Meteor Storm (The Surge #4)

1 Amelia

“The Nexus,” Gregory said. “That’s where we’re sending you.”

“To space? You’re sending me to space?”

“Yes. Unless you have a better plan. Your name is no longer Amelia. It’s Penelope. Amelia is dead.”

My heart skipped a beat at how literal that statement was. For thirteen seconds, I flatlined. And then I flatlined again for seven. It was by pure luck that I woke up from it three months ago.

I adjusted myself in my seat, not wanting to think about how close I’d come to never opening my eyes again.

But what hurt even more was that Natascha hadn’t been so lucky.

“What about Natascha’s funeral?” I asked.

Gregory sighed. “You know you can’t attend.”

My stomach sank. I started biting the inside of my lip, a habit I’d dropped years ago, but now it had returned with a vengeance.

“Look, we’ll get Sanchez, but you won’t be here to see it.

Not if you want to survive. My advice—leave this all behind.

Natascha. Every foster home you’ve ever been in.

You’re military trained, Amelia. You’re already halfway to your piloting license.

It wasn’t hard to get you on the Nexus. Not a lot of people can say that. ”

“But I’ll be going under a fake name. When people ask about me, I’ll have to lie.”

“Only until we get him.”

“I can help. Natascha told me about him. She told me—”

“No. Sanchez isn’t your responsibility.”

“Natascha was.”

“She was a grown woman. You couldn’t protect her forever. You needed to move on a long time ago and now you don’t have a choice.”

“I should have been here. Not in boot camp. Not halfway across the country. I should have—"

“She’s dead.”

Those words were like an arrow straight to my chest.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” he continued. “Natascha always dragged you into her problems. Even when you were kids.”

“She needed me. She needed safety.”

“What about you? Who’s protecting you?”

“I can protect myself. I didn’t join the military so someone else could fight my fights.”

“And all that training couldn’t prevent you from getting shot and killed.”

Another arrow to my chest. I didn’t know words could hurt so much.

I dropped my head, staring down at my hands.

Natascha was gone, that much was true. I wondered what I could have done and every option just filled me with more guilt.

Thirty-four years old and I was finally realizing how much of my life I dedicated to something destined to fail.

“When you catch him, you’ll tell me, right? You’ll bring me home?”

“Sure.”

“Promise.”

“I can’t promise anything. You know that.”

“Then, how long do I have to be up there?”

“I don’t know.”

He was trying to get rid of me. I could tell. I’ve been pushy my whole life, especially with anything regarding Natascha. She had a way of getting into bad situations. Most saw her as a lost cause. I never did.

In the end, it broke us both.

“Any other questions?”

I shook my head solemnly.

“Good.” He leaned over, picking up a file from his desk. “This is everything you need to get on the Nexus. The next transport leaves in three days.”

“That’s... that’s quick,” I smiled joylessly.

“The quicker the better.”

Nodding, I swallowed my anger. My sadness. My hate. It was all routine. Emotions only ever showed people you could be taken advantage of.

I looked up at Gregory and I took another deep breath, feeling helpless and inadequate. I knew he was doing everything to help me, but I couldn’t help feeling like he was also just trying to unburden himself. I was a liability.

“So, I'm Penelope, now, huh?”

“Penelope Elliot.”

“Good name.”

“Thought you’d like it. I pay attention. You should finish your book, by the way.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “I think that’s in the past from here on out.”

“Look,” he placed a hand on my shoulder. “Nothing is permanent.”

“Yeah.”

I left that office knowing I wasn’t coming back. One way or another, I was Penelope forever. Amelia was dead.

Penny: Four years later

. . .

I remembered explosions. Screaming. I remembered recruits hanging on for dear life as our cargo ship was ripped apart by an enemy vessel.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that. The valerians assured us that their war with the gek’tal was long past, but someone wasn’t being honest. Either that, or someone was being foolish.

Allying ourselves with the valerians made us an enemy in the eyes of the gek’tal and anyone else they might have had a beef with.

It was a war we didn’t want, but introducing us to intergalactic affairs came with baggage.

Baggage humans clearly weren’t prepared to carry.

It wasn’t long ago that humanity was still confined to Earth, dreaming of the stars and glimpsing them only through the cold lens of a telescope. They were distant. Untouchable. Beautiful.

Now we moved among them.

We stood face-to-face with the beings who had been crossing the dark between worlds centuries before we ever left our own.

