Journey Down Chatper Peek!
Not sure what to think of my first real sci-fi? Immerse yourself in the WHOLE first chapter!
Cameron Gray told the best stories. Nell Gray would sit by the window watching the birds flutter around while he told them to her pregnant belly as if, somehow, their daughter would know them by heart the day she was born. Well, I didn’t, but I sat in that same chair, staring at the same tiny yard, watching a whole other flock of birds pecking the ground for a morsel while my mother became a distant memory. And I did that for years.
Now, I’m watching them lower my father into the ground, and all I can think about is that plague, how it sucked my Mama in like a tornado, then threw her out its backside like nothing more than a flea-bitten rat. That’s what Papa told me. Things were like that when I was a kid, but a lot has changed since I was four. My father dove his nose straight into his work, leaving me to tend to what was left of our house without Mama, but I knew the truth. He couldn’t stand the look of me. I can’t stand the look of me either. I look just like her.
But I never expected Papa to die… didn’t think he’d leave me that alone.
“Journey,” Chance whispers by my side, distracting me from a thousand memories of a woman who’d ruined my life by dying before I was even old enough to understand death. I know his tone, that look in his eyes. He knows what I know. That it doesn’t matter how my Papa was killed. If he didn’t squirrel up enough money to pay off our tiny one-bedroom apartment, I’d be on the street by nightfall.
I blink, and Papa’s coffin is visible again behind the sheets of rain pummeling us. What a fool. Cameron Gray was the dumbest man on the planet, on any planet, and I vow that I’ll be smarter, work harder, and play the game like no one else until I am the master of the game. I won’t go down like him, like a dog bleeding out in the street, kicked and useless.
“Journey Gray, I know that look.” Chance shifts an inch closer, but there’s no one within miles besides the reaper putting my very last family member into the dirt. “We runnin’?”
“We? Chance, your family needs you.” I lick my lips, salty from the tears I let fall that first hour after Papa was gone.
He huffs.
“Your brother needs you, at least.”
“He needs my pay. We both know he ain’t loved me a day in his life, but you do. I go where you go.”
The boy’s been by my side since we were crawling, so I can’t say no, but I can’t exactly say yes, either. I have one ticket out of here, and it leaves in two hours, assuming I make it to the station before the probate catches me. I didn’t think he’d want to go with me when I spent my savings on that ticket, but it was a foolish, short-sighted thought. Of course, he wants to go with me. Chance Prince and Journey Gray go to the grave together. That’s prophecy.
“Journey, it’s almost time,” he whispers, stressing because his life is defined by whatever comes out of my mouth next. I nod. He exhales. “Where?”
“Creoria. But we gotta get you a ticket.”
Chance’s mouth falls open. Ghost chills crawl up his skin, and his eyes go kinda wide because Creoria is the last place a human orphan needs to hide out, but it is the best place to blend in with a species as close to human as you can get without being… human. Anywhere else is just asking for trouble. Well, more than I already have.
“Your dad really screwed things up,” Chance says, but he doesn’t mean it how it sounds. If Papa loved anyone as much as he loved me, it was Chance, but he’s not wrong.
Leaping between an Automatic Law Enforcer and a woman stealing from a Clean was about as dumb as… anything. Papa took the laser shot meant for another and left me a ward of the city, also known as conscription bait. I’ll be on the front lines of whatever fight Terran Authority is cookin’ up faster than I can blink if I didn’t run fast. The Cleans are the aristocrats, the ruling class, those untouched by the Void Plague that killed people like my mother. Those with abilities. Telekinesis. Energy manipulation. Foresight. The Clean have skills, while the Scourge waste away as their servants and slaves. And in cases like mine, as the front lines in Terra’s skirmishes with almost every other sentient lifeform planet in this universe and then some, when it’s not fighting its own, of course.
“How am I gonna come up with that kinda money? I got what’s on my back and in my head.” Chance’s head is filled with mathematical equations that amount to most of nothing but keep him from doing the same kind of stupid things that got my Papa jailed dozens of times and then killed. Aside from that, he has two pairs of pants, three shirts, a holy pair of socks, and shoes that have as much life left in their soles as my dead father.
My eyes shift to the reaper. He’s scooping that last pile of dirt over my father, and instead of mourning, I’m adding up the worth of everything I own—assuming I can get it out of our apartment before the probate comes—just so I can buy my best friend a ticket to a planet that would probably kill us. Just not as fast as the Terran skirmishes.
I can’t cry again. I mean, I try, but it just ain’t there. I love my Papa, but it’s the kind of love that comes from familiarity. He stopped loving me like a daughter about the time the Void came and erased his beloved wife from existence. I hurt him. It’s not like I mean to look like her, but it ain’t exactly something a person can change.
