Crash Landing (Surge #3)

1 Sam

I expected to be dead by now.

No, really. I wasn’t great when it came to decision making, but when my best friend decided she was done with our poor luck on Earth, we got some records faked and we hightailed it off our little rock. Not that the planet itself is a drag. It’s beautiful and as a kid, all I wanted to do was stare at pictures of it. The savannah. The rainforests. Even photos from space. The way the planet looked like a little multicolored marble fascinated me.

But Earth had changed since all those photos were taken. Overpopulation happened. Greenery and wilderness became so rare that people had to pay thousands of dollars just to take a vacation to glimpse it through a glass shield.

So you can imagine how being a botanist was completely out of the question. Despite my fascination with plants and nature as a little girl, what use was studying something that was going to be gone before my time was up?

I’ll get back to the part where my best friend convinced me to go to space later.

“You’re really going to give me attitude?” Thomas said, raising a bushy brow at me.

“It’s not attitude,” I said, cocking a hip. “Melissa knows I don’t like the slimy ones and she did that in front of everyone to make me look bad.”

“You’re going to have to get used to the slimy ones sooner or later.”

“Ok, but that was bitchy and you know it.”

“Bitchy or not, she’s worked hard to be here.”

“And I haven’t?”

“Maybe, but you also broke a lot of rules. Like… a lot.”

“That was a year ago. I’ve learned.”

“Have you?”

I wanted to throw my scalding hot coffee at him, but of all my workmates, Thomas was the most tolerable. Therefore, logically, burning his face off would make me a big loner. He’d hate me.

Not that I wasn’t used to everyone hating me. I was the kind of girl people rolled their eyes about. If there was a problem, I probably started it. If there was a mess, I probably had something to do with it. If some guy touched my ass, his girlfriend probably thought it was my fault.

But I didn’t really make it easy. Fingers pointed because my track record wasn’t great.

To quote my foster parents, “You’re just a big fuck up.”

“Whatcha thinking?” Thomas asked.

It was annoying how well he could read me. Sometimes I just wanted to be in my head for two seconds, but he always dragged me out.

I shrugged. “Trying to convince myself not to throw my coffee on you so I don’t lose my only friend in here.”

Looking around, most of the other interns had left the cafeteria and it was pretty much just us.

Mary Mark’s University of Science aka the only place on Earth where they dealt with alien plant life. I always found myself looking up at the Nexus at night. Or what I could see of it. From Earth, it was just a light in the sky. I should have been up there studying. Not back on Earth where plants from other planets could hardly last a month.

But there was a lot that went wrong the first time around and it stayed with me. I was torn between wanting to be in space and being terrified of going back.

“You’ll get back up there,” Thomas said.

He must have caught me staring through the glass ceiling of the cafeteria at the sunset. And of course, he knew I was daydreaming of the Nexus.

“I was just starting to feel important,” I said, mostly to myself.

“Yeah? And I’m sure you would have put some people in danger if you actually had to play doctor before they found you out. Couldn’t have lied about a less dangerous career?”

He brushed a hand over his bald head. He was one of those guys that had been balding since he turned twenty and he shaved his head clean every morning in an attempt to make it a style choice. I had to admit, he pulled it off really well.

I sighed and took another sip of my coffee. Black. No sugar. Bitter as hell just like me.

I cringed at the taste.

But smart people drank black coffee and not the stuff with piles of whipped cream on top.

“I was learning,” I said under my breath.

Thomas reached across the table and slapped my shoulder. “Well, now you’re learning this. From a university and not from behind prison bars. Count yourself lucky they even let you in this place.”

I raised my brows. “Thanks to the attack that killed tons of people on that freighter and led to me and my friend getting taken to an alien planet where I was allergic to everything and was forced to spend time with the most obnoxious valerian ass-hat in the world.”

“Uh… yeah… thanks to that. Guess spending time on an alien planet where no other human has stepped foot can now be considered extensive experience on a resume.”

“Or in an entrance interview.”

It still kind of irked me that I didn’t get into MM because of my brains. I wondered if I would have ever been considered had I not ended up on Sylos with the valerians. Now, NexCom, which handled all intergalactic relations and travel, considered me an asset.

I slumped back in my seat with a sigh. That was a year ago. My best friend ended up falling head over heels for one of those inhuman (and admittedly beautiful) alien studs while I was sniveling, puking, and crying my way through the whole ordeal. So she got a relationship out of it and I got my ass sent back to Earth where everyone kept telling me I was just privileged, lucky, and undeserving.

And yeah, I guess I was lucky. I wasn’t in prison. I was across the globe from the landlords and dealers who all wanted a piece of me because I owed them money. And I was following my childhood dream of doing… plant stuff. I was lucky.

And also, I was stuck. When you see heaven and then you’re sent back to the world, you’ve already seen what could be. I saw what I could be. Where I could be. But I was stuck on the ground again just wishing.

“Bad as you say it was, spending time with valerians and getting them to vouch for you is more of an advantage than anyone else has these days.”

I nodded because he was right. I was being an ungrateful jerk. But I couldn’t stop wanting to go back in time to do things better.

Maybe I wouldn’t be on that cargo ship then…

“So? Figure out your little science problem yet?” Thomas continued.

“Yup,” I said, pulling out my data pad. I slid it to the middle of the table and tapped the screen so a little 3D image of a flower with star-shaped petals was displayed between us. “I call it ‘pretty-little-shit,’ but valerians call it arlakh. The pollen was what made me sick when I was on their planet.”

“Ok. So, you working on a way to not react to it so badly?”

“I’m just a student,” I said, closing the image of the flower away. “I’m not exactly equipped to come up with my own allergy medication. Plus, the only time we had one of these flowers here, it died after two weeks. I’d need a fresh specimen and that means I’d need to go back to that awful valerian planet. Which isn’t happening.”

“Could happen.”

“It’s not happening and I don’t want to go back there anyway. Sylos was a nightmare. First with the allergies. Then the attempted kidnapping by the gek and then with Saleuk.”

“Oooh, right. The sexy valerian that had to babysit you.”

“Excuse me?” I drew back like I’d been struck in the face. “He was not babysitting me, for one. And for two, he was not sexy.”

“Actually, you said he was once.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. When we first started hanging out, you might have let it slip. You were three drinks into a mental breakdown, but still. You said it.”

I was doing anything I could not to turn red over the notion. I tried to search my brain for the moment I said out loud how attractive Saleuk was and couldn’t find it. But it wasn’t unlike me to blurt things out if they were on my mind.

My thoughts wandered back to the valerian. He was intolerable. Tall. Fit as hell, like every other being of his race. He had a wicked smirk I swore I’d slap off his face if I ever saw him again and skin that subtly changed shades depending on his mood. All valerians could change colors like they were damn mood rings.

“You’re doing that thing,” Thomas said.

“What thing?”

“You’re biting your lip. You’re thinking about him. I made you think about him,” he laughed, elbowing my arm. “Thinking about him shirtless?”

I swiped my foot out to kick him and hissed before standing from my seat.

“I need to get to my room. I have to study my ass off if I’m going to get that internship.”

“Good luck,” Thomas called as I marched away. “And don’t forget to write from the heart. Not everything has to be an equation.”

“Yeah, yeah.”