I floated in a world of pain, barely conscious. They'd left me behind in the darkness after they finished with their experiments, leaving pads on my arms to clot the blood after they'd taken their samples. I don't know how long I floated in the darkness, but I felt all alone.
I blinked, and I was back at home, eating dinner with my mom like I usually did. Peter had a room back at the Cadmus Institute, so he wasn't home much. The dinner was small, something I helped cook with my mom.
We didn't have a table in the dining room or kitchen to eat at, so we ate around the coffee table, sitting on the only two chairs there. This was one of the rare occasions that Mom actually got home early enough to eat dinner with me. Usually, she'd return an hour or so before my bedtime. I picked at my meal, poking my chopsticks at the dry noodles.
"Where's Peter?" Mom asked suddenly.
"What do you mean?" I asked her, puzzled. "Peter's still at the Institute."
My mom stared back at me with haunted eyes.
"I thought I said I wanted you both back home in time for dinner," she said.
"What?" I whispered.
The memories of the evacuation flooded back in. The Gholians shooting up the shuttles in space. Dead bodies floating outside the window. Monsters charging into our cabin, shooting students and faculty.
"No. Wait. I-"
Blink.
"Wait a minute," Peter said, peering out the window in the shuttle.
We floated in zero gravity, waiting for the rescue ships to arrive. Outside, just barely visible through the small viewport, a massive ship emerged from a rift in space, surrounded by a halo of red light. A portal.
Around us, students started murmuring in excitement. We'd been waiting out here for a while. It was about time some rescue ships showed up.
"Wait a minute," Peter repeated.
"What?" I asked.
"That's not a-" Peter started to say, and then our shuttle blew up.
Blink.
Peter lay on a table, strapped down to make a human tee. Needles pierced him everywhere, and his screams sent chills down my back. Someone, a Krakoshan, bent over him, dressed in laboratory scrubs. Others flocked around him, dressed in similar clothing and clutching various tools with sharp edges and needles and long probes. They were working a device, and I shifted to get a better look. When I saw it, I screamed, but nobody seemed to hear me. They were cutting him open!
"Peter!" I shouted. "Peter!"
"Charlie!" he screamed. "Help me!"
Blink.
A hand rested on my shoulder, gently shaking me. My face stung, like I'd been slapped. I knew the feeling. A loud screech rang through the air, familiar enough that I knew I'd heard it before, but my mind was too foggy to figure out what it was.
"Wake up!" a girl shouted.
She sounded bossy. I groaned, wincing as the pain of the recent experiments suddenly caught up to me. I gasped for air, fighting through the pain, making fists with my hands. There was a hand on my shoulder, I remembered. I turned toward the person, squinting through the darkness.
"Peter...?" I asked, confused.
"I'm Nicholas," the person said. "This is Amala. C'mon, you gotta get up."
YOU ARE READING
Trial 017 - 2019 Wattys Sci-Fi Winner
Adventure***2019 Watty Award Winner - Science Fiction*** Charlie has always been the one left behind. It isn't because there's something special about him; in fact, there is nothing special about him at all. As one of the few unlucky members of Terran societ...
