“I’m coming too,” said Parker, slipping the ring he’d taken onto his finger.
“You’re staying here.” Mina’s tone was flat and final.
“No!” Parker shoved her shoulder as she turned to the terminal on the desk, but she barely moved. “You can’t leave me out of this.”
“It’s safer if you stay here.” She entered something on the terminal, and then glanced at him. “Do I need to lock you in your room?”
Two bright red spots had risen in Parker’s cheeks. “I hate you,” he spat.
Mina kept her eyes on the monitors. “Let’s go, Chase. Stand on one of those.” She indicated a trio of metal disks stamped into the floor.
Stepping onto the nearest circle, Chase avoided looking at Parker, embarrassed by his outburst. He still didn’t understand how Mina could act like his guardian but not be his sister. Was she some kind of teenage bodyguard? But he was too excited about the prospect of seeing Dr. Silvestri to waste any time asking about her. “How are we getting there?”
“Just stand still,” said Mina. She entered something onto a panel on the wall and held her hand against it for a moment.
“What’s—” Chase began to ask, and then the entire room faded out.
A horrible, icy sensation rushed over Chase, as if every nerve in his body had gone dead. He would have shouted had he not been utterly paralyzed. A moment later, the numb feeling passed and he buckled to one knee with a cry. A pinging sound came from the ground below him. He opened his eyes to see that his ring had slipped off and fallen to the asphalt.
They were standing on a city street, in what looked like an abandoned warehouse district. Mina looked down at him. “Are you okay?”
“That felt awful! What was that?” He picked up the ring and rubbed his arms, his skin still crawling.
Mina arched an eyebrow as she helped him to his feet. “Teleportation. It’s not supposed to feel like anything.”
“You didn’t feel it?”
“Of course not.”
As Chase looked around, adjusting to the new location, he realized that this must have been how he’d appeared so suddenly on Parker’s lawn—he’d teleported. Tall, dilapidated buildings surrounded them, and there were no other people or vehicles anywhere in sight. The sky overhead had faded to a grayish violet color, the white disk of one sun lingering near the horizon.
“Where are we? I thought you said we were going to the doctor’s,” he said, trying to hand the teleport ring back to Mina.
“No, keep the ring on, we might need to leave quickly.” Mina glanced around. “The doctor has an anti-inport device installed at his home. No one leaves their home open for anybody to teleport into without a return ring. It’s the same as leaving your doors unlocked.”
“He lives around here?” The desolate neighborhood didn’t look like the kind of place where anyone would live.
“He has an apartment above his lab.” Mina rushed down the street, glancing at the tops of the buildings like she was looking for snipers.
“Is this place dangerous?”
“This is an abandoned district. There’s no perimeter fence here. Normally when the sun is setting, the Zinnjerha are no danger because they go underground at night. But they’ve been acting against their nature for the past two weeks. Keep moving.”
After a minute they stopped in front of the boarded-up window of a dilapidated building. Like many of the others, it was decorated with a patchy mosaic of rust and spray-painted symbols.
“Dr. Silvestri, will you let us up?” Mina asked the solid wall. Chase gave her a dubious look, but moments later a segment of wall swung inward like a door. Ahead of them was a dark stairway leading up. The air inside had a sharp chemical tang.
Dr. Silvestri appeared in the doorway at the top of the stairs. “Mina, what’s wrong?”
“I had to remove him from the compound.” She spoke confidently, addressing the doctor like an equal. “He was becoming a threat.”
“I wasn’t threatening anything!” Chase protested.
Dr. Silvestri came down and met them midway on the landing. “Let’s go into my lab. Hi, Chase.” He opened a door on the side of the staircase, giving Chase a squeeze on the shoulder, but his worried smile made Chase’s stomach plummet. It didn’t look like he had good news.
“David, is everything okay?” came a woman’s voice from the apartment.
“It’s fine, Anna,” he called back up the stairs, closing the door gently behind them. Track lights flickered on overhead.
