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The prisoners line up, two by two, a solemn procession through a wide, deserted corridor and down a steep launch ramp into the dropship, and the symbolism isn’t lost on Derek. Up until a week ago, Chancellor Argent probably fashioned himself a benevolent god, sparing two hundred juvenile delinquents from certain death while attempting to ensure the survival of the human race. But that death, while certain, was at least humane . A pin-prick to the vein and eternal oblivion. Today Chris Argent lords over the proceedings with a grim, stoic face as his only child—his daughter, Allison—boards the ship in her gray penitentiary jumpsuit, her heavy, rubber-soled boots squeaking against the floor, echoing over the persistent, invasive hum of the rocket engines. Today the Chancellor can’t deny what this really is: a probable suicide mission.
Allison makes her first of three stops before claiming her seat in the shuttlecraft, pausing in front of a guard who removes her handcuffs. Thus far, the guard has pushed each young man or woman roughly toward Nurse Melissa McCall, but he gently nudges Allison forward, a wary eye darting toward her father. With shaking fingers, Nurse McCall wipes antiseptic over the porcelain skin on the inside of Allison’s right arm, fastening a metal bracelet with colorful blinking lights around her wrist.
“It’s a vital transponder,” Melissa informs Allison. “With this, we’ll be able to monitor your blood pressure, breathing rate, radiation levels, and all sorts of things from right here in the control room of our space station.” Melissa offers a reassuring smile, but it trembles like her hands. Moments ago, Derek watched her fasten a transponder to the arm of her own son.
Now Allison faces to her father, the final stop on an assembly line sending kids to slaughter. He gives her the same canned speech he has to all the others. “When you walk onto this ship, you are hereby pardoned of your crimes. I hope you’ll use this chance to atone for your impermissible behaviors and mistakes. This is an unpress—“
Allison shoves her metal-cuffed wrist under his nose, stopping his spiel. This isn’t freedom, as her father would have the prisoners believe; she knows it, Chancellor Argent knows it, Melissa McCall and the rest of the Council know it. They’ve simply traded one set of shackles for another. She tilts up her chin and holds her father’s eye. “Good bye, Dad.” Derek swears more streaks of gray crop up at Argent’s temples, grooves deepening at the corners of his eyes. She turns away and takes her seat next to Scott McCall—the star-crossed lover for whom she’s defied both Colony law and her family—sitting back and letting Officer Camden Lahey fasten her harness. She doesn’t spare her father a second glance.
Chris Argent's wounded face broadcasts so much pain Derek prays he’ll call an end to this crazed endeavor, but he straightens—the same steel in his spine hardens Allison’s, allowing her to walk with grace out of a detention cell and into what will likely become her coffin—continuing on with the pomp and circumstance. Derek’s rekindled hope burns out like a dying star.
When Derek averts his eyes from the dramatic family scene he spots who he’s searching for, prisoner 129, Stiles Stilinski, watching Derek with dawning horror, tension festering at the hunched line of his shoulders.
Stiles is smart. Too smart. Keen brown eyes take in Derek’s blue uniform, shirt fitting looser around his broad shoulders in the half-year they’ve been parted, and the other puzzle pieces snap into place. He’s working from the outside edges—extra rationing, his father’s execution, his stint in solitary confinement, this culling of convicts—but as he twists each piece this way and that in his mind’s eye, the picture becomes clear. There is a reason why capital punishment is the new norm for breaking the most mundane Colony laws. Their space station is dying; the powers that be are dropping extra cargo in the hopes of surviving a little longer. This time, it happens to be human cargo.
Every teenager who files into the ship brings Derek and Stiles closer together, until Stiles is passing right in front of him. Heat radiates from Stiles’ skin, like steam from a rare hot shower. Derek sways closer, imagines reaching across the infinitesimal space and having Stiles’ body under his hands one more time. He’s one of less than a dozen guards accompanying the prisoners to what will ultimately be their freedom, or their deaths; it would be so easy , and to do so after this period of separation would be a balm to his bruised soul. But now is not the time. The time has been cruelly stolen from them.
He’d happened upon Stiles, perched in a window seat on G deck during his first week on patrol. “This corridor is off limits,” Derek had told him, still high off the power trip of his newly earned guard title.
“Yes, sir .” Stiles offered a jaunty little salute and a sardonic smirk, and Derek was a goner. Stiles knew it, too, because he kept coming back, day after day, and Derek let him. Eventually, Derek had come to think of their meetings as cosmic kismet.
“Of all the windows on all the stations, you had to park your ass in mine,” Derek joked, watching Stiles doodle in his sketch pad with the graphite pencil Derek pilfered for him. “Why this particular window?”
