Legacy's Ghost

Episode 22: Out in the Wild

The idea of being left behind horrifies me more than I care to admit. Yeah. It scares the crap outta me, but how many nights did I sit in the trees wishing I could leave the monastery, wondering what the rest of the world was like?

Now, here I was, with little more than a thin membrane separating me from what will probably be the greatest adventure of my life.

My fingers tingle in anticipation, and my senses go on high alert, preparing to catalog every smell, touch, sight, and sound the outside world gives me.

I follow on the Ghost's heals, half cringing in fear, and half bouncing with excitement, as he approaches the bio dome.

I don't know what I expected to happen. Maybe a portal to appear? Or a door? Maybe a cave? Instead, the Ghost walks right through the shimmering wall and out into the red, dust-covered desert of the Exodus planet, like Harry Potter through the brick wall at the train station.

A few seconds later, a breeze hits my back and there's another whoosh of air as the doorway closes behind me after I pass through at the same spot as the Ghost.

I glance over my shoulder to see where we'd walked through, but there's no indication we walked through the bio dome. Even the whooshing air seems to have washed our footprints away, removing any trace of our presence.

"Follow me," the Ghost calls, already several paces in front of me.

I hurry my steps, catching up to him and then matching his pace. He no longer seems concerned about being followed. Though I don't blame him. The only thing out here is Swarm, and they're all cave-dwellers.

I hope. I mean, if you get technical, all humans stay inside the bio dome. And yet, here we are.

I silently pray to all that's holy that the Swarm don't decide to deviate from their normal behaviors too.

Even fully clothed, I'm uncomfortably aware of my environment and how different it is from inside the bio dome.

It's obvious that it's the insane heat, lack of oxygen, and complete absence of water or vegetation that makes this planet uninhabitable. Even after we built the dome on the planet, it took years to make it habitable, to grow the trees, and to modify the atmosphere inside the bio dome to get to the proper oxygen levels.

Out here, the heat seems to pelt me in suffocatingly hot waves, penetrating my dark robe.

Sweat trickles down my back, making it itch, but before the moisture completes its descent, it evaporates. How hot is it out here? Thirty eight degrees Celsius?

My nose itches and burns from the dry heat in the air, drying any moisture inside my nostrils into a crusty mess. The atmosphere smells of scorched earth, permeating everything to the point that I can taste it on my dry tongue, despite the filter on my face.

I run my tongue over the roof of my mouth, but the friction of dry against dry is like sandpaper on velvet.

I'm about to ask to go back to the safety of the dome when the Ghost steps around a waist-high boulder and disappears.

I blink at where he was half a second ago, wondering if my eyes are playing tricks on me, but he doesn't reappear.

Panic surges through me. Did the Swarm get him? Are we being ambushed?

I stumble to the rock, lunging around it to lookin back.

He's not there.

I do a quick three hundred and sixty degree turn. Maybe he's playing some sort of trick on me? Is he testing me?

Nothing.

I step to the exact spot he'd been standing when he disappeared.

When my foot touches the ground, the sand and dust disintegrates beneath me, plunging me downward into the earth.

Fear grips my throat, keeping me from screaming.

I flail my hands, trying to grasp something to keep me from falling.

Except I'm not falling. I'm sliding down a smooth rock surface at a steep angle into utter darkness. My heart hammers in my chest. Fear grips my lungs like a chord wound tight making me unable to breathe.

This is it.

The Ghost is dead. I'm about to die. Nobody will know where to find us.

Dead.

Dead dead dead.

After dropping approximately twenty feet, the pitch of the rock levels off and I slow to a stop in the middle of a massive burnt orange cavern with stalactites and stalagmites of varying muted colors jutting from the floors and ceilings of the cavern.

I get to my feet and dust myself off, righting my robe and resituating myself.

My heart is still hammering, and I'm breathing like I've just run the entire length of this planet with my pants on fire.

Then I glance around.

The Ghost stands several feet away from me, with a purple strobe light in his hand. The light radiates around him in a six foot radius then plunges back into darkness again.

But what I see has my blood freezing in my veins and a yell paralyzed in my mouth.

Standing in the darkness, just outside the reach of the Ghost's light, are Swarm. A whole lot of them.