The two people stare at us for a moment, and then the woman speaks. "Hello." She appears to be in her thirties, maybe, with bags under her eyes, and a gaze that has seen too much. Her hair is messy and she seems tired, but at the same time she walks in a way that demands your attention. She's clearly a leader of some sort.
The man next to her appears maybe a couple years older, and only slightly less ragged-looking than her. He's extremely fit, with muscles that bulge through his shirt.
"What do you want with us?" I ask again.
"I am Head Official, Lindsey, and this is Carter, my right hand man. We have been observing your actions on Jupiter and you have committed multiple acts of treason. You took out your trackers back on Earth, avoided your evacuation, stole tickets to go to Jupiter, and joined the rebels. On top of that, you have conspired to blow up two entire planets, basically eliminating human life altogether." She says.
Neil starts, "It was my fault. Don't punish Cecily-"
But Carter continues as if Neil had never spoken. "And you've done it brilliantly."
"What?" I ask.
"You heard me."
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"We want to hire you. Why punish you for being brilliant, when we can have you on our side?" She tells us. "And think about it, we have tools and advancements here that you could never even dream of back on Jupiter. You could be wonderful working for us."
I stay quiet for a moment, thinking it over. "What would we have to do?"
"We would want you to help us in the battle against Jupiter. But we would make it worth it to you."
"You want us to hurt our own home?" Neil asks. I think about Natalie, and Mark, and everyone else back on Jupiter. We can't do that to them. Not when we've been fighting alongside them passionately for so long.
"We can't do that." I tell them.
"Just think about it. You don't need to decide right away. But your pay -should you choose to accept- would be a safe home here on Mars, wherever you like, equipped with any technology you need to work for us, plus free supplies of food and clothes. And of course an annual salary. Everything would be covered."
Neil whistles. The man speaks, "And should you need anything else, we can negotiate and add it in."
"We'll think about it." I say, tempted, but knowing we can't accept.
"Good. Take the night to think it over. We'll provide you with some food and cots for now, but you will be locked in. We can't have you escape." He tells us, and right on cue, men come in carrying steaming plates of food, and two small cots.
They set up the cots side by side, each with a thin blanket, and they hand us each a plate of the food- mashed potatoes, bread, and salad. Proper Earth food. Then the men leave, as silently as they came, and the other two follow them out. The door shuts and I hear it lock in place.
"What should we do?" Neil asks me, sitting heavily on one of the cots.
"I don't know. The pay is good, but how can we hurt Jupiter? They've been our home."
"Natalie..." He says. I know exactly what he's thinking. "We can't do it."
"What else can we do though? If we don't accept their offer they'll probably punish us for treason. Because if they can't have us working for them, why should Jupiter? If they can't have us, no one can." I say, knowing with certainty that Mars contains the sort of people who would easily eliminate us for not agreeing with them.
Neil sighs. "And furthermore how do we even know what they want? For all we know they're just going to keep us around long enough to gain our trust, then give away any secrets we have about Jupiter before they kill us. They can kill Jupiter with the push of a button, remember? Why do they need us? Unless that was just a fake, a lie to get us to come here." I remember the man on Jupiter, holding up a button that could potentially destroy an entire planet. But if it was just a hoax, maybe they really need us. Maybe two teens with a faulty plan to blow up planets is their best bet.
For a moment, I think about what Carter said. That we can negotiate pay. Maybe we could negotiate to take Natalie and Mark out of Jupiter, and then destroy it? At least the people we care about would be alright.
But how can I even consider killing everyone else? I care about them too. It would be on my conscience forever.
Either we stay here and destroy Jupiter, refuse and be destroyed by Mars, or somehow escape and go back...to what? A wreck of a planet that will die with one more bombing anyways?
"Neil..." Suddenly I remember the camera up in the corner of the room, constantly watching us. Surely they would know if we started plotting an escape.
We finish our dinner in silence, slide our cots together, and lay down side by side. "Let's sleep on it." He says finally. I guess that's all we can do.
...........................
I awake sometime later, presumably morning although there's really no way to know. I look around, seeing white in every direction, and forget for a moment where I am. I see that camera in the corner, and it all comes back to me.
I look at Neil next to me, peacefully asleep like he hasn't got a care in the world. He rolls over and pulls me closer in his sleep.
Somehow that's enough to comfort me. Enough for me to realize that whatever else goes wrong, we have each other. We're in this together, like we always have been. And we'll figure it out. I take a long, deep breath, and let it out slowly, holding onto him tightly. He's everything to me.
