Brightly Burning

by Alexa Donne

  There was a six- to eight-foot drop down to the ground—​another foreign concept—​but luckily one of the taller boys alighted first, then caught me when I jumped. The ground was solid but not too hard. There was a springiness to it; I crouched down and touched my fingers to it. The soil was damp. Not frozen. Several of the fieldworkers were making similar investigations, already getting to work in determining whether we could farm.

  Despite the thinness of my clothes, I was not too chilled: the moisture-wicking fabric insulated my arms and legs; only my ears and nose were in want of something to cover them. And yet, the discomfort was only enough that I felt mild annoyance. A surge of joy provided momentary warmth: it was not too cold. This was survivable.

  I walked away from the shadow of the Ingram, and the human ducklings who seemed to cling fast to my steps, until it no longer loomed large behind me. I ran my fingers through tall stalks of grass, doing a turn to survey my surroundings. On our right was a copse of trees, scraggly and thin, and all around was the unruly grass, alternately green with patches gold and brown. In the distance, mountains. I stood in awe of them, more magnificent than anything I’d ever imagined, let alone rendered with my stylus: towering like gods cloaked in purple and white.

  “Stella!” Jon’s voice rang through the field, and I whipped around to see him jogging toward me. “He’s alive,” he panted as he came to a stop, catching his breath.

  “Who, Hugo? You found him?” Frantically I peered in the direction Jon had come from, back to the ship, expecting him to appear any moment.

  “No, George,” Jon corrected. “Lori connected with the Stalwart as soon as we landed. My uncle messaged right away.”

  “Really?” Everything slowed down, my senses blurring, grief turning to happiness in an instant. “He’s going to be okay?”

  “My uncle says it’s not pretty, but they were able to stop the bleeding. He’s in surgery now.”

  I pulled Jon into a hug, crying happy tears into his shoulder. I heard him sniffle a few times too, the big old softy.

  “Can you believe this place?” he asked as we pulled apart. Then he glanced down at me, brow furrowing. “You’re covered in blood.”

  My eyes flicked down to my skirts, but it appeared black-on-black to me. Then I noticed my hands, stained dark red, nearly brown.

  “Come on.” He grabbed my hand, pulling me through the grass. The reeds thinned to reveal a stream of burbling, glistening, glorious water. I crouched on the bank, threading my fingers through the stream, watching the icy water wash away red. I pulled off my dress, thankful for my bodysuit, and drenched it in the gentle current.

  Jon crouched upstream from me, drinking water from cupped hands, alternately swearing and grinning. “This place is incredible,” he said.

  “Please don’t say ‘I told you so.’” I rose from my crouch, ringing out my dress, but determining it too wet to wear again. It was strange without an overdress. I felt naked.

  “All right, then, I’ll just think it.”

  I didn’t dignify his stupid joke with laughter. Jon frowned at me in my suit, a blush rising to my cheeks, and surprised me by removing his jacket.

  “Here,” he said, passing it to me. “I don’t want you to be cold.”

  “What about you?” I considered refusing, but it was too tempting to cover up.

  “It’s a short walk back to the ship. I’ll live.”

  It was good enough for me. As we neared the Ingram, I saw Xiao walking over to us, two coats and a tab screen in hand. She wasn’t alone.

  “Hello, Stella.” Her voice struck ice through my veins. Hanada.

  “What is she doing here?” I asked, balling my hands into fists at my side.

  Xiao launched into peacemaker mode immediately. “Mari was in hiding with us on the Lady Liberty, and I promised Hugo that I would take care of her. Ensure her safety. So we brought her along.”

  “What about Jessa? You left her behind, but brought . . . her?”

  “Jessa is safely and happily in the care of Orion and Grace,” Xiao explained, laying a comforting hand on my arm, squeezing gently. “I made Orion promise to arrange for her to come down once we know it’s safe.” I felt myself begin to calm, just enough.

  “What was reported in the news about me was not entirely accurate,” Hanada piped up, tone infuriatingly even. “After your experiences with Mason, I’d think you’d be willing to give me the benefit of the doubt.”

