Lost Planet 01 - The Lost Planet (11 page)

“It's called a scrappy—soy-chitlin-riboflavin patty,” said Parker. He broke his own patty into quarters and folded each piece meticulously in half before cramming it in his mouth.

Chase tentatively took a bite. The texture was strange—melty smooth on the outside, unexpectedly crunchy on the inside, with a rich, almost cheesy flavor. In three bites he devoured the whole thing. He washed it all down with a huge gulp of the fizzy red drink, wincing a little at its sweet-sour taste, like raspberries soaked in vinegar, and reached for another scrappy.

Parker swallowed and grinned. “Good, right?”

Nodding vigorously, Chase took a huge bite.

“One time last year, I snuck out and went into Rother City to a Captain Orion's and bought like a hundred scrappies, and brought them back and hid them in my closet.”

“Ew. Did they get all nasty?”

Parker's face lit up. “No! That's the crazy part—they stayed exactly the same! I was eating them for a month.”

Chase laughed. “That's gross.”

“I know. They're probably really bad for you.”

“Did Mina get mad?”

Parker gave him a devilish grin. “She never found out. Her central processor almost caught fire trying to figure out how I skipped every meal for two weeks and never lost any weight.” He frowned at the scrappy in his hand. “Actually, this is the first time I've eaten one since. For a while, I couldn't even think about them without getting sick.”

Chase took a long pull on his red drink. The flavor had become strangely appealing. “Why didn't you just have your autokitchen make them for you?”

Parker made a face, shaking his head. “Synthesized food seems like a great idea. You store the basic molecules of food—proteins, fats, sodium, the like—and the machine reorganizes them in a million different ways. But after years of eating nothing but synth, you realize that everything has this same underlying bland taste like, I don't know, petroleum jelly.”

“That breakfast we had at your house was pretty good,” argued Chase.

“It's not inedible, but you can't compare that synth croissant with a real, freshly baked croissant, can you?”

Chase mentally reached for the comparison, but there was no memory of a freshly baked anything. Did that mean he'd never had one? Maybe he'd eaten a thousand croissants in his lifetime—or maybe he'd eaten nothing but animal feed from an aluminum chute. His grin faded, and he looked down at the table. “I don't know,” he said.

For a moment Parker was silent. The chatter of the café rose up around them. “Sorry.”

Chase shrugged. When he raised his eyes to meet Parker's sober gaze, he felt self-conscious, but there was no trace of pity in Parker's expression. For a moment Chase got the feeling that Parker really saw him, really understood how he felt. Then Parker picked up the rest of his scrappy and shoved the entire thing in his mouth at once, making his cheeks bulge out like twin balloons.

“Now finish your unidentified indestructible food product,” he warbled around the mouthful. “Who knows when we'll eat this well again.”

With a wan smile, Chase reached for his third scrappy when he noticed that the noise of the café had started to die down. The wall of screens had switched to a video feed showing a blond female newscaster standing like a perky sail in a sea of distraught refugees, and everyone was watching. Her voice echoed at them from all directions.

“With aid primarily provided by the Federal Fleet, refugee centers on Qesaris are processing most of the survivors of the Trucon disaster. If you're just tuning in, this is Parri Dietz reporting on the event of the millennium, a devastating and unprecedented attack on the Federal colony Trucon. With stolen military technology, the attacker used nuclear thermodetonators in the oxygen plants of Rother City to scorch the atmosphere…”

Her image was replaced by a view of Trucon from Mircona, looking peacefully blue and sandy. Everyone in the café watched in horror as a black smudge appeared on the globe, expanding and blossoming with red and orange as it moved out over the entire planet. Just as it was about to eclipse the last bit of blue ocean, the newscaster's image reappeared.

“One moment, Boris, I'm getting an update here,” she said. “Early reports indicated the involvement of the Lyolian resistance group, Karsha Ven, and now we do have a photo. The suspected mastermind of the Trucon disaster is a Lyolian pilot serving in the Federal Fleet, a Lieutenant Elmans—I'm sorry, I'm not even going to try to pronounce this one—Lieutenant E. Maurus.”

