Lost Planet 01 - The Lost Planet (3 page)

Don't leave the house
.

Yeah, right
, Chase thought, jumping up from the table. He headed down the hall, away from the living room and past his bedroom, until he reached a foyer with a large metal door. He yanked the door open, and a wave of heat washed past.

The sky was a strange bright yellow, casting a warm glow over the landscape. Chase stood for a moment with his eyes half closed, soaking in the warmth on his face. He tried to look around, but it was difficult to see in the blinding sunlight. A pale green lawn stretched out before him, dotted with a few gnarled trees. Beyond the lawn, all he could see was a bordering jungle of leafy plants that looked like giant blades of grass, each one as wide as a man's shoulders. He took a step to the left, planning to circle around the house.

Something shot up out of the grass forest into the sky, a large, dark shape moving at incredible speed. Chase took a wary step backward, raising his hand over his eyes as it vanished against the glare of the sunlight. Then he saw it—a scaly black creature at least twice his size, with wings spread like a fan and far too many reaching limbs. He froze, holding his breath.

It was headed straight for him.

A loud electric crackle vibrated through the air, and the creature suddenly rebounded, tumbling inexplicably backward, away from the house. Chase tasted metal, and the hair on his arms stood up. The creature fell into the grass forest and vanished, but a second later, three more leapt up into the sky.

Chase stumbled backward into the foyer, slamming the metal door shut. A siren was blaring inside the house, though he hadn't noticed when it started. He turned around to call for help and found himself face-to-face with Parker.

“What are you doing?” Parker shouted. “Are you insane? Defense, lock sequence!”

The siren cut off as the heavy
thunk
of a deadbolt falling into place sounded in the door behind Chase. His heart still hammered in his chest. “What was that?”

“You mean the Zinnjerha?” Parker ran a hand through his hair. “Good lords. If you don't know what those are, there's no way you're from Trucon. If anything,
anything
, is burned into your memory, that would be it. The whole planet is full of those underground monsters. They could rip you to shreds.”

“Why did—it couldn't get to me—”

“There's an electrified dome protecting the house,” said Parker, waving his hand in a circular motion. “But you still can't go walking around out there like bait. One or two or five can't get through, but get two hundred of them riled up and I can't promise we'll be okay. Especially with the way they've been acting lately.”

“Everyone here lives like this?” Why would anyone live on a planet where they couldn't go outside?

“No, in the cities there's a perimeter fence. But we're pretty far from any city out here.”

An image formed in Chase's mind of where they were, in a solitary house out in the middle of nowhere. On a planet he wasn't even from, apparently. “Where did you first find me yesterday?”

“Out there in the yard, setting off all the perimeter breach alarms. And, yes, the Zinnjerha were trying to break through and tear you apart.”

“How did I get there?”

Parker shook his head. “I don't know. Nobody knows. That's why Dr. Silvestri told me not to let you leave.”

Chase looked back at the door. “Could I even go anywhere if I wanted to?”

“Not really.” Parker shrugged. “Sorry. You're stuck here for now.”

Anxiety teased at Chase's stomach. Dr. Silvestri had seemed so friendly when he told Chase it was safer for him at the compound. But that wasn't the real reason he'd asked him to stay put. He was suspicious of how Chase had gotten inside.

Nobody told the truth here, it seemed.

 

CHAPTER THREE

Sitting alone in his room, Chase felt like the walls were closing in on him. After locking him in the house, Parker had once again offered to play the same dumb piloting game with him, and then stalked away when Chase turned him down. It was starting to infuriate Chase that Parker treated him like a funny houseguest and not someone with a major problem.

He reached back and tore the bandage from his head. Unable to see his wound, he pulled aside the hair that fell over it and gingerly touched the area at the base of his skull. The doctor's healing gel had done its job—the wound was already covered in a layer of smooth, tender skin.

