Wishing Stars Ch. 01

Thalia was woken by the sudden blaring of a horn, followed swiftly by the flashing of a red light. Alarmed, she flew from her bed but stumbled half-way to the door of her compartment as the room seemed to shift violently to the left. Groggy and disoriented, she regained her footing just as the emergency lights blinked on overhead and a robotic voice began to sound throughout the room.

"Remain calm, make your way to the sanctuary. Please remain calm, make your way to the sanctuary—"

Her door opened on its own, and she saw that the hallway was already filling with the other girls. Some seemed still half-asleep, clutching their robes about them in confusion. Most seemed intent on panicking.

"Make your way to the sanctuary—"

"The ship is crashing!" A shrill, human voice drowned out the robotic one.

"We are all to die!" Someone else added.

"Please remain calm, make your way—"

"Come on, then!" Thalia yelled into the mass of nightgown and robes. She elbowed her way out into the hall and was relieved to find that the mass of humanity was actually moving in the correct direction. The more hysterical girls were being pulled to their feet and ushered along by their cooler headed friends.

While there were still agonized declarations of impending doom, the floor did cease rocking and the alarms suddenly shut off. The normal overhead lighting blinked back to life, the emergency lights extinguished.

"Make your way to the sanctuary," The robotic voice repeated above them, but even it seemed relieved.

In a matter of moments Thalia and the other girls had found the stairs leading down into the heart of the ship. It took nearly ten minutes for the swirling mass of humanity to travel down the spiral staircase. As soon as the last trembling girl, her face nearly white as a sheet, left the bottom step, the voice instructed them to stand back. The door at the top of the stairs slammed shut, and a lock clicked loudly into place. A second door slid from the wall and sealed off the stairs completely.

Everyone seemed to take a deep breath at the same time. The sanctuary was the safest place they knew of. With the doors closed it was a seamless circular room, airtight with thick walls to protect them. There were padded benches with in rows throughout the middle of the large room, each with various straps that could be secured in case of turbulence.

Many girls had collapsed onto the benches, the sudden fright sapping the energy from them, but only one girl had the presence of mind to secure herself with the straps.

Thalia remained standing near the wall, twitchy with anxiety. While it was all well and good to be secured away, to be safe, she wanted to know what was happening. Aside from a few violent shakes, what was there to hide from? Certainly they had experienced worse turbulence than this before. Why the need to frighten everyone with the alarm?

Certainly a few jolts of turbulence would have woken Thalia, but she normally would not have given it a second thought. Was the danger still imminent?

Everyone else seemed to be calming down. A few even let out nervous laughter and began to mock each other over the faces they had made in their fright. What a good laugh, some said, to be so scared for no reason. Others bemoaned tears in their nightclothes, and scrapes on their arms attained during their hurry to safety.

In all fifty of them, it seemed Thalia was the only girl still on edge. They had never been needlessly alarmed in such a way before. The crew had yet to appear to console them. Surely they would have come to apologize for the false alarm by now?

Unless, Thalia mused as she eyed the solid white walls, the crew was still engaged in maintaining their safety.

"Didn't the gearmen hear the alarms?" One of the girls had broken from the group and come to stand with Thalia. "Or did they do this as some kind of joke, you think?"

Thalia snorted and relaxed slightly. "A gearman with a sense of humor?" she returned, looking up at her friend.

Abigail was a good six inches taller than Thalia's five feet and two inches. Both girls had white, nearly translucently pale skin, like the rest of the girls. They had all been raised inside this ship, and kept from windows less the harsh rays of a sun tarnish their complexion. Aside from their skin, Abigail and Thalia looked nothing alike. Abigail was tall and willowy. Her hair was the color of gold.

Thalia was the nearly the shortest girl on the ship, despite being among the eldest. She was shapely as well, with a trim waist and softly flaring hips. Although they all ate the same food in the same quantities, she had simply become fleshy in areas that her slim friend had not. It was not something that bothered her, however. Each girl in the group was unique in some way. It was the only way that Thalia could be certain that they were not all the same person.

