Chapter 14

“I’m still your older sister.” The twinkle in Kita’s eyes amused Molly.

“Yes, but I had cell division first!” Molly quoted her age-old comeback and smiled brilliantly as her sister pushed her three-year-old in the swing. Molly twisted in a swing next to him. It was good to be with Kita and her son. She looked out across the play yard. A loud noise rumbled beyond the trees. Molly stood and shielded her eyes from the afternoon sun. Her gaze swept the tree line.

“What is that?” she said more to herself than to anyone, stepping closer to listen. Cracking sounds carried on the breeze, and the ground rumbled. The tops of the boughs swayed at a distance toward the playground, heading straight for them. They parted as a deep-creviced, carved figure of a giant wooden woman, leaning at a sixty-degree angle, led the bow of a huge ship onto the playground. The trees were crushed to the right and left of the ship’s hull like small sticks.

“Pirates!” Molly screamed and turned to grab Michael, but the swing twisted and buckled in his absence. She swirled around desperately searching for Michael and Kita.

Kita stood alone on the lawn, tugging at her milk-soaked shirt. Her feral, tear-saturated eyes stared at the threatening ship.

Molly fought a stifling sensation and looked over her shoulder. The ship gouged into the immaculate lawn as if it had run ashore at the playground’s edge. Michael stood among several pirates on the bow of the ship. One draped his rotten-rag-covered arm around the boy’s shoulder. Their evil grins bore rotten, brown-stained teeth.

Cold fear washed over Molly like a spray of northern seawater. She shivered violently but kept her eyes locked on her nephew. Michael bounced up and down, laughing and waving.

“Michael!” she screamed with all her might, but stopped abruptly, feeling her throat shred by the effort.

A bone-deep chill raked Molly’s body, causing a convulsive shiver that painfully tightened her skin with ginormous goose bumps. Her body wouldn’t obey her desire to rub the limbs. Panic crawled all over her like a thousand spiders. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. Suddenly, a gagging sensation tugged at the back of her throat. Something passed over her tongue and a bitter taste lay in its wake.

“Molly Jacobsen,” an unnatural voice called her name. “Molly Jacobsen, you are on the Interplanetary Ship Canaan Land. You have been revived from hibernation. You are all right, Molly Jacobsen. You will be cold, but we are warming you now. You will feel better soon, Molly Jacobsen.”

She forced her eyes open. The view blurred by ointment was confusing. Tremors in her limbs had a mind of their own. Warmed blankets swaddled her trembling body. She closed her eyes and let the warmth seep in. Soon, the bone-deep cold penetrated the wrappings, and another blanket, freshly warmed, replaced the first.

She was waking from hibernation. Her eyes darted across the other pods. She blinked repeatedly to clear her vision. She was the first to be revived. She sighed in relief. That part of her plan had worked. Yet, her heart pounded. An unrelenting fear tormented her lethargic mind. She tried to relax, let the warmth ease her into wakefulness.

An attendant examined the IV tube running toward her wrist. “This is warmed saline to help with your recovery. Try to relax, Molly Jacobsen,” it said.

Her legs and arms felt disengaged from her body. She had to look down at them in order to lift them, and open and close her hands. So odd. Involuntarily, she placed her hand on her lower abdomen. Was she all right? No one had told her about the waking process. It was weird, disorienting, and—cold. She focused on breathing. In ... out ... in ... out.

“Sit up, slowly,” the attendant instructed her.

She complied. A nice hot shower would be wonderful right now. And—and some food.

“Let’s swing our legs over the side,” the attendant coaxed her.

It was a painfully arduous routine but proved to be necessary. When she stood, she collapsed and fell back into the pod seat. “Whoa!” she croaked. Her throat burned with raw pain.

She rolled her eyes, grateful she was the first to be revived with no witnesses to observe her weakness. She let her eyes rove over the other thirteen pods. The pods were drained of the impact-absorbing gel, but the breathing tubes were still in place, no longer popsicles but not fully awake either.

Molly stood again and held on to the padded platform. She fought the dizziness and forced her eyes to focus on one object, the pod next to hers. Deuce’s pod. Deuce, asleep with a breathing tube protruding from his taped mouth. She focused on his closed eyes. The spinning in her head slowed. The nausea subsided. She took a deep breath and a step away from the pod.

Her knees buckled, but she stiffened her muscles. At last, they were holding. She took another step and pushed her palms into her lower back. Stretching felt remarkably good.

“I’m the first to revive, correct?” Molly whispered to the attendant at her side.

“Yes, Molly Jacobsen,” it answered.

“No one ... nothing interfered with the suspension during these—two years and nine months?”

“That is correct, Molly Jacobsen,” the attendant assured.

She stared into the amazingly human-like eyes. They were incapable of lying. She knew that. Still, she felt a weird inkling that meant something was askew. Then again, she had just been revived from nearly three years hibernation. Could these sensations be trusted? And with that, she took another step. Eventually, she made her way around her bed and felt confident enough to let go. She crept across the pod chamber and looked over her shoulder at the thirteen who emerged in various stages from their induced slumber.

She craved solitude. Perhaps she could update her investigative journal before she showered or ate. Assuming her fingers were working and she could type. She flexed her hands as she traversed the corridor.

“Good morning!” Miriam entered the dining hall. A bowl of something similar to cream of wheat sat out for each person, the fast break meal.

Molly smiled. “Good morning!”

Others just nodded and ate their beige cereal. Miriam stopped in front of one bowl and stared at the content. Cheerfully she whined, “No coffee?”