by Holly Hook
We had to get inside. That was mission number one.
Matt and I scrambled out from under the log. Who knew what Celeste was off to do? Maybe she was going to back up some Grounders, or she was going to circle the spaceport and hope to intercept us there. My cheek throbbed from where Celeste had hit me back on Mars. She could do a heck of a lot more than that now.
We ran to the door after making sure the tripod had vanished into the smog. These things moved quickly, at least. I pulled the emergency door, which turned out to have a latch that you had to operate just right to make the door open. At last, I got the door open, and fresh, clean air washed over my face, making me feel like some grime-covered troll as I stepped into the transport tunnel.
Matt followed. “I can breathe in here.” He sucked in a breath.
A family zoomed past on the belt that headed towards the museum and the spaceport. Two parents, and three children. I caught a glimpse of luggage. They were fleeing. I couldn’t blame them, but at least the parents weren’t sending their children away while they stayed behind. The belts were busy. Behind the glass safety barrier, people stood and flew towards the museum. There was a magnet rail station there, one that connected to the main one that could take you across the continent. An evacuation was underway.
No one looked at us as they passed. The belts were moving faster than usual as if the Enforcers had diverted all power to them. Most of these people were fleeing from my city. I saw hardly anyone heading back. Two black-uniformed Enforcers were the only exception, and I knew that neither of them could be Calvin. They might never find that guy. If they did, he might be too burned to recognize.
Matt closed the door, shutting the pollution and the strange world outside. At least Celeste wouldn’t see us in here, but she might suspect we had entered. Matt and I couldn’t get on the transport belt unless we found a rest area where you could board. The safety barrier guaranteed that. We would have to walk the rest of the way.
“Matt,” I said. “Stay on the other side of me as we walk. We can’t let people see you. I’m sure the Grounders told everyone to look out for green people.”
“And you,” he pointed out.
“I’m not as obvious,” I said. “You can hide in a bathroom or something, and then I’ll go find you a mask and some gloves. They make some cool ones now. People are trying to turn them into a fashion statement.”
“That’s nice.”
Matt and I had to walk a bit farther until we reached some vending machines and a rest area. Transport belt rest areas existed for commuters to use if the need to pee struck them. Only one man came out of the bathroom and rushed past us. People were in a hurry, and no one wanted to stop at a rest area so close to the invasion. Maybe people had seen the indistinct shape of the tripod walking over the tube. That might work to our advantage.
Matt ducked into the bathroom to wait things out. I got on the transport belt, stepping on the detection pad to stop it for a moment, and stood next to another family carrying everything they could. A dog barked inside a pet carrier. At least they hadn’t left their animals behind.
The belt ride took only a couple of minutes to reach the museum. The labeled door hadn’t been that far from it after all. I hated leaving Matt behind, but in a way, he was doing the same to me after what we'd gone through together. I thought of Matt as a friend, a friend that I happened to kiss when things looked dire, but this whole not wanting to take this further idea was bothering me more than I thought. I had to accept that he was right. We could both die very soon, especially if I didn’t pull this off. Even if the super-rational Grounders only deported us again (now that we were minus the walker), we still had the radicals on Mars waiting for us. Either way, our chances weren’t rosy.
The belt slowed as it ended. I stepped off to let the family go ahead of me. I even opened the museum door for them to go through. You had to pass through the main lobby of the museum to get to the magnet rail from here, since the front entrance attached to a station, and the family wasted no time running past the holographic Solar System and out the double doors.
I stood there, heart aching, as a young couple followed suit. The museum was empty except for people running through to evacuate. I checked my belt and realized that I still wore the electric baton. In the panic, no one had noticed. On a regular day, I would have gotten stopped.
Last time I had visited this place, Lin and Winnie and Blake joined me. I had been trying to comfort Winnie and get Lin off her energy pills. The whole memory made me hyperventilate in a very non-Earther fashion. I was losing my composure.