The screen changed before Chase's brain caught up, and he gasped when he saw the image that flashed across the screen: Maurus in his military gray, wearing a severe expression, his dark eyes arrogant and fierce.

“Lords!” yelled Parker. He slammed his half-eaten scrappy on the table.

“That's right, a Lyolian in the Federal Fleet—part of an experimental officer interchange program,” the newscaster continued. “Lieutenant Maurus has been serving as a pilot on the
IFF Kuyddestor.
Although we haven't received a copy of the image yet, he was photographed on Trucon shortly before the disaster, meeting with members of the Karsha Ven rebel group, where he allegedly provided them with the stolen thermodetonators.

“Although the Karsha Ven have not yet claimed responsibility for the attack, security analysts have been expecting some form of anti-Federation assault for the election of the new Lyolian president. Lieutenant Maurus is suspected to have died in the ensuing disaster. We'll have more on this story as it unfolds, Boris.”

Chase opened and closed his mouth several times, trying to find words for all the thoughts tumbling through his head. “But he's not dead.”

“No, genius, he's not.” Parker slammed his drink on the table. “Because we saved his life. We saved the life of the biggest mass murderer in history. Why did they let a Lyolian in the Fleet to begin with?”

“They said it was an experimental program—” Chase began.

“That's stupid! It's like if I ‘experimentally' invited a Zinnjerha into my house to see if it'd make a nice pet.”

“There's a slight difference between Maurus and a Zinnjerha.”

“Right, because at least I know what a Zinnjerha's intentions are from the start. Lyolians are physically the most similar to Earthans, but they're all sneaks and liars. Their planet's been in a messed-up civil war forever and the Karsha Ven are just … they're monsters. They've killed tons of innocent people. I don't even know what their goal is, other than making trouble for the Federation.”

Parker's railing on about the Karsha Ven wasn't getting them any closer to finding Mina. Chase took a sip of his drink to clear the tight feeling in his throat and rubbed his forehead. “I guess we're not going to find Maurus on his ship then, are we?”

Parker loosed a torrent of profanity. “He may think he's gotten away with Mina, but when she wakes up, she'll break his neck.” He crumpled up a wrapper and threw it at the table. “She'll come back to me.”

Chase looked back at the screens. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a tiny movement, but before he could focus on it, a sudden coldness spread in his lap. Parker's glass lay tipped over on the table, its fizzy red contents spilling everywhere. Chase leapt to his feet, wiping the liquid off his pants. “Thanks a lot!”

“I didn't touch it,” said Parker, using the tray to push the puddle of red drink onto the floor.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Whatever. Go ahead, blame me. Washrooms are over there, klutz.”

Shaking his head, Chase skirted through the tables and slipped into a small room in the back, closing the door behind him. He tried to prop his knee against a sink, but something dug into his thigh and he pulled Parker's knife from his pocket, placing it on the only available space, a shelf above the sink.

He had just splashed a handful of water onto his pants when something dropped down from above and crashed into him, knocking to the floor with a surprised shout.

Someone small—a girl—was on top of him, her tiny hands grabbing at his throat as he tried to twist out from under her. A hard, cold edge pressed against his neck.

“Stop!” she demanded in a high, thin voice. “Unless you want this to end right now.”

Chase froze. The girl, no older than ten, was perched on his chest, her skinny bare knees digging into his ribs. She wore a light blue smock—a hospital gown?—and her pale hair stuck out in a spiky halo. Violet half-moon bruises were slashed under her wide, unstable eyes.

She was holding Parker's knife to his throat.

“What are you doing?” Adrenaline snapped through his body.

She leaned forward, examining his face with a scowl. “What are you?”

“What?”

“I saw you standing next to Dornan. She didn't see your face, but I did. You're a perfect copy. Who made you?” She pressed down harder on the knife.

“I don't know what you're talking about!” he choked, pushing his cheek against the washroom floor and away from the blade's edge.

