Shadows of Mars (Broken Stars Book 1)

by I. O. Adler

  She was interrupted by a distant bang. The image on her mom’s screen went blank. Carmen shook her but it was as if the mom-creature had switched off.

  “Jenna, can you hear me? Can you move? I can’t explain what’s happening. But we’re in trouble and we need to get out of here now.”

  Her sister straightened herself before crouching down again. Then she stood erect and like a toddler took a few wobbling steps forward. Carmen held her hand and they moved across the plain room to the doorway. But the doorway had vanished. Carmen touched the wall and pressed on it.

  The distant banging continued, growing louder and more frequent.

  Carmen placed her sister’s hands on the wall. “Stand here and give me a second.”

  What had the mother-creature done to open the wall? Carmen probed the surface, tapping it and running her steel fingers in search of a groove, a depression, or anything to grip. Finally she walked into the wall in imitation of how her mom had done it and the doorway once again appeared.

  She grabbed her sister and pulled her along. “Come on.”

  Her sister took small steps and careened about before finding a semblance of balance. The curved hallway continued and seemed to head towards the banging. The opposite direction led to the room where she had gained consciousness. How many hidden doors had she passed? But while “Mom” was switched off, it was time to leave.

  She led Jenna away from the noise. The banging continued in a furious rhythm, but she felt certain it wasn’t mechanical or part of some normal process. Whatever it was had grabbed the mom-creature’s attention and couldn’t be good.

  The hallway just kept going, with no visible doors, no slope, angling around for what felt like hundreds of yards. The notion that they were inside the sphere in the restaurant had vanished. The space they were running through was larger than most buildings, like the concourse of a stadium.

  They were jogging at a steady clip when Carmen realized they were once again heading towards the banging sound. They had come full circle.

  “Help me find a door.”

  She let go of Jenna and proceeded to keel over and slam into a wall. At least she didn’t fall. There was a phantom pain as if she had struck her head but the sensation wasn’t real. None of this could be, she reminded herself. But willing herself to wake up wasn’t working. She tapped and probed at the smooth surface as they continued along.

  The banging up ahead stopped. A doorway had appeared and a spindly robot stepped into the hallway. At first she thought it was the mom-creature. But this was a new robot, or more accurately, a machine identical to their bodies, but the head screen showed Peter Vogel’s face. His fingers were fused together, his hands like blades. His eyes were wild and darting about. He looked around the corridor before his gaze fell upon them.

  “Peter?” Carmen said softly.

  He cut loose with a howl and charged.

  Chapter Eight

  “Peter, snap out of it!”

  But the metal skeleton with Peter’s face on its monitor wasn’t slowing down as it bore down on them. Carmen stepped in front of Jenna. When Peter got close, she smacked him aside, sending him into a wall. He lay still for several seconds before getting up.

  “It’s Carmen. Jenna’s here too. Get a hold of yourself. We’re all in trouble.”

  His face blurred for a moment. He looked past her at Jenna.

  Carmen held up a warning hand. As a person Peter was far too strong. But here? She could only hope their strange bodies were equal in strength.

  His voice was a choked mutter. “What did you do to me?”

  “We’re figuring that out. First you need to calm—”

  He sprang towards her. Too fast. They collided and slammed into the opposite wall. He flailed at her and struck her across the head. Pain—she felt a ringing pain. But the sensation passed quickly. She caught one of his blade hands and held him.

  “Jenna? A little help?”

  But her sister was frozen in place. Whatever momentary composure she had during their flight down the corridor had evaporated.

  Carmen shoved at Peter but he pushed back. What would happen to either of them if they got hurt? Could they die? There was too much she didn’t understand.

  “Peter, please. It’s Carmen. Listen to my voice. We’re friends. Try to control yourself. I didn’t do this to you. We’re all trapped her together.”

