Bright White

June 19th, 2130

“Captain?” I look up from the array of computer screens spread out on my desk to see one of the crewmembers standing nervously in the archway. Everyone on the base is well aware that I take three hours each day alone in my quarters to put together a report to send back home. I take absolutely no interruptions unless someone is dying, and I only go if there’s hope for them to recover.

Harsh, but necessary.

“What do you want?” I ask, pushing my glasses up on my nose. It does little to bring the girl into clearer focus. Her name is Petra, born to a very old family in the Balkans. Unlike the others, her qualifications aren’t exactly up to par. It would not surprise me to find out that her ticket to the base was bought.

“There’s someone… new aboard.” Her voice is wobbling, wavering with the fear she attempts to fend off by straightening her posture and squaring her jaw.

My blood runs cold. “Impossible.”

There were twelve people on the shuttle when we arrived, and no new humans were scheduled to arrive until we’ve been proven a stable community. Five years we had to wait. A thirteenth appearing without warning meant a breach.

A thirteenth meant someone who was most certainly not human.

“Where is the intruder being held?” I ask lowly, reaching into my holster for the gun I always kept. It was only yesterday that I had briefly considered going without it.

Petra shivers. “At gun point in the central control room. He just walked right in one of the airlock chambers, wearing a strange spacesuit and covered in orange dust.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Orange? We’re on the moon.”

“Please come see for yourself, ma’am.”

I push back my chair and it scrapes along the floor, etching marks beside old ones in the metal panel.

It takes five minutes to reach the central control room from my corridor in Side B of the Left Wing, an entirely too long five minutes.

We reach the entrance and Petra fumbles with the door panel, messing up the lock code twice before getting the eight-digit sequence correct.

The barely audible click of the door as it slides open draws the attention of the ten crewmembers, placed in a circle around the intruder.

He appears to be male and human, wearing unconventional clothing and draping a foreign spacesuit over his left arm. On the other, some strange device wraps around his wrist like a cuff. True to Petra’s word, he’s completely covered in a thin layer of orange dust.

I lift my gun, aiming it at the space between his eyebrows, where a slight crinkle lies. “Confiscate the suit and run the dust for testing, Walden,” I command the stoic man beside me, and he snaps to his sense and pulls the suit from the man.

“Oh, really?” The man says. “I sort of need that. I’ll be buried in fines if something happens to it.”

“Who are you? What’s your name and what is your purpose here?” I can see the vein pumping purple blood in his neck.

He’s young; early twenties with shaggy dark hair and eyes the color of grass as it’s dying in winter. A smile is plastered onto his face, stretching the skin in a mass of facial jumbles. His demeanor suggests that he’s a student, the nervous tick in his left eye giving off the vibe that he’s just disobeyed his teacher.

“The Great Isabel Cardenas,” he declares in a loud, reverberating voice. My name leaves his mouth weighted with solemn reverence. My eyes widen a fraction in shock. “Youngest person on earth to captain her own crew to the moon. You were eighteen when you landed, right?”

I falter for a second before I respond. “That’s irrelevant. How did you get inside the base?” I refuse to let my hand wobble even a millimeter from my aim.

“Is it really all that important? I won’t be here long; I just came for a visit. What’s the date?” He smirks at me, infuriatingly gaining a chuckle or two from the others.

“You will tell me your name and how you got on this base,” I repeat firmly, my index finger threatening to slip on the trigger.

“Fine, fine,” he says, holding his hands up as if he’s surrendering. “My name is not important. I literally walked inside from one of the airlocks. Not one person in this room noticed I was in here until I took off the suit and hacked up about a pound of that orange dust. Mars wasn’t fun, there aren’t people there.” He stops mid-sentence, trapped in thought. “Yet.” His eyes glint. “Now, if you could be so kind, what’s today’s date?”

Despite myself, I answer. “June 19th, 2130.”

His reaction is not one I was prepared for. There is absolutely nothing about him that I am prepared for.

Blood drains from his face, leaving it a pale, ghostly white. For a moment he seems so overcome with sadness he can’t even stand, but then it passes and it’s over and he puts the same cheery smile back on.

“What? Why did you react like that?” I demand, shifting my aim slightly away from his head.

“Your birthday, it’s June 28th, right?”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with anything—”

“You’ll just be turning twenty-one. So much life left to live.” His eyes glaze over, and I feel a weird pang of foreboding in my chest. Why does this stranger seem to know so much?

“Stop speaking in riddles! Tell me what your purpose is here and who sent you or I will end your life where you stand.”

“I should go, I really shouldn’t be here,” he says hurriedly, lifting a cover on his strange cuff and fumbling with the buttons beneath it. He forces the crewmembers into frenzy with all the beeping.

“Knock him out!” I order Jack, my second in command, who takes the butt of his gun and slams it into the back of the intruder’s head. His strangely colored eyes roll back into his skull before he slumps to the floor, part of his cuff snapping off in the process.

I walk over to him and nudge his limp arm with my foot. “Put him in isolation. Maggie, you keep close watch over him. The rest of you, go back to your assigned tasks. I’ll deal with the intruder tomorrow.”