A Hero Rising

by Aubrie Dionne

  After checking on Carly, Skye sat in her seat and belted herself in. James landed in a swirl of sand. When the particles cleared, the building came into view twenty feet away. The ceiling was partially caved in from rotted wood. The barn looked as though it hadn’t housed anything in years, never mind a secret government project.

  “That’s it?” Skye had expected a grand warehouse. How could they fit an entire colony ship in a thirty-foot barn?

  “It’s underground.” James pressed a panel and powered down the hovercraft. “We have to find the secret door.”

  “Great,” Skye huffed as she got up. “Can’t make it too easy, now can they?”

  James’s lips curled. “I have an idea of what to look for.”

  “You’d better, because the clock to Doomsday is ticking.”

  “Finding it is the easy part.” James stood up and pulled on his black cloak. “It’s flying the ship that worries me.”

  “Oh, geez.”

  “I’ve been practicing on a flight simulator program.” James sounded hopeful.

  “Wonderful.” Sarcasm dripped from Skye’s tongue. “Now I feel much better.”

  “Great, because you’re going to be my copilot.”

  Choking back a snort of surprise, she turned to the back seat. “I’ll get Carly.”

  Although she’d teased him, if anyone on Earth could fly a starship from practicing with a video game, she knew it was James. She swooned over him so badly, at this point, she’d follow him anywhere.

  Skye swallowed down her admiration, forcing herself to look reality in the face. James had just lost Mestasis, and if she came on too strongly, he’d push her away. Besides, it was selfish to dwell on her own emotions when they had a ship to reach and people to save. Only after they’d landed on Outpost Omega could she begin to wonder if James felt anything for her.

  They left the hovercraft and Skye refused to look back. The bleak horizon made her dizzy. In the city, the buildings surrounding her had kept her standing upright, and now there was no point of reference except the crumbling old barn. She squeezed Carly’s hand. She had to be strong for the little girl.

  James pushed open the door to the barn, and the wood squeaked on rusty hinges. Stalls lined the inside, and an old corroded scythe hung on the wall.

  “This place is scary.” Carly tugged on Skye’s hand. “I want to go back to the hovercraft.”

  Skye looked at James. “You sure this is it?”

  “Positive.” James walked the length of the barn, opening stalls. “Look for anything that seems out of the ordinary.”

  Skye ran her hand over the real wood of the stall. The grainy surface felt so different than the plastic couch back in her apartment. What would a secret door look like?

  James stomped on the floor and kicked over an old supply container. “Cyber hell! I know it’s here somewhere.”

  Skye’s gaze kept traveling to the corroded scythe on the barn wall. Only one tool, and no crops. Why would the original owners keep it?

  She released Carly’s hand and walked over, staring at the curved blade. The metal, although tarnished, was smooth and slick with no nicks, like it had never been used.

  Skye stood on her tippy toes and wrapped her fingers around the handle. When she pulled, the scythe broke off the wall and she stumbled back underneath its weight.

  “Found a new weapon?” James raised his eyebrows.

  Skye opened her mouth to respond when a ticking sound came from the wall. Dust wafted up, dancing in the sunlight as the floor underneath the wall where the scythe had hung parted, the crude wood giving way to a smooth metal revealing a platform with a keypad. The buttons lit up in orange fluorescent lights.

  “Looks like I found more than that,” Skye whispered, still holding onto the scythe. Maybe James was right—it did make for an intimidating weapon. Although the tool was heavy, she just might keep it.

  Making a broad circle around the scythe, James jumped onto the platform and brought out his miniscreen. “I developed a program that can crack the code of anything.”

  He flipped open the screen and a series of numbers and letters rolled by faster than Skye’s eyes could decipher. The program settled on +sl7q3]-08@h45 rq-0P*. James hit enter, and the lights on the keypad flashed green.

  James smiled. “Jump on.”

  Skye motioned for Carly to join them. She placed the scythe on the floor and helped the little girl down.

  “You said this base was deserted?”

