Dare Mighty Things Read online

  Tiny white letters below the gauge gave me the answer. Oxygen.

  My muscles tensed.

  “What?” Boris asked.

  I pushed the flashing red light and the siren cut off, leaving an echo ringing in my ears.

  “It’s oxygen,” I said, still not totally comprehending. I focused on Mitsuko’s worried eyes. “That’s the low-oxygen alarm.”

  “But . . . the alarms go off all the time. They’re simulations,” Anton said.

  I pointed to the empty gauge. “I don’t think this is faking.”

  Everyone craned in close to see. Then four hands hit the radio call button at once.

  Mitsuko glared at the other three and shouted into the mouthpiece. “Houston, this is SLH. We’re showing dangerously low levels of oxygen. Please verify the situation and issue instructions.”

  Mitsuko tried again. And again.

  There was no one on the other end.

  “They cut us off,” Luka said, his face grim.

  We looked at one another, all of us wearing the same incredulous expression. Would they really do this to us?

  Then almost as one, we looked at the hatch door.

  Boris and Anton were closest—they dove toward the door. The red button that was supposed to release the hatch—the red button that had opened the hatch for Giorgia just days before—didn’t respond.

  Anton stepped back and gaped at us, stunned. Boris shouted a curse in Russian and kicked the hatch, resulting in nothing but another shout, this time of pain.

  “That’s impossible,” Anton said. “This—the hatch—the radio—it’s all . . . it’s impossible!”

  My mind flew to the Apollo 1 disaster. Three astronauts, trapped on the launchpad during a simulation, burned to death while surrounded by people who couldn’t get to them in time. Just like us.

  My lungs seized up.

  “It’s not impossible because it’s happening,” I said, my voice pitching into hysteria. I had to be rational. Force myself to reason it through. “Whether this is a test or not, we have to do something; we can’t just sit here. We might have less than an hour of oxygen left.”

  “But how?” Emilio muttered. “How do we not have air? We’re on Earth!”

  I knew the how didn’t matter. What mattered was what do we do about it?

  My mind raced. What tools did we have? Precious few. There were no windows to break. Only steel between us and the outside. There was another hatch door in the kitchen where our meals arrived three times a day, but it was about three inches high and locked until our meals were ready. Maybe there was a hidden way out that we didn’t know? If we were trapped, our only other option was to do what Mission Control had instructed and climb through the air shafts to turn the vents back on. But in all our tests, there had been no scenario like this. We had no manual, no instructions, nothing. I didn’t even know how to get into the ventilation shafts.

  Luka met my gaze. I read in his face the same thing I was feeling: desperation.

  “We need schematics,” I said. “We need a map. Who has that packet they gave us the first day, with all the diagrams?”

  “That one with a thousand pages?” Emilio said, his black eyebrows creased together. “I—I still might. Let me go look.” He raced to his bunk on long, flying strides.

  “Tools,” I said. My breath was coming so fast now it was almost hard to catch it. “Where are those?”

  “Somewhere in here,” Luka said. Anton and Pratima were already moving, opening drawers and cabinets.

  “Got it,” Pratima said, holding up a black fabric case.

  Emilio came flying back to the kitchen, trailing loose papers. He slammed the packet down on the table, a textbook’s worth of technical specs they’d given us as study material. We each dove into the pile, spreading papers around the table, trying to find something, anything.

  Then the radio crackled to life. “SLH, this is Mission Control. Do you read me? Over.”

  It wasn’t just Mission Control—it was Pierce! Joy surged in my chest. I had never been happier to hear that man’s voice.

  Everyone’s hand went to hit the reply button at once but Mitsuko got to it first. “Yes!” we chorused.

  “Listen, kids.” Pierce spoke quickly; his voice had an edge. That was what made my skin prickle. He’d never, ever called us kids before. “Something’s gone wrong. A computer glitch or some horseshit, we don’t know exactly yet, but the hatch is sealed tight and we can’t get to you. We’re working on getting you out but it’s going to take longer than you’ve got. The fire was simulated but somehow the computer thinks it’s real. Your oxygen vent has been sealed off from the outside air and we can’t override it. You’ll have to work fast—get to the oxygen garden and to the control panel there.” He paused and added, “This is not a test. I repeat, not a test. You have less than thirty minutes.”

