“I don’t know.” Chase felt stupid admitting that he had no idea what it meant when he was the one who’d said it.
“Try harder. Can’t you dig up any personal memories at all?”
Did Parker think he wasn’t trying hard enough? “No. Where’s Dr. Silvestri?”
“At his home, I assume. How about any type of strong feelings? Do you remember any fear? Anger?”
“No,” snapped Chase. “Will you let up? I don’t remember anything at all, and you’re not helping.”
Parker looked surprised for a moment, and then his face closed, as though he’d drawn a curtain over it. “Fine,” he muttered. He punched a button on the panel, and a screen lit up on the wall and started playing a video feed of a crowd of people in a packed street.
A black sliver appeared directly below the video screen, widening as a large panel of the wall slid upward. Chase watched in wonder as a tabletop, set for two and covered with platters of food, extended out into the room. On either side of it, sections of floor rose silently to form two benches, flipping their tops to reveal a cushioned side.
Parker took a seat on one of the benches. “Don’t you want any breakfast?”
Chase gaped at the feast spread out on the table. “Where did it come from?”
“Autokitchen. Sit down.”
Chase sank onto a bench, breathing in the rich smells from a tower of hot buttered bread rings, platters of syrup-drizzled fruits, and a bowl of small red jelly-like balls. “But who made it?”
Parker gave him that examining look again, and Chase couldn’t tell whether his expression was incredulous or irritated. “It’s from a food synthesizer. Are you going to eat?”
His stomach suddenly roaring, Chase grabbed a bread ring and crammed the whole thing in his mouth in two bites. Crispy and sweet, it dissolved into buttery richness in his mouth. He reached for another.
“Whoa there, animal, don’t choke yourself.” Parker leaned over his plate and stared as Chase attacked the food like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. He touched the video screen beside the table, and the volume increased. On the screen, a sharp-faced man gesticulated behind a podium, speaking in a strange, fluid language.
“What are you watching?” asked Chase through a mouthful of tart green berries.
“I like the news,” said Parker defensively. “Why, would you prefer cartoons?”
Chase rolled his eyes. The video changed, and a blond anchorwoman stood in front of an ornate building. “Leaders from several planets are already commending the new Lyolian president-elect for his strong stance on shutting down interplanetary trafficking networks,” she chirped. “Here in the capital it’s a happy day, but in the wake of this surprising election, many are holding their breath as they await the response of the planet’s Karsha Ven militants. This is Parri Dietz reporting live on Lyolia. Back to you, Boris.”
“What’s Lyolia?” asked Chase.
Parker’s head snapped around so fast Chase could practically hear the air crack. “What?”
“I—I just haven’t heard of…”
Parker stared at him intensely for a moment. He pointed at the newsfeed. “What’s that called?”
“Um, a video screen?”
“What rises in the morning and sets in the evening?”
“You mean the sun?”
“Is a fork an animal or a utensil?”
Chase scoffed. “A utensil. Why are you—”
Parker held up a hand to interrupt him. “How many planets are there in the Federation?”
“What Federation?”
Parker’s eyes widened. “Fifteen. Is Trucon a colony planet or an origin planet?”
Chase shook his head.
“Colony. What’s the capital of Earth?”
“Earth?”
“Good lords! Earth, your origin planet. You’re Earthan, Chase—come on, you’ve gotta know that.”
Chase shook his head, the names and information whirling around inside it. How did Parker know that he was Earthan, whatever that was? What other options were there?
Parker stared at him. “Last night after you passed out, I was reading up on amnesia. If you know what a video screen is, what a fork is, that means your semantic memory—your memory of facts and information—is intact. You should be able to answer the most basic questions about the galaxy. How could you not know this stuff? How could you not even know that you’re Earthan?”
Chase flushed and started to stammer something about memory loss. The gaping void in his brain was bad enough, but somehow it made things worse to know that the only clue he had so far was that he didn’t know much about anything. “How do you know I didn’t just forget that too?”
