Parasite║LGBT+║ONC SHORTLIST 2024

3: The Storm

18:42, Firstsol 12th M5, 2226

The vision of the curly-headed warden reappears whenever I blink during my frenzied dash back to my pod, like it's burnt into my lenses.

Throwing my possessions into a backpack takes all of three minutes. My counterpressure suit catches on zips and ties in my haste to wrestle it on. I slam my pod door behind me and scramble to the garage, sending my untethered airtank and helmet swing wildly against my back as I run.

I punch Eris Spaceport's coordinates into the nav system of the battered hov that I bought from a dying miner when I arrived in Eris-1 eight months earlier. My destination: anywhere but Eris. I've fed on too many of this Dwarf's sick and dying to be safe from its wardens. At best the woman that I drained has died in the alleyway, and I'm a murderer. At worst if she hasn't died she'll tell the wardens what I did to her, and I'll be hunted across Eris's six cities until I'm caught and executed.

That's what I deserve. I'm a monster.

Escape is my only hope. I'll go to one of the other Dwarf Planets. Pluto ideally, but I'd settle for Haumea or Makemake. They may all have smaller colonies and mines than Eris, but us Eris-born have an advantage over their doctors: meatware. Whatever meatware glitch has turned me into an energy vampire, I'm still radiation-resistant, unlike workers on the other Dwarfs. No need for me to go underground every six months to recover from mounting radiation sickness like the unfortunate residents of Pluto or Makemake. The Pluto colony governors will beg me to join any city of my choice; us doctors are spread too thinly around the Edge to be scrutinised, especially radiation-proof ones. Another Dwarf Planet, another fresh batch of weak, sickly miners and foundry workers. I'll just take a little. I won't hurt anyone. I hope.

The meandering network of hovway tunnels between Eris-1 and the Spaceport is decorated by the domes of crumbling fuel stations and hotel complexes. Any one of them could be patrolled by a warden. My lenses tell me that all of the nearby fuel stations have run out of ammonia cannisters for sale. My hov's fuel indicator flashes; it's running dangerously low.

Two ammonia stations glow pink in my lenses, both located out on the barren sandflats beyond the domes and tunnels of Eris-1. They're a mere hour's drive away, and my hov needs that ammonia. Besides, if I brave a route across the sandflats to the Spaceport there's no chance of being stopped by a bored warden patrolling the hovway tunnel system.

Ignoring the urgent pink flash of the tunnel glowing on my retinas, I set coordinates for the hov to take me across the uninhabited Eris dirt, usually only traversed by unmanned mining rigs and lumbering metal ore transporters. I have a decent counterpressure suit and my hov is robust despite being old; I can endure Eris's wilderness for the two hours that it will take to get to the Spaceport.

I'll be OK.

§

Minus two hundred degrees, and getting colder. The hov bounces over sand. Eris's ever-black sky shimmers in purple on the horizon, the sign of a methane storm crossing the sandflats in the distance. The weather predictions in my lenses advise me that the storm will stay ten kilometres to the south, and won't intercept my route to the closest ammonia station, nor to the Spaceport beyond. But Eris is unpredictable.

Twenty kilometres away from the fuel station, the pink fuzz of the methane storm begins to creep along my weather map. It's heading north-east at a slow pace, missing me by barely three kilometres. The pink intensifies and the storm changes direction, shifting due north and picking up speed. I can outrun it.

My heart sinks. The storm starts to move north-west — towards me — at a blistering pace, too quickly for the lens weather tracker to keep up. The sweat on my back turns ice-cold, my counterpressure suit suddenly too tight. But I can't turn back now.