Being in Dr. Chatterjee’s biology classroom made me sad now. Maybe because of how much I’d loved it back when things were normal. Once his MS progressed, forcing him to hang up the stethoscope and take up a dry-erase marker, he’d needed a helper in his classroom. Someone to input grades, erase the board, sharpen pencils—all the fine-motor-coordination stuff that was increasingly tricky for him. He usually chose me.
I never took to math or history—but biology? It was one of my favorite classes, right there with English. Darwinism, meiosis and mitosis, parasites and hosts—I ate all that up. Maybe that made me a nerd, but I didn’t really care. Patrick had once told me that I seemed more at home inside books than outside of them. Until recently I hadn’t understood that he’d meant it as a compliment. It was useful now, what I’d learned. But for some reason that made it less beautiful to me.
When I was contemplating spores eating their way through my aunt’s and uncle’s brains or how my chromosomal base pairs had been altered or the fact that a whole race of aliens wanted to kill me … well, it took the fun out of all that old-fashioned learning.
Dr. Chatterjee sat behind his desk now. A thin film of dust covered the blotter, the rubber DNA model, the out-box still filled with the last round of graded papers. Janie Woodrow, who used to sit next to me, had gotten an A-minus on her report about Cartesian divers. Janie’s overbearing single mother, who didn’t countenance imperfection, would have had a stern talk with her about that minus.
I used to give Janie a hard time about her Japanese pens and her impeccable flash-card system. Even the rubber bands around the index cards had been color-coded. The last time I’d seen her had been the night of the Dusting. Don Braaten had pinned her to the middle of the road in town square. His knee in her back, his hands winding duct tape around her wrists. He’d been wearing overalls still stained with blood from the slaughterhouse, and I could see straight through his eyeholes. Her cheek had been mashed into the yellow dotted line. I was too far away to see if she’d been crying, but I’d known Janie Woodrow to cry at a lot less.
It’s probably not such a mystery why I didn’t like being in Dr. Chatterjee’s classroom anymore.
“How ’bout you, Chance?” Chatterjee said.
I’d zoned out.
“Huh?” I said.
Chatterjee glanced at me through his round wire-frame glasses. He’d been sitting cocked back with the Rebel’s helmet in his hand, contemplating it like Hamlet with the skull. Or had that been the other guy, the gravedigger?
Patrick, Alex, Eve, and I sat in the front row.
Back in the auditorium, we’d filled in the others on the big-picture stuff, from the Hatchlings to the march to Stark Peak. The news had drawn the usual reactions. Disbelief, tears, a few nervous breakdowns. But when it came to all that business about me and Patrick saving the world, we’d decided to heed the Rebel’s advice and keep it to ourselves. This discussion was only for behind a closed and locked door.
“I said, what do you think the Drones are beneath the armor?” Chatterjee was a few days unshaven, his beard coming in salt and pepper. “Just swirling DNA?”
“Yeah,” I said. “In a gas state.”
He hefted the helmet and stared in the face mask. “So the suit must replicate gravity conditions on their home planet. If, say, they evolved to live in metallic hydrogen as on Jupiter or Saturn, then in the massively lower gravity field of Earth, they’d be unable to maintain a solid state.” His faint singsong accent gave his voice a pleasing ring. “It’s a very clever system, isn’t it?”
“That’s one word for it,” Alex said.
But Chatterjee was undeterred. “First they send spores that make the indigenous life-forms do the heavy lifting and pave the way for their arrival. They design their suits to mimic the dominant life-form here. Us. Then they use the nourishing, healthy tissue and hormones of our young to grow their own next generation. Their offspring come out adapted to the host atmosphere.” He removed his spectacles and polished them on the lapel of his shirt. “Which means they don’t need us anymore.”
“Except for food,” I added.
Eve blanched.
“These Hatchlings,” Chatterjee said. “They’re tridactyl humanoids?”
“What they are,” Alex said, “is horrifying.”
“We have to understand them to beat them,” Chatterjee said.
“We saw these things, Dr. Chatterjee,” Patrick said. “And with all due respect, we’re not gonna beat them with understanding.”
“How, then? All you have to go on are a Rebel’s dying words. He said his compatriots will contact you about this … mission you’re required for. But they have no way to do so.”
