Thetis--The Deep Sky Saga--Book Two

by Greg Boose

  “He’s just going through it. We all are,” Hopper says as he easily steps out of Michael’s grip. “Coming down off this verve crap is fucking brutal, man. The fucking worst. And some of us,” he nods at Michael, “are huge pussies and are taking it a little worse than others.”

  “I just saw Camilla and Lark and they’re all messed up,” Jonah whispers. “They might be dying. But Camilla says you have something that you want to tell me, some information or something for me. Hurry up and tell me before Mirker finds us. They’re going to kill you if they find you.”

  Hopper bends down to pet one of the capstones, only to have the creature speed off the moment his hand touches its head. “I’m doing well, Jonah. Thanks for asking. Jesus.”

  “Shut the hell up and tell me. You have no idea what’s been happening here.”

  “And you have no idea what’s been happening with us up there!” Hopper shouts. The capstones start to chirp and sprint along the walls, their long skinny arms flailing, leaving claw marks along the wood. “We came all this way for you, you ungrateful piece of shit. We’re here right now for you. We never went to Peleus. Krev and the others beat the shit out of me and Michael and Aussie and everyone else, and then they flew us to the other side of Achilles where we did shit but find more verve and run around like savages. And that was all fine and dandy for a few days, and we stuffed our faces with it and flipped out and had some fun, but then, dude, we had too much. All of us did. Like, all at the same time and the hallucinations were bonkers and everyone freaked out—including yours truly—and the next thing you know we’re all sitting in one of those portal cave rooms. But without a portal and just the hieroglyphics. And that’s when the freaky monsters showed up…and they put on a real show for us.”

  Jonah is scared to ask, but has to. “They have two heads? And they’re yellow and like ghosts, and when they talk they sound like robots in your head?”

  “So, you’re old friends? Interesting.”

  Something crashes to the floor in the main room, stopping both boys from saying another word. Jonah slowly peeks through the door window, but all he sees is one of the tables covered with empty cages and a few tools lying on towels. His fingers find the door latch to make sure it’s locked.

  “Hurry up. Tell me what you saw,” Jonah whispers.

  A devilish smile creeps across Hopper’s face. “You don’t even know, do you? You don’t even know what they want from you. Guess you’re not that good of friends, huh?”

  “I’m going to kill you if you don’t hurry up and tell me.”

  “Ah ha. There’s the aggro Jonah I know and don’t love. Okay, well I hate to be the bearer of such good and bad news, but those alien guys showed up while we were sitting in that cave verving the shit out of ourselves, and they start circling around the room faster and faster and the hieroglyphics on the walls start to glow, and the room like, starts to blur—and we’re all seeing the same thing because we’re all asking each other if they’re seeing the same crazy shit and we’re all freaking out—and then boom, we see you, cool guy cadet Jonah Lincoln, the blind dickhead who punched me in the face, and you’re just floating over our heads. Your eyes look good now, by the way. Real pretty. I like what you’ve done with them. But so, we see you hovering over the room just standing there, and then you start to run, and then you’re on some ship flying somewhere, and you’re with me. I’m on the ship, too. And then the movie we’re watching, like, cuts to these two-headed alien monsters walking around on what we think is here, Thetis, because Lark and Camilla recognize some of the landscape. But the monster guys aren’t yellow and not looking like ghosts or whatever; they’re like living beings, and they’re kind of pink with gross skin and everything. They’re alive. And they’re doing their thing or whatever on Thetis when there’s a light in the sky above them and all these ships arrive. Our two-headed guys are like ‘What’s up?’ and these ships land, and then these short gray guys with horns on their faces come out of the ships.”

  A shiver runs over Jonah’s spine; he saw the same gray beings in his vision from the verve. They were on Zion. They’re the beings that built the pyramids and the giant symbol on the side of the mountain.

  “So, these gray guys just straight up start slaughtering the two-headed things. They round them up and shoot the hell out of them and pretty much murder them into extinction. Killed them all.”

