THE TITAN EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER 9 - TXP Facility

As soon as Sarah stepped foot back on the train, Wolf informed her that Admiral Jax authorized him to tell her where Jake's escape pod had landed. "On Saturn's moon, Titan," he said. "We don't know how he got there or why his pod veered off course, but that's where he is."

She kept a straight face but never took her eyes off Wolf. "That doesn't shock me. It only confirms the suspicions I had back at the Observation Facility."

"What gave it away?"

"It was the video. The moon's surface had a yellowish tint to it, and Jake had to wear thermal protection and not a pressure suit. Titan is bitterly cold, but it has about the same surface pressure as Earth, thus the thermal suit. Of course, how he survived there for the last thirty years is another matter."

Wolf shrugged. "He's alive. You should be happy."      

"I am," Sarah replied. "Somehow, he figured out how to sustain himself all this time. He must have stumbled upon a well-stocked habitat and maybe found some sort of food source on the moon. That's not taking into consideration the medication he had to take to counter the older version of the serum the admiral gave him. He had to have a good supply of the inhibitor drug with him when he crashed landed, or he found a ton of that stuff in the habitat on Titan."

"Anything's possible."

"I know he had a small supply with him on the space station. But he was going into cryo and was expecting to restock when he reached Earth, which he never did." She shook her head and sighed, then grew silent as she considered it all.

Of course, the fact he was in this predicament didn't sit well with Sarah at all. As their journey to the TXP Facility dragged on for hours, she found it harder to deal with all the new information the admiral had thrown at her. After Wolf left her to her thoughts, exhaustion set in, but she couldn't sleep. All she could do was sit in the recliner and stare out the window.

A vibration rattled a glass of water on the sink countertop—the only evidence Sarah sensed of The Bullet's deceleration—except for the endless sand dunes scrolling by the cabin window. The computer-generated scenery coincided with the movement of the train, slowing to a crawl before coming to a complete stop. Earlier, she would have thought they were in the middle of the Sahara Desert. But now, she suspected they were somewhere in the central United States. Kansas. Nebraska. South Dakota maybe... if they had stayed on course due west, as Wolf had said. Regardless, the landscape in the viewing window had no bearing on their location or even the time of day or night.

Wolf had left her alone in the cabin for the simple reason of self-preservation, because she told him if he didn't leave her, she would kick his nose in again. Too many of the wrong emotions dominated her right now. Anger: She seethed on the inside, wishing Wolf had stayed, so she could use him as a punching bag. After all, it was his fault she wasn't in her apartment, wrapped up in the comfort of her sheets. Heartache: Seeing the video of someone she believed to be her husband, a billion miles away, on the surface of another world. That sucked royally. But the crucial question was why was her husband there? And who was to blame for his banishment? Was it a mistake? An error? Or something else? Then there was Despair: A weight of depression like a boulder crushed her soul. A heavy burden she couldn't shoulder alone. However, there was one thread of hope that offered her solace. If she could perfect the serum, get to Jake, rescue him, then maybe she could cure him of the previous serum's side effects before it was too late? Maybe she could smile again? Love again. Laugh again. Enjoy the life she had, no matter how long it lasted.

Being kidnapped could be the miracle she had been searching for, because if Jake was alive, she wasn't alone in this world, or at least in this solar system.