by Rae Knightly
Without delay, the bald man approached the front of the spacecraft where he pulled up hovering screens filled with undecipherable patterns and intricate symbols.
Behind these transparent screens, the ship's large window dominated the concrete hangar. Connelly was not worried about being caught. He knew that, while he could look out, no one could look in. He was safe.
After performing a couple of movements over the screens, he connected to the Dugout surveillance cameras. He made sure that they remained disabled and showed static, then worked remotely to activate them again. His mouth turned into a thin line of concentration.
He checked the time. It had been almost four minutes since he had cut the power to the cameras–thus allowing him safe access to the spacecraft. Way too long! If he didn’t turn the system on again soon, security would notice–if they hadn’t already.
This was all Hao’s fault. What was his colleague doing in his office at this time of night? The man’s diligence irritated him.
Sure, it served him well, but he had to constantly be on his toes to avoid Hao’s scrutiny from focusing on him. For now, Connelly was satisfied to remain in Hao’s shadow. It avoided him having to interact too much with others. Hao did all the talking, while Connelly watched and learned. Yet the man kept on intercepting his own progress. Connelly knew that, should Hao become a burden, he would have to silence the man permanently.
At the moment, though, he had more pressing matters. It only took him half a minute to bring the Dugout cameras back online, yet by the time he was finished, his brow creased in pain.
Connelly stood and staggered backwards into a cubicle to the side of the spacecraft. At a wave of his hand, a stream of energy washed over him in blue surges, and his face began to tremble with unnatural speed. He sagged against the back wall, breathing heavily, unable to stop the transformation from taking its course.
Out of his bald head grew spikey, white hair; his nose lengthened; his muscles tightened; and he stretched a few inches taller. He groaned, leaning his forehead into the cradle of his arm.
When the shaking stopped, he glanced up with empty, honey-brown eyes. Bordock stepped out of the cubicle, then stretched his neck and shoulders, exhaling slowly as he did so.
This shapeshifting business was proving harder than anticipated, yet he knew he had no choice but to hold up the pretence that he was Connelly if he was to find Mesmo and the boy. Time was not on his side. He should have been gone long ago. Yet all trails of the fugitives had gone up in smoke. His pulse elevated at the mere thought.
His eyes fell on six, large circles outlined on the back wall of the ship–three above at eye-level and three directly below. Small lights blinked at him, inviting him over. He couldn’t resist the temptation and pressed a couple of buttons on the lowest circle to the right. Immediately, a long tube ejected from the wall. It contained a form inside.
Bordock stared at the pale face with white lips and closed, sunken eyes of the man who lay in the tube before him. He noticed how a soft blue light reflected on the man’s bald head.
“Enjoying the ride, Connelly?” Bordock smirked.
He noted with satisfaction that the features of the real Connelly were well preserved in the tube, meaning he would still be able to shapeshift into the agent. In fact, the man looked like he was sleeping peacefully. Bordock tapped on the small screen that should have indicated an extremely slow heartbeat brought on by induced sleep.
There was nothing.
“You’ll have company soon enough,” he promised the dead man.
Bordock let the real Connelly slide back into his unusual coffin, then tapped the other incubators for good measure. They would fit Mesmo and the boy, as well as Mesmo’s other three companions, who lay on the last floor of the Dugout. Then, and only then, would he have the necessary proof that his task was complete and he could leave this repulsive planet behind.
With that in mind, he headed back to the front of the ship, where he called up an impressive amount of screens. He surveilled them with renewed determination. On one of these many screens, Mesmo’s face appeared, while behind it an innumerable amount of live camera images flickered with thousands of faces on them: the computer scrambled to find a match.
Below it, the same operation was happening with Benjamin Archer’s face.
As the night wore on, the alien shapeshifter searched for the fugitives from within his spacecraft, while in the office a few feet away, he knew that Inspector Hao was doing precisely the same thing.
CHAPTER TWO
Poison
Wake up!
