The Survivor

by BRIDGET TYLER

  “He is now,” Shelby growls, stomping out of Grandpa’s office. “If I didn’t need every warm body I can get, he wouldn’t even be that.”

  “He was demoted?” I gasp. “Why? What happened?”

  “Go ask your boyfriend,” Shelby snaps. “The Admiral and I have more important things to discuss.”

  My eyes dart to Grandpa. He nods.

  “Go, Little Moth,” Grandpa says. “I’m sure he can use the consolation.”

  “But—”

  Grandpa waves away my protest. “Don’t worry. I’ll text you when the lieutenant and I are finished.”

  Then he follows Shelby into his office.

  A sharp pain in my jaw makes me realize my teeth are clenched so hard, they’re grinding. My jaw crackles as I force them apart.

  Don’t worry.

  I can’t think of a single moment when the words don’t worry ever made me do anything but.

  Jay is halfway to the barracks before I catch up.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” He cracks each word off with effort, like they’re frozen together.

  I grab his hand, pulling him around to look at me.

  “Jay.”

  “Don’t, Jo,” he says. “Just, don’t, okay?” He sounds tired. And sad.

  I can’t stand how sad he sounds.

  “I can talk to Grandpa,” I say.

  “No!” he yells. “No special treatment because my girlfriend is the admiral’s granddaughter.”

  “Then tell me what happened,” I demand. “Because I can’t imagine you doing something to deserve a demotion.”

  “None of us deserve this,” Jay says, so quietly I can hardly hear him.

  “Please, Jay. I want to help.”

  It comes out more like a request than an offer. No. That makes it sound too dignified. It isn’t a request. It’s a plea.

  Jay turns away from me.

  “You can’t help, Jo. This is on me. I failed.” He sags a little further. For a moment, I think he’s going to sit down, right there in the middle of the path. “The admiral was nice about it, but it’s my job to protect our people. That means doing whatever it takes. Even if . . .” He shudders convulsively, as though he can’t even think the words, much less say them. “But someone has to do it.”

  “Do what?”

  He walks away so abruptly, it takes me a moment to process what’s happening.

  “Jay!” I call, racing after him.

  He stops again, turning to grab my shoulders as I nearly barrel into him. His eyes are burning.

  “Just leave me alone, okay?”

  I don’t want to do that. I want to throw my arms around him. I want to force him to tell me what’s going on. But everything I can think to do or say sounds like another demand. Like I’m asking something of him instead of giving him what he needs. So instead I just nod.

  “Okay.”

  He leaves so fast, he’s almost running.

  What happened to him? Today was supposed to be his first day on Shelby’s special phytoraptor team. How did Jay “fail,” exactly? What did he do?

  What didn’t he do?

  A horrifying thought runs its fingers up my spine.

  Grandpa demoted Jay. Personally. Whatever it is Shelby’s special team is doing, Grandpa thinks it’s necessary. And if Grandpa thinks it’s necessary . . .

  What are we going to have to become, in order to survive here?

  Eleven

  “Joey?”

  Chris’s voice jumps out of the darkness.

  Startled, I spin to find him standing a few meters behind me, his tool belt slung over his shoulder.

  “Hi,” I say, trying to sound normal.

  He makes a face. “What are you doing standing out here in the cold without your jacket?”

  At his words I realize just how cold I am. I didn’t bother to grab my parka when I stormed off the flyer, and now it’s full night. My fingers are numb and I can feel gooseflesh prickling all over my arms and back, under my thermal and flight suit. How long have I been standing here, lost in my raging thoughts?

  I shove my hands into my pockets and toss the question back at Chris. “What are you doing out?”

  “Heading to River Bend,” he says. “Didn’t get to finish what I was working on yesterday.”

  “The Vulcan?” I guess.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve got a double shift tomorrow, and she’s so close to done. Chief G said I could take a jeep.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Wanna come?”

  I shouldn’t. I should go back and talk to Mom, now that she’s finally talking.

  There has to be a better way.