Parker narrowed his eyes, shaking his head. “After you showed up here yesterday, Dr. Silvestri and I figured you probably escaped from one of the slave traffickers. They’re always moving shipments of slaves around in the deserts here. But even a slave would know what Earth is, unless you’re just really dumb. Did you grow up in a wormhole or something?” A smile stretched across Parker’s face. Was he enjoying this?
“Obviously I don’t have any idea where I grew up,” said Chase through clenched teeth.
Parker opened his mouth to say something else, but his eyes flickered past Chase, and abruptly the smile vanished. His expression darkened into a scowl.
Chase glanced over his shoulder. To his surprise, a teenage girl with long brown hair had walked into the living room. Her bright eyes locked on Chase, and she walked right up to his chair and extended a hand.
“Hello, Chase,” she said.
“Um, hi?” He turned around and shook her hand. Behind him, he heard Parker snort. Why hadn’t Parker mentioned this girl?
“Welcome to our home. My name is Mina.” Her face was calm, almost expressionless, but her blue eyes rested on him with an unsettling intensity.
So Parker had lied about living alone. “Nice to meet you, Mina,” he mumbled.
“Where did you come from?”
Did she really not know about his amnesia, or was this another attempt to trick his brain into giving up the answer? “I don’t know,” Chase said after a strained pause. “I can’t remember.”
“Okay.” She stared for a few more uncomfortable seconds, analyzing him. What kind of weirdo was she? A normal teenager might try to make conversation, or at least blink.
Parker flicked at a piece of bread on the table, shooting a crumb across the room. “What do you want, Mina?”
“I’m going out to run some errands.” Her eyes never left Chase. “Don’t leave the house.” She turned around and walked away as suddenly as she had arrived.
“Who was that?” Chase asked after she had left. “Is she your sister or something?”
Parker’s eyes widened. “Are you—? You’ve got to be kidding me.” He got up from the table, shaking his head. “Honestly, I’m starting to think maybe you were raised in a wormhole.”
Chase stared at the video feed, grinding his teeth. Obviously there was a lot he didn’t understand. Parker didn’t need to make him feel so stupid. “When is Dr. Silvestri going to come back?”
“I don’t know. Hey, get up.” Parker jabbed him in the shoulder. “Come with me. You want to play a piloting game? I’ve got a pretty good virtual deck downstairs.”
“I don’t want to play any stupid games,” said Chase angrily. “I need to figure out who I am, did you forget that?”
Parker raised his hands, backing away. “Fine, freak. Whatever. Do what you want.”
Feeling guilty for his outburst, Chase added, “But thanks for breakfast. And for letting me stay here.”
“Like I had a choice,” Parker said over his shoulder as he walked away.
Chase watched the video feed, where people were dancing in a street somewhere. As far as he could tell, they looked the same as he did. Did that mean they were all Earthan? What was the opposite of an Earthan?
If he couldn’t remember where he was from, the best thing to do would
be to retrace his steps from yesterday. If he’d really come in from the desert, maybe the desert was where he should start looking for clues.
Don’t leave the house.
Yeah, right, Chase thought, jumping up from the table. He headed down the hall, away from the living room and past his bedroom, until he reached a foyer with a large metal door. He yanked the door open, and a wave of heat washed past.
The sky was a strange bright yellow, casting a warm glow over the landscape. Chase stood for a moment with his eyes half closed, soaking in the warmth on his face. He tried to look around, but it was difficult to see in the blinding sunlight. A pale green lawn stretched out before him, dotted with a few gnarled trees. Beyond the lawn, all he could see was a bordering jungle of leafy plants that looked like giant blades of grass, each one as wide as a man’s shoulders. He took a step to the left, planning to circle around the house.
Something shot up out of the grass forest into the sky, a large, dark shape moving at incredible speed. Chase took a wary step backward, raising his hand over his eyes as it vanished against the glare of the sunlight. Then he saw it—a scaly black creature at least twice his size, with wings spread like a fan and far too many reaching limbs. He froze, holding his breath.