And why not? Mom and Dad had gotten captured, and my friends were on Mars. Matt and I had almost nothing left to fight back with except for our knowledge of where the next cylinders might land. But Celeste had that, too.
I shook my head. I had to get it together. We had gotten this far. We were halfway to the Great Council by now. If we got another walker, we might reach it—and six more were coming. That was six more chances. If one landed near us, I had this weapon right along with Calvin’s emergency knife.
I checked the museum. The world snapped back into focus. Grandpa wouldn’t have given up. He would have seized this opportunity. The exhibits for each planet remained, but no one went in or out of them. The door to the Mars Exhibit lay open the tiniest bit. Henry wouldn’t hold any more guided tours. The rest of the entrances remained shut, except for the doorways that led to the bathrooms, the café, and the gift shop.
I spotted no staff. I hadn’t heard of looting happening in the past several decades, so I was about to break a long streak of law and order. I already had.
I was doing it to save the Earth, after all.
Ignoring the families who continued their exodus from Woking, I bolted across the dome of the Solar System museum and burst into the tiny hallway that led to the gift shop. I thought of the Grounder who had taunted my parents and me back in Rockville. Maybe the Grounders ran this museum. They at least had their hands in the management of it, even if some of the staff were human. They deserved to have their stuff stolen. I ran past the bathrooms (one of which had a loud crying woman inside) along with an office and a lounge for the museum workers. A guide robot stood next to the wall, dusty and unused for the past several months from the looks of it. This place had been using Henry to guide people to the real Mars for some time, then.
The gift shop was behind a glass door to the office, and of course, it didn't budge. Locked. I should have known.
Outside, a horn blasted to announce that the monorail was taking off. A loud hum followed as it pulled away from the station. I had a flashback of the one on Mars. While scary, it hadn’t been full of panic and despair. At least all witnesses were taking off. They wouldn’t see what I’d have to do.
I kicked the glass door, which trembled for a split second but otherwise refused to break. I tried again but got the same crappy results. I cursed in a very non-Earther fashion, thinking of Matt waiting on me back in that bathroom. I wondered if anyone was waiting for him to come out. Didn’t most of the rest stops have multiple stalls? Besides, no one would hesitate for Matt in this situation unless it was the direst emergency.
I had to break the door open, then. I tugged on the maintenance room door, thinking there might be some keycards, but of course, that didn’t open, either. I would have to venture elsewhere to find something to smash against the glass, something that would prevent me from slashing my hand to bits. My cut from Calvin’s knife still hurt. I had put it out of my mind until now. At least I had gotten some of Mom’s strength.
I also needed some ingenuity. Did Grandpa have any of that? He must have if he had attempted to blow up the Great Council. If only I had a rock—
Rocks.
There were some on display in the Mars Museum in the form of meteorites. Sure, they were under glass cases, but I might have an easier time smashing those with my bare hands. The glass on those was a lot thinner.
I shuddered at the thought of going ba
ck in there, to where I had let Winnie walk off to her doom, but I couldn’t think of any other options. I doubted the gas giant planets would have any rocks for me to borrow, and scientists hadn’t found too many meteorites from Venus or Mercury on Earth. Rocks liked to head towards the sun once they got blasted off planets, not away, due to this thing called gravity. Besides, Venus and Mercury's rocks didn’t have ancient bacteria in them to study. They were boring.
So I ran back out of the hallway, to find the place empty and silent. The holographic planets looked like ghosts. The Enforcers must be sending people from Woking in groups, to avoid stampedes, or there was no one left in the city but them and some Grounders and their radical buddies. I had to give them props for that.
The fact that I had fried Henry with that heat gun was the only reason I dared to step into the Mars Exhibit. It was just as cold and depressing as before, but after dealing with the real thing, I could handle it. Maybe. The flashbacks returned, mainly the one of Matt and me rolling across the red landscape in that rover. Then the one of Marv breaking into Base A followed, the one with all the air rushing out of the building. Okay. This wasn’t going to be easy, especially as the place looked so much like the Red Planet.