And if you asked me, we met them far too soon.

I was running to someone, trying to get control of the situation.

That was all I could remember before everything went dark.

I drifted in and out of that darkness, every time hearing more screams. More loud noises and the heavy drawl of metal stressing and moaning under pressure. Terror turned my blood to ice.

Only the super skilled, super smart, and super ambitious made it to the Nexus to work. It was a city in space built entirely by humans and powered by syfer crystals. It was an absolute marvel and a place of diplomatic advancement since the syfer crystals were harvested from a valerian-owned planet.

That freighter happened to be filled with those crystals and I was responsible for most of it. They were highly unstable if they were met with the wrong kind of friction and an attack on our ship qualified.

When humans introduced themselves to the galaxy as a spacefaring species, we needed friends.

The valerians knew it. It turned out, they needed us, too.

A dwindling population wounded by centuries of war with the gek’tal meant they needed military numbers.

And humans were good at numbers. We were overpopulated, so in exchange for a promise to help them in their time of need, we were provided power.

We couldn’t mine syfer ourselves since they had control over a highway leading to their main territories and we were not granted full access to it.

The warp abilities of their gates were the only way to get from one place to another without spending 70,000 years in cryo.

As far as we knew…

So, we were trading. Military numbers to aid a war that may or may not get rekindled for unlimited energy to power the Nexus. We were on retainer, you could say, but no one believed any war would actually come knocking.

I knew the ins and outs of the Nexus and its functions. I was a quick learner. I knew how to be useful. I had training and an ability to follow orders.

Which is why I knew that military power wasn’t the only thing humans were giving to the valerians.

Humans were trading something else and keeping it from the general population.

And when one secret is kept, then you know there are more.

And there are always powerful people that don’t like things being kept from them.

I was fairly certain the gek’tal knew something, too, and that’s why we were attacked.

I didn’t expect a full-on assault to interrupt my mission. I was so caught off guard that half the people I was responsible for died before we even knew what hit us.

I was devastated.

Maybe it was better to be knocked out in the chaos after that. That way I didn’t have to see the horrors unfold during the assault. That way I didn’t have to think. Hope. See. I could die in peace in an ocean of blackness.

But again, things weren’t going to be that easy.

Next thing I knew, I was waking up in small bursts, the world around me changing.

I saw darkness at one point and were it not for the pain in my right leg, I would have thought I was dead.

The next time I woke, I saw blurred images through a dirty pane of glass and heard muffled voices all around me.

Unfamiliar voices. The vague shapes I could see through the glass were anything but human.

I wasn’t sure if I meant to pass out again or if I was truly in that bad of shape, but the world disappeared again for some time.

I’m not saying I expected it to be fine when I finally woke up again, but I was hoping the situation would have improved.

I was lying in what looked like a glass tube, my body naked and on display.

Yellowed lights surrounded me, illuminating me from all angles.

Outside my tube was a group of onlookers with faces that didn’t look real.

I took a deep breath, hoping I’d gain control of my limbs, but alas, I felt paralyzed.

My heart started to race. My fingers tingled. My eyes felt hot and dry.

My worst nightmares didn’t involve violence or monsters. They involved me being powerless.

I needed to gain control.

Breathe. Just breathe.

Another few deep breaths and I could logically take in my surroundings.

I counted three different species—or what I thought were three species of aliens—standing around me.

There were half a dozen of them looking at my naked body and knowing I couldn’t do anything about it made me feel sick.

A tall one with large eyes and a skinny face was cocking his head from side to side as if sizing up a racehorse.

Another with a gray, ape-like face and wiry, sparse strands of hair snorted and stepped up to my tube to place a thick hand on the glass.

Lastly, a dull green mountain of muscle stood at the back with another of what I assumed was the same species, arms crossed over his broad chest. Any other details escaped me through the glare on the glass around me.

Muffled words were exchanged in a language I couldn’t understand and then two of the aliens seemed to come to an agreement.

The tall one with big eyes and another ape-like creature pulled out small devices and seemed to trade something between them.

Finally, the tall one waved a hand at his equally lanky companion and they approached my tube.

The whole thing began to move, but to where, I couldn’t tell, because the glass seemed to darken until it was tinted nearly black and all I could see outside of it was shadows.

I blinked, my eyes stinging, and hoped that when I woke again—if I woke again—I would have control of my body. I begged God to at least give me that.

Give me the chance to fight for myself…