Colonization (11 page)

“I don’t need it anymore. My foot feels fine,” I lied. My foot ached even as I spoke, but I didn’t want to look like a klutz at the festival and remind everyone of my failed attempt to save the colony.

Sirius looked down at the black sand as if I’d told him I didn’t need
him
anymore and not the crutch. That would be a lie as well.

“You look beautiful.”

“Where’s Nova?”

We spoke at the same time, and I didn’t have a chance to absorb his compliment or repay it with one of my own.

“She’s helping her father finish securing a perimeter fence, just in case.”

“In case of what?” My heart sped up. Had someone else seen the alien?

He gave me a half-smile as if he read my thoughts. “I think it’s more to keep us in than it is to keep anything else out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ray’s still sick. He’s fallen into a deep coma, and the doctors can’t bring him out of it.”

Guilt seeped in. Here I was enjoying myself while Ray suffered in the emergency bay. How quickly had I forgotten about him? Realization hit me and I cursed Crophaven’s subtlety. The festival was a charade, a decoy meant to distract the colonists away from thoughts of danger or death. The last thing we needed was mass hysteria.

“I wish I’d found the answer that day on the mission.”

Sirius’s face softened into the boy’s I once knew so well. “Annie, it’s not your fault. You and your mom are doing the best you can to find the source.”

“We haven’t had much luck doing anything but growing big tomatoes.”

“Another important part of our mission here, as dictated by the Guide.”

He we were again, talking about the stupid Guide. He sounded like a diplomat and not a friend. I was about to come up with a great, intelligent, witty retort when Sirius’s face closed into a stone-hard frown. I turned to see what had upset him so much. Corvus stood behind me, two drinks in hand.

“Sirius.”

“Corvus.”

The lower workers never got along with the higher command. Corvus was a grunt, and as an aviator Sirius was destined for lieutenant-hood. But I sensed something greater than difference in rank underlying their cold greeting.

“I see you already have your drinks.” Although it was mere conversation, Sirius’s voice tightened. He held Corvus’s stare, as if neither one of them wanted to be the first to look away.

“We have what we need.” Corvus glanced down at me and smiled before returning to address Sirius. “You’d best be getting yours.”

Behind us, the beat of the music grew louder and the crowd erupted in applause. Sirius bowed and disappeared into the nearest clump of colonists, slithering away in defeat like someone who’d lost a hand at cards.

“You don’t get along, do you?” I met his cool blue eyes and refused to look back to where Sirius joined the crowd.

“We have similar interests. Too similar.”

I furrowed my eyebrows. I didn’t think they had anything in common at all. Before I could respond, the music gained force behind us, and he offered me the drink. “Try it. The juice has tons of vitamin C.”

“Great. Just what my ankle needs.”

He laughed and took a sip of his drink. I lifted my lips to the cup. The juice flowed down my tongue, reminding me of sweet honey from the beehives in the biodome—a treat only certain colonists got to have on special occasions. I gulped more, wanting the tantalizing sensation to last all night. When I finished, my throat tingled and my belly warmed.

“Wow, you downed the whole thing.” Corvus’s eyes widened as he looked at me, impressed.

“I guess there’s one good thing here on Paradise 21.” The bitterness seeped into my voice, surprising me. I couldn’t believe how much venom I stored up.

“Come now, I can spot at least one more.” Corvus’s eyes glittered as he looked into mine. I wondered what else was good on Paradise 21, but he didn’t look anywhere special. He just kept staring at me. He took my hand. “Let’s go dance.”

“My foot—”

“I’ll make sure you don’t put pressure on it.”

And he did. Putting a strong arm around my waist, he hoisted me into the air and back down again in a pirouette. We spun together and I laughed, my hair catching in my mouth. He brushed it back and smoothed his thumb over my lips. My heart thudded against my chest, and I wondered if it was because of the exertion or something more.

A scream pierced through the techno beat and the music stopped abruptly. I turned around as the crowd grew silent. Nova broke through the jungle, holding a young girl in her arms.

“Who is it?” I whispered, standing on tiptoe to get a closer look.