Whatever had happened to Chase, whoever had given him this injury, the biggest question bothering him was how he had gotten to this place. Parker said nobody knew, but he could have been lying. Clearly he had no problem with dishonesty, since he'd lied to Chase about living alone.

The house was a frosted prison, surrounded by a forest of monsters. The doctor had deceived him. Mina, whoever she was, was a weirdo who'd barely spoken to him. And Parker was, well, Parker. There had to be a way to contact the outside world from this house. Even if he couldn't get out, he could try to look for help from someone.

Chase slipped out of his room and down the hall. He returned to the foyer, where a second hallway branched off, but this hall only lead to an empty dining room. Hadn't Parker said something about there being a downstairs?

When Chase walked back from the dining room, he noticed a closed door that he hadn't seen the first time. It opened onto a flight of stairs leading down.

“Hello?” He stood at the top of the stairs for a moment and descended, taking light steps. Would he be in trouble if someone caught him coming down here?

Another long hallway stretched out before Chase at the bottom of the stairs. The first door he came to was locked, as was the one after that. He didn't expect much from the third door he tried, but it swung open on a small room that held little more than a trio of video monitors and a keyboard. There were some other items in the room that he barely glanced at, wall panels and storage cabinets. He went straight to the monitors.

Maybe Parker was on to something with his semantic memory talk, because Chase navigated easily enough through the video screens, and the keyboard felt natural under his hands. He found his way to a messaging console and started looking for emergency contacts. A notification blinking on the side of the screen caught his eye:
Transmission pending.

Chase clicked on the notification, and a message popped onto the screen.

Code Maartens—immediate response required

Unknown Earthan boy, approx. 13 years, appeared within compound yesterday with blaster wound to back of head and damaged ID marker. Bypassed all level 1 and 2 defenses by no explicable means (see attached video); destruction countermeasure initiated but deactivated by P. Current status: Silvestri examining marker, boy being held pending your instruction. Threat level: uncertain.

Pending whose instruction? Who had written this message, and why were they calling him a threat? He had to scan the words
destruction countermeasure
several times before their meaning sank in. The compound's defenses would have annihilated him if this P, undoubtedly Parker, hadn't stepped in.

With a growing sense of dread, Chase opened the attachment. A video window opened, playing a recording that must have come from a security camera outside the house. It showed the pale lawn outside the compound, with the grass forest waving gently in the background.

A prone body suddenly appeared on the lawn. Was that him? How had he just shown up like that? He winced as he watched himself sit up and curl over in pain. There was a flash of black in the background, and then another: the Zinnjerha.

Parker raced across the lawn, sliding to a stop beside him, throwing his arms in large gestures. The black shapes of the bounding Zinnjerha grew in number, darkening the back of the screen. Chase saw himself speaking and then collapsing in front of Parker. After a moment of looking around in a panic and shouting, Parker hooked his hands under Chase's arms and dragged him back toward the house.

When the video clip ended, the screen went gray. Chase leaned back in the chair. So Parker had saved him. For a moment he was impressed, but he reminded himself that in bringing Chase inside, Parker had merely been protecting himself and his home.

“What are you doing here?”

Chase jumped out of the chair, heart thumping. Mina stood in the doorway with a sober and somehow menacing expression. “Who are you trying to contact?” she asked.

“What? No one, I was just—”

She took a step toward him. “Who sent you? What are you doing here?”

“No one.” Chase's voice shook as if he'd been caught stealing. “I wanted to see the video. I'm trying to figure out what happened to me.”

She advanced another step, backing Chase into a corner. “I won't hurt you if you come with me.” Her hand fell on his shoulder like an iron weight.

“Let me go!” Chase twisted out from under her hand and tried to dart past, but she sidestepped, blocking him. His panic skyrocketed and his legs felt so shaky, he wasn't sure he'd be able to run anyway.

“What's going on?” Parker appeared in the doorway, looking confused.

“Go back to your room, Parker,” said Mina. Still blocking Chase, she opened a cabinet on the wall, from which she pulled out two silver rings. She slid one on her finger and held the other out to him. “Put this on.”

