CHAPTER FOUR

Chase stumbled backward through the tall stalks, his heart galloping in his chest. The grass grew so thick that he couldn’t see more than a few feet. “Mina?” he called in a shaky voice. No one answered. She wouldn’t have sent him here on purpose. Had the teleport failed?

Suddenly he lost his footing and went sprawling down, slicing his arms on the sharp edges of the grass. His left foot had slid into a wide, deep hole. He yanked it out in a panic, scuttling away on his hands and feet.

An ominous whirring sound echoed up from the hole. A moment later a pair of scaly black limbs reached out, followed by the dark, angular head of a Zinnjerha. Its protruding, glittery eyes swiveled toward him, and it clicked the curved pincers jutting from its mouth.

As the dark creature emerged from its tunnel, Chase sat paralyzed with terror. RUN! his mind screamed, but his legs were two dead weights. The Zinnjerha tilted its head and started toward him.

Chase finally forced his legs into action, scrambling backward until he could jump to his feet. The creature clicked, closing the distance between them in two long strides. More clicking cut through the air, coming from every direction. Another Zinnjerha pushed through the grass, and then a third.

Chase backed through the jungle of plants, not daring to turn and run. One of the creatures lunged forward, its scaly limbs raking against his skin as it knocked him to the ground. Then it pounced.

Struggling against a dark tangle of slashing limbs, Chase couldn’t even draw breath to scream. There was no way to escape. At least death didn’t hurt—his body just felt numb.

Like a shot from a cannon, something slammed into the Zinnjerha, tearing them away from Chase. It was too dark, things moved too quickly to see who his rescuer was. Strong arms swept him up in a tight hug, and they took off through the grass.

They burst onto the lawn of the Kaplan compound, crashing through the front door a second later. Long hair swept across Chase’s face as his rescuer turned and kicked the door shut behind them. A series of thuds landed against the outside.

Chase stared in bewilderment as Mina set him on the foyer floor. With swift, determined movements she tore off his shirt and scanned him from head to toe. Her expression slowly changed to puzzlement. Her face and arms were covered in deep cuts, but there was something strange about them. Why wasn’t there any blood?

More thuds rained against the door, joined by skittering noises on the roof.

“Defense, perimeter breach!” Mina shouted, jumping to her feet.

A deep, loud hum filled the air, with a resonance that sounded like it was coming from the bottom of the house. Wincing, Chase clapped his hands over his ears as it grew to a deafening pitch. When it finally wound back down again, all the other noises from outside had stopped as well.

Parker stood in the hallway, pale and wide-eyed. “What on Taras happened?”

Chase gaped up at him from the floor, too dazed to do anything but stare. The whole event had lasted less than a minute, but reality spun around him as if he were sitting in the eye of a tornado.

Mina cracked the door open and looked outside. “The teleport failed.”

“What?” A sharp note of fear came into Parker’s voice.

“It placed him outside the compound. I had to temporarily shut down the dome so I could run out and get him.”

“But the Zinnjerha—”

Mina closed the door and nodded curtly. “They were out.” She rubbed one of her slashed arms. “This is all ruined.” With a loud rip, she tore the skin right from her forearm and tossed it to the floor.

Chase shouted in horror and pedaled his feet to push himself away from the flap of skin.

“Good lords, relax!” Parker barked. “She’s an android. A robot. Are you really that dumb?”

The harsh words stung, but any embarrassment Chase might have felt was eclipsed by the sight of Mina’s arm. Instead of muscle and bone, what lay underneath was a gleaming metal limb. She wasn’t human. Finally, a few things were starting to make sense.

He looked up at Mina’s pretty face, now disfigured by the savage gashes on her cheeks and forehead. “Your skin…”

“It’s just bio-molding,” she said with a dismissive flick. “I can fix it.” She crouched down in front of Chase and examined him with a frown. “You were as good as dead out there, and yet you don’t have a single scratch.”

“Are you kidding me?” Parker stepped closer to look at Chase.

“Parker, go to your room,” said Mina, but he ignored her and she made no move to make him leave.

Chase looked at his arms and frowned. She was right—there wasn’t a mark anywhere on him. But there was no way those creatures hadn’t cut him up. He’d felt their sharp claws slashing at his arms when he tried to fend them off. “I don’t understand…,” he mumbled.

“You must be the luckiest kid alive, Chase.” Parker laughed and held out a hand. Chase returned the grin shakily as he let Parker pull him to his feet.

