Chapter Text
In hindsight, this whole fiasco could have been avoided if I had run for the water the moment the lights went out. They wouldn’t have been able to reach me there. No way I could have known that at the time, but the thought kept surfacing again and again as I laid in the dark with nothing to do but sweat and think.
It started about a half hour after class ended for the day.
“Dr. Grace,” Bismuth asked. The pebble had stayed behind with some of their friends to chat and ask questions. It was typical for a few of my students to linger with questions and horseplay after class had officially ended.
I shut my briefcase full of plans for the semester and reached for my keyboard. ‘Yes, Bismuth?’
They tapped a claw against their stand, a nervous tick of theirs, and I noticed the last of their classmates had left. “I think your translator is broken,” they pointed not to my keyboard, but to the little box near the base of the classroom wall.
Rocky had designed the device to help me detect any side talk in the class that was outside a frequency I could hear. Every class inevitably figured out that their human teacher couldn’t hear certain conversations and from that point jokes, insults, swears, and typical kid chatter would fly right over my head. I hadn’t figured out what was going on until a parent had come to me with concerns about their child learning a new swear word during class.
After that, Rocky had made me a microphone that could detect what I couldn’t and would display a translation for me on a screen above. Eridians could hold two, or sometimes three, conversations at once and still have equal focus on each of them, unlike humans. So as long as the side chatter didn’t get too busy, and no one was swearing or fighting, I typically allowed the background talk.
At Bismuth’s comment I looked up to check the screen. It was blank, as it had been for the whole lesson, but I’d been so focused on teaching the human evolutionary chain I hadn’t noticed. I circled my desk to get a closer look at the box and found that a panel had been left open and a tool sat on the ground nearby.
Maybe Rocky had been making some repairs and forgot to finish up? No, that was stupid, his memory was perfect. But he had mentioned a few days ago that he wanted to mess with the device a bit more. He said he’d planned to have it done before I started class today. Maybe he’d been in the middle of it and gotten called away to something else? It must have been something urgent for him to leave a project half finished, and to forget a tool. I recognized it as a chisel, kind of. I’d seen Rocky use it to chip away at xenonite that hadn’t been shaped quite right. It was sharp on one end but there was a cap over the point. I pocketed the tool and decided to ask him about it once I got home.
‘I think you’re right,’ I played. ‘I miss anything I should know about?’
“Nothing my parents would let me repeat,” they said, shifting in place.
I laughed, but internally sighed at the possibility of another parent teacher conference over the same issue. ‘Fair enough. Thanks for letting me know. See you tomorrow.’
“See you tomorrow Dr. Grace,” Bismuth chimed before hurrying out.
After Bismuth had skittered out the door I gave the student’s area one more scan. No one left, so I flipped the switch to lock the outer door for the night and another to shut off the lights in the student area.
I shrugged on my briefcase and started my walk home. It was clear today, with the lights a little brighter to simulate a sunny, summer day. The sand crunched under my shoes and the waves crashed a little higher than usual against the shore. Adrian had been fascinated by earth weather and seasons, and had done an incredible job of giving my simulated dome weather some variety.
I was planning on watching Rocky and Adrian’s pebbles tonight while the two went out for a date night. I was looking forward to having circles run around me by the little terrors. Mary would inevitably find something to make a mess of, Dawn would pick a fight with Blip over some silly comment, and Sky would fight bedtime until they fell over. I loved being an uncle.
A deep boom echoed across the dome. It reverberated in my lungs and froze me in place. I had time to wonder what had happened, nothing looked different, before the domelight died.
All at once the world was gone, replaced by a complete void. The sand under my feet suddenly felt unstable without sight to orient with and I had to widen my stance to convince myself I wouldn’t fall.
This had never happened before. My heart beat a bit faster, but I waited where I was, confident that tens of Eridians were aware and scrambling to fix whatever had failed. The crashing waves filled the void, until they too started to fade. It sounded like they were getting smaller and smaller. As they got quieter, I realized it was too quiet. I should be able to hear the hum of the atmosphere system at this point.
But there was nothing.
After a few seconds I started to worry. There were back up generators that should have kicked on by now. Maybe not enough to restore the lights and waves, but certainly the atmosphere system and some emergency lights. What could have caused such dramatic system failure? Some kind of natural disaster? Or an explosion? That’s was the boom must have been.
A memory, the smell of melted plastic and smoke, flitted across my mind. My unease was creeping up my spine and threatening to become fear. Were Rocky and Adrian okay? Deep breath. Give them time to figure it out. I wasn’t going to suffocate anytime soon because there was plenty of oxygen. First thing was to get to my house where I could communicate with the Eridians outside.
As I was coming to that conclusion, and deciding the best way to navigate the area without getting my shoes soaked or bashing my face on a rock, I heard something.
I stopped breathing, trying to hear just a little better. After a second I recognized it.
It was the five-beat crunch of an Eridian running through sand. Distant, but they were getting closer, coming from the direction of my house.
“Rocky, that you?” I called, my hand drifting toward my keyboard. It could be a member of the dome team too. Most of them understood English, but oftentimes it was better I play in Eridian.
No reply. They had definitely heard me if I was close enough to hear them. Maybe they didn’t understand me? But all of the dome-team did at this point I thought.
‘Who is that question,’ I played. My hand was shaking and I told myself to get a grip. It was a member of the dome team coming to check on me. I was fine. But why weren’t they answering?
I could make out two more sets of Eridian footfalls now. All getting closer. Very close.
