The first thing I know is that I’m curled up on my side, suspended in loving warmth. My body sways, adrift in a tropical ocean of blue water. No, blue gel. It coats my eyeballs—there’s no need to blink—and my vision is a bluish haze. Beyond the haze is glass, the glass of my . . . window? Ceiling?
Stasis pod.
My mind snaps awake. Warm comfort flees.
I shouldn’t be awake. Not while inside my pod. I try to lift my hand, but it doesn’t respond. I try again. My heart pounds once, hard, as if springing to life. Then again. Then regularly.
My hand twitches. Gradually I push through the gel until my fingers reach the glass. I splay them across the undersurface. It’s convex, and icy cold.
I push against it, but it won’t budge.
The gel oxygenates me, protects my skin. I know this, but I’m trapped and my lungs yearn to gasp for air and I can’t stop my diaphragm from contracting.
Gel floods my chest. I choke and heave, lurching against the suspension. The pod lists left like a sinking ship. I pound at the glass—bang, bang, bang—as my mind shouts wrong, wrong, wrong.
A great lurch, and the pod and I are freefalling, spinning into a void, my hands still pressed against the glass as my diaphragm convulses helplessly with the need to scream.
We crash. Metal groans and glass shatters. My left hip is numb for a split second before agony explodes in my bones.
Too late, emergency protocols kick in and my pod releases, shooting icy stimulant through bluish goo that already drains away, free of its prison. I vomit mucus and gel, choke hard as acid burns my throat, and then finally, finally, I inhale cold air, real air, my first breath in years or decades or maybe even centuries.
“Hey! Can you hear me?” A male voice, coming from a throat as raw as mine. “Can you walk? We have to get out of here.”
A shadow looms, extends an arm. I blink to clear my eyes, and the shape becomes a person. A beautiful young man. Broad shouldered, naked. Pale skin and blond hair slick with gel.
I reach for his offered hand, and he clasps my forearm. My left hip screams anguish as he yanks me upward.
“You took a beating when your pod fell,” he says. He assesses my own naked body. His eyes are bright blue, intelligent but on the edge of panic. “Nothing broken, thanks to the stasis gel. C’mon.”
The floor heaves. My hip doesn’t want to support my weight, but the young man’s grip on my forearm is a vise, and I keep my feet.
“The Omega hit atmo,” he says. “We find the escape capsules, or we die.”
As I stumble after him, my hip loosens, and my feet remember they’re feet and begin to bear my weight without aching. We’re in the starship’s central hold, a massive cylindrical tower stretching so high that the ceiling is lost in shadow. The walls are full of stasis pods, thousands of them, held in brackets at a sloping angle in overlapping rows, like glass shingles. Many of the brackets are empty, their pods crashed to the floor.
As the boy leads me through the wreckage of bent steel and shattered glass and wobbly bluish gel, I catch glimpses of pale skin. Gel-wet hair. A limp hand.
“Wait!” My first word in who knows how many years. I yank my arm from his grasp. “The others! We have to help—”
“Everyone’s dead,” he says. His jaw clenches for a moment, and then he adds, “Everyone but us.”
No. I can’t be the only girl left in the universe. I can’t be. “How do you know? Look at all those pods. Thousands of them. They might—”
“Something went wrong,” he says. “The Omega went into conservation mode, cutting power to the pods one by one. Only a fraction were still powered on when she found a suitable planet—”
The ship jerks. I watch in horror as a pod six stories up slips from its brackets and missiles to the floor, explodes into glittering glass and crunching metal. Before I can turn to run, we both rise into the air a meter, float for a moment, then crash back to the glass-strewn floor, collapsing to our knees.
“Ship’s grav is in and out. We have to move now.”
I gain my feet and hobble after him. The glass is in tiny crumbles, like thick sand, and it feels odd on my feet but does not cut as we wade through bent metal and pale limbs toward a darkness in the far wall. A doorway, I hope, but it’s hard to tell in the dim emergency lighting.
My knees collide with a pod. I thrust out my hand to steady myself and realize pod number 4289 is intact, the body inside still encased in blue gel. The light indicator near the control panel blinks green.
“This one’s alive,” I call out.
