Thetis--The Deep Sky Saga--Book Two
Page 11
“We use that sucker a lot,” Matteo says, pointing to a silver machine that looks like a cannon, except that it’s flat and topped with a giant blade.
“And that’s a…”
“Wood chopper. Only way we could have put up the fence as fast as we did or build the farm building and other stuff. Anyway, this way.”
In the southeast corner of the village, Jonah finds himself in the shadow of the Woesner Telescope. The giant black tube extends out of the building’s roof at a forty-five-degree angle, and when Jonah follows the angle up into the sky, he sees it’s pointed right at Achilles. The moon looks beautiful from where he stands; it’s blue and red and purple and dotted with clouds. It looks so close that Jonah feels like he can almost touch it. He squints to look for any signs of smoke or fire on the moon but sees none. It’s an incredible feeling knowing what type of mess is up there when it looks so peaceful from this spot.
“They definitely use that guy a lot,” Matteo says as he begins to circle a neighboring tent. “Day and night, someone’s in there looking into the sky.”
Jonah stands in the telescope’s shadow until a wave of goose bumps sweeps over his body. “I pretty much pinned all my hopes and dreams on this thing when we crashed. Lots of us were depending on it for you all to see us up there from down here and then come and get us.”
Matteo reappears on the other side of the tent, his clipboard under his arm. “So, hey, can you tell me what actually happened up there? I’m unbelievably curious about you guys. Like, how did you even survive? I think I would have freaked out and like died on the first day. Did you have to eat any of the animals to survive? And how come only one adult was rescued with all you kids?”
“All the adults…” Jonah starts. He doesn’t even know how to say what happened to them, how they were tortured, killed, carved into, and written on like warning signs. “They pretty much all died in the crash.”
“All but one? But that doctor?”
Jonah stops staring at the telescope and looks at his boots caked with dried black mud from the caves. He still can’t believe Dr. Zarembo turned on him like that. She must have seen what Paul and the kids from Module Eight saw. Maybe she knows what those ghosts want. Maybe she’s hearing the same voices in her head that he hears, what Tunick heard. After he tracks down Griffin to find out exactly what he told Mirker, she’s next on his list to talk to.
“Yeah,” he says. “Dr. Z was it. The only adult to survive the crash.”
The cadet walks around the telescope’s building with Matteo quietly on his heels. When Jonah finds the door, he takes a deep breath and pulls on the handle. It’s locked. Or stuck. He pulls again, harder.
“Whoa, you can’t go in—”
The door suddenly opens, sending Jonah backpedaling into Matteo’s chest. Standing in the doorway is the short Indian woman from the rescue mission to find Paul. When she sees Jonah, she immediately grabs the door and pulls it closed, leaving just her face visible.
“You can’t be here,” she says to Jonah before eyeing Matteo behind him. “You know better than to let him inside here. What were you thinking?”
Matteo puts a hand on Jonah’s arm and tries to pull him away. “Come on, we have work to do.”
“But I want to see the telescope,” Jonah says. He thinks about Hopper and Malix and the Splitters leaving on Tunick’s ship. They could be on the other side of Achilles, which should be visible from the telescope right now, or they could be on Peleus, or they could be orbiting Thetis right now looking for a good place to land. “I want to talk to someone about looking at Peleus with it. When can I do that?”
The woman looks from Jonah to Matteo, and without saying another word, she closes the door and locks it.
“Wait! Why can’t I see it?” Jonah yells into the door.
Matteo gives his arm another tug, spinning the cadet around. Before Jonah can ask why the telescope is off limits, he sees that standing behind Matteo in a tight huddle are the kids from Module Eight. There are a dozen or more of them, kids of different ages and heights, and each of them holds another’s hand, save for the tall boy who stands directly in the middle of the huddle. For the first time, he sees his long black hair is burnt and uneven, angling up his back like a steep hillside.
All their faces are blank, their shoulders relaxed. A girl no older than twelve breaks off and steps toward Jonah, leaving her partner with his hand up and out, awaiting her return.
