Homecoming

A violent jolt threw Glass back against her seat as the dropship lurched sideways, then tilted almost forty-five degrees before righting itself with a stomach-turning swoop. A child’s wail cut through the collective gasp. Several people shrieked as the metal frame of the dropship began buckling, as if caught in the grasp of a giant fist. A high-pitched, mechanical whine screeched through the cabin, threatening to burst their eardrums, drowning out the cries and terrified sobs.

Glass gripped the arm of her seat and clutched Luke’s hand, waiting for the surge of fear. But it never came. She knew she should be afraid, but the events of the past few days had left her numb. It was hard enough watching her home fall apart as the Colony ran out of oxygen. Hard enough risking an insane, unauthorized spacewalk to make it from Walden to Phoenix, where there was still breathable air. Everything she’d gone through had seemed worth it, though, when Glass, her mother, and Luke had made it onto the dropship. But at this moment, Glass didn’t care if she never got to see Earth. Better to end it all now than have to wake up every morning and remember that her mother was gone.

She glanced to the side and saw Luke staring straight ahead, his face a stony mask of resolve. Was he trying to be brave for her? Or had his extensive guard training taught him how to remain calm under pressure? He deserved better than this. After everything Glass had put him through, was this how it was going to end? Had they escaped certain death on the Colony only to hurtle headlong into a different horrific fate? Humans weren’t scheduled to return to Earth for at least another century, when scientists were sure the radiation left after the Cataclysm would have subsided. This was a premature homecoming, a desperate exodus promising nothing but uncertainty.

Glass looked over at the row of small windows lining the vessel. Hazy gray clouds filled each portal. It was oddly beautiful, she thought, just as the windows suddenly popped and shattered, spraying shards of hot glass and metal throughout the cabin. Flames shot through the broken panes. The people closest to the windows frantically tried to duck and move away, but there was nowhere to go. They leaned backward, falling onto the people behind them. The tang of scorched metal burned Glass’s nostrils, while the scent of something else made her gag.… With rising fear, Glass realized it was the smell of burned flesh.

Pushing hard against the force of the ship’s velocity, she turned her head to look at Luke. For a moment, Glass couldn’t hear the sounds of whimpering and crying or the crunch of metal. She couldn’t feel her mother’s last breath. She could only see the side of Luke’s face, the perfect profile and strong jaw that she’d traced in her mind night after night during those terrible months in Confinement, when she’d been sentenced to die on her eighteenth birthday.

Glass was brought back to reality by the sound of metal ripping from metal. It vibrated through her eardrums and down into her jaw, through her bones and into her gut. She ground her teeth together. She watched in helpless horror as the roof peeled off and flew away, as if it were nothing more than a scrap of fabric.

She forced herself to turn back to Luke, who’d closed his eyes but was now gripping her hand with renewed intensity.

“I love you,” she said, but her words were swallowed up by the screams all around them. Suddenly, with a bone-shaking crack, the dropship slammed into Earth, and everything went black.

In the distance, Glass heard a low, guttural moaning, a sound full of more anguish than anything she’d ever heard. She tried to open her eyes, but the slightest effort sent her head into a sickening spin. She gave up and allowed herself to sink back into the darkness. A few moments passed. Or was it a few hours? Again, she struggled against the comforting quiet, fighting her way toward consciousness. For a sweet, groggy millisecond, she had no idea where she was. All she could focus on was the barrage of strange smells. Glass hadn’t known it was possible to smell so many things at once: There was something she sort of recognized from the solar fields—her favorite spot to meet Luke—but amplified a thousand times over. There was something sweet, but not like sugar or perfume. Deeper, richer. Every breath she took sent her brain into overdrive as it struggled to identify the swirling scents. Something spicy. Metallic. Then a familiar scent jolted her brain to attention. Blood.