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Mom had the gift of seeing the Monsters before they could show up. She was more amazing than I thought. She was a Monster killer and wielded a superpower unlike anyone else. No wonder she survived the journey from Old Earth to New Earth, the attacks by the Raiders, and even the years afterwards. A strong woman like Mom was what the Monsters were afraid of. And since Mom had the ability to see them and predict where they would be, she would be able to give humanity the upper hand in the war against them.
Did that mean I would have that gift as well? Why did the Monsters wanted to destroy me even before I was born? What was my purpose? Was I a threat to them? I took a sip of my coffee and looked down at the tablet Will had given me. A light was blinking in the Engine Room. I got up from my comfortable chair, the very chair my father Commander Thomas had sat on to commander Red Genesis to New Earth.
The red blinking light was flashing in quick intervals like a pulse, warning me that whatever it was would be severe.
“Engine Room,” I commanded. “Give me an Assessment.”
A cool professional male’s voice came on over the tablet. “Unusual activity in the Engine Room.”
“Engine Room,” I commanded. “What is the unusual activity?”
“Engine Room acknowledged command. Assessing the situation,” the male voice said.
After a beat, I asked again, “Engine Room, give me full assessment.”
I was already in the elevator headed down towards the Engine Room. Soon I would be right there, even before I received the assessment. In the elevator, I suddenly felt my heart beat grow faster and faster. As though my body had taken on a fight or flight position.
By instinct, I was reaching for the staff I had found in Commander Thomas’ room. One thing I did find of value that was wedged underneath some boards in the closet. It was Dad’s staff...the very one that he had used to fight off the Monsters years ago.
I didn’t need the computer to tell me something was wrong in the Engine Room. My instincts told me to be ready. For. When.
The elevator came to a stop, and the door opened.
That was when I saw the hideous faces floating in the dark black cloud in front of me in the Engine Room. Hundreds of them floating and entwined together like vines on a floating black tree. Faces contorted in fear and terror.
If I was just a human, this would be when I would instantly freeze up in terror that was so great that my heart would reach an uncontrollable and dangerous level of pressure. Enough to kill me, like all the victims of the Monsters. I would have already been dead, not staring into the black cloud of contorted screaming faces.
But I wasn’t like most humans. I didn’t see the Monsters with a human eye but with a spiritual eye, like Mother’s. Strong enough to tell me something is there, but faint enough like a feather’s touch to not affect me physically. Hence no instant heart attack or explosion.
I raised my staff and brought it down on the Monster, shouting, as I remembered my mother shouting in her journal as she struck down the Monsters, “In my father’s name, be gone!”
I struck the Monsters again and again as I made my way out of the elevator, determined not to be trapped inside a closed off space like it. I needed to find a more open space. “Be gone!” I yelled, jumping up to strike the Monster on the top.
“You, the human child of the Commander and Chief Engineer,” the Monster said in a scratchy witch-like voice. “You came back to the graveyard of the first travelers. You came back to die with them and remain on this ghostly ship forever.”
“No!” I shouted.
But the image of all those humans who had perished on the Red Genesis on the way to New Earth and then after by the hands of the human Raiders, also flashed through my mind. I saw all of them standing before me, faces grim as in judgement. “You brought this to us!” they exclaimed. “They would not have appeared on Red Genesis, if you had never been conceived.”
I saw the image of Monsters sweeping through Red Genesis, killing the passengers one by one and collecting their souls. “No!” I shouted. I swung my staff around, almost blindly, sending light from the staff’s tip, all over the Engine Room.
Upon one sweep of my staff, my eyes caught something shiny, glinting at me through the dark. I raised my staff to hold back the Monster from touching me before I made the leap to snatch the object from one of the rafters.
When I had it in my hand and brought it close up to the light on the staff’s tip, I recognized it as being the cross necklace my mother wore when she fought against the Monsters. So she had lost it. That was why she never mentioned it to me.
I wound the necklace around my wrist and then my knuckles.
She may have lost it, but I found it. Just in time, too.
Another monster had appeared to join with the first. Again it was only with my mind’s eye that I could see it. “Are you afraid, Future Child?” it asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m not at all. In fact, you should all be afraid of me.” I slammed my fist with the necklace straight into the black mass. “In my father’s name, be gone!”
The mass broke apart, screeching and screaming as it dissolved into nothing. Without warning, I rammed my fist into the second mass, telling it to go back to hell and to stay there in my father’s name.
The second mass dissolved into nothingness with as much screeching and screaming as the first.
Finally, after clearing out any traces of Monsters from the Engine Room, I found the source of the blinking red alarm light. The fuel gauge.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. I could feel a bit of a panic rising within me. But I knew if I let it control me, the Monsters would sense fear in mind and be all over me.
I took a deep breath and said, “So what if we only have fuel for less than one month when we have six more months to go before we land on Old Earth.”
Instead of feeling fear, I chose to laugh. I couldn’t believe the ridiculousness of it all. The irony of making it this far just to die in space because we didn’t have enough fuel.
I sat down on the steel floor of the Engine Room and laughed and laughed until I had tears rolling down my cheeks.
It couldn’t end like this. No, it just couldn’t.