  Every inhalation felt suddenly strained. Every lungful of air, not enough. Epinephrine flooded the synapses between cells, skyrocketing my heart rate, blood pressure, breathing. I glanced over my shoulder and locked eyes with Luka. His pupils were dilated, lips pressed together, bloodless and pale.

  Pierce continued. “Listen close, I’m gonna go fast. There’s an opening to the ventilation shafts at the rear of the sleeping quarters. Find the toolbox under the meal hatch in the kitchen, unscrew the vent cover, and send some people through the shaft to the mechanical room. The oxygen tanks will be there, and once you restart them you’ll have plenty of air until we can get through the hatch. But you need to do it now and you need to do it fast.”

  Survival instincts kicked in.

  Orders received, we raced to the end of the sleeping quarters. Anton and Boris together took off the vent cover, revealing a pitch-black opening in the wall about two feet across and three feet high.

  “No way am I fitting through there,” Boris said, shaking his head. And he was right: at six feet and some change, neither Boris nor Anton, and definitely not Luka, were going to get very far through that shaft. A quick survey confirmed it: even with my designer genes, at five foot seven I was still the shortest person there.

  “I’ll go,” I said quickly. “No one else can fit.”

  “I can,” Emilio said, stepping up. He gave me a reckless grin. “I’m about as tall as you, Cass.”

  I gave him a dubious look. “It’ll be tight, with both of us.”

  He shrugged, the grin never fading. “Can’t always let you have all the fun. I’ll be your backup.” He shot a look to Luka, as though asking if that was a good idea. Luka had been in the lead for so long, I guess it was kind of expected he would know what to do. “Just in case.”

  “Fine, just do it fast,” Luka said. To me, quietly, he said, “Don’t let him slow you down.”

  Anton scrambled around in the toolbox for a minute before pulling out a handful of items. A screwdriver, a wrench, a crowbar, a flashlight, and finally, a couple of walkie-talkies.

  No tool belt in sight, Emilio and I shoved the tools through our belt loops, and Emilio clipped on his walkie-talkie.

  “We’ll relay instructions from Pierce through the radio,” Luka said, holding up the other walkie-talkie.

  “As long as the connection holds,” Mitsuko said darkly.

  Luka stepped close, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Good luck,” he said.

  “Don’t need luck,” I said, adjusting the crowbar and screwdriver for maximum portability. “Just need time.”

  “Good luck,” he said again, with emphasis.

  I crawled in first on my hands and knees, leading the way with the flashlight held in one hand. The light jerked and splayed with each movement, but for now I needed it only so I wouldn’t run headfirst into any sudden stops.

  The shaft was hot and airless. I ignored the sweat trickling down my back and the hair falling in my eyes, thinking only of moving forward to the oxygen garden.

  By the time Emilio and I were fully ensconced in the dark recesses of the shaft, we’d already used abo
ut ten minutes of our thirty-minutes-give-or-take oxygen allowance.

  “I know this is a life-or-death situation” came Emilio’s halting, huffing words from behind me, “Which is why I am not going to make any jokes about staring at your ass.”

  Only Emilio could make me smile in a situation like this. “Try to get Luka on the radio.”

  A few seconds later, the static gave way to Luka’s calm voice. Just hearing it made my heart slow, if only for a few seconds.

  “Pierce says the shaft will go slightly uphill until you reach an impasse. At this point you should be directly above the mechanical room.”

  Above? But I’d worry about that later.

  The slightly uphill section was, in fact, like trying to climb a steep metal slide. After the third attempt ended in me sliding back into Emilio, I made myself stop and take off my shoes—bending like a pretzel to reach them in the narrow confines and then kicking them back past Emilio, despite his protestations.