  But what if there isn’t?

  Grandpa fought in the Storm Wars, but he’s also one of the architects of the peace accords that united Earth for the first time in human history. If he doesn’t think it’s possible to make peace with the Sorrow, then it probably isn’t.

  There are almost ten thousand people sleeping in orbit. All that’s left of us. Grandpa and Shelby are just doing what they think is necessary to protect them. To protect us. How can I question that? How can I not?

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’ll come.”

  I follow Chris to the airfield. He uses Chief G’s code to activate one of the jeeps parked beside the flyers, but he lets me drive. It’s not as much fun as flying, but there’s something satisfying about accelerating through the dark trees. I can almost imagine I’m digging my own feet into the dirt, pushing the jeep forward by sheer force of frustration.

  “You wanna talk about it?” Chris asks.

  “No,” I say, swinging the wheel a little too hard around a big orchid tree. I swear under my breath as I wrestle the vehicle back into line.

  “Okay.” Chris leans back against his seat to look up at the stars. The moons are slim crescents tonight, and the unnatural glimmer of the Prairie stands out like a beacon. She’s hovering just over the treetops ahead of us.

  I wish she weren’t.

  I wish they’d never come.

  The thought is followed by a wave of nausea. I just wished ten thousand people dead. My friends’ families. My own grandfather. I can’t wish for that. But I do.

  I wish that ship would just disappear.

  I didn’t know it was possible to be this selfish.

  “We have to do whatever it takes to keep the survivors safe,” I say. “Right?”

  Chris shrugs. “Depends on what it takes, doesn’t it?”

  I want to agree with him, but I’m not sure I do. What wouldn’t I do to assure the survival of the species Homo sapiens?

  What wouldn’t Jay do?

  The question surfs back into my brain on a wave of dread.

  “Joey!”

  I slam on the brakes just in time to avoid ramming the jeep into River Bend’s shield. I sit there, trying to catch my breath, as Chris pulls up the shield app and carves a portal for us. My heart is still pounding as I drive the jeep through the square opening in the force field and into the fast-growing settlement.

  The five ruined cabins Dr. Brown’s team left behind have been replaced by three dozen new ones. The Prairie’s marine squadron and their families have taken over the little settlement. It won’t be little for long. There are two jeeps with huge bulldozing attachments and ripper claws parked beside the orchid trees, ready to clear them in the morning.

  The thought of those claws ripping into the forest makes my stomach hurt. Beth would say I’m being sentimental. The orchid trees aren’t sentient. They aren’t even hybrids like the fidos. I still hate the thought of plowing them under, especially if this settlement turns out to be temporary.

  There has to be a better way.

  I turn my gaze from the construction equipment to the Vulcan. The scout ship is perched right in the bend of the river so she isn’t in the way. Work lights trace her high, curved wings and graceful body in the darkness.

  She looks so different tha
n she did the first time I saw her, listing over the rotting, abandoned camp. Now she’s straight and sure. Beautiful.

  “Guess we aren’t the only ones looking for some distraction,” I say, gesturing to the work lights.

  “Nope,” Chris says. Then he raises his voice and calls out, “Sorry I’m late, Lee-lu.”

  “Leela’s here?” I ask, surprised.

  “Obviously,” Leela says, sticking her head out of the hatch. “Come on. It’s freezing out there.”

  I try to ignore the twist of childish hurt in my gut as I follow Chris up the ramp. “If you guys had plans, I can just head back.”

  “Don’t be a drama queen,” Leela says as we step through the hatch into the ship. “We’re testing our new system. That’s not ‘plans.’”

  “A new system?” I say. “You guys added something to the Vulcan?”

  Leela grins. “Yup. Chris designed it. It’s awesome. We’ve been working on this for weeks.”

  For weeks? Where was I?

  Running away, I remind myself.

  “It was your idea,” Chris tells Leela, pulling the hatch closed behind us against the cold. “I just figured out the mechanics.”

  “‘Just’?” Leela fires back, arching an oh really? brow at him.