  “Yes.” James busied himself trying to find the command to lower the platform.

  “Why?”

  “Government stopped the project funding.”

  Skye shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. You’d think they’d put a life-saving colony ship first on their list.”

  James shrugged, his fingers flicking over the keypad. “The government works in mysterious ways. Why do you think I joined the Radioactive Hand of Justice? I’ve had issues with their priorities for years.”

  The platform began to drop and Skye shouted, “Wait!”

  James pressed a button and they jerked as the platform stopped. “What is it?”

  “I forgot something.” Skye reached up and grabbed the handle of the scythe, dragging it across the floor.

  “You’re taking that with you?”

  She brought it down with her. “Just a hunch.”

  James eyed her warily. “Watch out. You could chop someone’s head off.”

  Skye smiled, feeling safer already. “I certainly hope so.”

  They descended several meters underground, and the air grew as cold as the lower levels in winter. Carly had left her jacket on the hovercraft and Skye felt like a bad mother for not thinking to bring it with them. She rubbed her free hand on the little girl’s arm to generate some heat.

  A beep signaled they’d reached the bottom level. Metal parted to a dimly lit corridor, illuminated by emergency lights. A crumpled white lab coat lay in a heap on the floor surrounded by broken vials. Dampness in the air clung to Skye’s arms like mold on bread. The corridor reeked of decay.

  “I don’t like the feeling of this.” Skye balked, holding the scythe in front of her, pointy end out.

  James held both hands up helplessly. “There’s no other way to go. They’re about to nuke the city, and that hovercraft will only get us so far. Then what? Watch the fall of Earth and suffer a slow death from radiation poisoning? Huddle in some bunker for the rest of our lives?” He shook his head. “No. I refuse to go down without a fight. There’re too many people out there to save. You can leave in the hovercraft and take your chances, or you can come with me.”

  Skye stood frozen, Carly hanging onto her leg. Everything about the place screamed danger and death, yet James was right. How far could she go in that hovercraft? And who knew what else was out there?

  “I hope you’ll stay with me.” James’s voice deepened with vulnerability, making Skye shake with need. He hadn’t failed them yet.

  She nodded. “Let’s steal this ship and fly the hell out of here.”

  They followed the corridor down to a series of glass rooms. Shiny, metallic lab tables held sharp tools. Someone had bashed in the computer screens, and sparks still flew from open wires pouring out of the ceiling.

  “How could looters get down here?” Skye whispered, afraid to wake up whatever might lurk in the shadows.

  “Don’t know.” James pressed his face up against the glass. “What bothers me more is why they have labs down here in the first place. This is supposed to be a ship bay. These tools are for scientists, not engineers.”

  “Maybe they were working on the biodome?”

  James pulled his face back from the glass and shook his head. “I saw the progress charts. Hadn’t even started it yet.”

  A wave of uneasiness poisoned Skye’s stomach. “Why would they leave the electricity on?”

  “Seems like someone left in a hurry.”

  Skye tried one of the doors and it swung open, c
langing in the dark. James shook his head. “We don’t have time to explore.”

  Skye held up her index finger. “Just one minute. I want to look inside.”

  James stepped by her, his neon hair illuminating the inside of the room. A broken geode rose up from the floor, the outside rock a crumbly gray color, and the inside a sparkling silver black, dark as obsidian in the center, and white as a star along the edges. Mining tools hung on the wall: sharp and pointy drills as long as her arm, and small chisels with serrated teeth.

  “What is it?” Skye held Carly back from touching it.

  “It’s the mineral they extract Morpheus from.” James’s voice was hushed, almost reverent. “I’ve never seen so much of it this close up.” He shifted as if a snake slithered over his shoulder. “The Radioactive Hand of Justice has taken it from the Razornecks on several occasions, but all I’ve ever seen are crystals no bigger than a grain of sand.

  Being so close to the substance that took Grease away from her sickened Skye. The longer she stared at the shimmery mineral, the more she felt drawn to feel it under her fingers. Was she any different than Grease? Or did she have the same inclinations?