A cold metal hand closed on his arm. Chase turned to Mina, his mouth open in surprise. He could tell by her grip that the gesture wasn’t meant to comfort. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m going to have to lock you in your room.”

“What? Why? Dr. Silvestri said I wasn’t a threat.”

“No,” snapped Parker. “Come on, Mina. This is ridiculous.”

“It’s not personal, Chase. But both the teleport malfunction and your unharmed condition are unexplained anomalies. Your actions continue to create too many red-flag factors, and I can’t identify you as anything but a threat.”

“But what happened wasn’t my fault! Dr. Silvestri told you to protect me.”

Mina nodded. “I am. But my primary directive is to protect Parker, and the only way for me to perform both of these tasks is to separate you and lock you in your room.”

Her hand tightened on his arm, and Chase knew there was no use in arguing further with her programmed logic. He dropped his head and nodded. As Mina led him down the hall to his room with Parker’s angry protests behind them, he couldn’t help but feel like a guilty prisoner. But I didn’t do anything wrong! cried a voice in the back of his mind.

After the snick of the lock confirmed that he wasn’t going anywhere, Chase sat on his bed. He examined his left arm, whole and unblemished. It was strange—he really had felt a sting when those blades of grass sliced into his arms as he fell, and when the Zinnjerha were slashing at him. He told himself he must have imagined it. Parker was right, he had some kind of wild luck. Except for the whole amnesia thing, of course.

He lay back and stared at the ceiling for some time, reliving the attack over and over. Eventually the adrenaline began to wear off, and only weariness remained. He closed his eyes, visualizing the grass forest again, but this time his drowsy mind filled the forest with blank faces hiding between the blades. Sleep came like a tidal wave, crashing over and pulling him under.

*   *   *

Chase awoke with a jump. His windowless room was pitch-dark, but he sensed he wasn’t alone.

“Sorry, that was me,” came Parker’s whispered voice. “Hold on.”

The overhead light flicked on and Chase winced, squinting in the brightness. “What are you doing here? I’m supposed to be locked in. I’m a threat to you.”

Parker snorted. “Right. You’re so threatening. Come on, get up. I’ve come to spring you from prison.”

“Are you crazy? Mina’s not going to let me go anywhere.”

“True. But Mina’s not here.” Parker waggled his eyebrows. “She had to make a run to some warehouse on the other side of the planet, something to do with fixing her bio-molding.”

“Isn’t she supposed to be here protecting you?”

“Yeah, but Asa’s got her running his affairs on this planet too, so she leaves all the time. If anything were to happen, she’d be able to find me anyway—I’ve got an ID microchip kind of like the one Dr. Silvestri found in you. Only mine’s got a tracker so that she can find me anywhere.” Parker made a wry face. “Lucky me, I’ll never be able to get rid of her.”

Watching Parker’s goofy expression, Chase considered whether to tell him what he’d learned, how similar their microchips actually were. The eye contact lasted a moment too long, and Parker frowned.

“What?”

Chase redirected his gaze to the floor. A cautious part of him wasn’t ready to share this information yet. “Nothing.” He took a deep breath and realized that he felt pretty well rested. How long had he slept? “What time is it?”

Parker sighed. “It’s leaving-the-house time. Are you coming with me, or did I just spend ten minutes breaking the code on your lock for nothing?”

“Go where?”

“We can go to Rother City. It’s the only real city on Trucon. We’ll grab some breakfast and look around. Maybe we can find something that’ll jog your memory.”

“Won’t Mina just find you and bring us back?”

“She always does.”

“And then I’ll get in trouble.”

Parker made a face. “She’s an android. How much trouble do you think you can get into?”

“Uh, for starters she can lock me back in this room.”

“Which she will,” said Parker with a shrug. “But this is your one chance to escape for a little while and do some searching of your own. Do you really want to stay locked in here for the next week?”

It was a simple enough decision. Mina and Dr. Silvestri weren’t going anywhere—he’d still have the chance to learn what his connection to Asa Kaplan was when the time came. Besides, Mina wouldn’t even be able to contact Asa for at least another day, and this would give Chase a chance to ask Parker what he knew about his mysterious guardian. He was willing to live with a little scolding for the possibility of unlocking even a tiny portion of his memory.

Chase threw off the covers and jumped out of bed. “Wait. Are we going to have to teleport?”