  He managed to wedge an arm under her head. Lights were flashing around her. The corridor had grown brighter with floating shapes she couldn’t take time to make sense of. Carmen felt pressure at her neck and could only wonder how much punishment her new body would take before something broke.

  She managed to get a foot around one of his legs, ignoring the fact that her own leg was bending at an impossible angle. With the extra leverage, she hurled him off, but one hand continued to grip hers and he yanked her off balance.

  His other hand rose up and was poised to chop down at her head.

  The mom-creature appeared behind him. She grabbed Peter and flung him against the wall. She proceeded to smash him over and over, each impact sending shock waves through the floor.

  Carmen was free. She collected her sister and they retreated back the way they came. The corridor would eventually loop back, but getting away was all that mattered for the moment. The floating light shapes followed her, stuck in her vision no matter where she turned her head.

  Some kind of controls or gauges? Didn’t jet pilots have similar displays? The lights reminded her of the nicer cars with their speedometers cast into the windshield. But none of the symbols or colors meant anything to her. With her free hand she swiped at them yet they persisted. She had only succeeded in conjuring a fresh pair of floating dials.

  Jenna stopped in the hallway. “Wait. Mother’s here. We have to go back.”

  “That’s not Mother. I don’t know what that is. But she did something to us. We can’t stop here and wait for her to catch us.”

  “But it’s Mother’s voice and Mother’s face. Just like it’s your voice and your face. Am I like you?”

  Jenna held her gray fingers before her eyes and once again looked like she was on the verge of panic.

  “Come on. We’re going to figure this out together. But we have to move.”

  When she pulled on Jenna, her sister stiffened. Carmen only managed to drag her a few inches. The fight behind them continued as a series of hard thuds reverberated.

  Carmen made a helpless gesture. “I can’t carry you.”

  But the Jenna bot took a knee and gazed back down the corridor.

  A wall next to Carmen on the inside of the looping hall shifted. A new doorway appeared.

  “Jen, we can hide in here.”

  When her sister still refused to budge, Carmen left her to investigate. She entered a circular room where portions of the ceiling and floor morphed before her. Tuning out the commotion in the hallway, she forced herself to calm down and think clearly. Surely the lights in her display served some purpose. And now the room was becoming something, as portions of the furnishings sprouted lights and their own floating symbols.

  She focused on the pair of round dials that clung to the left side of her vision. Tried to will them away. Searched for a handy “X” at the top right-hand corner as if dismissing a window. But all she could accomplish was to turn the lime-green symbols a deeper shade of olive.

  The mom-creature had demonstrated complete mastery over the walls, ceiling, and floor. Whatever this place—this spaceship?—was, it followed directions given by its master or captain or pilot.

  No time to be cautious. If Peter won the fight outside, he’d already shown he had been driven mad by whatever process had placed them into their strange new bodies. And the mom-creature? Something was off about her. It had Mom’s face, her voice, but it spoke as if it were a confused stranger, and Carmen knew to trust her instincts.

  She and Jenna couldn’t chance losing what might be their only opportunity to escape or do something
that might take them back home.

  She ran a hand through a small cone of red light. Felt a fresh tingle that wasn’t heat or pain. Did it again. Then, more assertively, she smacked the raised console on which the cone appeared to be sitting.

  “Come on, show me something. Hello? Can you hear me? I want to go home. Back to Earth.”

  Several of the other lights and symbols shifted. Turned on, turned off, grew, and shrank. Only the red cone didn’t waver.

  She touched, pressed, and waved her hands over everything within reach. The buttons and virtual dials stopped responding. Had she locked herself out or tried too many commands at the same time? She felt a rising sense of alarm as the corridor beyond went silent. Was the fight over? And if so, who had won?

  Jenna wobbled in through the doorway. Carmen pulled her inside the room and away from the door. Like the portal from where she had first emerged into the main hall, the wall went solid as if the doorway had never been there.

  Carmen placed her hand on the Jenna robot’s screen as if to caress her sister’s face. “Stay still. Don’t make a sound. This room might be what we’re looking for.”