  No. I’m not like him. I put Carly first.

  “I don’t want to stay around to see what this much would do.” Skye pulled on James’s shirt, feeling like she should have never trespassed. “We’ve got a flight to catch.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Race

  Carly’s hands squeezed the back of Skye’s shirt as they walked farther into the compound. The little girl shrieked and hid her head.

  Skye twisted her neck to see behind her. “What is it, Carls?”

  “Something moved down there.”

  James pointed his laser into the dim light ahead.

  Skye’s hand clutched the scythe so tightly she felt splinters digging into her palms. Adrenaline she’d not experienced since her alley days shot through her veins. She knew what it felt like to be watched. “What was it?”

  Carly shrugged.

  A shadow flickered in and out, as if someone ran from one side of the corridor to the other. James waved them back. “Let me go first.”

  He took one step forward as a dark-skinned man darted toward him in a blur. Carly let out a high-pitched shriek. Skye glimpsed almond-shaped eyes too big to be human and the curve of a bald, oblong head before James went down with the man in a tangle of limbs. A primal urge swelled inside her, the same urgency she had when gangmen tried to catch her in the alley. She gripped the handle of the scythe, desperation racing through her veins.

  More shadows moved in the distance. Skye didn’t wait to see what they looked like. She whirled around, swinging her scythe until the blade cut through flesh with a thunk. One of the attackers went down spewing black blood, but Skye didn’t have time to examine him, or it. She swung again as two others reached out with fingers like wires, tickling her arms. A head went flying, and then an arm. The last attacker fell to the floor, holding its shoulder and hissing through crooked, V-shaped razor teeth.

  “What are they?” Carly shrieked as Skye raised her scythe. Its eyes were dark as deep space, and no matter how closely she looked, she couldn’t see her reflection. The emotionless orbs sucked in light.

  James was still struggling with the first one, so Skye slashed the injured one in half to make sure it didn’t go after Carly and ran to help him. Just as the moonshiner, alien, or whatever it was opened its mouth to bite his neck, James managed to regain control of the laser and fired. The skinny body weakened and stilled.

  “Cyber hell.” James threw the body off him and stood up. He looked around at the other three attackers on the floor and gave Skye an appraising smile. “You offed three while I battled one?”

  She shrugged, although every nerve in her body twitched and her fingers shook so hard the blade of the scythe undulated in the dim light. “Like I said, I had a hunch.”

  Movement shuffled in the rooms behind them. James’s eyes widened. “Run!”

  James picked up Carly and they sprinted through the corridor to an elevator at the end. James pressed the button as Skye positioned herself in front of them, holding her scythe. Black bodies squiggling against one another crammed the corridor behind them.

  Come on. Come on. Skye gritted her teeth so hard her jaw ached.

  The elevator beeped and they slipped in, watching the wiry hands reach for them as the doors closed. One finger managed to thrust in, and Skye chopped it off without another thought. It plopped on the floor oozing black blood. “Where does this go?”

  “I don’t know. Away from here.” James held onto Carly with both hands and she buried her head into his shoulder, sobbing.

  “What are those things?” As the elevator moved, Skye finally released her hold on the scythe, her palms burning with heat. The blade dripped black blood onto the floor, the substance thick and sticky as caramel.

  “Maybe that’s what Charles meant.” Even as James spoke he looked as though he couldn’t believe it. But Skye could. She’d had a good look at Grease those last few days, and she’d seen the darkness in his eyes before. Grease would blink once, and there it was: cold nothingness like a black hole. He’d blink again and be back to fun-loving Grease. Skye wondered if the substance was meant to change humans as some alien way of colonizing other planets, or if the human body had a unique reaction to it.

  “You think the government used people in experiments with Morpheus?”

  “That or overexposure from testing turned them into those things one by one.”

  “I can see why they shut it down.” Skye’s stomach tightened like a coil of snakes. “What if there’s no ship here at all? What if it was just a cover up for these lab tests?”

