THE TITAN EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER 34 - Reunited

She would allow them five minutes for the initial shock to wear off. It wasn't enough time, but it would have to do. Based on the countdown in her head, they had about ten minutes left. Make that nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds...

"Dr. Lawson." Phoenix's teeth chattered.

She went to his side. "Call me Sarah."

"What happened... Sarah? Where am I?"

"You've been in cryogenic hibernation for two and half years."

His face paled. "What?"

"I don't have time to explain. I need you and Nova functioning at optimal levels in, oh, around two minutes and nineteen seconds."

Sarah's words seemed lost on him as he stared at her, speechless. She suspected their short timetable wasn't to blame. To comfort him, she said, "Nova is perfectly okay."

A silence followed.

"I know it's difficult to process, but—"

"Nova's Dead."

"Not anymore."

Phoenix pushed up from the cushion, a shivering chill sweeping over his body. His teeth rattled together. "Hel-help me up."

Sarah lent him a hand. He latched onto it and slipped off the bedding of the sleep unit. His stance wobbled, but she steadied him with an arm around his waist.

"Her unit is right here," Sarah said, pointing at the chamber next to his. "Nova is alive and well."

Phoenix's jaw dropped when he locked eyes with his fiancée. 

"Nova," Sarah said. "Do you recall when I asked you if you remembered Commander Drake?"

She nodded, her head peeking out from beneath the blanket. "I do."

Sarah turned to Phoenix. "You two have a lot of catching up to do, but I need both of you on the bridge now."

"Why? What's going—" he looked down at his right hand, a flexible black prosthetic extending from the long sleeve of his jumpsuit. "I don't remember getting a—"

"You can thank me later."

Sarah leaned down and helped Nova to sit up. She swung her legs out of the chamber and her boots hit the floor. For a moment, Phoenix and Nova stood, wrapped in their blankets, gazing at each other. Phoenix in disbelief. Nova, obviously wondering who the man was before her.

"Come on." Sarah waved for them to follow her. "We don't have time to talk." She walked ahead, glancing back as she went.

Both of them gawked at her. The artificial gravity was playing tricks on their minds. In all the chaos of waking from hibernation, they only now noticed her hair drifting away from her body. Nova's silky black hair did the same.

"The gravity is an illusion. Magnetic field beneath us. It'll take some getting used to."

They crept forward, following Sarah through the hatchway toward the cockpit area in the front of the bridge.

She waved them on. "Hurry and take your seats. You have to dock the ship."

"What are you talking about?" Phoenix said.

Sarah backed out of the way to give him a glimpse of the port side window. She opened her palm to the grand view of a space station, shaped like a giant wheel with flat spokes leading to a central hub. Its charcoal exterior stood in sharp contrast to the crimson red eye of Jupiter in the background.

______

Phoenix shifted his gaze from the prosthetic hand to Nova in the copilot seat. He couldn't help but go back and forth between the two. He had evaded an enemy aircraft going Mach 3, buzzing low over the Sea of Cortez while his wingman, none other than Nova Kailani, blew the bogie out of the sky. When he was a teenager growing up in Billings, Montana, he had lasted eight seconds on a bull named Tank. But he couldn't fathom how Nova was alive and breathing right in front of him. The new arm mesmerized him, too. He flexed the rubberized fingers, stared at her out of the corner of his eye and bit his bottom lip. He must be going crazy. With only a thought, the prosthetic hand balled into a fist. The electrical components must have been bio wired into his nervous system. Amazing. However, no matter how advanced, he didn't have a problem wrapping his mind around a new technology. But his dead fiancée being alive, well, that was a different story.