“Journey?” Chance squeezes my hand and nods toward the reaper. The reaper shifts his gaze to me and slows the controls so I can buy a little more time to think. He knew Papa—didn’t like him much, but he knew him. If he’s worried, it’s because he sees the probate manager circling like a vulture somewhere. I can’t go back home. Only a fool would believe Papa saved any kind of money. No sense chancing it, going back for something that’s probably already gone.
“I got Mama’s wedding ring. We’ll sell it. Come on,” I say, tugging Chance away from the grave before the chill of what’s coming has a chance to sink in. I have the ring on me, tucked in my pocket where the probate wouldn’t find it until they did the pat-down. But I have no intention of sticking around for a bunch of idiots to run their hands all over me, looking for the last piece of dignity I have so they can smash it right in front of me. I never planned to, but now my plan has changed even more.
“You can’t sell your mother’s ring.”
“I love you more than I love that ring, so let’s go. Hurry,” I say, tugging even harder.
Chance’s eyes sparkle at that, the closest he’s ever gotten to a declaration of love from me. He’ll marry me if I give him a reason to ask, I know, but I’m just not the marrying type. I’m broken. I’m just… not good. I feel it deep in my bones, something like a curse or a glitch, anything but normal. I can’t tarnish someone like Chance, not like that. Not with a wife who is just wrong.
He keeps pace with me like he has for all seventeen and a half years we’ve been alive.
The jump station is seven miles from the only graveyard left in Penn Station. All the rest are full of Scourge and closed, forgotten, buried deep in history so we can forget about them and repeat all those mistakes sometime in the future because that’s what we do. We humans—sentient but stupid as a box of cracked rocks.
With any luck, we reach the jump station, pawn the ring, snag Chance a pass, and hop on over to Creoria by dinner. I heard once they ate mostly like we did, but I also heard they ate those cracked rocks, so I didn’t let my stomach get too ahead of itself. We’ll be lucky if we get dinner.
“What do we do when we get there? For work? Do they hire humans on Creoria?” Chance asks.
I hurry my pace, with some kind of worry sinking in the closer we get to the station. More than before. It slinks up my spine and encases my neck in a squeeze, choking me with anxiety. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but I know if we don’t get to the jump station fast, we can kiss our departure goodbye. Chance keeps up with me, jogging beside me until I break into a full run. Something’s coming. I see it, feel it.
Automatic Law Enforcers—ALEs—turn the corner in front of us, so we slow down. We maintain our composure while they pass, even though every twitch of my muscles is aimed at them, wishing they’d short-circuit in the rain and fry. But they don’t. They aren’t made that way, but there’s something comforting in fantasizing about their demise at the hand of something so innocuous as water. They pass, and we speed up again, but it’s not the same. We don’t make much headway now, so I look over to Chance. His leg is hurting, but he won’t tell me.
“Chance.”
“No. Keep going. If I fall behind, just leave me. Get out of here, and I’ll find you later.”
“I ain’t leaving you. You know it.” I know it too. I was stupid to buy one ticket. Stupid to think I could do this without him or that I would want to. I need him like I need air, and that only makes not being his wife like swallowing those dang rocks.
“Almost there,” he says, then he finds the energy to run the last quarter mile.
Inside the station, people buzz around with better things to do than pay any mind to two Scourge on the run. We aren’t exactly on the run, not yet. By law, I have two days to report to the probate and hand over everything I ever owned to pay my Papa’s debts. Two days, they say, but the hawks will descend on my lonely apartment by nightfall, pecking and swirling until I give up and let them have it all without a fight. That’s if they ain’t already raided it while I was watchin’ them bury my father.
I fish in my pocket for my mother’s ring, clasp a shaky finger around it, slip it on for safekeeping then step up to the ticket counter.
“Can I help you?” The attendant, also automated, shifts her creepy as bugs gaze toward us. I’ll never get used to them. Been around them all my life, but there’s something wrong about them, something a soul knows just by instinct. Probably their lack of a soul, if I’m honest.
“I’d like to barter this for a jump pass, please,” I say, placing the ring on the counter.
The attendant scans the ring and beeps. It’s all normal until it isn’t. Her creepy insect eyes blink from yellow to red, then an alarm screams at me. I jump back and topple into Chance, who catches me and tenses.
