ScareScapes Book One: Phantom Limbs!

by Jake Bible

  “Hold on,” Landon says. “I want to try something.”

  He stops by the portal hatch and presses his hand against a plate. It slides away and he smiles.

  “That’s promising,” he says. “If it’s letting me have access to the Security interface then everything can’t be offline.”

  A small keyboard slides out and Landon starts to type. Then there’s a flash of blue static that runs all the way up his arms and he jumps back.

  “Ow!” he yells. “What the fruit?”

  “You okay?” Felix asks. “That was quite a shock. I saw that on all kinds of spectrums.”

  “I’m fine,” Landon says, shaking his hands. “Just surprised me.”

  The keyboard slides back in and the plate closes.

  “Hey!” Landon says and presses his hand to the plate again. Nothing.

  “Guess it doesn’t want to play nice anymore,” Felix says. “Come on, follow me.”

  Felix takes lead again and we walk down the passageway, but don’t go the exact same route as before. This time we take a right then a left and another left. This points us in the direction of the mess hall and galley. We’ll want food other than fruit, that’s for sure.

  “You sure you’re okay?” I ask Landon.

  “I’m cool,” he says. “Don’t worry.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Grab food that’s easy to carry and prepare,” Landon says, changing the subject. “Plus a couple hydro jugs.”

  “Pots? Pans?” Felix asks. “Not that I can cook. Supply handles all of that.”

  “Don’t look at me,” I say. “I could probably boil water, if I needed to, but that’s about it. What can you cook with boiled water?”

  “See, this could turn out to be good for us,” Landon says. “We’re so used to Supply preparing our meals and serving us in the mess that we don’t even know how to cook the basics. Maybe there’s a cookbook in the galley.”

  “Books add weight and carry microbes,” Felix says by rote. “I remember that from orientation.”

  “Digital editions only,” I say. “Mom and Dad were pretty sad they couldn’t bring the library.” I look around at all the empty space in the passageway. “I’m guessing we probably could have found room somewhere.”

  “I know, I know,” Landon says. “But maybe there’s a printout or something in the galley. Supply has to provide us with some instructions if we want to cook for ourselves.”

  “Not how it’s designed,” Felix says. “Learned that too. Too bad we didn’t make it through the refresher course at school today. You could have learned how everything actually works. Like how this whole place is automated since technically it’s still on lockdown because of the almost 10,000 peeps in cryosleep. Not gonna find a cookbook, Mr. Security Chief, sir.”

  Landon snorts then shoves past Felix, taking the lead. Felix looks back at me and shrugs. I know he can be a pain in the fruit, but he’s always that way. Not like Landon to get all upset about it.

  “Hey,” I say quietly and hurry up next to him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he says.

  “Don’t give me that,” I say, grabbing his arm, forcing him to look at me. “Tell me. Felix didn’t say anything he hasn’t said a million times before. You know how he is.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Landon says. “I just don’t like being reminded how useless I am.”

  “Useless? What do you mean?” I ask, honestly stunned. “None of us are useless, least of all you. I couldn’t have gotten through those first few days after waking up without you.”

  I tap my legs and instead of a soft thud there’s the sound of metal.

  “You remember how you found me?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says, smiling a little. “You kinda lost it.”

  “Lost it?” I laugh. “I was hysterical. I woke up in a room with thousands of other people that were still asleep. Then I looked down and saw my legs. That’s before the synthskin grew over them. I freaked out.”

  “You lost your fruit,” Felix says from behind us.

  “Not that you were any better,” I say. “You were blubbering like a baby.”

  “But not screaming like you,” he replies.

  “You were pretty loud.” Landon chuckles. “I could hear you all the way into the cryosleep bay my family was in.”

  “And you found me,” I say as I stop and keep Landon from walking on. “Seeing you come running into my bay was what kept me from really going crazy.”

  “Then you saw my joints,” Landon shrugs. “It wasn’t quite as easy to get you calmed down after that.”

