Moonful of silver, p.26
Moonful of Silver, page 26
“Commander, we have a situation,” Captain Arden said, his tone tense. “Have everyone return to the ship—immediately.”
A chilling wind cut across the bleak land. Hapker shifted into high alert. Despite seeing no obvious threat, his training didn’t allow him to take this as anything less than serious. “Yes, Sir.”
He released the comm and addressed the scientists. “The captain wants us all back on the Odyssey, now.”
“What? Why?” Canthidius replied with irritation curled into his brow.
“No time for questions, Doctor. If you want to know the reason, you can ask the captain yourself, after we return to the ship.”
Canthidius pursed his fishlike lips in apparent reluctance. Captain Silas Arden had never served in the military, but his crew respected him in the same way everyone respected a general.
As the wind bit into Hapker’s skin, he couldn’t shake the feeling his second chance was about to be tested—and the real challenge was only just beginning.
If you want to continue reading, Dawn’s entire series is available on Amazon.
THE EXIT DOOR
In many ways, the door was unremarkable. It was all at once gnarled and ancient and new, heavy as a secret and firm as the wind.
Painted in an antique red, it shared its colour with a distant star, a basket of cherries, and a lover’s kiss, belonging to everything and nothing.
A brass knob stuck out from it a little too far. The hinges, the same.
But the strange thing about the door, the thing that separated it from others like it, is that for everyone but me, it didn’t exist.
Day One
I step through the door, emerging onto a street that shouldn’t be possible, and yet, here I am.
Before I’ve had a chance to test whether I’ve got lungs or not, my eyes adjust. Real, natural eyes. Phew! At least I won’t need to learn a new way to see. I don’t think my head could take another reality without eyes – it was bad enough the first time.
I glance around on instinct and go through the same old rigmarole.
Door’s within reach, check.
Body has limbs, check.
Breathing . . . I suck in the air and blow it out my mouth. Yes! Lungs. Check, and double check.
As for equipment, I haven’t arrived brandishing a weapon – always a good sign – but I’m wearing some kind of fabric from head to toe. A suit, maybe? It’s weird on my skin. Soft, but also, scratchy. A collar on this buttoned-up under-layer makes me want to yank it off my neck, and then the jacket is looser, with bigger and fewer buttons and a big gap over my chest. What’s the point of the gap? Why wear a jacket that doesn’t cover the whole of my front? How is it going to protect me from an arrow or a laser blast or a strong burst of wind? Weird. But not as weird as the things on my feet. I wiggle my toes inside the rough leathery shells that cover them and can’t stop the smile or the giggle that follows. Toes! Nothing like a couple of decades with hooves to make a person appreciate the freedom of having five full toes.
Come on. Concentrate.
Hostiles . . . negative. I’m alone. One more check to be sure. I crane my neck in every direction, scan for any sound that doesn’t belong, but there’s just me and the door. With a sigh, I unclench my shoulders and lower my hands.
Environment . . . well, it’s dark. Which means I’ve either arrived in the middle of the night, or people have found a way to kill the sun. Or worse. Maybe there never was a sun here at all? No, that can’t be right — streetlamps bathe the concrete ground in soft amber. Why would someone have made streetlamps if light had never existed?
Plus, I have eyes. Which means there must be light, right? Otherwise I’d be seeing with my hands again.
Still, I can’t rule anything out.
Then there’s the walls. On each side, iron bars guard broken windows. Chipped bricks stretch upwards into a clouded sky. Is this where people live? They don’t look like houses. They just look like walls. They’re not decorated or even painted. There’s no artistry about them. No markings or engravings to signify it’s some sort of temple. Simply a couple of walls with some barred windows. Why would someone build two of them right next to each other with only a small space between? Surely one would’ve been enough.
I take another breath. Lungs still work. But what in the world is that smell?
I inch forward and stumble over clumsy feet. My legs are shorter than I remember. The strangeness of having only two of them again disorientates me into a stagger, and I trip over the air, hurtling hands-first into a puddle that splashes across my face.
I haul myself up on a metal container brimming with decay. It seems to hold the rotting remains of every carcass possible — a nightmare of stench that taints my fingertips as I try to brush myself clean. The puddle’s rank tang clings to my cheeks long after I wipe it off.
That explains the smell.
The door snaps shut behind me, revealing no light from beyond. The only witness to my fall. Not my worst entrance, but certainly not my finest.
I shuffle forward until I dare another step, and after the first couple of ginger strides, it all comes flooding back. I wade through puddles and the scraps of paper and plastic that clog them. A creature stirs in the darkness, running away before it can be exposed. Just like a cat.
