Kate
Pious’s fist never lands.
Instead, the garden disappears, and the concrete landscape of a city spreads out above me. I clamber to stand as the world spins violently around me. Sunlight streaks through, in between tall skyscrapers, throwing shadows along the sidewalk. I’m back in New York.
I rub at my eyes to clear my blurry vision.
People hurry down the streets. Rusted yellow taxis zip alongside buses and cyclists.
I’m home?
I breathe in deeply and reach out to lay my palms flat across the nearest building. The air is filled with food cart scents and urine. It’s terribly disgusting, yet at the same time, it’s the best smell in the world because it’s home. “Yes!” I shout to the busy street, pumping my fist in the air. “Woohoo!”
A woman rushes past me, dragging a young child behind her who’s wearing a school uniform. They must be late. The kid is crying, tears and snot streak down her face. A face riddled with blisters and pus-filled boils. The mother’s is as well.
Three men barrel past me next, each of them wearing a surgical mask over their mouths and noses. But it seems too late. All three have red angry pockmarks dotting their forehead and their hair has completely fallen out.
I leap back away from them and bump into a man dressed all in black. “Female,” he greets.
I spin around wildly, hands up ready to defend myself.
“I took the liberty to show myself in a more familiar and calming human form for you.” It’s Pious, in the body of my ex-boyfriend, Jason Moorings.
I gulp back a scream.
“I gathered from your memories you have a fondness for this being,” he says, gesturing toward himself.
“Are you crazy? Where are we?” I say, backing away from him. “Is this really New York? Am I on Earth or am I still on that fucking ship? Help! Somebody, help me!” I scream at the top of my lungs. Not one person on the street stops, they don’t even look in my direction.
Oh my God, I’m still on the Caelum’s ship. Another woman hurries past, red sores festering all over her face. She’s coughing loudly into her sleeve. I reach out to grab the edge of her coat, maybe tap her on the shoulder to get her attention, but she doesn’t seem to feel me.
Pious, in Jason’s body, smiles at me wickedly.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I whisper.
Pious-Jason takes a step forward, I take a step back. “The longer I keep your mind with me, the better chance I have to pinpoint your exact location.” He chuckles eerily and clasps his hands in front of him. It’s off-putting seeing Jason make those motions and speak in such a deep raspy voice.
“So, none of this is real?” I ask.
“Oh, it is,” he says, looking up around us at the building. “It’s our recorded documentation of the outbreak of the virus strain that became so easily transmissible between humans it caused a worldwide pandemic.”
“I think this is all bullshit. I think you’re showing me only what you want me to see just like you did to the Caelum to make them believe I killed Rune.” I shake my head and back away farther. I’m not staying here to talk to this asshole anymore. “And I live in the 21stcentury, we have antibiotics and medicine and—”
“There was no antibiotic treatment made for the new virus strain, it spread too far and too fast.”
“Yeah, butyourpeople had enough time to build a spacecraft and save yourselves, right?”
Pious explodes into a fit of menacing laughter. “Who do you think created the virus, female?”
Every cell in my body stills and begins to tingle.The Caelum created the virus?
“We were at war and biochemical weapons were what the world used.”
I bolt and run down the street, my pulse roaring in my ears. There has to be a way to get Tore and Rune’s attention to get me out of this armor. If my mind stays with him, he can find me. Me and Rune and the others. I can’t let him do that.
I won’t let him.
Stores and restaurants sit on both sides of the street, each with boarded-up windows and dark interiors. Strange traffic lights pulse and direct speeding cars. By the odd shape of the vehicles, I think I might be in 2056. Ducking into an alley, I rush through the open door of a building. The lighting is dim inside, but there’s just enough of it to see the bodies on the floor, lying lifeless and decomposing.
