Gestern

by J. Grace Pennington

  A message from the Doctor. So we did still have a signal.

  My heart pounded as I read his words.

  Guilders is already on his way. I’m so sorry this is happening. I will see what I can do to distance myself from Edmunds without arousing suspicion and putting you in further danger. I talked to the Captain, and he has given Guilders instructions to contact the European Council in Germany. Trent believes they will send help quickly, but we can’t be sure. If that is successful, there should be help heading your way within twenty-four hours. If I don’t hear that you are safe before then, Trent and I will head out ourselves with whatever help we can find. Please message me your current plan and location if you can. I love you, and I pray that peace passing understanding keeps your heart and mind—and I pray for protection. I’ll see you soon.

  Hands still trembling, I handed the pad to Dred and took the mechanism back while he read it.

  “I’m not sure how much they can help,” he said, handing the pad towards me.

  I made no move to take it. “Can you reply while I finish this? I don’t know how to tell him where we are.”

  This seemed to surprise him. “Okay...”

  I just went back to my work, leaving him to type out the details. It felt vulnerable, letting him into the relationship between me and the Doctor, in a sense. But it was just a message. I needed to work. He knew our location.

  He finished typing after a moment but waited until I had put the blaster back together to hand me the pad. I returned it to my pocket and gave him the altered blaster.

  “What time is it?”

  He looked at his pad. “Almost four. The bats will come around six thirty.”

  I swallowed. Would two and a half hours be enough time to reach and find whoever was stationed in the forest outside the castle?

  I was so, so very tired.

  Pressing my hands to the ground, I pushed myself up. Then I brushed the dirt from my skin, my legs, my rear, as best I could.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  October 24th, 2321

  10:02 a.m.

  Baltimore, United States

  Gerard felt physical discomfort just walking into Edmunds’ office that morning. He didn’t have any idea what the man’s larger scheme was, but he knew it involved harm to Andi, trouble for his nephew, and danger to Andi and August’s very young half sister. And that was more than enough to make him despise his benefactor. But if Edmunds knew Gerard was onto him, what might happen to August or Ursula?

  Besides, he needed access to that information.

  He settled into the desk chair and pulled his pad, books, and papers out of his bag.

  A tap at the doorframe made him jump.

  “Any word from the kids?”

  The flippant question turned Gerard’s blood to slush, but he answered in his usual gruff tone. “Nothing yet.” Lord, forgive me.

  Edmunds nodded with the most sympathetic of frowns. “Getting information into and out of Austria can be difficult right now. Let me make some calls and see what I can do to expedite things for you.”

  Gerard forced a smile. “Thank you.”

  Edmunds nodded and left. Gerard’s smile left with him. He propped the pad up on the desk and accessed the files that were next on his list to inspect for clues.

  This resource might not last very long. He should make the absolute most of it that he could.

  Andi’s life depended on it.

  CHAPTER XVII

  I pulled Dred’s coat tighter around me as we walked. The cold from the ground seeped up through the soles of my hiking boots and permeated every muscle, leaving my body stiff.

  “Did you check for more messages?” he asked.

  I pulled my pad from my pocket with cold fingers and found there was a message from the Doctor. It was addressed to Dred, so I read it aloud.

  Thank you for your help in keeping Andi safe. Mr. Guilders is still on the flight to Germany, so I don’t know how long it will be before we can send help. If you get this message before you’re blocked again, be advised that I am continuing my work with Senator Edmunds for the time being, to keep from arousing suspicion and to make the best use of his resources. I’m sure I don’t need to say to be careful. My prayers are with you.

  That was all.

  So we were on our own for who knew how much longer.

  I pocketed the pad and looked in Dred’s direction. I could barely make out his eyes in the remains of light still filtering through the trees. “Do you think we’re almost there?” I whispered.

  “We’ll find out.”

  We walked on for about ten minutes before I heard the first familiar whiz of the winged rodents as they made their way into the forest.

  We must be close.

  Dred drew the rigged blaster and held it in one hand as we began to circle the perimeter of the peninsula. “Just a few meters away from the edge of the forest,” he murmured.

  They had to be somewhere near.

  The bats came more frequently as we made progress, and soon the swift raindrop sounds cut through the air nearby, and the animals made their way past us and into the cover of the trees.

  The forest turned a dark blue in the twilight. The smattering of bats became a storm, and the storm a gale, a black cloud I could just make out through the woods.

  Slipping from tree to tree, we reached the edge of a clearing. I saw movement.

  Swallowing, I slipped a little closer, still keeping cover behind a thick trunk and peeking around it.

  August and Ursula were bound and gagged against two trees a little to my right. An armed guard stood in front of them. In the center of the clearing was a smoking pile of ash surrounded by gray stones. A large brown tent completed the scene.

  I saw no one else.

  Even if I’d dared whisper a query to Dred, the whizzing of the nearby bats was too loud now. Why would they only leave one man? Were there others? Could we really be this lucky?

  Then I heard two sounds almost simultaneously.

