Charon Docks at Daylight

Chapter 1

Flickers of red light shifted through the darkness, illuminating what the moon couldn't of the large library. I held my own small flashlight between my teeth, directing the cardinal beam downward onto the book in my hands. The scientific title had seemed promising, but as I scanned the inside I found it was only a superficial account of the human body – definitely not the in-depth information about the nervous system that we were looking for. As quietly as I could, I set the book back on the shelf, the only audible sound the slight rub as it slid into place.

I pulled the flashlight out of my mouth, running it over the spines of other books until I found another that looked interesting, and then gripped it between my teeth again to free my hands. As I reached for the book, there was a faint whoosh, and a much louder thud as a heavy text hit the floor, echoing off the high library ceiling. Startled, I jumped, instinctively turning toward the noise as my hand shot to the twelve-inch knife belted to my thigh. Luckily I had a good enough hold on my flashlight that I didn't drop it and add to the clatter. Every other red light in the long row of shelves directed toward the noise, barely illuminating the soldier who'd dropped the book, and I could almost make out eleven inhales as each of us held our breath.

I waited, the only sound I could hear in the dark silence was the frightened pounding of my heart as we all waited for a dreaded response to the noise. My hand was still tensed over the knife, and though it was the weapon of choice among us for its silence, I felt even more comforted by the weight of the rifle strung over my shoulder. After thirty seconds of silence, the red beams shifted toward me, and I could see my limbs outlined by the light as they looked at me for orders. I waited another thirty seconds, listening intently for any sound that might indicate our mission was about to get a lot more dangerous. When none came, I gave an audible sigh.

"As you were," I whispered, just loud enough so my comrades could hear me. Releasing my hold on the knife, I grabbed my light and shined it on the one who'd dropped the book. "Jarvis, be more careful."

"Sorry, LT," he whispered back, and before I removed my light from him I watched him take a firm hold of the heavy book so it wouldn't slip from his fingers.

We'd been searching through Harvard's library for over an hour now, and with almost every shelf scanned we still hadn't found what we were looking for: a book, any book for that matter, that was extremely detailed about the human brain. Not just the different parts and what they were for, but also chemicals, hormones, and affects on the rest of the body – the kind of book that would give a first time reader enough knowledge to be a brain surgeon. There were plenty of biology textbooks about human anatomy, but none I'd seen yet that were specific enough. Nor did it help that a good number of the books had been thrown about and strewn all over the floor in a former chaos. The lack of vision and the layer of dust that reflected my red light back at me made it hard to scan the dropped titles quickly and accurately, and the disorder made searching troublesome.

"Genevieve." There was a quiet whisper behind me as I continued to scan the shelves. The familiar voice belonged to Blake McMahan. "How you doing over here?"

"Well," I started and turned to face him, my flashlight turning his short blonde hair a dark pink and shining back at me in his hazel eyes. At six-foot-three he loomed over me, and I'm sure his broad shoulders and hugely muscular body made him look at least three times my size. "I never got to finish high school, so I don't really know what the hell we're looking for."

His shoulders shook as he let out short huffs of breath in the quietest laugh he could manage. "No shit. I barely know the biology books from the psychology books."

Blake was a year older than me, but he was just a junior in high school when the world fell apart. A lot of us who didn't go from student to dead overnight went from student to soldier, and education had taken a back seat to survival for the last six years. I couldn't say I'd minded, seeing as I never liked school much anyway.