Stolen Flyght – Chapter 24

It’s a long trek across the frozen tundra to the foothills and the possibility of shelter. I take socks from my bag and give them to everyone to use as mittens. I try not to think about how cold it must be out here. Maybe ten or fifteen below zero? Don’t think about it, Vivian.

We take turns carrying Gloria, and despite the number of blankets we’ve wrapped around her, it’s not enough. She cries through the cold.

“We’re almost there,” I tell her, gazing up at the looming, dark mountain. The sun has set, and we’re navigating by flashlights.

“I can’t feel my leg,” she says, through her chattering teeth.

“You’ve probably severed nerves. It’s better this way.” This is not reassuring, I know. My bedside manner could use some work. “Hopefully, you’ll be in surgery soon. The nanobots will fix you right up.”

Gus would be a lot more comforting than this. He would tell her about her options and what recovery would look like. And he’d be able to say to her, straight up, what her chances of walking and living a full life will be after this.

Carlos and Lia come running up out of the cold. They went ahead about thirty minutes ago to search for shelter. I’m jealous because I’m sure they’re warmer than I am.

“There’s a cave, right where you said there would be, Commander,” Carlos says, pointing over his shoulder. His voice is muffled by the mask and his heavy breathing. “Not far.”

“It looks like someone has been there recently. There are ration boxes and a few cooking canisters, but they left behind their trash.” Lia grabs my handle on the stretcher as she finishes her report. I thank her and move to the side to shake out my shoulder.

Everything hurts, but I’m saving the meds for Gloria. If I could get a few hours of sleep, I’d be much better off. Will I be able to sleep with a mask on? Ugh. I hate the thing already.

By the time we reach the cave, my feet and hands are numb. The chamber is about four to five meters deep into the mountain. A fire pit is in the middle of the room, and sleeping space is to the rear. We set Gloria next to the unlit fire pit and unload our bags. Jinzo starts a fire using a flare and leftover compressed waste logs from the people who were here last. The fire burns and brings light to the cave but doesn’t roar like I remember campfires from Ossun. The lower oxygen content here makes fires smaller and cooler, but it’s better than nothing.

“What is the oxygen content here?” I ask Jinzo as I squat by the fire with my hands out.

“Like seventeen percent?” He pokes at the fire with his boot. “So humans need about twenty percent oxygen, and fire needs sixteen percent. Neve is somewhere in-between. Basically, it’s a really inconvenient planet to be stuck on.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

He chuckles. “Space stations need air to support life, and they need to stop fires quickly. We all learn these things when we go through training.” He groans as he steps away from the fire and stretches his arms. “Never thought I’d put it to use on a planet, though.”

When he catches me shivering, he wraps his arms around me and hugs me tight.

“Let’s finish getting settled and try to sleep.”

“I should go get snow to keep Gloria’s leg from swelling,” I say, sighing and grabbing one of the empty bags I brought with us. “I’ll be right back.”

Out of the cave and a few meters from the opening, I use my hands to pick up snow and stuff it in the bag. I pant through the pain in my hands. I didn’t think this day could suck anymore, but if I add frostbite to it, it just might be worse.

Before I head back inside, I tip my face up and stare at the night sky. These stars seem familiar but a little off. Lights zoom around far above in orbit. I bet the big military ships will be here tomorrow, if not sooner. The sky is about to get very crowded.

Gloria is grateful for the pain relief when I return to the cave. The fire has already warmed up the space by ten degrees or more. Enough to feel comfortable but not enough to keep us from freezing to death long term, especially when the compressed waste logs run out.

I shake my head. It doesn’t matter. We’ll run out of oxygen way before we run out of fuel for the fire. We have to leave tomorrow, regardless.

I place the thinnest blanket I can find on Gloria’s leg and pack snow on it. The rest of her is warming up, and she’s in and out of consciousness.

“Twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off.” I tip over my wristlet and grit my teeth as nothing comes up. Not even my home screen. It may be totally busted or dead. I don’t remember the last time I charged it. I take her hand and squeeze her fingers. “Call for me if you need anything.”

“T-th-thanks, Vivian.” Her voice is weak, but I can see the determination in her eyes. She will handle this like she’s dealt with every other part of the mission — with unending strength.

Nina nods at me as I pass her on my way around the campfire. She’s emptying the food from our bags and taking inventory of the meds. Once a military officer, always a military officer. My guess is that she works in her sleep too.

I groan as I sit down next to Jinzo on the other side of the fire. My entire body is wrecked from my hair follicles all the way down to my baby toenails. This is the most exhausted I have ever been. Jinzo wraps his arm around my waist and squeezes me to him. I hold out my socked hands to the fire, hoping they’ll warm up. I take the socks off my fingers and stare at them. They’re impossibly white, and it hurts to flex my finger joints. I hope I haven’t done permanent damage to them.

Eamon looks at us for a moment and gets up to leave.

“I’m going to pass out over there.” He jerks his thumb at a spot between the cave wall and the fire. “I’ll sleep for a few hours, and then I’ll watch over Gloria. If that’s okay?”

He hesitates, waiting on my approval. I blink a few times. My mouth is not working.

“You don’t have to ask permission. If you need to sleep, sleep. I’m sure Gloria will require help over the next few hours, but we’ve got it. You can help later.”

He trudges off to his spot, and I make eye contact with Skylar over the flames. It’s hard to tell with masks on, but I think she raises her eyebrows at me. If even Eamon feels like I’m in charge, I must have what it takes to lead.

I smile behind my mask. I just need my farm back, and then maybe I can run my own show.

“I’ve been thinking about what we saw in the base,” Jinzo says, keeping his voice low, only for me to hear.

“Oh yeah? Which part?” I bring up my legs and hug them to my chest. “Because there’s too much there for me to process.”

