The Other Earth (26 page)

Chapter Twenty Six

I held onto Brandon's hand as we ran away from the prison. I had never been happier to breathe fresh air in my life. I had begun to picture myself lying on a table, dead and opened up, the government of Terra studying me to see if I was somehow different b
ecause of where I came from.

"We have to get to the ship!" Brandon yelled from in front of me, still pulling my hand behind him.

I looked behind me and saw that Vanessa was running right with us, keeping our pace matched. I wondered what would become of her now, since she was the one that had turned me in, the alien they hadn't expected. I had thought that we have grown to be close friends in the time we had spent together and it hurt me to know that she had thrown me over to the government that she had said she hated time and time again.

I looked back in front at Brandon and saw the tip of our ship just above the trees and sighed with relief. There was nothing I wanted more than to just get off of this planet and go back home to people that wouldn't try to
dissect me. Even the pollution didn't seem quite so bad at that moment.

I felt myself slowing down and looked down at my legs, which were still quite numb from all of the electricity they had pumped through them over the past few hours. I was surprised to
see that my gray pants were not only streaked with dirt from standing in a dank and dirty room, but they had lines of blood seeping through them as well.

Whatever small amounts of scabs that had formed over the slashes had obviously broken free from the r
unning and were bleeding once again. Actually seeing the blood seemed to break my mind from the numbness in my legs, because as soon as I realized they were openly bleeding, the pain hit me. I gasped as I moved my legs, stabs of pain that felt like I was running through shards of glass.

I started to slow even more, tears burning my eyes as the pain became almost unbearable. The only way to keep going was to concentrate on Brandon's hand in mine, pulling me along.

Feeling me slow down, Brandon turned to look at me and seeing the look on my face, he slowed down long enough to glance down at my legs. I watched his eyes widen as he slowed to a walk and stopped running.

"Randi!" He yelled, grabbing me as I lost all use of my legs and fell forward into his arms.

He picked me up and held me in his arms like a newlywed husband would carry his bride over the threshold.

"What's the matter with her?" I heard Vanessa say breathlessly behind me.

"Her legs are bleeding! I'm going to have to carry her the rest of the way to the ship! Come on!" he yelled, as he started to run again with me in his arms.

I held on to his neck as tightly as I could to avoid being bounced too much in the running. I shouldn't have worried about that because Brandon ran like a sleek gazelle, grace
ful and smooth.

We reached the ship and ran inside, straight for the living quarters. I looked behind Brandon and saw that Vanessa had stopped just outside of the door, looking slowly inside with an uneasy look on her face.

"Brandon, Vanessa didn't come in" I said quietly in his ear.

I felt him nod and he slowly lowered me down onto the small couch that was in the common area. Once I was down he turned and went back to Vanessa, talking to her in a quiet voice that I couldn't hear.

She walked inside, looking around but still walking quickly toward me. Brandon turned toward the controls as she came over to me and looked down at my legs.

"Brandon told me to get your pants off so that he can help your legs. Is that okay?" she asked, obv
iously scared of crossing some line that had been drawn.

"Yes, but please be careful, the wounds are stinging" I said, wiggling my pants down as far as I could without help.

She reached down and slowly peeled my pants away from the open wounds. I hissed and braced myself against the couch as pain shot needles up my body.

"I'm sorry" She said.

I gritted my teeth, "Don't worry about it, just get them off!" I said as loudly as I could manage.

After only a few of the most grueling seconds of my life, she final
ly had my pants down past the wounds and for a blessed second I felt some relief.

I took a deep breath and looked down at my legs, gasping as I saw the damage that was done. My thighs looked like raw hamburger meat, with so many slashes in my skin, that mo
st of the skin was nearly impossible to see. Blood was slowly oozing thickly out of each cut and running down my legs onto the sofa.

My vision blurred as I looked down at myself and realized that the tears I had been holding back were now flowing. I reach
ed up and wiped my cheeks as I looked up at Vanessa, who was standing over my legs, holding her hands over her open mouth. As she looked up at me, I saw that she also had tears streaming down her tanned cheeks.

"What did they do to you?" she asked, horrifi
ed.

"Well, they kept poking with an electric rod, and when I wouldn't talk they eventually got mad enough to start cutting me with it. They went just a little overboard" I said.

"Okay I have the first aid kit" Brandon said, coming around the corner with a large red suitcase.

I groaned, knowing that he was going to have to touch my sensitive legs. "Please hurry" I said, hoping to get this done so that we could get out of here.

He nodded and opened it up, digging around until he found what he was looking for.

"Okay, Vanessa I am going to need you to hold Randi's hand. Randi, this is a disinfectant, and I'm sorry baby, but it's going to hurt." He said.

Vanessa walked over and grabbed my hand and I closed my eyes and braced myself for the pain. I heard a bottle cap opening, then felt Vanessa's hand grip harder as the cool liquid rushed over my legs. For a split second, the cold felt good. But then the pain started, it was a searing pain that could only be equated with someone dowsing acid onto your face.

I screa
med as tiny needles of pain shot up my legs, tears streaming down my face, and beads of sweat instantly forming on my forehead.

"I am going to dress it now Randi, almost done!" Brandon yelled.

