Paradox (2 page)

Ana
. The name is a wave that lifts her and a hand that holds her and a boat that carries her away. It’s a compass that says: Head this way! It’s a banner that tells her: All is not lost.

She recognizes it immediately. It’s her own name.

Feeling somehow stronger with this knowledge inside her, Ana sets the nametag down on the armrest of her chair and turns her attention to the tiny room. The walls are checkered like a quilt, each square padded with velvety red cushion and edged in polished gray metal. The ceiling, studded with fluorescent lightbulbs, rises to a narrow peak high above her, and is also lined with puffy cushioning.

She doesn’t see the belts that had been holding her. Did they retract into her seat? She looks down over the side. The chair sits on a pole—
like a dentist’s chair … but have I ever gone to the dentist?
—and underneath is a yawning black space. A grille walkway surrounds her seat and bridges the gap between her chair and the far wall, where there’s a door set into the red padding.
A door!
It’s an odd oblong shape, like some kind of a portal or a hatch, and made of solid-looking metal.

Ana slides off the seat and plants her feet on the walkway, her legs shaking a little at first. As she stands all the way up, her hand brushes something on her right hip: a tough nylon sheath with a smooth, dark handle at the top. Instinctively, she reaches across her body with her left hand, grasps the handle, and pulls it free to reveal a twelve-inch dagger made of a matte, nonreflective metal and with an edge so sharp it looks like it could cut steel.

What?
Heart hammering, Ana slides the blade back into place. She glances down at the bulky vest she’s wearing—bulky because it hides more weapons?

Ana looks back at the door. She has no idea where it leads, but it’s suddenly clear that there will be no lighthearted surprise party waiting for her on the other side.

Still a little unsteady on her feet, she crosses the grille walkway to the door. A bar-shaped handle bisects it at hip level; to one side of the door is a small, dark screen.
A finger-pad
. Without thinking, Ana presses her index finger against the screen.

Her stomach is churning.
Making fear soup
, she thinks, and the thought makes her smile. In spite of all the uncertainty surrounding her, Ana’s heart lifts. Her mind might be broken, but that expression had to come from somewhere, didn’t it? Maybe there are more fragments of the past drifting around her mind space, bits of her old self waiting to drop in at some random moment, when she least expects it.

The fingerpad beeps, and she hears a series of clicks and
whirrs from inside the door as the locking mechanism begins to disengage. She reaches for the handle.

And that’s when she sees it. On the lower half of the door there is a mesh pocket, and sticking out of the pocket is the edge of something that looks like paper.

Ana reaches down and pulls the paper free. It’s an envelope with one word written in careful block print, the same word that was on her nametag, her word:
Ana
. Inside the envelope is a sheet of paper.

She slides the sheet out and unfolds it. Her eyes run over the handwritten words.

Ana stands still for a long time, trying to process all this new information. Paradox? J. R. Pritchett? Surgical retrograde amnesia? None of it makes any sense. They’re all just words, ideas with no weight behind them—nothing like her name, which came alive when she saw it.

Looking down at the paper again, she notices something else. Scribbled at the bottom in smudged black ink—written in a shaky hand, different from the main note—are two letters: O+O

What is that supposed to mean?

What does
any
of it mean?

She starts to crumple the letter, then stops and folds it over and over until it’s a flat square that can fit in the hollow of her palm. She finds a pocket on the front of her suit and slides it inside. The panic in her gut, the cold emptiness of all she doesn’t know, is so strong it’s almost numbing. But she has to get moving.

Broken or not, there’s only one way she’s going to find answers.

The fingerpad flashes green, and Ana grasps the door handle. The bar moves easily under her weight. With a gentle
hisssss
, then a
click
, the door unlatches.

Ana pushes and the door swings open.

She is greeted by an endless swath of dry brown earth. Giant boulders that are gray and black and dull green and even coral pink are scattered across the landscape. She realizes she’s looking from a height, and as she pushes the door wider, she sees it’s a ten- or twelve-foot drop to the ground. Off ahead a cliff cuts across the horizon, so far away it’s barely more than a haze in the distance.

And the sky … she tilts her head back. The sky is pink! It’s as if she were inside a huge peach, the top half of the world streaked with ribbons of orange and yellow and red—and, yes, cheek-blushing pink. Over it all hangs a watery yellow sun.

What is this place?

The wind hits her then, a gust of chilly-fresh air that takes her breath away for a second, and she leans into it, pushing the door out until it’s flat against the outer wall and it latches into place.

That’s when she sees it. Over the horizon way off to her left, low over the distant cliff wall, looms a
second
sun.

