Left Behind

*This story was originally published in February of 2022. I've always felt that it needed an update. This is the resulting rework/expansion. Please feel free to leave a comment. I welcome the feedback.

Cover art for Left Behind. A dystopian future science fiction short story by Tabz Jones

The five of us sat perfectly still at the center of a human hurricane. The flurry of activity never touched us. How could it? We had already been set apart from the everyone else. Even our own families weren't allowed to see us. Not until the very last minute so we had no chance for second thoughts.

I looked to my left across the table where Tammy sat stick-straight in her chair. Her brassy red curls flaming out around her head, staring off into space. LOL "SPACE". That shouldn't have been funny but it was. What she was staring at wasn't even close to SPACE.

Jennifer sat on her right. There were silent tears running down her cheeks. If her eyes had been open, I could have seen straight to her soul in the darkness behind her eyelids. Her dark brown hair was braided tightly to her waist. Was it even going to fit in the helmet? I was surprised they hadn't made her cut it even just a little. It was such a tiny thing to worry about but they say the devil is in the details.

I remembered walking in on Jennifer one night during training. It was nearly midnight, and she was at her desk with a physics tablet open, scrawling formulas by flashlight because the main lights had been cut to enforce curfew. "You don’t have to study anymore," I’d said. "You already passed the placement trials."

"Doesn’t matter," she whispered. "I promised my abuela I’d be the first one in our family to touch the stars."

She wasn’t just doing this for herself — she was carrying the weight of generations, of sacrifice, of silent hope. Her tears now weren’t fear. They were gratitude. Love.

I never told her, but that night I started studying harder, too.

Matt stood against the far wall of the trailer. He was leaning on it, with his arms folded across his chest and his ankles crossed. I guess he was trying to look cool. It was a tough crowd for that kind of show. We all knew better. His jet black hair that had been super long just a few days ago was now cut short and slicked back. Did he do that on his own? The shorter hair suited him better but I wasn't about to tell him that. He had a big enough ego as it was.

On the far end sat Shane. She was trying very hard to make herself smaller. She stayed hunched down in her chair with her shoulders nearly to her knees. Her tight bleach blonde curls stood out against her honeyed chocolate skin. Did she even know how beautiful she was?

The first time Shane told me about her old school, her voice cracked halfway through.

"They called me 'deadweight,'" she’d whispered. "Because I’d cry in chem lab when the lights flickered."

I’d seen those lights flicker during our own drills — and Shane had never once flinched. But back then, she said, nobody had helped her. Not even the teachers. Especially not them. Her grandma was the only one who believed she was something special. A poet, a thinker, a girl who saw the world with soft eyes and refused to sharpen them just to survive.

"It’s not fragility," she’d said to me once, "it’s depth."

I closed the space between us by scooting down next to her, as she leaned against my shoulder in this tin can of a room, I realized she’d been right. Shane was deep, not weak. And that made me want to protect her even more.

As for me... what can I say? I'm taller than the others, I barely passed the height requirements for the program. But I was well within the age and weight reqs. And I would assume that my blonde hair and blue eyes had something to do with why I was chosen.

We all came from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. We were brought in after extensive global testing. We all had scored off the charts in one field or another. It was the largest operation of its kind in human history. It involved more political cooperation than anyone had thought was humanly possible. We should be "proud" that we had been chosen. Huh, PROUD...of what though?

The training had been brutal. The physical conditioning alone nearly wiped out half the preliminary candidates before we even made it to the mental evaluations. But it wasn’t the drills or the exhaustion that broke people. It was the loneliness. No contact with family. No access to the outside world. We had only each other.

I remembered the day Shane froze during the zero-G simulator. Everyone else floated with awkward grins and limbs flailing like newborn foals. But Shane curled into herself, eyes shut tight. Afraid of the darkness you could outside the windows of the aircraft. Matt had drifted over, grabbed her ankle, and cracked a joke about reverse cannonballs. It was dumb, but it worked. She laughed. We all did. And somehow, after that moment, we started to become something more than just the best test scores in our countries. We became a team.

