by Adair Hart
Emily stiffened as her heartbeat raced. These men were serious.
The room she was in was large, with featureless stone walls and a device standing at the back of the room next to an entrance. The device had a cylindrical base, with a slanted surface coming off it halfway down. A metal rod extended up from the base and ended in an upside-down dome-shaped structure. Several white-robed Purifiers stood in front of it.
“Face the portal,” said one of the men.
Emily’s breathing went erratic as she spun around to face the crystal rods.
The rods lit up, and a light solid golden surface appeared between them.
Emily felt the tip of a staff nudge in her back. “Go through.”
“I don’t want to,” said Emily with a wavering voice. She squinted when a sharp pain shot through her leg, causing her to buckle to the ground.
“Get up and go through the rift door, dog!”
“No … ,” said Emily with a cracked voice. “Please …” She screamed as the men grabbed her arms and legs and carried her toward the rift door.
Once they were within arms’ distance, they tossed her through.
She flew out into a similar room as the one she had just left. As she lay sprawled on the ground, two men grabbed her and held her down. Another man grabbed her arm and extended it out. Two tanned men in golden robes with the Purifier symbol in the chest area rushed out. Their bald heads glistened under the room’s light. They had elaborate markings on their faces, especially around the eyes, and one of them carried a syringe.
“Hurry! We only have thirty seconds,” said one of the gold-robed men.
The man carrying the syringe jabbed Emily in the arm.
“Stop it!” said Emily.
The other gold-robed man slapped her. “Shut up, filth!”
After extracting some of Emily’s blood, the man held the syringe up and eyed it. “Got it. These little wonders are going to make us.” He waved in a dismissive gesture. “Dispose of this trash.”
The three men held Emily up. The rift door surface changed from gold to red. They carried her forward as she kicked out.
“No!”
A sense of weightlessness washed over her as she flew through the portal and down a red tunnel. After a moment, she crash-landed onto a stone floor.
A pain shot through her body for a moment, causing her to wince. Her leg pulsed, and bruised spots on her sides ached where the men had kneed her. While squinting and trying to catch her breath, she took a look around.
The floor sat on top of a stepped pyramid sitting outdoors. Four metal pillars rose from the corners of the platform, ending in a circular roof. Near the top of the pillars, a small segment blinked. They emitted a blaring horn sound.
A rush of adrenaline shot through her. She hunkered down and waited out the horn sound. After it stopped, she continued to look around. Her nose rankled at the sweet smell of exotic flowers intermingled with the decayed smell of plants and animals. Looking up, she figured that whatever that thing was she came through, the ending must have spawned on the bottom side of the roof. She crawled over to one of the pillars and used it to stand up. Her breath staggered as she looked out.
Around the stepped pyramid was a small open area, separated from a lush jungle by a scattered white stone strip. A podium stood out at the base of one of the sides.
The ambient sounds of animals she did not recognize filled the air. One in particular caught her ear. It was a loud gurgling shriek that seemed to be coming closer.
She swept her gaze across the other sides. After a moment, she pulled out her PSD and tried to contact Dr. Snowden and Evaran to no avail. Her lips drew in as her eyes misted.
The pain in her arm throbbed where she had been stuck with the syringe. She rubbed the area, causing a tingling sensation to intensify. Probably the nanobots. She caught her breath and used the augmented reality view on her PSD to scan her surroundings.
A cliff loomed off in the distance, and a river had been detected nearby. Outside that, it was jungle everywhere.
Her stomach churned as a sense of dread welled up inside her. Maybe if she stayed put, Evaran and Dr. Snowden would be along soon. She gulped and then climbed to the nearest step, which was about three feet down. At least she could go see what the podium was. She knew her pain would subside, and the tingling sensations she was feeling seemed to minimize it.
After a few minutes of sitting and sliding down the steps, she reached the podium. It was metallic, like the pillars, and the top surface was caked with dried dirt. She cracked the crust and swept it away, revealing a smooth metal surface. She jumped back and shrieked when a beam shot out and scanned her. The surface then lit up and went semitransparent, showing a map. She approached the podium while surveying her immediate surroundings. After verifying there was nothing around, she scrutinized it.
The map showed a large landmass ringed by islands, with multiple yellow dots on it. Some dots were larger than the others. At the top of the landmass was a large blue dot.
A blinking yellow dot on the southern part caught her eyes. She figured that was her current location, assuming this map was accurate. With a press, several green dots appeared north of where she was.
The size of the dots seemed to follow a progression. The dot she was at was small. The green ones were a bit larger, and the blue one was massive relative to the others.
She switched to navigation mode on her PSD and held it up. After a few moments, she was able to determine the direction of the northern blue dot using the cliffs and the river as markers. The podium was on the south side of the pyramid. She was not planning on having to go anywhere, but at least now she had an idea of where she was.
A chattering sound punctuated by periodic shrieks raised the hairs on her arm. She glanced around and focused on the jungle. It was imperceptible at first, but a dark mass, like a carpet being rolled out, moved toward the white stone strip barrier below. She cocked her head as she examined it with the PSD.