“Stolen property. Please remain in place until—”
I don’t know what else the thing says because before I can blink, Chance and I are in a full run out of there with ALEs on our heels. Stolen? What in the name of Jupiter’s moons did my Papa do? Mama’s ring was stolen? Couldn’t be. It had to be a mistake, but that won’t matter to Terran Authorities. Then it hits me. It was probably a new conscription tactic—fake stolen property and arrest the Scourge, get them sent to prison on false charges. It didn’t matter how we got there as long as we got there to fulfill our roles as blast sponges.
“Stars, what just happened?” Chance puffs as we run. “Where do we go?”
I look around. ALEs flood the area, spill out of the jump station, and swarm us. We have nowhere to go… except down. Down is bad… real bad. But it’s all we have because now the probate is the least of my concerns. Now I’m—we are—headed for the front lines whether we like it or not. I run, cut a hard left, and snatch Chance’s shirtsleeve to pull him along with me, then dart toward the underground. Papa said there used to be something called a subway here like an underground train people used to move around the city, but after the fourth world war, they’d all but collapsed. We flew with hovercrafts by that time, so there was no reason to rebuild them. Most have been filled, but there are still a few that never got sealed. Penn ran out of money, and people forgot about them—except the homeless Scourge.
Ahead, the opening gets wider in front of me. It’s dark. Stinks. But right now, it feels like the safest place in the universe because those stupid ALEs can’t read navigation underground. For all the money Terran Authority stole to make their tech, they sure did make it stupid as… yeah, those rocks again.
“Journey!” Chance can’t believe what I’m about to do, but he doesn’t stop. He keeps pushin’ that bum leg to its limit, never leaving my side.
I reach the stairs and swing around the poles holding half a door in place, something meant to stop people from entering before they pay, but it’s useless now. Chance is on my heel, leaping over the thing despite his crummy leg, and together we all but fall down the flight of stairs into the darkness. I stumble and slip on the bottom stair.
It’s blackness. Complete night. Chance grasps my hand again and feels along the wall, no longer rushing since the ALEs pass the subway entrance like it doesn’t even exist. I’m huffing, and he’s panting, but we’re free for now.
“Careful. Don’t trip on the tracks,” he says, but I’ve already done it a half dozen times before I realize there’s a sliver of space between the track and the wall. “What do we do now? We can’t stay down here. I can’t even see a ding dang thing.”
“We’ll go back up at dark, try to… I don’t know,” I sigh, knowing going up at night is dumber than going back up now. “Let’s just stay alive for now, and I’ll think of something.”
He snickers, and I imagine his grin, toothy with dimples, and those pretty hazel eyes looking at me like I hung the moon. “The last brilliant idea you had landed us here, so maybe I should do the thinking the rest of the—”
A flash of light distracts him and pulls my attention too.
“Well, well, well. Look what came in with the rats.” A male’s voice echoes in the tunnel before that flash of light flickers again, illuminating our way. “Come on, Scourge. Just a little farther. Lemme get a good look at you.”
“Who are you?” Chance asks. We still don’t see a human, but the voice isn’t robotic.
“Judging by the look of you, I’d say I’m the best thing that’s happened to you all day. Name’s Gage, and you just invaded my home. Least you can do is come meet the family, have a bite to eat, and tell me your story.”
“Are you gonna kill us?” I ask because it seems like the logical thing to ask, but I’m met with laughter so loud I feel like a fool.
“Kill you? Nah. We ain’t about killing people down here.” Gage stepped closer, bringing his light to his face. He’s older, probably Papa’s age, with a scar that runs clean across his eye, forehead to nose, cutting his left eye right out of his head. “I know I look scary, but I’m not much of a murderer….” He paused. “Unless you’re planning to turn my family in to the—”
“No,” I say, putting up my hands. “No. We just need a place to lay low until we come up with a plan, that’s all.”
Gage eyes me, his clothing no better than Chance’s or mine, trying to find the truth in a whole pile of emptiness. It’s how I feel now, empty and cold and desperate to figure out how my day went from the usual mess to a steaming pile of junk in less than twelve hours. Something shifts in his eyes, then he swings his gaze to Chance. Chance squeezes my hand and steps closer to me, linking his arm with mine, making a point. I’m his, and ain’t nobody in some underground bunker gonna lay a hand on me. I’m not available. Gage likes this, grins, and nods.
“Come on, then. My wife’ll make you something to eat, then you can make that plan.”
Lord only knew why—or maybe He designed it—this small sliver of luck came to us, but it’s just what I need to recollect my thoughts. I’m supposed to be on a ship to Creoria, on my way to live my measly life working as a paid servant to some Creorian family, but since that all went to Hades in a handcart, I inhale another breath of rancid garbage before following Gabe right down a tunnel that might very well lead to the depths of Hell.
Chance strokes the inside of my arm, ready to walk into it with me no matter how hot the fire gets. And boy, is it hot now.
