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PART TWO
DEMONS
Chapter 15
Cora Keaton: 2030
“Cora,” her mother called. “Come to the table, please.”
Cora sighed. Why couldn’t she ever eat in front of the TV? She was so comfortable, with her legs crossed against the leather couch, eyes trained on the colorful images on the screen. Cora reluctantly pulled herself up and walked around the sofa. “Okay, I’m coming.” The tile felt cold against her bare feet as she padded through the kitchen and propped her elbows on the marble island.
“Chair. Now,” Sarina approached the table and set two plates of ravioli across from each other. She filled up a few glasses of water and arranged them nicely.
With a roll of her eyes, Cora sauntered over and plopped down in the fine wooden chair, slouching in defiance. “Can’t we wait for Dad?” He was late. Again. Cora wrapped her fingers around the fork and swirled it lazily through the pasta.
Sarina sat down across the table from Cora. “He,” she looked at Cora a second before continuing, “is probably getting held up at work right now.”
“What else is new?” Cora gazed outside as if the answer was in her pool.
“You know he loves you,” Sarina assured. “He just…” She took a bite of her food, smearing a speck of sauce on her chin. “He has a lot of weight on his shoulders. People depend on him.” She patted her face with a napkin.
“What about us? We’re his family.”
“We have food on the table. A beautiful home. Sometimes he has to work overtime.” Sarina considered something. “Or he’s off with his secret family in Sweden.”
“I’m sure he is,” Cora said flatly. Her mind wandered to Zach. She wished they could communicate. He would tell her about his exciting life on Mars while she unloaded gossip about her boring Earthbound elementary school existence.
The phone rang, and Sarina got up to answer it. She grabbed the metallic slab and held it to her ear. “Keatons.”
Cora strained to hear what the other line was saying but couldn’t piece together anything significant. A full minute of silence passed before Sarina’s eyes found the floor. Her jaw went slack. “Okay… Okay, we’ll be there.” She returned the phone to its dock and quickly scooped up their dinner. “Get your shoes on.”
“Why?”
“No questions. Get on a jacket and flip-flops. Meet me in the car.”
Cora did as instructed, grabbing her dark green sweatshirt and the pair of sandals she used at the pool. They hurried out of the house. The car door popped open with a beep, and Cora slid inside. Did something happen to her father? Was he dead? A heart attack? A stroke? As they raced onto the road, Cora probed Sarina for answers, but her mother brushed her off. Cora watched the streets glide past, not taking her eyes off the window until they pulled into the OSE parking lot.
A large crowd blocked the area, so Sarina retreated and drove to the back entrance by the loading docks. At the gate, the security guard recognized her and radioed to the higher-ups. After a beat, he gave a firm nod that permitted her to continue. “Go ahead.”
They found a parking spot and jumped out of the car. With one hand pressed against Cora’s back and the other clutching her purse, Sarina ran into the building. A worker directed her to the launch bay. So this had to do with space? With Prescott?
Cora squeezed her mother’s hand tight as they entered the launch site. The room was so packed that the back doors had been propped open to allow viewing for the dozens of people outside. Cora located a makeshift stage on one of the launch pads, where her father stood before a mic. “We cannot confirm nor deny anything yet,” he said calmly.
Confirm or deny what?
“All we can say is that we lost contact with the colony.” Victor visibly braced for the uproar. “But that’s not necessarily a cause for concern! Sandstorms are frequent on Mars; one easily could have blocked their transmissions.” Someone called out for OSE’s plans, so he added, “We’re doing everything we can. I assure you we will figure this out. Your loved ones are in good hands.”
Cora thought back to the pamphlet and the confident message printed across its bottom: BE READY TO HEAR GREAT NEWS. So this was the dazzling great news? Eek. What did they consider bad news?
By now, the official monitoring station was supposed to have been activated in the colony. It was one of Prescott’s most heavily protected locations—it controlled the supply caravans they received from Earth. That meant outside food, equipment, people, and everything else the colony needed to survive. With communication so highly valued, it should have been kept crystal clear. The fact that they had lost contact could only mean one thing: the monitoring station was damaged. Or, worse than that, destroyed. And if the most protected part of Prescott has been destroyed, everything else could be too.