  “But you did,” I say.

  “Thank fruit,” Felix says. “Wait…I don’t ever want to thank fruit.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “Point is, you have never been useless,” I say to Landon. “You help keep me from my freak outs. You’re like the First Mate to my captain.”

  “I already suck at my security chief job,” Landon says. “Don’t give me another one.”

  I’m about to get angry because he isn’t listening, then I see that playful smile of his and do what any thirteen year old girl would do to a guy she, uh, might like.

  I punch him in the arm.

  “Ow,” he says. “Glad you didn’t kick me.”

  “Barf,” Felix says and shoves between us, taking lead again. “Can we get a move on? I can’t wait to have to carry a bunch of supplies back to the campsite.”

  We keep walking and come to the mess hall doors. They are slightly open and we look at each other, puzzled.

  “Not protocol,” Landon says. “They should be either wide open or sealed shut. Not ajar.”

  He gets his hands between and shoves, sending both doors sliding into the walls. A loud grinding sound echoes through the mess hall as he forces gears to move that are usually assisted by power.

  “There,” Landon says. “Now, let’s find—”

  He stops as a loud crash comes from the galley.

  “Guys,” Felix says.

  “What was that?” Landon asks. “Hello? Who’s there?”

  “You think the twins beat us here and are playing a joke?” I ask.

  “Big,” Felix says.

  “No, they wouldn’t try that again,” I say. “They probably—”

  My brother grabs my arm and I wince as his right hand squeezes into my bicep.

  Then he points at the galley.

  “No, Izzy,” he whispers. “Big.”

  He only calls me Izzy when he’s scared. That gets my attention.

  I shine my flashlight at the galley doors as Landon gets closer.

  “Lan?” I say. “Get back here.”

  “Twins! If that’s you I am going to be fruiting mad!” Landon shouts.

  “Lan!” I yell.

  “What?” he asks, looking over his shoulder at us.

  “Big,” I say, pointing at the galley.

  “Yeah,” Felix says. “Big.”

  There’s another crash and Landon freezes then starts to walk backwards towards us.

  “What do you mean by big?” he asks.

  But we get our answer right away as the galley doors fly open, torn right from the wall by the force of what comes at us.

  “Big!” we all scream.

  Then turn and run.

  Chapter Three

  A loader bot is not something you want to mess with. They’re like ten feet tall and weigh close to a ton. Designed to haul cargo from place to place in the warehouse bays, they aren’t hover bots like the other robots on the Scorpio. They have large tracks on each side of their squat bodies.

  And very, very large pincher claws.

  Normally, the pincher claws are for lifting cargo, but as the loader bot races at us, claws extended and clamping open and shut, I’m thinking we aren’t in for a gentle lift.

  “Run!” I shout, yanking on Felix’s arm.

  Landon is right behind us, yelling as the loader bot gets closer.

  “Turn there!�
�� Landon shouts. “Left!”

  We turn left and Landon just clears the corner when most of the wall is warped and twisted from a swipe of the loader bot’s claw. Landon screams and dives to the ground as the other claw sweeps over his head. He rolls up against the wall and I stop to help him up, but he shoves me away.

  I’m about to yell at him when a claw slams down right where I had just been, putting a serious hole in the floor. My scream is a little more shrill than Landon’s and I am glad I used the latrine earlier or a very embarrassing accident might have happened.

  The loader bot tries to pull its claw free, but it is wedged in the floor, a hunk of metal twisted around it. Its motors whine as it shifts power into the claw, but the thing still won’t budge. The bot starts to thrash about, and despite what I know about bots, I can swear it’s mad. Which shouldn’t be possible since bots are automated, not run by AIs.

  “Go!” Landon yells at me, scrambling to his feet. He puts one foot on the claw and jumps over it, landing right next to me.

  That was cool.

  He spins me about and gives me a shove. Felix is nowhere to be seen.

  “Felix!” I yell. “Felix!”