It was headed straight for him.
A loud electric crackle vibrated through the air, and the creature suddenly rebounded, tumbling inexplicably backward, away from the house. Chase tasted metal, and the hair on his arms stood up. The creature fell into the grass forest and vanished, but a second later, three more leapt up into the sky.
Chase stumbled backward into the foyer, slamming the metal door shut. A siren was blaring inside the house, though he hadn’t noticed when it started. He turned around to call for help and found himself face-to-face with Parker.
“What are you doing?” Parker shouted. “Are you insane? Defense, lock sequence!”
The siren cut off as the heavy thunk of a deadbolt falling into place sounded in the door behind Chase. His heart still hammered in his chest. “What was that?”
“You mean the Zinnjerha?” Parker ran a hand through his hair. “Good lords. If you don’t know what those are, there’s no way you’re from Trucon. If anything, anything, is burned into your memory, that would be it. The whole planet is full of those underground monsters. They could rip you to shreds.”
“Why did—it couldn’t get to me—”
“There’s an electrified dome protecting the house,” said Parker, waving his hand in a circular motion. “But you still can’t go walking around out there like bait. One or two or five can’t get through, but get two hundred of them riled up and I can’t promise we’ll be okay. Especially with the way they’ve been acting lately.”
“Everyone here lives like this?” Why would anyone live on a planet where they couldn’t go outside?
“No, in the cities there’s a perimeter fence. But we’re pretty far from any city out here.”
An image formed in Chase’s mind of where they were, in a solitary house out in the middle of nowhere. On a planet he wasn’t even from, apparently. “Where did you first find me yesterday?”
“Out there in the yard, setting off all the perimeter breach alarms. And, yes, the Zinnjerha were trying to break through and tear you apart.”
“How did I get there?”
Parker shook his head. “I don’t know. Nobody knows. That’s why Dr. Silvestri told me not to let you leave.”
Chase looked back at the door. “Could I even go anywhere if I wanted to?”
“Not really.” Parker shrugged. “Sorry. You’re stuck here for now.”
Anxiety teased at Chase’s stomach. Dr. Silvestri had seemed so friendly when he told Chase it was safer for him at the compound. But that wasn’t the real reason he’d asked him to stay put. He was suspicious of how Chase had gotten inside.
Nobody told the truth here, it seemed.
CHAPTER THREE
Sitting alone in his room, Chase felt like the walls were closing in on him. After locking him in the house, Parker had once again offered to play the same dumb piloting game with him, and then stalked away when Chase turned him down. It was starting to infuriate Chase that Parker treated him like a funny houseguest and not someone with a major problem.
He reached back and tore the bandage from his head. Unable to see his wound, he pulled aside the hair that fell over it and gingerly touched the area at the base of his skull. The doctor’s healing gel had done its job—the wound was already covered in a layer of smooth, tender skin.
Whatever had happened to Chase, whoever had given him this injury, the biggest question bothering him was how he had gotten to this place. Parker said nobody knew, but he could have been lying. Clearly he had no problem with dishonesty, since he’d lied to Chase about living alone.
The house was a frosted prison, surrounded by a forest of monsters. The doctor had deceived him. Mina, whoever she was, was a weirdo who’d barely spoken to him. And Parker was, well, Parker. There had to be a way to contact the outside world from this house. Even if he couldn’t get out, he could try to look for help from someone.
Chase slipped out of his room and down the hall. He returned to the foyer, where a second hallway branched off, but this hall only lead to an empty dining room. Hadn’t Parker said something about there being a downstairs?
When Chase walked back from the dining room, he noticed a closed door that he hadn’t seen the first time. It opened onto a flight of stairs leading down.
“Hello?” He stood at the top of the stairs for a moment and descended, taking light steps. Would he be in trouble if someone caught him coming down here?