  I knew exactly what had happened. Hugo had explained in his letter. Logically I understood the position she had been in, Mason blackmailing her, threatening harm to her family. But my heart hated her for creating the virus in the first place. Hugo was too forgiving.

  But everyone was staring at me, waiting for an answer.

  “You’re going to have to explain to everyone here, and many of them won’t forgive you, no matter how good your reasons were,” I said. Hugo would want me to forgive Mari, so I’d have to work on it. And we were going to find him safe and alive. I had to believe that.

  Xiao nodded, launching into mission mode. “Mari, get what medical supplies you can from the cargo bay and tend to Sergei. We’ll be back soon.”

  She ran off, leaving me confused.

  “Is Sergei okay?”

  “He’s mildly concussed, but Mari will tend to him. She can earn her keep with her medical know-how.” She handed the tab unit to me. “Lori’s tracking program is loaded on here, and it says the Rochester is a mile away.”

  I wasn’t sure I had the strength to walk a mile, but she didn’t have to tell me twice. I gave Jon back his jacket and pulled on the heavier coat Xiao brought, leaving my dress to dry by the ship. “You’re not staying with Sergei?” I asked Xiao, whose reply was quick.

  “Fussing over a man, who is mildly injured at that, is not in my wheelhouse. I’d rather find Hugo.”

  We took a brisk pace, Jon serving as navigator with the tab screen aloft in front of him, following a red dot. We trudged on, first five, then ten minutes, until we could see the Rochester in the near distance. She’d come down where the grass turned to light forest, and as we came closer, my heart started to gallop. The Rochester had taken damage. The front was twisted and crumpled; it looked as if the bridge had been gutted. I broke into a run.

  “Hugo?” I shouted, nearly tripping over my feet, as they were unused to sprinting across such terrain. I rounded on the ship, whose aft end had suffered its own dings, but nothing that looked catastrophic. The hold door had been forced open several feet, as if some creature had clawed it from its frame. But there were no monsters on Earth, as far as I was aware. Someone—​Hugo?—​must have used something large and metal to pry it open.

  “Be careful.” Jon came up behind me, surveying the scene. “I should go up first, then pull you in.”

  “I’m going to stay out here and keep guard,” Xiao said. Much to my surprise, she pulled a stunner gun from her hip. I had not been part of the planning committee that discussed weaponry. What did we think we were going to find? Still, I did not protest, letting Jon make the precarious climb up to the hold door before I followed.

  I squeezed through the hole into pitch-black space, sure I was in the transport bay, though it felt wholly unfamiliar to me in the dark, with one side crunched in and debris all around. I scrunched my eyes closed, willing them to adjust, then opened them, thankful to find my own feet represented in dark shades of gray. I could at least navigate myself, and after a scan, I had a beacon: the faintest glow of an electronic light. The ship was not dead.

  “Be careful,” Jon repeated his warning from behind as I made my way forward. “We know the front took damage. Who knows how bad it is back here?”

  I grunted a response and made my way gingerly across the floor, my eyesight thankfully adjusting with every passing moment. There were spare parts strewn everywhere, but nothing that posed real risk. We arrived at the beacon, which turned out to be the backlit lock panel. It still recognized my bio scan.

 
; “Fancy tech,” Jon said under his breath as we moved into the outer bay, then past the next door into the ship herself.

  “Wait until you meet Rori,” I said, thankful to find the ship was running her night-cycle lighting, so we could find our way.

  “Hello, Stella. It is nice to see you again,” Rori, always listening, piped up. Jon nearly jumped to the ceiling.

  “Rori!” I sighed with relief. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

  “I’m glad you found me,” she said. “I was surprised to meet Lori; she was rather rude, but I approved of her mission and allowed her to interface with me.”

  I nearly laughed at the idea of the two AIs having a conflict of personality. “Why are the emergency lights on, Rori? Do you not have full power?”

  “My solar panels are drawing adequate power. Thank you for asking. The bulk of our power reserves is being directed to the medical bay and library. My protocol tells me their survival is paramount.”

