With the very last of my strength, I threw myself forward and felt the medicine burn into my chest as the plunger hit the ground. I slumped over and lay limp in the grass, barely conscious and unable to move.
“Great work, Cadet. Now you’re going to have to lie there.” That I could do. “The parasite that stung you has a paralyzing agent in its venom. You’re just going to have to lie there for a little bit while the antitoxin does its job.”
//////// ENTRY 9
I lay there forever. I felt like I was drifting but I also felt very, very heavy. It seemed like the world was getting darker and colder with each passing moment. I thought death might feel like that.
“Kitai.” My dad’s voice seemed to be coming from far away. Then I remembered, he was far away, alone on a ruined ship just like I was alone in this empty clearing. I thought about answering, but my lips wouldn’t move. Or maybe I just drifted off again before I could try.
“Kitai, it’s time to get up.” I thought I heard some fear in his voice now, but that was impossible. The great Cypher Raige is one of only seven humans in history to be completely free of fear. Maybe I was dreaming. Maybe in the dream, my dad loved me so much that his worry for me was greater than his unbreakable, inhuman composure. Something howled around me—maybe the wind, maybe a wolf. Nothing I could do, either way.
“Kitai, I want you to blink your eyes.” I just wanted to sleep, but he wouldn’t leave me alone. “Son, I need you to please blink your eyes.”
That was strange. He hadn’t called me “son” in years. I had to know if I had imagined it, so I fluttered my eyes open. “Hey, Dad,” I said, my voice raspy and throat dry. “That sucked.”
“That is correct.” I wondered if I had just heard my dad attempt a joke. Not at all what I expected from him. But then he continued drily delivering the facts, and I figured things were back to normal. “The temperature is dropping five degrees every ten minutes,” Dad told me. “You’ve got twelve kilometers to the hot spot.” No time for a heartfelt reunion, then. Back to business.
Struggling to my feet, I began gathering up my gear. When I finally had everything, my dad said, “Let’s see that ten kilometers in fifty minutes that you spoke about earlier, Cadet.”
Of course, that was my speed when I was feeling good. Now I felt terrible, still recovering from the leech’s poison, but I had no choice but to try. If I couldn’t get to the hot spot in time, I would freeze—simple as that.
“Sir, yes sir,” I said, my voice still weak and raspy. Setting my naviband, I followed its bearings to the north. I sprinted unevenly over the icy terrain. I saw animals scrambling underground to avoid the deep freeze. Then it started to snow, and I drew in a breath as the tiny ice crystals brushed my bare head and cheeks.
When my dad asked for an update, I told him, “Ten mikes out. Good. All good.” I ran steadily, though it took everything I had to simply keep putting one foot in front of the other as the cold seeped into my body. “Five mikes out,” I reported, feeling pretty proud of myself for shaking off the poisoning and running through the freezing air.
I arrived at an elevated volcanic area where steam rose from the ground. Lush trees lay tipped over with the weight of overripe fruit, the sickly sweet scent of rot filling the air.
“Hot Spot One arrival,” I announced. “H plus forty-eight minutes!”
Outside the geothermal zone, I saw that the entire forest was covered in ice. Coughing, I said, “Sir. I made it. I’m here.”
It took him longer to answer than I would’ve expected, and I wondered again if everything was okay back on the ship. But when he replied, he sounded as in control as ever. “Make sure you have everything. Take your next inhaler. Your oxygen extraction is bottoming.”
I opened the med kit to do as he said, but what I saw was beyond belief. Terrifying. Life-threatening.
Two of the five remaining vials were broken. I didn’t know if I had crushed them in my fight with the baboons, or maybe when I fell over after the leech poisoned me, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I didn’t have enough breathing fluid left to complete my mission. Technically, that meant the mission should be over, right now. I hid the kit from my dad, not wanting him to know we were doomed. I would find some way to make it work—I had to. Both our lives depended on it.
“Use the next dose of breathing fluid,” my dad insisted.
As another coughing fit threatened to overtake me, I realized that he was right—I was already struggling to breathe. But I wasn’t going to let him see the trouble I was in, not if I could help it. “I’m good, Dad. I don’t need it right now.”
If I could hold out just a little bit longer with each vial, maybe I could stretch them out enough to make it to the ship’s tail. There were probably med kits there, where I could get more breathing fluid for the trip back. I tried not to think about how much worse the crash had probably been for the tail section of the ship, how there might not be any usable med kits left.
I expected my dad to argue, but he just said, “Okay.”
It felt like my chest was being crushed, and I kind of wished he would yell at me to take the next vial until I had no other choice. Then it wouldn’t be my fault if I ran out before completing my mission.
Except that it would be, of course, since I was the one who had somehow shattered the vials. And I would die just as surely if I ran out of oxygen a little farther down the road as I would if I did it right now. I struggled to draw in a breath, coughing and wheezing as I did. The coughs built, racking my whole body.
I understood why they said Earth could no longer support human life. We couldn’t breathe here without supplementing the oxygen supply. All these plants and animals had somehow adapted, but it seemed like a fair bet that humans would have just died out when our air supply tanked before we ever had a chance to evolve. I had never thought about breathing before—who does, when we do it automatically, every moment of our lives? But now it was all I could think about, and despite my efforts to conceal my pain, I doubled over. I stared at the vials, knowing that I could end my suffering now, but the thought that these few extra moments might make a difference in whether or not I survived kept me from doing it.
Finally, I couldn’t hold out any longer. I pulled out the second vial of breathing fluid and inhaled it. Soon my labored breathing eased enough for me to say, “Second dose of breathing fluid complete.”
“Count off remaining so you can keep track.” Maybe I imagined it, but I thought he sounded satisfied. As if he sat there, quiet, to teach me some kind of lesson. I couldn’t tell him that I was low on breathing fluid. He would never let me keep going, and I knew I couldn’t stop.
So I choked out a lie. “Four vials remain, sir.” He didn’t call me on it.
I ducked into the musty hollow of a rotting tree, wanting to hide from a cluster of strange creatures. It was a good thing too, because I’d only just taken cover when the sky burst open, pouring down the hardest rain I’d ever seen. The tree offered some shelter, but not enough to completely protect me from the rain’s stray splashes and spatters.
Shivering and exhausted, I looked up at the giant leaves above me and saw a bee caught in a spiderweb. It tried to escape, making the gossamer thread that held it tremble. A spider bigger than my fist rushed down the web and started further entangling its prey.
I wasn’t scared of much, but I was scared of spiders, and I almost looked away right then. But the bee was still fighting, and I hoped it would win.
When the bee stopped struggling, the spider seemed unable to find it, blind as an Ursa without fear to guide it. I watched as the spider went in for the kill, its venomous fangs bared—but then the bee snapped to life once more, stinging the spider again and again. It was wild, and savage—and amazing. The spider made its sluggish way to the center of its web to die, while the bee, still tethered by the web, gave up trying to escape and died too. Maybe it was just because I was tired and lonely, but the whole thing struck me as such a tragic waste. Was that what we were doing as we battled the Ursa—killing them, maybe, but also destroying ourselves? It all seemed so pointless all of a sudden.