Thetis--The Deep Sky Saga--Book Two

by Greg Boose

  “We’re not going into any portal, Jonah. Please, let’s just get out of here and find Paul and then check on Brooklyn.”

  “Come on!” the woman yells over her shoulder. “I think I found a way out.”

  Jonah keeps his beam on the symbols overhead, wondering what each would do if he jumped up there and touched them. He then spins on his heels to light up the ground behind him, checking to see if the skulls have come back, but there’s nothing there but a few fading blue spots on the ground.

  “Let’s go already!” the man shouts before being overwhelmed by a coughing fit.

  On the other side of the wall of boulders, the sounds of splashing come echoing down the tunnel. Then comes the collective humming of the mimics. With each new splash, the humming grows louder, and then Jonah can see flickering blue lights in the distance, rising over the wall.

  “Shit. They’re coming,” Vespa says, pulling Jonah farther down the tunnel. She grabs the flashlight out of his hand, and they catch up with the adults who have started to jog. Rocks crash into each other behind them, and they break into a sprint, their beams whipping around the tunnel like strobe lights, and every few seconds Jonah catches a glimpse of a symbol or two. And all he wants to do is stop and examine each one and find the one or two that will stop the voices in his head from visiting him again. There must be a clue in these symbols. There must be a reason he keeps finding them. Maybe if he finds the right one, he thinks, the voices will stop and never come back.

  The tunnel winds to the left, and when they make the turn, Jonah smells the humid, sweet air of the Thetis jungle. A pinprick of light appears a hundred yards down. As soon as they see it, all four of them pick up the pace. The humming of the mimics continues to grow behind them, and when Jonah looks over his shoulder, he sees dozens of blue clouds that continually form and dissipate as black shadows burst through them.

  “Hurry!” shouts the woman.

  The end of the tunnel gets closer and closer, and when they’re just a few steps away from exiting, the man turns and fires a series of lasers into the ceiling behind them. Rocks cascade down in sheets, and within seconds, they completely seal the tunnel.

  Jonah plants his hands on his head and falls to his knees. “But what about all the…” He stops himself from mentioning the symbols, but Vespa knows what he means. She wraps an arm around his chest and yanks him back to his feet.

  “They’re everywhere we go, Firstie. I’m sure we’ll find more.”

  He backpedals out of the cave and immediately feels the sun and sticky air on his back. He looks down at his shredded jumpsuit speckled with black mud and his own blood. Anger and frustration suddenly boil over inside him, and he looks up into the sky and opens his mouth to scream when Vespa’s voice stops him.

  “Paul!” Vespa shouts.

  Jonah spins around to see three more cave openings nearby. In the furthest one, Paul leans against its frame with his hand clutching his side. He watches as Vespa runs toward him and whips her arms around his neck, pulling him into an awkward hug. A second later, she has her hand around his waist, guiding him toward the group.

  The bald man wheezes as he dips his head under Paul’s arm. “I know where the rover is from here. Come on.”

  Far off on their right, a geyser explodes into the air, and Jonah watches the plume of water rise and fall as he follows the others through the trees. He thinks about the symbols, the skulls, the voices in his head, and he can’t help but wonder if he’s going crazy. Maybe he needs more medicine. Maybe he needs more sleep. He’s going straight to the hospital when he gets back.

  The rover comes into view, and they ease Paul into the back. The other four climb into their seats just as Paul lets out a sickly groan, causing everyone to turn and check on him. When the man turns back around to start the engine, he shouts. A dozen or so kids from Module Eight stand in pairs, holding hands just twenty feet away. In the middle of the huddle, sticking out like a scarecrow in a cornfield, is a strange-looking boy nearly as tall as Jonah, maybe even taller, with extremely long black hair. Each of the kids stare at the rover with blank faces and open mouths. And with their free hands, they slowly point to the sky.

  From the back, Paul says, “These fucking guys again.”