“Never. I’ve got a much better plan. Now put on something besides those dumb pajamas and meet me in the hall.”

Digging up some jeans and a clean shirt from a closet Parker pointed out, Chase dressed quickly, a small smile on his face. He couldn’t believe that Parker had reached out to help him. At last he’d realized that Chase needed something more than virtual piloting games.

Parker was waiting for him in the foyer, and Chase followed him downstairs, where at the end of the hall they came to a bright, cavernous chamber at least three times the size of the living room. In the middle of the chamber, a long silver rectangle of a machine rested on squat metal legs. A row of nozzles lined each side of the craft, and the end facing them was made up almost entirely of a wide, reflective window.

“Ever seen one of these babies?” Parker asked, smacking the shiny metal.

“Um…” Chase wasn’t sure how to answer that. Of course not? Probably?

“It’s a Pentagalactic Starjumper, elite class.” Parker pulled a slim metal card from within his jacket with a triumphant flourish.

Chase took in every detail of the vehicle, from the outlines of different access panels that covered its long sides, to the small yellow sign marked Cargo Egress above a door near the back. Everything about the Starjumper felt completely foreign to him. “You’re allowed to take it out?”

“He who hacks the drivekey has the right to pilot.” Parker pushed the card into a slot on the side of the vehicle, and an adjacent door popped free with a hiss and slid open.

“Do you know how?”

In response, Parker rolled his eyes before jumping up into the vehicle.

By the time Chase climbed inside, Parker was already in the pilot’s seat. His fingers flew over a glowing console screen under the window, scrolling through lists and moving different information windows across the screen. The door slid closed.

“Door is closed,” a neutral voice confirmed.

“Ugh,” muttered Parker. “Why does she always leave the operational voice on?”

“Accessing CFC. CFC online,” said the voice.

“CFC?” asked Chase.

“Coordinated Flight Channels,” said Parker as he typed on the console. “It’s the planet’s central navigating system. You type in where you want to go, and the CFC slots you into the traffic streams and takes you there.” He flicked through a few windows before leaning back in his seat, and looked over, his eyes dancing. “Are you ready? Lords, this is awesome. I’ve been wanting to do this for ages.”

“Plotting course,” said the neutral voice. “Preparing to exit defense dome.”

Chase squinted as a bright shaft of light hit his eyes. Sunlight streamed in from a gap as the ceiling rolled away, slowly expanding until all they could see was the pale yellow of an early morning sky. Without Parker touching anything, the vehicle rose up, gliding out of the chamber and above the gray structures of the compound. Beyond it, the grass forest spread out in green waves. A single Zinnjerha leapt out and ricocheted off the defense dome. As they flew farther away, the vegetation tapered off into a rocky desert that stretched on as far as he could see.

Chase squinted at the horizon, wondering when the city would come into view, when the cruiser accelerated upward, pulling away from the terrain. He gripped the edge of the console and held his breath. It was still better than teleporting.

“Extraplanetary launch point in thirty seconds,” said the console voice.

“Launch point?” A spike of adrenaline shot through Chase as he looked at the jumble of information on the console. “Where are we going? I thought you said we were going to the city?”

Parker’s mouth curled up in a sly grin. “It’s … a city.”

“In five, four, three, two…”

With a sharp turn, the Starjumper rocketed straight up away from the ground. Through half-closed eyes, Chase could see only ochre-hued sky in front of them. His stomach flattened against his spine.

“I’m gonna be sick,” he groaned.

“No way!” said Parker. “This is the best part.” He looked down at the console. “About twenty more seconds until we leave the macrosphere.”

“What?”

“Just watch.”

Chase tried to lean forward, but the force of their flight pushed him back into his seat.

“Initializing gravity generator,” the neutral voice informed them. A moment later, although they were still flying straight up, the gravity inside the vehicle shifted to the floor. Chase lifted his arm, amazed—it felt no different from when they’d been sitting inside the vehicle at Parker’s home. Outside the windows, the sky darkened quickly into black space.

“Awesome,” breathed Parker. “We’ve got about fifteen minutes to go, so you can chill out for a while.”

“Fifteen minutes until what?” Chase asked. It irritated him that Parker had lied about their destination, but this was nothing compared with the anxiety that had begun to gnaw at his stomach. He had no idea how far from Trucon they were going—or if Mina could follow Parker’s microchip this far, in case something happened. “Where are you taking me?”

Parker leaned back in his seat and smiled, saying nothing.