Today, like every other day, I wake up expecting to die before night comes. No, I’m not suicidal and I don’t have a death wish. I am just a Hunter.

The life expectancy of the average Hunter in the Second Quadrant is ten years, and even that is if they are exceptionally lucky. There are too many ways to die in this line of work; so much that not even the few old-timers like myself and Jess can remember all the deaths we’ve experienced. We like to talk about the past on evenings when there are no mutants to kill or greenhorns to train, though those precious evenings are starting to decrease in number because more mutants are climbing up from the lower quadrants and fewer people are enlisting to join the Hunters despite the attractive pay.

Hunters are one of the highest paid professionals on the Helix, alongside the likes of engineers and the programmers who ensure we don’t fall into the yawning chasm that surrounds us. One recruitment ad I’d seen on the telecast the other day called us the wall between the remnants of humanity and apocalypse. Anything to make the job look attractive, I guess. People are smarter now, though. They have eyes and can see that we’re slowly losing to the mutants. Even the premier citizens who occupy the Apex, the highest section of the Helix and the farthest from the mutants, are beginning to feel uneasy. I cannot blame them. Recently, the mutants have changed. They have evolved, become faster and stronger. But, most dangerously of all, they have become even smarter than before.

I do not move immediately when I wake. Instead, I take deep breaths and try to prepare myself for the grueling day that awaits me. I am going on an expedition today. That means I’ll be descending to the lower quadrants to earn my pay by killing as many mutants as I can. There is no sound in my quarters save the purring of the air filtration system just above my bed and the soft snores coming from Jess who is fast asleep beside me.

I turn to look at her. Her face is mostly concealed from view by her unruly dark hair, and I gently sweep back the errant strands with one hand. I stare at her face, calm in sleep. Her skin, a slightly dark shade of brown like mine, seems to glow in the near darkness of the room. Her lips are slightly parted, and I run my thumb over her lower lip, causing her to shift in her sleep. I pull away before she wakes. I want to wait longer and watch her sleep, but I am already late.

I swing out of bed and then walk out of the bedroom, resisting the urge to look back. When Jess wakes, she’ll know where I have gone and will wait for my return, one way or another. She hadn’t been ordered to go on the mission today, for some reason. We usually descended together but the most recent summons had contained only my name on the comms tab.

“What do you think this means?” Jess had asked, confused.

I had a couple of ideas, but I didn’t say any of them. I just shrugged.

“You will be careful, right, Kari?” She had pleaded, looking up into my eyes.

I smiled.

“I am always careful, stupid.” I said, kissing her.

We both knew I was lying.

• • • •

I wasn’t careful enough.

I run as fast as I can through the forest, cursing aloud. My right hand is pressed firmly against my side while the left dangles uselessly. My legs are on fire but I cannot stop. I can hear the mutants growling behind me in hot pursuit. There is no way I can face them in this state. All the bones in my left hand are broken, I have a large bump on my head, and there’s a fucking big gash in my side. Also, I don’t have any weapons. I lost my plasma gun, my daggers are useless against their reinforced shells, and the mutants outnumber me anyway. Somehow, I have also misplaced my comms tab so I can’t report back to headquarters, though they should be monitoring my position and vitals through the implant in my spine. I hope they can see that I don’t have much longer. Soon, the mutants will catch up to me, and I will be done for. There is nothing I can do if they surround me.

I try not to think about how everything went to hell but that’s almost impossible. The events are too visceral, too fresh in my mind. I had arrived where the AI sent me—the Fourth Quadrant, dense with some of the strongest variants of mutants. Using my retinal implants, I had scanned the surroundings. The Fourth Quadrant is mostly occupied by a forest. Acres of land, strenuously cultivated when the Helix was built. Unlike most of the other Quadrants, this place was never meant for human occupation. It was intended that someday in the distant future, if we ever found a habitable planet, this forest would be the seed to revive our ecosystems. The forest was also a source of food that had to be extremely processed before passing up to the occupied sections.

I stop running and lean against a tree, aware of the mutants hot on my trail but too tired to keep up my pace. I take deep breaths and prepare myself to start running again. The sturdy tree trunk I’m resting against reminds me painfully of Earth in some unidentifiable way. I look around at the eerily quiet forest and take a moment to admire its rugged beauty. I cannot imagine how many trials it took to recreate a real rainforest in this structure that carries the rest of humanity through the abyss of space. The Helix had taken decades to build. The blueprints were done even before I was born and construction started shortly after. By the time it was finished, sixty percent of the people on Earth were dead. Those of us who made it onboard were randomly selected by an AI, and the rest were left behind.

I was a loner on Earth, moving from foster home to foster home, a girl without roots. I had no idea why the AI had chosen me. Until the virus started spreading and the first mutants were born.