It’s probably a cat.
Hopefully a cat.
From the rough size and speed, it’s not a human. I sneeze into my elbow.
Yep. It’s a cat. I can escape a whole world, but not my allergies. Perfect.
The door follows me down the street. It attaches itself to the brickwork and the iron bars, and looks just at home on these dark, decrepit buildings as it did on that Sultan’s yacht.
“Hello?” I call. “Is there anybody there?”
Perhaps it’s inviting trouble to shout into the empty night. But I want to know if my voice works. And besides, the door is just there if I need it.
“Hello?”
Nothing. The only sound to answer my call is a faraway blare – a mewing vibrato which reminds me of whalesong.
Save for the almost-cat, I’m alone.
But there must be someone to have built the buildings and broken the windows so they needed bars. Someone to wail the sirens and feed the cat.
I hurry beyond the end of the street, which opens onto a road. Lights trickle from every building. On all sides, giant screens project images of men and women in various states of undress. The screens make the people tower ten times the size of a normal person over the empty road. Is this a city of scantily-clad giants? No. The entrances to the buildings seem normal-sized. Maybe the giants are in charge? But they don’t seem to move. They just stand there, towering over the pavements. I’ve seen screens before, but the world they belonged to is . . . if only I could forget. I shake my head, willing the memory to fall out of my ears.
The door chooses a place for itself across the street, near to a bright glass facade. A huge window doubles as a wall, and inside, plastic morphs into the shape of a person who has no face. They’re posed in more clothing than the giants on the screens. I rush to the window-wall and bang on the glass.
“Hello!” I shout.
No answer. Not that I’m expecting one. If the plastic people had been given a mouth, perhaps it would be a different story. Instead, they just stand there. Mute.
I glance up and down the road. Apart from the billboards, the only things to change are the posts holding little circles of light. The circles flash from red to amber to green, and then back. Directions, maybe? But for what?
From a building across the road, a person emerges. A man. Or a woman. Could be either from their gait and clothing.
I reach for the door and grip the handle, ready to make a quick break. Then I take a breath and shout, “Hello!”
They look up at the sound. We meet eyes. They lower their head and keep walking.
Rude. Not hostile or aggressive. Just rude.
I release the handle and race across the road, waving with the frenzy of a firework. “Hello there!”
They turn their back to me and increase their speed, cradling a patterned bag to their chest.
“Can you hear me? Hello!”
They pace faster and faster until they begin to run.
“Hey! Not so fast.” I chase after them in awkward bounds. The door keeps up.
Around a corner, they disappear.
As I near the edge, two bleeps and a metallic thud are followed by a rumble of thunder. But the thunder doesn’t come from the sky. It comes from a mechanical monstrosity that has already swallowed the person. Through glass windows, I peer into the machanoid’s stomach, and there the figure sits, dragged away on rubber wheels at a speed I can’t match.
If only I had a weapon. Why had I felt so relieved to arrive without one?
There’s nothing I can do, but watch.
“Goodbye,” I whisper, helpless as the metal creature carries them off — grateful that it ignored me, its hunger sated.
I trace my way back along the road and follow the path to where I first saw the unfortunate soul whose life was lost to the steel carnivore.
The door moves along the street with me, remaining at my side as I walk the cracked concrete. I sense its pull. That magnetism which percolates in the aftermath of arrival.
Perhaps it would be better to use the door now?
As if in answer to my question, the first few spatters of raindrops chill my cheeks just before a downpour showers the street in misery. If ever there’s a sign I should open the door and try again, it’s this.
But then a hole appears in the wall beside me. A swoosh reveals entry to a most unusual room.
Sterile lights cast a glare across a myriad aisles separated by shelf upon shelf of food. Some of the food is raw. Some boxed. But it’s all collected in the room — a cross between a greenhouse and laboratory — all of it on display. A gallery and vineyard all at once. But more than anything, it’s dry inside. Out of the rain’s purview.
Well, here goes nothing.
I trudge through the opening. The door takes its spot on the end of an aisle.
Okay. Final checks. Breathing, yep. Environment, strange but not unfriendly. Hostiles, just the mechanoid – nothing I can’t handle. Clothing, not exactly comfortable, but I’ve worn worse. Shelter, got it. Food, surrounded by it. Door, still here. Always here.
What’s left?
The opening in the wall closes automatically behind me. I guess it’s official. I’ve arrived.
The Exit Door is coming soon. In the meantime, the rest of Frasier’s books are on Amazon.
Frasier Armitage, Moonful of Silver
