“Jonah? Jonah, please wake up.”
My head felt like lead. My eyes were glued shut, nostrils packed with dripping snot. The inside of my mouth tasted like burning fuel and every part of my body was on fire.
“Jonah?”
A voice penetrated my clogged ears and I forced one eye open.
Shane crouched over me, his little face creased with worry, cheeks streaked with tears. When he saw me open an eye, he flung himself on top of me, crushing the breath I was still struggling to draw. With a grunt of pain and effort, I managed to lift my arms and wrap them around him. He hitched in my arms, great wet sobs rocking through him.
“I’m here,” I croaked. “I’m okay.”
Someone peeled Shane off me and pulled on my shoulders until I was sitting up. I coughed and spat, wiping my eyes and face on the long tail of my shirt. It was still damp, so I couldn’t have been out for long.
“Where have you been all this time? Where did you get those clothes?”
I looked up, eyes wobbling into focus.
Six faces looked down at me. One was Shane. Mrs. Lucien from the Delta’s kitchens was there, and Mr. Conrad, my math teacher, along with three others whose names I couldn’t recall in my fuzzy, addled state.
There was no reason to ask where I was. The smell of the livestock room flooded into my head. I had a moment to wonder if everything I’d been through was just a dream. Had I really left this ship? Escaped and found humans and birdpeople, and returned to rescue everyone? Or had I just fallen asleep here and dreamed myself a hero? Some hero. I looked down at my legs. The baggy pants Shiro had given me were held up by the belt I’d worn on the Siitsi ship. The gun was gone, of course, but everything I remembered was real enough.
Shiro. I left him out there to freeze to death. Would he wait out there for me? Find another way in? Or did he have the sense to realize I was dead the moment I hit that water, and use his remaining strength to get back to his warm shuttle after he blew up this ship? For his sake, I hoped so. He’d gotten me here and I’d botched it. Looking around the room at the puzzled faces surrounding me, I realized I might as well have never left. All my travels had accomplished nothing. We were all going to die here, in a ship full of plants bound to destroy the remains of human life on Earth.
“Help me up.”
They hauled me to my feet, and I stumbled over to the water trough. A shiver ran down my arms as I plunged my hands in, drinking deeply of the warm, tasteless water. My stomach growled.
“Do they still feed you algae?”
Shane shook his head. “You’ve been gone for days. Where did you go? Did you find the others?”
I nodded. “There’s another room like this one. A couple of days ago there were eleven people in it. By now, who knows?”
The thought of not telling them anything more crossed my mind. It wouldn’t ease their minds to know there was a rescue ship out there in orbit full of bird people that weren’t coming to rescue us. That the other Horizon ships had landed on other planets and had colonies that were thriving, or at least surviving. That although the people of the Delta were doomed, the human race lived on and still would for a while after the Botanists destroyed Earth, a planet we had assumed long gone for two hundred years.
But at least it was a story. I wouldn’t tell them about the fate that awaited those that were dragged out of here. Wouldn’t have Shane’s last days filled with nightmares of the acid at the bottom of a pitcher, the central brain of a plant ship, with vine nerves spreading all through its living hull. I hoped that none of the ones with human faces had come into this room. In the days I was gone, they must have assimilated more and more human DNA. The way they plugged themselves into the vines, the ship’s brain that led to the pitcher in the center, they must all have bits of human swirling inside them by now.
My thoughts were interrupted by the hiss of the door sliding open. Three Botanists pushed in a low cart full of multicolored squares. None of the Botanists had a face I recognized, and they didn’t bring a vat of algae that I could try to hide in.
The food was tasteless, raw crunchy bits of something they must have extruded based on the DNA from the seeds they stole from the Delta.
“Don’t eat the brown ones,” Shane advised. “They aren’t poison, but they do a number on your belly.”
Trial and error. Maybe the brown bits were made from the seeds of a pine tree. Something we could plant on a new world but couldn’t eat. I chose a handful of orange thing. Carrot. Back to my roots. I snorted at the ridiculous joke.
When the Botanists came and wheeled out the food cart, I eyed the open doorway. Three more of them stood just outside in the hallway, aiming their weapons in at us. It would be suicide to rush them.
It hardly mattered. Die now, or die later. At least I had a bit of time with Shane.
I turned to him and grabbed him, hugging him until he squealed.
“I missed you so much,” I murmured into the top of his head. “I told you I’d come back.”
He peeled my arms off and stepped back, grinning at me. “I knew you would. I told everybody you’d never leave us even if you could.”
My throat tightened. I would. I did. I swallowed hard. But I came back.
I checked his wrist, and the swelling had all gone down. It seemed like forever since he sat on the med bay table in the Delta, crying about the injury. We sat on the hard ground, and I started my tale.
“So I rode the cart into the other room and found the rest of our people.” Well, not all of them. Skip over that. “And they wheeled me out and I ran down the halls until I found our shuttle.” Skipped over quite a bit there. “They were coming, so I hid in a crate inside the other shuttle, that big one we saw when . . .”
My words were cut off by the opening of the door.
Four Botanists strode into the room. We all scrambled to our feet and stood with our backs against the far wall. I held Shane’s hand, and his shivering raced up my arm.
They walked down the row of us. All of them had guns. They weren’t here to feed us this time. They were here to feed one of us to the pitcher.
All of them looked more human than the last ones I had seen. None of them wore a recognizable face, but the shape of the heads and hands was more familiar. They were using us. Learning from our bodies. The little group stopped in front of me and reached out.
They grabbed Shane.
He screamed as they tore him from my grasp.
“No!”
I lunged forward, throwing myself at the two that were dragging my little brother. I kicked at them, knocking them away.
“Get off him!” I shouted, arms and legs flailing.
Shane stumbled away and they grabbed me, one on each limb, lifting me off the ground as I struggled. Strong arms bound my hands in front of me and threw me to the floor.
Shane made a dive, but they pushed him away.
“No, Shane, don’t!” I cried. “You can’t—”
One of the Botanists cracked me in the head with the butt of his weapon. The white ceiling swirled around me as they dragged me from the room, the screams of my brother cutting off with a hiss as the door snapped closed behind us.