by Cross, Amy
“What do you mean?”
“I think he's struggling,” he continues. “He knows that he's doing the right thing, but it's still difficult for him. After all, you're his daughter and he loves you very much. I think he's finding it hard in these final moments, but he asked me to tell you that he's so very proud of you. Allow me to assure you that he said all the fatherly things that you'd want him to say in this testing situation.”
“When's he coming back?” I ask, trying not to panic.
“That's what I'm trying to tell you.” He pauses. “He seems to feel that any further goodbyes would only be harmful to your health, and to his as well. That's why he's made the decision to stay in the control room and focus on helping the launch to go smoothly. Speaking of which -”
“I want to see him!” I shout.
“It's time to go, Elizabeth,” he adds with a smile, stepping around the table and taking hold of a bar at the end. “The outcome here is inevitable, but you get to decide whether or not you're going to struggle along the way.” He starts pushing the table, which I hadn't realized is on a set of wheels. “There were almost eight billion people on the planet when all of this began,” he explains, as I continue to struggle. “Out of all that writhing mass of people, you're going to be one of only two who will manage to live on. Doesn't that make you feel good?”
“Where's my father?”
“I already told you. He's watching everything from the control room. He thinks that's where he can be of most use to you right now, and I happen to agree with him. He's a very logical man. I admire logical men.”
I tug harder and harder on the chains, as Carver wheels me into some kind of elevator. He presses a button, and we start rising up toward the higher part of the facility.
“The next part of the process will be relatively quick and easy,” Carver explains. “We have to be awake and conscious for the launch, just in case there's an emergency, but once we're in orbit we'll enter a state of suspended animation. I won't bore you with the details of our revolutionary technology, Elizabeth, but suffice it to say that we'll both be more than capable of surviving the journey to our new home. I know we don't know one another very well, but that'll change once we reach our target planet. We have a great responsibility, Elizabeth. The fate of all humanity will be in our hands, but don't worry, I'll be sure to guide you.”
“No!” I yell, still twisting and turning in an attempt to get off the trolley. “Dad! Help me!”
“Why would he do that?” Carver asks. “It's your father who arranged for you to be part of this.”
“He'd never send me away with someone like you!”
“I admit that your father and I haven't always seen eye-to-eye, but he's being very pragmatic. What matters the most to him is your survival.”
“Go to hell!” I shout, as the elevator stops and Carver wheels me out into a spacious, all-white room with display screens on all the walls.
“You've no idea how long I've waited for this moment,” he says, leaving me for a moment as he goes over to access another control panel. “The rich and famous fools who financed this project believed that all had a shot at leaving for the stars, but I always aimed to be one of the two crew-members. I was open-minded about who should join me, and I must admit that I wouldn't have minded Madeleine coming along, but I think you might turn out to be a better choice. You seem a little more...”
He turns to me.
“Feisty,” he adds.
“Rot in hell!” I sneer.
“Precisely my point.”
He presses another button, and I hear a loud, heavy whirring sound coming from nearby. Turning, I watch as a large screen door slides up, and I see the top section of the rocket. A smooth connecting bridge is already starting to extend out toward the rocket, where a doorway is opening. I try to think of some way to get out of here, but a moment later Carver takes hold of the trolley again and starts wheeling me toward the bridge.
“Isn't it beautiful?” Carver asks. “So many people contributed to our achievement here. I had their names engraved on the booster section at the lower end.”
“Right before you killed them all?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.” He wheels me out onto the bridge. “I sense that you're still resisting, Elizabeth. That's a shame, but not entirely unexpected. This must be an awful lot for you to take in. I actually like the fact that you're putting up a fight.”
“Dad!” I scream, as I'm taking inside the rocket and through into a large, sparse room. “You have to get me out of here!”
Carver turns the trolley around and slides it back until it clicks into place, and then he attaches some fresh restraints to my wrists before starting to pull the chains away.
“Another remarkable stroke of foresight,” he says calmly. “I can link you directly into the system right here, without having to request your cooperation.” He tapes some kind of pad to the side of my forehead. “You're in for quite a wild ride in the next hour, but I'll be over there in the other survival zone. We'll have a great view of the world as we rise high up into the heavens, and I'm hoping that by then you might come to understand the sheer magnitude of what we're doing.”
He turns and taps at a nearby monitor.
“You'll be pleased to know,” he adds, “that nothing invasive has to be done. That's another glory of the Project Atherius system.”
“Dad!” I shout, before looking up at Carver. “Can he hear me?”
“I doubt it,” Carver replies, before leaning over me and grinning into my face. “He'll be far too busy monitoring the systems. I'm sorry you can't experience some grand farewell with your father, but you should focus on the fact that he's so very proud of you.”
“Let me out of here!” I snarl.
“That's the spirit,” he says, stepping back. “It's precisely that sort of fighting talk that'll help us once we reach our destination in approximately five hundred years.”
“Five hundred years?” I stammer.
“It'll go past just like that,” he says, clicking his fingers. “You'll be unconscious for all but about two hours of the entire journey. And now, if you don't mind, I need to go and carry out some last-minute checks before the launch. You can never be too careful with these things.”