Gage glances over his shoulder and notices Chance is practically carrying me to keep me close.
“Nobody here is gonna bother your girl. We have rules and respect, unlike those above ground. What should we call you?” Gage asks with his one eye training on me before shifting to Chance.
I figure it doesn’t matter if he knows our real names or not. The consequences of things going wrong are the same either way. Even so, Chance lets me do the talking as usual, even though he’s probably smarter than me and less afraid of what comes next.
“Journey and Chance,” I say, still keeping my distance from this new person.
“Journey. That’s an interesting name. We’re close now,” Gage says. “My guess is since you were running from ALEs, you got yourself into a fix. If you need a place to stay, we run our community like a family and don’t turn out good people. By this, I mean if you ain’t in the Terran Authority or in their pocket, you’re good.”
“The Terran Authority never has been a friend of the Scourge. We’re good,” Chance says with a level of authority he doesn’t often use. This is his take-charge tone, which sets me at ease like a good cup of tea. Together, we’ll survive this.
Ahead, more light floods the tunnel until it opens into another platform. This one has been sealed, so the only entrances to guard are the tunnels, which are manned by several men all wearing a makeshift uniform—gray jumpsuits with a red stripe around each shoulder’s stitching. Gage enters the platform like he owns it, which evidently is the case since everyone stands to greet him like he’s some kind of ruler. But they don’t bow.
Over the open area are tents, lean-tos, and shelving units stacked against the far wall. They’re loaded with supplies, mostly food stocks and clothing, and opposite the tracks where the platform would open to the surface is a station of sorts. Little more than a booth constructed of wooden planks and sheets, it boasts a faded sign with words I cannot decipher since it’s missing a few letters, leaving gibberish that don’t make sense.
Eyes land on us while we follow Gage to the little booth.
He knocks on the counter, and a dark-skinned woman with brilliant green eyes pops her head up, her arms laden with paperwork. I’m confused by this—what sort of records do runaways need?—but I say nothing since she’s smiling at me, and she’s the least intimidating person I’ve encountered today.
“Selina, these are our new friends, Chance and Journey. Can you please rustle them up something to eat and a place to sleep while I talk with them?” Gage asks.
“Of course. Anything else?”
“No, that’ll be it for now. Thank you, Selina.”
She nods, and Gage gestures his head toward a door. This door is oddly placed, but I assume it leads to an office or bedroom, perhaps another tunnel. I’m surprised when the door swings open to reveal… a bathroom.
“Is there plumbing?” Chance asks.
“Yep. Whole world forgot about this place, which works well for us. Everything still functions, and we keep it up. There’s towels in the cabinet, and the last stall there has been refashioned into a shower. Am I right in assuming you can’t be separated?”
Chance narrows his eyes. “You ain’t the only one who knows how to be respectful. She’s not going out of my sight except when I face the wall so she can clean up.”
Gage accepts Chance’s response but doesn’t leave. Instead, he grunts and nods, then adds, “Well, I’ll wait outside, then we’ll have a talk.”
I don’t like this. “About what? I appreciate the food and shower, but we’re in a hurry to….” My voice seizes like it already knows our options are somewhere between dead and deader and refuses to complete my thought out loud.
“No one will force you to stay. I’m just offering kindness in a world filled with hate, and if you eat and shower then run right up those tunnels to your death, I ain’t gonna stop you. Choice is yours, but we can offer another way if you want to hear about it.”
Chance looks at me again, always going where I go. This time, I don’t have an answer, so I give him the same stare in return. He licks his lips, lifts his chin, and says, “Let her clean up, then we’ll talk before we decide anything.”
Gage steps back and closes the door behind him, leaving Chance and me alone in the large bathroom. I wander down the row of stalls and stop at the last one. I pop open the door to find it does, in fact, have a shower. And it’s clean. I sigh. I want a shower but not enough to get naked in some underground bunker that might be filled to bursting with crazy people. That’s the last thing I need, running underground stark naked.
“What are you thinking?” Chance asks.
I sigh again. “That twenty-four hours ago, my life was normal. Normal as any Scourge, I guess, and now I’m looking at a shower in a subway bathroom stall while a one-eyed old man probably listens to our conversation on the other side of that door.”
Chance chuckles. He steps closer so we can talk with some blind sense of privacy, taking a big leap that the room isn’t under surveillance. “Wanna keep running? I gotta say, I’m not getting that vibe from you, and I pride myself on knowing everything about you, Journey Gray.”