His lab was a long, narrow room lined with high tables. Strange machines filled the space, some whirring, others silent and covered in plastic sheets. A scattering of medical devices and flat metal screens covered the tables.
“I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Chase blurted out before Mina could say anything. “I was just trying to…” He realized he couldn’t say, trying to look for a way to escape the house. “I found the video of how I showed up outside.”
Dr. Silvestri nodded in a distracted way. “I don’t think you need to worry, Mina. I don’t think he’s a threat to us.” He leaned against a table and rubbed his forehead, frowning.
“What is it?” she asked.
“His microchip.”
The word brought Chase a mix of excitement and fear. “Did you get more information? Do you know where I’m from?”
The doctor kept speaking directly to Mina as if Chase weren’t even in the room. “The data on it is fairly corrupt, and also highly encoded, so I’m having trouble retrieving any information. But the technology…” He paused and glanced over, like he didn’t want to say this in front of Chase.
“What is it?” asked Mina in a low voice.
“It’s extremely similar to Parker’s,” the doctor told her quietly. “The design is … I’m almost certain it’s Asa’s work.”
A connection to Asa? Maybe this was why he’d shown up at the compound. Chase’s mind immediately began twisting and testing the name, trying to find any memories to fit it into, inventing an entire history with a stranger named Asa Kaplan. It was impossible to imagine, but so was everything else with a blank memory.
Mina hadn’t responded, fixing the doctor with her implacable stare, although it didn’t seem to bother him as much as it did Chase.
“Have you been able to contact Asa yet, to tell him what’s happened?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’ve queued up a message, but he’s out of range this week—I’m not expecting him to be reachable for two more days.”
Dr. Silvestri crossed his arms. “Do you think … could he have another?”
“No. Not that I’m aware of.”
“Another what?” asked Chase.
The doctor barely spared him a glance. “You’ll have to hold on to him at the compound until we reach Asa. I don’t know what this all means, but with his injury, I have a bad feeling that this is only the beginning. And we still don’t know how he got inside the compound.”
“I teleported, right?” said Chase. “That’s the only way I could just show up outside like that.”
Dr. Silvestri shook his head. “That’s impossible. The entire perimeter is ringed with scramblers.”
“With what?”
“Anti-inport devices. That compound is locked down like a fortress. For you to just turn up like that—it’s very strange. And very worrying.”
“Why?” asked Chase.
Dr. Silvestri pushed his glasses up on his nose and glanced at Mina. “Because Asa Kaplan has a lot of enemies.”
A million possibilities opened up in Chase’s mind, none of them good. All of them blocked by his missing memory. The freshly healed wound on the back of his head prickled, and he rubbed it. Had that been the work of Asa Kaplan’s enemies?
Mina was watching him with her creepy analytic stare. “I’ll take him back to the compound and keep him under close surveillance for now.”
“Give him the same level of protection you give to Parker.”
Mina nodded. “I’ll send the message to Asa as soon as I see his signal come back in range.”
Dr. Silvestri drew a deep breath and turned toward his work table. “I’ll keep working on the chip. I’ve also got a tissue sample I took from Chase’s wound. I’ll see if I can find any matches on his DNA. Be safe.”
“Be safe,” said Mina, taking a step away from the doctor. Chase reached for the door, but she stopped him. “No, we can leave from here. Just hold still.”
From the corner of his eye, Chase saw her touch the ring on her finger. This time he squeezed his eyes shut as the horrid sensation rushed over him, numbing his entire body. Instinctively he jerked backward from the discomfort.
Before he opened his eyes again, he knew something had gone wrong. A strong breeze blew on his face, and he heard a whistling, rustling sound all around him. Chase looked out into the darkening twilight, and his heart began to race. He was standing in the middle of a grass jungle, outside an electrified dome.
And he was alone.
CHAPTER FOUR
Chase stumbled backward through the tall stalks, his heart galloping in his chest. The grass grew so thick that he couldn’t see more than a few feet. “Mina?” he called in a shaky voice. No one answered. She wouldn’t have sent him here on purpose. Had the teleport failed?