He yanks at my arm. “There’s no time! Please . . .”
I don’t hear what else he says, and I don’t care. I push the release button, but the lid doesn’t unlock. The emergency protocols didn’t kick in for this one, and I have a minute, maybe seconds, before the stasis pod becomes a coffin.
“I’ll leave without you!” the blond boy says.
“Then go.”
The air fills with chemical smoke. Smoke means we’ll be out of oxygen soon. I run my fingers along the pod’s edge for the emergency lever. Each pod has one, fail-safe after fail-safe, designed to protect stasis humans in every circumstance except unforeseen planetfall. I find the latch with my middle finger, hook it, pull. The lock releases, and something hisses as stimulant is injected into the gel. The top unseals, folds away on a hinge.
Damn. It’s another boy. Dark haired, Asian features. He blinks up at me, his black lashes thick with gel.
A flood of bile pours from his mouth as he chokes and coughs.
I don’t know if he’s fully awake, or if he’ll be able to stand without absorbing the stimulant for at least a few seconds more, but the blond boy was right and we have no time, so I reach for his armpits and pull him upward.
He is slender but tall, too heavy for me to lift alone.
I turn, saying, “Hey, I need your help . . .”
But the first boy is gone. We are abandoned, and I don’t blame him.
The dark-haired boy tries to speak, chokes instead.
“The ship’s going down,” I explain, fast and loud over the sound of atmosphere screaming against the hull. “We have to find the escape capsules. Keep an eye out for survivors on the way.”
He nods and gathers his feet and supports enough of his own weight that I can half carry, half drag him to the darkness in the wall that might be a door. I glance at each shattered pod as we go, and I wish I didn’t have to, because all I see are broken bodies. A very few, the ones who were alive before falling, bleed freely onto the floor. Blood coats the shattered pod glass. In the ship’s emergency lighting, it seems as though we wade through a sea of shimmering rubies.
The darkness in the wall is indeed a doorway, and I almost cry from relief. I drag us left into the hallway, curve around the pod tower, open the first access hatch I see. The hatch slides easily aside, revealing a round capsule with six jump seats, face guards dangling before each seat, and the blond boy, already belted in.
“Oh, thank god,” he says. “A few more seconds and I would have had to launch.”
I strap the dark-haired boy into his seat and make sure his belt and harness are fastened tight, then I grab a seat of my own and buckle in.
“Ready?” the blond boy says.
I stare at the three empty seats.
“Ready,” I whisper, and my voice is lost in some kind of explosion as the capsule shudders and the blond boy slams the release button.
My back presses into the seat as we are jettisoned with incredible, bone-numbing force. The two small windows grow bright with fire, then my sight goes black as we spin through it.
And suddenly we’re free. My vision returns as a bright point, but gradually expands to reveal the faces of my companions. Tears stream down the blond boy’s face, and I’m not sure if it’s fear, relief, or too many Gs that are making him cry.
The dark-haired boy’s eyes are wide, as if he’s finally, truly waking up, and it’s to a horror beyond his imagination.
“Look!” says the blond, wiping at his wet cheeks. “More escape capsules. We’re not alone.”
He’s looking out one of the tiny round windows. Three other capsules fall through the mesosphere alongside us. They look like small comets, their hulls shiny with friction, heat streaming behind.
“No.”
It’s the dark-haired boy. The first word he’s spoken since I yanked him from his pod.
“They’re supply capsules only,” he adds. “No windows, see?”
My heart sinks, but the blond says, “Isn’t that good news? I mean, the Omega would only release supply capsules if it found a habitable planet, right?”
“Right,” the dark-haired boy says flatly. He catches my eye, and I know exactly what he’s thinking. He’d give up all those supplies for just one more person. Another girl.
The capsule begins to shudder. “Grab your face guards,” I say, reaching for mine. I yank it down and place it over my nose, making sure the mouthpiece fits snug. A variant on the stasis gel coats my teeth and gums, and my head clouds with drowsiness.
Fire erupts along our hull again as the strange planet’s gravity grabs our capsule and drags us into oblivion.
