Page 63 of Meteor Storm

“Well, light is obvious. Humans don’t see well in the dark.”

“And I know the cold bothers you. So let me test you.”

I watched as he loaded settings into the dimly lit control screen full of foreign symbols.

“Monrian children are trained in settings like this,” he explained. “Or we are dropped on a hostile planet to survive. Once by ourselves and again with a team of others to test our ability to work both independently and with a unit.”

“So, you just train from the day you’re born?”

“From the day we are born,” he said, turning to look at me. “We are judged for our usefulness. So, yes.”

The room began to shift. The vines and clouds were joined by sharp, vertical rocks. The floor undulated, reshaping itself into something even more uneven and harsh with fissures, nulls, and dips. From overhead, tiny white particles began to float down from the ceiling like snow and with them came an even colder draft that pierced the material of my suit. And finally, the light of the room faded into something akin to a moonlit night. I could see everything, but vaguely. Not enough to feel confident.

“Ok, what now?” I asked, wrapping myself in my arms.

“Now,” Thilar said, striding past me and disappearing around part of the upraised floor and holographic trees. “You try to get to the other side of the room.”

“Wait, really?”

Immediately, my confidence waned. The cold was quickly seizing me, and the darkness was too much of a disadvantage now that I thought about it.

“Isn’t there a beginner course?” I called after him, unsure where he’d ended up.

“A beginner course would not test you. Focus, Penny,” he said from somewhere deep within the obstacle of rocks and corners.

I took a few deep breaths, closing my eyes long enough to adjust my sight. I tried to remember the woman I was on Earth. That woman was confident, strong, and ready for anything. At least, she thought she was. Then she lost the one person that meant anything to her. Then she was launched into space. And then she was thrust into an alien dome to play a game that only ended in death for most opponents.

But the games were over and I survived. In a situation where I had a choice, I was not a woman to let a challenge go unanswered. Nothing was easy, on Earth or in the stars.

Steeling myself, I lowered my hands down to my sides and balled them into fists. I opened my eyes again, mapping a path through the environment. Thilar had gone down the center. Whether or not he stayed in that area was a mystery, but I chose to veer to the far right, searching for a small path where he’d likely not follow me. Already, I could hear my own footsteps in the silence and slowed my gait, treading with the toes of my boots toward a tiny walking path between two thick, rocky holograms.

I had to remember I was the competitive sort. I was determined.

I could beat him.

I just had to think like a cat.

Be stealthy, Penny, I told myself.

The suit the monrians had given me had a built-in pair of soft-soled boots that hugged my feet like climbing shoes. I was making little to no sound once I focused on my steps, but Thilar could hear my pulse for crying out loud. I had no doubt he could hear my footsteps, no matter how carefully I moved.

While I was focusing extra hard on keeping my stride silent, my shoulder slid across one of the holographic rocks, sending a pulse of light straight up the entire thing like a rescue flare.

“Focus, Penelope,” Thilar said from somewhere far away.

I held my breath, quickly and quietly moving away from the hologram to a different area. I was already shivering from the intense cold. Taking long, deep breaths, I tried to control it. It would be too loud and was already affecting my concentration.

I found myself on my belly at one point, crawling under an archway of stones where Thilar surely couldn’t squeeze. I still had no indication of where he was, though. I felt loud and clunky. He was quiet as a mouse, despite his size. None of the holograms had lit up anywhere in the room to betray his position.

When I emerged from my crawlspace, I found that the ground had become even more tricky to walk on. It was like hiking a rocky mountainside, which would have been fine with adequate light and the ability to make sound, but I had neither. I decided my best bet, with no other low points to navigate, was climbing and getting to high ground. So, I started to quietly ascend. If the idea was to get to the other side of the room, I had to figure out where that was.

I was on all fours, my feet braced on two stone-like protrusions while my hands were gripping two more. I was a damn mountain goat, but I was startled by the quiet flash of a hologram twenty feet from me in my peripheral. My head snapped toward it, every one of my movements ceasing so I could properly hear, but there was nothing to detect. My heart was pounding. My fingers were like ice. But as my teenage self would say, “I wasn’t a pussy.”

I focused on what I was doing when the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. My brain said look left and I did without question. There was nothing there. At least, not what I could immediately see. But then one of the vertical rocks on the peak across from me started to look odd. I squinted, as if that would help, but it wasn’t until I saw the eyes staring at me that my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. They were like cat eyes, reflective in the darkness. I gasped, nearly losing my footing, when Thilar started sprinting toward me.

It was entirely unfair.

Like everything in space.