Martian Academy (Honor Among the Stars Book 1) by James David Victor

Author:James David Victor [Victor, James David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fairfield Publishing
Published: 2022-08-08T16:00:00+00:00

10

REACHING LEVEL GROUND

Artemis didn’t want to ask for help in getting off the tower and back to base. The fewer people who knew about this, the better. She didn’t want to worry her friends, and she also didn’t want a bunch of strangers seeing her at her lowest. She was cold and bloody and exposed. It was hard enough keeping warm in what little clothing she had to go along with Titus tearing her shirt open.

But as she searched desperately for a way down, she found no options.

The building was a sheer drop. No handholds of any kind, just smooth flat glass. Even if there were handholds, climbing down a hundred floors in her conditions with no safety measures was practically suicide. One small slip, she was dead.

It wasn’t an option though, so she didn’t need to worry about that. However, the only exit was a metal-coated lift, and the only way to open it was a code, ID scan, or bio-encryption, none of which she possessed. Nonetheless, she spent the better part of an hour trying random codes that she could think of associated with Titus or his family, dates of key victories or laws or events associated with the Aurelius legacy. None worked. She even tried her ID chip and her fingerprints, even though she knew that was stupid.

Nothing worked.

So Arte was stuck on top of this tower. Her only hope of getting down without alerting her friends was to wait for some maintenance person to come up here for cleaning or something.

Who knew when that would be? Artemis couldn’t wait that long. She was lucky that it was a weekend, and she didn’t have to be up in a few hours for drills, but that didn’t provide her with much solace. If anything, it meant that it could be days before anyone came up here. She was too cold, too wounded, too tired to wait that long.

She had to get back. Her body was sore and hurt, and she’d catch her death in this cold. Plus, her roommates hadn’t reacted at all to her abduction, and she worried that perhaps Titus had done something to them, too.

There was one way to check and see if they were still alive, though—one she could do right from where she was sitting, her back against the cold door of the lift.

Hands trembling, she ran her index finger over her wrist, and the comm chip inside her activated. In her vision, a list of names appeared before her, all of the IDs of people she knew and could contact. She willed herself to push, to find her roommates’ IDs. They were still there. She sighed, almost choking on a sob. Whenever someone died, their chip went offline. Of course, there were rare cases where someone nearly died and were later revived, but seeing their names still clear made her smile.

She didn’t want to ask for help. She didn’t want anyone worrying about her. Her friends had their own problems, and getting through the academy would take enough out of them already, but Artemis had no other choice.

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