Page 89 of Evan and the Alpha

27

Evan

Mom fucking locked us in the brig. Because of course she did. Who does that, though? To their own kid?

Actually, don’t answer that. I’m sure a lot of parents would do that and worse to their kids. Ugh.

If I make it out of here, I’m never doing that to my kid. Never, ever, ever. No brigs, no go to your room. No groundings. Fuck. I hated when Mom and Dad grounded me.

I’m sprawled out on the single cot we have in here. Ge-Ro is leaned up against the wall, arms folded. He’s got his eyes closed, like he’s meditating or something. Do kroakka meditate? I don’t know. I don’t really know much about their religion and stuff. Maybe he’s sleeping.

Min’s lying on her back on the floor, legs up the wall. She’s staring at the ceiling. Every now and then, she says, “Okay, what about …”

She hasn’t been getting further than that. I don’t want to interrupt her though, because she’s got this incredible look of concentration on her face. She’s smarter than I am, that’s for sure, so like, if any of us are gonna come up with a plan, I think it’s gonna be Min. So I wanna give her the space to work. She doesn’t need me yapping in her ear.

It’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on. There are no windows here, and there’s only the one door. It’s dark, but that’s meant to keep us quiet and subdued, rather than to help us tell whether it’s night or day. I mean, there’s no such thing as night and day in space, but the ship simulates it everywhere else, to help people know when to sleep and when not to sleep.

Prisoners, they don’t give a crap about us. Perpetual darkness keeps us suppressed. Or maybe makes us go nuts eventually.

Anyway, so it’s hard to tell how long we’ve been here or what’s going on outside the walls of our little prison. Every so often, my stomach gives a great lurch, and the ship seems to shudder.

It’s not much to go on, but I think the ship’s going down. Slowly.

“Oh yeah,” Min agrees easily when I finally decide to voice my opinion. “We’ve been slowly losing altitude for around six hours now.”

“You know what time it is?” I ask. I’m honestly more impressed by that than anything else.

Min gives me a look. “Sort of,” she admits. Then she shifts her gaze back to the ceiling. “I think they realized the thruster damage is more extensive than they initially thought. There’s no point in staying up here and just drifting and potentially getting knocked off-course, especially when theColumbiafinally gets over here.”

I purse my lips. Min shrugs. “So I think they’re bringing us down slowly. It’s a controlled sinking, anyway.”

“Oh good,” I say, “so we’re not going to just fall out of the sky.”

Min gives me another funny look. “We could,” she says. “They might also be trying to bring us down because we’re lower on fuel than we thought. And we could hit turbulence or start accelerating toward the ground and then we’ll burn up.”

My stomach knots. “Great.”

Min smiles, then gets up. “But I’m doubting that’s going to happen. I mean, we landed before, and so did you and Darwin when you first arrived.” She rocks back and forth on her heels.

I sigh heavily. “All right, so … what now?”

Min shrugs. “We wait, I guess.”

Ge-Ro grunts and shifts, standing up straight. “I hate waiting,” he says, which is almost hilarious, because he’s been the most patient of us all. He turns his golden gaze on Min. “How do we get out?”

“Well,” she replies, “we can’t really—”

Ge-Ro bares his teeth and Min jumps. “But! There will be a moment, just before we land, when the power skips.”

I struggle to sit up. The effort leaves me panting; the baby is really heavy and awkward. “Oh?” I ask in between pants.

Min nods. “All the power is redirected to the wings, the engine cores, and the landing gear for a couple of seconds, so the circuit breaks. They haven’t really been able to figure that one out. So there’s a split second, maybe two seconds, where the power goes down.”

She looks at the door. “And that means …”

“The door’s open,” I say.

“It’s more like the lock pops off.”