A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) (29 page)

The view from a space elevator window, I am coming to learn, is a pretty impressive sight. You watch the world below get smaller and smaller and smaller, and then find yourself passing through the clouds, then over them. There are airplanes to watch, and billboard projectors hovering thousands of feet above the ground. When you get higher up, you begin to see the occasional satellite still flicking about in the very lowest levels of the atmosphere.

What you rarely see, however, is a hovercraft zooming straight for you.

“Away from the door!” Alan screams, a split second too late. The small dark craft slams into the side of the elevator, sending us all sprawling to the ground. I have to roll to keep
Dad from crushing me as we tumble, and he lets out a grunt as he lands awkwardly on his bad knee. I look to Zee, who is anchored against the long bench across from the door, holding Olivia in a protective shell on top of her chest. Olivia is screaming, and Bok Choy is going to town too, shouting a stream of shrill Kynigos gobbledygook. All of a sudden there is a high-pitched whirring sound coming from the edges of the door.

It’s chaos.

The Almiri are all shouting over one another, fighting to be heard as everybody does his best to right himself. Nobody seems to have any idea what’s going on—everyone has the same panicked, confused look on his face.

Everyone, that is, but Dr. Marsden. Calm, cool, and collected. Somebody, it seems, knows
exactly
what’s going on.

In one fast, brutal motion Marsden rises up and, with his hands still bound, grabs the nearest Almiri guard from behind, and snaps his neck, dropping the now-lifeless body without a second thought. Alan turns to see his compatriot on the ground and reaches for the gun at his side. But before he can draw, the elevator’s warning siren goes off—indicating that we’ve lost pressurization—and in that instant the door behind Alan slides open, revealing six burly, ruggedly handsome soldiers, who open fire into the elevator.

Jin’Kai.

I instinctively curl up into a defensive position, one arm draped across my father—the closest person I can reach—to draw him in safe. But as it turns out, the maneuver is unnecessary. The Jin’Kai aren’t aiming at us. Instead, they very
precisely gun down Alan and the rest of the Almiri—all save for Jørgen, whom Dr. Marsden has locked in a chokehold. There’s a gap of about one meter between the elevator and the hovercraft, which seems to be tethered to the elevator at four points, though it sways unsteadily as we continue to ascend up the cable.

“Doctor,” one of the Jin’Kai calls across the gap to Marsden. “Good to see you, brother.”

“Good to see you, brother,” Marsden replies in kind.

“We need to move,” the Jin’Kai continues. “Another two minutes and we won’t be able to match the elevator’s speed as it passes the apex of the Earth’s gravitational well.”

“No reason to dawdle, then,” Marsden says. He looks down at Jørgen, whose eyes are bulging out of his head. “Jørgen, was it? It’s been a pleasure. But about your desire to escape Antarctica at any cost?” Marsden forces Jørgen’s head down so that he’s looking at the gap between the elevator and the ship. Then, without another word, Marsden pitches the helpless Jørgen down—and his scream is immediately cut off by the air whipping around us. Marsden doesn’t waste a second, scooping Bok Choy up by the arm. At first the kid resists him, turning to me and making a plaintive mewing noise. But before I can so much as scream in protest, Marsden easily and roughly tosses the boy across the gap into the waiting arms of the Jin’Kai.

Marsden then turns back to us.

“Time to go!” he shouts over the whirling winds.

“Where are you taking us?” I ask, crouching next to Dad.

“Sorry, Elvie,” Marsden says, a genial smile on his face that belies the steel in his eyes. “Not you.”

My mother stands up, still carrying Olivia, and makes her way to Marsden at the edge. My eyes go wide.

“What’s going on?” I shriek. And as soon as I do, there are immediately three Jin’Kai weapons pointed at my face. One twitch, I realize, and I’m toast. My bones have very quickly turned to jelly.

Mom looks at me sternly. “You were right, Elvie, about needing help. Our people need help now. And I’ll do whatever must be done to make sure they get it.”

And that’s when I notice the papoose, still strapped uselessly to my chest, despite the fact that there is no baby inside it. There is a steady, blinking blue light emerging from the bottom.

Bernard’s book of maps.

