This is the sky that the worm plays under.
The place people come to die.
“We’re still going to make it,” Ana gasps as they run. “It’s going to be okay. There must be weapons or something in there, right? In the colony? Something we can use to fight the worm?”
“Ana.” Todd’s breathing is labored, too. “There’s so much you don’t know. …”
The words chill her. That she doesn’t know? What about him?
Somewhere to their rear, the worm lets out a shattering roar.
She forces herself to focus on what matters. There must be houses inside the settlement, Bunkers, maybe? According to Chen and Ysa, nobody knew about the worm before now, but there still has to be some sort of protection. It’s an alien planet, after all! Surely they had defenses.
“We just had to get this far!” Todd yells beside her. “And when the time is up, then …” His eyes are frantic as he looks at his circlet. “But the worm wasn’t supposed to be here.”
Ana darts a look over her shoulder. The worm is here, all right—mouth agape, roaring along the beach in a maelstrom of whirling dirt and stone fragments—a couple hundred feet away and closing the distance fast.
Just ahead is the short incline leading to the base of the colony’s wall, which is made of piled-up stones fixed with some type of mortar. It’s a quick scramble for Ana to get up the bluff. The wall is tall right where she is, but as she runs along following the edge, she sees that parts of it have crumbled down to about eye level, and even lower.
Ana finds a gap where she can look over the wall. Several small dwellings made of flimsy-looking materials lie in a state of complete disrepair—roofs are caved in, walls are cracked, and everything is covered by sand. On the far edge of the settlement she can see the start of a more durable building, stones heaped upon each other in the beginnings of a foundation, a task begun but certainly not seen through to completion.
The colony, if this really was a colony, has not only been deserted for some time, but it looks like the settlers never even finished building it.
Ana takes a step backward, unwilling to believe what she is seeing.
She remembers Chen and Ysa’s discussion on the mountain. They said there were a few survivors … or did they? Leaving aside all the hedging and half-truths, one thing right now is abundantly clear: this place is abandoned. There are no reinforcements. There is no refuge.
She and Todd are on their own.
In that moment, Ana realizes that she can no longer hear the worm.
She turns and finds that Todd has stopped at the bottom of the slope. Like a knight facing down a dragon, Todd plants his feet wide and stretches his arms out to either side. A long blade glints in each hand. The worm is advancing on him slowly, just like it did at the mouth of the cave, closing in with the surety of predator on prey.
“Todd!” Ana yells. “What are you doing?”
“Stay right where you are,” he calls back without turning. “We just need another minute. …”
Ana looks up and gasps. There’s no more than a hairbreadth of sky left between the suns. She glances at the circlet. Barely a minute until zero hour.
The worm opens its mouth so wide that, for a second, it’s nothing but a giant gaping maw. As it roars, the sky goes from a dull peach to an assault of light so bright it feels like it’s peeling back Ana’s skin. Ana drops to her knees and hides her face against the ground. The light is a crushing physical force.
Somewhere beyond the pain she hears Todd yell, the pounding of running steps, and the crunch of a blade hitting something hard. The worm tackling him? His tackling the worm?
Eyes still shut, Ana scrabbles down the incline and fumbles for the pistol in her vest. She squeezes her eyes open just enough to orient herself. In her peripheral vision, the two suns are meshed into one amorphous glowing ball of fire, reacting somehow to each other’s presence in a cascade of fiery sparks and—what? Radiation? Gamma rays? Shielding her eyes with her hands, she struggles toward the worm.
Todd is hanging off the side of the worm’s head, one of his daggers hooked into leathery skin next to the beast’s left eye. As she watches, he swings his other arm up and plants his second blade higher on the worm’s head.
He’s climbing the worm’s flank! Ana wonders if he’s trying to get to the eyes, or the fleshy-looking area between
them.
Ana draws her pistol, aims for the worm’s gaping mouth—she doesn’t dare risk trying for the eyes, with Todd so near—and fires.
At the sound of the report, Todd looks back over his shoulder at her, eyes wide.
“Get away!” he screams. His grip slips and he catches himself just in time. “Get behind the wall at least! You’ve got to survive!”
Something inside Ana’s chest squeezes into a tight ball. She doesn’t think she’ll be able to stand it if the last word Todd ever says to her is survive when he’s risking so much.
She’s running toward them, looking for a better shot, when she feels a thrum on her wrist. Her circlet is warm and suddenly aglow.
00:00:00:18
00:00:00:17
00:00:00:16
Ana stops, suddenly realizing that the sunsmeet is already here; the colony is empty and in ruins.
So … what has the countdown been for?
00:00:00:12
00:00:00:11
The worm shakes itself, and Todd crashes to the ground in front of the monster, his left leg bent awkwardly under him. One dagger stays lodged in the worm’s hide, a seep of dark liquid dripping in its wake. The other has fallen out of his reach in the sand. Todd looks up at the creature, and even from this distance Ana can tell he’s lost to the worm’s trance-like pull.
00:00:00:08
“Hey!” Ana screams. “I’m over here!”