  “I refuse to believe it.” James’s voice hardened. “All of Dal’s research couldn’t have been wrong.”

  Skye held onto his hope as the elevator beeped and the doors parted again. She held up the scythe, but nothing lunged at them from the darkness. They stepped into a vast, cavernous room with wires and chains hanging from the ceiling like chandeliers. A long, torpedo-shaped vessel towered over them. Small bubble windows lined each level in rows.

  James stepped closer, leaning over the railing. The silver hull reflected James’s neon hair. “That’s it: the Destiny.”

  “It’s humongous.” Never mind the space station—they could just live on that. She’d heard of cruise ships sailing in the deep ocean for years on end, but the Destiny loomed far larger than anything she could have ever imagined.

  “It’s one of the smaller ones.” James paced down the balcony, taking in the length of the hull. “Holds maybe fifteen hundred, two thousand at most, if you don’t mind being cramped.”

  Carly finally let go of Skye’s leg and took a tentative step forward with wide eyes.

  Behind them, scuffling echoed down the elevator shaft. Skye whirled around, poised to strike. “They’re climbing down.”

  James pulled her backward. “We can make it in time. Come on!”

  They ran across the balcony and down three flights of stairs to a platform where the ship’s belly rested. A console with a thousand buttons and three panels stood by a ladder leading up to a sealed door. Finding a morsel of food in an alley Dumpster seemed easier than deciphering these controls. Skye almost pulled her hair out. “How do you open it?”

  James hooked up his miniscreen. “Just give me a sec.”

  The elevator banged as the first few moonshiners fell on top of it. Scratching noises echoed out in the high ceilings as they clawed their way through the metal.

  “What if there’re more of them in the ship?”

  James shook his head. “Highly unlikely. They had this project locked up pretty tight. Unless they can figure out code, which I doubt.”

  “Is it ready to fly? Does it have any fuel at all?”

  James scanned the screen as it downloaded information from the console. “Looks good. The ship’s not finished, and it won’t fly us to another pla
net. But it can get us to the space station.” James’s fingers flew over his keyboard. He jabbed one last button. “There.”

  Streams of lights flickered on across the hull, illuminating both the inside and the outside of the ship. Air wheezed as the hatch opened, revealing a chrome interior. Skye shouted at Carly, “Climb!”

  Carly scrambled to the ladder as James closed his miniscreen. The aliens broke through the roof of the elevator and moved with a strange fluid grace down the balcony. Some jumped three flights and landed upright on the ship’s level.

  Carly climbed one foot at a time, excruciatingly slowly. Skye suppressed the urge to rush her; she didn’t want Carly slipping to her death. She clutched the scythe, reluctant to discard it but knowing she couldn’t climb with the weapon. Although the weight of it felt reassuring, there were so many, she’d never be able to fight them all off. Skye threw it at the oncoming horde and the scythe clanged as it hit the floor. Defenseless, Skye sprang up the ladder. James still stood by the console, his fingers pattering over the keys.

  “James, come on!”

  “Just one more thing. I have to make sure the chamber will open.” James pressed a few buttons on his miniscreen before slipping it into his backpack and following. Carly climbed in, wiggling on her belly, and Skye followed, pulling herself up with aching muscles. She shot her hand down to James and he grabbed on. Above them, the ceiling cracked open with a loud screech. Sand rained on their shoulders and sunlight shot down in a thin line as the two halves parted. Skye finally understood why James had taken so long. They couldn’t take off with the dome still intact.

  An army of the aliens filled the balcony, dropping like grasshoppers to the platform. James looked at Skye with panic in his eyes. “I have to kick the ladder out. They’re too fast.”

  “I’ve got you.”

  Skye’s grip tightened as James kicked away his support. The aliens scrambled up the slick side. Their fingers brushed James’s feet as Skye pulled him up and dragged him in.

  He lay on his back panting. A set of wiry fingers clung to the hatch where James had hung just a second ago. Skye kicked them away. “Close the door!”