I push myself away from the tree and take two steps forward. A blurred gray form leaps out of the bushes in front of me and I have only a split second to react. I duck, wincing as my injured side sends a lance of pain through my body. The mutant’s claws pass over my head harmlessly and it lands with a heavy thud behind me. I spin to confront the mutant, a dagger already in my right hand. Growls from my left and right alert me to the presence of two more mutants. I try to steady my breathing but it is almost impossible. One mutant is too much for me to handle in my current state, but three? There’s no way I’m getting out of this alive. I keep my eyes on the one in front of me, maintaining eye contact and pointing the dagger in its direction. It does not pay attention to the slim blade. It knows I cannot pierce its scales with that.

The mutant in front of me walks on all fours and its entire body is covered in hard scales. It looks like a cross between a baboon and a reptile with eyes that burn with hateful intelligence. It is difficult for me to think that this thing had once been human, had once rejoiced to be part of those chosen to discover a new world where humanity could start afresh. The nature of the virus is still unknown and one of our greatest fears is that it lies dormant in our cells, waiting for the right conditions to trigger it so we all devolve into mutants.

This is why Hunters are not allowed into the upper Quadrants. The premier citizens of the Apex don’t want to get infected, just in case we turn out to be carriers of the virus due to our frequent forays into mutant territory. This is also the reason behind the weekly examinations where the doctors scan us for traces of the virus. They’d never found anything.

The mutant in front of me snarls. The dagger trembles in my hand. I cannot believe I’ll die here. I wonder when my body will be discovered. Probably when Jess realizes I’m taking too long. Jess. Tears rise to my eyes for the first time today. I drop the dagger. Jess. Sweet, tough Jess. I can almost smell her hair. I wish there were a way I could see her one last time, peer into her deep eyes, kiss her . . .

The mutant leaps for my exposed throat.

There is a loud bang, and the stench of ozone fills the air. The mutant falls to the ground, half of its body burnt away. The remaining mutants scatter into the forest. There are no other shots. I wonder if I’m beginning to hallucinate due to blood loss. My eyesight blurs. I fall forward, now on my hands and knees. In my peripheral vision, I see very familiar boots approaching quickly. My arms give out from beneath me and I hit the forest floor with a thud. Before my eyes shut completely, I see someone bending over me and shaking me, calling my name. The last thing my brain registers is the smell of hair oil and ozone, mingling to give a confusing but strangely soothing aroma.

Then my eyes close and I fall into the welcoming darkness.

• • • •

I open my eyes and the first thing I see shocks me. A tree, waving its leaves lazily. For a split second, I think I’m still on the forest floor, surrounded by mutants and death. Then the tree disappears, replaced by a sunset over the ocean.

Ah, I am looking up at a display ceiling. I realize then that I must be at the clinic. The telemorph ceiling is supposed to create calming scenes that recovering patients can look up to as they recover. I doubt they are ever used much though. The clinic is in the Second Quadrant and is specifically made for Hunters. We only come here for our checkups. I have rarely seen Hunters admitted to the clinic. Any Hunter who gets injured in the field is as good as dead. Injured Hunters are easy targets for the always hungry mutants, and we know better than to let sentiment win and try to bring injured Hunters back. That would make us both easy targets for the mutants and we would perish. I wonder how I had made it back. Who had come for me? Could it be—

“Kari!”

Jess’s voice rings out in the almost empty ward as the door slides open. She is still dressed in field gear. She pulls off her gloves as she approaches my sickbed.

“Hey.” I say, weakly.

She bends over me and kisses my face. I breathe in the lavender oil smell of her hair. I remember smelling it in the forest. She had really come to save me. She pulls away and gives me a searching look.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

I want to say yes because the wound in my side is already healed, probably by the nanobots, and some feeling has returned to my left arm, but somehow I know she’s not talking about physical wounds. I shake my head, preferring not to speak. Jess nods and takes a seat beside my bed, her hand finding mine.

“You were out for four days,” she says. “Headquarters is aware of your situation. They want a report.”

There is something that worries me about her tone and the way she doesn’t quite meet my eyes.

“What’s the matter?” I ask, in my usual unsubtle manner.

“I don’t know,” Jess says. There is uncertainty in her voice. “But when I went to HQ to check your tracker, I saw an engineer there.”

I feel a frown creasing my forehead. An engineer? Here? The engineers never descend to the lower quarters. Never. They are too important to the human race to risk losing even one of them to the virus.

“What did they want?”

Jess shrugs, the concern still on her face.

“They want to see you though, immediately when you’re fit enough to report to the HQ.”

