14.01.2723

My chest felt like it was about to cave in. Something - I didn't yet have the strength to open my eyes - kept pushing down near my sternum, pumping my chest repeatedly. I tried drawing an awkward breath, but whatever was pushing down on my chest kept me from making any sound.

Suddenly, the pressure vanished and my nose was pinched shut. I panicked, trying to breathe through my mouth, but something closed over that too, forcing hot air down my throat as silky coverings draped themselves over my face and throat. My arms wouldn't respond so I tried speaking again. This time, my tongue moved, albeit sluggishly, brushing over the object clamped over my mouth. It felt warm, and...moist?

My eyes cracked open, straining against sudden sunlight, nearly blinding me. Through the light, I could see a creature bent over my face, its long hair streaming down across my nose and chin.

"Ack!" I coughed, heaving violently.

The pressure over my mouth suddenly retreated, and the creature sat up abruptly. It spat to the side and leaned back, revealing an auburn-haired human girl about my age.

She seemed to be about my height, but it was hard to tell because her knees were drawn under her. The girl was dressed in a pair of dark leggings and a loose shirt with billowing bell sleeves, cinched around her narrow waist with a belt. Something about the clothes looked familiar to me, but I couldn't quite place my finger on it. As my eyes adjusted to the sunlight, I could make out her light skin and her auburn hair, bound into a loose ponytail that was slowly coming apart. She had canted eyebrows and hazel eyes, I noticed, along with a slender nose and thin lips.

"Hey," she said, straightening her hair. "Are you alright? You weren't breathing a second ago."

I stared at her, my mind clouded by a thick haze. My surroundings were blurry, as if viewed through cloudy lenses or through mist, and the light was too bright. Even the sounds I heard seemed as if coming from the other end of a long tunnel. Questions swam through my head. Did I know her? Who was I? I didn't remember my name! No, Charlie. That's my name. Was this my home? Where was I? Did I miss school?

"Who are-" I started to say, but then the memories of the evacuation and the Gholians came rushing back like a sledgehammer and I quickly recoiled, suddenly feeling ill.

"Stay away!" I blurted, sitting up quickly. My shoulder struck something hard and I noticed I was lying in a sort of coffin. "Where am I? Who are you?"

I bit off my questions, coughing as my nausea caught up to me. Before I could help myself, I leaned over the edge of the coffin and dry heaved onto the ground. Nothing came out, but I still felt terrible. And to top it all off, my head was killing me.

"Whoa, calm down," the girl said. "I found you like this just now. You might want to take it easy; you weren't breathing a second ago."

My cough lightened and I sat up, wiping my mouth. It was dry, and my stomach was rumbling, as if I hadn't eaten in a while. My knee struck the edge of the coffin and I glanced down at my metal tub. My head throbbed, but at least my thoughts were clearing up.

"What's this? And...and what do you mean I wasn't breathing a second ago? Oh man, my head is killing me."

"I found you submerged in some sort of cryo-sleep," the girl said. "I woke up in one just like it not so long ago. And about the headache, it'll go away in a few minutes."

"Were you just kissing me?" I asked abruptly.

We shared a moment of stunned silence.

"What?" the girl said. "What the-no! I was trying to revive you. Weren't you listening? You weren't breathing!"

"Oh."

I stared at her blankly. We had a brief moment of awkward silence, which the girl defused by suddenly sticking out her hand.

"Uh, I'm Bekka," she said. "What's your name?"

I took her hand and pulled myself up.

"Thanks, I'm-" I began, climbing out of the pod. Her grip gave instantly and I stumbled over the edge, pulling her along with me. "Whoops, I meant I'm Charlie."

Bekka brushed herself off and glared at me. "What was that for?"

I coughed, pulling my hand back. "Uh, I thought you were pulling me out-"

I glanced up, suddenly realizing she was giving me a weird look.

"I'm just going to chalk the past few seconds up to cryosickness," Bekka muttered.

I felt my cheeks heat up. "Oh."

She picked at her clothes, huffing in exasperation. "Whatever. Look, do you know where we are? It looks like we're stranded in some kind of forest and I have no clue what to do."

"Forest?" I started to say, but then I realized what she meant.

