Shades of Earth

For the first time since the bullets left our guns, I think his eyes really focus on something other than Dr. Gupta’s mangled body. Chris throws his massive arms around me and crushes me in a hug that leaves me breathless, clutching me as if I am his judge and savior all in one.



Mom steps forward, and Chris releases me reluctantly. She wears the calm, measured mask of a scientist over the panicked terror in her eyes. This is how she’s always been; if she can’t handle something that’s happened to her as a person, she hides behind her role as a detached academic. Mom takes the lead back to the shuttle, sending more military and workers out to where we were, directing them to bring both bodies back to the gen lab before going inside herself. She breaks the news of Dr. Gupta’s death to the scientists in an even, reserved tone, then starts clearing aside space in the gen lab for an autopsy of Dr. Gupta and a dissection of the ptero.



She avoids my gaze for all of this.



Inside the gen lab, she allows herself one deep, shaky breath.



From the other side of the door, we can hear the noises of the bodies being brought inside the shuttle. There are gasps of horror at the ptero—and it was a small one, I think—and wails of sorrow at Dr. Gupta’s mangled body. Most people hadn’t seen Lorin’s or Juliana Robertson’s remains.



Mom looks up at me, and in her eyes I see Mom, with all the fear that lies inside her.



I realize: she needs the mask of science, she needs the shell of Dr. Maria Martin, to separate herself from the horror of what she’s seen.



We all have to find a way to separate ourselves from that.



I turn to Chris. He wears the guilt of his kill like a mantle. He doesn’t hide it. Maybe he can’t. My heart swells as I watch the way he straightens his shoulders as he puts one foot in front of the other.



Mom stands up and walks to the gen lab door, staring as Dr. Gupta’s body is carried across the cryo room to her. “The first thing we’re doing is a toxicology screen. Dr. Gupta was alive, but he had no reaction to the ptero . . . the ptero eating him.” Her voice cracks over the word. “We have to find out why.”



“One of the purple flowers that knocked me out?” I ask.



Mom shakes her head. “The flowers weren’t open, and they don’t emit the neurotoxin unless blossoming. Besides, Dr. Gupta was awake and even mobile, to a certain extent. When you were knocked out, Amy, it was like you were in a coma.”



Finally the helpers lay Dr. Gupta’s body on one of the metal table gurneys, possibly the same one Orion lay on as he was dying. The ptero is too big for a single table—we have to shove four tables together to hold it, and even then its wings and legs hang down over the side.



“We have to report this to Colonel Martin,” one of the military men says. “He needs to know.”



Mom nods silently as the man radios Dad.



“I’m beginning the autopsy immediately,” Mom says.



The man looks up at Mom in surprise. “Bit obvious what killed him, isn’t it?”



Mom gives him a thin-lipped grin. “Nevertheless, I will perform an autopsy. Please leave.”



The man’s eyebrows rise even more at Mom’s dismissal, but he turns to go. Chris starts to follow. “You may stay,” Mom says. She glances at me, and in her look is a question. I nod. I’m staying too. Seeing that together—it doesn’t feel right that anyone but the three of us helps with the autopsy.



The gen lab door zips shut, leaving us alone with the two bodies—one the remains of a human man, the other the stinking corpse of the monster that devoured him.



Mom sighs again, but this time her breath doesn’t shake. “Bring me that tray,” she says, jerking her head to the tray she’d prepared on the table against the wall. I pick it up and head over to her.



It’s hard to look at Dr. Gupta’s remains, but not as hard as it was before, when he was alive. I try to shake the blank look in his eyes from my mind. His expression was so . . . empty. Devoid. And while he showed no pain, it makes it all the worse to think about what he felt but could not express.



Mom picks up a Vacutainer needle and carefully positions it over Dr. Gupta’s heart. I try to watch as she gathers samples from his body, but soon I retreat, burying my face into Chris’s shoulder while Mom works.



“I’m going to do an immunoassay,” Mom explains as she leaves the body and crosses the lab with her tray of samples. “It won’t tell us much; we can only test against drugs and chemicals from Earth, and I don’t know of any drugs that . . . affect a person in the way Dr. Gupta was affected.”



She means, she doesn’t know of any drugs that let someone lie motionless yet conscious while he’s eaten alive.



“Then why bother with it?” Chris asks. He stands close behind me, and I have to admit that I’m comforted to know he’s there.



Mom looks surprised at the question. “Because we have to try.”



She turns to the specimen bag that holds the few samples she’d taken outside before we found Dr. Gupta. I don’t know who returned the bag to Mom, but everything’s still there.



“Fortunately, we have an analyte generator,” Mom continues as if she were speaking to a class of chemistry students. “So all I need is a sample”—she plucks one of the purple string flowers from the jar—“and then I can make an analyte to test against Dr. Gupta’s blood.”