Was Zach suffocating under an airless dome as Cora stood there, hyperventilating? She wondered how long it would take for him to die.
Or if he already had.
Nicolas Carver: 2053
The whiskey wasn’t doing its job.
Two glasses in, and Carver’s mind was still flying faster than a bullet, trying its hardest to comprehend what Zach had done. How could he be so reckless? So insubordinate?
Carver poured himself another drink, not caring whether anyone saw him drunk at his desk. What were they going to do—fire him? They would, but not for that. Someone stealing a dropship under his watch was a much more serious offense.
Carver groaned and glanced at the mirror beside him. The disheveled face of an exhausted man stared back at him. After everything Carver had done for Zach, how could Zach go behind his back and betray him like that? And how dare Zach undermine his authority and question his judgment? It felt like being kicked in the stomach.
Carver thought of his own father—wasting their money on booze, drunk most of the day, barely conscious enough to tell which way was up—and wondered if he’d failed just as badly. He took another sip of his drink, fully aware of the irony.
A sigh escaped Carver. Something was gnawing at his brain. Who was flying the ship? Zach was brilliant, but he wasn’t a pilot. Flying a dropship was the type of thing you learned over the span of years, not just a few days. Zach needed someone with experience. Someone who’d flown a dropship. Someone he trusted.
And who, just who, came back on that dropship?
Carver gave a joyless laugh as he replayed what Zach had told him hours after Ryker escaped from containment. “I should have listened to you. That was not Ryker.”
Great. There was the answer. There was Zach’s pilot. Zach knew it was Ryker from the start. He probably helped the guy escape. Carver cursed himself for being gullible enough to believe Zach had nothing to do with it.
Carver groaned. Swallowing another sip of liquor, he thought about all those years he wasted trying to mold Zach into the perfect person, a shining example of OSE at its finest. He wanted Zach to do good, to be protected, and to follow in his footsteps.
Whatever. The only thing Carver could do now was to find out who had helped Zach hijack a dropship. It couldn’t have been just him and Ryker alone. Carver closed up the bottle of whiskey and placed it in a filing cabinet. Then he grabbed the phone and called for Jason Greene, the head of security. He ordered that Jason bring him security recordings from the past few days. With any luck, Zach hadn’t covered his tracks. Jason agreed, claiming they would find out who helped him in no time.
As Carver awaited Jason’s arrival, he ran through the risks of Zach’s endeavor. An outbreak of the Red Plague on Earth would be the worst-case scenario. Zach could go to Mars, get infected, and return to Earth. Not only would he die, but millions of others would join him. Even if he didn’t come to the ground, dragging a thousand people to the Gateway for them to get sick and die wasn’t much better. They’d be a pile of corpses by the time they got to Alpha Cen.
Say for a moment that Zach was extremely careful. He didn’t get sick, and he didn’t bring the Red Plague back to Earth. It was still likely he would get himself killed. Mars was an unforgiving planet: violent sandstorms, unbreathable air, unbearable cold; the list went on and on. What was left of the Prescott colony would serve little protection against the elements. It was in ruins, after all. Zach was a scientist—he knew nothing about how to survive under such harsh conditions.
Carver wished there was a way to stop Zach before he got to Mars, to turn him around and bring him back safely. He dismissed a fleeting hope that Zach would wise up and return on his own. No, Zach was gone, probably never to return. So was Ryker, although Carver had a much more positive feeling about that. It saved Carver the trouble of figuring out how to get rid of him without raising any red flags. Zach had done that job for him.
The moment Jason walked in, Carver shot up. “You’ve got the footage?”
Jason nodded. “Got it.”
“Show me.”
