Tundra 37

by Aubrie Dionne

  The lookout spot­ted some­thing on the floor and dragged a line across her foot­prints in the dust. His boots flashed as he stepped to­ward her hid­ing spot, fol­low­ing her trail to the plastic as­sim­il­ator.

  Mestasis froze, feel­ing her life on the brink of nonex­ist­ence. After wit­ness­ing their crime, they’d never let her live. Es­pe­cially after they found her keytag and learned she worked for a di­vi­sion of the gov­ern­ment. She wor­ried about the kit­ten in her arms. Would they tor­ture it? Would they throw it out the win­dow?

  Her hands sweated into its fur as the man eyed the dangling arm of the plastic as­sim­il­ator. Mestasis ducked, watch­ing through a pee­p­h­ole in the cor­roded metal frame. He had wide gray eyes like two pieces of steel, silky mid­night-black hair tinged with the neon at the tips, and cream-colored skin, much lighter than hers. Too hand­some to be a gang mem­ber, but that was clearly what he was.

  He met her eye, his own gaze flash­ing with sur­prise, and her body jol­ted in­side. They froze, locked in each other’s gaze.

  Please. Mestasis bit into her lower lip. Please don’t turn me in.

  He raised a fin­ger to his thick lips and turned the other way. Mestasis re­leased her breath in dis­be­lief. Gang mem­bers were sup­posed to be ruth­less. But curi­os­ity filled that man’s eyes in­stead of a hard edge.

  Walk­ing up to the man in charge, the lookout spoke with a soft and smooth voice, “We have to keep mov­ing. We’re too high up.”

  The leader nod­ded and his lack­eys shoved the pro­duce back in the con­tainer. “We’ll count the rest later.”

  The lookout’s hand res­ted on his sub­sonic laser. “I’ll keep watch un­til the men carry the last of the con­tain­ers down.”

  “Ex­cel­lent, James. Don’t linger.”

  The two men who had opened the con­tainer bent down and heaved it over their shoulders. The leader turned back to him. “Thank you for your pro­tec­tion.”

  James nod­ded, silky black hair tinged with neon fall­ing around his face to block his pro­file. “I do what I can.”

  The gang dis­ap­peared down the stairs and Mestasis con­tem­plated mak­ing a run for it. But the man named James had just saved her life, and she didn’t want him call­ing out to his friends. She waited, listen­ing to their foot­steps fade.

  “Tell me why I shouldn’t turn you in.” His voice was more amused than stern.

  Mestasis gave up her hid­ing spot and stepped into the moon­light pour­ing down through the broken glass. Her body shook in sur­vival mode, every inch of her skin tingling with over­sens­it­iv­ity. She could feel his heat sig­na­ture from across the room, a strong, manly pres­ence, much sharper than Dr. Fields.

  “I’m not a spy. I came to res­cue this kit­ten.”

  Its furry head popped up out of her uni­form and she real­ized her biggest mis­take. She should have changed into ci­vil­ian clothes be­fore en­ter­ing the lower levels.

  “You’re from TINE?” He soun­ded sur­prised.

  Mestasis kept her voice even des­pite the tremors spread­ing through­out her body. “I told you; I’m not here to cause trouble.”

  He stepped closer and the moon­light il­lu­min­ated his face. He had a wide fore­head and a sharp, broad nose. Des­pite his good looks, Mestasis had to re­mind her­self he was dan­ger­ous.

  James crossed his arms, his long cloak rip­pling be­hind him. “You’re go­ing to let us steal food from your rich friends and not re­port us?”

  “They’re not my friends.” The venom in her voice sur­prised her and she bit her lip. James fur­rowed his dark eye­brows, study­ing her like a puzzle that re­fused to be solved.

  The way he looked at her, like a spoiled high-rise prin­cess, made an­ger warm her neck and she spit out her words. “I grew up in the slums, no dif­fer­ent than you. I’m only work­ing for TINE to get my fam­ily away from gang­men like you.”

  “Is that how you think of me?” He soun­ded amused and she wondered if he set a trap.

  A ker­nel of an­ger hardened in­side her. “I re­cog­nize your col­ors. I’m well aware of the Ra­dio­act­ive Hand of Justice.”

  He shook his head. “I’m try­ing to help the world, not con­trol it.”

  “By steal­ing from the gov­ern­ment, en­act­ing your own laws?”

  “By mak­ing life more fair for the thou­sands that live in the shad­ows of those above.”