She froze as she realized the white stone strip was bones, as if they had been swept off the pyramid and got caught on the jungle transition area. A quick look past it and her eyes widened.
The dark mass was a group of individual turtle-like shells, roughly a foot in length, ambling toward the pyramid. One of the turtle shells stopped. It reared up, showing a six-legged body underneath it with a somewhat humanoid face near the front. It let out a gurgled shriek and pointed toward her.
She gagged at the thought of one-foot bugs that resembled humanoids with shells. Her breathing sped up as the creatures reached the bones. She had to move. Were these creatures responsible for the bones? She was not going to wait to find out. Facing north, she eyed the cliff in the distance. She remembered seeing a river on the way there when she was surveying the land earlier. Maybe these things could not swim.
She climbed down to the ground and headed around the corner to the right to head north. At least the creatures were coming from the south, so she would have a head start. As she approached the bones to the north, she slid to a stop.
Another mass of the creatures was ahead of her.
Looking to her right, she realized they had surrounded the entire area. Maybe they could not climb. She hustled up several steps.
As the first wave hit the first stone, they paused to allow the second wave to stack on top of them.
Her mind went wild as she realized they were forming a living ramp. Snapping her head left and right, she saw some had already made it up the first step. She set her PSD to a repulsion blast. “Get away!”
The creatures moved to the second step.
She scrambled up to the third step.
Some of the creatures on the step below her from the south were beginning to come around the corner.
She aimed at the wave on the second step and fired her repulsing beam.
The creatures went tumbling, but their empty space was quickly filled by others.
She exhaled quickly. “Leave me alone!” Sh
e fired in a downward-sweeping motion, clearing a temporary wide path through the creatures. Adrenaline, accompanied by a tingling sensation, shot through her. It was as if time itself slowed down when she jumped three steps to the ground. She blasted a path through the creatures and took off running. With a quick leap over the bones, she burst into the jungle. She could hear the creatures gurgling and shrieking as they changed course. The sound of the river ahead made her speed up.
She crashed through branches, vines, and underbrush in her rush. Startled animals fled on her approach. Large insects that would normally have made her jump out of her skin were all around, but she did not care, and they did not either, it would seem.
After reaching the river, she stopped to catch her breath. The sounds of the creatures breaking through the jungle were unmistakable. After a quick scan of the twenty-foot-wide, fast-moving brown river, she tucked the PSD into her pants pocket, then jumped in and swam over to the other side. She hoped the color of the water was due to disturbed silt.
The creatures approached the other side of the river. They paused and gurgle shrieked. Two tried to enter the water and were swept away. The others backed away. Some were snapped up by the large insects she had seen earlier.
“Yeah! How ’bout that!” she shouted while bobbing her head.
The creatures dispersed into the jungle.
Looking around, she noticed the cliffs were not too far off. She expected the Torvatta would be around soon, but if she was going to stay the night, shelter would be needed. After calming down, she pulled out her PSD and selected the purifying water container. It formed out of the morphable matter aspect of the PSD. She took a scoop of the river water and then pressed a button on the handle. The brown water cleared. She gulped it down and repeated this several times until her thirst was slaked.
She let out a deep breath as she scanned toward the cliffs. The PSD showed them to be about four miles away. The jungle was less dense on this side of the river. She could not go back to the pyramid, and she knew that animals would come to drink at the river, so staying there was out of the question. If the Torvatta came, it would be able to find her, or so she hoped. With a look back over her shoulder, she decided to head to the cliff and took off.
Her adrenaline wore off over the roughly two hours it took to reach the base of the cliff. Looking up, she noticed unusual openings on the rock wall sitting on a ledge. It reminded her of housing she had seen in her Native American studies. The climb looked rough, but it was either that or stay the night on the ground. At least that high up, she would not need to worry about something sneaking up on her. That was her thought, anyway. She did not know when it got dark, but she figured she had some time to get up there. Better to wait there.
Her eyes softened as she thought of her situation. She missed Dr. Snowden, Evaran, and V. Where were they? She sighed and began the arduous climb. Her journey to the ledge was not as bad as she thought it was going to be. A few flying animals had come close, but a shot from the PSD sent them packing. When she got to the ledge, she wrinkled her eyebrows as she saw small doors carved out of the stone. She pulled herself up and approached the first one with the PSD aimed forward. Looking in, she saw what appeared to be a small living space. Whatever had lived there was long gone. Maybe due to those creatures.
She stepped into the enclosure and swept it with a light from the PSD. Nothing was in there as far as she could tell. She went to a corner in the back and slumped down. With knees pulled up to her chest and a frown on her face, tears began to flow. Her quick, successive breaths did not help the situation. She stared out the door with a numbness in her head.
She was alone.
The night seemed to get dark around 6:00 p.m., according to the PSD clock. Emily had spent the rest of the day checking out her surrounding area on the ledge. Using her PSD, she was able to determine that the rooms were over a thousand years old.