  “Just go!” the woman shouts, and the man puts the rover in reverse and speeds them back to the village.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Paul lies in his hospital bed with his eyes closed, his fingers picking at the edges of the bandage covering his chest. The lines carved into his skin have faded, but they’re still visible under the fluorescent lights. Jonah sits on a canvas chair against the wall with his own bandages crisscrossing his chest. He drifts off to sleep every few minutes before being jolted awake by visions of the connected skulls and the mimics and the Module Eight kids pointing to the sky.

  A bag of clear liquid hangs from a wobbly hook drilled into the wall above Jonah’s head. He watches the medicine drip through the tube and disappear into his forearm, hoping it won’t only help keep his eyes healthy, but that it will also help with his mind. He’s done with the voices and the hallucinations and the constant paranoia. He’s done being used and hunted and pulled against his will.

  Guilt pecks at his neck; he should be down the hall checking on Brooklyn. He should also be looking for Kip. He hasn’t seen nor heard of the hacker since they arrived on Thetis. After seeing the kids from Module Eight, he worries Kip will fall in with them, if he already hasn’t. Jonah should be doing so many things instead of sitting in this uncomfortable chair and trying not to fall asleep, but he’s been ordered to stay in this hospital room with Paul. Freeman stands guard outside the door, peeking his head inside every few minutes to ask if the boys need anything.

  “Paul?” Jonah whispers.

  The cadet opens his eyes and stops picking at his bandage. “What, Firstie?”

  “That first night on Achilles, when you went looking for Module Eight after dark, you started acting weird afterwards. What happened to you down there? Did you see something?”

  Paul lets out a laugh and then shifts away from Jonah, his muscular back rising and falling with heavy sighs.

  “Because I heard you talking to Vespa before we headed west. You said you saw something, and it sounded like it really freaked you out. I want to know what it was. I really need to know.”

  “You need to know? Oh, really? Look, it was just…it was just some stupid residual effects from the wormhole, Firstie. Not a big deal. Hallucinations or some shit.”

  Jonah takes the bag of medicine off its hook and painfully drags his chair around to the other side of Paul’s bed. He sits down directly in front of Paul’s face. The cadet’s eyes are wide open, his teeth clenched. Sweat beads off his head and soaks the pillow.

  “I want to hear about what just happened with Dr. Z and what she was saying about me, but right now, I really need to know about what you saw on Achilles,” Jonah says as he sets the medicine bag on his shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “Because I’ve been…I’ve been seeing things. And hearing things. Stuff like that.”

  “Yeah, well that’s because you’re a fucking weirdo with stuff wrong with you, and plus you’re a total wimp.”

  “Then you’re a total wimp, too. Because I know you saw something out there. I saw the way you talked to Vespa about it. I need to know because I think I’m going crazy or something. My head feels crazy all the time now.”

  Paul rolls over so that he’s facing the ceiling. Tears trickle down his cheeks, mixing with the sweat. After a long pause, he says, “Fine. Fine, Firstie. You want to know what I saw out there? Fine. All you kids went to sleep like a bunch of babies after the snouts rolled through, and while that Tunick kid and Sean were out killing the adults and writing shit on them and hanging them from trees, me and a couple other cadets went looking for Module Eight. Took us an hour, but we found it smashed and split open against the bottom of a hill. Do you want to know how many dead kids we saw? How
many were splattered all over the ground?”

  Jonah takes a deep breath and tries to imagine it all before saying yes, he does want to know.

  “Thirty or forty of them. At least. Dead kids just fucking dead everywhere. And some adults, too. Everywhere I turned my flashlight, there was another pile of them, or there was some kid’s arm or some dude’s leg. I even saw a cadet’s head all by itself. But the cadets I was with—Samuel and Mason—they took off pretty fast. Couldn’t handle it. Of course, that was the last time I saw those cadets, too. Guess Tunick and Sean got to them, too, I don’t know.”

  Just then the door cracks open and Freeman’s head pops through. He sees Jonah sitting next to Paul and smiles. “Need anything?”

  “Yeah,” Paul says. “I need my life back, man. I need to be done with all this bullshit. I didn’t sign up for this stuff; I came here to research and maintain security, not to be hypnotized or whatever by a lunatic doctor and left for, for…for slaughter in a cave.”

  A weak smile comes across Freeman’s face. “How about some water?”