  She clamped her lips down with no re­sponse. He did have a point. Al­though it was wrong to steal, the cur­rent sys­tem failed the ma­jor­ity. The gov­ern­ment had cut aid pro­grams be­fore her life­time, and too many lived in poverty and died of hun­ger. She was try­ing to save her mom and sis­ter from those con­di­tions by stay­ing in the sys­tem. He was try­ing to save the world by think­ing out­side it. In real­ity, who made the biggest dif­fer­ence?

  More foot­steps soun­ded in the stair­way and he ges­tured to­ward the plastic as­sim­il­ator. Mestasis crouched down in her old hid­ing place and he stooped next to her. The room filled with men, their hair singed with red high­lights. Spikes poked from their necks, the im­plants pro­trud­ing like scales down their backs.

  James clenched the metal ma­chine arm in his fist. “Damn, it’s the Razor­necks.”

  Mestasis opened her mouth to ask who they were, but the men flooded the room, their rough voices break­ing the si­lence. James put his hand over his laser, but she knew they were out­numbered, even for a weapon of that caliber.

  He brought his lips to her ear, his breath tick­ling her neck. “If they find us, we’re dead.”

  The men spread out, perch­ing on the old equip­ment. They held strange tu­be­like glass bever­ages and watched the room with wild eyes.

  Mestasis put a hand up to her mouth, cov­er­ing a gasp. They were moon­shiners, men who drank their prob­lems away with a sub­stance stronger than al­co­hol. Made from Morph­eus, a chem­ical found on the moon, the sub­stance brought out vi­ol­ence and ate the drink­ers from the in­side out. Highly ad­dict­ive, they’d kill to get their hands on any­thing that would lead them to their next drink.

  They be­came rowdy quickly, stand­ing in a circle punch­ing each other, while the oth­ers roamed around the room, des­troy­ing what re­mained of the ma­chines. With gaunt cheeks and dilated pu­pils, they looked more like ghouls than men. One broad-ches­ted Razor­neck sauntered over in their dir­ec­tion. James slipped off his coat, threw it on top of her, and drew his laser.

  “Look what we’ve got here.” The burly man ap­proached James with a bar of jagged metal in his hand. “Looks like a green-haired lep­re­chaun, a do-gooder from the Hand of Justice.” James stood, hid­ing Mestasis and she shrank back into the shad­ows.

  Some of his com­pan­ions chuckled while other spat. “I hate those guys. They think they’re help­ing people out, but they won’t share any of their profits with us.”

  James tightened his grip on the laser growl­ing, “And we never will, you moon­shiner crap.”

  Grunts of protest rang out. Mestasis’s throat con­stric­ted and she struggled to breathe. She’d just met James, but she was tied to him. He did save her life.

  An­other one of them shouted, “Bring him here. Put him in the cen­ter circle.”

  James pulled the trig­ger, but the man had already drunk some of his moon­shine, and he moved faster than any nor­mal hu­man. He grabbed the weapon as it flung white light into the ceil­ing and hauled it up in the air. James, un­will­ing to let go, dangled from the straps.

  Mestasis closed her eyes and fo­cused her en­ergy. Quickly, she placed both hands on the con­crete, feel­ing the elec­tro­mag­netic pulses of the room around them, the heat sig­na­tures, and the re­main­ing work­ing lights. Her con­scious­ness heightened by the im­pend­ing danger, she’d never ex­per­i­enced so many im­pulses in her life. She channeled the en­ergy and re­leased it in a strong gush of will. All
of the lights in the room flickered on be­fore ex­plod­ing above their heads, rain­ing shards. The man dropped James, and he re­covered quickly, fir­ing warn­ing shots with his laser.

  He shouted as he pur­sued them, “Leave now! All of you.”

  Their drinks gave off a strange ra­dio­act­ive pulse, and she re­versed it, send­ing it back to each glass tube with twice its force. The glass shattered in their hands, blood spray­ing every­where. Cries of fear and rage erup­ted into the dark­ness. Dis­or­i­ented, the men scattered, giv­ing James enough time to work his way back to Mestasis. The gang evac­u­ated the room as quick as they’d come, leav­ing a sprawl­ing mess of glass and blood in their wake.

  James pulled his cloak off her shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  Mestasis se­cured the kit­ten be­neath her shirt and stood, wip­ing her elec­tric­ally charged hands on her legs to dis­perse the ex­tra en­ergy. The room swirled around her and she stead­ied her­self, lean­ing on the old ma­chine. Her powers re­ceded and she be­came a nor­mal nine­teen year old once again.

  Still hold­ing his laser to­ward the door, James stared at her, gawk­ing. “You did this?”

