The Final Dawn Read online

  He knew he had to speak up. Even if they threw him in the brig for it, he'd never forgive himself if he didn't try.

  "I'm a pilot," said Jack, raising his hand. "I'll do it."

  Everybody in the laboratory fell silent. Captain Blatch looked at him as if he were a brown goo leaking out from a crack in the floor.

  "Who the hell are you?"

  He stood up straight. "Jack Bishop, ma'am."

  She eyed him up and down.

  "If you're a pilot, why are you dressed like a bloody engineer?"

  "Because I am an engineer, ma'am."

  Reeves tapped away at the transparent data pad in his hand. Jack guessed he was searching through the files of everybody registered on the base. He handed the pad to Captain Blatch a second later.

  "Says here you never qualified from the Academy." She took one look at the data pad and then slammed it back into Reeves' hands. "So you're not a pilot, then. Thanks for wasting my time."

  Jack's heart fell into a shallow puddle of ice-water. He prepared himself to be dragged out of the lab by the same grumpy soldier who had brought him in.

  "Hang on a second," said Reeves, reading through the entries in Jack's record. "He went through all the tests. Ran plenty of simulations. He's not completely green. I could use him."

  "If you're worried about people blacking out, I was fine inside the human centrifuge." Jack coughed awkwardly. "Came top of my class, actually."

  "For the short while you were actually in class," Captain Blatch replied. Every time she looked at him, Jack felt as if his whole head caught on fire. "Forget it, Reeves. Absolutely not. This idiot has no idea what he's getting himself into. It's completely against regulation."

  "Come on, Captain." Reeves was practically pleading with her. "We need to continue the experiments, one way or another. We'll never get off this planet if we don't."

  Captain Blatch sighed and turned back to Jack. She gave a curt nod in the direction of the mysterious machine.

  "You do understand the level of risk involved, right?"

  Jack studied the buckled hexagonal shields and the electrical panels from which smoke had been wafting only minutes before. He swallowed hard.

  "Pilots get a ticket on the Final Dawn, right?"

  "Qualified ones do, yes. Why? Do you want one?"

  "Two, ma'am. One for me, and one for my wife."

  Captain Blatch rolled her eyes and turned on her heels.

  "Make sure he signs a non-disclosure agreement," she said, marching out of the room. "And for goodness sake, make sure it goes right this time."

  Jack felt cold relief wash over him. He couldn't stop his legs from shaking. "Is that a yes?" he asked.

  "It's as close to one as we're likely to get," replied Reeves, darting across the room. He stuck out his hand. "Pleased to meet you, Jack."

  Jack shook it. Now they were stood next to one another, Jack was surprised to discover that Reeves was still in his early thirties – no more than a few years older than himself. His jaw was covered in patches of neglected stubble. The name tag pinned to his lab coat said his first name was Everett.

  "When's the earliest you can get here tomorrow?" asked Reeves. There was a hint of excited impatience in his voice.

  "My shift normally starts at nineteen-hundred."

  "Get here by eighteen-hundred, then. Don't worry, we'll square it with your supervisor." Reeves motioned for the soldier standing by the door to come forward. "Speaking of which, we'd better get you back to where we found you."

  Jack turned to look from Everett to the approaching soldier, then back again. "So does this mean I'll be getting tickets?" The words came blurting out from Jack's mouth quicker than he could stop them.

  Reeves let out a single dry laugh as the soldier guided Jack towards the exit. "Let's see how tomorrow goes first. Oh, and Jack?"

  Jack paused by the door.

  "Yes?"

  "Are you good with secrets?"

  Jack nodded with a shrug.

  "Good." Everett Reeves turned away and started typing at one of the computers. "Best to keep this one to yourself."

  2

  Amber

  Sleep did not come easily for Jack. He lay in bed beside his wife, fretting until long after the sun had risen. When he did finally slip under, his dreams were hot and restless.