They pushed us in different directions—Jennifer spent hours with navigation AI modules while Tammy and I were crammed into the hydroponics bay, learning how to grow kale in zero atmosphere. Matt was always being pulled into engineering simulations, fixing phantom glitches the staff programmed just to test his patience. Sometimes I think they wanted to see us crack. But we didn’t. We fused together under pressure. Like carbon into a diamond.

We were a year into the program before Ms. Adams finally sat us down for what she called "the real mission briefing." We’d had glimpses before—buzzwords and acronyms whispered in hallways or glimpsed on monitor screens—but this was different.

She dimmed the lights and pulled up a projection. The hologram hovered above the table, showing Earth’s atmosphere, then panning outward to show a sleek ship we recognized from simulations.

"This is the Novus Terra," she said. "You’ll know her well. She’s the most advanced generational seed-ship ever constructed. What we haven't told you until now—what you deserve to know—is that she’s not part of a global research project. She’s a lifeboat."

Shane leaned forward. "A lifeboat? From what?"

Ms. Adams looked at each of us in turn. Her voice was steady, but her eyes were wet again.

"From collapse. Ecological, geopolitical, societal. The models agree—we’re out of time. It won’t be one single catastrophe. It’ll be dominoes. Resource wars. Heat waves. Infrastructure breakdowns. Mass migration. Disease."

Tammy swallowed audibly. Jennifer’s hands had gone still.

"But... why us?" Matt asked. "Why teenagers?"

"Because adults can’t survive the full voyage. Not without extensive cryo-rotation, and even that risks long-term cellular degradation. You six can grow with the mission. Learn. Lead. Build a future."

I said nothing. I was thinking of my parents, how I hadn’t seen them since selection day. How they had wept and smiled like proud actors in someone else’s tragedy.

We'd been on our way to the base for intake. I still remembered the sound — glass exploding, metal folding like paper, the wet silence that came after. One second, my mom was laughing at my dad's terrible radio singing, and the next... the sound of screaming. I had only survived because I’d dropped my pen and bent down to grab it from the floorboard. One of those weird coincidences that don’t feel real even when they are. I crawled out through a busted window, barefoot on the glass and gravel, and sat, crumpled on the side of the road screaming until someone came.

After that, everything blurred. The funerals, the court, the series of foster homes with their smiling caseworkers and hollow promises. The only light in the storm had been training. I stopped letting people in. Nobody stayed anyway.

Until now. Until these four strangers somehow became more than teammates. They were the only real family I’d had in all these years — and the idea any of us might not make it was worse than anything I’d ever lived through.

"You're not alone in this," Ms. Adams finished. "But you are essential."

We'd sat in silence for a long time after the lights came back up. That was the moment we stopped being trainees. We became survivors-in-waiting.

I reached over to tap Tammy on the arm. She jumped and turned to look at me with near panic in her green eyes. "Hey... hey, it's going to be ok." I tried to calm her down but I wasn't exactly feeling any less terrified myself. "We're going to get through this." She nodded weakly and went back to her staring.

We were still sitting there in silence when the door creaked open—but this time, it wasn’t the usual intern or uniformed officer. It was Director Halvorsen himself.

He strode in like he owned the air we breathed. Tall, steel-haired, wrapped in a coat too expensive for this dusty compound. His eyes scanned us like we were lab samples. He didn’t sit. Of course he didn’t.

"I trust Ms. Adams has informed you of the stakes," he said flatly.

"Yeah," Matt muttered. "Thanks for the bedtime story. Really warms the soul."

Halvorsen’s gaze locked onto Matt. "Sarcasm won’t protect you out there, Mr. Reyes."

Matt smiled without humor. "Neither will a three-piece suit."

"Enough," Ms. Adams said, stepping between them. She placed a gentle but firm hand on Matt’s shoulder. "They’ve just had their whole world shifted. Give them time to breathe."