  It made sense—​you wouldn’t want to lose the Library of Congress, and the medical bay held essential medicines and vaccines. I began to call out Hugo’s name as we neared his quarters.

  “Hugo is not here, Stella,” Rori said once I’d ceased shouting.

  “What do you mean? Where is he?”

  “They took him.”

  They. The pronoun rolled around my brain. It meant there were other people here. But who? Survivors from another downed ship?

  “Who are ‘they,’ Rori? Where did they take him?”

  “I do not know that, Stella. I am sorry.”

  Jon leaned down, whispering in my ear. “The ship’s system just apologized to you, Stella. This is so weird.”

  “Rori has all sorts of feelings,” I said, forging on toward the bridge. It’s where Hugo would have been for landing, and the part of the ship that appeared to have taken the most damage. I had to see.

  The picture came into sharp focus as we reached the space where a staircase used to be. What was left of the connection between the rest of Deck Two and the bridge, of the stairs down to Jessa’s quarters and the kitchens, was a gaping hole, jagged metal pieces, and debris visible if you gazed down into it. Someone had laid a wooden plank across it, establishing a walkway.

  Jon went first, annoying in his chivalry, but I didn’t complain. The drop made me nervous, and balance had never been my strong suit. Taking tiny, slow steps and accepting a hand from Jon at the end, I made it across, and found my favorite spot on board in ruins. All the tab screens had been shattered or cracked; some exhibited signs of superheating. So did the metal fittings at the windows; they’d melted and been reborn as gnarled appendages twisting in unnatural directions. There’d been a fire here. The heat shields must have failed.

  “Rori, was Hugo injured?” I asked, voice rising with panic as I took in the state of things.

  “Yes, he was. He would not rouse, so when the strangers came on board, I let them come up to the bridge, and they took him away.”

  “Did they say anything? Do you have any clue who they were?”

  “They did not speak to me; thus I had no reason to converse with them.”

  “Come on, Stella.” Jon tugged my arm back toward the plank. “He’s not here. We should go.”

  We went back the way we’d come as the questions ran over and over in my head: Who had taken Hugo? How badly injured might he have been? What if he was dead? All this time, I’d interpreted the fact that the Rochester was on, that Rori was sending out a ping, as the promise that Hugo was alive. The thought that I could have come all this way only to lay flowers on his grave . . . My legs nearly buckled out from under me, but Jon was there before I could fall.

  “We’ll find him,” he said, intuiting my fears. His reassurance gave me a tiniest flicker of hope, but I was bracing myself for the worst-case scenario nonetheless.

  “You didn’t find him,” Xiao said as we exited; no need for a question.

  “Rori said he was injured in the landing, but someone came and got him. We found a plank they used to get to the bridge. But there’s good news. The med bay is completely intact, and Rori’s been diverting power to keep everything up and running.”

  “Good.” Xiao nodded. “If Hugo’s injured, that will come in handy. We should look for tracks, signs of life. There must be a settlement nearby.”

  “Maybe it’s the survivors from the Crusader,” Jon suggested. “They came down, what, a year ago? If Fairfax’s bizarrely sentient computer system chose this as an optimal landing spot, their ship’s computer might have as well.”

  Jon sprang into action, circling the ship, looking for tracks, while Xiao and I went in the opposite direction.

  “There’s sign of disturbance in the underbrush, heading into the forest,” Jon said as we met back at the front of the ship. “But I don’t know if now’s the most opportune time to proceed.” He turned to look behind us; I followed his gaze and clapped eyes on a sight that competed with the mountains for beauty.

  “I think that’s a sunset,” I said. “Or at least the beginnings of one. I read about them in so many books, but I never imagined . . .” Literature could not begin to touch the reality I beheld before me. But neither Jon nor Xiao had the eyes of an artist; they observed for a moment, then turned back to the matter at hand.