In spite of the parachute, the air jets, the gel sedative, and walls designed to absorb crushing shock, we land so hard it feels as though my tailbone lodges in my sternum. We spin at impossible speed. The atmosphere roars around us as we cannonball across the planet’s surface. Gradually, we decelerate and come to a neck-wrenching stop.
I sit stunned for a minute, maybe longer. Our capsule came to rest so that I dangle from the ceiling, staring down at the two boys seated across from me.
“You okay up there?” says the dark-haired boy.
“Think so.” I unbuckle the lap belt and reach for the chest harness.
“Wait,” he says.
The blond watches mutely as the other boy extracts himself from his own harness and moves into position to help me down.
“Unbuckle now. I’ll brace you.” His hands wrap my waist in readiness.
I press the release and slide neatly against him. He holds me a moment, making sure I’m steady on my feet. We are skin to skin, his breath warm on my scalp, both of us still slick with stasis gel.
“Hey,” says the blond boy, too sharp and loud. “Let’s check out this planet the Omega found for us.” Without waiting for a response, he punches a code into the console. My ears pop as our capsule matches the outside atmosphere and pressure. The air fills with moisture and organic sweetness, reminding me of hot summer nights on Abuela’s porch, drinking her tamarind-rum punch.
The hatch slides open, and I put up a forearm against the brightness. We step gingerly on bare feet into a humid world of white sunlight and waxy, wide-leafed foliage. Jeweled insects larger than butterflies flit from plant to plant, sending proboscises into thistly red flowers. Warm mud squishes between my toes.
The dark-haired boy says, “Welcome home.”
We’ve set up camp using our crashed capsule as a focal point. A smoking ground scar stretches for miles behind it, but the rest of the world is pristine and lush. Using the capsule’s limited supplies, we’ve erected a tent and a space heater, but I’m doubtful we’ll need either. We sit around the heater for its comforting familiarity though, eating ration bars. We have no chairs, not even the equivalent of Earth stumps to sit on, so we’ve stripped giant leaves from nearby plants to lay on the ground as a barrier to the mud.
Every few seconds, the sky flashes as a chunk of starship debris meteors through the atmosphere. I watched them at first; they were so beautiful, the brightest shooting stars I’ve ever seen. But then I realized I was watching a funeral for humanity’s legacy. The greatest thing we ever built, still dead and gone, no matter how brilliant its pyre.
“We have enough food and water for two months,” the dark-haired boy says.
“We need to find those supply pods,” says the blond boy around a mouthful of ration bar. “That’s what we should do first. Then we’ll—”
“Hey, I have a crazy idea,” I interrupt. “We could start with names. I’m Eva Gonzales-Aldana, eighteen years old, from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.”
The dark-haired boy’s smile hits me in the gut. “Nice to meet you, Eva,” he says. “I’m Jesse Niyamoto. Also eighteen. Los Angeles, California.”
I smile back. “Hi, Jesse.”
The blond boy swallows quickly, says, “Dirk Haas. Nineteen. Amsterdam.”
“Hi, Dirk,” Jesse and I say in unison. I take a bite of ration bar and chew. Another shooting star streaks the sky.
“I guess it’s just the three of us,” Dirk says. A muscle in his jaw twitches. “In all the galaxy.”
“Guess so,” says Jesse.
“Dirk?” I say. “You lost someone on that ship, didn’t you?”
“My sister.”
Only one per family, that was the rule, and we all said our forever good-byes before climbing into our stasis pods. But multiple births were expected to be a fundamental part of the culture of the new world, so they made a few exceptions.
“Your twin?” Jesse says.
Dirk’s lips twitch as if he’s trying not to cry. “Hers was the first pod I found. She was . . . the Omega cut her power long ago.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“She was in love with the adventure of it,” he says. “Couldn’t wait to have children. Always wanted to be a mom.”
Suddenly they’re both staring at me. All of me. My breasts, my belly, the mound of hair between my legs. I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them.
I thought I had lost my shame over nudity. We’re used to being naked. We trained naked, entered our stasis pods naked. Two years prior to launch, when we realized Asteroid Holly-Krause’s impact would destroy the Earth nine months sooner than originally calculated, we had to speed up our manufacturing timetable. That meant steel-frame stasis pods instead of titanium, bulky freeze-dried rations instead of food paste, and many other shortcuts. It made the Omega too heavy.
