Light Through the Window

by Cassandra Morphy

  "Night night, Georgie," Miranda said. She slammed her fist into George's face, knocking him out instantly. Or worse, though Ellie couldn't see from where she was.

  "Dad, door," Ellie yelled, pushing her father backwards, towards the other exit. Ellie stood her ground, taking on a defensive position with her back to the desk. When she didn't hear the door opening behind her, she looked back, barely surprised that he hadn't moved a muscle. "Dad," she yelled, again.

  "I'm not leaving you to fight off all these people."

  "I have the training, you don't. Plus--" Her words were cut off when the group attacked her.

  Chapter Fifty

  Stubborn Father

  The three that were already in the room came at her at once. The rest of the aliens were all stuck outside the door, scrambling with each other to be the first inside. At first, Ellie figured that, if their sheer numbers weren't too much for her, she might actually manage to get through it in one piece.

  Ellie had backed up into the narrow area between the desk and the chalkboard, pushing her father further backwards and to the door. As the aliens came at her from the front, two of them tripped over each other's feet. The third went around the other side of the desk, coming at her from her left. From how the boy held himself, it was clear to Ellie that he hadn't had any training in fighting. He used his enhanced strength to leap up onto the desk, giving him the high ground, which was the only advantage he had in the fight.

  The boy threw a simple right hook, slow, even for an alien, and coming in high. Ellie just stepped under it, closing the distance as she jumped up next to him on the desk. In the same movement, she punched him in his solar plex, using her momentum to add to her strength. He went down, his face right in front of Ellie's knee. When she slammed his face with it, she thought to herself that it was an accident, though she wasn't sure about that.

  The other two had managed to get a hold of themselves at the same time, climbing up onto the desk after her. They both punched her from behind, as she laid the first one out. One punch glanced off the top of her head, again her height saving her. The other hit her in the shoulder, spinning her around to face them. She followed through with the momentum, bringing an uppercut to bear against the closest of the two. He took the punch, barely noticing the blow as it glanced off his solid chest. This one charged forward, slamming into her and knocking her to the floor. Again, their lack of experience saved her, as the second one was just throwing a punch at the same time. It hit the thicker one on the back of the head. Offended, he turned on that one, buying Ellie the time to get back to her feet.

  "Run, Dad," she yelled, as another group of four came at her from the side. "I can't focus on them and you. You're just in the way."

  "Forget the girl," Rebecca Anne snapped. "I got her. You focus on the professor."

  Without any further warning, Rebecca Anne charged at her, right past the four that were already making their way across the room. She was a blur, covering the distance in a second, while the others were still lugging along at normal human speed. Rebecca Anne led with her fist, aimed straight at her face. It was only Ellie's training that saved her, as she reflexively threw up an arm to block the blow. Her arm felt like it was broken, but her face was intact. She ran forward behind the blow, but Rebecca Anne's other fist found her there.

  Adrenaline coursed through her veins as she fell backwards from the punch. The entire room seemed to fall into something of a slow motion. She had only experienced it once before, during a rather heated sparring session with another student at boarding school. At the time, she just figured it was like how everyone usually described an adrenaline filled moment. But, as she was falling backwards there, in that room, surrounded by aliens on all sides, she started to think it was something more. As her mind raced forward to meet the new speed of her awareness, she noticed that Rebecca Anne didn't seem the least bit affected by the reduced speed.

  Rebecca Anne raced towards her, faster than Ellie could fall. She punched down from above, and, at the same time, kicked up from below. It seemed like an awkward move, one that had to have her off balance and open for a counter attack. Ellie saw a path through the move before it was even close to hitting her. As she put into motion the counter, a mid-air spin with a kick, pushing off of Rebecca Anne's leg to get herself back up onto her feet, Ellie realized that she, too, wasn't slowed down like the rest of them.

  The kick landed on the side of Rebecca Anne's shoulder. Ellie had aimed higher, but it was hard to land a kick in a spin while falling. She managed to push off of the leg as she had planned, but she put too much strength behind it. Instead of landing on the floor in front of the first row of seats, she ended up landing hard into one of the seats on the third row. It took her a second to reorient herself, to get up and after Rebecca Anne. However, the alien was similarly stunned by the maneuver, and hurt by the kick, which gave her the time to get back into the fight. Ellie jumped off of the seat she was sitting on, over the two rows of seats in front of her.