  My bare feet found better purchase than my knees did on the slippery metal, and I shimmied up the incline like a spider. But halfway up, my sweaty hand slipped and dropped the flashlight. It banged and reverberated all the way down until I heard Emilio shout, “Ow!”

  After a few seconds of scrambling where I was held hostage by the impenetrable darkness, the flashlight beam found me. “Go on, Cass, I’ll spot you.”

  I climbed the rest of the way until I came to a small landing. I was blind without the flashlight, but my bare feet told me that I was crouched over a metal grate. I put a hand out, testing, and made it only a foot or so before hitting another grate. We’d come to the dead end.

  Emilio scrambled up behind me with his shoes tied by the laces and dangling around his neck—why hadn’t I thought of that?—and the flashlight in his mouth, rescuing me from the darkness.

  The two of us were huffing and puffing now, our breaths commingling. How long had it taken us? I had been too distracted to count the seconds.

  I did a quick self-check: a little breathless and light-headed, but whether that was exertion or oxygen deprivation, I couldn’t tell.

  In the bobbing light of the flashlight, I could finally see that the wall we’d dead-ended into wasn’t really a wall: behind the grate was an industrial-size fan, about as wide as I was tall, blades still and silent. Over our heads was its twin, also dead.

  “Ready?” Emilio asked, a reckless grin spreading across his face. He’d aimed the light straight down, revealing the grate that I’d felt with my bare feet. His brown eyes shone wild in the darkness, his Mohawk a haphazard and sweaty mess. “Only way to go is down.”

  The grate was unlocked. All it took was some uncomfortable maneuvering to make enough room to lift it. The dark hole it revealed was even less inviting than the opened grate back in the sleeping quarters: round, pitch-black, and only slightly wider than my own body. I’d have to tuck in my arms and slide down the vent feetfirst.

  “Just like a waterslide,” Emilio said. “Like those big loopy ones at water parks. Only without the water. And with a little extra terror.”

  “I hate water parks,” I muttered, and, hoping against hope that this would lead to where I needed to be, I clenched my jaw and pushed myself down the rabbit hole.

  SEVENTEEN

  I LANDED ON my feet but, unprepared for the shock, immediately fell backward with a painful thud. Back up, I hopped aside. Not a moment too soon, because Emilio came sailing down the chute behind me, crashing to a stop in the same space I’d occupied a second before.

  The flashlight clattered to the ground and broke open, useless. But we didn’t need it anymore. This room was lit with brilliant sunshine.

  For a second we were both motionless, staring in awe at the windowed ceiling. Warm and buttery sunshine filtered in from the outside world, from the room where the SLH was parked. It was the most beautiful thing I’d seen in a week.

  Then I looked down and realized where we were: on top of one of two tanks, each easily twelve feet tall, so massive they took up half the room.

  I spared one last glance upward at the glass ceiling. If only we could reach it—break the glass. Thinking quickly, I took the heavy iron crowbar from my belt loop and threw it with all my strength upward at the glass.

  The crowbar bounced harmlessly off the glass, and a metallic clang echoed in the small space as it fell to the floor somewhere below.

  I should’ve known. That ceiling could probably stop a meteorite.

  “Cass . . .” My attention was diverted. Emilio was still prone, one hand cradling his side, groaning. “I think I broke something.”

  He’d landed worse than I thought. I knelt at his side, gave him a once-over. No bleeding, but he groaned louder and sucked in a breath when I tried helping him to his feet.

  No time!

  “I’ll live,” he said, but his voice was weak. “Go do what you gotta do.”

  Hesitating only a nanosecond, I left him, taking the walkie-talkie with me. I found a ladder built into the side of the tank and climbed down into the small room. A few rows of bare metal tables filled the small space. There was a door on the far side, but it was locked.

  My foggy brain tried to piece the scene together. The functions of the SLH had been in one of the million manuals they’d given us to study. This was a mock-up, a practice habitat. But in the real one—the one designed for humans to live on Mars—they would grow their own oxygen here. The tanks held water, both potable and to use as a backup source of oxygen. But ours had been modified for use on Earth. No need for plants or electrolysis of water. Instead, a vent drew in air from outside.