Some bright-eyed engineer realized we could lose fifteen thousand pounds of launch weight simply by eliminating our clothing. Humanity didn’t need clothing, she argued. Not in the right environment. In the end, it was either lose the clothes, or eliminate the arts and culture track. We voted to get naked.
“Okay,” Dirk says, wiping his eyes. “Someone needs to address the elephant on the alien planet.”
Jesse frowns, wrenching his gaze from my skin.
Dirk presses on. “So I’ll just go ahead and say it: we need to start making babies.”
The ration bar is dirt in my mouth.
Within me is enough genetic diversity to restart the human race. My ovaries contain several hundred thousand oocytes, transplanted from women all around the world. I signed a contract saying I would bear at least two children on the new planet. All of us girls who won the New Hope Lottery did, whether we wanted children or not.
But now that I’m the only human woman left in the universe, my two contracted children won’t be enough. I’ll have to get pregnant and stay pregnant until I die.
“Eva should have children by both of us,” Dirk says. “Just to be safe.”
“She doesn’t need to,” Jesse points out. “She could restart humanity with just one of us.” Dirk is about to protest when Jesse puts up a hand and adds, “But you’re right. Having children by both of us would be best.”
I force myself to swallow my bite of ration bar.
“I know this is awkward and inconvenient to talk about,” Dirk says, “but it’s important to establish right away that she shouldn’t mate with both of us at the same time. We need to keep the bloodlines clear. Make sure our offspring doesn’t mate with each other. There’ll be no way to determine the father by looking at the kids. We’ll have to keep track.”
Finally I find my voice. “I’m right here, you know. And maybe I don’t want to pop out a baby every nine months—”
“This isn’t about you,” Dirk says. “It’s about the human race. We thought the Omega would be the vessel of our salvation, but it’s not. It’s your body, Eva.”
I open my mouth, close it.
“Let’s give it a few days,” Jesse says gently. “We just got here. We’ve all been through something terrible. Let’s make this camp comfortable, use the test kits on the soil and atmosphere, try to find those supply capsules. Then we’ll talk again.”
Dirk frowns. “We can’t put this off for long.”
A shadow blocks the sun, cooling the air on my skin. I look up and find a massive winged creature soaring overhead, long flight feathers trailing like a jet stream. There’s so much about this new world to learn, and what we don’t know might kill us a lot faster than infertility.
Jesse and I push through the alien jungle. Earlier, Dirk climbed what passes for a tree and spotted another ground scar, made by one of the supply capsules. “Follow the moons,” he said. “I’ll do soil testing while you’re gone.”
A break in the canopy of leaves frames them perfectly. The smallest moon hangs heavy and full, the texturing of its surface like the skin of an old man. The larger one sits behind it, dwarfing its smaller sister. It’s only a quarter full, its outline hazed. How big must it be to appear so huge and yet so far away? Monstrous. Planet sized. If there’s an ocean on this world, it might take us generations to understand its tides.
I stare at Jesse’s back as we hike. He is tall and slender but wiry with muscle. Beneath his taut waist, his glutes and hamstrings contract with each graceful step, and I can’t help but wonder if the conspiracy theorists were right, that the New Hope Lottery wasn’t a lottery at all. There were some basic requirements to enter, of course—younger than twenty, certified physically fit, less than 5 percent observable epigenetic degradation, levels of testosterone and dopamine sufficient to produce high libido. But looking at Jesse and Dirk, it’s easy to believe the lottery was rigged to select humanity’s most beautiful specimens.
Jesse stops suddenly, and I almost collide with him.
He turns. “Eva, I need to thank you,” he says.
“Why?”
“For saving my life.” His dark eyes are very close. He’s a whole head taller than I am. My forehead would fit perfectly in the crook of his neck. “I would have died on the starship if you hadn’t yanked me from the pod. You got me moving before I was even aware what was going on.”
If I shifted the smallest bit, I could kiss him. “Oh. Well, you’re welcome.”
He continues through the jungle, and I follow.
