Nobody got to choose how to spend the last few minutes of their life, but if they did, floating through space with a breathtaking view of Mars might come top of the list. Day tried to appreciate the view and not think of the suffocation that would follow. As soon as the gauge measuring the air in the life support pack reached zero, she would try to rip through her suit. Exposure to space would kill her instantly. Better than suffocation.
It didn't seem so awful now, not knowing whether Will's life-pack had attached to him in time. If he was out here, drifting towards Mars, then they shared the same destiny, and he'd only been given a brief reprieve. Besides, was it better to know what was coming? It wasn't as though you could prepare for death.
An afternoon when Day was five or six flashed through her mind. She was in the park with her mom and refusing to go home. Her mom had picked her up and carried her underarm to the car, legs kicking, arms flailing, teeth biting. She had thrown Day into the back seat, locked the doors, and switched on the air. Day had hit her head and cried.
Her mom had clambered over into the back, rubbed Day's head and pulled Day into her arms.
"I'm sorry, sweetie."
"I'm sorry, Mom."
Her mom had squeezed her hard and whispered into her hair, "The world's not supposed to be like this."
Day gazed at Mar's rusty red aura and blinked back the tears on her lashes. When Will had told her Monday believed their parents were alive, she'd felt a fragile blossom of hope flower inside her. She would do anything to see her Mom again. Even for a few minutes. Dayna must have known this. Dayna had used Day's deepest longing to manipulate her. If Monday was a bitch, then Dayna was a cold-hearted psychopath.
An orange light on the inside screen of the helmet flipped to red. Will's words about sleep came to mind: in sleep you did not understand you were asleep until you woke up. Oblivion couldn't be so different. If you didn't know you were dead, then how could it matter? And if you did know, then you weren't dead, were you?
Day focused her attention on the spectacular view ahead. Mars was half the size of the earth, with a coppery red and dirty blue crater-riddled surface. It was mystical and beautiful. She ignored the rapidly decreasing red zone on her air gauge. After several minutes of drifting, a white speck appeared in the corner of her screen.
She rubbed the front of her visor. It didn't vanish. Instead, it grew in size, almost imperceptibly at first, but then without a doubt. And it aligned its trajectory straight for her.
Her heartbeat rate shot up. The red gauge began flashing. Words popped up on the screen.
Please assume the pod rescue position.
Day's vision wavered. She wasn't getting enough air. She tried to read the instruction on the screen again. Pod rescue position?
Suddenly a giant fast-moving ball filled her vision. It was going to hit her straight on! With the last vestiges of strength, she drew her legs to her chest, and pulled her arms over her head.
The side of her body hit something. The edges of her vision darkened. She was out of oxygen. Her mind drifted, losing track of what was happening. She was vaguely aware of a whooshing sound, followed by an annoying insect-sized buzzing.
She gasped. Oxygen! She could breathe! The oxygen made her head spin. She reached for her face where the stitching of the helmet had been cut and pulled the casing off. Oxygen filled her lungs, and her mind cleared.
Dazed, she took in her surroundings. She was floating in a round pod about two-meters across. Dim light lit the silver panels. There were no windows. But she could tell the pod was speeding up because her back was up against one of the concave walls, and when she pushed herself off, she found herself back against it a second later.
She gave up trying to do anything, tilted the back of her head against the wall and closed her eyes. She was alive. A tear trickled down the side of her cheek and her limbs went slack with relief.
Ferdinando must have released the pods from Mars when the PD squad attacked the ship. And the pods had an inbuilt command to find life and bring it back to the Veda's base.
Unless it was a police squad pod which had tracked her bracelet... No, the pod had come from Mars. And there were no prisons orbiting Mars, no colonies, no need for a police base.
She wondered how the pod had enveloped her without causing injury on impact. She wondered if the computer had located everyone else in time. What about Will?
