Woke Up Hungry

Chapter 1Margot woke up choking. Something in her throat. She coughed against it, and instinctively grabbed at her face. A tube. There was a tube in her mouth. She yanked and it came out painfully, leaving her coughing and retching. Her hand struck something as she pulled out the tube and she squinted up into light from above. Dark shapes moved in the light, dim, unfocused. “Who’s there?” Her voice came out as no more than a croak. Hearing it made her realize she was hearing another voice too. It had been speaking for a while, but she’d been too disoriented to pay attention. “…imperative you do not struggle. Lie still. Stay calm.” “What? Who’s that? Where…” Her last memory before sleeping came back to her. The hypersleep pod. The sedative. Drifting peacefully off. The staff would have put in all the tubes after she was unconscious, then closed her in. Now she was awake, but the hypersleep pod was still locked. Like a coffin. Trapped! She flailed at the lid, muscles weakened by her time in the pod. How long? Had they arrived at the colony? The voice came again. A woman’s voice. “This is Captain Hillary. You are safe in the pod. You have air. Help is coming. You must not struggle.” “What’s happening?” “If you struggle, the pod’s emergency release will activate and you will be in danger. You must lie still. You are safe in the pod.” A calm voice. Guiding her like the voice of a meditation teacher. “Help is coming. Lie still. You are safe in the pod. You have air. You will not suffocate.” Nausea swirled around Margot’s head and she retched again, throat raw from the tube she’d yanked out in a panic. Her vision began clearing, her eyes growing used to the light again. She reached up and touched the translucent lid of the hypersleep pod. Her rapid breathing fogged it, further blurring the shapes outside it. People? The ones coming to help? Why didn’t they open the pod? They moved…oddly. Hands scrabbled and pawed at the lid, leaving dark smears behind. Her panic started to rise again, her heart pounded, her breath came in gasps, the terror of being buried alive rising and rising. Had to get out get out get out get— “Margot, listen to me. If you want to live you must lie still.” The voice had a more urgent edge. No guided meditation any more. “If the pod opens you will be killed. It is imperative you lie still. Do that for me. Do that for Luke.” Luke! His pod was beside hers. The last thing she’d seen before she went under the sedative had been his goofy grin, and his wave, the last thing she’d heard, his words. See ya on a new world, sis. “Luke! Is he okay?” The captain didn’t answer. Margot didn’t think she could hear, her voice continued on even as Margot spoke over her. “…help if you close your eyes. I know you’re afraid, but you are safe in the pod. You have air. Help is coming. You must stay calm and lie still.” Margot obeyed. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the spinning in her head. Tried to control her rising terror. She didn’t know what was going on, but the captain said she had to stay calm to be safe. Okay then. She’d done meditation before, guided by voices as calm and steady as the captain’s. This was no yoga studio, but she believed the captain. The captain had one of those voices you had to believe. A voice that defined reality when you heard it. This is the way things are. This is the way they will be if you listen to me. Margot had tried to cultivate a voice like that for her students. She took slow, deliberate breaths, counting, one, two, in, hold for two, breathe out, one, two. “That’s good, Margot, that’s good.” If the captain couldn’t hear her, how did she know? Oh, the pods were all monitored. Heart rate, breathing. Even as she thought it, Margot became aware of the electrodes on her rib cage, under the simple shift she wore. The captain must be watching the readouts of those monitoring feeds. “You’re doing so well. You’re brave. You’re safe.” The voice grew softer. Gentle. Encouraging. “You’re safe as long as you lie still. Nothing can hurt you there. Help is close. Keep breathing slow and steady.” She could hear something else, besides the captain’s voice. Shouts, of what, rage, pain? She stirred, her body starting to reject the advice to stay calm her brain was trying to impose on it. Screw this, her gut said, we have to get out of here! She raised a hand, but had no strength to push against the pod’s lid. She knew it had a safety mechanism built in, that if you thrashed about enough, if your heart rate went too high, the pod would open. They’d been taught that in the prep for hypersleep. And that…was exactly what the captain had told her not to do. She wanted Margot to stay calm and keep the pod closed because there was something out there. Something dangerous. Something terrible. She froze, suddenly terrified any movement would trigger the pod to open. The captain’s voice came back into focus. “…almost there. The pod will open in a moment and you will be picked up. Do not struggle. They are my people. They are there to help you. Do not fight them. They’re almost there.” The other sounds were louder. Screams, yells. The shapes above her had moved away. Her vision was still blurry, still unfocused. “They’re there, Margot, the pod—” The pod opened and Margot gave a short scream, expecting whatever horrible danger the captain had warned her about to attack. “You’re okay, you’re okay.” Another voice, a woman, right there, not through a speaker. Margot’s vision was still blurred, she could only make out the shape of a face, all details fuzzy, of the woman speaking to her. “We’re getting you out. Don’t fight.” She couldn’t have if she’d wanted to. Too weak to fight off a kitten. A shape loomed close, a large man, his face and body also a blur. He grabbed her up out of the pod. Electrodes ripped off skin and hair as they tore away from her body. Everything whirled around Margot as the man flung her over his shoulder and the nausea surged. She retched and threw up some bile onto his back as she landed. “We’ve got her!” That same woman’s voice again, shouting. “Go! Give them cover!” The man carrying her started running. She jerked up and down on his shoulder and threw up some more, the motion making her so sick and miserable she almost wished she was back in the nice peaceful pod, but she managed to raise her head to look around, through the hair falling into her face. The world was still a blur, and she felt more than saw the space of the large hypersleep chamber, full of pods, that she’d walked into what felt like the day before. There were running figures around her and the man carrying her. She heard the woman who’d spoken before, shouting orders and warnings. A shape that must be her was close behind Margot, her face not visible, turned away, a mass of dark hair tied up. Beyond her were others figures, running not with her group, but at them. Chasing them. The sounds from the pursuers…surely her hearing must be distorted. They snarled, growled, like animals. But the voice of the woman who’d spoken before sounded clear, as the voice of the captain had been. There were other sounds she couldn’t parse. Whooshes, cracks and sharp bangs? “Give us the door!” the woman giving the orders called, looking back over her shoulder as she spoke. Her features still no more than darker shapes against paler skin to Margot. Like a child’s crude drawing. The space around Margot narrowed briefly, and she knew they’d passed through a doorway. “Closed! We’re out!” That same woman again. She went on, not so loud, not yelling. “Medics!” The man carrying Margot lowered her to the deck and she lay looking up into the ceiling lights, head spinning, bile rising again. Someone blocked the light, barely more than a silhouette. The woman’s voice. “I think she’s okay.” Margot would have liked to express a dissenting opinion, but her voice came out as nothing more than a gasp. Had she even spoken at all in the pod? Or only thought she had? Darkness hovered around the edges of her vision. She started sinking deeper and deeper into the blackness. “Captain, we got her.” The voice came from a long way off. “Everyone is okay. Minor injuries only. Taking the normal to the infirmary now.” The big man lifted Margot again, but not like a sack of laundry this time. He scooped her up gently, like a child. Her head rested against his chest and the darkness spilled across her vision like ink.