“To be honest,” I say to his back, “I was kind of hoping you’d be a girl.”
He spins around. “You like girls?” The disappointment in his face makes me smile.
“I like men.”
“Oh. Okay. Good.”
“Not that it matters. Everyone had to sign the procreation contract, right? It’s just that I was hoping I wouldn’t be the only baby factory left in the galaxy.”
His eyes drift to my breasts, but he snaps them back to my face. “Sure, that makes sense.”
“Hey, I think we’re there,” I say, pointing beyond him. Something metallic glints each time the breeze rustles the trees.
We run toward it, shoving leaves and branches aside, and we break into a field of wrecked vegetation and smoking ground. The capsule is hugged up against a massive boulder, scarred but intact, its hull lights still blinking.
Jesse reaches for the release panel.
“Careful,” I warn. “It might be too hot to touch.”
He tests the air temperature with his palm. “I think it’s okay.” He enters the key code, and a small panel swings open. Jesse clasps the latch inside and gives a great tug and twist. Air hisses as the door lifts and slides sideways.
“Eureka,” Jesse says.
It’s jammed with stuff. Food rations, water purification pumps, solar energy packs, and four white chests, each emblazoned with a bright red cross.
“Medical supplies,” I say.
Jesse brightens. “Check this out.” He grabs an orange plastic case. He opens it to reveal a shiny silver handgun, an anti-projectile vest, a set of handcuffs, and multiple syringes, all set in cushiony Styrofoam-like material. “Sheriff’s kit.”
But as he stares at the kit, his face becomes morose and his chest and shoulders deflate like a dying balloon.
“What’s wrong?”
“I was law enforcement track. I loved it. The physical training, even the psych classes . . . I mean, I really loved it.”
“Then you should be the one to carry that gun.”
“Yeah. I guess.” He closes the kit and latches it.
“What were those syringes?”
“Adrenaline, painkiller, sterilization, tranquilizer.”
I stare at the case. “Sterilization?”
“In case the sociopath gene cropped up.”
“Oh.”
“What about you?” he asks. “Which track?”
It’s my turn to be morose. “Arts and culture. I played cello.” Just saying the words puts a pang in my chest. “Something I’ll never do again.”
“But you really loved it.”
“I did.” I had a full scholarship to the New York School of Music. Two weeks before launch, I was one of seventy recent preparatoria graduates selected to perform “Adagio for the Holocaust” at Carnegie Hall.
He studies me a long moment. “I bet there’s a supply capsule somewhere on this world that contains a cello. The Omega had everything, right? I mean, we sacrificed our clothes so we could have music.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
His gaze is so warm, so full of understanding, that my eyes start to sting. He adds, “Holly-Krause killed our planet, not our humanity. If there’s a cello anywhere on this new world, we will find it.”
Who has time for music when you live to raise an army of children? I appreciate his effort, though, so I force a smile and say, “Let’s gather what we can carry and get back to Dirk.”
The day will not end. Even after establishing camp, hiking miles to the supply capsule and back, and eating a meal of reconstituted split pea soup, the sun sits angled in the sky, indicating early afternoon.
“So, what next?” Jesse says, scraping at his soup cup for every last calorie.
“We need a water source,” I say. “And better food. This soup is gross.”
“It looks like an avocado mated with a mudslide,” Jesse agrees, peering into his empty cup.
Dirk grins. “Never look at what you eat. That’s the rule for interstellar travel. We should be okay for water, though, as long as we get to work on it.”
“The soil is moist,” I say. “So either it rains a lot, or the water table is high.”
“If you two don’t mind,” Jesse says, “I’d like to explore the area a little. Try to find a creek or something.”
“I’m not sure you should go anywhere alone,” I say.
“There’s been no sign of animal life,” Dirk says. “Except butterfly things and those giant birds. This planet is in a very primitive evolutionary stage.”
“I’ll take the gun,” Jesse says. “Just in case.”
My vision is bleary with exhaustion, and sweat and mud coat my naked skin, making me itch. The medical supply chests contain a few sanitary wipes, but if Jesse found a creek, I could wash up for real. “Be careful,” I tell him. “We’ll dig a latrine while you’re gone.”