Halvorsen ignored her. "You were chosen because you are humanity’s best shot. Not because you’re ready, but because no one else will be. You’ve all lost something to be here. Make it count."

He turned to leave, but paused at the door. "Your families are here. You’ll see them now. Keep it short. We launch within the hour."

Only after he was gone did any of us exhale.

Ms. Adams looked at us, her usual iron mask cracking just a hair. "Be gentle. But be as honest as protocol allows. They deserve that much."

A uniformed officer stepped halfway into the trailer and cleared his throat. "Visitors are ready. Keep it orderly."

One by one, our families filed in. First came Jennifer’s parents — two middle-aged people clinging to each other like shipwreck survivors. Her mother couldn’t stop crying. Her father tried to smile, but the effort trembled on his face like a collapsing star. Jennifer stood tall, wiped her own cheeks dry, and let them hold her.

Shane’s grandmother was next. A wiry woman with silver braids and fierce eyes that took in everything at once. She cupped Shane’s face in her hands and whispered something that none of us could hear. Shane didn’t say anything back, just nodded with tears streaming down. Her grandma kissed her forehead and walked out like a queen.

Tammy’s dad brought a younger sibling — a brother maybe eight years old. He wouldn’t look at her at first, just scuffed the toe of his shoe into the floor. Then Tammy dropped to her knees and hugged him so tight he yelped. Her father stood behind them with his jaw clenched and his fists at his sides.

Matt’s uncle arrived alone, grizzled and stone-faced. No words passed between them at first. Then Matt, of all people, broke the silence. "Bet you're glad you don't have to deal with my mess anymore."

The uncle snorted. "Kid, I'm gonna miss the mess."

"Don't go soft on me now."

"Too late."

They hugged — quick and rough like they’d both die before admitting it meant anything.

And then there was me.

No one came.

I sat and watched the others say goodbye, watched their heartbreak and their pride and their hundred thousand little unfinished conversations.

Ms. Adams hovered near the door. She must’ve seen the shift in my shoulders.

"I’m sorry," she said quietly. "We reached out to your foster placement, but..."

I shrugged like it didn’t matter. Maybe it didn’t.

She came over and placed her hand on my shoulder. "They didn’t show up, but you’re not alone."

I believed her. For the first time in a long time, I actually believed her.

When the visits ended, the air in the trailer changed. Heavier. Charged. A silence built not from absence, but from things left unsaid. Goodbye doesn’t always come in words. Sometimes it’s a look. Sometimes it’s just... standing there, refusing to let go.

And soon, we’d have to.

The trailer door opened again, this time not for more family or officers, but for our transition. We were to be moved to the holding tents beside the launchpad — the final stop before departure.

We stepped out into a storm of sound and flashing lights. Cameras. News crews. Even behind the barricades and armed guards, the media found a way in. Microphones were raised like weapons. Questions shot out like bullets.

"How does it feel to be Earth's last hope?"

"Do you think you'll ever come back?"

"What do you want to say to the world before you leave?"

None of us answered. Tammy flinched. Jennifer looked down. Shane held my hand so tightly I could feel the bones in hers grind. Matt… Matt raised his chin and stared straight ahead like he couldn’t even hear them.

Ms. Adams moved in front of us like a shield. "Clear a path, no comment," she barked, and something in her voice made even the guards flinch. We followed her into the floodlights, into the noise, and finally into the tents where our suits and fates awaited.

Inside, the air was thick with the sterile scent of vinyl and disinfectant. Rows of lockers lined one side, and in the center, five sealed storage crates waited—each marked with our names and a stenciled Earth insignia. A tech officer silently handed us tablets with final checklists and biometric scans. No one spoke.

I opened my crate. Inside was the suit. Matte white with iridescent solar reflecting overlays and reinforced plating along the spine and limbs. Sleek. Lightweight. Terrifying.