I bolted past the models of the old rovers and through the pop culture section, trying not to eye the model tripod that loomed over me. It was a crappy company, especially in this silence. Even the old radio wasn’t playing the War of the Worlds adaptation anymore. Someone, not appreciating the sick humor of the situation, had turned it off. Just two doors away waited Space Port Nine, the local Grounder hangout. I didn’t know about the museum, but I was willing to bet there wasn’t a single human worker there.
Right after the pop culture stuff, I found the past life section.
The meteorites sat in their thin glass cases, cases designed to keep dust off the rocks. I ran to the nearest one, labeled ALH something, the one scientists freaked out over right before the turn of the millennium. I intertwined my hands and slammed my fists down on the case, which cracked. After three attempts, the glass shattered, leaving the ancient Mars rock there for me to take. It had been too easy. Of course, Grounders ran this place. Their security agents must be gone to deal with Matt and me.
The rock was heavy. My muscles had taken a beating on Mars and in space, mainly because I hadn’t had the chance to work out. I hugged the ancient meteorite to my chest, aware that I was carrying microscopic Grounder ancestors with me. Oh, well. They would play the betrayal game and help me get into the gift shop. Families could be a pain.
The gift shop door cracked for me when I banged the rock against it. After five tries, the glass shattered enough for me to get my hand in through the door to unlock it from the inside. If alarms were going off, no one was coming to arrest me. All of the Enforcers were worried about getting people to safety, right?
The gift shop was dark except for the light coming in through the door. I spotted T-shirts, disposable tablets, and plenty of solar system models that could do everything from simulating orbits up to displaying information about each planet. There were T-shirts for each world, covered in facts, and one, in particular, looked like a non-seller, since a billion of them hung on the rack. I wondered why.
But after a few minutes of desperate searching, I found what I needed.
Pollution masks.
Everybody sold them. Companies saw profit, so of course, there were pollution masks with clothing brand names on them, energy tab symbols, and more. These hung behind the counter, and I spotted a whole bunch of dark blue ones decorated with an image of the galaxy. I seized two of them, one for me and one for Matt. If we had to venture back outside, we couldn’t be wheezing the entire way. Matt also needed to hide his green face as much as possible if we stayed in here.
I also grabbed him a long-sleeved shirt, one with the planet Venus. I hoped that it fit.
Once I got back out into the main room, more people were getting off the belt—a lot more people. What made things worse was the fact that the entrance to the station and the entrance to the transport tunnel were close together, making it hard to cram into the front of the museum. It took some time for the new line of families to get through and into the tram station. I heard the horn blow that signaled another departure. That gave me a few minutes to find Matt.
And I found him, standing behind a plant at the rest stop. I hated that it had taken me so long to get us some face masks, but I was grateful that no one had stopped me. No one cared. I wondered what things were like in Woking right now. We had left. Why were people still fleeing? Wasn’t this the phase where the authorities told people they could return home?
I wasn’t going to wonder about it now. Matt and I had a mission.
“That’s…loud,” Matt said, eyeing the face mask.
“I couldn’t find gloves,” I said, handing Matt one of the long-sleeved shirts. “Don’t worry. That’s Venus on this shirt, not Mars. I wasn’t going to be that mean.”
Matt put it on, hiding his green skin. He also strapped on the mask. Ironically, standing behind the plant had helped Matt to blend in. The belt was empty right now, and not moving very quickly. The Enforcers were waiting to send another batch of people.
Matt looked like a bandit with the mask on, as I was sure I did. We hopped on the belt, using the detection pad to slow it down, and rode the rest of the way to the museum. I felt a lot better, knowing that Matt wasn’t super noticeable now.