Chris frowns. “I thought you said that you didn’t believe the flower could have drugged Dr. Gupta?”



Mom doesn’t stop as she sets up the test. “I don’t believe anything I can’t prove.”



A few minutes later, the immunoassay machine beeps, and I shift out of the way as Mom examines the report on the screen. “No . . . ” she says, frowning.



“What?” I ask as Chris hovers closer to us.



“This doesn’t make sense,” she says.



“What?”



Mom pushes a button, and a small paper readout spits out of the machine. She reads it again, disbelief written all over her face.



“Dr. Gupta had been injected with gen mod material,” she mutters. “Just before he died, recently enough that it was still in his blood.”



“Gen mod . . . ?” Chris says, letting his voice trail off into a question.



“Genetic modification material,” Mom says. “Developed on Earth.”



28: ELDER



I wait until dark.



“Elder?” Amy says. I adjust the rucksack on my shoulder—filled with gear I’ve gathered just for tonight as I stand on my tiptoes, peering through her window.



She’s made herself something of a cocoon, using strung-up tents to create walls inside the building. I wonder where the tents came from—probably more supplies from the Earthborns that they’re unwilling to share.



“What did you say, Amy?” a voice—Amy’s mother—calls through the tent walls.



Amy looks at me, eyes wide with surprise, then calls back, “Nothing, Mom!”



She kicks the sleeping bag off her legs and rushes to the window. “What are you doing here?” she whispers. “It’s curfew.”



I know—the patrol Colonel Martin’s set up throughout the colony tried to cause me trouble as I snuck down here.



Amy sets down the book she was reading—The Little Prince.



“I’m going to the probe,” I whisper back. “Your father’s hiding something, and I intend to find out what.”



She grabs my wrist. “Don’t,” she says, such worry in her voice that I’m afraid her mother will hear again.



“I have to.”



“It’s dangerous.” There’s a haunted look in her eyes now, and I’m reminded of the rumors I heard in the colony—that they found another body in the woods, one of the Earthborns.



“I have to,” I repeat. “I don’t think your father trusts me, and he’s not telling me the whole truth.”



“Dad wouldn’t—”



I cut her off. “Did he show you the crystal scale I found?”



Amy frowns. “Scale?”



I describe it for her, explaining about the tunnel. From her wide eyes, I can tell Colonel Martin has kept the discovery from her—from everyone.



“We can’t afford to be in the dark,” I say. “We have to know what’s going on.”



Amy bites her lip, then nods. “I’m coming with you.”



“I was hoping you’d say that.” I grin up at her. Amy steps away from the window, grabbing her gun and holster from the ground and belting it around her waist before pulling another shirt over her tank top. She uses both arms to push up on the window ledge, then swings her legs over and drops silently on the ground beside me.



“What’s the plan?” she whispers as I lead her away from the ruins.



“Follow the water pipe to the lake, then head back to the forest. I think the probe is somewhere around there—or, at least, something’s there that Colonel Martin doesn’t want us to find.”



Amy frowns as we sneak away from the colony. “You know, there could be a perfectly valid reason Dad’s made the probe off-limits. He’s not Eldest. This isn’t Godspeed.”



I don’t answer her as we duck around the new latrines, following the pipeline in the shadows of the mountain.



Once we’re far enough away from the colony, Amy speaks again, her words cutting through the darkness. “I saw a man die today.”



I pause.



“I wish you had been there.” It sounds morbid to hear her say those two sentences so close together, but I know what she means. For the past three months, the walls of Godspeed forced us close together. Now I’m wondering if they were the only things that kept Amy near me.



“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean about more than just today.



“Maybe the only reason Dad is keeping everyone away from the probe is because it’s dangerous,” Amy says, her voice still distant. Her fingers touch the hilt of her gun for reassurance, and I can’t help but notice that it’s the weapon that comforts her, not me.



We don’t speak again until we reach the lake, and even then it’s in hushed tones.



“Look how exposed we are here,” Amy says. “Do you really wonder why Dad’s keeping people away?” She slips the gun out of her holster and carries it at the ready. She’s right—there are no trees here, and any ptero circling overhead could easily strike us.



“That’s not why he won’t let anyone come here.”



Amy’s eyes dart to the sky. “Elder . . . those pteros . . . they’re horrible.”



There is panic in her eyes, something dark and scared I’ve never seen there before. But while her knuckles are white, the gun is steady in her grip.



“Let’s get this over with,” Amy says, narrowing her eyes as she starts up the hill.



I squint in the darkness. I can barely make out the black, rectangular outline against the sky, almost hidden by a small hill. If we hadn’t been standing right at the water pump, I’d never have seen it.



I glance at Amy. Her face is paler than usual now, contrasting with the dark night.