They both looked out the large panoramic window together. And to her relief, she didn’t see her entire team possessed by shriekers standing in a band before them. Her heart continued to drum the beat of fear in her chest.
She jumped out of her own skin when Stryker unbuckled and stood up, moving closer to the window that glared back at him with a shield of rain.
The blue light of his eyes flashed once before it changed to a ruby red.Blood red.Her broken nails bit into the armrests of her seat.
“What is it?” She began to unclip herself.
“Don’t.”
Norah was beside him the next moment but couldn’t see what Stryker was looking at.
“What is it? What do you see? Can someone else be alive?” It was her biggest fear. What if they were about to leave someone behind? Could she live with that doubt? She wanted to leave, to run away and never come back, but another part of her wanted to get off of the ship with a rocket launcher and kill every shrieker she came across and avenge her fellow scientist's deaths.
So many great minds, gone.Studying planetary environmental and ecological science always had that risk. The need to beat at the glass and yell was overwhelming her.
What can I do? What can one person do? I can kill everything.A warm hand grasped her shoulder and squeezed.
“Calm down.” She was pulled against his side. She knew that she was no longer drenched in rain but soaked in her own sweat. “Do you see that?” Norah followed the point of his finger. She peered but was blinded to what Stryker was looking at until a laser beam shot out from his eye and led her gaze.
“I see,” she gulped. “I see something swaying in the tree. Under the tree.” A dark shade stood out with his help. “Is it someone? Stryker, we can’t leave someone behind. I can’t leave someone behind. I can’t.”
He didn’t answer her at first as he continued to watch the figure. “There’s no one left.” The shade dropped from the tree. And to her horror, moved and writhed on the wet ground.
She was lifted off her feet and placed back in her chair.
Stryker was jerking the controls and typing in code as the thing crawled closer to them. “We can’t leave them!” she screamed and moved to get up. Saroya’s very terrified face appeared within the light. “It’s Dr. Mehan...”
But the ship jerked as she struggled with her restraints and her co-worker’s face disappeared as they shot into the air.
“It’s not her anymore.”
Norah continued to thrash in her seat, her nerves split and frayed, her jaw locked and for a split-second, she thought she was going to let out a shriek that rivaled the horrible water banshees of Axone.
Stryker ignored her as her tears finally overflowed and she sobbed. She cried and fought herself and was egged on by the purple and black clouds of the giant storm that surrounded their ship and obscured their view. The shades of grey and violet melded together and blinked to a new shade with each wave of electric tears; Norah could barely focus through to see the horrific beauty of it.
She heard Stryker curse next to her as the ship rocked and vibrated around them. Her belly filled with ravenous butterflies.
Norah buried her head into her hands and rubbed off her tears. She peered through her fingers at the endless clouds; the worst part about it was the suffocating silence around her. She could hear neither the monstrous storm nor the beat of rain on the window; all she heard was the zip of the ventilation system and Stryker’s muttered curses as he fought through the storm.
When they finally broke through the barrier of clouds, the ship was able to pick up speed and ascend through the sphere of the world. The shaking of the vessel stopped and everything became an easy glide. Norah felt the tell-tale changes of gravity around her as the ship automatically accommodated them.
Stryker opened up the communications channels, a clear screen appeared before them, and sent out a missive.
“Who are you contacting?”
“Requesting coordinates for Ghost.”
Ghost?“What’s Ghost?”
“The Cyborg city that doesn’t exist,” he mumbled as he adjusted the mask over his mouth.
Norah took a deep breath, clean, luke-warm and delicious with no amount of water in it.
“I don’t understand?” she asked but found her focus on ventilated air system, having forgotten what it was like to not be within the humidity of Axone. The warm, wet hug of the alien planet would be in her nightmares for the rest of her life.
“If it can’t be found, it can’t exist. Rumors and myths don’t prove existence...just like ghosts.”
Norah glanced at him as he waved his hand over the screen, reading the diagnostics, and typing in his own overrides and controls. The universe was a big place after all; there were a lot of spots to hide a city of robots if breathing wasn’t a concern. Stryker was a Cyborg after all.