Another long hallway stretched out before Chase at the bottom of the stairs. The first door he came to was locked, as was the one after that. He didn’t expect much from the third door he tried, but it swung open on a small room that held little more than a trio of video monitors and a keyboard. There were some other items in the room that he barely glanced at, wall panels and storage cabinets. He went straight to the monitors.
Maybe Parker was on to something with his semantic memory talk, because Chase navigated easily enough through the video screens, and the keyboard felt natural under his hands. He found his way to a messaging console and started looking for emergency contacts. A notification blinking on the side of the screen caught his eye: Transmission pending.
Chase clicked on the notification, and a message popped onto the screen.
Code Maartens—immediate response required
Unknown Earthan boy, approx. 13 years, appeared within compound yesterday with blaster wound to back of head and damaged ID marker. Bypassed all level 1 and 2 defenses by no explicable means (see attached video); destruction countermeasure initiated but deactivated by P. Current status: Silvestri examining marker, boy being held pending your instruction. Threat level: uncertain.
Pending whose instruction? Who had written this message, and why were they calling him a threat? He had to scan the words destruction countermeasure several times before their meaning sank in. The compound’s defenses would have annihilated him if this P, undoubtedly Parker, hadn’t stepped in.
With a growing sense of dread, Chase opened the attachment. A video window opened, playing a recording that must have come from a security camera outside the house. It showed the pale lawn outside the compound, with the grass forest waving gently in the background.
A prone body suddenly appeared on the lawn. Was that him? How had he just shown up like that? He winced as he watched himself sit up and curl over in pain. There was a flash of black in the background, and then another: the Zinnjerha.
Parker raced across the lawn, sliding to a stop beside him, throwing his arms in large gestures. The black shapes of the bounding Zinnjerha grew in number, darkening the back of the screen. Chase saw himself speaking and then collapsing in front of Parker. After a moment of looking around in a panic and shouting, Parker hooked his hands under Chase’s arms and dragged him back toward the house
.
When the video clip ended, the screen went gray. Chase leaned back in the chair. So Parker had saved him. For a moment he was impressed, but he reminded himself that in bringing Chase inside, Parker had merely been protecting himself and his home.
“What are you doing here?”
Chase jumped out of the chair, heart thumping. Mina stood in the doorway with a sober and somehow menacing expression. “Who are you trying to contact?” she asked.
“What? No one, I was just—”
She took a step toward him. “Who sent you? What are you doing here?”
“No one.” Chase’s voice shook as if he’d been caught stealing. “I wanted to see the video. I’m trying to figure out what happened to me.”
She advanced another step, backing Chase into a corner. “I won’t hurt you if you come with me.” Her hand fell on his shoulder like an iron weight.
“Let me go!” Chase twisted out from under her hand and tried to dart past, but she sidestepped, blocking him. His panic skyrocketed and his legs felt so shaky, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to run anyway.
“What’s going on?” Parker appeared in the doorway, looking confused.
“Go back to your room, Parker,” said Mina. Still blocking Chase, she opened a cabinet on the wall, from which she pulled out two silver rings. She slid one on her finger and held the other out to him. “Put this on.”
“No!” Parker rushed into the room and snatched the ring from her palm. “You can’t take him away! I won’t let you.”
“He’s becoming a threat. I’m removing him from the house.”
“I wasn’t doing anything!” insisted Chase.
“You were spying on our network and interfering with our communications.” Mina took another ring from the cabinet. “Put this on and come with me.”
Parker grabbed her wrist. “Stand down, Mina. Stand down, you stupid—”
“Where are you taking me?” Chase interrupted.
“To Dr. Silvestri.”
Chase paused as a spark of hope ignited inside him. While he still didn’t know how much he trusted Dr. Silvestri, he did have Chase’s microchip, and possibly more answers for him by now. “Okay,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ll go with you.”
Lost Planet 01 - The Lost Planet Page 2