The Champion Read online

  The Champion

  A bonus chapter following

  jane and the exodus

  Stargazer series – book 1

  T.R. Woodman

  Spoiler alert

  Dear Reader,

  The Champion is a bonus chapter bridging the first two books in the Stargazer series. Before you read this bonus material, make sure you have read JANE AND THE EXODUS, the first book in the series. There are spoilers in The Champion, and they are significant. If you read this bonus material first, it will fundamentally change the way you see the characters and events in the first book, and there’s just no way to undo that. Take my advice and don’t ruin the surprise for yourself. Read JANE AND THE EXODUS first, and if you don’t already have a copy, click here or go to TRWoodman.com to navigate to your favorite online retailer.

  Best, Travis

  The Champion

  The girl turned the locket over in her fingers. The surface was smooth, polished, and clean—without blemish, and even in the artificial light of the corridor, it glinted like the pearly inside of an oyster left open on the beach.

  It was not ornate. Just a simple oval with a clasp and a thin metal cord threaded through it. And though it looked like it should open to reveal a photo, the way lockets were made many decades past, this one didn’t. It was perfect, though. A masterpiece of craftsmanship. And it was beautiful, but the real genius of the locket wasn’t in its beauty but in the marvel of engineering it contained. In that sense, Evelyn was exactly like the locket she admired in her outstretched palm. Beautiful, if ordinary on the outside, an illusion to better conceal the wonders of what lay beneath.

  The thin silver cord, which ran through the clasp, was just long enough for her to wear the locket around her neck, but that’s not where it was—it was in the palm in her hand, because as remarkable as the technology hidden within it was, the locket had far more meaning for her. It was the first gift she had ever received, and she couldn’t take her eyes from it.

  “Evelyn … don’t lose that.”

  Evelyn turned to look at the man in the doorway, and she smiled. “I’ll take care of it, Hans,” she said, weighing the locket in the palm of her hand.

  “See that you do,” Hans said, failing to return her smile and shooting her a cocked eyebrow instead. “Now that we’re gone, it’ll be awfully hard to replicate.”

  Evelyn closed her hand over the locket and felt the smooth metal warm from her touch. “Yes, sir,” she added, waiting for him to turn back into his lab, but he didn’t.

  “Well,” he said, waving his hand at her to hurry up, clearly getting irritated by her lack of follow-through.

  “Oh, right … sorry,” she stammered, and then as quickly as her thin fingers could manage—given she had only had fingers for a few weeks now, and they did take some getting used to—she worked the clasp open and hung the necklace around her neck.

  Apparently satisfied that she had done what she needed to do, the man gave her a curt nod and a grunt. Without so much as a goodbye, he went back into his lab, the door sliding shut with a whisper behind him.

  Her first gift—ever—and Evelyn wasn’t about to let a grumpy old man take the moment away from her.

  She turned around and started down the long corridor. As the seconds passed, she noticed the quietness settle down her spine, from the base of her neck all the way down her back. She exhaled a deep sigh, not realizing until just then how anxious she had been.

  For eight days she had allowed the nanites in her body to sync with all of the systems on the space station. She didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Someone had to navigate Vista to the new world, run the life support, and monitor the thousands of other systems on the station. It had always been her responsibility, but it was much easier when she was artificially intelligent—before she was burdened with human frailties. And it didn’t help that she had the physiology of a ten-year-old girl. The girl they took her DNA from was eighteen, and there wasn’t a day that went by when she didn’t wonder why they had decelerated her growth rate at ten, when they could have made her Jane’s age. At least then she wouldn’t be doing the work of a hundred adults in the wrapper of a child.

  She fiddled with the clasp again, let the locket drop into her hands, and instantly felt the surge of static vibrate up her back, like an itch deep under the skin she couldn’t scratch. Mr. Philips told her the locket would filter the noise of the electronic systems around her if she wore it around her neck. The only other alternative was for her to shut down her nanites for brief periods, but there was too much at stake for her to even consider that option. At the speed they were traveling, even a few seconds of being untethered could send the space station into a systems failure. But she had to do something. She couldn’t stay connected to the computer systems without a break. Being bombarded with that much static made her feel like the back of her brain was sizzling, and she had only been connected for two weeks. If they had to spend decades on the station to get to their new home, she would probably go insane—or have a coronary, which would be a horrible end for a ten-year-old girl, especially when her body was barely a month old.

  Evelyn wasn’t sure if Mr. Philips was worried about her because of the billions he had invested in her or because she now shared the same DNA as his daughter, but she didn’t care. He had made sure the technicians developed the locket for her, and it was the first gift she had ever received. She wasn’t going to worry over his motivations.