I look up at the shifting ceiling, trying to gather my very scattered thoughts. What can an engineer want with a Hunter? Our fields are tangential at best. Perhaps they want to show me some new mutant killing weapon? But why can’t it wait? What’s so urgent that they came down from the Apex instead of making a virtual call?

I can feel a headache coming on from all the thinking I’m doing. The nanobots still somewhere in my body fixing me up must have detected it too. I guess they release a sedative into my bloodstream because my eyelids get heavier all of a sudden.

I fall into a blissful sleep, the ceiling’s image of clear skies burned to my retina.

• • • •

Navigating the Helix while trying to fight off the lingering effects of sedatives isn’t an activity I would recommend to anyone. The inside of the spaceship we call the Helix (I don’t know why we call it that since it’s actually quite cylindrical in shape) is a maze. One could navigate just the Second Quadrant alone for several Earth days. Even someone who practically lives there, like me, has to consult a digital map to make sure they’re still on track.

I am on my way to the part of the Second Quadrant closest to the First, the section that controls everything that happens in this Quadrant and houses the offices Hunters like to call our headquarters. HQ is where we go for briefings and reports, where we get the trainees and where we stock up on weapons before going on missions. It is at HQ that we receive maps of the most densely populated parts of the lower quadrants so that the automated assistants would know where to send us.

There are barely any humans at HQ. There is no need for a secretary or director when the system itself could point out the basics. There are a couple of technicians, of course, but their main functions are weapon and gear maintenance.

The passageway starts to rise slightly. The air is getting cleaner as well. I grimace at this. Hunters are paid in credits that only have value on the Helix. The lazy humans we fight and die to protect enjoy better oxygen than we do. If humanity finds a new planet tomorrow, we’ll be just as poor as everybody else, even though our contracts claim we’ll be placed in the highest positions available. Of course, that’s only until someone devises a way to destroy us all over again by introducing some form of currency.

The door that leads to the HQ appears before me and I almost walk into it before I realize it is there. I have been lost in my head and only just looked up in time. The door scans me and while it processes my information and double checks with the system, I examine myself on its reflective surface.

Jess had tried her best to make me look presentable—her words, not mine. After a long bath punctuated with kisses, she dressed me in clothes I wouldn’t normally wear. I frown at my reflection on the door’s surface. I am dressed in a green dress that’s thankfully not clinging to my body but I still hate it. Jess had insisted, though, and she is stubborn about these types of things. I observe my face. I don’t look sick or tired, thank the stars. The reflection in the door looks quietly powerful: a black woman with closely cropped hair and a slightly muscular build. I smile at the image, and it smiles back. The door completes its scan and melts away. If it had detected an anomaly of any kind (say a virus, for example) the system would have immobilized me somehow and sent me back into the lower sections of the Second Quadrant for immediate containment.

I step inside the headquarters and immediately see the engineer. They stand with their back to me but I know it’s them. Like all the engineers, they have an external memory bank that looks like a crown on their head. They have supposedly used up all the space in their brains and need the banks for more storage space. I can see the fine wires that connect the memory bank to their brain disappearing into their skull. The crown isn’t the weirdest thing about their appearance, of course. They turn as I get closer, and I see that half of their face is made of some metal unknown to me. The eye in their metal face is like a bot’s, always calculating and scanning. Apart from these physical adjustments, they look just like any other human. I stop a respectful distance away and wait for them to speak.

“Hunter Kari,” they say in a voice that surprisingly sounds quite human. I don’t know what I’d expected them to sound like. A machine, perhaps.

“Engineer . . .” I trail off, realizing I don’t know their name. I wonder if they even have one. They probably use designated numbers instead of names.

As if they can read my thoughts, the fleshy side of their lips twitches in a brief smile.

“I’m Ses“.”

I nod in acknowledgement.

“I was told you want to see me.”

The engineer turns back to the holo display they’d been observing when I came in, gesturing to me to join them at the screen. The holo images contain graphs, charts, complex looking machine schematics, and several other things that only make sense to an engineer.

The engineer—Ses“—swipes at the display and it all moves out of sight, replaced by a video. Before they tap the “play” icon, they meet my eyes.

“What you’re about to see is highly confidential. It is way above your clearance level. You understand?”

I nod, my curiosity intensified. They press play.

The video quality is poor, and I surmise that it had been shot with a drone cam. The visibility isn’t really affected, though. The video shows a settlement with a couple of people moving around. They look like they’re exploring the land and making records. I can see the NASA logo on their overalls and their helmets. The place they’re walking on looks just like Earth but the video pans out and I see the sky. The sky is purple and littered with stars. There are three moons in the sky, just barely visible above the explorers.

“What am I looking at?” I ask.

“It is exactly as you see it,” Engineer Ses“ says. “Our new home.”

