She was feeling excited. The adventure of a lifetime, her lifetime, was getting under way.
1000 AE
Earth
i
The world returned to him bit by bit. That wasn’t bad, actually. He hadn’t expected the world to return to him at all.
First there was simply the blackness. All around him, so thorough that on some level Kitai was convinced that he was in fact dead.
Then he slowly became aware of his breathing. It seemed highly unlikely that he’d be dead if he was breathing. The slight hum of computers followed, and moments later, something even stranger: the humming of insects.
Insects? We’ve… landed?
Kitai slowly and nervously attempted to open his eyelids. It held a moment of fear for him, because if he couldn’t in fact open his eyes, he was in some sort of bizarre in-between state: not dead, not alive.
His eyes opened.
Okay, well… that’s a start.
The world around him was slanted. Not a lot; just enough to get his attention. The backs of the seats in front of him were tilted, and cords hung from the ceiling at angles.
Slowly Kitai tried to sit up. He had no luck, and it was only after a few moments of near panic that he remembered he was double harnessed into the seat. His fingers fumbled slowly with the buckles. He felt as if it took him hours to undo them, though it actually took less than a minute. Technically he was in shock, but he wasn’t capable of understanding that. He just felt unsteady and groggy.
He noticed that some of the observation ports had been broken open. Reflexively he braced himself, certain that he was going to be sucked right through the window. It was only when he saw shafts of daylight streaming through the windows that he remembered that they’d landed. Kitai was having trouble recalling various statuses. Dead, alive, dead, landed, still in space, still hurtling forward—he had to remind himself actively from one moment to the next what his personal situation was.
Tentatively, very tentatively, he started to pull off his oxygen mask. He wasn’t really thinking when he did that. It was simply an obstruction that he wanted gone from his face. He wasn’t even consciously considering what its basic purpose was.
Yet he received a very swift reminder as he gasped, finding it extremely difficult to breathe. He held the mask up, looking at it incomprehensibly, as a digital readout blinked on it: LOW OXYGEN: 15%. CAUTION.
This was all Kitai required to jog his memory, to make him remember that he needed to keep the mask on his face. Quickly he fastened it back into position and sat there a few more moments, gratefully breathing in lungfuls of air. Right. Air mask. Need the air mask. Remember that. Once he was certain that he liked the positioning of the mask, he clambered out of the tilted seat and moved into the aisle.
His first confrontation with mortality came a few seconds later, when he saw a body tangled between seats. It was twisted and contorted in a position that left no question in Kitai’s mind that he was looking at a corpse. Yet still he could not take his eyes off him. After a moment, he realized who it was: the Ranger who had placed the oxygen mask on him.
Now he was dead. First alive, then dead.
Kitai’s eyes were huge and terrified. There was no reason for him to worry about repressing his reactions because there was no one there to see them.
Dad… have to find Dad…
Slowly, tentatively, he started moving up the aisle. There was another body to his left, crushed under a section of the ship. He ignored it. If he just stopped and stared at every dead body he spotted, he might simply collapse and let the gravity of his situation immobilize him. He was faced with the reality that he might do well to lie down and die himself just because he had no business being alive. But on the off chance that his father was somewhere in this disaster, waiting for his help, Kitai was not going to deal with the situation by lying down and collapsing.
He made his way down the hallway until he got to a section that led to the cockpit. The door was sealed shut. All around him was debris from different sections of the ship. It had been tossed around enough in space for everything within to come apart and scatter itself throughout the vessel. And that was without looking outside to see where the rest of the ship had scattered.
It was only at that point that Kitai had an awful realization.
The Ursa. Its pod had been one of the things that had struck the planet’s surface. The chances were that the creature inside it had not survived.
But what if it had…?
As quickly as he could, Kitai pushed all such concerns away. Dwelling for any period of time on such disastrous possibilities was simply not going to do him any good.
Suddenly he was startled by a loud, ear-piercing screech of noise that came from everywhere at once. A loud series of beeps echoed throughout the area. He couldn’t even begin to discern where it was coming from, until he looked behind himself and saw the air lock doors grinding together in the passenger section.
He’d gone right by that part of the ship, taking no notice of the body that was wedged into the opening. The lifeless corpse had been shoved out of the cabin, but his arm must have gotten stuck in the doors, preventing them from closing. Slowly Kitai advanced, seeing something tattooed on the man’s arm. Of all the stupid things to notice, a written word on a man’s arm was what caught Kitai’s attention.
It was the word Anna. The doors continued to try to close on it, obviously out of whack since the obstructing arm would have made them cease closing under ordinary circumstances. Since the doors were functioning improperly, they kept rolling open and closed, open and closed, trying to seal despite the arm that would not give way.
“Remove obstruction,” a computer voice began repeating. “Remove obstruction. Remove obstruction.”
Kitai continued to watch, transfixed and horrified. He felt as if he couldn’t just walk away and leave the imprisoned arm behind. But he likewise couldn’t bring himself to touch it.
Finally he hit on a compromise. Carefully, worried he might step on something or, even worse, someone else, he moved over to the arm. Slow and timidly, he extended his foot, hesitated, then sheepishly lifted the arm with his boot. He gingerly nudged it back with his foot through the door onto the other side, allowing the door to slide shut with a thud and a suction sound. Air started blowing hard through the vents, and a tinny computer voice announced, “Repressurizing complete.”
Tentatively, Kitai removed his respirator mask. This time, with an air supply around him, he was able to breathe steadily.
There was an opening in the wall that looked into an adjacent corridor. Kitai peered through it, not thinking he was going to see anything of any use.
There was another human arm there, and at first it didn’t register on Kitai as anything more than another piece of a person. That was all he thought about it until it suddenly dawned on him that its hand looked like his father’s.
Instantly Kitai rushed through the opening and lifted the first piece of debris he could get to. He was preparing himself for the vast likelihood that he was wrong, that the man who was buried under the rubble was simply another stranger.
The moment he pulled away the debris, however, he gasped aloud—and looked down at the battered body of Cypher Raige. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was at best erratic. However, the fact that he was breathing at all was a huge relief to Kitai. He felt that as long as Cypher was still alive in any way, shape, or form, he himself had a solid chance of surviving. That was, admittedly, a hugely selfish reason for being glad that his father was still alive.