Suddenly he lost his footing and went sprawling down, slicing his arms on the sharp edges of the grass. His left foot had slid into a wide, deep hole. He yanked it out in a panic, scuttling away on his hands and feet.
An ominous whirring sound echoed up from the hole. A moment later a pair of scaly black limbs reached out, followed by the dark, angular head of a Zinnjerha. Its protruding, glittery eyes swiveled toward him, and it clicked the curved pincers jutting from its mouth.
As the dark creature emerged from its tunnel, Chase sat paralyzed with terror. RUN! his mind screamed, but his legs were two dead weights. The Zinnjerha tilted its head and started toward him.
Chase finally forced his legs into action, scrambling backward until he could jump to his feet. The creature clicked, closing the distance between them in two long strides. More clicking cut through the air, coming from every direction. Another Zinnjerha pushed through the grass, and then a third.
Chase backed through the jungle of plants, not daring to turn and run. One of the creatures lunged forward, its scaly limbs raking against his skin as it knocked him to the ground. Then it pounced.
Struggling against a dark tangle of slashing limbs, Chase couldn’t even draw breath to scream. There was no way to escape. At least death didn’t hurt—his body just felt numb.
Like a shot from a cannon, something slammed into the Zinnjerha, tearing them away from Chase. It was too dark, things moved too quickly to see who his rescuer was. Strong arms swept him up in a tight hug, and they took off through the grass.
They burst onto the lawn of the Kaplan compound, crashing through the front door a second later. Long hair swept across Chase’s face as his rescuer turned and kicked the door shut behind them. A series of thuds landed against the outside.
Chase stared in bewilderment as Mina set him on the foyer floor. With swift, determined movements she tore off his shirt and scanned him from head to toe. Her expression slowly changed to puzzlement. Her face and arms were covered in deep cuts, but there was something strange about them. Why wasn’t there any blood?
More thuds rained against the door, joined by skittering noises on the roof.
“Defense, perimeter breach!” Mina shouted, jumping to her feet.
A deep, loud hum filled the air, with a resonance that sounded like it was coming from the bottom of the house. Wincing, Chase clapped his hands over his ears as it grew to a deafening pitch. When it finally wound back down again, all the other noises from outside had stopped as well.
Parker stood in the hallway, pale and wide-eyed. “What on Taras happened?”
Chase gaped up at him from the floor, too dazed to do anything but stare. The whole event had lasted less than a minute, but reality spun around him as if he were sitting in the eye of a tornado.
Mina cracked the door open and looked outside. “The teleport failed.”
“What?” A sharp note of fear came into Parker’s voice.
“It placed him outside the compound. I had to temporarily shut down the dome so I could run out and get him.”
“But the Zinnjerha—”
Mina closed the door and nodded curtly. “They were out.” She rubbed one of her slashed arms. “This is all ruined.” With a loud rip, she tore the skin right from her forearm and tossed it to the floor.
Chase shouted in horror and pedaled his feet to push himself away from the flap of skin.
“Good lords, relax!” Parker barked. “She’s an android. A robot. Are you really that dumb?”
The harsh words stung, but any embarrassment Chase might have felt was eclipsed by the sight of Mina’s arm. Instead of muscle and bone, what lay underneath was a gleaming metal limb. She wasn’t human. Finally, a few things were starting to make sense.
He looked up at Mina’s pretty face, now disfigured by the savage gashes on her cheeks and forehead. “Your skin…”
“It’s just bio-molding,” she said with a dismissive flick. “I can fix it.” She crouched down in front of Chase and examined him with a frown. “You were as good as dead out there, and yet you don’t have a single scratch.”
“Are you kidding me?” Parker stepped closer to look at Chase.
“Parker, go to your room,” said Mina, but he ignored her and she made no move to make him leave.