  “We’ll make camp for the night, then rally a search party in the morning,” Jon concluded, already turning and heading back the way we’d come. I lingered, wishing desperately to take off into those woods, though I knew the soundest thing was to start fresh the next day. Strange, because as far as my body was concerned, it was still midday. It would take some time to adjust to the new clock. Xiao tugged on my arm until I moved reluctant feet in the wrong direction. With the sunset at our backs, and despite the coat I wore, a chill set into my spine.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  We spent the night on board the Ingram, dividing up the sleeping quarters among us, but sleep had eluded me for the most part. Restlessness brought me into the transport bay when the sky was still dark; I sat on the edge of the open doorway and gazed up at my former home. The stars were beginning to disappear, but the moon was still clearly visible. She looked so far away, so lonely without the Rochester to keep her company.

  I wondered once more at my new home, watching as my breath turned into white puffs upon hitting the cold air. As the light began to flood the landscape ahead, I could make out rustling grass, signs of an animal skittering about. And if I thought the sunset incredible, the sunrise proved equal if not surpassing it in measure. Watching inky blue and dusky purple turn pink, then orange, finally giving way again to the lightest blue was a revelation. It was also a welcome sign that it was time to go.

  Jon and Xiao were a given, but I was surprised to see Justine join our search party. I hadn’t realized she’d come down with us. When I asked her about it, she sniffed and said in heavily accented English, “After the marriage I have had, I am ready for an adventure.” Fair enough. Then I saw Hanada approach. And she had a stunner gun.

  “She is not coming,” I said.

  “Mari knows the med bay better than any of us,” Xiao said.

  “And she knows how to fire a gun,” Jon threw in. Traitor. “We need her.”

  Overruled, I gave in, and in no time at all, we overtook the Rochester again. Hanada raided some supplies from the medical bay, and then we pushed onward through the trees.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Justine asked.

  “Signs of human beings, likely dragging a body,” Jon answered, from the point position. Hanada was the sweep.

  “Dragging Hugo,” I corrected him. “Body” made it sound like he was dead.

  “Who do we think they are?” Justine’s voice shook just a bit.

  “The leading theory is that we’ve landed close to the survivors of the Crusader.” Jon looked back, offering Justine a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry—​we assume they’re friendly. The guns are just a precaution.”

  I sided wit
h Justine on this one; after what had happened to George, I didn’t care for guns at all. Even those that just stunned. “It doesn’t have to be the Crusader, does it?” I asked, shifting the subject. “Couldn’t it be survivors from that ship that went down three years ago? I think it was Wuthering Heights?”

  I could see Jon shake his head. “They didn’t make it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “My uncle told me. Said she had communication tech on board and was supposed to hail the Olympus once she landed. They didn’t hear from her, and she’s presumed lost.”

  “No one’s heard from the Crusader, either,” I said, tamping down the alarm I felt at learning Wuthering Heights’s fate.

  “She didn’t have any comm tech, so we’re hoping for the best.”

  The forest was more like a dense outcropping of trees; in no time, we were through, once again walking in fields of tall grass. It was easier to follow the trail, crumpled and bent stalks guiding our way. We had no timepieces to judge our progress, but I watched the sky; I’d read in enough books that the sun traversed east to west, and at midday would be straight above our heads. The sky grew ever-brighter blue where patches of colors broke through dense cloud cover, and I guessed we’d walked about an hour through the grass when the trail veered right. We followed it a quarter of an hour to a road, the first true sign of human influence, and a thing to behold: worn tracks of dirt instead of metal grating. Here, we found distinct grooves—​something with wheels had been through here.

  “They have a vehicle of some sort,” I said. “A cart, I think.”

  Jon grinned at the sight of them. “I’m doing my best not to gloat,” he said. “I told you guys there was life here. We should have come down ages ago.” It put a new spring in his step, and we had to push to keep pace. Two hours later, the rain started.

  “By the moon, what is this?” Justine shrieked, attempting in vain to cover her hair.

  “Weather,” I said, pulling my coat around me and trudging on.

  It stopped after an hour, during which time I thought my clothes and hair must have absorbed more water than previously I’d been rationed in a month aboard the Stalwart. We stopped by the side of the now-muddy road to check our packs. Our sleep sacks and spare clothes were soaked through as well.