  A low, sickly moan comes out of Michael. He finally stops rocking back and forth to look up at Jonah with bloodshot eyes. “You have to kill them before they kill us. You have to kill them before they kill us. But in the past for the future. In the past. For the future. Do you understand? Does that make sense?”

  Hopper pats Michael on the shoulder and continues: “What my esteemed colleague is trying to say here, Mr. Lincoln, is that in this movie, they show you flying to the gray people’s planet and you’re an alien, and they’re all impressed and scared as hell and start to worship you, and you like, become their God.”

  Become their God? That’s what Dr. Z said, too. When he visited her in the jail cell the first time, she said he was long enough and smart enough “to be their God.” It meshes with his other visions, too, how he descended to their planet and some of the gray beings immediately began to worship him. Even so, Jonah shakes his head and says, “That’s so…stupid. That’s ridiculous.”

  “I one hundred percent agree,” Hopper says. “If anyone is godlike around here, it’s me. You know it, and I know it. I’m definitely the smartest kid here. I can fix anything. But you? You’re simply the tallest. The reason you’re so hot on their charts is because of your height, dude. And your wing span.”

  Again, Jonah is amazed that more of Dr. Z’s gibberish actually had some meaning. “Why? Who cares?”

  “Because you can reach shit other humans here can’t. That’s what they need. They showed you standing in some room and you’re reaching your arms out wide and touching these controls on two walls at the same time. I think you can reach out as far as the two-headed guys can, but they can’t do that anymore because they’re stupid friggin’ ghosts now.”

  Jonah thinks back to the tall Module Eight boy with the uneven hair. He had almost an identical stature. That’s why he was next in line.

  “Is that it?” Jonah whispers. “Anything else? Because we need to move. They find us and we’re dead.”

  “‘Is that it?’ You just heard you’re going to be a God and you want to know if that’s it? But no, man. There’s definitely more. Jesus Christ, listen to me. There’s a whole time jump thing happening with all this shit. It’s fucking crazy, but here’s what we think is going on: These monsters were wiped out by the gray guys, okay, but if you travel to the gray guys’ planet or moon or whatever from here with me on some ship and we go through this blue wormhole or portal first, you are somehow in the past, and you can derail the whole freaking thing before it starts. You become their God or leader or whatever, and you gain their trust, and then you lead them astray, and you stop them from advancing their civilization so that they don’t evolve to build spaceships and then kill the two-headed guys here on Thetis. Because if you don’t do this, then these gray guys end up making the trip to the Milky Way and destroying Earth. And then like, humanity is fucking done and shit.”

  Several pairs of boots run by in the main room, and they’re the only thing keeping Jonah from shouting how ridiculous this all is, how stupid Hopper and the others are for believing it. They were all just high, stoned on an alien seed, hallucinating. Yes, most of what Hopper says fits together with Dr. Z’s warnings and what the Module Eight kids seemed to be after, but they’re all just having psychotic breakdowns at the same time. They’re all just messed up from the initial wormhole jump into the Silver Foot Galaxy, Jonah thinks. It’s the radiation from the wormhole.

  “Why should I trust you anyways?” Jonah whispers. “You’ve lied to me so many times. You hid the homing device, you backstabbed us all in Tunick’s cave. You t
urned on us.”

  Hopper leans forward with fire in his eyes and his neck muscles flaring. “I just flew a spaceship from Achilles to Thetis to find you here to tell you all of this, and you’re wondering if I’m lying to you? This isn’t bullshit; I believe everything we saw. And you were supposed to stay on Achilles and go to this new planet from there.”

  “Zion,” Jonah says. “The planet is called Zion.”

  “I don’t give a shit what it’s called, but I’m going to take you there. It’s like my mission or whatever. I think if I don’t, I get eaten or something.”

  “I’ll come with you, but you have to take everyone,” Jonah says. He can’t believe he’s starting to see this as a viable option. “The air here is poison. Everyone is slowly dying, and they need to get off Thetis soon.”

  Hopper smiles. “No, they’re aren’t. Because I found the terraformer from the Mayflower 2, brah. It was smashed up a bit, but I think I know how to fix it.”