  We run up to the next junction and he nearly collides with us. His eyes are panicked and he grips my uniform, tugging me away from the direction he just came.

  “Not that way!” Felix yells, pointing down the other passageway.

  Another loader bot. Moving fast.

  “This is bad,” Landon says, looking at the first bot that still struggles to get its claw free. “How did this happen? The loader bots should only be active if ordered. So who ordered them?”

  “We’ll figure that out later!” I shout. “Now, we run!”

  “This way,” Landon says, pulling at me and Felix as he sprints down the passageway ahead of us.

  We take a quick turn and lose sight of the stuck loader, but I can hear the other one getting closer, its tracks trundling along, ripping gouges into the smooth floor. Pilot will be fruiting mad when he finds out what the bots have done to the ship.

  But that’s not my problem at the moment. The wall in front of us is.

  “Dead end?” Felix says, his mouth wide open in surprise. “When has there ever been a dead end in the Scorpio?”

  Landon kneels by the wall and runs his hands along the bottom.

  “This was just put here,” he says, standing and slamming his hands against the metal. “This isn’t permanent.”

  “But why?” I ask. “Why would a wall just appear for no reason?”

  The loader’s tracks are getting louder and Felix spins about. I can tell he’s scanning through the wall, trying to get a sense of how close the bot is.

  “Felix?” I ask.

  “It’s close,” he says. “We need to go the other way.”

  We all look at the passageway behind us, the only one open.

  “Go,” Landon says. “We don’t have a choice.”

  Again, we run; one turn then another and another. We zip around corners, sprint down passageways, zip around more corners, until, well, I’m pretty sure we’re thoroughly lost. I think I now understand the mad part of “mad dash.”

  “Do you recognize this sector?” Landon asks me. “I don’t.”

  Felix runs his hand along the wall and shows us the dust he collects.

  “No one has been this way in a long time,” Felix says. “Where are we?”

  We walk for a minute as we catch our breath. The bot is still coming, we can hear it, and I’m pretty sure its pal has joined it, but we put enough distance between us for a quick rest.

  “What’s this?” Landon asks.

  We stop by a door and he wipes his hand across a plaque.

  “Cybernetics Development Laboratory,” he reads aloud.

  Landon is about to try to open the door when a loud bang gets our attention.

  A wall has slammed into place ahead of us, blocking our way.

  “I didn’t know the ship could do that,” Landon says. “Did you?”

  Felix and I shake our heads, realizing we have to go back the way we came.

  “Let’s go,” I say. “We have to find another way.”

  “Maybe we should hide in here?” Landon says, pointing at the door.

  “I don’t think any place with the words ‘development’ and ‘laboratory’ together is gonna be a good thing,” Felix shrugs. “That’s just me, though.”

  “So we go back,” I say, getting antsy. I don’t like standing in one spot for this long. If other walls have moved then we could be trapped quickly.

  “The bots are back there,” Landon says. “We’ll run into them.”

  “Not if we hurry,” I say. I point at the door and frown. “I don’t care what’s in there, but did you see what that loader did to the floor? What do you think it can do to this door? We go in and we’re trapped for sure.”

  “Fine,” Landon says. “Lead the way.”

  I start to jog, but Landon’s hand clamps on my arm and holds me back.

  “Let go,” I say.

  “What?” he asks then looks down at his hand. He lets go and I can see his whole arm shaking. “Sorry. I, uh, don’t… Sorry.”

  I give him a puzzled look then jog back down the hall and get us to the junction. We can go left, right, or straight.

  “You see anything?” I ask my brother.

  “No,” he says, shaking his head. “They aren’t close enough for me to pick them up through the walls.”

  “That’s good,” Landon says. “Right?”

  I listen hard, trying to make out which way the loaders are coming from, but it’s impossible as the sounds seem to echo around us.

  “Sure,” I say finally. “Right.”

  We keep going and jog past three more junctions before I figure out where we are.