  “Now you know why I work for TINE.”

  She thought she’d scare him away. Any man her age that was aware of her powers stayed a clear two-meter ra­dius away from her. But James seemed im­pressed. “With powers like that, you could rule TINE, never mind work for them.”

  Mestasis laughed for the first time that day. “I didn’t know how strong they were un­til to­night. Be­sides, I don’t want to rule any­thing. I just want to have a safe place for my fam­ily.”

  His ex­pres­sion grew ser­i­ous. “Leave TINE and come join me. We have everything you could ever need: freshly grown food, run­ning wa­ter, everything in a vast net­work un­der­neath the streets.”

  She smiled. His of­fer en­ticed her, be­cause it would provide shel­ter for her whole fam­ily that in­stant, in­stead of wait­ing for years to raise enough money so her mom didn’t have to work. But, she could never live the life of a crim­inal, even if they were fight­ing for the lower class. She had too much to sac­ri­fice on the higher decks. Her mother would never hear of it, and Abysme wouldn’t either.

  “Thanks, but I can’t.”

  She moved to leave and he grabbed her hand, his hot fin­gers warm­ing her skin. His voice was husky. “At least tell me your name.”

  “Metsy.” She slid her hand from his grasp, study­ing his per­fect fea­tures in the moon­light. She’d never al­lowed her­self a sliver of ro­mance, and the feel­ings she’d sup­pressed rose in­side her like hot lava.

  “I’m James. James Wil­fred.”

  She star­ted walk­ing, shout­ing at her feet not to stop. She couldn’t al­low her­self to be­come at­tached. “See you later, James. Good luck with your cause.”

  His voice stopped her as she reached the stair­way. “Will I see you again?”

  Mestasis froze, one hand on the doorframe. His ex­pect­a­tion hung heavy in the air between them. She had to make a choice. She could re­turn to her floor and for­get this night ever happened, or she could risk everything to con­spire with a reneg­ade. Her con­ver­sa­tion with James made Mestasis ques­tion how much she really trus­ted TINE. What if her work failed to land her and her sis­ter suc­cess­ful ca­reers? What if the gov­ern­ment shut the pro­gram down? What if Abysme’s con­cerns were valid? The world fell apart around them, crumb­ing a little more with each passing day. It might be use­ful to have an ally un­der­ground. Her feel­ings screamed in­side her, and this time she couldn’t ig­nore them.

  “De­pends on if you like cof­fee.”

  §

  Mestasis sighed, the memory of James filling every ounce of her body with warmth and mak­ing some parts long dead and severed feel again. She could al­most wiggle her toes. As the cold­ness of Tun­dra 37 seeped back in, real­ity hit her hard. This frozen planet was the last place she had ex­pec­ted to end up.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Woman of His Dreams

  “I can’t con­tinue this mis­sion without them!” Luna whined from the front seat, re­mind­ing Gemme of when five-year-old Fer­ris wanted to swim in the aqua tanks with the sal­mon.

  Tech revved the en­gines of the landrover, wait­ing for a dir­ec­tion from Brent­wood. The old en­gin­eer had vo­lun­teered to take up the wheel, giv­ing the Lieu­ten­ant time to rest. “Should we go back?”

  Brent­wood rubbed his temples and Gemme’s heart went out to him. He’d gone through a lot. They all had, and the mis­sion had just be­gun. “I’m not sure how far we’ve come es­cap­ing that creature, but I bet go­ing back would put us a whole day be­hind.”

  Luna twis­ted her neck to gaze at him from the front seat. She bat­ted her eye­lashes and pleaded. “I need them. Code Beta Prime, re­mem­ber?”

  It soun­ded like non­sense to Gemme, but when Brent­wood’s face showed re­cog­ni­tion, she stared at him in dis­be­lief. Luna spoke as though the two of them had some secret lan­guage. Gemme couldn’t un­der­stand what was so im­port­ant about chunks of snow and tentacle goo, but she kept her mouth shut. This was Brent­wood’s de­cision, not hers.

  In a resigned voice, he ordered, “Turn around, Tech.”

  Tech craned his neck from the front seat to meet Brent­wood’s eye. “You sure about this, chief?”

  “Yes, ab­so­lutely.” He sat back against the seat and stared out the sight panel, his jaw set in a ri­gid line. Gemme was temp­ted to ask him what Beta Prime was all about, but she didn’t want to seem nosy, or overly eager for his at­ten­tions with some school­girl crush. And she didn’t want Luna to get the sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing she was curi­ous. They prob­ably wouldn’t tell her any­way. She settled into her seat and watched the snow­flakes blow against the sight panel, feel­ing like she’d re­gressed back to her class years.