  The wall where the door had been had no visible controls. No easy way to lock it, she suspected. If the mother-creature had won, she would eventually find them.

  She returned to the middle of the room and tried to look at the lights with fresh eyes. It felt as if she were standing behind a stained-glass window with the sun shining bright. She ran her hands through the patterns of light. But nothing responded.

  The room had to have a purpose. Otherwise, she couldn’t imagine why so many of the lights hung at hand level as if waiting to be manipulated by a robot body like hers or the mom-creature’s.

  Perhaps a key was needed. Or a password. Or behind it all was a facial recognition algorithm that knew she wasn’t an authorized user. The base of the consoles had no ports or interface. She examined the tips of her fingers and confirmed that they didn’t seem to have any kind of prong or plug.

  The notion that she might need to capture the mom-creature to access the functions of the room caused her heart to sink.

  But everything was a guess and each passing second was a moment closer to their being caught.

  Jenna walked about awkwardly before stopping to lean on a wall. “Why is this happening?”

  “We’re going to be okay.”

  When Carmen spoke the words, a few of the smaller symbols beneath a prominent virtual dial shifted. The characters had their own tiny marks beneath them.

  “Can anyone out there hear me?”

  A single character vanished. A new one appeared. Her voice. It was the only thing that triggered a response.

  “I’m Carmen Vincent. Tell me how to make this thing return to Earth.”

  The olive light turned a dark shade of forest green. But that was it. She almost laughed. What if this room was some toy or video game, or designed to test the psychology of captured humans? A light-show torture chamber? A mind maze for lab animals before the probing began?

  She had seen too many bad TV shows and none of them had prepared her for this.

  She took a step back and considered the entire display. “Is there anyone there? Talk to me.”

  The cone of red light, the only constant feature that hadn’t shrunk, grown, or moved, now winked.

  “Hello?”

  A soft voice spoke. “New imprint logged. Location tracked. Communication voxels established. Hello, unknown designate. Will you please return the spaceship you have stolen?”

  Chapter Nine

  “I didn’t steal anything.”

  Carmen blurted the words out without thinking. Who was she even talking to?

  The red light continued to shine for a moment before the voice spoke again.

  “Then the one designated ‘Sylvia Vincent,’ ‘Mission Specialist,’ or ‘Queen of Mars’ did. Please return the spaceship at once.” The voice sounded bright and feminine with the slightest pause between each word. It was as if it was reading with only a passing understanding that the strung-together expressions functioned as a sentence.

  Queen of Mars? It was her mom’s idea of a joke, something she had told a Sacramento Bee reporter after an endless series of interviews before her departure. How did whoever was talking to her know?

  “Who am I speaking to?”

  “Designate She Who Waits.”

  “That’s your name?”

  “My designation. Please identify yourself.”

  Carmen considered the light for a moment. How to answer?

  Jenna appeared next to her. She passed her hands through the red light. “We’re Sylvia Vincent’s daughters. Can you help us?”

  “Remote access is limited,” the voice said. “How do you need assistance?”

  “We want to go home.”

  “But you are home. Home is planet designation ‘Earth.’”

  “We’re stuck in this place you call a spaceship. We were kidnapped.”

  The voice didn’t answer for a moment. “Remote access link via communication node doesn’t equate to term ‘kidnapped.’”

  Carmen held a hand up for Jenna to wait. “Explain ‘remote access link.’”

  “Communication nodes allow bioforms transmission of neural net matrix to assume task functions of remote units.”

  “Hold on. If bioforms are people, then that’s us. What does the rest of that mean? Can you speak plainly?”

  “Designates ‘Sylvia Vincent’s daughters’ must wait for—”

  The voice cut off and the red light went out. The other displays went through a series of color changes and symbol configurations. Several dimmed or vanished.

  Carmen waved her hand where the cone of light had just been. “Hello? Hello?”

