Chapter 7
Months have passed. I am finally healthy enough to race.
After working with other women who have completed the race and found mates, I’m starting to like the sound of it a lot more.
Not to mention, the idea of leaving Earth behind is growing on me.
There are enough painful memories here that I’m more eager to forget everything.
Radar loves working with the other security patrol dogs, and I wish he had more of a pack than just me. I think he wants one too, based on how he sits by the window each night and watches for the night patrol dogs. Every time they walk by our room, he wags his tail.
A creature handler with Abr greets us when my shuttle finally docks at the complex on the moon. She’s a kind-faced human with brown hair tied up in a large bun and biscuits preloaded in her pockets. “Hi, Radar! We’re going to let your mama have a break, okay?”
Radar looks up at me. I’m certain he knows just how fast my heart is beating, and how scared I am of what the fuck I’ve gotten myself into. I try to calm myself, because I don’t want him to think she’s not trustworthy.
“It’s okay, buddy. I’ll see you soon.” I reach for her hand. She takes it, and we shake, but she doesn’t let go.
“I’ll take good care of him. I’ve read over his diet and habits, so I’ve got everything already set up in your room in our designated service dog quarters. He’ll be there waiting for you. I’ll take him for a walk now and in a few hours.”
“Thanks.”
She releases me, then holds the hand with my scent on it close to Radar.
He sniffs her and seems to accept her. I transfer his leash to her, give his head a comforting scratch between his ears, and let them walk off.
Radar glances back at me, like he’s afraid I’m abandoning him or he’s going into another veterinarian’s office.
But it’s the emptiness that eats at me the most. I hope she does what she says she will.
If she hurts him…
Ah, who am I kidding? I never do anything when others wrong me. I’ve spent my entire life trying to avoid the people that will hurt me. And it always happens anyway.
A nurse walks up to me in blue Abr scrubs. “Tessi? We are ready to get you on a bed.”
Normally, Abr runs the final tests on the shuttle. But at the risk of Radar getting out of control, I needed to stay conscious until we were on the lunar base, where a handler could take him.
I enter the round room and sit on the bed she motions to. She helps me lie back and places a device on my forehead, then tugs my collar aside and presses an injector to my neck. It clicks and hisses.
Sleep grips me. “This is normal?”
“Quick nap before the race, to ensure you’re fresh and ready to run.”
“Oh, okay.” I think I say it, but I’m not sure as shadows of sleep swallow my thoughts.
Through the murky atmosphere of rest, I hear a distant explosion. It makes me twitch. Another goes off.
Radar runs by me, but he’s not grown. He’s just a puppy again, scared and malnourished. He hides in a drain pipe that’s got a trickle of water running through it. All around me, the world takes more shape. Silhouettes of trees rise, forming a familiar forest.
I lie on the ground not far from the creek.
When another explosion goes off, close enough that I can see the bright fireball, feel the heat, and hear the flames as they billow into the sky.
I crawl to the pipe and gather Radar into my arms. Then I get up and run, deeper into the forest, away from the battle.
Bushes scrape at my legs and arms. I shield Radar and sprint as fast as I can, but it seems like the blasts never get further away. I glance back to get an idea of how close they are, when I collide with something soft and warm.
I stumble to the ground, curl up around Radar, and pray I don’t squish him. When I get my bearing, I notice the deep growl of a different kind of terror.
The forest suddenly seems darker, like the shadows are alive. Bright, iridescent silver-blue eyes stalk us from the void between boughs.
I scramble away from him, clutching Radar, who whimpers in my arms.
A faint, rapid beeping enters my ears.
“No, no. Let her sleep. We’re almost there. Proceed.”
I glance up at the sky like it holds the answer to why another woman’s voice is in my dream.
The shadows move, and a wolf limps into a patch of sunlight through the trees, something protruding from its chest. I slowly get up and study his posture. I don’t think he’s here to attack us.
Walking toward him takes every ounce of courage I have. But I can’t believe he’d chase me to attack me. I think he was hunting me because he needs my help.
An arrow protrudes from his shoulder. He sniffs in my direction, and I seize up. I close my eyes and pray he doesn’t hurt us. When his warm breath moves away, I look down.
He sits. Waits.