“No!” Parker rushed into the room and snatched the ring from her palm. “You can't take him away! I won't let you.”

“He's becoming a threat. I'm removing him from the house.”

“I wasn't doing anything!” insisted Chase.

“You were spying on our network and interfering with our communications.” Mina took another ring from the cabinet. “Put this on and come with me.”

Parker grabbed her wrist. “Stand down, Mina. Stand down, you stupid—”

“Where are you taking me?” Chase interrupted.

“To Dr. Silvestri.”

Chase paused as a spark of hope ignited inside him. While he still didn't know how much he trusted Dr. Silvestri, he did have Chase's microchip, and possibly more answers for him by now. “Okay,” he said, holding out his hand. “I'll go with you.”

“I'm coming too,” said Parker, slipping the ring he'd taken onto his finger.

“You're staying here.” Mina's tone was flat and final.

“No!” Parker shoved her shoulder as she turned to the terminal on the desk, but she barely moved. “You can't leave me out of this.”

“It's safer if you stay here.” She entered something on the terminal, and then glanced at him. “Do I need to lock you in your room?”

Two bright red spots had risen in Parker's cheeks. “I hate you,” he spat.

Mina kept her eyes on the monitors. “Let's go, Chase. Stand on one of those.” She indicated a trio of metal disks stamped into the floor.

Stepping onto the nearest circle, Chase avoided looking at Parker, embarrassed by his outburst. He still didn't understand how Mina could act like his guardian but not be his sister. Was she some kind of teenage bodyguard? But he was too excited about the prospect of seeing Dr. Silvestri to waste any time asking about her. “How are we getting there?”

“Just stand still,” said Mina. She entered something onto a panel on the wall and held her hand against it for a moment.

“What's—” Chase began to ask, and then the entire room faded out.

A horrible, icy sensation rushed over Chase, as if every nerve in his body had gone dead. He would have shouted had he not been utterly paralyzed. A moment later, the numb feeling passed and he buckled to one knee with a cry. A pinging sound came from the ground below him. He opened his eyes to see that his ring had slipped off and fallen to the asphalt.

They were standing on a city street, in what looked like an abandoned warehouse district. Mina looked down at him. “Are you okay?”

“That felt awful! What was that?” He picked up the ring and rubbed his arms, his skin still crawling.

Mina arched an eyebrow as she helped him to his feet. “Teleportation. It's not supposed to feel like anything.”

“You didn't feel it?”

“Of course not.”

As Chase looked around, adjusting to the new location, he realized that this must have been how he'd appeared so suddenly on Parker's lawn—he'd teleported. Tall, dilapidated buildings surrounded them, and there were no other people or vehicles anywhere in sight. The sky overhead had faded to a grayish violet color, the white disk of one sun lingering near the horizon.

“Where are we? I thought you said we were going to the doctor's,” he said, trying to hand the teleport ring back to Mina.

“No, keep the ring on, we might need to leave quickly.” Mina glanced around. “The doctor has an anti-inport device installed at his home. No one leaves their home open for anybody to teleport into without a return ring. It's the same as leaving your doors unlocked.”

“He lives around here?” The desolate neighborhood didn't look like the kind of place where anyone would live.

“He has an apartment above his lab.” Mina rushed down the street, glancing at the tops of the buildings like she was looking for snipers.

“Is this place dangerous?”

“This is an abandoned district. There's no perimeter fence here. Normally when the sun is setting, the Zinnjerha are no danger because they go underground at night. But they've been acting against their nature for the past two weeks. Keep moving.”

After a minute they stopped in front of the boarded-up window of a dilapidated building. Like many of the others, it was decorated with a patchy mosaic of rust and spray-painted symbols.

“Dr. Silvestri, will you let us up?” Mina asked the solid wall. Chase gave her a dubious look, but moments later a segment of wall swung inward like a door. Ahead of them was a dark stairway leading up. The air inside had a sharp chemical tang.