Free Odyssey Rising by Michael T. Best Page A

seventeen and a half years, he had never imagined, nor ever been in this crazy situation.
    The sound of the Escape Pod’s innards revolving, twisting and tumbling through space sent a rumble through Theo’s empty stomach. He was numb and confused and moving. His mind reeled with the memory of the fear he had heard in his father’s voice.
    The Escape Pod was six sided and the walls were a shade of metallic gray. Along the two longest sides of the Escape Pod there were a total of eight folding seats built into the wall. All other real estate along the walls was filled with a series of control panels and computer screens. The Escape Pod had an upper loft with sound proof, private sleeping bunks for eight.
    Theo’s eyes were blurry from sleep. They darted left and right and he did a quick count. There were four others with him in the Escape Pod.
    The only other girl in the group was Ellie. She sat with her eyes closed, back against the wall and legs crossed. She was trying to meditate.
    The other humans with Theo in the Escape Pod were Ravi and Sam Suzuki. The last citizen of the Escape Pod was not human rather he was the canine named Harry Wolf who sat proudly on his hind legs at attention in front of the closed Pod door.
    As Theo stood up from his place on the white floor, he was groggy. He stretched out his body, making a deep back bend on his way up.
    “Theo? Hey there,” Ravi said. “You okay?”
    “What’s going on?” Theo asked.
    “Quarantine,” Ellie said.
    With a sudden jerk to Odyssey’s rotation, the group was thrown off balance. Theo’s knees were especially weak and a little wobbly. His head throbbed and spun. It wasn’t only his head that was spinning; it was the entire Pod.
    Theo asked, “How long was I asleep?”
    “About an hour,” Ravi answered as he went to the corner of the Escape Pod. He stammered as he paced, “This is bad. This is really, really bad. This is not good. Right? This is not good.”
    “It’s okay. We’re not even sick,” Theo said.
    “That’s not how they’re treating us,” Ellie said.
    “This is all just a precaution, a very conservative, knee-jerk precaution,” Theo said.
    “It’s the protocol,” Ellie added.
    “I hate this protocol. It totally means we’re in a ridiculously bad situation,” Ravi said.
    “It’ll be okay,” Theo said.
    “You have no idea,” Ravi said.
    “Hate to say this, but I agree with the little mutant,” Sam said.
    “Come on, guys, everything is going to be okay,” Theo said.
    “You haven’t seen the latest with the rabbits,” Ravi added.
    “What about them?”
    “While you were sleeping,” Ravi said, “they went kind of went crazy.”
    “Mutant, that is the under-statement of the century,“ Sam added.
    On the Communication Device, Sam scrolled through some messages and then he brought up a video stream.
    On the tiny screen there was a video of the two rabbits. They were brown and gray, cute and cuddly. They were in the same silver cage. The grayer of the rabbits was the female one. The other one had a browner coat of fur and he was not well. He foamed at the mouth. Each rabbit’s eyes were bloodshot. Twitches rippled through their small, soft bodies. While the brown one ran around in a tight circle trying to bite its white snowball of a tail, the gray one scratched at his own body as if he wanted his fur and his skin to come off his body. His claws were like weapons. With foam spewing out the brown rabbit’s mouth, he threw himself into the bars of the silver cage repeatedly pummeling his body six, seven, eight times before the little rabbit fell in an exhausted heap and a thin line, just a trickle of blood seeped out of a burst vein in one of the rabbit’s ears and then the image went black.
    “This is not good,” Ravi stated. “Right? It’s really not good. We’re going to be like the rabbits, sick, deranged, violent, bloody running down our faces.”
    “We’re not rabbits,” Theo said, “we’re able to