Chapter 3

"Bang! "

The door to the hospital room flew open, and four hulking men in anti-static uniforms walked in.

Right behind them came more than a dozen media reporters, cameras and long lenses at the ready.

The lead researcher showed his credentials, then bowed deeply to me.

"Ms. Swanson, I'm the medical director of Stellar Aerospace's Mars program. Dr. Finch."

"Thank you for your husband's great sacrifice to the cause of human spaceflight. Thirty million viewers across the country are witnessing this historic moment right now!"

At the words "live nationwide," Ervin's fingers twitched hard on the hospital bed.

"There are thirteen hours until launch at eight tomorrow morning. We need to bring the volunteer back to base and begin cryo-perfusion preparations."

"Cryo... cryo-perfusion?"

Summer shrieked, every trace of color draining from her face.

Dr. Finch pushed his glasses up, expression flat.

"To withstand the hypergravity during liftoff, we need to lower the volunteer's body temperature to sixty below zero."

"Don't worry. For a vegetative patient, the body will convulse violently from the extreme pain, but he won't feel a thing."

The moment he said it, the heart monitor let out a piercing alarm.

Ervin's heart rate shot straight past 180.

"He moved! He can feel it!"

Summer grabbed his arm and clung to it like a lifeline.

"He's not a vegetable. You can't take him."

"Move! Don't obstruct a national-level research project!"

The four big men shoved Summer aside and yanked the ordinary tubes off Ervin's body.

Then they hauled him up like they were dragging a dead dog.

Just then, a commotion broke out in the hallway.

"That bastard Ervin Gilbert skipped town with eight million dollars. Nobody's leaving today until that money's handed over!"

Several debt collectors with tattoos running up their arms pushed past the reporters and stormed in, faces twisted with menace.

Ervin's mother screamed in fright and instantly jabbed a finger at me.

"Her! She's Ervin's wife."

I laughed coldly and slapped the Mars program agreement flat against the head collector's chest.

"Ervin's going up any minute now, and Stellar Aerospace will pay out ten million dollars in compensation, all at once."

I pointed at Ervin's mother and Summer, both crumpled on the floor.

"By law, that money will be collected on his behalf by his mother and his personal caretaker, Miss Fox."

"You want your money, go ask these two millionaires."

The head collector's eyes lit up in an instant, fixing on Ervin's mother and Summer like a starving wolf.

"Boys, take these two women. If we're a single dollar short, we sell them off to the Southeast!"

"No! I don't have any money!"

The room dissolved into chaos, Ervin's mother wailing and Summer shrieking over each other.

Suspended in midair, Ervin had to be in agony inside right now.

Open his eyes? The second he came back from the dead, he'd face the fury of the whole country and get hacked to pieces by the loan sharks on the spot.

Keep them shut? These lunatics were about to shove him inside.

In the end, he chose to keep playing dead.

Worst case, once the cameras were gone, he'd come clean to Dr. Finch and beg for mercy.

As the hibernation pod's glass cover slowly lowered, I bent down and leaned close to his ear.

I whispered, in a voice only the two of us could hear:

"Honey, the eight million you and Assistant Fox were going to spend on your wedding in the Maldives? I've already donated every cent of it to the Mars program as a research fund."

"Don't worry. I'll make sure you live comfortably on Mars."

Ervin's eyelids snapped open.

He finally understood. I'd done it on purpose.

He wrenched his mouth open to cry for help, but the glass cover of the pod had already locked shut.

High-concentration sedative gas surged out in an instant.

In utter terror and despair, his eyes rolled back, and he sank into a dead faint.