Her blonde hair is covered in dirt, and when she raises her face up at Jonah, a thin blanket of dust falls from her head onto her shoulders. Jonah thinks of Paul’s story and doesn’t know if he should fear this girl or try to save her. He wonders if they all still see the giant two-headed ghosts. Perhaps several are circling them right now. Jonah looks left and right. If Paul could see the ghosts, then maybe he can, too?
“Follow us,” she says in a flat tone.
Matteo puts his hand up. “Just get out of here, freak. We have work to do.”
The girl extends a finger, pointing right at Jonah’s face. “Follow us.”
Jonah looks from the girl to the huddle of kids behind her. Their faces remain blank, but it’s then Jonah notices their milky eyes constantly shifting. They do still see the ghosts, Jonah realizes. And those ghosts are all around them right now. Jonah spins around with his breath caught in his throat, squinting and focusing, trying to see what they see. He feels something. The air suddenly feels electric. He whips one arm out from his side and waves it back and forth in front of himself. Maybe he’s doing nothing but creating a little bit of breeze, or maybe he’s pushing his arm right through some entity’s ghostly body.
Matteo sighs and pushes the girl’s finger out of Jonah’s face and then turns her around. “Seriously, get the hell out of here. Shouldn’t you all be locked up or something? Or at least on some kind of medication? Nobody is following you weirdos anywhere. Why don’t you follow me to the med tent?”
The girl’s shoulders rise and stiffen, and a second later she’s in the air, leaping at Matteo with both hands out like claws. Jonah reacts immediately, and with one arm, he intercepts the girl in midair. The cadet sets the girl on the ground, turns her around, and pushes her back toward the huddle, shouting, “Leave me alone!”
The girl spins around and again leaps at Matteo. Jonah has no choice but to put his foot out, and he kicks the girl right in the chest. She stumbles backward, falling into the legs of the rest of the Module Eight kids.
The tall boy with the burnt hair lowers his forehead and flares his nostrils. His eyes stop shifting and focus only on Jonah. Without breaking eye contact, he bends down and whispers into the fallen girl’s ear. When he straightens back up, the girl slowly gets to her feet and points at Jonah and screams, “Follow us! Enter the exit! Exit the entrance! Follow us! We keep your fingers! They choose you! HE CHOOSES YOU!”
She then slowly lowers her hand back to her partner’s and takes it. The Module Eight kids begin shifting their eyes again, and then a moment later, they turn to the left in unison and walk up to the telescope’s building. They each place a hand on the wall, bow their heads, but then a few seconds later, they walk away.
“What the hell was that?” Matteo asks. “She chooses you? For what?”
“I have no idea.” Jonah’s hands are shaking. He watches the huddle disappear amongst the tents, and when he’s sure they’re gone, he falls to his knees. They choose you. That girl just repeated what the voices in his head have been saying. We keep your fingers. Paul was telling the truth.
Matteo takes a quick glance at his clipboard and then drops it to his side. “Were they like that on Achilles? Or did they get like that because of the wormhole, or what?”
Jonah pushes himself back up to his feet. “Where do we keep the prisoners?”
“Prisoners?”
“Where do people get locked up?”
Matteo scratches his neck. “At the guard’s station. In the northwest corner
next to the gate. But you won’t be able to—”
Jonah turns and runs. Matteo yells something, but he’s already too far away to hear it. Jonah flattens his hands and breaks into an all-out sprint, his head swiveling back and forth the whole time trying to locate the huddle of Module Eight kids or Griffin or Vespa or Mirker. He passes other villagers who stop whatever they’re doing to stare at him as he flies by.
He pounds on the door under the red light bulb for a solid minute before the man wearing the red ball cap stumbles out. Again, he reeks of alcohol.
He squints at Jonah as if he doesn’t remember him from that morning. “Yeah?”
Jonah wipes a layer of sweat from his face. “I need to talk to Dr. Zarembo, if she’s inside. Just for a second.”
With his hands on his hips, the man chuckles and starts to close the door with the toe of his boot.
“Wait!” Jonah yells. “I was on Achilles with her. I think I might know what’s wrong with her. Maybe I can help her not be crazy anymore.”
The man stops closing the door, but he doesn’t open it back up, either. “Yeah, and how are you going to do that?”
