Page 8 of HaL

For the first time in as long as I can remember, my lungs don’t burn. My throat doesn’t itch. I’m not sneezing or struggling to breathe.

No pollen.

No pollution.

Nothing but clean air and snow. I almost laugh again. Of all the things that could/were going to kill me, now my allergies aren’t going to be one of them. The snow stings my face and exposed arms, each tiny crystal biting into my skin like a thousand needles. The powdery ground shifts beneath my numb bare feet as I force myself to take another step, each one sinking nearly to my knees. I should turn around. I should crawl back inside the pod. There might be something I missed. Supplies. Shelter. A way to call for help. Instead, I stand there looking at the endless white surrounding me.

Why die inside a metal box that smells like dirty socks and body odor when I can die out here? At least the air is clean. A bitter smile touches my lips. Then my legs give out. I fall forward, my cheek hitting the snow. The cold burns. It shouldn’t be possible for something so cold to feel like fire, but it does.

I try to push myself up.

My arm screams. I collapse again. My breathing becomes slower, heavier. Every breath feels like work now, as though my lungs are struggling against the cold just as much as the rest of my body.

My fingers are gone.

My toes are gone.

I can’t feel my face anymore.

Maybe that’s a good thing. The wind howls around me, but somehow it sounds farther away now. Everything is fading. My eyes drift closed. For a moment, I think about the girl ... Jade. I wonder if she knew this would happen. I wonder if this is what she was trying to warn me about. I wonder if anyone will ever find me.

Then, just as the darkness begins to take me, something strange happens. I feel warmer. Not much. Just enough to notice. I frown. Warmth spreads slowly through my chest, so faint I wonder if I’m imagining it.

My lips curve into the ghost of a smile.

It won’t be long now.

And then the darkness takes me.

CHAPTER 3

HAL

I have been home for a few rotations already, but instead of the peace it usually gives me, I have been restless. My darkness’ have been haunted by gray eyes and bright red hair. Colors, I am not sure I have ever seen put together in such perfection. It seems like the moment I close my eyes, I see her smile and the little dots on her small nose. Every rising when I wake, I wonder if I am truly remembering her as she was, or if my mind is conjuring its own version of the ultimate beauty.

I was drawn to the one called Dawn, as I have never been to another, but I have nothing to offer the soft skins they call human. Their bodies are too delicate and weak to survive in my world, and I cannot survive in theirs. Even though I may have tried to for her when I was younger.

Shaking off the uneasiness that has plagued me for the last few rotations, I decide to take a hunting party out to see if we can make any last-minute additions to our food stores before the frost season settles upon us and we are trapped inside the mountain until the storms pass.

Due to the temperature fluctuations at this time of the rotation, I head to my mainland speeder, only to laugh when I find Oset already there, firing both our machines up, checking over their sleds and the many sensors that keep them going in such extremely cold temperatures.

“Good rising, Oset. How did you know I would be heading out this rising?”

“HaL, I’ve watched you pace these halls for the last few risings, like a youngling itching to get into trouble. I knew you needed to get out for a while. Once I had the speeders ready, I was planning to come find you anyway, so I figured I might as well join you.”

“Are you not worried about Eirwen? She is close to term.”

“No, she is tougher than either of us combined. Troza never lets me in the room, anyway.”

“Hmmm” I know it’s not my place, so I don’t say anything else as we both throw our supplies in the machines, but if I had a mate … one that was birthing my young, there would be nothing in this universe that could take me from her side, no matter how many young ones we already had. A few of our kind still prefer solitude, as it is odd and sometimes dangerous for all of us to gather together. A handful of elders still refuse to change their ways no matter how much I argue about the benefits of unity, but occasionally they come to the market to trade or buy supplies.

I am just about to step up onto the side of the glider when a huge explosion ricochets through the mountain valley around us. Icicles and frost crystals fall from the ceiling as I grab my phasor and hunker down, trying to see where the threat is coming from. Before I can yell out to Oset, a voice echoes through the cavern coming from my communicator, which I often forget I have on.

“HaL, this is Jade … SiN and I are in the process of trying to disarm and disable a Korgon ship that abducted one of the girls from Ethra. She was able to escape in one of their pods, but I couldn’t hold on to her as we’d planned due to the pod’s thrusters proving to be stronger than the tractor beam I was trying to pull her in with. Her last known location in the outer atmosphere was close to you, but she was coming in hard and fast to the point she may already be on the ground.”

“Are you telling me that a human female just landed on MY planet?”

“Yes, you must find her, HaL! The odds were against her the second she entered that pod, since she was already injured, but if she somehow made it through that reentry, you are her only chance.”