Something was wrong. The acceptance of it dumped ice water into my blood.
I turned to run-
The ground spun out from under me and slammed into me hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. Something had struck the back of my legs hard enough to topple me. I could still hear someone-several someones right next to me-but none of them were talking and that alone terrified me more than anything. I needed to get up. Get away. I moved to stand.
Someone grabbed me by the belt-line, another seized one of my arms, I was being lifted up off the ground and I was being jostled as the sound of crunching sand filled my ears. My back was pressed against a hard surface of small panels, a xenonite suit, and I figured out I was face up, being carried on the back of an Eridian. Two arms around my stomach kept me trapped in place.
“Let go,” I tried to yell, it came out more hoarse and startled. I thrashed, feeling like a turtle on its back. One of my arms was trapped against my side by the arms wrapped around me. “Let go of me!” I shouted with more force. I tried to kick down and back a few times. The two times I felt contact with something resulted in absolutely no change. I pushed at the arms around my waist with no effect. I tried hitting them a few times and realized I was only bruising myself for the trouble.
I reached around and felt the xenonite suit, seeking out the radiator apparatus. Maybe I could damage it? The xenonite panels felt rough and irregular in shape and size. Not Rocky-made quality. I couldn’t find anything that felt like a radiator apparatus. I was either on it, or couldn’t reach it.
My bones rattled as the dome alarm finally sounded. It was an incredibly deep bass note played six times, a pause, then repeated.
“Get it operational,” one of the Eridians, somewhere to my left, said. The pace of their run slowed and I couldn’t hear the sand anymore. Their steps sounded like we were on a solid surface now. Where were we? I tried to wrack my brain but came up blank. We were still in the dome obviously, but I had no concept of how far we’d run or which direction.
“Listen,” I said. I couldn’t reach my keyboard, and wasn’t sure I still had it actually. “Please put me down. I want to be let go of.” I tried humming the notes for ‘stop.’ None of them so much as twitched in reply.
There was a thunk, a hiss, another thunk. Still, no one would answer me. I was starting to lose my composure again. I could feel my critical thinking skills drowning beneath the panic welling up in my stomach. I started hitting at the arms holding me again. I had to keep it together, I couldn’t get lost in the panic, I couldn’t get lost in the memory of what happened last time I asked to be let go of by people who wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Let me go!”
The claws locked around my stomach shifted to lift me up and shoved me. For a second I thought I was in zero g again, then I hit the ground. I scrambled to my feet and ran–I slammed into a wall.
Clutching one hand to my face where my glasses had dug into my nose, I raised the other to a smooth, multi-faceted wall. It slanted-taller behind me and lower in front. It felt familiar, and I was able to place it as I heard the thunk of the airlock sealing.
In order to transport me to my new home, I had been placed in what was essentially, a much, much smaller dome on wheels. It had atmosphere control, and some basic necessities like a bed and toilet, but it was only built for a 18 hours trip. I hadn’t seen it since it had been parked against one side of my dome. They had left it attached there in case of an emergency. And now someone had thrown me inside and sealed the door.
They were taking me away from the dome. Yep, panic had a good hold on me now.
I fumbled around until I found where the control panel was supposed to be. If I could get out before they uncoupled it from the dome I could get away. My hands found a smooth piece of xenonite welded over where the panel was supposed to be. I slammed a fist against the wall.
I felt around for the airlock door and tried kicking it open, then prying at the seal with my fingers. Logically, I should have known I couldn’t open it like that, but I wasn’t feeling very logical at that point.
The floor lurched as the vehicle rolled into motion. Which meant we’d uncoupled from the home-dome. The ground bounced and jerked so much I sat down so I didn’t fall down. We were going much faster than the controlled pace that had brought me here. I heard the hiss of the atmosphere control activating and a wave of cooler air wash over me.
They wouldn’t get far, I told myself. We were in a populated area. Even if I couldn’t see them, hundreds of Eridians would hear what was happening, they would be getting help. “Help,” I shouted for good measure. “Get the dome team, I need help, please!”
I reached for my keyboard-
I slammed my hands over my ears as a wall of sound roared over me. High tones, low tones, everything at once screamed all around me and drilled into my eardrums. I curled into a ball, pressing my head between my knees to get another layer of protection between my ears and the deafening blast that just kept going and going.
It felt like hours.
Once the panic had faded into a sense of looming dread, and I had the brain space to think again, I figured the sound was the Eridian equivalent of flash-bangs. They were sending out so much sound that anything trying to get a good ‘hear’ at us wouldn’t be able to past the cacophony. I wasn’t sure what was going to keep the Eridian officials from following the noise in general, but so far it seemed to be working because the vehicle was still lurching along.
The sound finally stopped. I kept my hands clamped over my ears for a few seconds out of caution, then slowly uncurled from my dignified fetal position on the floor. My jaw ached from being clenched for so long and my spine popped. The sound was weird. Like it was underwater. I knocked on the xenonite floor and found that yes, everything sounded distant and muffled. My hearing would probably go back to normal after some time. I hoped.
I started yelling again and my own voice sounded faint. I couldn’t hear anything outside the dome, and no one was nice enough to turn the lights on for me, so I had no clue if any friendly Eridians were nearby, but I figured I had to try. After several minutes and a sore throat I gave up. My captors hadn’t reacted to it, so they didn’t seem to think I was going to be heard by anyone.
I had been abducted by aliens. A hysterical little giggle crawled up my throat at the thought.
I dropped my head into my hands and tried to breathe.