  Tech brought the landrover in an arc around a jagged out­crop­ping of ice. “What’s the big dis­cov­ery, Luna?”

  Luna shif­ted in her seat. “Ocean life and lots of it.”

  The old man scoffed. “I don’t see any ocean.”

  “It’s be­low us. We’re driv­ing over it as we speak, kilo­met­ers of wa­ter run­ning un­der­neath the ice. Where do you think all those tentacled ele­phant jelly­fish ran to?”

  Gemme shivered at the thought of driv­ing over an ocean with a layer of ice in between. It seemed al­most as scary as a chrome hull sep­ar­at­ing her from deep space. Why did life have to be so pre­cari­ous?

  Tech shrugged. “I don’t get it. The scouts said Tun­dra 37 had little to no known life.”

  Luna soun­ded smug. “That’s be­cause they never checked be­low the sur­face, when the find­ings lay un­der­neath their feet.”

  “You mean this for­saken place just might prove a use­ful hab­itat in which to live?”

  “If we can eat them, yes. That’s why I need my sample trays. I’m try­ing to fig­ure out how com­pat­ible their pro­teins are to our bod­ies. Yes we need en­ergy, but we also need food to eat, and I don’t see any apple trees spout­ing, or fields of golden wheat.”

  Golden wheat. Gemme thought back to the strange dreams she’d been hav­ing ever since the comets hit. Dreams of Old Earth. They’d seemed so tan­gible at the time, but sit­ting in the landrover with Al­pha Team Blue made her dreams feel like gib­ber­ish. She was re­lieved no one else could see what she ex­per­i­enced when she closed her eyes.

  “Here we are, home sweet home.” Tech parked the landrover and opened the hatch.

  Gemme jumped out, stretch­ing her legs. The paws of the alien-mam­moth had decim­ated their camp. Luna’s trays of samples lay knocked over, the small vi­als scattered in the snow. Luna’s tent was flattened and torn, the pegs all bent out of shape. Gemme wondered if they’d get their mis­sion ac­com­plished at all, never mind on sched­ule.

  Brent­wood sur­veyed the dam­
age, eye­ing his own still stand­ing tent. The strength in his voice gave Gemme hope. “Luna, next stop, you can have my tent. I’ll bunk up with Tech. As for the samples, find as many as you can and start pack­ing up. I’d like to leave as soon as pos­sible. If I drive through the night, we can make up for lost time.”

  Tech spoke up. “I’m go­ing to need someone to help me pry these mon­ster hairs from the drill. I took a look at one of the strands, and the darn things are made of pure muscle. I don’t want them clog­ging our equip­ment.”

  “I’ll help.” Brent­wood clasped Tech’s shoulder. The two of them walked to the back of the landrover. Hug­ging her shoulders against the brisk wind, Gemme didn’t know where to start.

  “Oh my poor samples!” Luna cried as she fell to her knees in the snow.

  If Luna spoke the truth, her find­ings were just as im­port­ant as the hy­perthium. She’d already packed up her own be­long­ings. Gemme sprang for­ward to help her. At least she’d have a task to ac­com­plish, even if she did have to work with Luna.

  Gemme bent down and picked up a broken vial and Luna gave her a ques­tion­ing glance. “You’re go­ing to help me?”

  Gemme shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Great. Thanks a mil­lion, Gemme, dear.” Luna stood up, brushed off her knees, and left Gemme with the mess of samples. Gemme watched open­mouthed, won­der­ing what could be more im­port­ant than col­lect­ing the an­swers to their fu­ture ex­ist­ence on this planet. Luna bent over the mess of her tent and rum­maged through the torn fab­ric, righted an up­turned tray, and star­ted to load the vi­als. When she turned to Luna again, she’d pulled out a makeup kit and was ap­ply­ing some sort of skin cream to her face.

  Gemme’s frus­tra­tion balled in her chest. “Luna, what are you do­ing?”

  “Col­lect­ing my things.”

  “What about the samples?”

  She winked at her. “You’re do­ing a nice job, hon. Keep at it.”

  Gemme shook her head and picked up a few more vi­als filled with snow. She wondered if Luna had con­vinced them to come back for her per­sonal items, and not for her re­search. But, no one could be that self-ab­sorbed, right? She wished she’d vo­lun­teered to help Tech along with Brent­wood. Gaz­ing across camp, she saw them chip­ping away at the ice-coated hairs wrapped around the drill.