  Chris has grown, I realize. He’s gotta be almost as tall as Jay now. His shoulders are broader too.

  Chris grins, flushing in pleased embarrassment. “It was kind of a challenge.”

  “What was?” I ask.

  “C’mon,” Leela says. “I’ll show you.”

  We follow her into the Vulcan’s bridge. The dome-shaped room is just like the Pioneer’s bridge but smaller. The wall screens are set to three-sixty mode, showing the camp around us so vividly, it’s like we stepped outside again, minus the cold.

  “Computer, run simulation twelve,” Leela requests.

  The bridge plunges into absolute darkness. Reflexive anxiety splashes through me. But before I can even switch my flex to flashlight, red light zips around the seams where the wall screens meet the floors.

  It swells, filling the room. A sentence fades up on each wedge of wall screen.

  Emergency power cells activated.

  “It works!” Chris crows, grabbing Leela and swinging her around in a joyful victory dance.

  “You gave the Vulcan emergency power cells?” I ask, pivoting to take in the stark message on the screens. “Doesn’t it already have backup systems?”

  “This is a backup to the backup,” Leela says, “It has just enough power to save our butts if something happens to the computer.”

  “ISA ships depend on their central computer to activate their backup systems,” Chris explains. “Which is all well and good, usually. The mainframes have independent power. But if your computer dies, you’re screwed. That isn’t supposed to happen—”

  “But we all know supposed to doesn’t mean crap out here,” Leela says, her voice gruff with emotion. “Hindsight sucks, but it’s useful.”

  “Oh,” I say, abruptly understanding where all this came from. “If you’d had this when the Wagon’s computers failed last year . . .”

  She nods. “Yeah. Exactly.”

  If there had been a system like this on the Wagon, Leela would have been able to land our old shuttle safely on the airfield, instead of crash-landing in the mountains. Thirteen people might still be alive if she’d had this system. Including Chris’s mom and Miguel.

  I can’t help but imagine that alternate history. It’s like prodding a sore tooth. It hurts, but I can’t stop. Chief Penny, alive. Miguel, alive. Mom making first contact with the Sorrow like she planned, instead of us stumbling into it. Mom and Penny working together to repair the Prairie, instead of this headlong rush to bring down the survivors.

  Everything would be so different.

  But it isn’t.

  “Of course,” Leela says, breaking my list of might-have-beens, “accidentally triggering the nanoscrubbers would have sucked harder.”

  “Nanoscrubbers?” I ask, startled. “The Vulcan has an atmospheric filtration system?”

  “Yeah,” Chris says. “I mean, not exactly. It’s the same system, but the programming is completely different from the ones that—”

  “Destroyed Earth?” Leela supplies, her dry tone not quite hiding her grief at the thought.

  Chris shakes his head. “Still have trouble getting my head around that one.” He hunches his shoulders a little, like he’s trying to make room for the apocalypse under his skin. “But yeah, the Vulcan’s scrubbers are the same basic idea as the Earth system, except they’re programmed to search and destroy organic waste on the surface instead of carbon in the upper atmosphere. The Rangers adopted it to clear Earth DNA off planets they’d finished exploring.”

  “Are you serious?” I say, a whole other set of fears churning into my guts. “And we just left it sitting here, in a rusting old ship?”

  The atmospheric filtration system’s nanobots are designed to chew through unwanted molecules and break them down to their component atoms. If these scrubbers do that to Earth DNA, that means they’d chew through us if they were activated.

  “It wasn’t dangerous until Dr. Brown died,” Chris says. “The scrubber system has a fail-safe linked to the Vulcan crew’s RFID identification implants. As long as a Ranger was alive on planet, the scrubbers stayed dormant.”

  “But after that, yeah, a couple more centimeters of rust, and we could have all been reduced to our component molecules,” Leela snarks.

  Chris rolls his eyes. “Oh come on. It’s not just instant death if those things get out. It takes hours for them to saturate the atmosphere enough to initialize the system. We’d have shut them down long before that happened.”