“By talking to her. She’s a good person. Or, at least she was. And if I could help her get well, then there would be another doctor around here to help out. Isn’t that why she was on the trip here in the first place? So we could have another doctor here? Maybe she can help find a cure for the atmosphere problem here? Maybe she’s the key to saving us all.”
A few seconds pass as the man mulls over Jonah’s words, and then he looks over his shoulder and into the room as if he wants to make sure no one is listening. Leaning forward, he says in a slur, “Look, I know she’s a good person. I knew Laura, I mean Dr. Zarembo, back on Earth when we were stationed in Baltimore together. But I…” He pauses to look back over his shoulder again. “But I think the wormhole really did a number on her.”
“It wasn’t the wormhole that turned her like that.”
“Yeah? Then what happened to her, smart guy?”
Jonah takes a step toward the door. “That’s what I’m going to ask her.”
The man hesitates but gets out of Jonah’s way. The concrete room is small and cold and drab with nothing on the walls. A desk made of fuzzy black wood sits in the corner, covered with hand-drawn maps and field notes, plus there’s an empty plate of food and a sheaf standing up, curled into a half circle showing different video feeds. On its screen, Jonah sees the huddle of Module Eight kids standing against the fence near the hospital, and then the screen changes to a view of a drone sweeping over a steaming body of water.
“She’s in here. All the way down,” the man says as he fumbles with a key ring. He unlocks a door next to the desk and bows sarcastically. “Your date awaits, my lord.”
Jonah walks into a narrow dark hallway that smells like sweat and rotten food; he covers his mouth and nose as he makes his way to the end. There, on the left, stands a thick door with a small barred window that Jonah has to lean down to see into.
“And hurry up,” the man slurs from down the hall. “Because if Mirker knows you’re in here, I’m a dead man, man. But then again, we’re all dead men. So, fuck it, I guess.”
It takes a moment for Jonah to see Dr. Zarembo inside the dimly lit cell. He finds her by her voice; she’s standing flush with the wall, her nose practically touching the concrete. Her one hand is flat against the wall while her other hand jumps wildly above her head, opening and closing, pointing at the ceiling. Instantly, Jonah is reminded of Tunick’s erratic behavior when they found him on the island. She mumbles something Jonah can’t understand, so he holds his breath and listens closely. After a few seconds, he understands what she says: “Eat the seeds. He has to eat the seeds. Eat the seeds. He has to eat the seeds.” Over and over and over.
Jonah takes a deep breath and then puts his mouth in between the bars of the window. Quietly, he says, “Dr. Z? Hey, Dr. Z? It’s me, Jonah Lincoln from the ship. I’m here to check on you just like you checked on me after we crashed. I wanted to see if you’re okay.”
The woman’s body stiffens at the sound of his voice and both of her hands fall to the side. Slowly, she sets her head against the concrete wall and then turns it toward Jonah. Her forehead is covered with bruises and scrapes and dried blood. An evil grin grows across her dried lips when she sees Jonah’s face.
“I need to know what happened to you on Achilles,” Jonah whispers. “What did you see? Who is telling you we need to eat the seeds?”
“Eat the seeds. He has to eat the seeds,” she says. “Eat the—”
Jonah snaps; he wraps his hands around the bars and shouts, “Shut up about the stupid seeds! Did you see the ghosts, Dr. Z? Who are you talking to? Damn it, who is telling you about the seeds?”
Dr. Z starts to laugh. It’s quiet at first, and then it grows into something menacing. She places her forehead against the concrete wall and starts knocking against it. Fresh blood quickly dots the wall. “Enter through the exit,” she says. “Exit through the entrance.”
“Please stop,” Jonah pleads. “I’ll listen to you, to whatever you have to say.”
Dr. Z pauses, her head inches from the concrete. She brings her hands up to her red hair and pulls them through to its burnt ends. For a few seconds, the woman mouths something and makes herself shake with laughter, and then she pounces at the door to wrap her hands around Jonah’s on the bars. Her grip is strong, but she doesn’t seem to be trying to hurt him.
“You okay down there?” the man asks at the end of the hall. “Just a couple more minutes, okay? So, fix her already. Make her stop saying all that shit all the time, it’s driving me bonkers.”