  The metal had gone cool in the short time it hung around her neck, against her shirt, but quickly warmed again from the heat in her hands. She turned and started down the hall again, staring at her treasure. She couldn’t explain why, but there was really only one person she wanted to show it to, and she figured Joseph would be out on the playground with the other kids on Vista.

  Evelyn skipped around the corner—it was strange being a kid—clipping her shoulder on the corner, and bobbled the locket. And no sooner did it hit the floor than a clunky boot stomped on top of it.

  “Finders keepers.”

  Evelyn didn’t have to look up to know who it was. She knew every voice on board Vista, and she knew the voice of Titus even though they had never met in person. She looked up anyway, and immediately felt the thump of her heart against her ribs.

  Even at eleven, Titus was huge. He towered over the other kids his age, in most cases by a head. Evelyn knew all his stats—she knew everything about all of the colonists—but something in the numbers got lost in translation. Now that she was wrapped up in the body of a ten-year-old girl, with the biggest bully on the space station leering at her, Evelyn’s brilliant mind faltered.

  Mitch, his sidekick of the day, was shorter that Titus but still had a few inches on Evelyn, and stepped from behind the bruiser, a quirked eyebrow leading his way. At the sight of the two boys, Evelyn couldn’t help but flip her head back and forth between them, wondering what was going to happen next.

  Titus sneered, revealing his cheesy, crud-caked teeth. Good dental hygiene obviously wasn’t high on his list of priorities.

  Evelyn tried to settle her nerves. She knew she was smarter, and she reminded herself of Titus’s disciplinary record. He had a propensity for bullying boys, but as of yet, he hadn’t ever turned his attention to girls.

  Perhaps realizing he and his ringleader were branching out of their comfort zone of terror, Mitch stared at the side of Titus’s head, obviously confused, like the bully had lost his mind.

  “I just dropped that,” Evelyn said, looking back at Titus.

  “I didn’t see that,” Titus said, stepping closer to her, still with one foot on the locket.

  “But it’s mine.”

  “But it’s mine, but it’s mine,” Titus taunted
with a wicked sneer, pushing his face to within a foot of Evelyn’s.

  Evelyn felt the heat of frustration build in her chest. “Give it back,” she said, teeth clenching. She felt rigid, like her feet were glued to the floor, her fists balled and her mind scrambling. And then as if to prove that her new human shell was nothing more than the twiggy ten-year-old girl she appeared to be, Evelyn felt her eyes start to water.

  “I ain’t giving you nothing,” Titus said.

  “Come on, T, just give it back to her,” Mitch finally said, shifting his weight where he stood, but refusing to look either of them in the eye.

  Titus whipped around, pointing his finger in Mitch’s face. “What are you gonna do about it?”

  Mitch’s eyes popped open, perhaps realizing his own life was in danger. He shook his head as if to say exactly what he said … “Nothing.”

  Titus turned back around, and not a second later, Evelyn felt the sensation of weightlessness as her feet left the ground. She didn’t even see Titus move, but she felt his fist slam into her chest and then felt the wall behind her stop her momentum in mid-flight. Evelyn slumped to the floor, but quickly scrambled to her feet, just barely able to see Titus pick up the locket and put it in his pocket through beads of tears that were filling her eyes. Sneering, Titus lurched at her as if to shove her again and then laughed as she flinched.

  “What are you doing?” Mitch said, his face and shoulders going slack. “She’s a girl, T.”

  This time Evelyn saw the shove that sent Mitch lurching into the wall. “That’s not a girl, you idiot.”

  Evelyn could hardly see. She desperately tried to wipe the tears away from her cheeks as Titus walked off with a snigger. As if to say, “I tried,” Mitch cast her a shoulder shrug, only looking her in the eye long enough to blink, and then followed Titus down the hall reluctantly, as if Titus was dragging him behind him by an invisible leash.

  Evelyn didn’t know what to think. She glanced into the park and down the hallway. She didn’t think anyone had seen what happened, but she couldn’t be too sure, since she could hardly see through her uncontrollable tears. Without thinking, she sprinted down the hallway, the thought of being seen crying and humiliated, overwhelming her.

  The emotion welling within her chest made it hard for her to breathe. The horrible shame and sadness crushed her skull like it was wedged in a vise. She resented being human more than ever before. The anxiety swirling in her gut made her want to vomit, and she hated herself for her frailty.

