dark eyes clearer and more alert. Yet he doesn’t bother to wipe the spittle from his lip. A familiar tingle creeps up my spine again as the froth twitches with his upturned mouth.
Noticing the same thing, apparently, the guard steps closer to the boy and tightens his grip on the chain. The doctor’s disinterested mask falls away and her bright brown eyes fly open. She runs toward the door, throwing the small metal box in her panic. Neither are fast enough.
The boy leaps from the table and soars through the air, landing on the doctor’s back. His animalistic growls mix with her prey-like whimpers. The guard is jerked like a ragdoll at the end of the chain, stumbling to come to the doctor’s aid.
As the scene fades to black, their cries can still be heard… felt.
“Many such attempts at a cure have been unsuccessful.” The calm male voice and warm lavender carry me out of the exam room, through the barracks, and to the public square. Smiling people mill about, seem
ingly unaware of the horrors I just witnessed.
I’m ushered back to the outer edges of the clear dome where I now notice a line of soldiers. My tour guide says, “That is why you, soldier, are an integral part of this operation.”
//Synta.//
###
Cold liquid courses through the I.V. in my arm and a heavy lavender fog pulls me under. It feels nice. For the first time in forever, I’m relaxed. I forgot what this feels like, to not have a care in the world. This must be what people my age felt before The Glitch. How nice.
It’s so hard to focus on the voice in my pod. Around my pod. Everywhere. Still, I can’t understand what he’s saying. I don’t care.
//Synta, are you there? Is everything OK?//
But I hear him.
//Synta, I need to hear your voice.//
Yes, I hear him.
The male tour guide tries to talk over him, to tell me how important I am to the security of our mission. But I don’t hear him. I hear Howie.
//I’m here! I’m here! Can you hear me?// I struggle against the weight of this illusion. More cold liquid pumps into my arm. The male voice gets louder, straining to drown out Howie.
//I don’t know where I am.// He sounds frail, scared. I need to go to him. How do I get to him?
//Howie, I’m coming. Where are you? I’m coming.//
Soldiers march in formation around the dome, all wearing bright white paper suits over their camouflage, casting a muddy aura around their bodies. The male voice drags my own visceral image toward them, telling me again how important I am to the survival of this new planet.
I pull back, detaching myself from the illusion. Gliese will still be there in a year, when my ship arrives. Howie needs me right now. I will the interface to drop away so I can find him. I need to find him.
//I’ll find you Howie. Where are you? What do you see? Please hold on.//
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