Some part of Benjamin Archer’s mind was talking to him, but the words did not match the intense dream he was having. In it, he was caught in the middle of a lightning storm. He was surrounded by bright sparks that gave off bluish, electric charges which shot into the darkness, in such a way that he did not have time to figure out where he was. Were his feet even touching the ground? He didn’t think so.
He became extremely apprehensive as the storm intensified. It reminded him of a girl with long, white hair. She was grasping his hand, staring at him fiercely as she discharged a flow of energy into his body.
He squirmed in his sleep, trying to escape something he could not run from. But as he did so, he felt himself drop into darkness at an alarming speed. His arms flailed in a meek attempt to slow his fall, while a deep, repetitive sound reached his ears. Whatever it was, he was careening towards it.
Thud-thud, thud-thud it went, louder and louder.
A roaring sound reached his ears, and without warning, he was thrust into a thick liquid, surrounded by nasty, blue filaments.
Poison!
He writhed at the realization. The blue threads followed him into the dark-red rivers that were his own blood. His mind zoomed out and he saw the complex network of his veins, like a million tree-roots, heading in the same direction.
Thud-thud, thud-thud
In an instant, the blue poison would reach his heart and be pumped throughout his body.
He scrambled to stop this from happening, but it was as if he were swimming in dense water. His heart pounded like a drum, releasing the poison to every living cell, ingesting, expulsing, ingesting, expulsing.
Stop!
Wake up!
Two voices were fighting for attention, one internal, the other external.
How does that even make sense?
Wake up!
Ben’s eyes fluttered open. He rolled to his side, breathing heavily. He reached out to his bedlamp, but just as he flicked on the switch, he thought he saw a bluish halo around his hand. He blinked several times, now wide awake. He shut off the light again and stared at his hand; of course, it was normal. He leaned back into his pillow, switched on the light again, and took in the normalcy of his bedroom: a desk with a chair, a window with dark-blue curtains, a beige carpet, a bed with a thick, dark-brown duvet which he had half kicked off.
And Tike, who was staring at him with his tongue lolling from his place beside the nightstand. The white-and-brown terrier placed his paws on the side of the bed to lick his face.
Ben scratched the dog’s ears absentmindedly. Was he ever going to have a normal nights’ sleep again?
The blue filaments of his dream followed him as he got up, showered and dressed. A lump of fear grew in his throat, and he knew why: a second before waking, he had glimpsed the poison exiting his heart and spreading to the rest of his body.
It was too late, of course. The alien girl had infected him with the alien skill just over three months ago. Every cell of his body would have absorbed it by now.
Ben remembered Mesmo’s words when he had asked him, “What if I don't want it?”
Mesmo had replied, “That question is irrelevant. It is part of you now. You should be happy.”
Only, he wasn’t.
Too much had happened for him to think about it much, but as soon as Mesmo confirmed the alien element was part of him, a terrifying thought dawned on him.
Ben knew, with unspoken certainty, that with every passing day, the infection was making him less and less human, and more and more alien.
***
Tike didn’t seem affected by Ben’s mood. He scampered down the stairs, then headed to the kitchen.
As Ben followed him, a man's voice reached his ears. He remembered that his mother had started a new job at a local Tim Horton’s that morning, so the man was apparently talking on his cell phone. This was confirmed as soon as he entered the kitchen and found Thomas Nombeko sipping a cup of coffee with the phone stuck to his ear. The dark-skinned man thrust a couple of fingers in the air as a matter of greeting without letting go of the cup as he continued to speak.
Ben slipped into the chair of a small breakfast table and was about to reach for a slice of bread when he saw his mother’s note. “Dear Ben, Enjoy your first day at school. Love, Mom.”
He smiled, thanking his mother silently for her soothing words. They made him feel less alone. He grabbed the pen that she had used and wrote. “Thanks, Mom. Enjoy your first day at work. Love, B.” She had left at dawn, so he knew she would be back before him and would read the message on her return.