00:00:00:06
There’s an instant where the worm turns its head to look at her, and she feels the crush of its bottomless stare. Then the worm’s tail whips around and smashes into Todd, tossing him into the air like a piece of driftwood.
“NO!”
00:00:00:02
Todd hurtles out toward the sea.
00:00:00:01
The worm bears down on her.
00:00:00:00
Ana’s head jerks back as though it’s been caught on a fishing hook. There’s a tearing sensation, as if someone has hold of her skin and is pulling it off.
Then a sheet falls over her mind and everything goes white.
Part 2
FIFTEEN
This is how she wakes. There is a heavy pressure on her chest and a dull weight in her legs. Her mouth feels like cotton, and her eyes are glued shut.
No … not glued. She thinks they might open, if she tries.
She tries.
Everything is white. And somewhere nearby, a very faint sound: beep … beep … beep …
To her left there’s a wall and to her right a paneled screen. Overhead, fluorescent lights shine from a painted ceiling.
Where am I?
Lights … a ceiling … She’s indoors, lying on a bed. But how?
She remembers the worm … the overlapping suns … the end of the countdown …
And then nothing.
What’s happened to me?
Ana tries to sit up, but there’s something on her forehead, holding her down. There’s a wide strap across her hips. And when she tries to lift her arms, she finds them restrained, too. Ana forces herself to take slow, steady breaths. One thing at a time.
She wiggles her arms, which slide easily out of the loose restraints. Then she brings her hands up to her head, feeling a thick band across her forehead. Fumbling a little, she finds a button, which she depresses. The band splits open and falls off to either side of her head. As it pulls away she hears little suction sounds coming from her forehead, as if a series of connections comes loose.
A second time Ana tries to sit up. This time she gets halfway before the room begins to spin. Black spots l
ace her vision.
She drops back onto the bed.
I need to take it easy, slow things down. Even though that’s the last thing she feels like doing.
She touches her tongue to her lips and discovers they are sandpaper rough. So she’s been here awhile. Unconscious. Captive?
Trying to steady her pounding heartbeat, she starts over. She moves slower this time, easing herself gradually to a sitting position. But there’s still that band on her hips. She realizes after a moment what it reminds her of: the belt on her seat, back inside the rocket. But a cluster of wires and cords snake out of this belt and twine away below the bed.
Under her trembling fingers, this band comes apart as easily as the one on her forehead did. And sure enough, just like back in the rocket, rows of acupuncture-like needles withdraw from her midsection, leaving a dull, pulsing ache.
So wherever she is, they’ve got equipment. Technology. And for some reason, her bodily needs have been taken care of—fluids, elimination, nourishment.
But why am I still alone?
Ana looks down at her body. Her jumpsuit is gone. She’s wearing jeans and a tight cream-colored shirt with long sleeves and a red embroidered flower pattern. Somehow she knows that the jeans are Olive brand size 29, and on the shirt there’s a—no, that’s ridiculous. But Ana lifts the hem of the shirt anyway.
Just above the stitching is a wide green stain, which looks an awful lot like grass.
It is a grass stain.
How does she know these things?
Then she notices something else: she’s wearing a nametag again—just like the one she removed back in the rocket. It’s got the same cheap plastic holder, the same silvery pin. With trembling fingers Ana unclips the little plastic tag. The paper inside is very different from the nearly blank one she saw last time. This tag is ringed by a red border, with small red letters along the bottom: SAVITECH. Above this is a small thumbnail photo of a girl with dark brown eyes and cropped hair and a stony expression. Next to the image is printed: ANA ORTEZ
Does the girl look familiar? Ana can’t say. She looks like someone out of a dream, someone not quite known but not unknown, either. Bile rises in Ana’s throat at the thought that she is looking at her own photograph and she doesn’t recognize herself.
What is going on here?
Her head is steadier now and Ana turns her body, very slowly, keeping her left hand on the bed for support. She glances down and freezes in place.
Thick, ropy scars wind over the back of her hand, the backs of both hands—lacing each of her fingers, covering her wrists like vines before creeping under her long sleeves and out of sight.
Whose hands are these?
She doesn’t remember these hands—but she knows them. Knows with the rock-bottom solidity that has come with each of her regained bits of knowledge that these are her hands, her scars, her … guilt?
The word jumps out at her, but she can’t deal with it right now, can’t remember, doesn’t want to remember. These are her hands, her clothes, her body. That’s enough for now.
What really matters is figuring out where she is and what’s going on.
She slides her feet off the bed and rests them on the floor. She’s wearing white canvas sneakers—no more hiking boots. She tests the injury in her shoulder by shrugging it. Nothing. No pain at all.
How long have I been here?
In front of her bed stands an IV drip with a tube dangling down loose. But the bag that held the liquid is empty, the tube dry. Ana tries to lick her lips again. Is that why she is so parched? Maybe whoever has her here is due to come fill up the device.
Or has given up on keeping her alive.
