But this wasn’t the end. Of us or our story.
NOW
JENNY FAKED A FIGHT WITH Ty, though I’m not sure he knew it wasn’t real, providing DJ and me the distraction we needed to slip out of the gym through the locker rooms and make our way to the main building.
The hall lights were dim, giving the school a creepy vibe that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. And it was too quiet. There should have been students shouting over one another as they moved in herds from one class to the next. The lack of chaos was unnerving.
“Where do you think the students go when school is out?” I asked.
DJ and I checked classrooms on opposite sides of the hall. We were looking for a computer with network access that DJ could use, though I was worried we weren’t going to find one. What use were computers to Teachers? They were computers.
“No idea,” he said. “Let’s stay focused, okay?”
I said “Sure,” but I couldn’t stop my mind from picking away at the problem of the impossible school. “It’s weird, though, right? They’ve got an underground mall. Maybe there’s another level below that with houses. And how come all the adults are robots? Where are the actual adults? Where are the parents?”
“Got something!” DJ ducked into a classroom containing a dozen workstations organized into two neat rows. He slipped into a seat behind the nearest computer and got to work.
“I’ll keep an eye out,” I said, remaining near the door. “But maybe hurry up. I have a bad feeling about this.”
DJ’s fingers danced across the keyboard; his eyes were fixed on the screen. My only real regret about the time I’d spent looping through the same day is that I hadn’t become a computer genius. I suppose I was lucky I had DJ.
“I’m really glad you were on board Qriosity when I woke up,” I said. “Jenny too, but you especially.”
“Same,” DJ said.
“Think of all the people I could’ve been stuck with. My French teacher, Mr. Hoosier? What a dickbag. Gerald, my neighbor who moved away when I was ten. He used to throw rocks at me because he thought it was hilarious, and I’m ninety-nine percent certain he’s going to grow up to be a serial killer. Could you imagine being trapped on the ship with a psycho killer? The only thing worse would have been waking up alone.”
“Isn’t being stuck with Jenny bad enough?” DJ asked, quickly flashing his dimples.
I snapped my fingers as a thought occurred to me. “I couldn’t tell you before, but when Ty and I were shopping, he barged into my fitting room and begged me to take him with us on the shuttle when we left.”
DJ glanced at me with pursed lips. “What was he doing in the fitting room with you?”
“You’re cute when you’re jealous,” I said. “Kidding. Jealousy is gross. It wasn’t like that. But you should have seen him. There was a moment when he became a totally different person.”
“Weird,” DJ said, his attention back on the computer.
“I told him he could come because I didn’t have a choice.” I bit my lip. “But we’re not going to do it, are we? Take Ty, I mean. It would change our whole dynamic.”
“If he wants to leave, and you promised he could come, we have to take him.”
“What if everyone wants off this rock? We can’t take them all.” There were easily a few hundred students at Beta Cephei High, and while we probably had space for a hundred if we crammed them into the cargo bay, we’d quickly run out of food and water. But the bigger problem was that we only had space for four on the shuttle. With more time—
“I think I got it,” DJ said.
“Our coordinates?”
“Access to their network.”
DJ sounded excited about it, but before I could congratulate him, Klaxons began to blare. Red lights in the hallway flashed like lights on a fire truck. “Alert! Intrusion detected! Alert!”
“That’s bad, right?” I asked.
“Damn!” DJ slammed his fist on the keyboard and then stood so quickly his chair fell backward. “They locked me out.” Fear was etched onto his face. He looked more scared than when we’d been waiting to die from radiation exposure. “They know I was trying to penetrate their system.”
Whatever else happened, we needed to return to Qriosity before the fold drive engaged. “Forget it, then. It’s time to go.”
DJ shook his head, undeterred. “I can still get in. We just have to find a computer connected directly to—”
I took DJ’s hand and smiled. “Hey. It’s all right. We’ll find another way home. This isn’t the end of the world.”
“I’m sorry, Noa.”
I kissed his palm and I kissed his cheek and I kissed his lips, and I wished I could keep kissing him until the end of time. But the alarms were incredibly distracting. “Come on. Let’s find Jenny and get the hell out of here.”
DJ and I dashed into the hallway. He was looking the wrong way and didn’t see the three Teachers blocking the path we needed to take to reach the gym. The Teacher in the middle raised one of its appendages, and a bright flash of light erupted from the center. Time moved like honey. My brain registered the threat before I did. The middle Teacher had fired a weapon at us. At DJ. With every ounce of strength I possessed, I shoved him to the linoleum. The blast from the Teacher struck my thigh, and the pain was blinding. I screamed as DJ dragged me down the hallway and away from the Teachers.
My leg was on fire. It was molten lead.
“What were you thinking?” DJ asked. He had pulled me into a classroom and was kneeling beside me.
“Must not have been.”
DJ tore open the hole in my trousers, which caused me more pain than actually being shot, and said, “It’s not too bad. You’re not bleeding.” Tears streamed down his cheeks, though he was trying to hide them.
“Hey,” I said. “What is it?”
“You’re not supposed to do that!” he said. “You’re not supposed to risk your life for me. You said you’d never do it, and I… I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
I thought back to the day I had told DJ I wouldn’t have put myself in danger to save him the way he’d done for me. So much had changed since then. “I’m fine, DJ. You said so yourself. And I still don’t know if I’d have the courage to jump out of a spaceship for you, but I’m not about to lose you either.”
DJ sniffled and wiped his tears with his sleeve. When he’d pulled it together, he peeked out the door. “Three Teachers are still blocking the path, but they’re not coming for us.”
“There has to be a way out,” I said. “But I’m not sure about walking.” Just the idea of standing sent a surge of pain through my leg.
DJ ran to the other side of the classroom. He returned with a first aid kit and set about applying some type of bandage to my thigh. A cool sensation spread through my leg, and the pain grew distant.
“Do you think you can walk now?” he asked.
With DJ’s help, I stood and slowly put weight on my injured leg. It hurt, but I could manage it. “I won’t be running.”