I kept my eyes closed as I felt slight pressure on my legs in segments, then sighed with relief as I felt a soothing balm going onto the wounds right before they were being covered with what I assumed were bandages.

I finally opened my eyes as Brandon was putting a thick paste onto the last set of cuts just above my k
nees and covering it with white gauze, taping it down on the sides that were untouched.

He looked up at me, tears lining his cheeks. I reached out and pulled him to me, wiping away the tears that I had never before seen him shed. He laid his head down onto
my chest and held onto me as though I was going to float away.

I looked up at Vanessa, whose tears were still streaming down her face, "I'm so sorry Randi. I didn't know they would do this to you" she said.

I gave her a weak smile, "I know. You saved me. You both saved me" I said before blacking out.

***

I opened my eyes and looked around, for a second confused as to where I was. I turned my head and saw Vanessa and Brandon sitting at the small table, watching me silently.

"What happened?" I asked.

Brandon stood up and came over to me, "You passed out after I finished tending to your legs" he said.

I suddenly remembered and looked down at my legs, which were still bandaged from the tops of my thighs, all the way down to just above my knees.

"Oh, sorry" I said.

Brandon smiled, "Don't be sorry" he said.

"How long was I out?" I asked.

He shrugged, "Not long, maybe twenty minutes or so" he said.

I slid my leg to the side, remembering the sight of the blood flowing onto the couch, and saw that there was quite a large puddle under my legs.

"Brandon, can you help me move? I don't want to lie in this blood. I can sit up in a chair at the table" I said.

He lifted me into a standing position and grabbed a few moist towelettes from the first aid kit and cleaned the back of my legs, which were crusting with drying blood.

After my legs were reasonably clean, he helped me sit down in a chair. I looked over at Vanessa, who was sitting in her chair, looking down at the table.

I looked over at Brandon as he pulled a chair from the desk in the corner, "Look. We need to talk about this. I want to go home. I know we talked about leaving early, and with the government knowing about me, they are going to do nothing but keep hunting until they find me. I see it as our cover is blown and we need to get the hell out of dodge."

"I agree, I think we should leave immediately" Brandon said from beside me.

I looked over at Vanessa, who finally lifted her head up and looked back at me, "What if you don't go?" she asked.

"What do you m
ean? They will find me" I said.

She shook her head, "We can go back to Europa. They will take us in and the government will never know you are there" she said.

I sighed, "What good would it do to go there? What can we accomplish there that I haven't already seen?" I asked.

She looked at me seriously for a few seconds, "You
are not understanding me. I'm asking you to stay here and don't go back to your planet."

I was shocked, "Stay here?" I asked, confused.

"You say you want to do something that will change the world. What if your world is too far gone to change? Think of what you could do for Terra. You have seen and experienced things that we could never even imagine. Help us to learn and grow and become a better planet" she said.

"You don't understand. I a
m nothing alone, I cannot change an entire planet by myself" I told her.

"You won't be alone Randi. You will have me and all of Europa behind you. You can teach us advanced technology and science that will help us. We need you Randi" she said, reaching out
to grab my hand as she pleaded.

I sighed, "Technology?" I asked.

"Yes, you came here on a space ship. Your planet is so much more advanced than us, just think what we could do with that knowledge" she said, her eyes glistening with excitement.

"Let me tell you a little about Technology Vanessa. There was a huge technological boom in the twentieth century on my planet. They designed cars so fast that they would race them, airplanes that could fly through the skies and travel thousands of miles in
just a few hours. Rocket ships that could go to the moon, and allow men to walk on it. They invented computers and telephones that were small enough to fit in our pocket, but would connect you with the entire world in seconds." I said.

"That is what we ne
ed!" Vanessa yelled.

"You don't understand. Our planet was much like yours at that point. The air was clean and the ozone layer was good. Just a little over a hundred years later, we have pollution so thick, you can't walk more than a block without an oxyg
en tank. Our ozone layer is almost completely gone, causing such extremes in temperature that it is normal for hundreds of people to die from freezing to death in the winter, and just as many to die from the heat in the summer; every year. Technology was great, but in the end, all it did was kill our planet" I said.

"She's right you know" Brandon said, looking over at me.

"Who?" I asked, wondering if he was agreeing with me or with Vanessa.

"Vanessa. This planet is smarter on the ways to make things that ar
e better for the planet rather than use it dry like ours has" he said.

"You think I should stay?" I asked him, incredibly confused.

He shook his head, "No, this is the biggest reason why you should leave with me." He said as he turned toward Vanessa. "You see, Randi is also right. She cannot change your planet by herself. We can send people back here from our planet to help create a free society for you all. Then we could work together to create new technology that won't damage Terra the way it did Earth."

"But that could take years before anyone is able to get back here to help" Vanessa said to Brandon.

He nodded, "Yes that's true, but change doesn't happen overnight anyway. You can help to start that change in the meantime." He said.

Vanessa looked back ov
er at me, "But I need her here. I don't think I'd be able to go back living my life the way it was" she said.

Brandon looked from me back to Vanessa, "You see
, there is another problem there too. I know you haven't known the truth about us long enough to know this, but Randi and I aren't brother and sister. We only said that because we saw that your government chose people's mates and we didn't want to arouse suspicion. We did grow up together, that is the truth, but we are not in the least bit related, and also..." he said, looking back over to me.