  “What? How did you even know about that? They never told the public. People on Earth don’t know about it.”

  “Dude, I’m godlike, remember? Or, I’m the next best thing: I’m a fucking hacker. I hacked into the ship’s mainframe on the very first day of the trip and read all about the terraformer. Read the schematics, about what was happening on Thetis, how fucking important it was. It was going to be the ace up my sleeve when we landed here, but then, you know, there was a little detour-slash-crash on Achilles. But when we went back looking for you after our little vision quest, I found the thing all smashed up and didn’t think anything about it, because fuck Thetis for how they treated Tunick and the other kids, but then who comes out of the trees all half dead to say you got picked up and flown back to Thetis? Little hacker Kip Kipperson who got zapped up in that first portal.”

  “Now I know you’re making stuff up,” Jonah says. “Kip is here right now on Thetis. I just saw him a few hours ago.”

  “He’s on Achilles, brah.”

  “He still is,” Michael whispers.

  “Totally,” Hopper says. “Kip popped out of the trees, told us where you were, and then he booked it right out of there. We yelled for him to come back get on our ship, but the little bastard ran off.”

  Jonah shakes his head. They were obviously hallucinating from the verve. Kip got picked up on the island days ago, just like him.

  “Anyhow,” Hopper says. “I brought the terraformer because I’m not coming down here to save the freaking day just to be poisoned by a shitty atmosphere. Plus, it’s our little peace offering to the colony. Welcome us home because, hey, we have your life force.”

  Michael suddenly sits up straight and vomits all over himself, retching an explosive red and white mess that keeps coming and coming. Jonah and Hopper jump to their feet, sending the two capstones into a loud chirping fit. A second later, a shadow appears in the door window and the latch rattles. And then something bangs against the door, splintering the wood. Another bang and another. And with the fourth bang, the door falls from its hinges. Standing in its place is the bald man with the scar going down his face. He points a LZR-rifle at Jonah’s chest and steps inside.

  “There you are, big guy. And who are your friends here?”

  A capstone runs right into the man’s leg, buckling him at the knee. Jonah doesn’t hesitate; he leaps and tackles the man to the ground. As they wrestle for the rifle, Hopper jumps in between the man’s legs and raises his foot.

  “I’m your new neighbor,” Hopper says before stomping down on the man’s groin. “Nice to meet you.”

  The man cries and curls up into a ball, but as soon as Jonah gets off of him, the man kicks Hopper’s legs out from underneath him and the hacker falls flat on his back, right into the vomit.

  “Fucking gross, man,” Hopper whines.

  Jonah dives for the rifle, but the man rolls over and gets to it first. The capstones continue to chirp and run back and forth, and then one leaps over Hopper and speeds off into the main room, dragging its arms through the mess.

  The man gets to his feet and spits over his shoulder. With the barrel of the rifle aimed at Jonah, he places his boot on top of Hopper’s face and slowly puts his weight on it. “Welcome to the neighborhood, kid.”

  Hopper groans and grabs at the man’s ankle, gasping for air. Jonah takes a step forward and the rifle barrel rises up to his nose, stopping him.

  The man coughs several times and then brings his wrist up to his mouth and speaks into his watch: “Commander Mirker, I’ve got Cadet Lincoln pinned down in here. We’re in the farm building. Room number…” He looks down at the broken door next to Hopper. “Room number fifteen.”

  Mirker answers back: “Good work. Is Tunick in there with you? What about Sean?”

  “Negative. Just the cadet and two other kids.”

  “Be there in five. Don’t you fucking lose him.”

  “You better get off of him,” Jonah says, nodding at Hopper. “If you want to live, you need to let him up.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because he brought the terraformer back from Achilles and only he knows how to fix it. He can save the whole colony; no one will get sick and die.”

  Hopper struggles to move his head enough to the side to say, “It’s true. I’m here to save everyone. So, get the fuck off me before you ruin my brain.”

  The man thinks it over before slowly removing his boot from Hopper’s face. “Get up.”

  Jonah offers Hopper his hand and pulls him to his feet, vomit dripping off every inch of the hacker’s clothing.