Getting up, I slowly reach out, cautiously wrap my hand around the arrow’s shaft, and prepare myself to run. Then, with a sharp motion, I rip the arrow out, turn, and sprint through the trees, clutching Radar close.
Light filters through the forest. It breaks up my dream, and I wake to the Abr complex again.
“Blue bands,” a woman in a white coat says.
“Are you sure?” my nurse asks. “She served on the Abr security detail. Seems like she should be black. Myndrous were hunting her.”
“They hunt all females and Mindorans,” the doctor replies. She turns to me. “Why did you run?”
“Run?”
“In your dream?”
“I had no weapons, no ship, no other way to survive.” I glance between the women. “How did you know I was running?”
The doctor looks over a tablet. “It’s a special concoction that stimulates critical decision making moments in your life when you dream.
Combined with our beds, we can guide dreams to expose what we need to know about you to band you so males know your personality type.
You are docile but courageous when you see another in pain. ”
“Not sure I’d call myself docile. I was a scavenger.”
“Non-confrontational.”
“But it’s a dangerous job. And there is definitely confrontation with other scavengers.”
“And what did you do when they confronted you?”
I chew my cheek. “I ran.”
“Uh huh. One more question.” The doctor looks me over. “If you were given everything you ever wanted, would you keep it all for yourself or share it?”
“Share it.”
“Why?”
“If I can help others, we can build something better for even more of us.”
The nurse removes the device on my forehead and helps me sit up.
“I think that’s only part of your answer.” The doctor sighs. “But I will accept that.”
“Wait,” I say to stop her before she walks away. “What do you mean by that? What’s the other part?”
She gives me a sad smile. “Let me just say this, you do deserve the care a male wants to offer you.”
The doctor walks off but my nurse remains.
“What’s up?” she asks like she knows I’m not eager to get up.
“I just don’t really know what I’m doing here. I just want a better life for my dog.”
“So there’s a deeper problem. You don’t have a direction, a goal for your life?”
“Just to survive and keep surviving until I die. There is no goal, no dream, no purpose…not anymore. I’ve always had shit jobs.
I’ve lost my parents, my closest friends, my home.
” Someone special. “I couldn’t finish college.
I always wanted to go back. But my life has just been one disaster after another.
” I feel like a failure. “So I don’t really know what else to do except to change something, take a new path, and hope it leads somewhere better.
But it just seems like each one is worse than the one before it. ”
The nurse sits on the end of my bed. “Everyone has different philosophies on life. Some believe in God or gods or spirits or energies. Do you have any of that?”
“My faith broke the day my mother died. It’s been one disaster after another since. So…no. Maybe there is, but I haven’t seen anything that gives me hope like that once did.”
“Well, my two cents is this: we aren’t born with a purpose. We are born because of natural selection, because we’re biologically wired for it. Purpose is our choice. We decide what our purpose is. And I know what yours is.”
“You do?”
“It’s obvious.”
“Enlighten me.”
“You care for lost and broken souls. You mend what is fractured, likely because that’s how you feel.
And fixing others is easier than fixing yourself.
But you feel a little better each time you help someone else.
And that is beautiful but sad. That’s why Doctor Jarin told you that you do deserve any affection a male wants to give you.
“It’s why you’re a blue-banded racer. There’s nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t mean you’re weak.” She pats my shoulder. “I think it actually says you’re stronger, emotionally.”
“How’s that?” I ask, getting up.
“You put others before yourself. You find a way to be okay with your pain, your loneliness, to heal others. That’s very selfless. Not many people are like that anymore. Anyway, better go pick up your first suit and your bands. Changing room is through there.”
I thank her and follow her directions through a doorway and into a large room where women filter through in lines that pass attendants by computer screens.
A canister drops onto the counter when I step up to the attendant. She removes the suit, a wrist band, and the blue armbands and extends them to me.
I change in the locker rooms beyond, tighten my ponytail, and affix the blue bands over the Velcro that wraps over my sleeves just below my shoulders.
No one makes a move to talk to me, but I don’t try to talk to anyone else.
There are a lot of pinks and yellows this round, not many blues like me, and we all tend to tuck ourselves in our own corners in the room, avoiding conversation.
The buffet hall is busy with clusters of chatting women in skin-tight, zip up race suits like mine. Abr staff wanders through as they restock the food tables. TV screens around the room show our conversations from the dream dome.