All around us, trees wound sideways and around each other in thick tangles, with leaves as large as my palm branching out every which way. Each leaf was round and smooth, a dark red that bordered on crimson. I reached out and touch one of the leaves, feeling the smooth top and the rugged veins on the bottom. It felt waxy, almost like the leaves of Terran plants back at home, but much thicker.

Even stranger, the tree bark was made of little shingles, like rooftops, or maybe even like scales. Upon further inspection, I noticed that every tree that sprouted from the ground split and intertwined with others nearby, eventually driving itself back into the earth. They gave off a slightly sweet smell, the sort you get from wild fields or lush jungles. That's what this was. An alien jungle. A slight breeze stirred, so faint that I barely felt it, but it brought with it floral scents and the smell of damp earth. In the distance, a faint chorus of high-pitched birdcalls trilled.

I forced myself to take a deep breath, breathing in the thick smell of earth. This jungle smelled damp, and the ground underneath was soft and loamy. Then, I rubbed my eyes vigorously.

"What are you doing?" Bekka demanded.

"Trying to be sure I'm not dreaming," I replied. I opened my eyes and took a second look.

Red trees. With scaly bark. Alien trees, and definitely not from Terra.

No, I thought. No, no, no, no, no...

I started shaking my head, my thoughts racing frantically. I'm on an alien planet, I thought. Kidnapped, stranded, lost. There had to be a way out. I had to find a ship, and a way out of this jungle, and...

Mom. Oh no. She was probably freaking out right now, and not just because we didn't make it home for dinner.

I shook my head disbelievingly.

"Hey," Bekka said. "Keep it together, okay?"

"My mom's going to be scared to death," I said. "She's probably going to turn on the news tonight and see the dead bodies in space and think we're both dead."

"Hey!" Bekka said.

I glanced up at her.

"Don't worry about that yet," she said gently.

"But-"

"We're not dead yet," Bekka reminded me. "And that means we have a fighting chance."

I nodded.

"Okay."

She smiled at me, and I found myself smiling back.

"So," she said. "What kind of questions should we be asking?"

"I don't know," I muttered. "What about starting with 'where are we?'"

"Alien planet," she said. "All I know was that I was meditating in a gym, then there was some screaming and smoke and I passed out. Woke up just a few meters over."

She pointed vaguely over her shoulder, motioning at a hole in the canopy. I followed the shaft of light and noticed a large pile of wrecked bushes. They seemed to grow wherever the trees didn't block out the light, a twisted mass of thin vines growing along the ground into a bushy red cushion.

"Are those brambles?" I asked, squinting. The bright light was really not helping that headache.

"Uh, yeah," Bekka muttered. "I think we must have crashed through the canopy or something. You got lucky, landing on these soft bushes."

I turned around, slowly, ignoring Bekka for a moment while I took in my surroundings. Next to the alien trees, the pod I'd woken up in looked very much out of place. Looking almost like metal coffins with no lids, it was clear from the small panel by the head that this pod was definitely not from Terra. The top of another pod poked out from the edge of the bushes where Bekka had indicated, looking just like mine. Apart from my pod and hers, all I could see about the canopy was a sea of red.

"So, what were you doing before you woke up here?" Bekka asked.

"I was on a shuttle-wait did you say you were in a gym?" I said, latching on to what she had just said. "Why weren't you on a shuttle?"

She shook her head. "I was meditating. In a gym. Why would I be on a shuttle?"

I gave her an incredulous look. "The Institute had an emergency evacuation. Didn't you hear the alarms?"

"What Institute?" Bekka asked slowly.

"The Cadmus Institute."

She blinked in surprise.

"What? I was at the Dirga Academy."

Now it was my turn to be surprised.

"Where the hell is that?" I asked.

"Mars," she said. "And the Institute is on Terra's moon. Why are we here?"

"I don't know," I said, rubbing my forehead in confusion. "All I remember was some evacuation and boarding an escape shuttle with my brother. Some Gholians carrying energy cannons boarded our craft and I woke up here. Now that I think about it, they can't be a coincidence; the Gholians must have somehow triggered the evacuation."

I sat down on the dirt, leaning back against a curled tree trunk to think. Even though I didn't look at her, I could feel Bekka's gaze on me, weighing what I'd just said. I ignored her, doing my best to think things through. Just as I did so, an uncomfortable lump dug into my back and I suddenly realized that I was still wearing my bag.