  The first was a deafening blast. It ripped into the sound of the bats like a cleaver, slashing the chilly air in one enormous burst of sound accompanied by a small earthquake. I gripped my sheltering tree as the sound emanated into a low rumble, like the growl of a long, distant, clap of thunder.

  The second was the sound of the creatures. The whizzing turned into the screech of a hundred rodents and the gust of bats scattered in every direction, becoming a tornado of chaos that took control of the forest.

  Bats everywhere, flying every which way, screeching. A smell—smoke?—filled my nostrils. I coughed.

  Dred gripped my arm and I looked up at his face. He was mouthing something.

  The castle. The castle.

  They’d blown up the castle, as he’d worried they might. Probably hoping I was still inside.

  I touched the blaster in his hand and tried to let my eyes speak of my urgency. Knock out the guard. We can get August and Ursula away in the confusion.

  He either misunderstood me or just thought differently, because instead of firing the gun into the clearing he began creeping around the edges of it, circling towards the hostages.

  It might work. Either way, I had no time to think or try to convince him otherwise. I rushed after him, ducking to avoid the bats that flew at me from every direction, trying not to think about anything except August and Ursula.

  We reached the trees they were tied to, but for the moment the bats still obscured our view of the rest of the clearing. I pulled a pocketknife from my backpack and knelt behind August. Then I put a hand on his cold, white ones and he jerked them down.

  I didn’t have time to try to reassure him of my presence, so I just grabbed the rope that held his hands together and pressed the blade to it. He kept trying to yank his hands away, and the motion helped the knife slice through the bonds.

  Dred, still holding the blaster in one hand, was reaching for Ursula’s arm with the other. But before he could touch her, she was pulled away
into the thinning swarm of bats in the clearing.

  “Ursula!” he yelled.

  August yanked the gag from his mouth and whipped his head around. His pale, confused face didn’t change much when he saw me, but a tiny light leapt into his eyes. I laid the knife in his palm and left him to saw at the rope that bound his legs while I jumped to Dred’s side.

  He was stepping into the clearing with drawn blaster.

  No. They had the advantage now. They still had Ursula. They could hurt her, manipulate us. He was putting her and us in danger by proceeding now. We should back off and wait for another opportunity.

  The bats waned, and I saw a group of half a dozen men in the middle of the clearing. One of them held Ursula against his chest. Her dark eyes were wide with fear, her face nearly as pale as August’s in the fading light.

  Dred held his blaster towards them.

  They don’t know it’s been changed. They’ll think it’s just a normal weapon. Was that good or bad?

  “Give her to me,” Dred demanded, his voice flat and calm.

  The last few bats scattered out of the clearing and disappeared into the trees.

  None of the other men said anything.

  I gripped the elbow of Dred’s jacket and tugged. “Dred...”

  He yanked his arm away.

  My heartbeat accelerated.

  August finished cutting his bonds and scrambled to his feet.

  Nobody moved. The smell of smoke lingered in the air.

  “Dred,” I whispered. There was no good outcome here. If he fired the gun, they would have more than enough time to kill us or Ursula or both before they passed out. And there would be nothing we could do about it.

  He was smart enough to know that.

  “Let her go,” he said, more sternly.

  “The minute you shoot at one of us,” said one of the men, a thick-jawed one with a scar running down the side of his face, “one of us shoots her.” He prodded a blaster at Ursula’s temple.

  She squirmed, but her captor kept his grip.

  “She’s just a little girl,” Dred insisted, his voice faltering just barely discernibly. “She’s not the one you want.”

  “How do you know what we want?” the man with the scar asked.

  Dred glanced at me.

  No.

  August scooted closer to me until I could feel his breath against the top of my ear.

  “I know what Edmunds is trying to do,” Dred stated matter-of-factly. “I know he’s after the radialloy.”

  Scar-face’s expression didn’t change. “Why would he want the radialloy?”

  “He wants to destroy it. He wants to cover his tracks for his part in the Qandon supernova.”

  Silence. August stiffened beside me.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?” Dred raised his voice.

  None of the other men said anything.

  Dred just stared at them for a moment, chest rising and falling. I fixed my gaze on Ursula, her tangled hair and terrified eyes.

  “I can get you what you want.”

  Dred, please don’t...

  “Let her go, and it’s yours.”

  Please. I don’t want to die. God, don’t let him do it...

  “Why should I trust you?” Scar-face asked.

  “Because you have what I want and I have what you want.”

  August reached out and gripped my arm with more strength than I’d thought he had. My pulse pounded in my ears.

  Scar-face hesitated and reached for his pocket.

  “Don’t ask your boss,” Dred barked. “This is between you and me. This is how it’s going to work. You’re going to give Ursula to her brother, and they’ll leave. I’ll get the radialloy to you, and we all get out of it peacefully. Is that clear?”

  “Dred!” August cried.

  “Shut up! Is that clear?” Dred enunciated each word as if it were its own sentence.

  Scar-face hesitated.

  “Yes or no!” Dred insisted.

  Every cell in my body became ice.

  “Deal,” the man said at last, and nodded to the henchman holding Ursula.