“But . . . we haven’t gotten there yet. We don’t even know if we’ll find a habitable planet.”

The engineer dismisses the video and brings up the holographs again. They magnify a record log that shows the transmission history between the Helix Command Centre and an unknown position.

“Several years ago, back on Earth, while the Helix was still in early development, a selected team was sent to this star system to explore possible new worlds. Actually, three different teams were sent to different systems. Two of them never got in touch again. They were presumed dead. Only this team survived.”

Another holo image comes up and shows a grainy picture of the team members. There are eight of them, smiling at the camera in front of the shuttle that would ferry them into the unknown.

“Each team was given the tools necessary to seed life on a new world. Seven Earth years after the Helix began its voyage, we received a message from this team. They had found a world. The atmosphere is oxygen-based. The microorganisms in the soil are similar to Earth variants.”

Another tap, another holograph. I see the reports about the new planet. The team was calling the place Gaia Two. I shake my head, stunned.

“So . . . how long? How long till we reach this new world?” I ask.

“That is exactly why I have called you here,” the engineer says. They turn to look at me. Their human eye focuses on me and there is something like regret in them.

“We cannot reach Gaia Two. Not like this.”

I don’t understand. I wait for them to explain and after a moment, they do.

“We are running out of fuel. Yes, I know how stupid that sounds. But we have a way to overcome this. If we can boost and use a wormhole as a pathway, the chances that we will emerge on the fringes of Gaia Two’s system are high.” Ses“ says.

I smile. “So . . . let’s do it, then. Why do you have to tell me this? I kill mutants, I’m not an engineer or an Apex Citizen.”

“We cannot,” the engineer says. “Not like this.”

They turn back to the display board and magnify a stat table.

“This is the population of the Helix.” They point to a figure on the lower corner. Fifteen million. “Not including the mutants, of course.” Engineer Ses“ says.

“So . . . what are you saying exactly?”

They sigh and suddenly look very tired.

“To prevent engine failure during the necessary jumps required to get a boost, we simply cannot move so many people. We have decided to split the Helix into two.”

“What?”

I cannot believe my ears.

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“What I’m saying, Hunter Kari, is that the Apex and First Quadrant will move off on their own while the Second and Third Quadrants will move on their own.”

“But . . .” I cannot even understand what they’re trying to say. “Don’t they use the same engines? What about the fuel? How do they detach? The Fourth Quadrant?”

“The Fourth Quadrant is a liability at this point. As you just experienced firsthand, the mutants are too densely populated there. We can do without the food from the forest if we ration the food we already have.”

I nod slowly.

“But how will the Second and Third Quadrants move on their own? Isn’t the main control board in the Apex?”

The engineer shakes their head and taps the holo images again. An image of the Helix pops up, detailing its parts.

“You see here? That’s where each Quadrant splits from the others. It was designed this way in case something bad happened to one Quadrant and we needed to evacuate it and eject. There is a secondary control board here at the Hunters headquarters. Second and Third can be steered from right here.”

I think about it for a minute.

“I only have two questions, engineer.” I say. “Can this be done without an engineer to calibrate the systems? And why are you telling me all this?”

Engineer Ses“ smiles. It is a strange smile, half fleshy and half chrome.

“I will stay here as supervising engineer. As for why you are hearing all this, it’s because you are the most experienced and qualified Hunter in the Helix. The engineers unanimously decided that you’ll be in charge of the Second and Third Quadrants.”

I don’t know what to say. Me? In charge? But that would mean . . .

“I can’t stop going after the mutants—”

“Without the Fourth Quadrant, there are almost no mutants to kill. We have developed a vaccine to prevent the virus from ever becoming active in all of us and between yourself and the other Hunters, I’m sure the few mutants in the Third Quadrant won’t be a problem.”

I think about their words. I have to admit, Commander Kari has a nice ring to it. I think about a future where I don’t have to wake with morbid thoughts every morning. A future where we finally make it to Gaia Two and I am alive and well, with Jess by my side. I feel the smile forming on my face. I don’t expect to understand everything about commanding half of the rest of humanity on a journey to a new home, but I will tackle it like I’ve tackled everything else in my life: head-on. Twenty Earth years ago, the Helix started its voyage. I was seventeen then and confused. Half of the world’s population was dead, and the rest weren’t far behind. I didn’t know why I had been chosen to board the Helix. Did I have special genes? Was I talented in some way I wasn’t aware of? I didn’t know. When the first mutant appeared in the Fourth Quadrant, however, I knew. This was something I could do. So I did it and I did it well.

“Well?”

I blink. The engineer is watching me with an amused expression. I realize I must have zoned out for a while. They are expecting an answer.

I smile apologetically and reply, “When do we start?”