Colonists surrounded her and took the girl from her arms. Lieutenant Crophaven pushed his way through the crowd. “Take the girl to the emergency bay.” He turned to Nova. “What happened?”

“I found her lying face-down in the jungle. She was unresponsive, so I picked her up and brought her here.”

Crophaven had that official annoyed look he did so well. “Come with me. You need to be examined as well for any contagion.”

He turned to address the crowd and his eyes skimmed over mine with recognition. “For the rest of the colony, don’t panic. We’ll postpone the celebration until further notice. Return to your family units. If anyone here has any strange symptoms, report to sick bay immediately.”

A line formed to the ship with people whispering in scared tones. I followed Corvus and joined in behind a bunch of younger teens. “Do you think she has what Ray has?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope Nova’s all right and didn’t catch anything from the girl.”

Why would he be so worried about Nova?

I blocked my brain from going further down that path. I wouldn’t allow myself to think about what would happen to Sirius if his assigned lifemate grew sick and died.

Chapter Twelve

Visitor

My locator beeped with an incoming message. I checked the sender and slumped down, pressing the receive button with resignation.

When can I see you again?

Corvus. Would he ever give up? Probably not. He’d persisted all morning, and I needed more time to sort out my feelings.

The crystal flickered in the back of the greenhouse. My other problem. Why couldn’t everyone, including the aliens, just leave me alone?

I ignored both distractions, pruning the tomato vines, hoping the play of light was a hovercraft in the sky. My imagination ran on overdrive due to a night of fitful sleep. Anxiety crept up my spine like a ventilator spider, prickling the hair on my back with spindly legs. I was thankful Corvus had finished the brunt of my work the previous day. All I had to do was check that the new irrigation tubes spouted enough water and grind more crystals for the soil.

Too much had happened the night before, and my mind wrestled with the thought of Ray lying in the emergency bay with the little girl, the thought of Nova falling ill as well, and the thought of Corvus as more than a friend. These unresolved feelings churned in my stomach in a foul brew, and I could hardly keep down the few slices of pear I’d stuffed into my mouth before leaving for my work.

The light reflecting off the crystal gained intensity, casting rainbows across the ceiling. I couldn’t ignore it any longer. Holding my breath, I crept down the row of tomato plants. The stems towered over me, reminding me of the jungle.

The crystal’s light throbbed as I approached. I smoothed my fingers over the sleek surface, wondering why the hell I didn’t run away screaming. Guess my curiosity won over fear.

The locator beeped on my arm. I’d fallen into the habit of turning the life-form scan on every day when I worked alone, hoping it would alert me if any strange aliens decided to show up and take their crystal back.

A figure approached the greenhouse, skinnier and taller than Mom. Because of the mask she wore, I couldn’t recognize her, and I rose to open the portal with shaky fingers. I pulled back the glass separating us and she rounded the bend, staring at me with blazing emerald eyes framed in hair so lustrous it burned like fire in the purple sun.

“Nova, are you all right?”

She pulled down the mask and said the first words she’d ever said to my face. “I’m perfectly fine.”

“The girl wasn’t contagious?”

A flicker of irritation crossed her eyes. “No, Amber Woods didn’t infect me.”

We stood at the threshold like two statues. I blocked the entrance, and she stood too far away to step in. The moment couldn’t have been more awkward had we been naked.

I swallowed hard and scrounged up some kind words. “Come in. Make yourself comfortable.”

“Thank you.” She didn’t sound thankful at all.

I gestured for her to sit on a metal chair by the lab table, but she waved me away. “I won’t be long. No one knows I’m here.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t imagine why she’d come, besides to taunt me. I wanted to scream
You have Sirius. What else could you possibly want?
I held my tongue against the side of my mouth and gritted my teeth. There must be a reason why she finally decided to talk to little old me after all these years.

“I found something with Amber in the jungle.” Her eyes darted around the greenhouse as if spies lurked in every corner.

I followed her gaze but only saw the large hulk of purple crystal casting a shadow on the far back wall. “No one’s here. Go on.”

Nova pulled a cloth out of her pocket and unfolded it. “When I found her, she was holding this.”