The Museum’s main chamber was empty. The magnet rail outside seemed to have left. I tried to think of the layout of this area. As far as I knew, the museum, some businesses, and Space Port Nine were all in this district, along with the monorail station. The Great Council would be to our right, past the lake that Calvin had mentioned and wedged between the city of Landin and the mountains.
“I don’t want to go outside,” Matt said, “but we might have to.”
“Celeste is out there,” I said.
“And others will join her,” Matt said. “We still need to watch for the fourth ship to fall. That's what I hate. What are our chances of seeing it in here?"
“Our best bet might be to go back outside through another door,” I said. “We can walk down past the monorail station, see what we can find, and get out through there.”
“You mean, come out where she wouldn’t think to search for us?” Matt asked.
“Exactly.”
We had to move fast. The fourth cylinder would land soon. The ships had been coming hours apart. I took Matt’s arm (yeah, I know, he didn’t want me to do that) and pulled him towards the entrance to the monorail station.
A loud whistling noise came from overhead, getting louder and louder. I stopped between the transport belt entrance and the monorail entrance, as the holographic Terminus continued to crawl along the wall.
Something was wrong.
Matt faced me with wide eyes. “Run,” he said.
In one moment of panic, I got what he meant and what that noise must mean.
Together, Matt and I ran back into the museum, towards the holographic sun, as the world exploded.
Chapter Six
Well, the world didn’t explode, but it came close.
The entrance to the transport belt and the door to the monorail station both erupted into flying metal, stone, and dirt. Matt and I fell together, landing underneath the fake sun, while the inner planets continued to circle overhead. All the breath left me. I gasped for air, feeling as if my chest had collapsed from the shock wave. Dirt rained down on us and dust flew everywhere. If it weren’t for my pollution mask, I might have drowned in it.
But instead, oxygen flowed through and provided me with all I needed to find my strength.
Matt and I held hands again. He lifted his head, feeling to make sure the straps still held his mask to his face. Check. “Um,” he managed.
Dust filled the entire chamber, or what remained of it.
Half of the room had collapsed. The fact didn’t quite register at firs
t, but I forced myself to stand. My butt hurt like I had landed on that bone too hard, but I shoved the pain away. It was just one more ache at this point. I would survive. I was an Earther, after all.
But Grandpa hadn’t survived whatever the Grounders had done to him.
“I think we know where the fourth cylinder landed,” Matt said.
Then the full implications hit me. Nothing but twisted, silver wall and wires and other debris filled the space where the transport belt and monorail entrances had been. A loud hissing sound came from the wreckage. Dirt and stone flowed down through cracks as if whatever had happened cleared out a bunch of earth.
Forming a crater, maybe?
Matt stood next to me and swung his arm in a circle. “I think I sprained something,” Matt said. He eyed the mess and blinked. The dust thickened, thrown up by the collision, but it wasn’t enough to block it from view.
The fourth cylinder had landed a lot closer than Matt and I had expected.
“So,” Matt said. “Scout Number Four didn’t make it far before getting captured by the Grounders.”
I imagined another scout like Matt, running off the cargo holds of one of the ships, heat ray in tow. They would have arrived right after him. He or she would have used the heat gun on some of the Task Force people and run into the monorail station, perhaps forgetting about the fact that the Grounders could turn on the gas out there. Then the gas came on, and the scout had to plant the tracking cylinder wherever they could before they passed out and got dragged back to Mars. Maybe the gas had messed with his or her thoughts, and they forgot about the fact that they had hidden it in an area that people used. The mission had to come first. It was our only chance to take Earth back.
“The scout must have planted the tracking cylinder under the tracks,” Matt said. "Nobody goes down there. What a smart idiot!"
“No crap,” I said. “I hope nobody was standing there when the ship landed!” I turned away, nausea filling my gut, and dry-heaved. I hadn’t eaten in forever, so nothing came up but a bit of bile. People might have gotten crushed. Families. Little kids.