“It has the best view,” Stiles whispered, brown eyes abandoning the page he’d been intently focused on, zeroing in on Derek’s face instead. But Stiles was right. Everyday, without fail, ten minutes before Derek’s shift was due to end, Earth came into view out the window, bursting with blues and greens and whites, the colors vivid, alive; nourishing their souls after a constant diet of stark, muted grays aboard the ship.
“When I see it, I feel like I’m on top of the world. Like anything is possible,” Stiles said. “It gives me hope for the future.”
“That’s funny,” Derek replied, heart beating a frantic tattoo against his sternum.
Stiles laughed, eyes twinkling. His face was pale as the moon under the circadian lights of the ship, a constellation of moles standing out in stark relief along his jawline. “Why is it funny? Because Earth is a toxic wasteland and won’t be able to support life for another hundred years?”
“No.” Derek smiled, softly. “Because that’s how I feel when I look at you.”
Now, as Stiles passes by, Derek feels anything but hopeful. Stiles shakes his head, the move tiny, imperceivable to anyone else, a flick of brown hair—grown long in his six-month confinement—off his forehead. Don’t be a hero, it screams.
He watches the transponder get fastened to Stiles wrist (I sucked a bruise there on our first night together) , memorizes the hard line of Stiles’ mouth when the tiny needles inside the cuff pierce his pallid skin (his lips were always so soft when I kissed them) . Derek shoves the memories to the back of his mind, where they need to stay if he has any hope of going through with this.
Once they’re all loaded into the shuttle, strapped into rows of harnessed seats, a Council member steps up to the small box mounted on the adjacent wall, presses a series of buttons, and a three-minute timer pops up onto the display, flashing green as it counts down. Hot beads of sweat roll down Derek’s spine, seeps through his shirt, but he ignores that, too.
00:03:00
When he’d first gotten wind of the culling, he’d gone straight to Erica Reyes—his friend Vernon Boyd’s girlfriend and an apprentice engineer—and bribed her to give him a breakdown of the launch process.
“Hypothetically, how could they make this happen?” Derek had desperately questioned, cutting through her technical muttering.
She shoved the extra ration coins he’d slipped her in the pocket of her moth-eaten lab coat. “Each station is equipped with cargo crafts, but the Council would never touch those. It’s too public, everyone would know they were launching defenseless kids into space. The only thing I can think of is the hunk of junk ferry rocket on S desk they use for spare parts.” She shook her head. “It’s prehistoric . I’m no rocket scientist, but that thing would be lucky to survive reentry into atmosphere.”
“There will be children on board, Erica. Most are eighteen, coming up for parole, but some are as young as twelve.”
She’d frowned, the coin’s jingling in her pocket. “I’m sorry, Derek. You don’t send people into space in a relic if you care whether or not they make it to their destination. Whether they’re twelve or twenty, the Council doesn’t give a shit.”
“So tell me what I can do .”
00:02:00
The Chancellor stands before the doors to the ship, monologuing like a villain, gaze focused on the harried teens in front of him. Some glare back, some blink away tears, some struggle against their restraints. “You’ve been given a second chance at life,” Chris Argent tell them. “You’re the pioneers; the course is yours.”
00:01:00
Derek’s eyes dart around, counting a total of sixteen adults, including the Chancellor, remaining on the deck. He’s lucky they valued secrecy over security today.
00:00:30
The time comes.
The descending numbers on the launch pad flash red, as Erica told him them would. He has twenty seconds before the hatch automatically shuts, and manual override becomes impossible.
Argent is still droning on, telling the teens they are making history, they will be the first humans to leave this space station in over three hundred years. They should be proud .
He steps up behind the Chancellor, pulse skyrocketing, and taps him on the shoulder. Chris Argent pivots, eyebrows lowered. “What is it, Officer Hale?”
Derek’s green eyes drop to the pin on the collar of the Chancellor’s shirt—the insignia of their Colony, that once stood for unity. So it’s in the spirit of togetherness, for better or for worse, that Derek lets his hand quickly drop to the holster attached to his belt, and before anyone can think to move, there’s the sharp sound of a gunshot.
Chris Argent grabs at his stomach, blood flowing like a river between fingers, splattering Derek’s boots like droplets of rain.
The sight of the Chancellor’s wound pulls the remaining people on the launch deck toward them like a black star, and Derek ducks under the arms of the guards who reach for him instead of helping their leader, rolling under the hatch as it seals shut, locking him inside the dropship. Furious banging erupts on the doors as he falls into the unoccupied seat next to Stiles, tucking the still-smoking gun between his knees as he buckles his harness.