  “Cass, what’s happening? Where are you?” Luka demanded over the walkie-talkie.

  “I’m here,” I said, my voice weak. Talking suddenly required a lot more effort. My lungs were working hard to draw out every molecule of oxygen they could.

  “You have to manually open the valve to let in the air. Should be on a wall near the tanks.”

  Fighting hard against the dizziness, my unfocused eyes wandered around the room before finding an orange control panel and beneath it, a hand-wheel crank. That had to be it.

  “Give me a minute,” I said into the walkie-talkie, and then dropped it with an unspeakably loud clang onto a metal table. Emilio groaned again from the top of the tank.

  I grabbed the crank and pulled with both hands. It didn’t budge. Not enough air to fuel my muscles. They were hypoxic, useless.

  I breathed quickly in and out through my mouth, purposely trying to hyperventilate, hoping to infuse my blood with as much oxygen as possible. If this didn’t work, then using up my air quicker wouldn’t really matter.

  I gritted my teeth and put every ounce of strength into my arms.

  The crank groaned, released. Gasping, I spun it open as fast as I could, spots dancing before my eyes.

  Nothing was happening. I reached for the walkie-talkie, missed, stumbled and fell to my knees. My vision was going gray. My head felt like a helium balloon, floating above my body.

  I reached up to the table with both hands and felt around blindly. Yes! My fingers hit hard plastic, wrapped around it. “Opened,” I gasped into the radio. “Didn’t work.”

  There was a moment’s pause. I laid my head against the metal table and listened to my heart struggle to keep going.

  The metal was pleasantly warm from the sunlight.

  I closed my eyes.

  “Pierce said you will need to open the control panel and turn the ventilation system back on. Cassie? Do you hear me?”

  His voice sounded different. Distant.

  I was so tired. Maybe I could lie down on this table and just rest for a few minutes.

  “Cassie? Stay awake, Cassie! You have to turn on the ventilation system! We are almost out of oxygen!”

  Oxygen. Right. That’s why I was so sleepy.

  But Luka, he was still awake. This exertion might kill me before the others. But I was their only shot.

  A picture bubbled up through t
he fog of my brain. Mitsuko strewn like a discarded doll on the floor. Luka, back in the kitchen, slumped down in his chair, the radio fallen at his feet. Emilio, who’d gone quiet on top of the tank.

  Without me, they would die.

  I dragged myself to my feet. My heart pounded painfully in my ears as I felt my way back to the control panel.

  “I’m here,” I whispered into the radio. “What do I do?”

  He recited a code to access the vent system. I punched the numbers dutifully, following his instructions, utilizing every bit of brain activity I had.

  For a long time nothing seemed to happen. I collapsed into a heap, my legs unable to support me anymore. Blackness took over my vision, and briefly the world went away.

  But not before a mechanical whir reached my ears and I felt a cool breeze rustle my hair.

  EIGHTEEN

  “A COMPUTER MALFUNCTION,” Krieger was saying. Her voice was high and nervous, her hands doing almost as much talking as she was. “Improbable accident. We are most definitely going to find out what happened.”

  Krieger’s flitting hands settled as she crossed her arms in front of her chest. Her fingernails, painted into pink, sharp tips, dug into the sleeves of her silver brocaded suit jacket.

  I sat perched on the edge of a cot in the medical wing. Mitsuko sat beside me, her warm presence a comfort even as we shared dubious expressions. They’d insisted on everyone being evaluated by a doctor, so despite the fact that I felt fine, I was stuck there until the white-coat had finished with Emilio and made her way over to me. And since Emilio was the only one with an actual injury, the rest of us were going to be there awhile.

  I could see them, way over in the far corner—Emilio shirtless and prone in bed, wincing, as the doctor palpated around his ribs, where a dark red bruise had begun to form.