Around forty minutes had passed when the pod began to tremble. The silver walls shimmered in Day's vision as she passed into Mars' thin atmosphere. Removing the life-pack had proved too difficult, so it slapped against the wall, and simultaneously knocked the breath from her lungs. There came a wild flapping noise. The air-tubes around the pod had inflated to increase the surface area and help the pod slow down.
There was nothing to hold on to. Nothing to do but ride it out. Day gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. In her head, she heard the fragments of a song.
Here comes the sun,
Here comes the sun...
She concentrated to see if she could remember the name of the singer or any other words. Instead, she saw her father's smiling face twice the size of her own, planting an enormous kiss on her cheek and laughing.
The sound of retro rockets fired up with a deafening explosion. They were nearing the surface. Because of its thin atmosphere, landing on Mars was complicated. Landing on the moon, you didn't have to worry about drag or pressure or heat. But on Mars you had big dust storms, and you couldn't use a parachute to slow the descent—the air was too thin.
Finally, the shuddering and banging faded, and then the burning rocket fuel died out. Gravity gently pulled Day to the bottom of the pod, though she felt as light as a soap bubble. Mars' gravity was three times less than the earth's. Another piece of information she knew without remembering where she'd learned it.
Day's insides clenched. Dayna had learned it. And now Amber and Ferdinando would be eager to get Dayna back, because they had what they wanted: Will. Did it matter to them if he was dead or alive?
The pod seemed to shudder and move differently, like it was being carried. Her stomach flipped over as there came a sudden vertical drop. There was nothing to hold on to, so she sat down, cross-legged on the metal floor and hoped the entire thing wouldn't turn upside down.
The pod slowed to a stop. In the silence, she heard the swish of blood in her ears, and her heart pounding. The curved wall on one side of the pod rearranged itself. Many small panels vanished into the rest of the structure, and a doorway appeared. Day got to her feet.
A humanoid poked its head into the capsule. The droid was different to an earth droid. It was half Day's height and twice her width.
"Please step out of the pod."
She ducked through the door, boots clanging on the metal grating. She held onto the rail to help ground her body, which felt weightless, and gazed around the enormous hanger.
In the middle of the hanger was a circular panel with eight giant arms resembling an octopus. Four of the arms held pods in their finger-like extremities. Apart from droids moving around, pushing stairways towards pods, cleaning the sparkling floor, Day saw no one else.
"Can you tell me how many pods they have recovered?"
"That is classified information. Careful down the stairs, please."
Day didn't need to be told. She inched her way down the long stairway. She felt light-headed and her body seemed alien in the altered gravity.
At the bottom there was a wheelchair. She sat down and the droid pushed her into a gigantic square box the size of a compact room.
"What's this?"
"Medical examination. Hold still."
For several minutes the machine buzzed, and lights flashed. Then an army of tiny spider-like robots with miniature scissors on the end of their front legs crawled up into her legs and over her arms, cutting off her space suit.
"Hold still," the droid warned.
Day tried not to move. She felt sick. When a spider crawled up her neck she flinched, and tiny knives bit into her skin.
"Hold still or they'll cut you," the droid said.
She closed her eyes and tried to banish the vision of a thousand robot spiders shredding her to pieces. She tried to banish all thoughts because her mind was on a rollercoaster.
A voice inside her head said:
You must ask yourself, 'who am I?' Follow the idea of yourself back as far as you can go.
It seemed like a memory. Not one of Will's videos. Not Will's voice, or Monday, or Dayna. Nothing that she'd seen or heard in the last couple of months. Was it a memory? Wait... if she was really Dayna, why didn't she know her correct name? They had only wiped two years of her memories...
Yellow gas swamped the chamber, suffocating. Bile rose in her throat. She dry wretched. Several seconds later, the gas dispelled. Her space suit was in shreds around the wheels of her chair, and spiders were all retreating.
"Disinfection complete," the droid announced. "Welcome home, Dayna."