"Huh. That's weird."

"What?" Bekka demanded.

"This," I said, unslinging my bag to open it up. "I still have my bag."

Bekka blinked in surprise, probably seeing my bag for the first time. Although she didn't say anything right away, she knelt next to me, eyeing the bag with thinly veiled curiosity.

"It's like the Gholians didn't even bother disarming us," I muttered. "I still have my stuff."

I upended the bag, but the only thing that came out was a small lunchbox-shaped capsule. Right, I hadn't brought anything else from the laboratory. Why did Peter pack these, anyway?

I started digging into my shorts pockets, wondering what else I had on me. I laid it all out on the floor, next to the box from my backpack. I found a candy wrapper, a used tissue, my house ring, my mobile, and a copper wire, about the length of my pointer finger. The mobile battery was dead. And a brass shell, which I quickly put back into my jacket pocket before Bekka could see.

"What's that?" Bekka asked, picking up the box and shaking it. It rattled oddly.

"It belongs to my brother," I said, snatching up my house ring.

"It has hinges," she observed, pulling at the lid. "What's inside?"

The lid swung open before I could stop her, revealing a grid-like formation of tightly packed cubes. Each transparent cube held a white pill, about the size of a pinky nail, making maybe thirty or so pill boxes inside.

"What is that?" Bekka asked. "Your meds?"

I sighed, snatching the box back. "Not mine."

Bekka gave me a strange look.

"It's my brother's," I said, discarding the wrapper and tissue.

"Well, if it can't help us, it's dead weight," Bekka said, standing up again. She dusted herself off, clearly no longer interested in the box. "We should focus on what we should do next. No offense, but you carry a lot of junk."

I nodded, stuffing the box back into my bag despite what Bekka said. It probably was dead weight, but it was Peter's stuff. If I saw him again, he would need this medicine. When, not if.

Suddenly, I shot to my feet, although the rapid movement made my head spin. Peter! Where was he? He was with me when I was captured, but a quick glance around the clearing told me he was nowhere near. How could I have forgotten him?

"Where's Peter?" I gasped. "Oh, Zeus. Peter!"

Bekka dove forward and clamped my mouth shut with her hand.

"Quiet!" Bekka hissed. "We're on an alien planet, for crying out loud. Ever watched a horror movie? You're gonna get us killed!"

I froze, straining my senses for anything out of the ordinary. Other than the rustling of wind on leaves, there was nothing. Bekka released her grip slowly, backing off, giving me a warning glare for good measure.

"Alright," she said warily. "Explain yourself."

"My brother," I said. "Peter. He was on the shuttle with me. When the Gholians boarded, he tried fighting them off. I don't know what happened to him, but he has to be here somewhere with us. That's the only explanation."

"Well, finding your brother can wait," Bekka said, crossing her arms. "We need to figure out where we are and what to do next. We can't help your brother if we can't even help ourselves."

I pushed past her anyway, scrambling into the thicket to search for signs of another pod. He could be lying just a few meters away. My gaze swept all around us, screening the thick tangles of the jungle for signs of my brother, but there was nothing. Apart from the two holes our own pods had made in the canopy, there was nothing else to latch on to, just endless jungle in every direction. I was never going to find Peter in this. I didn't even know where to look.

"I'll never find him," I said. "The jungle's too thick; I don't even-"

"Charlie," Bekka said gently. "If there was another pod, I would have seen it already. We have to focus on helping ourselves first."

I wracked my brain for a better argument, but she was right. There was nothing I could do right now and we were in deep enough trouble as it was. Peter was smart; between the two of us, he probably had a better chance of survival than I did.

"Both of our schools must have been attacked," Bekka said, starting to pace. The clearing we were in was only about a meter or two wide so she could take only two or three steps before turning and starting over, but she took to her restless pacing with vigor. "That doesn't make sense. None of this makes sense."

"Why doesn't it make sense?" I asked. I was hardly paying attention to what she was saying. There had to be a way out of whatever mess we were in, and there had to be a way to make sure Peter was somewhere safe. Maybe...

"Maybe it was a terrorist attack of some sort."