  He found himself standing on a bright and empty shore, the waves lapping at the sand and his shoes. The cool ocean air whistled through his ears and swept his hair. Everything was calm, quiet… and completely wrong. He sensed Amber standing beside him, but when he went to speak to her, she was gone.

  A seagull circled in the air above, going nowhere. Jack felt much the same way. Each time he turned to leave, he found himself facing the sea again. But that was fine. Like the gull, he had no place else to go.

  And it was a nice view… until the sea began to boil.

  At first it merely bubbled along the shore, as if some strange amphibious beast lay in wait beneath the surface. Then all the waves died in an instant, leaving the whole ocean unnervingly flat and still, and the pops and belches of the water spread all the way from Jack's feet to the edge of the horizon, where the blinding sun had grown fat and consumed the sky.

  The once cool breeze now scolded the skin on Jack's arms and face. He looked up to see the gull burst into flames. Even in death it continued on its eternal loop, until finally its charred skeleton plummeted into the rising mists. The sea had turned to steam.

  Jack went to run, but the sand had hardened to glass around his feet. He gritted his teeth and kicked, but no matter how hard he struggled, he couldn't get the ground to shatter.

  His skin began to weep and blister. The air was sucked from his lungs. He raised his head just in time to see the flickering red tongues of the sun devour the crystalline planet as it raced towards him—

  Jack sat up in bed, hyperventilating. His covers were drenched in sweat. He closed his eyes and counted backwards from ten. By the time Jack reached zero, he had something resembling a healthy heart rate again.

  This was hardly the first time he'd suffered that nightmare. The same one came most nights. Had done since around the time of the first solar flare, in fact. He doubted they would ever stop of their own accord, just as he doubted everyone else he knew didn't have similar nightmares of their own – even if they didn't like talking about them.

  Jack let out a final sigh, then turned to look at his alarm clock.

  His heart rate spiked again.

  He'd overslept.

  Jack threw the covers aside. Goddammit. He was going to be late. Why hadn't Amber woken him up?

  Then, as he swung his legs out of bed, it struck him. He'd kept his early appointment at the lab a secret, just as Everett Reeves had asked. Amber hadn't come in to wake him because, as far as she was concerned, he wasn't due to get up for another half hour.

  Great. Another thing to feel guilty about.

  His engineering scrubs were where he'd left them – in a messy pile on top of the bedroom's dresser. He quickly stuffed his arms and legs inside the dirty uniform. There wouldn't be time for a shower.

  Still, he hurried into their tiny bathroom and splashed cold water over his face just the same. He looked tired and gaunt under the stark, pale light of the mirror. It didn't matter. He had much more important things to worry about than his appearance.

  A pair of rectangular devices no bigger than a matchbox sat in the crevice of the metal sink. Each had a thumb-groove in its top. Amber's was already speckled with blood, much to Jack's relief. He knew she didn't like taking the test.

  He pressed his thumb onto the other one, flinching as a microscopic needle pierced the skin. He sucked his thumb as he waited for the result. A second later, the light on the front of the device flashed green.

  Hurrah. No radiation poisoning this time.

  He left the bathroom and barged into the only other room in the apartment – a cramped chimera serving simultaneously as kitchen, living room and
dining room.

  "Look who's awake," said a bright voice as he entered.

  Amber was sat at the kitchen counter in her periwinkle blue dressing gown, scrolling through the day's news on her cracked data pad with one hand and eating her sloppy breakfast gruel with the other. Her chestnut hair tumbled to her shoulders. Her bare feet tapped what would have been a pleasant rhythm against the metal footrest of her stool, under less stressful circumstances.

  He hurried past her towards the coffee machine.

  "You're up early," she said, not looking up. "Something the matter?"

  "No. Got to pull a longer shift, that's all."

  She put down her tablet and spun around to face him.

  "Another bad dream, huh?"

  He paused and sighed, keeping his back to her.

  "Yes," he said, reaching for a mug in an overhead cupboard. "Same one as always.”