***
Day woke on a King's sized bed with a walnut-paneled headboard and white cotton sheets that had a smell reminiscent of a summer beach house. Windows ran the length of one wall and on the holo-screen a five-star view of palm trees, an endless stretch of white sandy beach, and the sea. Day could almost smell the salty waves and hear the gulls.
She pushed back the covers and got out of bed. The room possessed extra-gravity and after her rest she almost felt normal. She still wore the light trousers and grey t-shirt Will had given her on the convict shuttle, but both garments had small holes where the spider scissors had ripped through the material.
Day crossed the soft cream carpet and opened the three-tiered wardrobe. One tier had a row of immaculately hung pants in original materials and monochromatic colors. The second had a row of vest tops, the third sweaters—some elegant, some plain, all designed for comfort. She reached out and touched a cream cotton sweater.
"Good morning, Dayna," the wardrobe said. "Will you be wearing your favorite outfit today?"
"Yes." The rail with the soft white sweater, and grey shimmering, loose trousers, popped out. It was exactly what Day would have chosen.
"I've changed my mind," she said. "Give me a random selection."
Three more garments popped out, one from each tier of the wardrobe. A cream, short-sleeved top with gold edging, and ultra-thin flamingo-pink stripes; a pair of baggy black trousers, and a ribbed grey sweater.
As Day dressed a small droid came to life in the room's corner. She started with fright, then straightened up.
"Would you like to do your hair and make-up now?" the droid asked.
"No, thanks." Day slipped on the first pair of shoes in the wardrobe, black sneakers and headed for the door.
A light flashed in her right eye, scanning her iris. "Welcome back to Mars, Dayna," the security camera said, and the door swished open.
She walked through the corridor. Every few feet there was another door. It could have been a luxury hotel on Earth. No sense of the gravity difference. No way to detect the difference in the air.
Up ahead a door hissed and pulled open, startling her. A five-foot-ten athletic male stepped out with his back to her. But she recognized Will's sandy blonde hair, the square tilt of his shoulders and slim neck.
"Will?"
He turned, and a smile lit up his face.
"You're okay." She ran and flung her arms around him. Holding tight, tears pressing behind her eyes.
"We made it to Mars," he whispered.
She pulled away, a lump forming in her throat. Will beamed. She thought he'd understood. It was Monday who wanted to get to Mars. Monday, a fictional persona the Veda had invented to capture him.
"You shouldn't have come here. I'm not Monday. Monday was a trap to get you here."
"It's okay. Trap or no trap, I'm here. That's all that matters."
"What do they want you for?"
"I'm sure we'll find out soon enough."
"Is it to do with the inter-dimensional doorway that's supposed to be here?"
"Oh, it is here. Finding it has been my dream ever since my father disappeared.
"Your father knew about the doorway?"
"He was on the team of scientists who discovered it."
Day's lips felt like they'd stuck to her teeth and her mouth was paper dry. She suddenly knew why Will was here. He and Monday had wanted to come for the same reason: to follow their parents through the porthole.
"Will," she said, keeping her voice low in case they were being watched, "putting things—and people into the energy flux caused all the weather problems on earth. Thousands have died and millions have suffered because of it."
"I just need to see it," he said. "After that, things will take care of themselves."
"How?" What was that supposed to mean, things would take care of themselves? They reached the end of the corridor and stopped. Day scrutinized Will, waiting for an answer. He returned her gaze steadily, but this time that strange calmness he possessed didn't break over her in a wave of soothing reassurance.
The doors buzzed open.
"Let the end begin," he said. He winked and stepped into the atrium beyond. She stood for a moment, unable to go back, not wishing to go on. But like everything that had happened, she could pretend to herself she had some choice in the matter, when really she knew there was no choice at all.
Oh my God. They made it to Mars. What's going to happen? Will Day finally find out who she really is? Thank you so much for being here, for reading, voting, commenting and breathing in and out. Appreciate it