I dart between empty skyscrapers on empty streets. My armor squeezes my chest, suffocating me. Air rushes through the three tears in my glove, stinging the bloody wounds beneath.
Footsteps pound on the pavement somewhere behind me. My pursuer is still on the warpath.
Slipping into a narrow alley, I adjust my gloves.
Jaelyn had considered slashing herself with the toothbrush shiv she’d fashioned. But if it were found on her it would be confiscated, and her venture would be over before it even started. The jagged rocks that formed the margin between the exercise yard and the camp’s caustic fog wall would have to do the job instead.
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CAL! Get me out of here!” Walden screamed into his comlink.
The whine of blasters sent him scurrying around trees and jumping branches as he bounded through the woods where he’d landed that morning. At least CAL had the foresight to scan the local channels and had seen the proclamation. How the Lothean government knew he was here remained a mystery, unless his contact had snitched on him. After all, the bounty on Terrans was enough to make any poor sod give up his own grandmother.
“Keerful with them chickens.” Jack McGuffin eyed Earl warily as he loaded up the final crate and closed the cargo hatch of the Mud Runner. “They’re priceless, you know.” He clasped my hand in his gnarled claw. “Swiped their mother from a giant back in my youth.”
I nodded politely, ignoring his senile ramblings. It’s bad business to upset a customer, especially one paying so well.
I stroke the strings of my finntler as I set it up under the burning lights of the spaceport overhead.
I reckon the best way to describe a finntler is it’s mighty like a xylophone, ‘cept with strings. That and it’s my life on a table. I’m just a boy, but most cain’t mimic the way I play. Travelers passin’ by throw coins. A few stop to listen to the music; my regulars clap along, whoopin’ and cheerin’ as I finish.
Hank wandered about the empty house, bored out of his mind, from the kitchen with a fridge full of meals, to the TV showing only reruns, to the shelf of books he’d read a dozen times, then all over again. He’d expected having his parents away for five weeks would give him a sense of ecstatic freedom.
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“Five minutes, King.”
I let out an irritable sigh at the warning transmitted into my head. “Copy.” I’ve only just arrived, and I’m already running out of time.
Where did he put it?
The serum has to be here. We’ve spent years tracking it across time and space and through the fibers of alternate dimensions.
“The citizens of New Earth must be expecting someone to appear from the ancient depths of space.” I didn’t know if I was trying to reassure myself or my assistant. “After all, the cradle of life is littered with functioning spaceships.”
The tractor beam continued to draw us in.
“They’ll welcome us, surely.”
I stared at the looming sphere of Earl Grey dominating The Seeker’s viewport. Not Earl Grey as in the tea—Earl Grey the planet. Some doofus had the nerve to name the planetary collection “The Tea System.” Of course when you hear the name, it sounds like “The T System,” which is way more categorical.
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Red. All I can see is red. What’s wrong with my vision?
“Excellent. Open your eyes,” a female voice says gently.
I do, and wince when bright light blinds me further. I throw my hands up to cover my eyes, my left palm brushing against my right wrist, irritating the stitches encircling it.
The spaceship rattled again, the second violent vibration in as many minutes. Leaves fell from the trees above, and water from the large koi pond splashed my spacesuit. Vibrant colors danced and pulsed in the transparent dome of the garden’s ceiling, which offered a view of nearby space.
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“One more time. Please, Dude.”
“You’ve already tried ninety-nine times, John!”
“No sweat, Dude. One hundredth time’s the bomb.” John paced in the only open area the lab equipment left them.
“I don’t know. Dr. Perrault’s due back in the lab soon.”
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