“Unless we hit groundwater,” Dirk amends.
Jesse grabs the gun from the bright orange case and, after a quick smile in my direction, disappears into the trees.
“How long are the days on this planet, do you think?” Dirk asks, his eyes on the space Jesse just vacated.
“Longer than Earth days, that’s for sure,” I tell him. “I’m so tired I could die.”
“Please don’t,” he says, with a slight smile. “Eva, I have to tell you . . .” He grabs a stick and pokes at the mud with it. “I know I behaved . . . badly. While the Omega was going down. You were right to look for survivors. I was wrong, and if I’d had my way, we wouldn’t have found Jesse.”
I’m not sure he deserves a concession, but I give him one anyway. “It was a terrifying moment.”
His full lips are turned down, and he stares at the mud he’s poking at like it holds all the mysteries of the universe. “I had just found my sister’s body, and . . . I know that’s no excuse. I was a coward. And I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted.”
Relief floods his features. “Thank you.” He lumbers to his feet. “Let’s start digging. If I don’t work on something, I’ll get all mopey again.” Dirk is not as tall as Jesse, and we are exactly eye to eye. His jaw is perfect, his lips curved and sensual, his neck and shoulders corded and thick. Where Jesse is fire and grace, Dirk is mass and power.
His thumb comes up toward my cheek, and I almost flinch away, but then I don’t. I want him to touch me.
His caress is as gentle as butterflies’ wings. “I’m glad it was you,” he says softly.
“Huh?”
“Who I found in the pod, I mean. You’re smart, you’re kinder than I deserve, and . . .” A smile quirks his lips. “And the most beautiful girl in all the world.”
It’s not that funny, but a giggle bubbles from my chest anyway, and his answering snicker sets me over the edge and suddenly we’re both laughing so hard we can hardly breathe.
Night has finally fallen, and I’m curled up alone in the escape capsule, wrapped in a Mylar blanket. The blanket is probably overkill in this planet’s warm climate, but I like the comfort of being wrapped in something.
Jesse did not find water, but he plans to try again when the sun rises. He and Dirk share the tent tonight. Soon enough, it will be me in that tent, sharing it with whichever one I choose. I don’t think I can go wrong. They both seem decent enough. Willing to work hard. Gorgeous.
Dirk was right. If we’re going to save humanity, I need to get pregnant right away and have as many babies as possible while I’m young and healthy and strong. I don’t know how many pregnancies a woman’s body can take, but if I start now, and my body holds up, I could potentially bear twenty or more children before menopause.
Twenty children. My heart speeds up, and my skin is suddenly slick against the Mylar.
Twenty times, my body’s organs will rearrange to make room for life growing inside me. Twenty times, carrying a weight against my pelvis and spine. Twenty times, stretching out the skin of my belly, my breasts, my thighs, until it hangs on me like dirty laundry. Twenty agonizingly painful labors. Twenty chances to die.
I owe it to humanity. As Dirk pointed out, my body is not my own.
I hardly know what I’m doing as I thrust the space blanket aside and clamber from the capsule. Our camp is swathed in silence. The smaller moon has set, but the larger one is high in the sky, casting plenty of light to see by.
I tiptoe through our unorganized supplies, past the tent. One of the boys breathes loudly with something that is not quite snoring.
The orange case sits beside the space heater. I open it slowly, and the hinges do not squeak. Jesse returned the gun to the case; it glints up at me, bluish in the moonlight. Beside it are the syringes.
They’re all carefully labeled, leaving no doubt which is which. I uncap the one I want and hold it up to the moon, studying it for a moment, hesitating, thinking about the future.
With one swift motion, I jam the needle into my right thigh and hit the plunger. The liquid is ice cold and stinging, and my fingers tremble so badly that I drop the empty syringe into the mud.
I grab it back, wary of the needle, wipe it up as best I can with leaves, replace it in the case, and close everything up. A laugh starts to squirm out of my chest and I have to cover my mouth with both hands. Why did I bother putting the syringe back? Jesse will realize exactly what I’ve done as soon as he opens the case.
What have I done?