I peered down into the fabric, my heart racing. A flower, bright as crimson, red as newly shed blood lay against the white micro-fabric. Its star-shaped petals curved inward, and a small pod lay at its center.

“What is it?” Because I was supposed to be an authority on plants, embarrassment flushed in my cheeks.

“I thought you could find out.” Nova refolded the fabric and placed it on the lab table. “Sirius told me you and your mom are working on finding out what made Ray sick. He said if anyone would know what to do with it, it would be you.” Nova shook her head. “I didn’t want the other scientists getting their hands on it. They’ve been keeping too much from us, and I need to know the truth.”

I stepped back in awe, looking at Nova, who’d changed from a haughty princess to a renegade. She trusted me with her specimen. She actually thought I could help more than anyone else on Paradise 21?

“Did Sirius put you up to this?”

She blinked and looked away momentarily, biting her lower lip. A hint of jealousy passed through her eyes. Why was she jealous of me? She was the one who had him.

“Yes, Sirius recommended bringing this sample to you. I respect his faith in you, so I agreed.” She squirmed a little, as if she wasn’t comfortable saying so much.

I opened my mouth and gawked, speechless. Maybe I didn’t know her as well as I thought. Besides that, Nova handed me an enormous responsibility. The scared part of me wanted to turn it in to Lieutenant Crophaven, but an even greater part wanted to dissect it with tweezers and battle this damn planet with my own two hands. I met her gaze. “Thank you for bringing this to me.”

“Don’t thank me.” Nova cast a glance over her shoulder just as another figure walked by the smoky glass. She jogged to the portal. “Just find a cure.”

After she left, I strapped on my bio mask and pulled a chair over to the table to study the petals under the microscope. Despite their striking color, nothing separated them from anything else on Paradise 21. I turned my examination over to the pod at the center. Using a scalpel, I cut a small incision in the outer membrane. White fluid bled out like pus from a sore. I scraped a sample onto a plastic microscope tray and slipped it under the lens.

Tiny crawling microbes writhed. I clicked a higher resolution for more magnification, and gasped. The little buggers looked more like parasites than any pollen I’d ever seen. With squirming, spidery legs and pincher jaws, they barreled down into the plastic, trying to gnarl their way through.

Were they infecting the plant? Or did they coexist in a symbiotic relationship? More important, were they the cause of the infection?

I used my locator to send a message to Mom. Her locator buzzed back as temporarily unreachable, so I typed
top priority, come ASAP
and returned my attention to the slide under the lens. The microorganisms’ movements slowed until they stopped and died. They couldn’t exist outside the plant host. So how could they travel through the air and infect us?

Had Amber eaten the pod? I shook my head. She’d have to be pretty stupid to put anything from Paradise 21 in her mouth, and Ray wouldn’t ever ingest something he found on a scouting mission. No. There was a missing link.

I looked down at the dead microbes and felt as though I stared at one of those puzzle pictures, barely making out the shape but not knowing what it was. Maybe it wasn’t the source of the infection at all. Maybe she just found a pretty flower in the jungle, one with nasty little bug things squirming in its belly.

I stood to test the petals in chemical samples when the crystal at the far end of the greenhouse cast a strange glow, emanating pulses of light between the tomato leaves.

“Oh, jeez.” I slapped my hand over the mask covering my mouth. This time I wasn’t staying around. I backed toward the exit of the greenhouse and my foot caught the leg of the stool. I toppled over, and the stool clanged against the table legs, making the most racket I ever heard in my life. The glow sparkled as it moved through the rows of tomato plants, illuminating the far reaches of the domed ceiling with flickering light.

This was it for me. The aliens had come to catch the person who’d stolen their crystal, and they’d find me red-handed, scurrying backward on my butt. How could I tell them it wasn’t my fault, that I didn’t even want Mom to grind the crystal into powder, that I lamented the death of the jungle as the Landrovers tore it down?

The silhouette of the head and bumpy wings came into focus as the alien rounded the corner, and my stomach clutched into a tight ball.
How did it get into the greenhouse?

It lifted its bony hand, fingers longer than my arms. I cringed back, hiding behind my elbow. “Take it. Take the crystal. I don’t care.”