“That’s why we have to contact them,” I said.
Patrick and Alex looked over at me. Only then did I realize that I hadn’t discussed this plan with them. I’d thought it was self-evident. That was the problem when you were as close as we three were; I sometimes forgot that Patrick and Alex weren’t inside my stream of consciousness.
“Chance,” Chatterjee said, in a gentle, let’s-not-rile-up-the-mental-patient tone. “You have no way to contact them either.”
“Why do you think I risked my life to go back for this?” I reached across the desk and plucked the helmet from his hands.
“Wait,” Patrick said. “Sit down a second. This isn’t safe.”
“As opposed to what, Patrick?” I said.
For that he had no answer. I knew I was being cocky, but I liked the way it made Alex look at me.
“You heard Dr. Chatterjee,” Alex said. “The suit is designed to replicate their home planet’s gravitational conditions. Heavy gravity means massive pressure. That thing could pop your skull like a grape.”
“That’s just a theory,” I said, waving her off. “Besides, I saw a bunch of their screens back at the Hatch site. There are controls and stuff.”
“Labeled in English?”
“The mask translates to English, Alex. That means it probably understands it, too.”
“This is crazy, Chance,” Eve said.
“Like I said, compared to what? Marching into Stark Peak and confronting ten thousand Hatchlings? Give me an option that’s safe and sane and I’ll shut up.” I stared at them, daring anyone to speak. I shook the helmet. “Whatever answers we’re gonna get are in here.”
Before anyone could stop me, I tugged the helmet over my head. The rubbery insulation gave with a faint pop and sealed around my neck. It felt airtight in here, an underwater quiet. At first nothing happened. I stood there like an idiot with a giant Rebel helmet on my head.
I pictured what I looked like to the others. To Alex.
Major fail.
I cleared my throat. “Okay, then. I was wrong.”
At the sound of my voice, the helmet lit up. No—not the helmet. The entire world.
A vivid metallic blue that was impossible to describe because it was a shade I’d never encountered before. Everything I looked at was outlined with hundreds of lines that mapped every shape and contour—the writing on the dry-erase board, Patrick’s mouth shouting at me, a rotting apple core in the trash can. The lines sparked and fizzled, and I remembered that the software or whatever it was had been damaged in the Rebel’s crash.
I staggered around, knocking into Eve’s chair. Between the lines, the static, and the actual environment, it was hard to keep my bearings. Chatterjee’s face swept by. I felt Patrick grabbing my shoulders.
Then there was a foomp sound like a vacuum cleaner trying to suck up a baseball. The insulation around my neck tightened. The air cramped around my temples. I felt my sinuses caving in. All the bravery and confidence I’d felt moments ago evaporated.
“Controls,” I croaked.
A thousand symbols I couldn’t understand blinked to life, scrolling across my visual field. Confused, I batted at them. The clamp grew stronger. My head was going to cave in because I’d decided to show off. My vision dotted. I pictured what I would look like when they unscrewed the helmet. I’d have one of those tiny shrunken heads, the kind that witch doctors made in cartoons.
Patrick grabbed me around the waist, and Alex pulled at the helmet, her foot buried in my gut.
We fell over. Patrick took out two desks and Eve. I rolled to my knees. A roar—my surging blood—filled my head. My hands scrabbled across the face mask. My vision swam. I fought for focus.
I could hardly get my vocal cords to work, and when they did, I forced out one croaky word: “Pressure.”
All the symbols flew away except for a circular icon blinking a few feet off the middle of the face mask like the tip of a rhino horn. Sucking for breath, I smacked the virtual icon with the heel of my hand. It must’ve looked like I was giving a high five to an invisible friend.
Air hissed out vents in the sides of the helmet, thin jets of steam slicing my peripheral vision. The pressure relented. I yanked on the helmet with both hands, but still it wouldn’t give. The hissing kept on, and a moment later I could finally snatch in my first breath.
I fought the helmet off and barfed on the tile.
Eve rubbed her head. Alex untangled herself from a chair. Sprawled on the floor, Dr. Chatterjee readjusted his leg braces.
Patrick sat up. “Okay,” he said. “That went well.”