Paradox by A. J. Paquette Read Free Book Online

It’s the only way to get where they’re going.
    Ana reaches over and grabs the circlet on Todd’s left wrist. With a quick stroke she pulls up the map, which gleams against their dark backdrop. There’s a flash of near-recognition in Todd’s eyes as he tries to focus on the display.
    “Hey, Todd,” Ana says. “You see that? Gotta follow the directions. We’re almost there.”
    They’re not almost there—not as far as she can tell from the map, anyway. She clicks it off again and they move on. She wishes she could take the time to zoom out and get an idea of how far in they are and how far there is to go, but she’s got all her focus on keeping Todd moving forward.
    More and more it’s looking like a battle she might not win.
    “No!” she yells aloud at the thought. Todd jumps at the abrupt sound, then sinks back to his walk-be-dragged-shuffle. But that jump gives her an idea.
    Ana stops and drops his arm, pausing for a second to catch her breath. As she does, she can see Todd’s body beginning to shift, as if his very bones were pulling toward the ground. And she could swear she sees tendrils rising from the ground, little shoots twining around his heels, curling over the rims of his boots.
    “It’s so dark in here,” he whispers. His voice is weirdly hollow, almost like it’s disconnected from his body. His eyes arewide and staring and he’s craning his head from side to side, but he doesn’t seem to see her.
    “Todd!” she says. But he doesn’t even register her words. It’s as if he’s caught in the grip of some hallucination and isn’t able to pull out of it. She’s going to need some extreme measures.
    She lifts his arms out in front of him. Todd is so gone he lets her, leaving his arms suspended in midair, like a mannequin or a zombie or whatever it is he’s turning into. She activates his circlet map again and lines it up so that it’s clear and sharp and right in front of him. Then she pulls back her arm and slaps him hard across the face. At the same time she yells, “RUN, TODD! RUN! Get out of here! You have to GO GO GO GO GO GO!”
    It works like an electric shock. He vaults forward and starts tearing down the path, the roots and grasping tendrils falling away behind him. Ana stays right at his heels, giving him a shove if he slows, letting out another yell every so often, until her voice becomes a croak and her lungs are ready to explode and her feet are two leaden clumps that want to fall right off her legs.
    Still they run on.
    Ana’s ears are full of a dark whispering rustle as they push through the forest, a rustle in a forest with no leaves, where the only living things are the two humans crashing through branches that grasp at them from faceless trunks.
    Faster and faster they push on, over fallen trunks, under low limbs, across shallow, ashy streambeds. Spiky brancheslash at her and a steady warm trickle starts down the side of her face, but she doesn’t let herself stop.
    If she stops, she knows she won’t be able to start again.
    When Ana thinks she can’t run another step, she sees their goal up ahead. It’s barely visible through the thinning tops of the trees, but it’s there all right, bathed in the light of the double suns—the crest of a rocky slope. She can’t pull up her own map or zoom out Todd’s, which is bobbing like a carrot in front of a madly chasing donkey, but the Timor Mountain range begins just beyond the forest, and if they’re now in sight, then there’s still hope.
    There’s still hope.

Ana and Todd erupt from the forest, boots outstretched, arms flung to either side, like a couple of interstellar desperadoes escaping certain death and living to tell about it, somehow, against all odds.
    It’s been just a few hours since they entered the forest, but already Ana was forgetting the way the breeze could tickle and the light could tease, and forgetting, almost, the incomparable freedom of the open arc of the sky. Even the twin suns in their