Jason walked over and assumed a position beside Carver. “I found this, sir. From yesterday morning.” He produced a tablet, tapped the screen alive, and then navigated to the security video. At first, it showed a still frame of an empty room. There was nothing special about it. No indicators that anything out of the ordinary was happening. Then Zach stepped into the frame. He quickly scanned the room to confirm it was empty, then motioned back the way he entered. A woman walked in behind him, wearing a lab coat customary to the biology department. In an instant, Carver recognized her as Mabel Liora. A moment later, another woman stepped inside. She was short, with dark hair.
“That’s Rhea Vasquez,” Jason said. “She’s a StarSet pilot.”
“Yeah, I know her,” Carver replied. How could he not? He’d seen her less than a week ago when he visited one of their cruise ships. Did that mean Zach had asked her to pilot instead of Ryker? Carver felt a momentary wave of hope. Maybe Zach really didn’t have anything to do with Ryker’s escape. Perhaps he didn’t know it was Ryker at all. Yes, that was it. Rhea was the pilot. Rhea, not Ryker. Carver shook his head with disappointment. “I never would’ve thought she’d be involved with this.”
“She didn’t go with them.”
“What?” Carver felt the blood drain from his face.
“I saw her in the lounge twenty minutes ago.”
Carver was vaguely aware of Jason asking him a question, but he wasn’t listening. Instead, he croaked out an order. “Bring her here.”
“On it, sir,” Jason said, then walked out.
Carver dropped his chin against his chest. He didn’t know if he should be relieved or furious. Someone who had helped Zach get away with all this was still in the building, pretending nothing was wrong. Furious. On the flip side, that meant he could get some answers. Relieved. Answers wouldn’t do anything to bring Zach back, but they would at least help Carver understand what had happened. And confronting Rhea would give him some sense of control over the situation. Her career was over. He would see to that.
Carver’s train of thought was derailed at the sight of Rhea strolling into the room at Jason’s side. Her attitude was nonchalant. “What can I do for you?”
“Sitdown,” Carver said firmly.
Rhea pulled out the chair and sat. “Something wrong?”
“You have some nerve.”
Rhea raised her eyebrows. “I do?”
Carver glanced at Jason and wordlessly instructed him to leave. Jason exited, closing the door behind him. Once he was gone, Carver continued. “I know you helped Zach.”
“Helped him with what?”
Carver let out a long exhale, trying to maintain his patience. He grabbed the tablet and brought up the security cam footage. The video of Rhea entering replayed. This time, he didn’t pause at her arrival. Instead, he fast-forwarded a few minutes, stopping on a frame of Zach, Rhea, and Mabel talking at a table. No, not just talking. Planning.
Rhea waved her hand at the video dismissively. “Yeah, he asked me to help. But I didn’t. I bailed the second I heard what he had in mind.”
Carver tapped the video, then scrubbed it along the timeline. “You were there for hours. Hours.”
“So what? It was just talk. There’s no law against that.”
“No law, no.” Carver acknowledged as he placed the tablet on the desk. “But I can still fire you.”
“Fire me?” Rhea glared at Carver in disbelief. “Over this?”
“You’re an accomplice to a crime. A serious crime—”
“I never knew he was going to steal that ship,” Rhea snapped.
Carver gritted his teeth, trying his hardest not to show his anger. “Give me your clearance card.”
“I can’t believe it. You’re seriously going to fire StarSet’s best pilot? I don’t think they’ll be fond of that decision.” Rhea reached into her back pocket, then froze. Her jaw dropped a little. “That son of a bitch,” she mumbled. “He stole my card.”
“Stole it,” Carver scoffed. “Right.”
“I swear—”
Carver stood and walked to the door. He opened it, then motioned to Jason to re-enter. “Jason, if you could show Ms. Vasquez out…”
“Hang on, Jason,” Rhea said. She glared at Carver. “Close the door.” Her tone was cold. Commanding.
Carver was taken aback. How dare she order him around like that? Who did she think she was? However, despite his dismay, he couldn’t help but admire the balls it took for her to challenge him like that. He nodded to Jason, then closed the door. “Yes?”
“You’re not firing me.”
“Is that so?” Carver arched an eyebrow.
“In fact, you’re giving me a raise.”
Carver laughed at her audacity. “And why would I do that?”
“Because I can bring them back.”
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