  Evelyn bolted down the hall, through the door to her quarters, and like she had crashed through a dam holding back a reservoir of tears, she exploded into great heaving sobs. She collapsed onto her bed and screamed into her pillow, not knowing what was worse—being bullied, her feelings of helplessness, or the fact that she couldn’t think straight about it. A month ago, before she had a body, none of this would have bothered her. But now, she was torn between wanting to tear off her own skin and jettisoning Titus into space through an airlock. She struggled to put together a cohesive thought, but images of his ruddy cheeks and scowl kept flashing though her field of vision, intermingled with memories of Hans telling her to be careful with the locket.

  Eventually, the anxious whirling in her gut migrated to the back of her skull again, sizzling away as Evelyn remembered that the whole of Vista was completely under her control, even if the inhabitants weren’t. She sat up on the edge of her bed. Nothing but the cold metal walls of her small room stared back. At least she didn’t feel like she was going to hyperventilate any longer, though she still felt the shuddering in her chest from her great heaving sobs. How do people do this? she wondered.

  Reluctantly she stood, knowing that she really only had one choice. She was going to have to tell Mr. Philips about the incident, as humiliating as it was. But she had to get the locket back somehow, and she felt certain she wasn’t going to get it back confronting Titus on her own.

  The knock at her door in the quiet brooding of her murky thoughts sent Evelyn’s heart racing. Grabbing the edge of her side table to brace herself, she glanced quickly in the mirror over her dresser and felt a wave of despair wash over her. There was no way she was going to pull herself together in the second it would take her to step across her quarters. The pale pink glow from what should have been the whites of her eyes and the gray hue of skin encircling them made her look comical, like a warped version of her older sister, Jane. Taking a deep breath and wiping her cheeks to at least disguise the salty stains of tears, she pushed the button.

  “Joseph,” she said as the door to her quarters slid open. She immediately felt her shoulders relax and her eyes start to well with tears again, but she quickly clenched her jaw. The wonder of emotions flooding her body was making her crazy.

  He smiled at her with his crooked grin and brushed the hair away from his eyes.

  “Hey, Evie,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “I thought you might want this back,” he added, opening his hand to her.

  There, in his palm, was her locket.

  Evelyn stared at it for a moment, unmoving and unable to connect her thoughts to her mouth. She looked up as if he might be able to help her find some words, and as she did, she noticed the reddening around his left eye and the puffy red halo of swelling that had started around his cheekbone.

  Perhaps realizing she was staring, Joseph reached out and took her hand, placing the locket in her palm. As he did, she noticed the scuffs on his knuckles. Still at a loss for words, she caught a glimpse of his mossy-green eyes as he turned, noticing for the first time the gold flecks set deep within depths of the green.

  Evelyn’s mind raced. She had no idea how he had done it. Joseph was taller than average, but he was still shorter than Titus and under-weighed him by at least forty pounds. Joseph also was partially paralyzed from the waist down, and he struggled to walk, like he was having to think about every step he was taking before he took it. The doctors on Vista seemed to think it was a condition they could help improve, but they hadn’t gotten around to checking him out. Apparently, his disability didn’t matter. Growing up on the streets around Ironhead had made Joseph tough, but he was also the only boy—the only person really—who had treated her like a real person.

  Evelyn felt her heart skip again as she watched him walk down the corridor. “Thanks, Joseph,” she called to him, stepping into the hall.

  Joseph slowed enough to glance at her over his shoulder, his eyebrows raised, and gave her another smile. Giving her a half wave, he hobbled around the corner, out of sight.

  A strange warmth she had never experienced flooded Evelyn’s chest, and she smiled, holding the locket to her heart. For the first time in her very short life, she was happy to be human.

  The story continues …

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  Stargazer Series

  Have you read the other books?

  Book 1

  Click here to find your favorite online retailer, or go to TRWoodman.com

  Book 2

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  Copyright notice

  THE CHAMPION

  Copyright © 2018 by T.R. Woodman

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Stargazer Press

  www.stargazer.press

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events and places is entirely coincidental.

  Cover artwork provided by J Caleb – J Caleb Design

  About the author

  T.R. Woodman (Travis) is the author of the
Stargazer Series of young-adult science-fiction books, including JANE AND THE EXODUS and DOPPELGANGER GIRL. A Colorado native, he lives in Georgia with his family, where they enjoy warmer weather and less snow.

  You can connect with Travis through his website at TRWoodman.com, on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads, and you should definitely send him an email at [email protected], even if it’s just to say hello.

 

 

  T. R. Woodman, The Champion

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