Chase looked at his arms and frowned. She was right—there wasn’t a mark anywhere on him. But there was no way those creatures hadn’t cut him up. He’d felt their sharp claws slashing at his arms when he tried to fend them off. “I don’t understand…,” he mumbled.
“You must be the luckiest kid alive, Chase.” Parker laughed and held out a hand. Chase returned the grin shakily as he let Parker pull him to his feet.
A cold metal hand closed on his arm. Chase turned to Mina, his mouth open in surprise. He could tell by her grip that the gesture wasn’t meant to comfort. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m going to have to lock you in your room.”
“What? Why? Dr. Silvestri said I wasn’t a threat.”
“No,” snapped Parker. “Come on, Mina. This is ridiculous.”
“It’s not personal, Chase. But both the teleport malfunction and your unharmed condition are unexplained anomalies. Your actions continue to create too many red-flag factors, and I can’t identify you as anything but a threat.”
“But what happened wasn’t my fault! Dr. Silvestri told you to protect me.”
Mina nodded. “I am. But my primary directive is to protect Parker, and the only way for me to perform both of these tasks is to separate you and lock you in your room.”
Her hand tightened on his arm, and Chase knew there was no use in arguing further with her programmed logic. He dropped his head and nodded. As Mina led him down the hall to his room with Parker’s angry protests behind them, he couldn’t help but feel like a guilty prisoner. But I didn’t do anything wrong! cried a voice in the back of his mind.
After the snick of the lock confirmed that he wasn’t going anywhere, Chase sat on his bed. He examined his left arm, whole and unblemished. It was strange—he really had felt a sting when those blades of grass sliced into his arms as he fell, and when the Zinnjerha were slashing at him. He told himself he must have imagined it. Parker was right, he had some kind of wild luck. Except for the whole amnesia thing, of course.
He lay back and stared at the ceiling for some time, reliving the attack over and over. Eventually the adrenaline began to wear off, and only weariness remained. He closed his eyes, visualizing the grass forest again, but this time his drowsy mind filled the forest with blank faces hiding between the blades. Sleep came like a tidal wave, crashing over and pulling him under.
* * *
Chase awoke wit
h a jump. His windowless room was pitch-dark, but he sensed he wasn’t alone.
“Sorry, that was me,” came Parker’s whispered voice. “Hold on.”
The overhead light flicked on and Chase winced, squinting in the brightness. “What are you doing here? I’m supposed to be locked in. I’m a threat to you.”
Parker snorted. “Right. You’re so threatening. Come on, get up. I’ve come to spring you from prison.”
“Are you crazy? Mina’s not going to let me go anywhere.”
“True. But Mina’s not here.” Parker waggled his eyebrows. “She had to make a run to some warehouse on the other side of the planet, something to do with fixing her bio-molding.”
“Isn’t she supposed to be here protecting you?”
“Yeah, but Asa’s got her running his affairs on this planet too, so she leaves all the time. If anything were to happen, she’d be able to find me anyway—I’ve got an ID microchip kind of like the one Dr. Silvestri found in you. Only mine’s got a tracker so that she can find me anywhere.” Parker made a wry face. “Lucky me, I’ll never be able to get rid of her.”
Watching Parker’s goofy expression, Chase considered whether to tell him what he’d learned, how similar their microchips actually were. The eye contact lasted a moment too long, and Parker frowned.
“What?”
Chase redirected his gaze to the floor. A cautious part of him wasn’t ready to share this information yet. “Nothing.” He took a deep breath and realized that he felt pretty well rested. How long had he slept? “What time is it?”
Parker sighed. “It’s leaving-the-house time. Are you coming with me, or did I just spend ten minutes breaking the code on your lock for nothing?”
“Go where?”
“We can go to Rother City. It’s the only real city on Trucon. We’ll grab some breakfast and look around. Maybe we can find something that’ll jog your memory.”
“Won’t Mina just find you and bring us back?”
“She always does.”
“And then I’ll get in trouble.”
Lost Planet 01 - The Lost Planet Page 3