"No," Bekka said, shaking her head. "Or maybe. Both of our schools have money, and lots of it. That's probably what they're after."

"I've never heard of the Dirga Academy before," I confessed, "so I wouldn't know."

She gave me a sidelong look. "Are you serious? It's one of the top ten Career schools in the nation!"

Oh. A Career school. I didn't know all of them by heart, but the elitist Career schools were renowned for training the best Kinetics around. One of the requirements for enrollment was that students had to meet a certain strength level in their specific Kinetic abilities. Of course, I'd never been interested in them because, well, I don't have any powers.

Bekka stopped talking, letting the silence take over. Her facial expressions seemed to reflect my own thoughts. What next? We were stranded on an alien planet, and it looked as if we had no way to get home. I didn't even know what to think.

"This doesn't add up," I said suddenly. "Two famous schools are attacked by a group of mercenaries, and instead of killing us, they go through a lot of trouble capturing us and packaging us into pods, only to dump us here in the middle of nowhere without disarming us. There are so many reasons this doesn't make sense."

"Then stop standing there and think of a way out," Bekka shot back.

I glanced around, mulling over our surroundings for a way out. My gaze eventually made its way to the pods, and I hesitated. They might have a defining marking on it, something to signal where they came from. Would that even help us?

"Uh," I said awkwardly. "Maybe we should, you know, examine these pods for clues?"

Bekka sighed, one foot poised to resume her pacing.

"Fine."

I started making my way into the thicket, where Bekka's pod was. When I was deep enough into the undergrowth to see the pod, I stopped.

"Hey, your pod has a lid," I observed. It was lying on the side, next to the pod, as if it had been shoved aside.

"Yeah," she said, "but it was already detached when I woke up. Yours blew off when I was trying to wake you up. No clue where it is now; it went flying into the trees somewhere."

"Blew off?"

Bekka shrugged. "I found a button on the side of your pod with warning stripes and when I pressed it, the lid went flying. Nearly took my head off."

I glanced back at Bekka's pod. I could see the button she'd mentioned, on the right-hand side of the pod. There was also a touchscreen, sitting around the center of the discarded lid. It was located somewhere around chest height, and I thought I could reach it from where I was standing.

Careful not to prick myself on the sharp twigs of the bushes, I reached out and grabbed ahold of the nearest edge of the lid, slowly dragging it into a space where it was easier to examine it. Bekka watched me struggle for a few seconds, but once she joined me, we managed to pull it out into the small clearing.

"Hey, look," I muttered, peering at the words written on the control panel. "I'm not completely sure, but is that Krakoshan?"

"It is," Bekka confirmed, "but unless you've taken a foreign language course, neither of us can read the language. And that doesn't necessarily mean Krakoshans are holding us captive, just that these pods are from a Krakoshan manufacturer."

I scratched my head. Languages had never been of much interest to me, especially since there was no need for foreign languages in Kingsfield's xenophobic capital city.

"Okay, so I guess we didn't learn anything," I sighed disappointedly.

"This thing still has juice," Bekka said suddenly, pointing at a button.

She was right; the button was faintly lit, probably because the battery was dying. I pressed the button, listening for a beep or anything. Nothing happened. I pressed it again, this time holding it for a longer duration. Still nothing.

"Doesn't seem to do anything," I observed.

"I'm not so sure about that," Bekka said. "Maybe it's a-"

She cut off suddenly as a rumbling sound came filtering through the trees. We both looked up, scanning for the source of the noise.

"That sounds like a ship," I whispered. "A rescue ship?"

Bekka gasped, her finger shooting up to point at a break in the trees. "Look!"

I followed her gaze and froze, staring at the ship in the sky moving slowly in our direction as if it were moving through molasses. It seemed to be made of a dark gray metal, dark enough to seem as if it drank in the light. A pair of slanted wings flanked the main body, with powerful turbines rumbling to keep the ship aloft. Twin cannons protruded from the nose of the ship on rotating turrets, primed to fire.

It turned sideways, gliding slowly in a half circle until its rear was facing us. When it had turned around completely, it stopped, as if waiting for us to do something. Then, the bay doors opened, and two heavily armed troopers started to rappel down, hefting heavy rifles.

"Not a rescue ship," I gulped. "Run!"

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