“You’re long enough,” she whispers into Jonah’s face with rancid breath. “You’re long enough and smart enough and long enough and smart enough and long enough and—”
“For what?” Jonah asks. “I’m long and smart enough for what?”
“To be their God.”
A shiver runs down Jonah’s spine. “What are you talking about? To be whose God? Who is telling you all this? Who are they?”
Dr. Z’s hands get tighter around Jonah’s, and she brings her face through the bars. She takes a deep breath before screaming at the top of her lungs: “Kill the red one!”
The man rushes down the hall with a flashlight and shoulders Jonah out of the way, breaking Dr. Z’s grip on the boy. Jonah crashes into the concrete wall and falls to the ground. Dr. Z points a finger at the bearded man. “You will die.”
“What happened to you, Laura?” He whispers to Dr. Z. “We were friends back on Earth. We…we went on three dates before I left. How do you not remember me? We crashed that moped, remember? We almost fell into that lake?”
“You will die,” she laughs.
Jonah scrambles to his feet just as the man crushes Dr. Z’s hands with the head of a flashlight. She stumbles back into the cell with a hiss, and when the man points his light inside, Jonah sees the walls are covered in symbols drawn in blood. He recognizes many of them from the caves on Achilles. There’s a sudden pull on his mind, a tunneling feeling that draws him forward, and without thinking, he reaches both arms through the bars. He wants to touch the symbols. He must touch the symbols.
The man yanks on Jonah’s shoulder. “What the hell are you doing, man? Get back!”
The need to touch the symbols is too strong, so he holds his ground. He reaches farther into the room and then slaps his hands on the inside of the door, feeling for symbols, carvings, answers. He knows he should listen to the man. He knows he should back off once he sees Dr. Z walk toward him with a sadistic grin on her face. Instead, he finds himself reaching toward her.
“Dr. Z,” Jonah pleads. “Help me understand.”
“I said…” the man wraps his arms around Jonah’s chest and pulls. “Get…the…fuck…back.”
Dr. Z approaches Jonah’s outstretched hand. Slowly, she opens her mouth and places his index finger
between her teeth. As she bites down, the trance or the pull or whatever keeps Jonah from wanting to run away, breaks. The pain is immediate, and he screams for her to stop. He tries to yank his hand away, but she grabs his wrist with both of her hands and then leans back as if trying to pull him through the tiny window. She puts two more of Jonah’s fingers in her mouth, and he can feel her freezing cold tongue on his skin and what feels like loose teeth slipping between his knuckles.
The first gunshot zips through Dr. Z’s hair, blowing a wide hole clear through it, but the second shot from the man’s gun grazes her right shoulder, sending her twirling into the back wall. Jonah falls onto the hallway floor, his bleeding hand balled into a fist. He jumps back to his feet and looks inside the room to see Dr. Z standing motionless against the back wall with her head down. Blood drips from the top of her shoulder and makes its way down her arm, creating a small puddle on the floor.
“I need a medic in the jail block,” the man says into a walkie-talkie. “Now. Right now.”
The symbols of the room begin to call to Jonah again, but this time he resists and backpedals down the hallway with his fist up to his chest. He can still feel her loose teeth and cold tongue on his fingers as Dr. Z begins to laugh in her cell. Her voice echoes down the hall and follows Jonah into the room where he slams the door shut with his foot and falls to his knees in exhaustion.
Two people run past him and rip open the door. Dr. Z’s echoing laughter appears for a second until the door closes again. Jonah sits back on his heels and takes a deep breath. Then he opens his bloody fist to find three white seeds in his palm.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The hammock groans under Jonah’s weight. The cadet listens to it with his eyes closed, his arms crossed over his chest. Bandages cover the tips of the fingers of his right hand. He reminds himself to breathe. He reminds himself that, despite everything, he’s okay. For now. He reminds himself that he’s lucky, to not only be alive after everything that has happened in the past several days, but to be off Earth with its wars and loneliness and uncertainness. But he can’t convince himself; he doesn’t feel lucky. Not everything is okay. He can’t just breathe. After all, the air here will poison him soon enough.