  Their decrepit chrome coffee machine was shaped like a bug's head, with transparent domes full of rotating wheels of coffee pods where the insect's eyes would be. Jack stuck his mug beneath the drip feed and turned it on. There was a whirring sound as a mechanical arm moved Jack's chosen pod into place.

  Then the whirring was replaced by a clanking noise, and milky brown liquid dribbled out over the kitchen counter.

  "This damn coffee machine." Jack clenched his fists. "I swear, one day I'll…"

  "Okay." Amber got up from her stool and hugged him from behind. His worries remained, but some of the tension slipped away. "There's something else bothering you. What is it?"

  Jack was glad Amber couldn't see his face. He hated keeping secrets from her. That's why he never did. He once ruined a surprise birthday party because hiding it from her had felt too great a betrayal.

  But he didn't keep quiet about the experiment because that's what Reeves and his non-disclosure agreement had told him to do. He would have happily spilled Britain's military secrets to his wife without so much as a second thought.

  No, he did it because he knew what she would say if he told her. She'd tell him it was too dangerous, too reckless, that it wasn't worth putting himself in harm's way just for a silly pair of Ark tickets. And she'd convince him to back out of it, too. He'd turn up to the pit as if it were any other day, saying nothing to nobody, and for that day at least, he'd be safe.

  But one day he wouldn't be safe. One day he'd get sick, and so would she.

  He couldn't let that happen.

  "I just wish I could get us tickets away from this cursed place." He turned around to face her, clutching her tight. "I work on those ships each and every night, yet there'll come a day when they leave us behind. And I can't…"

  He lowered his eyes from hers.

  "I can't help feeling as if it's my fault."

  "Hey. We've talked about this." She hooked a finger under his chin and lifted his head back up. "You can't keep beating yourself up over something outside of your control. How were you supposed to know what would happen?"

  "Oh, come on. The other kids at the academy weren't any the wiser, but they stuck with it. Now they have a future, and we don't." She looked up at him with a sweet, apologetic face. He shook his head. "God, we were so young. We still are! If you hadn't married me, maybe—"

  Amber jerked away from him, eyebrows raised.

  "Do you regret it?"

  "No!" His face fell, aghast. "No. Of course not. I just mean—"

  "You just mean I might have met somebody better," she replied, breaking into a smirk. He relaxed. She was only having him on. "Somebody who could sweep me off my feet… off my feet and away to the stars."

  Jack couldn't help but break into a smile as well.

  "Yeah, something like that."

  "You're an idiot, Jack." She hugged him close again. "But you're my idiot. If I had the chance to do it all again, I would. Exactly the same."

  "Really?"

  "Really. And will you please stop trying to be my knight in shining armour? Maybe I should have tried harder to make something of myself. Did you ever think of that?"

  Jack made an incredulous noise.

  "You did try hard. You're a nurse."

  "And apparently that's still not enough." She rested her head against his chest. "If we're stuck here, then we're stuck here. And you know what? That's okay. I'd rather we do our part and humanity go on to survive elsewhere than for nobody to survive at all. So long as we're together, that's all that matters."

  "You're too good for me, you know that?"

  "Yes, I do." She pulled away from him. "But you've got a good heart, Jack. You're always trying to do the right thing. That's what I love about you. Now get going, before you really are late."

  Jack gave her a kiss. Amber followed him to the other side of the room, where his satchel lay strewn across an old wooden table covered in scuff marks.

  "Hang on a second," said Jack, slinging the bag over his shoulder. "Why aren't you dressed yet? Aren't you heading to the med tent today?"

  Amber shook her head.

  "Woke up feeling a bit queasy, so going to call in sick," she said, offering him a dry smile. "It's no biggie."

  "Will they manage without you?"

  "They'll have to," she said, leaning against the doorframe. "I reckon I've earned it after all that overtime I did covering Lucy's shifts last month."

  "You checked your blood this morning, right?" Jack's voice turned cold. Suddenly he felt pretty nauseous himself. "If it's radiation poisoning, we need…"

  "It's not radiation." Amber rolled her eyes. "I'm fine. Now get moving. Think of me while you're out there saving the world."