Slowly I make my way back to the capsule. Maybe it’s the irrevocableness of it all, but my heart slows to normal, and it feels as though a weight lifts from my shoulder. I belong to me again.
I curl up in my Mylar nest and sleep like a baby.
All three of us are awake well before the dawn. Maybe, years from now, we’ll adjust to the new planet’s rotation and learn how to sleep fourteen hours straight. But not today.
After a quick breakfast of freeze-dried beef Stroganoff, Jesse says, “Going to look for water again. I’ll head east this time.”
“I’ll go with you,” I say, popping to my feet. I woke this morning overcome with the desire to explore. Does this world have oceans? Mountains? It can’t all be dense and tropical like this Eden. I want waterfalls and flowers. Deserts and ice caps. I want a closer look at those glorious flying creatures. I want to see everything.
“Okay by me,” Jesse says. “Dirk, if you’re going to be here alone, you should keep the gun.”
“Agreed,” Dirk says. “That should be a rule. Whoever is alone gets the gun.”
I glance at the orange case. The empty syringe inside seems to scream at me.
The boys will figure out what I’ve done soon enough. No doubt they’ll hate me for it. I just hope they come around over time, once they realize we’re all we’ll ever have.
“Be careful,” Dirk says.
“We will,” I say. “Back soon.” And I give Dirk a slow, deliberate smile that is full of promise. He catches his breath.
The giant quarter moon guides us as Jesse and I hike through the jungle. The ground here is rockier, less muddy, and my feet become scraped and sore. They’ll toughen soon enough. Like fingertips against cello strings. Human skin is remarkable that way.
Dirk’s and my latrine yielded no groundwater, which is fine. It means we’re not likely to contaminate a water source with our waste. It also means we need to find a creek. Or better yet, a nice, clear pond perfect for bathing.
And it’s like I’ve summoned it with a thought, because we push through a giant fernlike plant and nearly trip over a perfect pool of rippling, moonlit water.
Jesse draws in a breath. “Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?” He crouches toward it.
“We don’t know what’s living in there,” I warn.
“Just testing the water.” He pulls something from his carry pack. Dips it into the water. Holds it up to the moon.
“And?” I prompt.
“Perfect pH,” he says, grinning. “Nothing toxic. A few organic compounds from the surrounding vegetation, some microbial life.”
“Then we should purify it before drinking,” I say.
“Yes, but . . .” His grin becomes as bright as a sun. “We can still go swimming.” With that, he drops his pack to the ground and plunges into the water.
He’s under for several seconds. My heart is in my throat by the time he breaks the surface, black hair streaming against his temples, skin glossy with water. He stands waist-deep. “It’s cool and shallow,” he says. “Come on in!”
He doesn’t have to tell me twice. I shuck my pack and step in after him, mud squishing pleasantly between my toes. I dunk once to rinse off yesterday’s grime. For a split second, it feels like I’m back in my stasis pod, floating in beautiful nothingness.
I surface and slick back my hair, then I open my eyes to find Jesse watching me, lips slightly parted. His gaze roves down to my belly and up again, comes to rest on my breasts.
“Jesse,” I whisper.
“Eva,” he says. He doesn’t bother to hide what he’s staring at. I stare right back, admiring his lean muscle, his trim waist. But I hesitate to close the distance between us because I’m not sure it’s me he wants. Maybe he wants the utility of me. Maybe he wants to be the father of the new humanity. Maybe he’ll hate the real Eva.
I breathe deep and stand tall, enjoying the feel of his gaze on my skin. My life—humanity’s life—is going to be short, a blip on the universe’s timeline, and I want it to be filled with moments to savor. There’s no time to waste.
So I just come out and say it: “I want you.” For now. For tonight.
One swift movement brings him into my space. His hands slip around my waist, glide down to my rear, where he cups me tight, hitching me against him. Water sloshes around us.
My arms go around his neck, and I lift my face to take in his gaze; it’s hungry and filled with wonder. The skin of his chest is warm against mine. “Thank you,” he says, “for choosing me.”
A laugh bubbles from my throat before I can stop it, because if Dirk were here instead, it would make no difference. “I’m not choosing you,” I say. “I’m choosing me.” And I press my lips to his.