“I could have survived anything, if I thought you were up here, safe and alive,” Stiles tells him. Derek can read the fear in his wet eyes. “Even if it was only for a little bit longer.”
A series of bleeps emit from the instruments in the cockpit. The purr of the engines becomes a roar, and Stiles’ fingers dig into the plastic armrest like claws.
“I couldn’t have lived with myself if I let you go alone,” Derek replies, wiping the star-bursts of blood off his face. “So here we are.”
Stiles nods. “Here we are. We won’t be on top of the world for much longer, but at least we’ll be together.”
With a jarring blast, the ship detaches from the space station, and they free-falling, barreling toward Earth, a planet left for dead three hundred years ago, at a thousand kilometers an hour.
The first leg of their journey is relatively calm, the sun outside the windshield a red thumbprint against a blue-black sky dotted with stars. Some of the passengers pray, some excitedly discuss the probability of surviving on the surface of a world ravaged by nuclear and biological war. Stiles reaches over, squeezes Derek’s knee, and he jolts, losing the grip on his gun. It floats weightless through the cabin, prompting some of the former inmates to unfasten their harnesses and somersault through the air. But soon the stars fade, as does the light, replaced by smokey-gray clouds of atmosphere.
“Everyone, get back in your seats!” Allison Argent warns.
One boy mockingly laughs as he floats in front of her. “Who the hell are you to tell me what to do? Just because your daddy was the boss doesn’t mean you get to be in charge. You’re not—“
A loud bang on the port side cuts off whatever he was going to say, their calm voyage turning abruptly terrifying as turbulence jerks their vessel. The boy crashes into the front window as the ship lurches downward, his head leaving behind a smear of blood. He speaks no more. Muttered prayers become shrill screams, and the acrid scent of vomit fills the cabin.
The ship shakes, primal roar of the engine mutating into a piercing wail as they plummet. “Derek!” Stiles yells as grey smoke gives way to red flames and spiderweb cracks splinter the windshield. Erica’s voice fills his ears, warning him the shuttle’s sensor systems may be too antiquated to safety guide them through strong winds and dangerous atmospheric conditions. The prayers return at a fevered level, some people crying desperately for their mothers and fathers over the stuttering grind of failing mechanics.
“Give me your hand,” Derek yells back, locking their fingers together. The desire to say something profound flares in his gut, to use his last words to convey how much finding Stiles in that window seat on top of the world meant to Derek.
“Stiles,” He rasps, hardly recognizing his own voice. It’s the only thing he has time to say.
They are a meteor, burning fast and bright through the sky. Derek closes his eyes, and makes a wish.
The crash rattles every bone in his body, his front teeth slicing through his bottom lip like a razor through silk. His neck lolls with abandon, body jerking like a rag doll, but his harness—and Stiles’ solid grip on his hand—hold him secure as the shuttle skids to a halt, a gaping wound torn through the outer and inner hull on the starboard side. The smell of stale vomit is overpowered by melting metal, burning fuel and coppery blood.
“If the outside air is still poisonous, we’ll be dead in minutes,” Stiles gasps, and no one gets up, searching each other for signs of radiation sickness.
None come.
“It pains me to say this,” Scott McCall grimaces at Allison, “but maybe your father didn’t heartlessly send us to our deaths after all.”
“Maybe,” she concedes. “But he’s still a dick.”
One by one they slowly exit the ship. The buckle of Derek’s auto-release jams, so he pulls a utility knife from his holster with numb fingers and saws at the neon orange straps. He unhooks Stiles, and together they stumble, arms wrapped around each other’s waists, toward the laceration in the wall, holding each other steady as they adjust to the gravitational pull of Earth. They step outside.
Derek blinks, jaw dropping. It’s not the ravaged, nuclear wasteland they’ve read about in their Earth Studies textbooks; the unsurvivable world.
All around him chirping birds sing and clicking crickets jump. The sweet scent of soil fills his nose, sharper than anything he’s ever smelled aboard the space station.
Snow-capped mountains dot the distance landscape, a lush green canopy hangs above them, multi-colored blossoms bloom around their feet, and warm sunlight kisses Stiles’ moles.
“I’ve never seen so many colors,” Stiles exclaims, eyes roaming over the verdant hills, listening to the wind whisper through the tall grass.
“You were wrong,” Derek tells Stiles, cradling his smiling face between his palms. He laughs. “ This is the best view.”
Their lips meet in a kiss that tastes like fresh air, like freedom, like hope.
They’ve hurtled through space, crash-landed in the dirt to face insurmountable odds.
They’re the lowest they’ve ever been.
They’re on top of the world.