Changing was an exercise in ritual. Each step choreographed, drilled into us over months. Under-suit. Cooling mesh. Sensor mesh. Exo-skin layer. Then the armor plates. Last came the helmet, which sat like a crown beside my boots.

As I suited up, I caught glimpses of the others. Tammy was breathing slow, methodical, like she was trying to meditate through the anxiety. Jennifer moved with clinical precision, hands steady even though her face was pale. Shane struggled with a latch and hissed in frustration. Matt crossed to help her without a word. That was the thing about him—his mouth ran on instinct, but his hands always knew exactly what to do.

Ms. Adams stepped into the center of the tent. "You’ve all passed every threshold. This is the final stage. From here, you walk to the capsule as a unit. Understood?"

We nodded.

She looked at each of us—really looked—and for a flicker of a moment, I saw pride flicker behind her professional calm. "This isn’t just a launch. It’s a legacy. Walk tall."

We formed a line. Five figures clad in the future, holding our helmets under our arms like offering bowls, walking toward the edge of Earth’s last hope.

Just before we stepped out, Matt caught Ms. Adams’s eye. It was barely perceptible—a slight tilt of his head, a twitch at the corner of his mouth—but she gave the faintest nod in return. An understanding passed between them, and the message was clear. They were prepared to change the plan.

Ms. Adams turned sharply, raising her voice just enough to draw attention. "Final check! Matt, Shane—double-check the seals on the external oxygen couplers." They ducked out of the tent to follow her orders.

There was a commotion outside as a reporter broke through the line of MPs and rushed them. It gave Shane just enough cover. She peeled off from Matt with a burst of sudden speed, jogging back toward me at the end of the line just inside the tent flap. Without a word, Shane kissed me with all she had. I was too shocked at first to react. She broke the kiss and ran for the tent flap, never looking back. Why had she kissed me like that? I blinked and started to follow her when Ms. Adams blocked my path.

I could hear the smirk in Matt's voice as he teased Shane. "Smooth move, Shakespeare."

"Better than dying with regrets." I heard her words tossed back to me on the wind.

I turned to look down into Ms. Adams's dark eyes. "What is going on?" My voice cracked with confusion and rising panic.

She hesitated, then forced a steady breath. "There’s been a recalculation," she said. "Only one reactor core is viable for full thrust. It was always a long shot to get all five of you beyond the heliopause with the reserve protocols... but now the timing has to be exact."

My eyebrows knit. "So why does that mean I can't—"

"Because," she said, stepping in closer, her voice almost a whisper, "the launch trajectory has to account for weight, sequence timing, and AI acclimation. Four is optimal. Five tips the margin too far."

I felt the blood drain from my face. "You're saying... this was always the plan?"

"Not always," she said, eyes flicking briefly toward the flap where the others had vanished. "But we knew we'd need a contingency. You’re the strongest emotionally. The most grounded. If anyone could handle staying behind..."

She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to.

I took a shaky step back. "You used me."

Her lips pressed together, not denying it. "I’m sorry, Amanda. I truly am. But you helped get them there. That matters."

A silent scream lodged in my throat. I turned toward the flap again, but this time she didn't block me as the ground rumbled under our feet. I reach the chain link fence that surrounded the launchpad area just in time to see the shuttle lift off. The flames from the rocket boosters lit up the late evening sky enough to hide the stars. I sank to my knees as I watched the only true family I had leave this world and me behind. The tears I'd been holding back finally let loose.

Ms. Adams kneeled down in the dirt beside me. She no longer seemed to care about keeping up appearances. Her fitted red jacket was crumpled and covered in the dust that had been kicked up by the launch. She folded her arms around me and held me while I cried.

Her voice was hoarse when she finally spoke. "Maybe this was always the only way. They gave you a gift, Amanda. Their trust. Their legacy. Their families are your responsibility now. You're the link between what was and what comes next."

I clung to her, broken but not alone, and watched the sky for a sign that the stars might still be within reach.