The crew of the ship—the gearmen, as the girls called them—provided the girls with everything necessary for life, if not for comfort. Their belongings were minimal. Each owned a few white nightgowns, a white robe, some identical white dresses in their size and dainty white slippers for walking the ship's halls. In such a sterile, boring environment, they had quickly begun to celebrate differences they saw in each other. Abigail's height, Rhonda's fabulously blue eyes, and the shocking orange color of Zia's hair were all fawned over in turn.

Compared to them, Thalia found her coloring quite boring. Her hair was pitch-black, the color of night in a windowless place, and it only seemed to make her white skin stand out in stark contrast. Although her eyes were blue, they were not brilliantly so like Rhonda's. Thalia's eyes were a cool, pale blue, and did not elicit much excitement among the other girls.

Without warning, the wall leading to the stairs slid open, and the robotic voice politely asked them to return to their beds. No reason for the event was given.

"Must've been a false alarm," Abigail shrugged and, with a yawn, headed back up the stairs with the rest of the girls.

Thalia remained behind. She was annoyed at being woken for no reason. The palms of her hands still prickled with tension. While her adrenaline had waned, it was not gone entirely. She wanted answers.

So she waited.

Not long after the room had emptied, a gearman stepped into the room. He was exactly six feet tall, as all the gearmen were, with golden mechanisms whirring about inside of him. In the place of skin, he had a hard, translucent casing that reflected light. A golden, robotic skeleton incased in a glasslike container. There could be no confusing him with a living being.

"Return to your room please, miss." He said, his robotic voice almost chipper. If it weren't for the quiet beeps and whirring noises issuing from his body, she could almost have thought he sounded human.

"What happened?" She returned, planting her feet. "Why did we all have to come down here?"

"You will know what you are meant to know." He returned, pleasant as ever. "I will escort you." With that his cold fingers wrapped around her upper arm. While not painful, his grip was firm.

Thalia shivered, and allowed him to tow her towards the stairs. She hated when they touched her.

"Where are we?" She tried. All the gearmen looked exactly alike and spoke identically. Each also answered her questions im exactly the same way. She had been asking the same questions for years, but never gave up hope of receiving a different answer. Or maybe, just hearing it one more time would help her understand.

"We are aboard Human Quarantine Ship X33465. Currently docked indefinitely in deep space." No new information there.

"How did I get here?" She asked, as they emerged at the top of the stairs and the gearman tugged her toward her room.

"You were brought here by shuttle." He returned easily.

Glints of light caught her eye, and she turned her head just in time to see a Gearman returning another girl to her room. Unlike Thalia, this girl was crying and fighting. She was young, Thalia thought, maybe only ten years old.

Thalia had never seen her before.

In the chaos of the emergency, a new girl had appeared. Did that mean another had gone? That was how it had always worked in the past, but she had not seen anyone taken from the sanctuary. Surely the group would have noticed if one of their own simply vanished from their midst?

"Where do you take the girls?" Thalia asked quickly. The door to her room was looming nearer, and she felt even more desperate for answers than she usually was. "Why do you bring them here and then take them away?"

The door to her room automatically snapped inward when they stood before it, and the gearman gave her a gentle push across the threshold.

"You know what you are meant to know. Now, please sleep, miss."

"No!" She grabbed his arm when he released her. "Where did we come from? Where are you sending us? Please!"

"You are hysterical." He informed her in his pleasant voice, and she realized that she was.

Her chest was locked in a ball of anxiety, she felt her breath beginning to come in gasps. Stress and fear were slowly strangling her. The urge to scream began to build, and her eyes started to water with the strain of keeping it inside. And then the floor was gone from beneath her, and the gearman's cold arms were around her. His touch made her nauseous.

"Now, you will sleep, miss," He said as he laid her down on her bed. She knew what was coming, but she still didn't react fast enough to stop him. A needle slid from the tip of his finger into her skin. She barely registered the sting of it before sleep claimed her.