A sharp pain shot through her foot the next morning, waking her out of her sleep.
A small owl-like bird pecked at her foot.
Her eyes popped open as she waved it away with her hands and kicked out. “Shoo!”
The bird flew out of the enclosure.
She yawned and then looked around. A small beetle-looking bug was on her shoulder, making her jump up. She stepped forward while checking the rest of her body. This enclosure would need some cover for the nights, assuming Dr. Snowden, Evaran, and V had not already arrived. Her heart sank as loneliness crept in. She had been alone before, but always around people to some degree. To truly be alone made her palms sweat.
She stepped out of the enclosure and perched herself on the ledge to scan the jungle she had come through before. In all the excitement of the previous day, hunger had taken a backseat to more immediate concerns. She had shelter now, and the river could provide water. Her stomach grumbled as she thought of having breakfast. Dr. Snowden was probably having his morning coffee. Hopefully it was while they were trying to find her.
She pulled out her PSD and checked the survival section. Looking at it jogged her mind about the new food pellet feature Evaran had talked about. With a press of a button, a food pellet came out of the PSD and fell to the ground. She picked it up and dusted it off. It was brown and about the size of a quarter. She had a nine-month supply, but hoped she would not need more than a day or so.
With a shake of her head, she chewed the food pellet. It was tasteless, like chewing cardboard, but she knew it would give her the vitamin and caloric intake she would need. She briefly smiled as a thought popped into her mind of what she would say to Evaran about the pellet’s taste. The smile wound down as she remembered where she was.
Her bowels gurgled. She had already decided to go to the river to get water. May as well make use of it as a toilet. If she had to go, better to do it somewhere other than where she was going to stay. Maybe there was a place to do it nearby. Wherever she went, it needed to be soon. At least she would not need to worry about menstrual flow due to the nanobots breaking it down and reabsorbing it into the body. Evaran had mentioned that the process could be reversed, but would require some time to research. Even without them, the stress would have probably made her miss a few.
She climbed down the cliff face and headed toward the jungle. It was muggy, but it was not the temperature that brought her spirit down. Loneliness was ever encroaching into her thoughts. She gulped as she trudged through the sparse landscape.
It took her about an hour and a half to reach the river. She shaved off thirty minutes by going a different route that she scoped when perched on the ledge earlier. One of the interesting things she discovered was that the jungle was filled with poisonous trees. The PSD had warned her of that when she scanned them on her way through. It would explain why there were so few animals. Even insects were rare other than an annoying insect that reminded her of a fly. She was sure that she had touched some of the trees on the way through, but did not feel or see anything that would indicate she had a rash. Maybe the nanobots had protected her. She looked across the river as she took off her pants. There was no need to go over there. Ever.
The brown river was as she remembered it. Fast flowing and decently wide. It had a strong odor, which was something she did not notice her first pass through.
She drank several times using the purifying container and then stepped into the river. The strong current pushed firmly against her as she relieved herself. She spent the next few hours sitting next to a set of rocks where her pants were. With the two suns beating down, it did not take long for her to dry off.
She headed back to the enclosure and sat outside, dangling her legs off the side. The light breeze calmed her, but her morale was tumbling. With nothing to do but wait, she pulled out the PSD and browsed through the survival section.
The videos section caught her eye. They covered everything from basic tips to fighting techniques. She smiled as she saw Evaran going through them and showing examples in the holo room. How did he have the time to do all the
se? Or did he do them for someone else previously?
Most of the day went by as she studied the videos on the PSD. Evaran had even added one on the recent food and purifying container features. She had a brief moment of joy when first hearing Evaran’s somewhat emotionless voice. If she was going to be alone while she waited, these videos could occupy her time.
Later that night, around 9:00 p.m., she hunkered down in the enclosure. With two rocks holding the PSD back against the wall and pointing toward the open doorway and window, she activated the shield. It initially shot out a small square shield. One of the videos explained how to extend the shield and shape it. She was not sure she fully understood some of what was being shown, but she was able to extend the shield to the front wall, and expand it to touch the floor and almost the ceiling. A small slit near the top allowed air in.
She snuggled into the corner, satisfied with her setup. Looking through the shield out into the night, she wondered what Dr. Snowden, Evaran, and V were up to. A lump formed in her throat as she cried herself to sleep.
Two weeks later, she had a routine down. Trips to the river were done in the morning and at dusk. She spent half the day exploring her immediate area and the other half learning from the videos.
The loneliness ate at her but did not make itself really felt until she was secured for the night. Several times she had panic attacks, thinking maybe the Torvatta could not come here and this was it. Maybe they were unable to come because they were dead. She fought these thoughts, but as each day passed, the sinking feeling that something was wrong grew stronger.
Another week later and even the routine was failing to keep the loneliness at bay. She tried to find anything to keep her mind off the situation, but hopelessness was beginning to set in.
