“Ellis?” I say. “I’m so sorry.”
“Please don’t. Not now. I can’t. Right now all I can do is focus on keeping us alive. We need to get to the spaceships.”
Like so many times before, I’m wrapped in Ellis’s arms. I’m not sure if it was his fall or the death of Fallon, but his pace is slower and he stops periodically to catch his breath.
“You don’t have to carry me. I can run.”
He shakes his head. “There’s no need to run. The ships should be in that building.” He points to a stone structure about two hundred feet away.
We walk quickly, constantly checking to see if we have been discovered. Finally we arrive at the building and rush inside, setting off the alarms.
We stand rooted to the ground as if some invisible tether is holding us fixed to the floor. The siren wails so loudly that my brain shakes and my ears throb. Ellis rushes to a wall, and the blaring stops.
It’s a large warehouse holding several spaceships of different sizes. A couple resemble the ship we had been in. Ellis rushes to a bigger ship. It looks like an airplane, with its rounded nose and wings on the sides. He opens a compartment beneath one of the wings.
“We haven’t got much time. We need to load the capsule with as many supplies as we can.”
There’s a line of wide lockers at one end of the building. Ellis yanks open the doors and tosses me package after package, which I fill the compartment with.
“You get on the ship, and I will release the controls,” he says.
“Wait. You’re not coming?”
“Of course I’m coming. Well, if you want me to.”
“I do.”
He smiles wistfully. “Here, take these and get on.” He hands me a box of syringes.
“What’s this for?”
“It’s nuveau flureans. I grabbed all I could find. There’s not much, but it’ll have to do.”
The meaning of his words sinks in. I can’t let him do this. “You have no way of knowing how your body will react to living on Earth in the long run. Do you? You need this stuff to survive,” I say. “There are only a few syringes. We have to stay here.”
“It’s not safe here. There’s too much upheaval. The whole planet could be flooded with molten rock,” Ellis says.
“They might be able to stop it. Fallon said Lucas had a team working on it.”
Ellis shakes his head. “Many have abandoned Lucas. They’re no longer confident he can lead the planet to recovery. We knew this would happen if we failed our mission. And now with the impending volcanoes, I can’t take any chances of you getting hurt. Plus we can save those women if we go back.”
Then I remember. “The embryos? What about them?”
His body sags, as if the answer is too heavy bear. “I don’t know when, or if, they can ever come back to Istriya.”
The thought of going back to the basement of the workshop and seeing all of it makes me sick. But I can’t let all those women die, just like I can’t let Ellis die.
“So send me back alone. You can’t survive on Earth without those flureans. I’ll figure a way to help those women.”
Saying the words tears my heart apart. To live without Ellis? But I don’t want him to risk his life for me again. I can’t bear the thought of watching him die because he came back to Earth for me.
Ellis pulls me into his arms and lifts my chin. “If going back with you means my life is shortened by ten, fifteen, twenty years, I don’t care. If I die tomorrow, I don’t care, as long as I get to spend every moment up to my last breath with you.”
Ellis grabs my waist and hoists me into the spaceship. Once I’m sitting down, he adjusts my straps, and then he injects me with some more of the flureans. As I watch him fiddle with his straps, I worry about how his body will cope with living on Earth. Maybe it will be okay. It has to be okay.
“Kalli, there’s one more thing. Lucas was adamant that no one on Earth be harmed. Even if it meant our identity was discovered. But there are others in the Council who hold different views. And if one of them replaces him, well, it would be best if no one knew we escaped. It would be best if they thought we either perished when the chamber exploded or died trying to escape.”
“Ellis?” My voice is small.
In the minimal light I can see his face, ashen and tense. I squeeze his hand, prodding him to speak to me.
“No one can know we left the planet alive. I’ve set up explosives that are timed to go off so that we can escape unnoticed.”
“What are you talking about? This is a huge ship. Of course people will see it.” And then the realization sends me reeling. “If they know I escaped, they’ll come after me. They’ll go to my house. They’ll find Navi!”
Ellis flicks switches, and the ship roars to life.
“I won’t let that happen,” he assures me. “The explosion will be huge. The smoke and flames will completely conceal the ship.”
“How? What can you blow up that is so big?”
Ellis rests his arm on one of the levers. “I’m going to blow up the entire building. It’s the only way.” Ellis’s hands frame my face.
“But if there isn’t enough smoke to hide us?” I ask.
“Then we don’t go.”
I nod. He pulls what looks like a tiny silver phone from his pocket. He leans in and kisses me gently on my lips. And then he presses a series of buttons on the phone.
“The explosives are set to detonate in ten seconds. As soon as the first explosion starts, we take off.”
I press back into my chair, one hand clenched around the armrest the other wrapped around Ellis’s hand. I shut my eyes but immediately open them as the first blast tears up the building, and our ship bursts into the sky.
The world is black. I can’t see anything outside of the ship.
“Ellis, how can you fly this thing if you can’t see?”
“Hang on, Kalli. We need the smoke to shield our escape. I’m just going straight up.”
He pulls his hand from mine and grips the steering wheel.
“Was it enough? Will it hide us?” My voice is urgent.
Before he can answer, the ship is propelled even farther up by another explosion and then another and another. The sound vibrates against my bones. Smoke and flames lash out from all sides. The ship will be transformed into an oven. My fingers dig deep into the arms of the chair.
“It’s okay, Kalli. We’re still okay,” Ellis shouts, over the roar of the flames lapping up the ship. “Almost there. Almost there,” he repeats, just as we break through the wall of thick black smoke.
The change is instantaneous, reinforcing the fact that we’re traveling at an unbelievable speed. We’re surrounded in a beautiful purple haze.
“Ah,” Ellis breathes and sits back into his chair. “You okay?”
“I think so. You?”
“I think so.”
As the ship takes us back to Earth, I close my eyes. I allow myself to play out my happily ever after. A life where I am safe. A life where there is love. A life where there’s still hope for me. And I hold on to that as tightly as I hold on to Ellis’s hand.
What lies ahead is full of uncertainties. But at least we’re alive. That, in itself, is a miracle. We’ll find our way.