Page 130 of Blightfall

“Hang on,” Arturo said.

“Even if he manages to fight through,” Ivy said, “my varvax will have another flight of pilots awake and ready soon.”

I smothered the urge to scream. “I thought you wanted some humans alive to appreciate you! You murdered an entire planet’s worth of people and now you’re going to kill us too?”

“I did not,” Ivy snapped. “Much of the population had emigrated, and another large percentage had evacuated. Of those who were left, some of them survived.”

“How many?” I asked.

Ivy didn’t respond.

“How many?”

“Twelve million,” Ivy said. “Ten and thirteen one-hundredths percent of the remaining population of the planet.”

“And where are those people now?” I asked. “Frozen? Or did you only preserve the useful ones?”

“Their descendants…evade me,” Ivy said defensively.

I bet they did. Stars, Earth was yet another prison colony.

“Almost there,” Arturo said.

I kicked at the glass doors with my boots, then picked up the grate cover—no longer caring what Ivy might think—and banged it against the glass, but to no avail. Arturo wouldn’t be able to fight all the way up here and free us. We had to get ourselves free if we wanted to join him when he returned.

I threw my whole body against the glass, and this time the unit rocked forward, just slightly. I looked back at Nedd. He met my eyes, and I leaned against the back of the unit again.

Then we threw ourselves at the glass doors in tandem. The box rocked forward and then righted itself with a thud.

“What are you doing?” Ivy asked. For the first time, she looked concerned.

“Come on,” Nedd said, and together we threw ourselves against the glass again, then threw ourselves backward, rocking the unit back and forth, each time tipping it a little farther.

“Stop that!” Ivy said, then began calling for her varvax assistants in hisses and clicks.

“So about that date,” I said to Nedd as we tossed our bodies back and forth. “What are we going to do? Dinner? A moonlit walk through a scion forest?”

“Picnic on the beach?” Nedd asked, strain evident in his voice. “I think I could arrange for us to visit one on Evershore. There are some kitsen who owe me a favor.”

“Evershore it is,” I said, wincing as I hit the glass with my shoulder. “I want to swim in the ocean.”

“Yes,” Nedd said. “Please.”

“Where in the building are you?” Arturo asked.

On the next tip, the unit came precariously close to toppling over before it fell back again.

Stars, he was listening to this. “Second floor,” I said as we rushed the doors again. “Room above the warehouse floor with big windows facing in.”

“Here it goes,” Nedd said, and the whole unit tipped forward. Nedd and I landed on top of the glass doors as they shattered against the floor beneath us, and we both immediately braced ourselves against the unit above us and lifted.

We pulled the thing off us, our arms bleeding, and scrambled out from beneath it in time to see two things: Ivy’s alarmed expression as she frantically called for help, and the warehouse outside exploding inward, concrete showering the cryopods, forming a second large hole next to the first one.

The door flew open, and several varvax barreled through. I grabbed the nearest gurney and rolled it into the path of the varvax, knocking the nearest one off its feet.

“Stop them!” Ivy shouted.

These varvax were medical assistants, not warriors, and they didn’t have weapons, though I imagined those who did would be following soon.