Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

“Where on Palan?” he spat.

“In the canyons.” Molly forced out the answer as quickly as she could. She tensed her legs, stretching her spine, trying to levitate away from his grasp.

“Liar,” he said. His fingers applied a little pressure. Molly felt dizzy, could smell something like ozone, could taste the pain. It was a new experience, and it hadn’t really started. Her throat constricted, her eyes watering.

What is he looking for? she wondered in her haze. She would give it to him, whatever it was, she’d hand him everything for a quick death, that’s how bad it felt.

“It was in space, wasn’t it?” he yelled. “You did something in Palan’s orbit. You opened a door!”

He no longer looked calm and in control. He looked desperate. In Molly’s state, his thin face, spitting with rage, looked like the specter of death, come to take her away.

“I know it was in space,” Byrne shouted, “because I came through it with Parsona. Tell me how you made it.”

With Parsona? A door? From where?

“I’ll help you,” Molly hissed. “Just. Stop. Hurting. Me.” She had to force each quiet word around a separate pant for air.

The hands relaxed. Byrne surveyed her face.

“There are two doors in this old house,” he said. “Invisible doors. Both were opened by friends of your parents many years ago and then resealed. It was a daring, foolish invasion, and now we get to return the favor.”

Byrne turned and nodded at the metal cross. “I can open old doors,” he said, “but I can’t create new ones. I’m thinking you can. You just don’t know how you did it, do you?”

“And that’s what you went to my mom, the one on Dakura, to find out about? How to make them?” Molly cherished the conversation, hoping it would continue. Her body tingled with the absence of pain.

“No. I went to her to determine which door to reopen.”

The game show. Her mother’s words came back to her, the innocuous analogy made deadly.

“One of these doors will open and end your galaxy, along with the threat it poses. My people will move in and systematically destroy this… mutation.” Byrne looked over Molly’s head. “The other door would have led you to your damned father…” He peered down at her, his eyes narrowing as Molly felt her own widen. “But don’t waste your time hoping, I’ve already sealed that one forever. And soon, the other door will open…”

His voice trailed off. “Wait,” he said. “Your mother. What do you mean by the one on Dakura? ”

Oh, crap, Molly thought, grimacing at the slip. She could see how tortured criminals were broken, how the pressure of layered lies smothered until desperation forced you to tear them off, exposing the truth underneath, forgetting the consequences.

In the glow of the work light, Byrne’s face smoothed out, the bunched muscles disappearing. His grin grew into a menacing smile.

“Your father made a copy, didn’t he?” The nasally laugh returned, which scared Molly more than his rage.

Byrne peered over Molly’s shoulder, into the darkness of the commons. “How ironic,” he chuckled. “To think that the answer was under my nose all these years!” His laughter swelled as his hands came away from Molly’s armpits. One of them slid up her chest to her neck. She tried to pull away, but the other hand tangled itself in her hair, balling into a fist around a thick clump of her locks. The two sides of the vise worked together to squeeze off her air supply. She clawed at them, but they were made of steel. Indestructible.

“All these years, I had the hyperdrive under my feet! This galaxy and more could already be ours!” The hysterical laughter ceased as he looked away. Molly gurgled for air, arching her back and digging her heels into the dirt. She could feel her eyes bulging out; she looked up at Byrne with tears streaming down her face, wondering where Cole was, why he wasn’t there to rescue her—

Byrne smiled down at her, as if calmly waiting for her to die.

When her esophagus closed completely, her ability to even gurgle was taken away. The world became silent, and the last of Molly’s consciousness marveled at how quiet death could be. She teetered on the edge of life, peering over the other side, when—in the scary vacuum, the eerie silence that had ensued—a loud metallic click rang out. The release of something mechanical.

Byrne squinted into the darkness, his fingers relaxing. Molly wheezed a large gulp of crisp air past her burning neck, a temporary reprieve from the suffocation. Her captor leaned farther over her, peering toward the commons.

Molly turned her head as far as she could and looked back to her ship; Byrne grabbed the work light and shone it in Parsona’s direction. A dark shape fell from one of the wings and into the tall grass.

“What was that?” Byrne asked.

Molly remained silent, save for her rapid pants for more air.

She had no idea.

Byrne scanned the commons with the work light, keeping a hand on Molly. “Who goes there?” he called out, playing the beam across the hull of the ship.

Another object fell from the wing, flashing briefly in the cone of light. It disappeared in the grass and clanged loudly against something else.

“Were those missiles?” Byrne asked Molly.

Molly clung to a fresh lungful of oxygen and pursed her lips. As the fingers dug back into her hair and neck, she asked her own silent question:

Walter—what in hyperspace are you doing?

••••

“Walter, what are you doing?” Parsona asked.

“Firing the missssilesss,” he spat.

“You have to arm them first! I told you not to jump ahead, just follow my instructions.”

“But—”

“Listen to me. We don’t have much time, and it’s very important. We need to stop a man from opening a door, and the readings on my sensors say he’s already trying.”

“But—”

“Those were our only two missiles, so you’re going to need to get in one of the escape pods and eject into the grass. I don’t care what you have to do to stop this, we’re all going to be dead either way, do you understand me?”

“But what about this wirelesss menu for the misssiless?”

“Do you hear what I’m saying? Very bad things are about to happen if you don’t get out there and stop that man. Destroy his machine. Do something. Now leave those wireless settings alone, they’re only for disarming missiles after they’ve been launched properly.”

“I can arm them,” Walter said flatly.

“No, you can’t. Trust me, it doesn’t work that way. It would take a quantum computer a dozen years to hack into—”

“I’m already in.”

Silence.

“That’s… that’s impossible.”

“No, it’ss the ssame key the Navy ussess on Palan for their mainframe. I ussed to log in and delete sstuff for fun.”

Walter shook his silvery head as he armed the missiles. “It’ss a sstupid passsword,” he added to himself.

••••

Bright lights popped in Molly’s vision as the choking resumed.

Flashes of pain. Explosions of misfiring, confused neurons. When another bright light erupted from the