  Everything happened in a blur. Dred gripped my arm firmly, so that I could feel each of his fingers through the jacket he’d lent me. August screamed, “You’ll have to kill me before you touch her!” and the henchmen shoved Ursula towards him.

  “August, take her and go,” Dred ordered. Then he turned the gun towards me.

  I stared into his eyes, unable to control my shivering.

  “Trust me,” he whispered, averting his face from the henchmen.

  I thought my heart was going to burst out of my chest. Trust him? How could I?

  Lord, please help me... please, somehow, let it be okay...

  I looked towards August and nodded, heart pumping wildly. He gripped Ursula to himself and stared.

  Dred pointed the gun directly in my face, said, “I’m sorry, Andi,” aloud, and pulled the trigger.

  August cried out and a sickly, burnt smell immediately invaded my senses. I tried to hold my breath but after several seconds I gasped in the gas and coughed. My ears started buzzing. The blood drained from my head.

  I couldn’t stand. The world spun.

  Dred’s arms encircled me and lowered me to the ground. He pulled my backpack off and unzipped it.

  “What are you doing?” I could barely make out Scar-face’s words.

  “Giving you what you want,” Dred said. He pulled out my first aid kit and took out a scalpel.

  “Stop!” August’s voice.

  Everything was gray. The sound, Dred’s face, the sky.

  Gray. Spinning.

  Something stung my knee ever so slightly. Like an ant bite. I remembered ant bites from when I was little.

  So long ago. No ants in space.

  So sleepy.

  “That wasn’t our deal.”

  “Yes it was. You just need the radialloy. You don’t need her.”

  I heard Scar-face’s voice but the words were garbled.

  My knee ached, but it felt very far away.

  Sleepy. So sleepy.

  The buzzing faded.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Doctor.

  That was my first thought. Doctor.

  My knee throbbed. Pounded.

  A hand smoothed my hair back from my forehead. Doctor?

  No—the hand was too cold and soft to be his.

  “You miststück!” a voice said nearby. Austrian. August.

  The hand stopped. “Shut up.” Another voice. Dred. His voice softened ever so slightly. “Andi? We need to get moving. Try to wake up.”

  “What’s wrong with her, Daddy?” whimpered a little voice. “Why did you cut her leg?”

  My leg. As I forced myself towards consciousness, the pain throbbed harder.

  “To make the bad guys go away. Keep quiet, pumpkin.”

  I finally opened my eyes to twilight, and trees, and Dred’s face hovering over mine.

  The small act seemed to awaken my senses and I began to shiver as the chilly air pressed against my skin. The shivering made the pain in my knee sharpen.

  I blinked.

  Dred pressed a hand to my arm. “Are you okay?”

  What kind of question was that?

  August sprang from my peripheral vision and pushed Dred away from me. “Okay? You’ve killed her!”

  Dred straight out yelled for the first time I’d heard. “I saved her! They were going to shoot her then and there. At least now we have time.”

  Shaking, I raised myself on one elbow and peered down at my leg. My jeans had been rolled up above my right knee, and blood was caked, stiff, dry, and cold on my skin. A straight slit, neatly stitched with an old-fashioned black suture, divided my knee evenly from top to bottom.

  My chest ached with the realization.

  The radialloy was gone.

  It had been there my whole life. The one good thing my biological father had given me, preserving my life for over twenty years. And just
like that, it was gone.

  Dred pulled himself away from the argument with August and knelt beside me. He spoke quickly. “Listen, Andi. Once I gave them the radialloy I threatened them with my blaster long enough to carry you into the woods after August and Ursula. But I don’t know when they’ll decide to follow us. I think they thought whatever was in the blaster killed you, but the rest of us know too much. I can help you walk, but you need to get up.”

  August shoved him aside. “I’ll help her.” He put an arm under mine and tried to pull me up but stumbled as he attempted to rise.

  “Lie down!” I tried to yell, but the words came out garbled. My thoughts moved slowly, like a ship on its lowest propulsion, but I was able to link August’s cold skin, exhaustion, and malnutrition with his chronic hypotension, and I knew there was little chance he could support his own weight, let alone mine. He collapsed to the ground and I tumbled on top of him, feeling that everything was happening in slow motion.

  Dred gently pulled me off of him and set me back on the ground. “Like I said. I’ll help her walk.”

  I put my hands out to my sides to feel for my backpack.

  “What is it?” Dred asked.

  I tried to say “Enari.” I’d brought some of August’s medicine along. But my mouth still refused to form clear sounds. Dred pulled my pack over to me and I unzipped it clumsily. “He has low blood pressure,” I tried very hard to enunciate clearly.

  Dred glanced over his shoulder at Ursula. She was sitting against a tree, Galactic Lucy clutched to her chest.

  “Hurry,” he said, grabbing the first aid kit from my bag and thrusting it towards August.

  My head pounded in sync with my knee. Dead. I was dead.

  As August shakily dug for his pills, I forced myself to sit up, one slight motion at a time. I might be dead, but August and Ursula weren’t. We had to press on.

  “It’s not here,” August said.

  I stared at him. “I... I know I...”