  The door shifted and the mom-creature appeared. But she was having difficulty moving and it quickly became apparent why.

  The robot with Peter’s face clung to her partially severed arm. The mom-creature dragged him into the room as if she were chained to a fallen tree branch. His legs dangled limp and one of them was half-missing.

  The mom-creature considered them both. “Jennacarmen…Jennacarmen…you’re here…you’re here. We were in trouble…but now we’re safe.”

  Carmen tried to pull Jenna away as the mom-creature limped towards them, but her sister wasn’t moving. So Carmen stepped forward to shield Jenna.

  “Stay back. Mom, if you’re in there somewhere, you need to listen to me. Something’s wrong with you. You’re frightening us.”

  “Don’t be frightened, my sweet girl.”

  “Then answer my questions. Tell us what you did to bring us here inside…these machines.”

  “Jennacarmen, I need you. But you’ll have to be strong.”

  The mom-creature paused at the center of the light display. With her free hand she began making rapid gestures in the air. The lights and symbols responded and new symbols appeared, shifted, and vanished in rapid succession.

  Peter hadn’t released the mom-creature’s arm. The fingers of his other hand were dug into the gray material of the mom-creature’s chest and shoulder and had left gashes. His own body had similar wounds, with long scratches rent down his back. His face screen was partially crushed, distorting the image of his face.

  He was murmuring the whole time. “Lord, save me because of your kindness. Lord, save me. Save me, save me, save me…”

  The mom-creature ignored him as she worked. “Jennacarmen, we’ll be together soon.”

  Jenna allowed Carmen to lead her away towards the back of the room. “Car, why does she keep calling us that?”

  “I don’t know. She’s confused. She doesn’t seem to know we’re both here.”

  The mom-creature spoke without shifting her attention from her work. “There’s so much to show you. Once we fix…once we fix…we’ll have the best reunion, you and I. It will be like our Sunday breakfasts, mom and daughter time. You’ll have the pancakes with all the syrups mixed together. You’
ll have all the time you ever wanted to practice and play your instruments.”

  Carmen realized she was only partially correct. The mom-creature spoke of them as if they were one person. Jenna had gone with her mother on their weekend outings and to breakfasts at the Bumbleberry. But Carmen was the one who’d played music.

  Mom had pressured her to take band. It would look good on her college transcript for a well-rounded student, she insisted. Carmen had chosen trombone and then had proceeded to almost fail the class. So much for the easy A to bump up her grade point average.

  It hadn’t helped that her hearing had been on the way out. But she loved playing, had taken to the instrument, had even gotten a couple of other girls to try to start their own Specials cover band. She had learned enough guitar and piano to stand in for most of the other parts, but the band flopped before it had even begun. But making band class on time and completing assignments and turning in practice sheets?

  Not while the Vincent family imploded.

  “Mom, if you can hear me, stop whatever you’re doing and talk to us. We’re right here. If you’re in trouble, we want to help, both Jenna and I. But right now we’re both scared. If we’re really on board a spaceship, then take us home. Fix whatever you did to us. Mom?”

  “Oh, Jennacarmen, there isn’t time for that. If only there were. If we don’t hurry, it will be too late for all of us. But if we act quickly, we might survive. Somewhere out there, we’ll make it. And it will be together.”

  “Where’s our real bodies?”

  “Flesh and blood won’t inherit the stars.”

  “Explain that to me. What do you mean?”

  She didn’t answer. Her free hand continued to manipulate the virtual controls. Carmen edged closer. Tried to understand what any of the symbols meant. The surrounding spaceship made no sounds and she felt no sense of motion. If they were taking off from Earth, wouldn’t they be pulled down to the floor?

  Meanwhile Peter had stopped praying. He hung limp, still attached to the mom-creature by one hand. But then his head turned. He locked eyes with Carmen. The madness from earlier was there in full force.

  “Mom, look out—”