By the time he had spread peanut butter on his bread, Thomas had hung up and grinned at him. “Hey, kiddo! How did you sleep?”
“Fine, thanks,” Ben answered automatically, reacting to the man’s contagious smile, then remembering the dream. He swallowed the piece of bread through the lump in his throat.
Thomas sighed, a worried look passing briefly through his eyes. “That was work,” he said, waving the cell phone at him. “They're asking me to fly a doctor to a town up north. Some kind of medical emergency.” He put the phone away in his back pocket as he shook his head. “I promised your mom I'd take you in on your first day of school. You know, to show you around and all that. But now this came up…”
Ben studied his host’s genuinely concerned face and said hurriedly, “It’s ok. I can manage. I know what a school looks like.” He tried to sound sincere, but an image of his old school and the two bullies, Peter and Mason, flickered through his mind.
He could tell that Thomas wasn’t convinced. “I don’t know. I promised your mom. Plus, we want to be able to face any awkward questions together.” He bit his inner lip while he thought. “You could start tomorrow instead.”
Ben considered this for a moment. Facing a whole class of new students did not sound particularly inviting, but spending a day alone with his thoughts was even less so. He breathed deeply to give himself courage.
Might as well get it over with.
“No, it’s ok, really. You already took care of the administrative stuff, right?” When Thomas nodded, Ben continued, “So it’s fine. I’m almost thirteen, you know? I’ll find my way around. And if they ask anything, I’ll tell them to contact you.”
Thomas placed his empty cup in the dishwasher and beamed. “All right, kiddo. Gotta get those neurons working, eh?” He chuckled warmly as he headed out of the kitchen.
In the short week they had spent with the forty-three-year-old man, Ben had learned that their kind host was never one to worry for too long. He hoped the man’s positive attitude would brush off on him. As a witness of The Cosmic Fall, who had had to give up his job as a postal worker in the town of Chilliwack and who had had to flee government intrusion by moving east to begin a new life, Ben considered that Thomas Nombeko had done quite well for himself.
After swooping Ben, Laura, Mesmo and Tike off Susan Pickering’s island, Thomas had explained how he had been taking intensive flying lessons in Chilliwack before his life was turned upside down by the events that took place there. Yet, The Cosmic Fall had ultimately allowed him to fulfil his life-long dream of becoming a pilot. He had ended up in the small town of Canmore, on the edge of the Canadian Rocky Mountains in the Province of Alberta, where the local Canmore Air Company was swift to hire him after he proved his flying skills. Ben laughed inwardly as he remembered the panicked look on Mesmo’s face at the words “flying skills” while the hydroplane took them low along the West Coast to escape radar detection.
Thomas appeared in the kitchen doorway, covered in a thick, knee-length winter jacket, gloves and knitted hat. “Are you done with that yet?” he said, pulling Ben out of his thoughts and indicating his half-eaten piece of bread. “We have to get going.”
Ben blinked, stuffing the rest in his mouth. “Wha’? A’ready?” He glanced at the clock on the wall. It was still early.
Thomas burst into laughter, showing his pearl-white teeth. “Have you looked outside yet, kiddo?”
Ben gulped down his milk and placed the cup in the dishwasher, glancing through the kitchen window as he did so. Everything was white.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, understanding Thomas’ hurry.
“Yes, ‘oh’ is right.” Thomas chuckled. “I’m going to need your help clearing the car out of the driveway. The sky dumped six inches of snow on us during the night. You’d better get used to it. They say we’re headed into an unusually cold winter.”
Ben opened the fridge door hurriedly. “Ok, give me a minute, I’ll be right out.” He’d forgotten he’d need to make his lunch. This going-back-to-school business was going to take some getting used to. He suddenly felt like he’d been thrown through a hurricane these past months and hadn’t quite landed on his feet yet.