“The Rio plants and the gate.”

“What about them — ?” I stop. “Wait. Why those two particular things?”

Together?

“Nina said the gate allows people to travel through ‘space-time.’ Have you ever wondered why the Rio plants pair with certain people?”

“Yeah, I’ve thought about it. But without a lab and testing, I didn’t think I’d ever crack that mystery.”

Jinzo’s quiet for a moment while we both hold our hands out to the fire.

“If we can travel through space with that gate, we can travel through time too. What if — ?”

I place my hand on his arm and shake my head. “You don’t think we’d have gone back to stop us fucking up Earth first?”

“What if we couldn’t? Think about it. There would be too many things that could go wrong with that. But Rio? It could be altered without doing damage to our shared histories.”

Oh, man. I do not want to add time travel to my list of interstellar worries. Did we go back and seed Rio with DNA or something? If we did, then who did that? Doesn’t that break timelines?

I swallow through my dry throat and wish we had brought more water along. There were a few bottles from the Amagi, but not enough for longer than a day or two.

“Jin, we should forget everything we saw in there.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not sure I can.”

“We report back to Renata Dellis, and then we move on with our lives.”

Jinzo leans to the side, and when he returns to me, he has something in his hand.

“Your plant,” he says, slipping the crushed leaves into my numb fingers. “Don’t you want to find out what it does?”

I reflexively inhale. Yes. Yes, I do want to find out what it does.

Hiding my eyes, I check on everyone around the campfire. Gloria is in and out of consciousness. Nina is wandering about, cataloging our goods. Lia is asleep, curled up in a blanket by the fire. Eamon is asleep. Carlos is taking something apart with a screwdriver. But Skylar catches my eye and comes over to sit on my other side.

“What’s that?” she asks as she sits next to me.

“It’s my plant. We came across it in the labs on the base. It… It reached out to me.”

“Wow. No shit?” I let her take it and examine it closer, and the separation produces a peak of anxiety in me, acute and painful. Wait. Give it back!

I inhale through my nose and calm myself. The anxiety fades quickly.

“It looks like an ivy, don’t you think?” Skylar hands it back to me. “Such a pretty color.”

“It is pretty. And it resembles an ivy. You’re right.” A wave of relief washes over me as the leaves touch my fingers.

I hadn’t thought about this plant in hours, and now it’s something my body craves and can’t be without. Yet, the hunger for it disappeared as quickly as it started.

I can see this kind of thing becoming addictive fast with more prolonged exposure. On Rio, Darmit Hoggard couldn’t wait to return to the bush that brought him vivid memories. He pulled us through the jungle at the worst time of year to show us what he had found.

What will this plant do for me?

I sandwich the leaves between my two palms, and I rub them back and forth. A calm sense of peace warms my chest. Hmmm. That’s nice. Especially after the days of depression I suffered before ending up stranded on Neve.

Jinzo knocks my shoulder with his. “So? What do you think?”

“This is not exactly the best climate in which to be trying out a random experiment.” I squeeze the leaves between my two palms, and my inward breath becomes slow, almost meditative.

“Try it anyway. Just a little. Hold it in your mouth.” Jinzo is an enabler, but I’m ready to be pushed. I tear off a corner of one leaf, lift my mask, open my mouth, and place the piece in my cheek.

Slowing down my breathing, I concentrate on that thin piece in my lip. What will it do for me?

I close my eyes, but my mind’s perception continues to see. Huh. Another breath in, another out. My vantage point changes, and I’m floating above everyone else in the cave. Nina checks our supplies, again, for the third time. She’s avoiding me, doing everything she can to bypass talking to me about her behavior. Eamon twitches in his sleep. Carlos is mumbling to himself. Gloria is passed out.

I inhale, and my consciousness snaps back.

“Whoa.” I lift the mask, sweep my finger into my mouth, and pull the piece of leaf out.

Holy shit.

Jinzo squeezes my arm. “What happened? It was like you fell asleep there for a moment.”

I open my palms and look down at my plant. The leaves are curling on the edges, and my hands are sweating.

“I wasn’t asleep. I was above myself. Detached from my body.”

Skylar gasps. “You were. What did you see? What did it feel like?”

“Like I was right there,” I say, pointing to a spot on the ceiling. “It was… strange but natural. I don’t know.”

She nods. “That’s how it felt being able to throw things with telekinesis. I just wasn’t myself. It was damn cool, though.”

“There’s a term for what I did… Astra-something?”

“Astral projection,” Jinzo whispers, awe coating every syllable. “Hey, if you ingest it, I bet you can survey the land. Keep us out of the hands of the military until we can get the heck out of here.”

I don’t know about that. I’ve had nothing but adverse reactions to every plant I’ve ingested so far. Do I want to be running for my life and have my bowels bottom out? I don’t think I can handle being this tired and sick at the same time.

“What happens if I do it again, and I don’t return to my body? It was easy here. I saw myself and came right back with a deep inhale.”

Jinzo takes my hand, and his eyes meet mine behind our masks.

“Vivi, this is your plant. Everyone who has ever paired up with their plant has had a pleasant, if not transcendental, experience with it. Ken has never been sick after taking his empathy plant. Darmit Hoggard was perfectly fine that whole way back to the lodge on Rio after interacting with his.”

I look at the plant again, and it scares the hell out of me. But only because of everything I’ve been through with the other plants. Jinzo has a point. Everyone else has had a positive experience with their plants. Why wouldn’t I?

I want this to work.

I want to be useful. This entire mission has been me reacting to all the shit going on around me.

This plant could change the course of our future if I use it correctly.

Jinzo smiles at me, and I know he’s right. I could take this plant, and I could help.

Or I could take it and die?

Anything is possible.

I break off half a leaf, lift my mask, and pop it into my mouth.