Shadows of Mars (Broken Stars Book 1) I.O. Adler (read people like a book TXT) 📖

Her “body” below her neck was a thin shaft of metal running down to where her “legs” emerged, twin curved spokes which were somehow holding her up. But where was her body? How did she fit inside such a slender costume or container?

Impossible.

Had to be dreaming.

Cold. Hot. Bright. Dark. All her senses were on overload. She closed her eyes. But the soft sound of the hum was something she could latch on to as she forced herself to shut out all the other sensations. For the hum was no phantom sound. It was real and it softly reverberated through the gray floor and walls and ceiling.

Her stomach churned. She thought she would throw up. But as the urge to retch overwhelmed her a hand took hers.

“Focus on me. Focus on the sound of my voice. Your body will adjust. More importantly, your mind will.”

Carmen kept her eyes clamped shut. “What did you do to me?”

“I’m bringing you closer to me. Carmen…Jenna…I need you.”

“Where are we?”

“Inside the sphere. It’s safe here. Oh my sweet girl…my girls. How I’ve missed you.”

Carmen dared open her eyes. The world before her held an unreal thickness, dreamlike. Her stomach continued to roil. Her face felt too warm. But the suffocating sensation ebbed.

Sylvia Vincent’s face smiled at her from the screen on the head of the robot.

“Mom, what happened to you?”

“I’m alive. This spindlebot isn’t my body. And you’ve been placed in one just like mine so we can better talk.”

“I don’t understand. Where’s Jenna? What have you done to me?”

The image of her mom’s face flickered. “Jennacarmen…you’re here.”

“You haven’t told me anything. Where is here?”

A second flicker of her mother’s face, and the room vanished. All around her were stars. She fought a wave of vertigo as she spun about, finally looking up, where the circle of the earth loomed above her.

Drugged. Had to be. Or somehow she had been tricked to step inside the sphere and was experiencing some kind of virtual reality light show. She pushed the mom-creature aside and rushed past her, only to collide with the wall, which remained invisible but was as solid as brick. The floor was still there too. She struck the wall and the stars and Earth vanished.

The gray room once again surrounded her.

“Turn it off,” Carmen gasped. “Let me out.”

The mom-creature recovered her balance and stared at her for a moment. “Oh, looks like you’re waking up.”

“What do you mean? Wait!”

The mom-robot stepped towards a wall where a doorway now appeared.

Carmen moved to follow. It took several tries to walk straight, and she tottered forward, almost tumbling but for some mechanism inside her now helping her keep balance. With the floor and walls no longer translucent and her sense of down restored, she found herself able to hurry after her mother, who was walking briskly along a curved corridor and through another doorway.

Another thin robot stood in the center of the room. The face on the head screen was Jenna’s. And her sister looked terrified.

The mom-creature strode up to Jenna. “Focus on me, Jennacarmen.”

Her sister’s eyes were wide and they darted between the mom-creature and Carmen. “This isn’t real. This isn’t real.”

The mom-creature caressed Jenna’s head. “You came for me, darling. I’m here. We’re together.”

Carmen held out a tentative hand and touched Jenna’s shoulder. “Jenna, it’s me. It’s going to be okay. I’ll figure this out. I’ll get us home. Mom, please tell me what’s happened to us.”

“Dear Jennacarmen, you’re coming to me. I almost lost you and won’t lose you again.”

“We’re both here, Mom, Jenna and me. But where are we? Don’t show me. Explain.”

Mom’s head turned in place to face her without her body moving. “In space. Closer to where I am. I need you. And then when the two of us are together we can—”

She was interrupted by a distant bang. The image on her mom’s screen went blank. Carmen shook her but it was as if the mom-creature had switched off.

“Jenna, can you hear me? Can you move? I can’t explain what’s happening. But we’re in trouble and we need to get out of here now.”

Her sister straightened herself before crouching down again. Then she stood erect and like a toddler took a few wobbling steps forward. Carmen held her hand and they moved across the plain room to the doorway. But the doorway had vanished. Carmen touched the wall and pressed on it.

The distant banging continued, growing louder and more frequent.

Carmen placed her sister’s hands on the wall. “Stand here and give me a second.”

What had the mother-creature done to open the wall? Carmen probed the surface, tapping it and running her steel fingers in search of a groove, a depression, or anything to grip. Finally she walked into the wall in imitation of how her mom had done it and the doorway once again appeared.

She grabbed her sister and pulled her along. “Come on.”

Her sister took small steps and careened about before finding a semblance of balance. The curved hallway continued and seemed to head towards the banging. The opposite direction led to the room where she had gained consciousness. How many hidden doors had she passed? But while “Mom” was switched off, it was time to leave.

She led Jenna away from the noise. The banging continued in a furious rhythm, but she felt certain it wasn’t mechanical or part of some normal process. Whatever it was had grabbed the mom-creature’s attention and couldn’t be good.

The hallway just kept going, with no visible doors, no slope, angling around for what felt like hundreds of yards. The notion that they were inside the sphere in the restaurant had vanished. The space they were running through was larger than most buildings, like the concourse