White Space Season 2

which sent a chill through her body.
    No, Sarah suddenly knew, she wouldn’t be going home soon. Maybe never again.
    “You can’t go back, Sarah,” Blake filled her fear with truth. “Not for a long time.”
    “What?” she cried out. Even unsurprised, air fled her lungs as she forced her breath into a rhythm steady enough to continue. “Why not?”
    “Your family believes you’re dead. And the world believes you’re dead. A victim of a random school shooting. That means it must stay that way … for now.”
    Blake’s warmth turned to vapor, and his eyes darkened into something so cold and callous, Sarah could hardly meet them. She swallowed, searching for the right words, but too many scrambled thoughts turned every word wrong and nudged her toward the edge of a breakdown.
    “Why can’t I go home? I’m alive!” Sarah was near hysterics. “My family needs me! I have to see Emma.”
    Blake shifted in his seat, then leaned forward.
    “I feel for you, Sarah, I truly do. But before you can go home, there are things we need from you.”
    Sarah definitely didn’t like how that sounded at all.
    “What?”
    “What if I told you the weaknesses plaguing humanity were nearing extinction? That cancer, disease, disabilities, deformities, birth defects, dimmed intelligence — all could be forever eliminated? What if aging and death could be paused or stopped, and in some cases, completely reversed? Wouldn’t you agree that such impossible sounding gifts would be what’s best for our world?”
    It was a question with only one right answer. Yet, Sarah had no idea how to respond. Of course she was supposed to say yes , but Blake Conway was clearly selling something.
    Does he really expect a serious answer?
    “What does curing cancer have to do with me being up here?”
    “Everything,” Blake gave her the same smile Sarah had been seeing in interviews forever. “You’re part of something remarkable, Sarah. You and your sister, both. You’re both a part of the next phase of human evolution. And I’m not talking small steps, I’m talking a series of thousand-year leaps!”
    The light was back in Blake’s eyes as he stood.
    “Now that you’re here with us for the foreseeable future, we will no longer be forced to pull you from your life in the middle of the night.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?” Sarah asked, tucking her knees under her chin, then wrapping her arms around them and balling her fists.
    “You have no memories of the tests, do you?” Blake’s lips cracked into a wry smile. “Even now, up here?”
    “What tests?” Sarah said, feeling as if she were asked to solve a madman’s riddle — a madman who had her locked in some secret space lab.
    “We’ve been taking you for a long time now Sarah, along with others who share similar traits. People we’ve engineered from birth to be better, more pliable, more receptive to humanity’s next phase. Humans require a slight push, a nudge here and there, to fulfill our destiny without being forced to wait through the eons it would take to naturally reach the next rung in our evolution. That is where you come in.”
    “What do you mean, ‘engineered from birth?’”
    “Let’s just say you’re not among the first generation of subjects we’ve been working on.”
    “Wait? You did something to my mom?”
    “You say ‘did something’ as if it’s a negative rather than a positive, Sarah. We only fix what’s broken. We’ve improved everything, and continue to do so. We make people better than they could ever be on their own.”
    Blake’s smile grew wider, proud, in fact.
    Blake asked, “Did you know there’s a genetic flaw in your code which makes it impossible for you to conceive? This is true for both you and your sister. Or was, until we fixed you. Now you have a nice, normal, healthy, intelligent child, don’t you?”
    Emma!
    “Did you do something to my child?”
    “As I said, Sarah, I’m only here to help.”
    “You fucker!” Sarah said, lashing out and swinging her balled fists at Blake, slamming him repeatedly in the side of his head before he had a chance to recognize or defend her attack.
    The door swooshed open, and two men in all white raced inside to yank Sarah from Blake. She screamed, kicked, and squirmed, trying to break free from the bed and race out the door.
    You can’t escape a space station.
    How you going to get back? You going to fly?
    You’ll never see Earth again.
    One of the men in white