Stolen Flyght – Chapter 11

Warmth on my shoulder sends a shock down my back, but I’m unable to flinch away. Life is dark and swimming, a long, black tunnel, stretching off into nothing.

“Vivian.”

I’m not sure I recognize that voice, a woman’s voice. Who is that?

“What’s the temperature in the container? Is it rising?” the woman asks, but I don’t hear a response.

“It is rising,” she says, after a moment of delay. “Okay. According to what I’ve read, we need to give it a few more minutes.”

Another delay.

I slip into the dark again, not sure where I am or what’s going on. My body feels detached from my head. Like it doesn’t exist.

“Vivian, we’re going to move you, and it’s going to hurt. A lot.” The woman’s voice is there again, and I want to tell her to go away. Leave me in peace, please. “Keep your eyes closed and try to stay in the same position you’re already in. Jinzo, you will do the same. Mat, bring the temperature up by ten degrees.”

Hands pull me from under my shoulders, and the pain that rips down my chest is enough to send me right back into the black.

Long bounces. Something over my skin. Warmth.

Ahhhhh, warmth.

I try to move my mouth, engage my vocal cords, but I have nothing. I can’t even open my eyes.

But I can feel heat.

“Stay still. Don’t talk,” the woman’s voice says again.

Wait.

I recognize that voice.

That’s not a woman. That’s Ai.

The world dips as something is set next to me.

“I’m raising the temperature in this room to thirty-five degrees. That should do it.”

I was told to stay still, but once my arms and legs begin to thaw, they shake, and I can’t stop them. I try harder to seize the muscles in my body and get them to settle, but the harder I try, the more they shake.

As feeling returns and my body warms up, the surrounding room takes shape. I’m on a bed, next to another person just out of cryofreeze. Their body is shaking too. Is it Jinzo? I’m unsure because I can’t open my eyes and neither of us can talk. Hollow thumps and bumps echo through the ship, doors open and close, and voices drift over the whoosh of the life support system.

My body shakes violently now. There’s no stopping it. But with this added movement comes the additional flexibility of my fingers and toes. I can wiggle them and not be in excruciating pain. Everything is thawing.

The drugs in my system have held me slow on purpose. They maintain my cells and keep them malleable, so they don’t crack and cause damage until I’m warmer. As my interior organs warm up, my breathing deepens, drawing in air to thaw out my larynx.

Still, I wait. I listen.

I calm my body through the shivers while the ship thumps and knocks around us. The door opens with a swish, and I hold my breath.

“And what’s in here? Why is it so hot?” I don’t recognize this voice.

I hear a sigh.

“He says that the environmental controls in this room are broken, so he only keeps things like extra blankets and other supplies in here.”

“All right. Fine. We don’t have the time to search every room. Let’s move on.”

The door closes, and I let go of my clenched muscles.

“Vivi?” Jinzo’s voice is quiet and hoarse. “Is that you?”

I draw my lips into my mouth to moisten them and test my vocal cords with a hum. They work.

“It’s me. I’m under blankets, I think.” Speaking makes my head swim. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Jinzo’s voice cracks. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

His words are a kick to the gut. We have barely started the mission, and we’re in jeopardy. This was supposed to be the easy part.

My shoulder aches, so I try to move it under me. If I can feel the ache, then I must be getting my body back, right? Pain slices through my chest and my stomach turns over. Oh God, I want to puke, but I hold it down. When I throw up, my entire body gets involved from my feet to my head. I can only imagine how painful that would be.

“Don’t move,” I whisper. “Let’s wait and see what happens.”

It takes more willpower than I thought I had to lie and wait for someone else to come fix my problems. But at least we’re warming up while we wait. And if I lie really, really still, I don’t feel nauseous.

Finally, after many minutes of silence, a voice bounces off the walls of the room.

“Captain, the military officials have left the ship. Mat will be right with you. Can you move?”

“If I move, I’ll vomit.” Bile creeps up my throat, but I swallow it away. “The pain is getting better, though.”

“Jinzo, what about you?”

“Same,” is all he says.

“What happened, Ai?” I ask, hoping to bide the time before Mat gets here.

“I’m not sure, but there was an emergency, and Mat called me to help. He worked furiously to unload the steaks and get you out of cryo without hurting you. You were supposed to go through a warm-up cycle in the container, which would have decreased the opportunity for cell damage and pain. But there was no time.”

“What about Lia and Gloria?”

“Well…”

The door opens, but it must be Mat because Ai didn’t tell us to be quiet. A hand searches for my feet and then moves up my legs to my hips before drawing the hot covers off of me. Even though the room is warm, I still shiver in the air. A hot washcloth comes down over my face and presses on my eyes. I sigh from the warmth of it. With gentle strokes, Mat coaxes my eyelids open, and when our eyes meet, he slumps in relief.

“Thank God,” he signs, dropping his head for a moment before pulling the covers up over my torso to my shoulders again. Warmth flows over me, and I sigh.

“What happened?” My vocal cords strain under the effort of talking. They need more warming up.

“They shuttled us up the queue,” he signs before moving over to Jinzo. He pulls back the covers on Jinzo’s head and uses the same hot washcloth to wipe open his eyes.

Jinzo’s large brown eyes open and look across the bed at me. He’s just as relieved as I am.

“When we arrived, they gave me a two-hour wait time, so I put you on the longer thirty-minute defrost cycle because Gus said it would be safer. But then I got the news that they had moved me up the queue because someone else forfeited their spot, and I had less than twenty minutes.”

I look at Jinzo and realize I’m too wrecked to translate.

“I…” Mat’s hands grind to a halt. “I fucked up, Vivian. I’m so sorry.”

“What?” I prompt him with as much gentleness as I can muster.

“I got you and Jin out of the containers and the steaks in, but there wasn’t enough time to unfreeze Gloria and Lia. When the inspectors came, your cryocontainer was unstacked, and they opened it, saw the meat, and moved along. But they took the other cryocontainers, including the one with Gloria and Lia in it.”

I close my eyes and hold back my anger. Not at Mat, but at this whole fucking awful situation. Are you kidding me? We’re only a few hours into the mission, and two of my crew are already gone. I quickly sum everything up for Jinzo.

“Fuck,” I breathe out. “We have to fix this.”

“We will,” Jinzo whispers. “We’ll get them out.”

“Captain, I have a suggestion,” Ai chimes in. “I’m in contact with Carlos, and we have a potential solution for this predicament.”

“Really? That was quick.” I’m impressed. My team is already on top of things.

“It will require some work and a slight change in plans. How good are you at pretending you’re a chef?”