“Come back!” I yell as he heads back out across the bridge, and then I look around in the hope that I might see some kind of camera. “Dad, if you can hear me, I'm begging you to stop this before it's too late. I know I said some horrible things to you, but I didn't mean them. Dad, I'll do anything you want, just get me out of here.”
I start working on the new restraints that Carver attached to me. I don't even have a plan right now; I'm just furiously pulling my wrists and ankles in every possible direction, in the hope that at some point the trolley or the rails will break and I'll be able to get free. The more I struggle, however, the more I feel as if the whole situation is hopeless, and finally I lean back and look up at the ceiling, at which point I see a small, dark dot that looks a lot like a small camera.
“Dad,” I continue, with tears in my eyes, “if you can hear me, I'm begging you one final time to help me. Dad, please, you have to realize that this is wrong. Dad, I love you. Help me!”
Chapter Fourteen
Thomas
Reaching up, pushing through the pain, I finally grab the edge of the opening that leads into the main building. I haul myself as high as I can, and then somehow I manage to get one leg onto the very top of the bridge's connecting section. With one final heave, I'm able to roll myself through the opening until I land flat on my back on the floor, breathless and exhausted.
I stare up at the ceiling.
She's gone.
“I'm not going to let anything happen to you!” I hear myself shouting, the words echoing through my mind.
“I'm sorry, Thomas.”
I tried.
I really tried.
“I'm so sorry. I'm -”
And then she fell, plummeting down i
nto the depths of the chamber until she was just a tiny figure that quickly disappeared into the darkness. Her hand slipped, she just couldn't hold herself for even a moment longer, but...
Is that really what happened?
Did she slip, or did she...
I think back to the look in her eyes, right before her hand left the railing.
“I'm so sorry. I'm -”
Then she was gone, just like that. She didn't even scream as she fell. She just vanished at the bottom of the chamber, tipping into the darkness around the engine section of the rocket. I tell myself that she might be okay, that she might be hurt but otherwise fine. Already, however, I know that there's no chance she could have survived a fall of that magnitude, not when there was a hard, flat surface waiting for her at the bottom. She must have died instantly.
“I'm so sorry. I'm -”
She did it on purpose. I think. She was so afraid that I'd end up falling too, she sacrificed herself.
No.
No, she'd never do that. Martha was a fighter, she'd never give up, not even if -
Suddenly I hear a loud cracking sound, and I turn just as the bridge finally breaks free from the opening. I crawl over and look down, and I watch helplessly as the bridge hits the wall far below and then rolls into the shadows, joining Martha down there. Just as it disappeared from view, the bridge broke into two separate pieces. If the fall did that to a large piece of metal, what chance did Martha have of surviving.
“I was going to save you,” I whisper, as tears fill my eyes but somehow don't run down my face. “I swear, I was going to find a way.”
I watch the chasm for a moment longer, and then finally I get to my feet. My whole body aches, and I'm trembling slightly, and slowly I look around as I realize that Edward Doncaster – or Maxwell Carver, or whatever his name is – seems to have left the area. He must have disengaged the bridge somehow, hoping that Martha and I would both end up dead. And he doesn't even seem to have stuck around to make sure that his plan worked.
“I'm so sorry. I'm -”
I pause for a moment, before turning and looking out across the large room. There are empty tables near the walls and, as I make my way across the room, I realize that this seems to be some kind of waiting area, with chairs at the sides and a large screen at the far end. Martha would probably be better at figuring out what's really happening here, but without her I'm left wondering exactly what I've found. I head to the next door and look through into another room that's filled with monitors and computer stations, but so far there's no sign of anyone else.
I turn to go and keep looking, but at the last moment I hear a faint gasping sound.
Glancing back into the main room, I suddenly realize that there's a pool of blood spreading out from behind one of the desks. A moment later I hear another gasp, and then a thudding sound, and I immediately rush over to take a look. As soon as I get around the side of the desk, I see a familiar figure struggling to get up from the floor.
“John!”
Stepping around the pool, I kneel next to him. The front of his shirt is soaked in blood, with thick, glistening wounds visible from beneath the torn fabric around his belly. As soon as I get a proper look at his face, I can tell that he's extremely pale.
“What happened?” I ask, trying not to panic. “Where's Elizabeth?”
“He took her,” he groans, barely able to get the words out.
“Where?”
“Launch... to the launch area...”
“You're talking about Carver, right?” I look down once more at John's wounds. “What did he do to you?”
“I came through to check some settings,” he replies. “Just as I was about to go back to Elizabeth, to try again to make her see sense, Carver appeared and... four, five... he shot me four or five times.”
“I'm going to get you out of here,” I tell him, even though it's obvious that he's lost far too much blood. “I'm going to find Elizabeth, and then we're all going to get as far away from this hellhole as we can.”
“Take Elizabeth,” he says, slurring the words slightly. “It's too late for me.”
“No, you -”
“Find her,” he continues. “Don't let Carver take her away. Tell her I was wrong. I should have realized sooner, I should never have dragged her into this. I thought I was doing the right thing, I thought I was protecting her, but now I realize I should just...”