  “Whatever, man,” Paul says.

  Freeman disappears, and Paul looks back at the ceiling. Jonah reaches for Paul’s shoulder but pulls back. He wants Paul to keep going. He knows there’s more to the story than just seeing so many dead kids.

  “So, then what happened? After the other cadets took off and you saw all the dead bodies and everything?”

  “I guess it took me about twenty minutes before I found any survivors down there. It was brutal, man. All those bodies. But I walked around this big hillside and there was this small group of dirty kids all just standing there in a huddle. I practically ran right into the bastards. Their clothes were all burnt up and melted to their skin, and they were just standing there, not saying a word. And yeah, it’s the same kids we just saw in the jungle holding hands and acting all crazy. But that night, they were standing there and putting one of their hands on this big black rock that was sticking out of the hill. I ran up to them and yelled at them to come with me, you know, told them I was there and I was rescuing them and to follow me and everything, but they didn’t move. They didn’t react. At all. Not one of them turned a head.”

  Jonah gives the medicine bag sitting on his shoulder another squeeze. “That’s…creepy.”

  “Right? Super creepy. So, I start shaking them by the shoulders and kind of tossing a couple of them to the ground, but they got right back up and put their hands right back on that stupid rock. I saw that one of the kids was this really tall demic I’ve seen before. The really tall one with the long hair, the one that was on the road just now.”

  Jonah remembers him well. He can see his stony face and long black hair and narrow shoulders hovering over the heads of the other kids.

  “So, that guy,” Paul continues, “He’s like standing there with his hand against the rock, and it’s high above all the other kids’ hands because he’s so tall, and he’s saying something to the rest of them, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. So, I get closer and closer until I’m physically pushing my way into their huddle. And I’m yelling in their faces, and I’m yanking them away from the rock and pushing them down on the ground.” Paul raises his hands off of his chest in exasperation. “But they just keep getting back up. And I mean, I really wailed on this one boy. Used him as a fucking punching bag. Knocked two of his teeth out, I swear to god. Blood all over his white shirt.”

  Jonah shudders as he imagines Paul taking the opportunity to beat on someone without repercussions. Jonah stands, balancing the bag on his shoulder. “What was the tall kid saying?”

  “I couldn’t tell at first; it was really fast, over and over, and it sounded like just bullshit gibberish and kind of robotic. I pushed my way out the huddle and got out just as the tall kid is finishing saying whatever he’s saying, and then all at the same time they turn their heads—with their hands still on the rock, they never take their hands off the stupid rock—and they look around, staring at nothing, and…I don’t know, it looked like they were sleeping with their eyes open and not looking at anything, but at the same time they were definitely looking at something. I waved my arms and yelled at them, but they never looked at me. So, I was like ‘Fuck it,’ you know, and I walked right up to the black rock and put my hand on it, too. And then I started to see…” Paul takes a long, deep breath and then covers his mouth as he tries to hold back a heaving sob. After a few seconds, he steels himself and runs his hands over the blond stubble on his head. “That’s when I started to see the ghosts. Or whatever they were. Ghosts? All I know, Firstie, is that when I put my hand on that rock and looked over my shoulder like the rest of them, the entire hillside was covered with these yellow-ish ghost monster things. Hundreds of them marching back and forth and they were see-through and kind of not see-through at the same time. And they were about eight or ten feet high, and they had two bodies that were connected in some way like conjoined twins or whatever. And they had these two scary looking heads like birds or some shit.”

  Jonah drops back into his chair, and the bag of medicine falls onto the floor with a quiet thud. His mind is back in the tunnel with the blue lights and two connected skulls with beaks he saw in the cave. The ones that just seemingly disappeared by the time Vespa and the others arrived. “That’s…”

  “Insane? Yeah, it’s insane, Firstie. But I saw it. I saw them. Most of them were just gliding around, going up and down the hill, just up and down, up and down, but then there was this other small group of them of maybe four or five that circled around me. They’d go sideways up over the black rock and then back on the ground and keep circling. That’s when I finally heard what the tall kid was saying because he slowed down.”

