Last night, I didn't sleep well, despite being exhausted from the day's events. I kept picturing Janice; her freaky eyes, the throwing-up of blood, and her dead arm hanging off the side of her bed. And every couple of hours the Ghemin would come in, shine their small lights in our faces, check on us, and carry a new body out. I don't think exhaustion even begins to describe how I am feeling. I roll over, trying to get a few minutes of rest, and then hear a voice calling my name.
"Rayanna. Are you awake?"
"I am, now," I grumble. I open my eyes and see dim light pouring in through a dusty window, high above my head. A bed squeaks and I turn to find Carina sitting on her bed, feet dangling over the side. Of course, it's Carina. She seems like a nice person but a bit too needy.
"Good, because I'm freaking out." Carina states.
"About what?" I ask, sighing. Is this how Wolfe used to feel about me? That I was too needy? Now there's a thought. But at least he's finally free of having to care for me.
"Besides the obvious? It's empty." Carina states.
"Huh?" I ask, yawning and stretching. "What's empty?"
"The room. It's empty. There is no one here but us."
I sit up quickly, which brings a sharp pain to my abdomen. I wince, gently place my hand on my incision, and then quickly glance around the room. She's right. There were eight of us, in here, last night, and now there's just me and Carina.
"That's roughly a seventy-five percent death rate, or if you want to put a positive spin on it, a twenty-five percent survival rate. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I didn't die like I thought I would, but those odds freak me out." What horrors will today bring? Will I survive today? Or will I die as everyone else did? Will the seventy-five percent chance of death increase to one hundred percent? My heart starts hammering in my chest as I consider the possibility that I could still die.
"How in the world can you do math at a time like this? The stress, the freakiness, I can't even begin to think like that." Carina says.
"That's how I keep calm. If I didn't think about a problem I could solve, I would be freaking out."
"Oh. Well, I guess that makes sense. What do you think today will bring? What do you think will happen?" Carina asks.
It's not long until we find the answer to the question of what today will bring. Because within a few minutes, the Ghemin soldiers come in, only two this time. One stands guard at the door, and the other walks toward Carina and me carrying something in his arms.
"Put this on." the soldier says, stopping at the foot of the bed and dumping the clothes. He walks over to Carina and dumps clothing on her bed as well, before turning and stopping at the door. "I'll be back shortly. I expect you both to be dressed and ready to go." With that, he and the other soldier turn around and leave us alone.
I take my hand off my incision, get up and inspect the clothes. They appear to be simple garments. A white top with long flowing sleeves and a khaki-colored long flowing skirt. Why a white outfit? Why a skirt? Why are they dressing us up? A few minutes later, Carina and I are dressed and being marched out of the room, at gunpoint, by several soldiers.
"I wonder where we are going," Carina whispers to me.
"I don't know," I whisper back.
"Eterly Station." one of the guards says.
"What is that?" I ask.
"That isn't your concern." a different guard says.
We are marched through hallway after hallway and end up walking down a familiar corridor. Large sections of the wall are clear, just like the cell I was locked up in when I first got here. Oh, great, back to the small room again. As door after door flashes past me, I catch glimpses of men in the cells, one man per cell just like the women. It doesn't seem like the men have been experimented on. So, what exactly do they do to the men? Or have they not started the experiments, yet? And then pass a cell with a familiar face, Wolfe.
His arms are wrapped around his legs and his head is down. Relief washes through me, he looks okay. "Wolfe!" I scream, running towards his door. "Wolfe! Help me! Please!" A soldier catches me by the arm and jerks me back, just before I can touch the wall. "Let go of my arm!" I scream at the soldier before turning back towards my brother. "Wolfe?" He doesn't lift his head from his knees. Either he didn't hear me or doesn't want to hear me. I guess that's understandable. When you are about to die you tend to think about what could have been. I didn't but that was because some small part of me always knew I would end up like this.
Feeling defeated, I allow the guard to pull me back over towards Carina and we continue our march to Eterly Station. My brother hates me. My only family member. My lifelong protector. Now what? I am so miserable and feeling sorry for myself that I don't even realize where I am going until I hear one of the guards saying we have arrived. I pull myself out of my thoughts and look around. Carina and I are in some strange building. The room itself is huge with the ceiling extending way above my head.
The walls are made of some kind of strange metal. The floor and ceiling seem to be painted like the night sky, black with brilliantly colored white specks to represent stars. I bend down to check out the floor, reaching out a hand to touch it, and realize I was wrong. The floor is cool to the touch. It must be made out of some kind of thick glass-like material. What I thought was a painting is real. Apparently, at some point during my pity party, we left Earth. Everything under my feet is stars and the occasional rock. Astroid?
The floor under my feet vibrates, slightly, making the world momentarily swoosh down around me. I wonder what that's about? I straighten up, the thought of being so high up only makes the dizziness worse. Good thing the soldier is holding my arm, otherwise, I would probably fall over. Once I get passed my initial amazement at the room, I realize that we aren't alone.
Waiting on the other side of the room is a small group of people. They look similar to me, so that's a plus. I have had enough aliens to last me a lifetime. I count eight of them, five men and three women, all of them wearing simple white clothing, similar to what Carina and I are wearing. Ah, now the clothing choice makes sense.
One of the men steps forward and introduces himself. "My name is Altair." he says. He looks to be around thirty, with light blonde hair and deep green eyes. His nose is perfectly placed on his face, his teeth are shiny and white. He stands head and shoulders taller than all the other men, taller than the Ghemin soldiers as well. He locks eyes with me, and I get a fluttery feeling in my stomach. Something about him makes me simultaneously feel shy and want him to notice me. "I am here to rescue you from your Ghemin prison. You both will come to live with me and the other Dini on Rojus. It's a great planet, plenty of food and fun, and best of all, you won't be kept in a prison cell." Altair says.
I'm so caught up in the excitement of getting away from the Ghemin and in the eyes of Altair that I ignore my gut feeling. The one that's screaming that the Dini couldn't possibly be whom they seem to be. The gut feeling that they are probably worse than the Ghemin.