The Bleed: Book 2: RAPTURE by David Moody (best selling autobiographies .txt) 📕

riding on Earth’s largest satellite. Besides dealing with the abhorrent bleed, Maddie knew there were going to be more pressing needs, food being the primary. Yeah, the foliage appeared lush and that generally meant wildlife, along with berries and fruits, but could they possibly hunt and gather enough to continually feed the throngs? And if there was a forest, that meant there was an atmosphere, which meant the people would need shelter. Perhaps they could all fit in the hotel, but a youth hostel during Oktoberfest in Berlin would be less crowded. It was likely it would look like an old-Earth Indian commuter train on a Monday morning. Maddie had seen pictures and wondered how many of those people had fallen to their deaths while just trying to get to work. Would the government be prepared to keep those types of numbers?

“I can’t believe this shit. I need Sandra.” Maddie was referring to the moon base’s resident asshole and best molecular scientist. She couldn’t stand the woman, but she did have an innate ability for organization, for getting things done. Perhaps not in the most diplomatic of ways, but right now diplomacy wasn’t what was needed, a heavy-handed authoritarianism might do the trick. The individuals here needed to work as a cohesive unit if they wanted to survive. Any selfishness among them could create hardships that would be difficult to overcome. She didn’t know exactly what she was going to do, what she actually could do but standing there wondering about how many ways this could go sideways, was going to get nothing accomplished. For better or worse, she was going to try something. She was fearful that perhaps she might inadvertently expose this oasis to the Bleed, but she didn’t see any other options.

“Clockworks room, it is.” She headed to the roof access door, descended the small half flight, and had no sooner stepped into the hallway that led to where she needed to go than she saw the curled up form of a female. She didn’t appear to be a Bleed abomination, but there was something off about her, a feeling Maddie could not shake. Her long blonde hair obscured most of her face, her arms were pulled tight into her chest and her hands were clasped. Maddie was unsure if she was breathing or not and, without a weapon, was hesitant to get any closer to check.

“Arridon?” The girl, for that was what Maddie figured her for, a young woman, perhaps no older than sixteen or seventeen, spoke hardly above a whisper.

“Not here,” Maddie told her, looking around for a fire axe box and coming up short.

“Where am I?” Thistle slowly moved.

“Good question. Still in the process of figuring that out. And you are…?”

“Are they here!?”

Maddie was physically pushed back, she didn’t know if it came from the force of the question shouted, the crazed look, or the striking color of the young woman’s eyes.

“Who are you?” Thistle asked as she focused on Maddie. She stood rapidly, keeping her back against the wall. She had her fists raised as in preparation to strike. “Where’s my brother? Oh…oh, my poor father.” She desperately attempted to hold on to her composure, her bottom lip quivering as she wiped a tear from her eyelid before it could roll down her cheek and betray her.

Maddie had her hands out in a placating manner, she didn’t know what the girl was capable of but today had been entirely too strange to test it out.

“I’m Maddie, and, as far as I know, you’re the only one here. Haven’t seen your brother or father, and I’m not going to hurt you.”

“As if.” Thistle sniffed. Maddie could sense that the other was scared, but also that she might be very capable of backing up her snide response.

“I’m from the moon, well, from Earth, originally, but the moon most recently.”

Instead of calming the woman down, that seemed to agitate her further. “I don’t know either of those places. Are you a god?”

“If I say no, are you going to respond with, ‘then die?’”

“Not unless you give me a reason to.”

“Let me start from the beginning.” Maddie gave Thistle the condensed version of the wars on her home planet, the escape to the moon, how they’d been thriving until very recently. The explosions, the impossible atmosphere and life forms, the flight through the tunnel and of her exploits on a differing timeline with Jenny Allsopp. She did leave out the part about the other woman, that she may or may not have been a half-god; she was still having a difficult time reconciling that. In the end, it took her nearly an hour to recount. “Now you know my name and some of my story. How about you?”

Thistle hadn’t completely let her guard down, but she was willing to talk. She spoke of her family, her village, how the bleed had come and destroyed nearly everything she knew, their escape to the citadel. Maddie was astute enough to realize that Thistle was leaving some parts out; she wondered if it was on purpose to hide a secret, or perhaps the shock from the events made them too painful to recount. Either way, she did not press it; if the woman wanted to fill in the details later, Maddie would listen. Wherever Thistle was from, it was not her Earth or that of Jenny’s; it was possible it was another timeline. More unnerving, Maddie got the impression that it might be a different world altogether. She had mistakenly believed her mind could only be blown so many times before it would shut down to new stimuli. How wrong she had been.

“Your eyes…is that a normal color where you’re from?”

Thistle stood tall and proud, a defiant look upon her face, believing that she was about to be attacked for being a filthy “halfsie.” “It is not.” Her chin held high, she dared the other to say something.

“I was just wondering; you don’t have to look at me like I