Inside the fridge were several small plastic containers with food in them and a post-it with a smiley face drawn on it. Ben felt a rush of warmth as he took out the neatly packed lunch.
“Thanks, Mom,” he said to himself with a smile.
He placed everything in a backpack Thomas had lent him, then rushed to the front door before realizing he still had to put on his snow gear.
Sure, it snowed back west where he came from, but it only felt like yesterday since he had been spending his summer vacation at his grandfather's house. Now he was suddenly thrust into sub-zero temperatures and needed to think in terms of dark, gloomy days. He felt a pang of worry as he imagined himself sitting for hours in a new classroom while he tried not to think about everything that had happened to him, and everything that could still happen. He pushed the thought away and concentrated on pulling on his snow boots, warm jacket, scarf and gloves.
“C’mon, Tike,” he said to the dog as he heaved his backpack on his shoulder. Leaving Tike behind did not even cross Ben’s mind.
He opened the front door and was greeted with a street lined with townhouses, parked cars and snow-covered walkways. The snow removal trucks had already cleared most of the town, but Ben could tell that people were driving with care.
Thomas handed him a second snow shovel and both set to work clearing the driveway in front of the car. When they settled in it, Thomas exclaimed, “Hang on a minute! I can’t take Tike to work with me.”
“He’s coming with me,” Ben interjected, to which Thomas raised an eyebrow. Ben glared at him to show him that that was the end of the discussion.
Thomas shrugged. “Fine by me,” he said as he moved the car into the street. “Just remember it’s a twenty-minute walk if they send you home. There’s a bus, too. It’s line twenty-five. You can take it when school lets out. The school said it's only three bus stops to my place.” He pointed out some street names and landmarks so Ben could find his way back.
Finally, Thomas parked opposite the Lawrence Grassi Middle School. It was a large, low-lying building with an extensive, snow-covered playground around it. Children made their way to the main door, often stopping to throw a snowball at their friends.
“This is it,” Thomas said in a low voice.
Ben figured he was scanning the surroundings to make sure everything was safe. He felt a small shiver run down his spine.
Thomas turned to him with genuine concern in his eyes. “Will you be ok?”
Ben nodded bravely. He picked up his backpack and got out of the car, managing a small “Thanks.”
“Hey, kiddo,” Thomas said urgently as Tike jumped out of the car after the boy. Ben bent his head to look at the man in the driver’s seat. “What’s your name?” Thomas asked.
Ben frowned at the question. “Benjamin Arch…” He began, then froze, his eyes going wide. He bent his knees, not so much to be at eye-level with Thomas, but rather because his legs had gone weak.
I almost fell for it!
“It’s Ben Anderson,” he said with a strained voice.
CHAPTER THREE
The Declaration
Ben gazed at Thomas, repeating to himself, “Ben Anderson, Ben Anderson…”
Thomas nodded tensely. “Ben Anderson. Not Benjamin Archer. This is important: it’s the name I registered you under.” He warned. “Don’t forget.”
Ben could tell Thomas was hesitating to let him go, so he nodded, stood back and closed the car door swiftly.
If I don’t do this today, I’ll never do it.
He crossed the road with Tike at his heels, feeling Thomas’ gaze follow his every footstep. The lump in his throat magnified. How could he forget the story they had made up to cover their tracks and integrate into the town of Canmore?
He played the conversation he had had with Laura, Mesmo and Thomas over in his mind so he wouldn’t forget any details.
Thomas had suggested that Mesmo–whom they would call Jack Anderson–was his former colleague from back west. He had been laid off, so Thomas had offered him a job at Canmore Air. When Jack had accepted, he had brought his wife and son–Laura and Ben Anderson–to Canmore. Thomas was offering them a place to stay in his three-bedroom townhouse until the family could get back on their feet and find their own place to rent.
Ben thought it was a brilliant plan. He couldn’t understand why his mother had gone crimson as she stuttered to find an alternative story. Did it bother her that much to pretend to be married to the alien?