The room is small, with a narrow space around each side of the bed. And all the equipment …
Ana’s attention snags on a wide readout panel that fills the head of her bed, like a spider’s body with its wire limbs dangling to connect to a wide black band. The band she now knows was fastened around her forehead. So, wires that were connected to her. The main face of the panel is a wide display screen. It’s gray with static and is also the source of that faint beeping that she’s been hearing on the fringes of her awareness.
For a moment Ana wonders what was on the readout before she disconnected herself from it. There’s something at the edge of her mind, something she thinks she might remember if she tried hard enough—but right now she’s too frantic to try bringing it back. If she even could.
Ana stands, pausing just long enough to be sure her legs will hold her—and they do, with just the barest tremble—before shuffling to the end of the bed.
At the far side of the room, to the left of her bed, is a doorway with clear plastic strips hanging from the frame. Across from it, on the right wall, is a heavy door marked EXIT.
Ana contemplates the door with the plastic strips. Why can she suddenly remember the feel of them slapping across her face? Was she carried through them? Did she walk through them on her own? Shaking herself, wishing that could shake some of the cobwebs out of her brain as well, she turns to the heavy door and pushes through.
She finds herself in a large room with office cubicles to one side and a lounge area to the other. A big set of glass double doors lies directly across the room from her, leading into an outer hallway.
Ana steps into the main area and looks around. The air is cooler here, but it smells horrible, a stench like nothing she’s ever smelled before. In the lounge area there’s a pink velour couch facing a coffee table and a flat-screen television mounted on the wall. The television is on, its screen showing a vacant, pixelated pattern.
Right next to the television is a water cooler. Ana nearly falls on top of it in her relief. She downs five cups of water in quick succession, and the freezing liquid helps to settle her thoughts. There has to be a logical explanation for all of this. She just needs to keep looking.
Dropping her cup in the trash, she turns back to face the couch. It’s big and soft and suddenly, something about it looms sharp in her mind. There’s a spot between the two middle cushions where the springs have bent to the side and left a hiding place. …
How do I know that?
Ana is standing over the couch before she realizes she’s moved. As her hand slides between the cushions, she already knows what she’s going to find.
She pulls out a scrap of paper no bigger than the palm of her hand. Scrawled in blue ballpoint ink is:
O+O
The same message that was scribbled at the bottom of her instructions from the rocket. She pats her shirt where her pocket used to be, but of course the letter is gone, along with her missing jumpsuit.
There’s a picture window perpendicular to the couch. Letting the scrap of paper fall to the floor, she moves toward the window. Outside, the sky is not pink or peach or raspberry; it’s blue. Dark, midnight blue. There’s a single moon, round and full, rising over the edge of a tall building.
There are buildings everywhere. The window she’s looking from is high off the ground—ten, maybe twenty stories up. She can see the roofs of buildings all around her, some flat, some shingled, some with little rooftop gardens. There’s water in the distance, glinting black in the moonlight.
And electricity. There are streetlights below her.
Federal Street, she knows suddenly. Downtown Boston. Massachusetts.
She isn’t on Paradox anymore. She’s back on Earth.
She’s home.
Ana chokes back a sob. She runs her hands over her face and feels the series of faint depressions on her forehead where the suction marks from the probes and electrodes on her forehead band must have been attached. But the rest of her skin is perfectly smooth and healthy. There’s no sign of the deep gouge she received in the Dead Forest. For the wound to have healed so completely … how long has she been back?
Once she lost consciousness at the colony, she must have been put immediately into suspended animation and into a rocket home. Four months’ travel—how do I know this, without know
ing that I know?—that should be plenty of time to explain her good-as-new shoulder, the way her other bruises and cuts have faded.
What about her hands, though? Where did all these new scars come from?
Her legs have started shaking and she can’t seem to make them stop. She turns from the window and walks toward the television she noticed earlier, its screen still bright and blank. There’s a remote on the coffee table and she picks it up, hovering over the off command, then she pauses. She slides her finger to the left and scrolls through the channels instead. The next channel shows the same empty display. As does the next, and the next. What’s going on?
Something has to be connected!
Finally, she finds a channel with a picture. It’s a newscast set, a room dominated by a large desk. On the wall behind the desk is a bright logo saying WCN-TODAY. At the bottom of the screen is the flashing red word: LIVE!
The picture is tilted ever so slightly, as if someone bumped the camera and didn’t bother to fix it. And there are no people in the frame.
Or … are there?
Ana leans closer to the screen, then gasps.
The newscaster’s desk is empty, but on the floor partly hidden behind the desk a man with black wire-frame glasses is lying on his back, one arm half-covering his face.
A face dark with blood.
Ana jerks back from the screen. On live television? Where is the camera operator, where are the lighting technicians, where are the network executives?
And suddenly, she thinks she knows what’s going on. There’s only one place she can remember seeing that kind of blood, that kind of death: inside a twisting memory strand that rippled across the face of an alien planet.
Her heart sinking, Ana turns to take in the rest of the room. The cubicles that fill the main office area look familiar, and not from some shadowy half-memory. This room, this place—she’s seen it recently.
She saw it through Bailey’s eyes.
Paradox Page 11