Two
suns? That’s not right. And yet, there they are, one dim and high overhead and the other lolling white-hot on the horizon.

Is this a sign that the strings inside her are broken worse than she’d thought? Or is it something else?

Some
where
else?

She should be seeing buildings. She should be seeing trees. There should be signs of roads and cars. Planes, maybe. Instead, there’s just dry, empty land, and the wind beating against the heavy door, and
two
suns pulsing in the raspberry sky.

She thinks about the letter and its talk of exploring, of discovering, of trying to save her world, almost as if—
You have
now arrived on Paradox
—as if that world that needed saving were somewhere else. Somewhere not here.

No way. That’s ridiculous … isn’t it?

And yet the more she thinks about it, the more the idea fits, sliding into another one of those gaps in her mind with a perfect fit. Gripping the doorframe, Ana steps up onto the threshold, teetering a little as the wind whips across the doorway. She considers the drop and wonders what to do next, but even as she thinks it, her right hand is reaching toward a heavy-duty switch in the doorframe. She flips the switch in a practiced motion, as if she’s done it countless times before, and a mechanical
whirr
fills the air. A second later a staircase is unfolding beneath her feet, the base hitting the ground with a resounding
boom
.

Your body has been well trained
, the letter told her. She’s just starting to understand what that means. She steps onto the top step and finds it surprisingly solid. Well trained or not, her legs are shaking, and for a few moments she focuses on tensing and releasing the muscles until she gets herself under control.

These are running legs, she suddenly knows. She has a flash of a foot hitting a puddle, water arcing out in a brown swell; athletic shoes slapping on concrete; bare toes tamping down soft black rubber.
Thud, thud, thud
. There’s no body or face attached to the image, but she senses the movement in those legs and knows they are hers.

It’s not a memory, exactly, but it’s a piece of her all the same. A ripple of warmth floods her chest.

Carefully, Ana climbs down the staircase. Only when she reaches the ground does she allow herself to turn and look at the place she’s left.

Two suns … A pink sky …
She has a definite idea about what she’s going to see, but still—a thrill courses through her to observe the tall, conical body, solid and gleaming as it rests on its round, squat bottom, nose pointing to the sky.

She’s just climbed out of a rocket ship.

Metallic red, scratched up in places, the rocket reaches four or five times her height. Still, it doesn’t seem very big for a ship that has apparently carried her to this alien world. To this …

She forms the word in her mind, then says it out loud because it really is beyond astonishing: “
Planet
. This alien planet.”

Mentally judging the rocket’s size against the tiny chamber she woke up in, Ana slowly circles the craft. On either side of her door are two sealed portals. But as she comes around to the rear of the rocket, Ana stops short. There’s
another door
, half open in the wind, with another mechanical staircase clawing on to the rocky soil.

Her heart leaps into her throat and she covers the ground in seconds.
I’m not alone here, not alone!
She’s halfway up the stairs before she’s even fully realized what she is doing.

She swings the door wide to …

Nothing.

The compartment is identical to hers, down to the grilled walkway and the black leather chair and the bright white light filling a space lined with red cushioned walls. But there’s no
sign of life, not even an indentation in the seat where a body might have rested. Ana steps all the way inside, and the heavy door falls shut behind her.

The disappointment crests like a wave, all hope and possibility of companionship slipping away in the undertow. She feels it roaring straight for her and immediately knows that if she lets it in, she will be paralyzed. She makes a split-second’s decision:
No!

Ana has no idea what kind of person she was, or
is
, but one thing she does know right now: Loneliness and self-pity are not only self-indulgent but dangerous.
You have now arrived on Paradox
. She’s maybe alone, definitely damaged, possibly deranged—but she’s
here
. On this alien planet.

She has no one to rely on but herself.

Ana turns back toward the door. As she starts to push it open, a sound outside makes her pause. It’s a grinding noise, a
MRRROOOOAR
and a
GRRRRRRAH
, like a dozen bulldozers moving across torn-up ground. It’s loud and harsh, digging into her ears like claws, like hungry things—and somehow Ana knows that whatever is out there, it’s alive.

The walkway below her is shaking, and suddenly she’s fighting to keep her balance; then the door whips out of her hand, and through the opening she sees a rush of brown like a moving mountain. There’s a gust of stale air, then a bloodred maw and jagged teeth as tall as fence posts and a throat that goes down down down like a slide to hell.

Ana tumbles back onto the grille walkway. Her head
crashes against the footrest of the chair. The door bangs shut. Her left hand flies to her right hip with practiced fluidity, and suddenly there’s a dagger in her hand.

Outside, the noise is a roar is a bellow is a dull throbbing moan and then gradually it’s all but gone.