My mother—my own
mother
—triggered a homing beacon. I reach for my baby, blissfully unaware in my mother’s arms, but the gunmen only cock their weapons higher. I lower my hands. My chest is bursting with all I cannot do to stop the scene that’s unraveling before me. “You called them here!” I spit at my mother. She and Marsden planned this together, I realize. Either while we were on the
Echidna
or on the way back—I dunno, but somewhere along the way they agreed to deceive me. I’ve been played. I am
useless
.

“Those with mutual enemies make for good allies,” Zee says. My baby grabs for a lock of hair at the base of my mother’s neck, and my heart pounds. “Someday you’ll understand.”

“You’re going to trust
him
?” I shriek in disbelief. “The guy who just tossed someone to his death in cold blood?”

“Tossed an Almiri,” she says. “I’ll make sure Livvie’s safe. Take care of your father.”

And as she turns toward the hovercraft, preparing for the jump, I make a dash for my baby. Fuck the gunmen. But Marsden, of course, is too fast. With one quick flick of his arm he knocks me down on my ass. The soldiers across the way lock their weapons on me again, but Marsden raises his hands.

“No!” he hollers at them. “No need for that.” He places his hands on Zee, sheltering Olivia from the wind and guiding my traitor mother as she makes the jump across to the hovercraft.

With what is probably the last of the strength he can muster, Dad inches across the floor and takes me into his arms. And I curl up in his lap, like the powerless child I am, and begin to weep. Marsden looks down at our pitiful little scene, that goddamn smile plastered on his face like he just gave us a great deal on a car lease.

“I’m truly sorry, Elvie,” he tells me. “I’d take you with us, but we both know that our objectives are in conflict.”

I look past him at Olivia. She’s crying in my mother’s arms, but I can’t hear it, thanks to the wind.

“My problem is, I always put my faith in the wrong people,” I say.

Marsden smirks at that. “Perhaps, given the opportunity, we could have come to an understanding,” he tells me. “But there’s no time for that now. They’re coming. And we need to be prepared.”

“Hey, Dr. Marsden?” I say. He lifts his eyebrows. “I’ll be seeing you again. Real soon.”

“Please, Elvie,” he says, still smiling. “It’s Ken.”

Marsden leaps easily across to the hovercraft, which is starting to tremble and shake as it struggles to maintain a matching
speed with the accelerating elevator. Then he turns and gives me a wave as the hovercraft’s door closes and obscures my view of Olivia.

The ship—and my daughter—pull away from us. Tears are streaming down my cheeks, but I don’t even have the energy to sob. I’ve never felt so hollow in my entire life. So enraged and yet so helpless.

“No,
don’t
!” Dad shouts in my ear. I don’t know what he thinks I could be doing from my place on the floor, but quickly I realize that it’s not me he’s yelling at.

Alan—bleeding out but not dead—has dragged himself on his stomach toward the door and is aiming his blaster at the hovercraft. But he’s a split second too late. As the hovercraft tethers disengage from the elevator, whatever overrides our Jin’Kai attackers had in place go offline, and the elevator door slams shut.

Just in time for Alan’s shot to blast it right off its hinges.

The explosion is loud—leaving a large gaping opening out into what is quickly going to be space. The Jin’Kai hovercraft must have been using some sort of pressure regulating field while it was attached, and with it gone, the instant pressure drop immediately sucks Alan out of the elevator, without so much as a peep.

No sooner do I witness Alan’s quick and silent death than I begin skittering across the floor myself, but Dad grabs me with a fierce grip and pulls me in. He’s braced himself along the wall. The dead Almiri, who do not have quick-thinking fathers on board, fly out the hole in the side of the elevator right after Alan. I watch them float on the air like macabre
kites without strings as my father clutches me tighter to him. The air is incredibly thin, and I’m getting light-headed.

“I can’t breathe!” I shout.

“We need to get out,” Dad hollers back. “We’re about to cross into the atmosphere and get pulled up into space!” His hold on me still brace-tight, he motions with his elbow to the wall above our heads, where the red emergency sign is blinking. Directly beneath it sits the release lever.

God, I hope the Almiri keep this thing up to code.