“Of course you wouldn't, not if they made you to be perfect,” she spat. “But that doesn't make you innocent. I won't be tricked into thinking you're something you're not!” The words poured out of her in a hysterical jumble. “Something you never could be! I won't let them do this! They wrecked everything! They ruined us! I won't let them use—violate my—my—”

With a savage cry she slashed the blade across his throat and plunged it into the side of his neck. Chase jerked back against the floor, and his body began to tremble. He locked eyes with the girl. She stared back, her face a mask of horrified shock.

He rolled his eyes over to look at the hilt of the knife, pressed against his skin. His neck felt numb. The girl followed his eyes, and suddenly recoiled, pulling the knife out with a start. It clattered to the floor, and she slid off his chest.

Heart pounding, Chase cupped his hands around his neck, trying to stop the blood that would be pouring out, taking his life with it. But he felt no wetness, and when he tentatively probed his skin, it was warm and whole, all his blood contained within the furiously throbbing veins.

The girl's pale eyebrows bunched together in a bewildered expression. “What are you?”

He looked up at her, dazed. “I don't know. I woke up a week ago at someone's home with no memory of anything before that. They told me my name is Chase. Do you know who I am?”

Her mouth dropped open. “If…”

“If what?”

She shook her head. “No. This is a trap. You can't be Chase!”

“Why not?”

She shook her head again.

“Why not?” he repeated impatiently.

“Because he's dead!”

It felt like someone had knocked all the wind out of his lungs. “What?”

“Chase is dead.” She looked away, her voice breaking on the words. “I saw it happen.”

The room spun and compressed, narrowing in to one tiny little point on the girl's face. He couldn't speak—every thought process had short-circuited. She glanced over her shoulder and looked back at him. Her eyes were turbulent, full of a wild mix of fear and hope and anger.

“Someone's coming. If you have any of Chase's memories, then you have to know the safe place. Please remember it, they told us so many times. Go there! Tell them I'm alive and that I'm being held by the one who led the end. Tell them to come and get me!” Her face crumpled, and for a moment she looked like nothing more than a frightened little girl.

“Tell who?” Chase grabbed her narrow shoulders. “Asa Kaplan?”

“Who? No…” She paused, and her eyes seemed to lose focus. “Guide the star!”

And then she vanished.

Chase stared in shock at the empty space where the girl had been. His hands hung in midair, holding nothing. “Come back!”

The washroom door opened and Parker's head poked inside. “Hey, are you taking a bath in here or something?” He frowned down at Chase sitting on the floor. “I'm not going to ask what you're doing down there. Get up. We need to go.”

“What? Parker, I just—”

“Shut up, I don't care. Let's go.”

Chase froze. “Is something wrong? Did they find us?”

Parker's mouth twisted up in a crooked smile. “No. But I know where we can find Maurus.”

 

CHAPTER TEN

Chase's mind spun as Parker led him back through the café. Nothing the girl had said made sense.
Perfect copy. Can't be Chase. He's dead.
Her wild eyes were burned into his mind. She'd known who he was—or at least, she knew another Chase who she believed was dead. But she was wrong about that. Wasn't she?

They stepped out onto the street, and Chase finally found his voice. “Parker. There was a girl. In the bathroom.”

“Um, what?” Parker cut him a sideways glance before starting down the sidewalk. “You were alone in the bathroom, Chase.”

“No, I wasn't. She vanished right before you opened the door.”

“Uh-huh.”

Chase rushed around Parker and stood in front of him, blocking his way. “I'm serious! She tried to stab me with your knife, but it didn't work, and then she said I was a perfect copy, and that Chase was dead.”

“Dead,” repeated Parker. He squinted at Chase, inspecting him. “And the knife ‘didn't work.' Buddy, did you fall and hit your head in there? Because this sounds crazy.”

“I'm
not
crazy! She even said ‘guide the star.'” Surely that would convince Parker she was real.

Parker gazed down the street for a moment, looking thoughtful. “Maybe you're having a weird reaction to the food.” He stepped around Chase and started walking again. “Now which way is the Shank?”

Chase grabbed at Parker's sleeve, yanking it with such force it nearly tore at the shoulder. “Will you listen to me?” he shouted. “It happened! She was really there, and then she just disappeared. I'm not making it up!”