His eyes open slowly, and dart around for a moment before resting on my face. We lay for a moment like that, just staring at each other. He leans in and kisses me softly, resting his forehead against mine.
And in that moment it was like a piece of the puzzle just fell into place. We both knew we couldn't possibly hurt Jupiter, and there was no point staying on Mars unless we wanted to get killed for refusing their offer.
I put my lips to his ear, careful to speak so softly that the camera won't hear us. "We have to run."
.....................................
When the doors open we immediately bolt through them, taking the people on the other side by surprise. We run and run, in whatever direction our feet take us. It's not long before I hear footsteps after us, speeding up with every step. We dart down countless hallways and through a maze of rooms until we come to a door that seems older than the rest. Made of wood, unlike the white doors everywhere else, it seems out of place.
Without time to question it, Neil flings the door open and we launch ourselves through to the other side. We find ourselves on a dimly lit staircase, that seems to spiral down into nothingness.
I hear the footsteps grow louder. "No turning back now." I say. We race down the steps, taking them two at a time, until we can no longer see the door behind us, or what lies ahead. It's so dark I can barely make out Neil's figure next to me. And eerie silence settles in. I take his hand and we slow our pace, trying to figure out where we are.
Finally, after ages of climbing down, the staircase comes to a stop, in front of a large room. It's dark, filled with countless tables and chairs with straps, jars containing what I can only imagine are human body parts, screens displaying X-rays that hardly look human, metal instruments lying everywhere...
"What is it, some sort of laboratory?" I ask.
"Judging from the straps on the chairs and the metal bars lining the walls, I would say more of a modern day dungeon. A torture room, of sorts."
"Did we... Did we just literally lead ourselves into a prison with no escape?" I look around for any means of getting out but there's nothing.
"Yup." He says.
"You've got to be kidding me."
"No, indeed." A voice booms from the other side of the room, stepping out of the shadows where he had gone previously unnoticed. A tall man soon stands before us, maybe in his late fifties. His hair is jet black, but his eyes are an ice cold blue. He's willowy and thin, to the point of looking frail. Under his gaze I feel like a specimen being inspected under a microscope.
Neil holds my hand a bit tighter, taking a step toward the man. "Who are you?"
"Me?" The man scoffs. "Only the owner of this delightful room you have stumbled upon. I'm in charge of any interrogation here on Mars. You want someone to talk, I can make them talk."
"Torture." I say.
"I suppose in a sense. But if it's the only way to get information, then so be it."
"And they've got plenty." Says a guard who appeared at the bottom of the stairs behind us. Multiple men have caught up to us, along with another woman who I can only assume is an official, though not Head Official.
"Make them talk." The woman says with a cruel smile. I decide then and there that I won't tell them anything. Not that I have very valuable I formation to begin with, but she's not the sort of person I would even trust with my name. She smiles wider at me and my stomach drops, feeling emptier with each passing second. Every muscle in my body screams to flee, but there's nowhere to go.
I realize that these are the people we've been fighting. Not people like Lindsey and Carter, or the innocent families that reside here. People like this official, or this cruel interrogator. He winks at me, and then addresses the guards. "Boys, bring them to me."
Men surround us, prying our hands apart and forcing our arms behind our backs. "Neil!" I cry, as the men drag me to one of the tables. They lay me down and force my hands and feet to be still, no matter how much I kick. A strap is secured around my waist and metal cuffs surround my wrists and ankles.
Neil puts up a slightly better fight than me, managing to slip out of their grasp for a moment and throw a few punches. But soon they have him under control again, and instead of strapping him to a table, they force him in a sort of cell that i hadn't noticed before, made of clear walls that looks several inches thick. He pounds and pounds at them but they didn't give.
"Neil!" I cry out again. He shouted something at me but I couldn't hear it through the thick, clear walls. He tried again and I focus on reading his lips, "Don't tell them anything."
"Oh, but I'm afraid you'll be telling us everything." A deep voice said, staring into my eyes with his own ice cold ones. A chill runs down my spine and I look the other way.
I want to run. I want to leave this room, this entire planet, and never come back. How did humanity come to this? Why are we in this situation to begin with? Can't I just travel back in time a few hundred years? Back to a time when the sun hadn't expanded enough to swallow planets. To a time when stars were visible every night and air wasn't too polluted to breath. A time when we didn't have multiple planets that were all at war. A time when people got along. When it wasn't just the last few drags of humanity struggling to survive.
But then again, there's no point dwelling on the past and on 'what ifs', when a man stands above you wielding a six inch blade and multiple needles.