  “And you,” the man says, pointing at Michael in the corner. “You get up, too.”

  “He’s too sick,” Jonah says.

  “I don’t give a shit. Get. Up.”

  Jonah grabs Michael by the elbow, bringing the nearly comatose boy to his feet, and then he’s standing there holding both demics upright, unsure of how he’s going to escape before Mirker arrives. Just then the other capstone wanders up to the man with a flat rock balanced on top of its yellow head. Annoyed, the man backhands the rock right off, sending it ricocheting into the dark corner of the pen. “Get the hell out of here.”

  The animal twists its long neck all the way around to watch the rock spin on the ground, and then it turns back to the man and emits a low, devilish growl. It crouches and then springs up, attacking the man’s chest with its long arms whipping in a blur. The man yells and spins around, and Jonah immediately flings Hopper forward into the chaos, then he lands two good punches to the man’s chin, knocking him to his knees while the capstone continues to thrash at his chest and neck. Hopper bounces off the doorframe and then wheels to deliver another kick to the man’s groin, sending the man face first into the pool of vomit.

  “Drink that shit up,” the hacker says.

  The capstone turns its head to look at the three boys, and then it scurries into the corner, puts the flat rock back on its head, and then jogs out of the room.

  Jonah grabs the rifle and peeks inside the main room, seeing only the backside of the capstone as it rounds the end of a table. No Mirker. No kids from Module Eight or Kip. But no Vespa, Paul, or Brooklyn, either. He looks back at Michael who lies on his side near the man, and then at Hopper. “You guys stay here or maybe go get help. Hopper, tell them you brought back the terraformer and get people to listen to you and stop all this stuff.”

  Hopper places his foot on top of the man’s scarred face and steps up and over him. “Screw that. I think I’m going to follow the God kid with the gun. Besides, Michael has this under control.” He then drags and drops Michael on top of the man’s back. “I mean, just look at him. Number one security agent in the galaxy.”

  Jonah doesn’t want to leave Michael alone like this, but he doesn’t have time. He crouches down and enters the main room, passing empty cages and jar after jar holding creatures suspended in liquid. He sees a baby mimic bobbing up and down in one large jar, its red feathers floating all around
it. Hopper is right behind him, mumbling about the vomit dripping into his underwear. When they get to the end of the last table, Jonah peers around to see dozens of doors and the capstones feasting on the owl creature.

  A door bursts open on the other end of the room and Hopper and Jonah hide behind the end of the table. Above the thunder of boots running down the room, Mirker shouts, “Room fifteen! Down there!”

  Jonah swings the rifle onto his back and army crawls toward the closest door. He looks up to see that it has the number three painted above its window, and he’s about to try to duck inside when he sees next to it, marked with a big yellow hazard sign, is door number four. He pauses, remembering how a few of the Module Eights repeated the phrase, “Door four,” how Dr. Z said the same thing on top of the cliff.

  “Go already,” Hopper whispers behind him.

  “What the fuck happened in here?” Mirker shouts on the other side of the tables, his voice echoing in the capstone’s room. “Where is he?”

  Jonah crawls to door four and reaches up for the latch, and to his surprise, it’s unlocked. He cracks it open and squirms inside the pitch-black room. Hopper follows right behind, and as soon as he’s inside, the hacker locks the door.

  It’s silent inside save for Hopper’s heavy breathing. The stench from the boy’s clothes immediately overtakes the room; the smell is so strong that Jonah gags quietly into his shoulder and considers pushing the hacker back outside.

  “Christ, that you?” Hopper whispers.

  “That smell is coming from you,” Jonah whispers back.

  “That shit is not from me.”

  Jonah swings the rifle around to his chest and finds its spotlight, clicking it on. There, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room is Dr. Z with her milky eyes staring right into the light. Her hands are caked with black dirt, and they slowly open and close on her knees. And right next to her sits Kip with his faded pink hair. His jumpsuit is in tatters, ripped completely across the chest so that his collar floats around his neck like a broken halo. With trembling hands, Jonah shines the light directly in his face, but he has no reaction.