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I

Lyra

The air was chilly that night, biting at Lyra’s skin despite the pull-over that she wore. She supposed that she could have worn something a little more appropriate, but to her credit, she had been so excited about this night that it had slipped her mind. I wasn’t every day, after all, that one found an opening in the Compound’s walls, a gateway into the outside world.

As she moved in the shadows, avoiding the blue-green beams of floating scanners moving here and there through the air, her heart beat faster than her legs carried her. The closest Out Zone was only another block or so away, and she had happened upon it by accident less than a week ago. It had been a wonder to her that she had managed to wait so long to go exploring, but preparations had to be made.

Earth Two had only been occupied for about fifteen years. She had been five when her father, an Admiral in the Earth’s Intergalactic Navy, had been stationed there as a part of the starting colony. She barely remembered what Earth was like – but she loved everything about Earth Two (except perhaps the uninventive name; scientists, it seemed, weren’t always the most creative people.) It was a beautiful planet, nearly three times as large as Earth with more sustainable resources and untapped potential. The colony had flourished in the fifteen years of its start, expanding into more territories, save for the Out Zones.

The Out Zones were unexplored terrain, occupied by native colonies of creatures that were rumored to be warrior-like tribes. The original masterminds behind the colonization of Earth One had wanted to avoid the many problems that had happened on Earth is mass colonialization – namely the destruction and near extinction of native populations. It was different… perhaps a little trickier when the native populations were alien and not human in nature, but a full-scale extermination wasn’t something that anyone wanted to have happen.

Lyra could understand that. She respected life. It was a creed that she had lived and breathed, what with being raised by her father, and him being the kind man that he was. When technology quite literally gave you the ability to span galaxies, you couldn’t approach your exploration with conquering everything in your path in mind.

That being said, she was painfully curious. She wasn’t a scientist in practice – she didn’t like the stuffy conditions, really – but she desired exploration. There was only so much of that that would be done within Earth Two’s Compounds – the great expanses of colonized lands that were surrounded by reinforced holographic walls – and she had always wanted to see what was out there, what more there was that the world had to offer. She wasn’t afraid of what she would find; in all honesty, it made everything all the more interesting and thrilling not knowing what she would find out there.

It was that thrill that kept her ducking around through the night. She was prone to late-night jogs, and it had been one of those jogs that led her to the breach in the wall she had discovered. As she came upon it again, she was excited to see that it was still there. The holographic walls weren’t conventional brick and mortar walls. They were completely invisible, aside from the steel pillars that rose about twenty feet into the air every fifty miles or so around the Compound. One wouldn’t be able to notice the wall itself, aside from these pillars, but when there was a hole in holographic code, rather than appearing as nonexistent, it was a vibrating shimmer. It was easy to overlook, but Lyra hadn’t.

She was immensely happy for that fact.

Flashlight in hand, she looked left, then right, and slipped through. The break in the holographic code was just large enough for a person to get through, and she wondered if it had been someone going in or coming out that had made it – perhaps it was an animal. That was curiosity that she didn’t have time to indulge, however. She was outside, now, and she breathed in.

The holographic walls had an image projected onto them, which made everything past the wall look as though it were merely an open plain of grass. It was pleasing to look at, but what Lyra found on the other side was far more interesting. There were trees, huge, magnificent trees, farther than her eyes could take in. Even in the dimness of the evening, the moonlight illuminated the great collection of foliage in front of her, almost making the rich greens and browns glow beneath the shine in the sky.

Lyra didn’t even need to make use of her flashlight, though she kept it in hand. She walked forward, stalking almost like a cat through the forest. There was the occasional croak and snap of an animal, but she wasn’t attacked, nor was she approached by anything. Her exploration was peaceful, encompassed by the sights and sounds of the unexplored nighttime, and the satiation of finally, finally, stepping out of the encased world that she lived in.

She had every intention of wondering her way deep into the forest, letting her feet take her wherever they cared to let her go. The deeper she got, the darker it got, though. Her attention taken off her footing in order to pay attention to turning on her flashlight was the single second of lapse that was needed to lose her footing, and send her spiraling down the steep incline of a hill she hadn’t realized she was stop.

Everything went black.