  “The dome!” I say. “There should be a portal to the dome just around the corner!”

  We hurry that way and turn the corner.

  Then freeze.

  A loader!

  I tackle Felix and scream as the bot’s claw misses my head, but is close enough to snag a few of my frizzy red hairs, yanking them right from my scalp.

  “Isla!” Landon shouts.

  I roll and tumble with Felix wrapped in my arms, stopping only because we crash into a wall. The claw smashes into the wall right above us and once again the stupid bot gets stuck.

  Landon grabs us and yanks us away from the thing, pulling us to our feet. We spin about and take off down the passageway.

  “There’s the other one!” Felix shouts, pointing into the darkness at the end of the passageway.

  A crash behind us makes us look over our shoulders and we see the second bot, its tracks sliding across the floor as it moves too fast around the corner and smashes into the first.

  That means the one coming from ahead is a third bot. That’s a lot of bots.

  The loaders are clumsy enough that we get a good lead and start to go around another corner when my feet go out from under me. I tumble across the floor and look up, surprised to see that Landon’s leg is sticking out. Did he just trip me?

  “I’m losing control,” Landon whispers, looking at me, his face horror stricken. “What’s happening?”

  “Guys!” Felix shouts and points.

  Loaders. Here they come.

  Landon looks at his leg, looks at me, then turns and takes off.

  “Hey!” Landon shouts, running towards the loaders. “Hey, you! I’m right here!”

  “Landon! What are you doing?” I scream at him.

  “Go!” he yells back. “Take that turn and go! Get back to the dome and warn the others!”

  “But what about you?” I scream. “Landon!”

  But he doesn’t answer, just keeps running into the darkness.

  “They’re going to get him,” Felix says, then looks behind us and gasps. “And those will get us if we don’t keep running.”

  “I can’t keep running,” I say, struggling for brea
th. “I’m exhausted.”

  “Your lungs are, sure,” Felix smiles. “But not those legs of yours.”

  My legs. Of course. I’ve never really tested them beyond the regular physicals Health puts us through.

  “Need a lift?” I smile at Felix.

  “What?” he asks. “Hey!”

  I grab him up and throw him over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes—which don’t taste much better than the fruit or the cookies, by the way.

  “Izzy! Put me down!” Felix shouts.

  “We’ll make better time this way!” I shout as I flex my cybernetic legs and take off running.

  Focusing on my artificial limbs, I can feel the energy in my legs build and hear the servos kick into overdrive. Felix is still shouting at me to put him down, which I’d love to do since he’s heavy and I don’t have cybernetic arms or anything, but that’s not happening; he’s staying put until I can get us to safety.

  I don’t bother taking any of the turns, just keep sprinting forward, gaining more and more speed. Which is sort of the easy part. Stopping? Not so much.

  When we get to the end of the passageway, it T’s and I am forced to take a turn. Not sure if it’s my indecision on which way to go—left or right—or the fact that I’m moving a lot faster than a thirteen year old girl is supposed to, but our race comes to a painful end quickly as we run right into the wall.

  “Felix! Are you hurt?” I gasp. We’re piled up against the wall and I start patting him to see if he’s injured. “Felix?”

  “I’m good, sis,” he says. “Stop smacking my face.”

  “Oh, sorry,” I say. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m cool,” he says. “Landed on my cyber arm. You?”

  I think for a second, but don’t feel anything other than some sore spots which I know will be nasty bruises by tomorrow morning.

  If there is a tomorrow morning. The way the day’s going so far, I’m not placing any bets.

  I help Felix up then turn back the way we came. No loader bots.

  Also, no Landon.

  Fruit.

  I look at the two directions we can go, turning my head back and forth until I’m a little dizzy.

  “I see pollen particles,” Felix says, pointing right.

  I bend down and pick up the flashlight I dropped when we went splat on the wall, but it only flickers for a second then blinks off. We are plunged into pitch darkness.