Chapter 2

Paige

M y head is splitting apart. Nausea rolls my belly into knots before I even realize I’m awake.

The sensors are quiet. No more alarms echo through the ship.

I feel a soft touch on the right side of my face and I wince.

“Sorry,” Nicole says softly.

I struggle to open my eyes and see her dabbing some blood off my face. Her pouty lips are pinched into a frown as she focuses.

“You got a nasty cut above your right eye. It definitely needs stitches,” she says. “Look at me?”

It’s an effort to focus on her as she moves her finger from side to side. Her hair is longer than mine, probably down to her butt if she let the gorgeous brown waves hang free. It’s wrapped up in a bun with some loose curls framing her face.

“You may have a concussion. Anything else hurt?”

Oh, yeah. Nicole is a medic. Or at least she was back on Earth. Thank goodness for that.

Slowly, everything is coming back.

I glance around me and realize I’m on the ground, stuffed between a pod and the wall. Debris is everywhere. Wires hang from the ceiling sparking as they short circuit. Half the pods are knocked off their bases, and one of them is completely shattered on top.

We crash landed somewhere.

At least we’re not hurtling through space anymore.

“Does anything else hurt?” Nicole asks as she offers me a hand.

I roll my neck and stretch my arms. Yeah, everything hurts. I shake my head no and take her hand. She pulls me up and I hang on to the pod for support.

I spend a second bending and taking stock of my body. Luckily, our blue protective body suits are thin, but surprisingly strong. It covers our arms and legs with a zipper in the front meant to allow for quick changing. I’m barefoot–I mean I would have pulled my boots on if I’d known we were going to crash–but the rest of my body doesn’t seem too damaged on the outside.

“Good. Melina needs me.”

Nicole hurries across the small passenger chamber to Melina who is still lying on the floor limply. Her leg is folded in a direction it definitely shouldn’t be and my chest grows heavy.

“Is she?”

“Alive.”

I lock eyes with the youngest of us, Cristina, as she obsessively wipes blood off her forehead. Her green eyes are haunted and distant as she perches against the opposite wall. Her short, pixie blond hair is stained with blood by her temple. I take in her injuries and realize it was her pod that was shattered.

“We’re all alive,” Ryan bites. She kicks a hunk of metal that must have fallen during the impact. “Not sure if that’s a good thing.”

“Ryan!” a short, black-haired firecracker shouts at her. It takes a second to bring her name to the forefront of my mind. Lara.

Man. Maybe I do have a concussion.

Ryan throws up her arms, her red wavy hair tumbling around her like a burning flame. “What? I’m just being realistic. What the hell are we going to do now?”

Another wave of nausea guts me and I double over, unsure if there’s anything even left in my stomach to throw up. My muscles ache and every inch of my body feels like a bruise.

But I do feel lucky—to be alive. I for sure thought I wouldn’t be. That none of us would have made it out of that wormhole.

But Ryan is right. What the hell are we going to do now?

Where are we? And what is there outside the battered walls of this ship?

I shove down the queasy and brace myself against the wall. I stagger down the corridor, focusing hard on each step before I finally make it to the autopilot control center. Thankfully, everything is still intact.

Lights flicker as I look through the buttons and the options on the main screen. “Guys,” I call out. Ryan and Lara keep fighting.

“Shut up, Paige!” Ryan shouts back. “You have no idea either!”

“I’m trying to figure it out over here,” I call back. That technically isn’t true. Right now I’m trying to locate the emergency contact line.

The command base on Earth needs to know what happened to us.

I flip through the settings, the general radio showing no connection, and find the emergency satellite communicator. I suck in a deep breath and put in my traveling code to unlock it. There’s a short dial tone and then the line is open.

I yank the mic free and crush the button to connect.

“Hello? This is Paige Jackson aboard the TM 7612. We came into some debris and we were sucked through a wormhole. Do you copy?”

The bickering behind me falls to silence as we all listen intently.

My heart pounds in my chest as we wait. My palms sweat around the mic.

Seconds tick on.

I smash down the button and repeat the message, keeping my voice steady.

I have to hold it together. Command center won’t be able to understand me if I’m a crying, blubbering mess.

Down the corridor and on the other side of the ship, I lock eyes with Cristina who is wringing her hands in her lap. Fear is plastered on her battered face.

I look around as the rest of my friends wait with bated breath, leaning around the corner to see me from the corridor.

It’s on all of their faces. Fear.

I clear my throat and repeat the message. “Can you hear me? Can anyone hear me?” I ask.

We wait. The silence sucks us into a reality that is almost too heartbreaking to face.

I want to sink to the floor when Lara shakes her head, realization setting in. “We’re out of range.”

“No shit,” Ryan says.

“Keep trying,” Cristina says softly.

I wave her over and hand her the microphone. “Keep repeating the message every thirty seconds. If you hear anything let us know.”

She nods and I’m back to looking at the autopilot control. I click through the settings until I see a safety check. I run it, biting the inside of my cheek and praying that it does what I want it to.

Everything fails.

The exterior walls are breached. The electrical systems are almost completely down. The pods are offline, along with our medical monitors.

“Yeah, we’re fucked. We get it,” Ryan says.

“That’s enough,” Nicole snaps back at her. Our resident doctor is still hunched over Melina, slowly tugging her leg in the right direction and using the linens to wrap it to a metal pipe stint.

Cristina talks into the mic next to me, sending out an SOS when the system finally gets to the checks I was hoping for.

Atmosphere air quality: breathable.

My lips part slightly.

Wherever we are, the air itself won’t kill us.

I set my hands flat on the control panel and shut my eyes, processing everything.

We’ve landed somewhere that isn’t Earth or Mars. We have no idea where we are. The ship is wrecked and control can’t hear our calls.

We’re doomed.

We’re in way over our heads.

I’m in way over my head.

But I have to figure this out. None of us are thinking clearly and it will only take a few days before the resources on board will run out.

“We need to look at all of our options,” I say, my eyes still shut. “Talk things out and figure out what to do before we make any rash—”

Suddenly, the door to the locking chamber rattles to my right. I whirl around to see the metal shaking as if something from the outside was trying to get in.

Cristina screams and drops the microphone, running back through the corridor into the hold of the ship to get away from the commotion.

“Get in your pods!” I order in a muted, hushed voice.

If the thing outside is sentient, it would have heard Cristina’s scream. It would know there was at least one living being inside.

“Now!” I whisper and wave as Ryan stands rooted in place. Nicole abandons Melina on the floor, covering her up with some tattered linens and hopping in her pod.

The door rattles and a bang from the outside nearly stops my heart.

Ryan gives me a pained look and then turns. She’s the last to get into her pod when the door to the locking chamber is torn completely off.

It’s dark outside, but even amongst the shadows, there’s no way to miss the massive, hulking creature that steps inside the ship.

Fear claws into my belly and I can’t breathe, but I can’t look away either.

It’s huge. Tilted, amber eyes appraise me as I take a step back and nearly trip over my own feet. A strange, guttural grunt erupts from its mouth and I still, every hair on my body raising up in this thing’s presence.

It takes another step in my direction and I realize that I’m the only thing stopping this thing from getting the rest of the girls. My teeth chatter as my entire body shakes, running on pure adrenaline as I take a hesitant step forward and reach for a metal pipe rolling around near my feet.

If I’m going down, I’m going down fighting.

And I’m saving the rest of the girls from whatever this creature is.