Gravity (Dark Anomaly #1) - Marina Simcoe Page 0,7

Like a soap bubble with a flattened bottom for the floor, it protruded from the wall of the ship into the vast space beyond.

Outside looked like nothing I had ever seen, even after nearly a year of working in space. Shimmering waves of multi-colored lights ebbed and curved through the absolute darkness surrounding me. Beyond the magnificent lightshow, distant stars twinkled.

Standing on the clear glass, surrounded by undulating lights from all sides, made me feel like I was falling.

“Ahh!” I exhaled in shock, spreading my arms in an attempt to hold on to something.

Then the sensation of floating in space came.

“You’re not afraid of open spaces, are you?” Vrateus asked calmly.

“No. Not afraid. It’s just...” I swayed, struggling to find a reference point for at least a modicum of balance as everything around me appeared to move along with the lights. “Unsettling. Like a free fall. Or flying. Weird, but not scary.”

“Good.” He moved back to the entrance, leaving me in the middle of the floor, my arms spread wide like wings. “Errocks are terrified of open spaces. They’ll never come in here.”

His comment hardly registered.

“What’s generating the light?” I asked, mesmerized. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

His chest expanded with a deep breath as he folded his arms across it.

“That is the Dark Anomaly. You must have known you were near it when you crashed.”

“Do you mean space anomaly GR-A8502?”

“We call it ‘the Dark Anomaly.’ But sure, why not assign it a number?” He shrugged on his way to the door. “I have to go. There is always a lot of work with each new ship’s arrival. Don’t stare at the lights for too long. They can drive you mad.”

The space abnormality my team had been studying had looked dark on the images. Upon its discovery, it had been initially mistaken for a black hole. Professor Zhang Wei Liu was the first one to calculate a number of dissimilarities in its behaviour. A significant one being that unlike black holes, the Anomaly did not grow. Neither did it suck in any celestial bodies nearby. It didn’t absorb planets or stars.

We’d been unable to peer inside it, but the gravitational force of it was strong enough to rival that of a large star or a giant planet. Unlike them, however, its gravity behaved differently, too.

“How did you get this close to it?” I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the hypnotic lights. “How come the gravity doesn’t pull us in right now?”

“Because we’re already inside it, human,” he said before exiting the room. “You’re looking out of the Dark Anomaly, into the open space beyond.”

I KEPT STARING AT THE lights long after he had left. After a while, the awareness of this room had completely disappeared. All that remained was the feeling of floating in space, surrounded by the undulating colors and light.

“Don’t stare at the lights for too long. They can drive you mad.”

I understood what he meant. The sense of reality was no longer there, but I didn’t miss it. The brutal aliens, their captain, this insane grotesque world—all seemed to be just remnants of a bad dream. A nightmare I hoped to wake up from soon.

The sound of the doors opening yanked me back into reality again.

“Dinner,” the captain’s voice sounded behind me, and I slowly turned around.

Carrying a tray in one hand, he rolled a small table in with the other. A group of his thugs lingered outside the door, peeking in over his shoulders. Their smirking faces proved even more sobering.

This was real. I still didn’t understand why or how, but this world truly existed.

The wall between the room and the corridor was of the same solid pewter-colored metal as the doors. Both provided a stable point of reference that helped me finally ground myself. Facing the wall, I felt the floor under my feet once again.

The captain deposited the tray on the table. When he turned around to get more things from his crew, his tail came into view.

He had a tail!

Covered in long, silver-white fur, it swayed delicately, the black tip reaching the tops of his tall boots.

Next, he brought in a roll of blankets and a metal box.

“Sleeping pallet.” He tossed the bed roll at my feet. “May I suggest you place it in the part of the room farthest from the door. We’ll search for a real bed for you later.”

“Listen...” I scrambled to collect my thoughts. My new reality seemed surreal, no matter how hard I tried to orientate myself.

He