“You’re sure you’re okay?” I asked when no one else was in the room.
Mary looked down at the dead man and back at me. “I’ll be better when we’re back on New Spero, picking tomatoes and having tea on the porch.” The skin at the sides of her eyes crinkled as she forced a smile at me, and I leaned in, giving her a kiss on the lips.
“Me too.”
“Over here!” Magnus called from a distance, his voice carrying to us easily.
I ran to him, unsure of what to expect. What I saw was heartbreaking.
Leslie was fumbling with the locked bars, but the key she had didn’t fit. She was crying, a soft sob as she struggled to open the lock. Beyond it, a dozen or so hybrids were in a mess hall. A couple were lying on tables. Others sat together, heads low to the tables, none of them speaking.
One of them looked up, saw us, and put her head back down like we were nothing more than an apparition. Another one – who looked like Terrance, only ten years older and gaunt – looked toward us and stood up on shaky legs. “Are you real?” he asked, his voice a gravelly whisper.
“Brother!” Terrance called through the bars. “We’re here to bring you to paradise.” The excitement and energy in Terrance’s voice was electric. I took the keys in my hand and went to the lock, trying them one by one until one inserted and turned to the side. Leslie slid it open and rushed into the room.
“Where is everyone?” she asked one of her people, who were still coming to, realizing something important was happening. They seemed like zombies, their skin gray, the flesh tight against their bones. It was horrifying, and we’d done this to them. Humans had locked them up to waste away.
The man who’d first spoken was hugging Terrance, and he broke free to answer the question. “This is all of us.”
TWENTY
“What do you mean, this is everyone? When we left the compound on Long Island, there were twenty times this many.” Terrance stood straight, his posture rigid and his fist cocked like he was ready to punch something.
All of them were now over beside us. Mary had already gone with Magnus to find food from the guard areas for these sad souls.
“They left us here. We heard the guards say something about the Bhlat being here, and within a week, they were all gone except some sadistic bastard. We begged him to let us go, and he said it was his duty to keep us locked up. When we realized he wasn’t going anywhere and wouldn’t let us go, we plead for food. We had a little bit stashed away here, and he wouldn’t dare come inside with no backup, so we ate for the first couple months. Now we have nothing left. You’ve come at just the right time. Steve died this morning.” The first one to speak to us had called himself Byron. His hair hung in his face in greasy clumps as he told us his story.
“I’m so sorry. We thought we would help by leaving.”
“It is you two. Terrance and Leslie, our fate sealers,” one of the women said, her voice so weak it came out like a whisper.
Leslie already looked a wreck, but that comment set her over the edge.
“We couldn’t have known!” she cried. “We were trying to improve our future.” She slid to the ground, her face in her hands.
“All you did was give us a bigger target than we already had, and we didn’t think that was possible,” Byron said, the others nodding along.
“This isn’t all their fault. Were you all on the vessels, piloting our people to their deaths?” I waited for a response that didn’t come. “Humans didn’t trust you from the start. Would you have? If the Kraski had suddenly told you they had a change of heart and they wanted to be your friends, would you have listened?”
“No,” the woman said, abashed.
“Then cut these two some slack. They found a world for you to go to. The only glitch was that the wormholes messed with our timelines. We’re going to get you food and water, then take you to your new home. Let this be a new bridge to your future, and let your past go. Mourn for your losses and be grateful for your lives, because we’re all lucky to have them at this point.” The speech was a little overdone, but I meant every word of it.
“A new world?” one of the others asked. “With sunlight?” He raised his face to the dark ceiling, closing his eyes like he was feeling the rays of the sun on his pallid skin.
“Yes, my brother. With sunlight, and rivers, and food aplenty. We live there among others, the Deltra included.”
“Don’t forget swamp monsters,” I said under my breath, getting a glare from Terrance.
“Deltra? What the hell are you doing with them?” Byron asked.
“They weren’t all evil. Even those ones were only doing what they needed to keep their people alive. Even Dean likes Kareem, right?” Terrance looked at me, raising his eyebrows in a signal saying he needed support.
“Sure. He’s a stand-up guy. In an ‘engineer weapons of mass destruction’ sort of way.”
They looked unsure, but the subject changed when Magnus and Mary came back with a duffel bag of supplies.
Magnus dumped it out on a table. Water bottles and bags of chips with Cyrillic script on them fell out. The hybrids scrambled for them, and my heart sank, feeling terrible for them. I couldn’t wait to see their faces as we left the portal and walked onto their new planet.
Thinking about it made the urgency increase. “Gather anything you need, and let’s leave,” I said.
“How are we going to get everyone back?” Magnus asked.
“The transport isn’t big, but there are only twelve of them.” Mary scanned the group as she spoke. “By the looks of them, they won’t take a lot of room. I think we can make it work.”
“What about Dinkle and his pilot?” Magnus asked.
“I think we have a good spot for them just around the corner.” I followed his gaze to a cell just beyond the mess hall. “We’ll leave them a little water and food, of course. It’s more than they deserve.”
Soon a line of hybrids in tattered clothing, smelling like death, followed us out of the prison, their eyes wide as they walked past the guards’ station and into the main halls. Byron set his hand on the whitewashed cinder blocks making up the wall, looking like he was about to pass out. I set my hand on his bony back and he turned to me, eyes glistening.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You didn’t deserve this. We’ll make it right.” I knew we could never make it up to them, but even though I wanted that Bhlat homeworld portal location, this was important. I was glad Kareem had made us barter for it. These people needed our help.
Snow blew on us as we pushed out the entrance doors, the hybrids covering their eyes from the bright light of the Siberian morning. They weren’t dressed for the cold, and we ushered them quickly to the ship. Magnus and Terrance hauled Jeff and the pilot out of the transporter.
“What are you doing?” Jeff asked, his face covered in blood from his head injury. “You can’t leave me here. The Bhlat are expecting me.”
“Have they seen you before?” I asked nonchalantly.
“No, when would I have met…” He seemed to catch on and hung his head.
“Tell us what you were supposed to do, and we let you live,” Magnus said, standing over the tied-up man.
He looked defiant, and Magnus gave him a light kick. Jeff didn’t need to speak, because the pilot did.
“He was going to take you to them, and in exchange, he was promised he would live like a king among their people. I heard the conversation. I had nothing to do with this. I’m just a hired hand.” The pilot looked up with pleading eyes.