With Dad bracing me, I lift myself up the meter and a half or so toward the lever. It takes every ounce of strength I have, but at last I’ve got a grip on the lever. It sticks when I try to pull it, so I reach up with my other hand, and using all of my weight, I yank it down hard. The emergency panel pops off, revealing a bright yellow package behind it. The Velcro
riiiiiiiiiiips
as I tear the package from the wall, clutching it to my chest against the pull from the opening behind me.

It’s the funniest-looking parachute I’ve ever seen. On closer examination I realize that’s because it’s not a parachute at all—it’s an air raft, essentially a large inflatable cube. I’ve seen vids of them, of course, but usually on the same kind of sites where you go to watch idiots trying to ride their bikes down a handrail and breaking their faces in the process. I did
not
know the things were used as emergency escape devices.

Velcroed to the wall behind the raft are at least twelve smaller packages, presumably jumpsuits. I rip two down and hand one to Dad before tearing open the flimsy package. It’s not a jumpsuit.

It’s a flipping gliding cape.

Good thing Ducky’s not here.

“There’s no way these things will work this high up!” I cry.

“It’s just a precaution,” Dad assures me weakly, already slipping the half jacket/harness on awkwardly with his free hand. He pulls the hood and goggles down over his head. “In case something happens with the raft.”

Like I’m so sure
that
thing will work either.

But there’s no time to argue. The elevator is still climbing higher and higher, and it’s getting more and more difficult to struggle against the pull from the opening, and the blast marks around where the door blew off the hinges are fizzling dangerously. Braced firmly against the wall, I toss off the papoose with the goddamn book of maps and pull one arm, then the other, through the sleeves and zip up the front, the long nylon drapes flapping out toward the gap.

“Ready?” I ask Dad, positioning my hand over the pull string on the side of the raft.

“As I’ll ever be!” he shouts back.

I give a sharp tug. Something pops, and the raft starts to inflate. Only problem is, I neglected to unfasten the bindings holding the folded-up contraption together.

Note to self: always read the instructions.

Dad and I wrestle to pull the bindings off the swelling raft, which pinches and rips at our fingers as it expands beyond our control. One binding does pop off, due less to our efforts than to the sheer pressure of the rapidly inflating raft. But it’s unfortunately no cause for celebration—the force of the popped binding sends the raft shooting away from us, across the elevator floor, where it is promptly sucked out the window.

Shit.

Looking out the opening, I can see the raft below us, which is—rather infuriatingly—inflating just fine now that it is several dozen meters away.

“Aim for the raft!” I hear Dad cry, and before I can even turn back to look at him, my
hypothermic father
lets go of the wall and is sucked out into the open air.

“Dad!” I screech after him as I clutch tighter to the bench—the only thing between the certain death of the void of space and . . . well, certain death. The elevator is rocking violently side to side now.

I don’t have a choice.

I jump.

I’m not sure exactly what I thought the sensation of flying out into near space would be like, and I’m still not sure, because for the first few seconds I’m pretty certain I’m passed out. As soon as I come to, I’m hurtling downward at terrifying speed. My nylon cape is flapping behind me, seemingly doing nothing. I look around frantically, the wind brutally fierce against my neck, before spotting the raft below. Sure enough, the giant contraption is fully inflated, more spherical than cube-shaped. A few seconds more of searching and I lay eyes on Dad, whizzing nearby. He’s soaring like a flipping bird, arms outstretched, his cape filling and falling as the sensors in the material adjust automatically. It’s hard to hear much of anything, but it definitely sounds like the noise he makes as he goes past me is
“Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

Trying to follow suit, I extend my arms, and the nylon under them catches the air—which has the effect of violently
jolting me backward, as if I were attached to something above by a string. It takes a little getting used to, but soon I find myself flying in slowly descending circles. Too slowly. The air is incredibly thin, and I’m still way too high up—much, much higher than Dad has managed to get. I’m not sure why I haven’t passed out again, but perhaps it has something to do with the time I spent in the zero-grav hangar bay on the
Echidna
. Could it be possible that my hybrid physiology took the opportunity to adapt to low-oxygen environments?

Well, if I have rapid adaptation on my side, my father has sheer ingenuity—and at the moment, his seems to be the greater gift. Still struggling with my own stupid suit, I watch as, farther and farther below me, Dad flattens his arms against his sides and shoots toward the raft with uncanny speed, until an instant later he penetrates the surface through one of the collapsible side openings and disappears.