The Extinction Trials(23)

He smiled. Maya smiled back. And she hoped it wouldn’t be the last time she saw him alive.

A moment later, he was marching past the dead man, the beams from his helmet lighting the way. Soon, he was a dark shadow, and when he rounded the turn, he was gone, the passageway dark again except for the glow of the red emergency lights pulsing outward from the station and the dim glow at the end of the tunnel.

Maya shivered in the corridor. Her breath came out in thick clouds of white now—not the faint puffs they had been when she woke. The power had been off for some time, and it was getting colder.

With each frigid breath she expelled, she had a sense that time was running out for them. Inside, the cold was closing in. Outside, whatever deadly unseen element that had killed the older man was waiting.

They were truly trapped.

She wondered what Owen would find out there. She had wanted to join him but knew that, logically, she had to stay to monitor the others—and that preserving the suit oxygen was critical.

She jumped a little when the decon sequence began in the airlock, the nozzles spraying forth the hazy liquid with a hiss. The airlock clearly had an automated sequence to cleanse the outside air that got in when the outer airlock was opened.

As Maya watched the mist fill the airlock, her mind drifted to her mother and sister, and of a lingering memory of a man who had visited her in the hospital: Parrish. That thought evoked another memory, of her going to work at Genesis Biosciences. Will had said that he worked for ARC Technologies on a team dedicated exclusively to Genesis Biosciences. Was there a connection? Did he know her and wasn’t telling her? It seemed too random to be a coincidence.

When the decon spray had been sucked out of the chamber, Maya entered the airlock and gathered the suits, careful not to touch the blood on the suit Cara had previously worn outside.

She dragged them down the corridor and fumbled with the thumb outside Observation Two, finally managing to get the door open.

A blast of warm air rushed out, and Alister turned, annoyed. “Come on, close the door, you’re letting the heat out.”

“Little help here,” Maya muttered as she pulled the four suits inside.

At her words, Will was on his feet instantly, helping her with them. Maya realized then that the group had been eating, and she only then felt her own hunger.

With the door closed and the suits stowed in the corner, Maya ripped open a meal pack marked ARC Rations.

Alister, still chewing, called to her, “Don’t expect much.”

Maya immediately saw what he meant. Where she had expected some sort of structured meal, she found only a sea of gelatinous green goo. “What. Is. This?”

“ARC’s idea of fine dining,” Alister said.

“I checked the nutrient report on the label,” Cara said. “It will sustain us. But obviously not inspire our culinary delight.”

Alister snorted. “Culinary delight. Good one. I’d love to know what’s in the slime. Or who. Maybe—”

Maya held up her fork. “Don’t go there. Just don’t, okay? Not while we’re eating.”

Alister shrugged. “Suit yourself. Complaining is how I stay sane.”

The lights overhead faded, flickered, and after a struggle to return, winked out. Even the red flashes from the hall went dark. It was pitch black except for the ARC tablet that lit Will’s placid face. He tapped furiously, as though he were playing a video game in which he was battling for his life.

Maya felt a small, warm hand slip into hers—Blair reaching out. Maya pulled the girl close and wrapped her arms around her, rubbing her hand up and down the child’s bony back. She pressed her mouth and nose into the top of Blair’s head and let the warmth of her exhales flow into her hair.

Maya expected the power to flip back on, but this time, it didn’t.

The soft rumble of the air supply duct overhead fell silent. By small degrees, Maya felt the temperature dropping. Blair snuggled into her as the shivering began.

Caring for the girl seemed to come naturally to Maya, but she couldn’t remember if she had any children of her own. Instinctively, she felt that she didn’t, that she had been alone, and that the lack of a family had been an area of regret and longing in her life. In a strange way, in this bizarre place, she felt closer to having something she had wanted in the world before.

In the dim light, Alister rose and moved toward Maya and Blair, stooping close to them, reaching for something—a blanket—which he wrapped around the girl. “We should put her in the corner and use our body heat.”

Maya couldn’t have been more surprised. The burly man continued to be an enigma. “Not a bad idea, but I think we should get her into the suit.”

“No,” Blair whispered. “I don’t want to.”

“You have to, dear,” Maya said. “It’s okay. We’re all going to wear them. It will be warm and... safer.”





They had all suited up—except for Alister—when the power came back on.

“What did you do?” Cara asked Will, who continued to work the tablet awkwardly through the gloves.

“Nothing,” he replied over the suit radio. “I can’t take credit. The system just came back on.”

Overhead, Maya heard the air supply rumble to life. Alister moved over and stood below it, tilting his head toward the warm air drifting down. Despite the system being off, Alister hadn’t gotten sick like the man outside. It served to reason since the station was sealed off from the air outside (Alister had merely been breathing the oxygen already in the station, albeit a dwindling supply).