He pauses, and then he reaches into his pocket. He winces, clearly in a lot of pain, but he continues to root around and finally he pulls out a small enamel pin badge of a smiling man. Holding it for a moment in his shaking, bloodied hand, he seems lost in his own world.
“Give her this,” he says finally, holding the badge out toward me. “I was going to give it to her at the last moment, for luck. To remember me by.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“It's a cartoon character from a show she used to like,” he explains. “Last time I tried to give it to her, she said she didn't remember it at all. I don't know, maybe she was just trying to be cool, or maybe it just wasn't an important memory for her. But she and I used to sit and watch that show, and when I saw the badge online a while back... I'm probably being dumb, but it's all I have to give her, to show her that I've always loved her so much.”
“Hang onto it,” I reply. “You can give it to her yourself.”
“There's no time for that!” he snaps angrily, forcing the badge into my hand. “Tell her it's from me. Tell her I'm sorry. Tell her I'm proud of her, and that her mother would be proud of her too.” He winces again. “Do you want to know something, Thomas?” he continues after a moment. “All my life, there's one question I've been asking myself, and I've never managed to come up with an answer. Am I a good man, who sometimes does bad things? Or am I a bad man, who sometimes does good things?”
“I'm sure you've never done anything really bad.”
“You have no idea,” he replies, “but tell Elizabeth... tell her I tried to be good. Tell her I tried to protect her, and her brother. And tell her... tell her...”
His voice trails off, and now he's staring past me. I look over my shoulder, but there's nobody there.
“Tell her I saw her mother at the end,” he whispers finally, with tears in his eyes. “She's right here, waiting to... take me...”
I look again, but I still don't see anyone.
“Get her out of here!” John gasps suddenly, grabbing my shoulders with furious energy. “If she doesn't want to go up into space, then that's her choice, and nobody has a right to force her! She shouldn't be going with Carver, anyway! Tell her... tell...”
He pauses, and then he leans back. As he does so, he turns and looks at his right hand as he reaches it out, and he slowly closes his hand slightly as if he's feeling something. And then, after a few more seconds, I realize he's gone.
“John?” I say cautiously, shaking his shoulder. “John, come back! It doesn't have to be like this! You can fight! John!”
I check his pulse, but there's no sign of life. Looking down at the pool of blood, I realize I'm too late anyway, so after a moment I simply reach out and gently close his eyes.
“I'll find her,” I say after a moment. “I'll save her, I promise.”
Getting to my feet, I look around, trying to figure out which way to go. Spotting a window, I hurry over and peer out at the rocket, and then when I look up I see that there's some kind of white bridge extending from the main part of the facility. All the other bridges are gone, but this one's new and it connects to the rocket's upper section, which I guess means that it leads into the section of the crew. If Carver's kidnapped Elizabeth, that must be where he's taken her.
Turning and rushing out into the next corridor, I try to figure out which way to go next, and then I look to the left and see an elevator.
Chapter Fifteen
Elizabeth
“Damn... you... to... hell!”
Finally the strap breaks, and I manage to pull my left wrist free fr
om the restraints Carver used to tie me down. As I start frantically working on the rest, I can't help realizing that I'd still be firmly held in place if Carver had kept the chains that Dad put on me, but apparently Carver decided to use his own method instead. I've got to hand it to Dad, he's still the only person who knows me well enough to actually keep me tied to anything.
It takes a few minutes, but I soon manage to get free completely. Turning, I look around the surprisingly spacious flight deck of the rocket, and for a moment I'm stunned by the realization that I'm actually standing in a spaceship. I mean, some pretty crazy things have happened to me over the past year, but at least I always had my feet – or rather, my sole remaining foot – on the ground. Now I'm on top of a real-life spaceship, and I have to admit that it's hard to believe this is really happening.
“I have to get out of here,” I mutter, turning and limping toward the door, only to see that Carver is starting to come back across the bridge.
I quickly duck out of sight, and now my mind is racing as I try to figure out what I'm going to do next. Simply hiding and then running isn't going to be much of an option, but it's not like I have any weapons either. A moment later, hearing a brief, loud beeping sound, I look up at a monitor and see the number six hundred flashing. The number then drops to five-nine-nine, then to five-nine-eight, and so on, before an automated voice bursts from a nearby speaker.
“Ten minutes to launch. All occupants prepare.”
Okay, great. In ten minutes, this hunk of junk is going to blast off into space. And judging by the size of those engines I saw a while back, I'm not convinced there'll be a whole lot of the facility left after that point.
“Elizabeth,” Carver says as I hear him stepping back on-board, “your father sends his best wishes and hopes that you're ready for -”
Stopping suddenly, just past me, he looks at the empty spot where I should be restrained. I instantly realize that I have probably half a second to figure out what to do, and that's when I make my move. Almost without thinking, I let out a scream as I throw myself against Carver's back, knocking him against the trolley, and then I grab one of the broken restraints and wrap it around his neck before pulling as tight as I can.