I smile and shove him lightly but not enough that he stumbles away. I want him near, always do, so trying to escape without him really was the dumbest thing I’d ever planned. “I think we hear him out, get a better feel for what’s happening down here, then we make a plan. I still want off this planet. It’s got nothing good for us.”
“That’s how I feel, too. You want to clean up at least?” He pops open the cabinet and tosses me a towel. “Face and hands might make you feel better, at least.”
Together, we wash up enough that we can tolerate ourselves. We move slower than we need to, but there’s something about going back out that door that says we’ve already accepted what Gage has to offer. What if it’s all a ruse, I wonder. What if we’ll be the dinner he spoke about?
A soft knock distracts me from staring in the mirror. Chace opens it, letting Selina step inside.
“I made you some food.” She smiles and points her thumb over her shoulder. “I know Gage is intense, and you’re probably freaking out a lot, but no one here wants any harm to come to you. We get a new face down here every few months, so you’d think he’d have better introduction skills by now.” She laughs, but she’s not nervous.
“The delivery did lack a certain flair,” Chance says. “What is this place?”
Selina shrugs one shoulder. “It’s just home. All of us are on the run from Terran Authority for some reason or another, but it seems as long as we stay down here, they don’t bother us. It’s not ideal, but we’re alive, and we’re a family, so it’s worth it.”
“And you’d just welcome in two strangers without any interrogation or suspicion?” I ask. “What if we’re murderers?”
“We believe in trust down here. We give it until you give us a reason not to. We’ve been wrong a time or two, had to move to new platforms and seal off old tunnels. Things happen, but most people here just want to survive.”
Selina is easier to trust than Gage, which is probably why they sent her in. I can smell a set-up from a mile away, at least when I’m this heightened, but she also seems genuine.
Chance licks his lips, and I know we have to give this a shot. His leg will only hold out for so long, and we can’t run anymore today.
“Okay. We’ll give it a chance. Tell Gage we’ll hear what he has to say, and if we agree, we’ll stay. For a while, at least. I ain’t promising forever, not when Terran Authority has its sights set on me for now.”
Selina smiles again and opens the door wide, her curly black hair shrouding her face like a halo. She’s likable. I know this from the five minutes she’s been assessing me, and they use her to separate out the threats from the people like us, the ones who only want to make it another day. Despite what she said, they don’t trust everyone right off. So, I’m not surprised when Gage is standing just beyond the door, his guards flanking him, a smile on his face.
“Nice, Selina. Thank you,” he says.
She nods and practically skips back to her station, but I’m not fooled. I knew we were getting played right about the time she checked my waistband for weapons. Her eyes grazed all over Chance, then me, before landing on my face to gauge my reaction to everything she said. I’m no fool. I’ve been interrogated enough to know how a Terran Officer works.
“Why do you have a Terran Officer working for you?” I ask, hoping I’m right about my assumption.
Gage snickers and waves his guards off. “She was caught releasing information about unsanctioned murders. They’ll kill her if they find her, and she’s been a big help, so we know she’s good.”
I exhale, slow and steady. I was right—at least, I wasn’t wrong. I assumed she had willingly or forcefully left the TA to sustain her own interests and life. “Good,” I say. “Next time you send her to assess someone, make sure she doesn’t make it so obvious she’s doing it.”
Gage laughs again. “Well, she wasn’t an agent. Just did the payroll and came across something she wasn’t meant to see. Still, she’s better at noticing things out of place than most.”
Chance, who is spitting mad—either at them for playing the ruse or me for not filling him in, there’s no time to decide—stands straighter. Before he got hit by a stray round, Chance had been stronger, bigger, a force no one would want to cross. Now, he’s still intimidating, so Gage flinches just a bit, waiting to see what my self-appointed guardian has to say. But Chance is a man of few words. Instead, he narrows those hazel eyes and points at me. And that’s all.
“He always this… odd?” Gage asks, his one eye on us again.
“When he thinks I might be in danger, yes. Am I?” I ask, checking the exits and how many people stand guard at each before I flex my jaw. I’m ready to run if we need to.
“Let’s get one thing straight. If I wanted you dead, I’d have killed you in the tunnel and thrown your body into the furnace. I brought you here because we need strong people in our community for phase one.”
“Phase one?” Chance asks.
“Sure. Every good revolution starts with phase one—build an army.”
“Well, when you put it like that,” Chance says, shrugging with that air of sarcasm only I understand.
This community is insane if they think they can spark a revolution, let alone survive it. But I like the tenacity, the all-out gall to purposely look the impossible in the face and laugh at it. This has Journey Gray’s name written all over it, and so I link my arm with Chance’s and grin.
“Sounds like my kind of fun.”
Thanks for reading! Check back next week for some character artwork and videos!