  Jack relaxed. Nodding, he made for the front door.

  "All right. Get some rest, you hear?"

  "Yes sir." She gave him a mock salute. "Oh, can you pick up dinner tonight?"

  "Sure. What would you like me to get? Sloppy mush, or mushy slop?"

  "Oh, definitely the latter."

  "I'll see what I can do."

  He paused, his hand on the latch. He turned back to Amber. She was leaning against the table, watching him go.

  His stomach tied itself into a knot. This was his last chance to tell her the truth.

  "I love you more than anything. You know that, right?"

  She smiled quizzically.

  "Of course I do, Jack. I love you too."

  He unlocked the door and went to work.

  Had he known then where that work would take him, he never would have left.

  3

  Everett’s Experiment

  Jack sat anxiously on the cold metal bench and watched as a technician by the name of Stone vacuum-sealed the arm of his spacesuit. Or what looked like a spacesuit, at least. It slotted into place with a dull click.

  "Is all this really necessary?" Jack wiggled his fingers. The glove was surprisingly flexible. "I'm going into a test chamber, not into orbit."

  Stone twisted the other arm into place.

  "Without this suit, you'll be dead within twenty seconds." He noticed Jack's expression. "Don't be alarmed – it's no different than those special G-suits you would have worn back at the academy. No way of surviving sustained high-G's without it. Plus it allows us to monitor your vital signs throughout the experiment. It's actually a modified version of what the astronauts who first went to Mars wore."

  "Well I won't say it isn't comfortable, in a bulky sort of way," said Jack, tapping the hard carapace covering his torso. "I suppose I should be grateful it isn't the suit they used for the Moon landing."

  Stone smiled politely and then retrieved the helmet from the top shelf of a locker. The back half was solid, the front transparent. It wasn't quite as round as a beachball, but it wasn't far off either.

  "Seriously?" asked Jack.

  "Seriously," confirmed Stone, lowering the helmet. "You're not much use to us if we can't monitor your damn head. Besides, it'll keep the pressure from shutting your eyes. You'll need to tell us what you see."

  Stone attached the helmet to the body of Jack's s
uit. Sound became a little muted… but not as much as Jack expected.

  "Okay, you're all set." Stone stepped away from the bench. "How does it feel?"

  Jack rose to his feet and took a quick walk around the lockers and shelves of the Preparation Room. Just like the gloves, the whole suit was remarkably mobile.

  "Turning my head will take a bit of getting used to." He shot Stone a thumbs-up. "Otherwise all good."

  "Good to hear. Head on through those doors there – they're ready for you."

  Jack crossed the room, then paused. He turned around and pointed at his engineering uniform folded in a neat pile on the bench.

  "Hey, could you grab the wallet out from my pocket?"

  Stone looked confused, but did as Jack asked. He fished out a battered, old leather wallet and tossed it over.

  Jack flipped it open and pulled out a piece of paper. It was folded over on itself. The edges were worn and flimsy, and the creases looked very white.

  A small compartment was built into the front of his spacesuit, just above his heart. Jack prised it open and tucked the photograph inside. He'd been advised not to wear his wedding ring during the experiment, so a memento of Amber would have to do.

  "Old school romantic, eh?" Stone caught Jack's wallet as he tossed it back. "Go on, now. Get going before they have to call through."

  "Don't let me forget this later," said Jack, tapping the compartment. He approached the large pair of metal doors at the end of the room, took a deep breath, and pushed them open.

  He emerged into the same laboratory hall as before. This time, however, the bulbs that hung from the high ceiling were much brighter, and the smell of burnt electronics had been replaced with that of sterilising bleach. Only a few of the two dozen scientists glanced up from their computer terminals as he entered.

  The mysterious machine stood in the centre. Jack's heart fluttered as he walked towards its dome. He had no idea what to expect inside. Gas? Gamma radiation? Panic gnawed in his chest like a hungry rat.

  This was a mistake. A big mistake.