  Jonah clears his throat and reaches down for the medicine at his feet. He can’t bring himself to look at Paul’s face.

  “The kid said…he said, ‘We keep the fingers.’”

  The door flies open, and Mirker marches in with a tall glass of water spilling over his fist.

  “You, get back to where you were sitting,” the man says to Jonah. And then he presses the spilling glass of water into Paul’s shoulder. “This is for you. Drink it.”

  Paul stares at Jonah for a long moment before sitting up and taking the glass. He downs half of it in one gulp and then cradles the cup in his lap. Jonah looks from Mirker to Paul with the words “We keep the fingers” on the tip of his tongue, and then he slowly drags his chair back to the wall and hangs the bag on the hook. What does that mean? Whose fingers? These two-headed ghosts want their fingers?

  Mirker paces back and forth as Paul takes another sip of water. The man looks as if he hasn’t slept in days; dark bags sit under his eyes like rotten fruit, his muscular shoulders slump forward, and the man smells like someone too busy to shower.

  Mirker rips the empty glass out of Paul’s shaking hand. “You going to tell me what happened out there? Tell me why I lost one of my best men to a bunch of fucking alien apes so we could drag your ass back in here like a little baby?”

  Paul connects eyes with Jonah and then looks down at the bandages on his chest. “Honestly, sir, I don’t know. I don’t remember. I went to sleep in my yurt at 2100 hours, and then when I woke up I was sitting in a cave with Dr. Zarembo standing over me with a sharp stick in her hand and my skin was covered with a bunch of lines. She started saying things, but when I tried to respond, she stabbed me. I woke up again and I see Firstie over here and Vespa and some woman and a hell of a lot of mimics coming at me.”

  “And what did the doctor say, cadet? Before she stabbed you with a sharp stick.”

  “Sir, she was talking about someone. She was talking about…him.” Paul nods toward Jonah.

  Mirker twists around. “Talking about you? Now, why would the nutso doctor who we had to lock up for attacking you earlier be talking about you?”

  “I don’t know,” Jonah says. “But I also don’t know how if you locked her up she was able to get out and take
Cadet Sigg outside the perimeter with her.”

  A huge grin takes over Mirker’s face as he squats in front of Jonah, putting his nose inches from the cadet’s. “Now, if I remember correctly, I had to save your skinny behind from that crazy little lady just yesterday. You know how much of a pain in the ass she can be. The bitch got the jump on a couple of my officers. Now, if I were to have been there when she pulled that shit…” The man clenches his fist dramatically next to Jonah’s face. “She would be on top of the compost heap.”

  “Where is she now?” Paul asks.

  “We’re tracking her,” Mirker says as he stands up straight. He takes Jonah’s bag of medicine off its hook and holds it up to his eyes. “Don’t you worry about that. But, Cadet Lincoln, seems to me like trouble follows you wherever you go. Here. On Achilles. I’ve read your report, kid. I know your background. It’s just full of trouble.”

  Jonah yanks the tube out of his forearm and stands up. He doesn’t need to listen to this. Not here. Not right now. “I’m going to go check on Brooklyn.”

  Mirker snatches Jonah’s wrist and yanks him back into his chair. “Like hell you are. What you’re going to do is sit here, and you and Cadet Sigg are going to tell me everything that happened on Achilles. From before the crash up until we picked you up with Kip Kurtz. I’ve been patient, but I’m done waiting. I’m very much done. You’re going to tell me. Now.”

  Jonah looks back at Paul who slowly shakes his head. He doesn’t trust Mirker either.

  “I was asleep, we crashed, and then we waited around to be rescued,” Jonah shrugs. “That’s it.” Then, in almost a whisper, he adds, “Thank you for rescuing us.”

  Mirker puts his hand on Jonah’s shoulder and gives the cadet a sarcastic wink. “You’re very welcome for the rescue. It was our fucking pleasure, believe me. Now, you should know that I’ve talked to that dopey Griffin kid with the dumbass lion in his hair, and he’s told me a bit more of your adventures than you all just sitting around and waiting to be rescued. For example, you kids murdered some of the adults. Hung them from trees. Slit their throats. Stuff like that.”