  “Assuming we knew the killer nanobots had gotten loose, which we wouldn’t have known, because we didn’t know they existed.” Leela shakes her head, disgusted.

  “Mom has most secret clearance,” I say. “She must have known about this.”

  Chris shakes his head. “Nope. It was above even her clearance level. I’m not sure the admiral would have told anyone, if we hadn’t asked for access to the Vulcan’s mainframe. The commander and Chief G are still the only other people who know. The admiral said that he and Dr. Brown kept their modification to the scrubber system secret because they were afraid of them getting into the wrong hands.”

  “Which would have been ours, if we’d started messing around with the power systems before the admiral segregated the planet scrubbers on their own hard drive and locked it under his command codes,” Leela says. “Secrets are stupid. I’m over them.” She pulls off her flex and presses it to the wall screen, syncing with the Vulcan to bring the computer back online. “But the ship’s basically done now,” she says as she works, “so we can get the Vulcan into orbit to dispose of those things in space, where they can’t hurt anyone.”

  “And then it’s back to cabins and cargo runs for us,” Chris says, as the ISA logo appears on each wedge of the wall screen.

  Leela sighs. “Who knew the post-apocalypse would be so dull?”

  The three-sixty view from the exterior cameras flows back over the dome, surrounding us with the cold dark outside once more. But it isn’t as dark as it looks. Pale light is flickering through the tidy rows of cabins. Weird.

  “What is that?” Leela says, peering at the light.

  Something bright flashes through the sky and lands in the cluster of cabins.

  “What the—”

  “Oh my god!” Leela gasps as a ball of fire balloons out of the settlement, scattering flame across the cabin roofs.

  Two more flashes of light burst through the air. Fire-bombs.

  It’s finally happening. We’re under attack.

  Chris and Leela and I drag the hatch open and race down the ramp toward the burning cabins.

  “Get your breathers!” Leela shouts.

  I don’t slow down, fumbling blindly in my utility harness pockets until I find the slick membran
e. I smear it over my nose and mouth and cough on the abruptly clean oxygen. I didn’t even realize how smoky it was.

  The Prairie squad members who were off duty are already pounding on doors and hustling squad families away from the flames. Sergeant Preakness is checking people off on his flex and shouting out names to the others as he gets them.

  Something hard thuds into my solar plexus and a little voice rasps, “Move! Move! Get out of my way!”

  I snag the kid before he can push past me. He looks five, maybe six. His face is sooty and his eyes are red and furious.

  “Let me go!” he shrieks. “I have to get back to my house!”

  “Is someone stuck in there?” Chris asks, darting back to us and crouching next to the kid.

  “My bear!” he wails. “I need my bear! He’ll burn!”

  Chris looks up at me, aching regret in his eyes.

  “We can’t,” I say to him.

  “I know,” Chris responds.

  Neither of us means it.

  Then someone swoops the little boy out of my arms. It’s Shelby, though I hardly recognize her under the thick layer of gray ash that coats her face.

  “Come on, little punk,” she growls, shoving a bedraggled stuffed bear into the child’s arms. “Your daddy’s having a conniption.”

  Did Emily Shelby actually just risk her life for a stuffed animal?

  “Don’t just stand there,” Shelby snarls at us. “Go do something useful.” With that, she strides away, carrying the child out of the smoke.

  Sergeant Preakness assigns us to a fire-suppression team.

  For what feels like a long time, it’s just the Prairie squadron and us, fighting the flames. The heat and smoke make it hard to think, much less keep track of time. I keep expecting more firebombs, or attacking Takers, but they never come.

  Eventually more people show up from the Landing to fight the fires. I catch glimpses of Mom and Grandpa darting between groups, coordinating fire suppression. And I see Beth and Dad down by the river, helping to haul water up to the settlement in a long cooperative chain. But I haven’t seen Jay at all. I hope he’s okay.

  Leela and Chris and I are all caked with soot by the time Mom hurries up to us.

  “What’s happening, Mom?” I demand. “Is everyone—”