  Again, she over compensated, using too much of her alien strength. She had planned to come back at Rebecca Anne from the front, landing between her and the front row of seats. However, as she flew over her head, she realized that she was going to hit the wall behind her instead. With these strange alien senses, she had plenty of time to spin around again in midair, landing on all fours against the wall, and pushing off of it and down onto her intended target. Rebecca Anne was still looking above her head and over her shoulder, not lined up to take the blow at all. She just barely managed to get a protective arm up to block Ellie's divebomb.

  "Ellie," Dave called out for her.

  Ellie looked over to her father, who was now surrounded by the aliens. Two of them were holding his arms, one on either side, while the other two were taking turns punching him in the stomach. Blood was already coming out of his mouth, though it didn't seem like he had been punched there. Not yet, anyway. Ellie wanted to go to him, wanted to defend him against his attackers. But she had her own hands full already. And, still, more aliens were pouring through the front doors of the lecture hall. Once they managed to get over their own egos, they managed to come through just fine, one at a time like the door necessitated. In her heightened state, the aliens looked like zombies as they lumbered across the room, arms outstretched as they came at the two of them.

  Her moment of distraction cost her dearly. Rebecca Anne had already recovered from her last attack and was throwing a flurry of punches. Ellie only had enough time to throw up the right blocks, her hours of ninja class saving her once again. However, she wasn't sure how long that would last, as she kept losing ground under her barrage. Fortunately, the adrenaline was enough to keep any fatigue at bay.

  Ellie's heart fell when she saw someone else move behind Rebecca Anne. Miranda had been standing over the prone, and hopefully unconscious, form of George. But when she saw how the fight was going, she decided to join in. Unlike the rest of the group, though, Miranda ran forward, as fast as Rebecca Anne and she had been. In the brief moments she had to think, she wondered if that was something else that the female aliens had over the men. The rest of the group in there were all male, and very much ill equipped to the high-speed fights that the three women were managing.

  Miranda hit Ellie like a freight train. Ellie was already fully occupied by Rebecca Anne's assault. She had no way to defend herself when Miranda slammed into her at her enhanced speed. The two of them went down, hard, with Ellie's head slamming against the edge of the desk. She could already smell blood before she hit the floor, and, from the look on Miranda's face, now just millimeters away from hers, it was clear that she smelled it too. Miranda quickly took on the persona of a shark, smelling blood in the water. Her teeth, sharp and pointed, went for the kill.

  Ellie woke up in the ambulance. The siren was blaring behind her, the flashing lights at first distracting her from the rest of the city still being dark. Dave's face, bruised and bloodied, was the first thing she saw when she opened her
eyes. He was holding her hand against his cheek, his familiar blue eyes staring down at her. Dave smiled when he noticed that she was awake, but he looked over towards the other end of the ambulance. She followed his glance down towards her feet.

  Miranda was sitting against the doors to the ambulance. The paramedic was glaring at her, making it clear that he didn't like her being there. However, her crossed arms and dead eyes declared that she wasn't moving. That she was staying right where she was so that Ellie couldn't escape from her. She, too, noticed that Ellie was awake. After a brief flash of relief on her face, her usual glare returned, a mask falling into place.

  "Ah, good, you're awake," the paramedic said.

  The paramedic seemed to be taking the middle ground between the other two, both physically and emotionally. He was detached, preoccupied with looking at his tablet, rather than at her. Three quick beeps drew her attention to the new, state of the art fitness band on her wrist. While there was no display, she recognized it from some of the ads that had been going around on the internet. It was designed to take a person's pulse rate, pulse ox, cholesterol, glucose, blood pressure, and about a half dozen other readings all from one unit on the wrist, and all constantly over hours of battery life. Ellie figured that was what he was looking at on the tablet.

  "Sorry about the close quarters," he said, gesturing around the small back area of the ambulance. "That one insisted on coming along. Absolutely refused to leave. Anyway, we're taking you to the hospital, if we can find a way through the city. The whole place looks like a war zone out there, and the power is still out. Fortunately, the hospital has its own backup, so you'll be fine once we get you there. You should be fine anyway. It looks like you have a mild concussion and a head lac. Nothing to worry about. We'll get you fixed up and sent back out in no time. Though... I guess you might want to stay overnight, what with the state of the city out there. Seriously, it's crazy. I almost didn't come on shift tonight, but..."

  "We really should get you fully checked out," Dave said. "The last thing we want is for there to be something wrong with you."

  "Yea, yea, yea," Miranda said. "Have them run all the tests you want."

  Ellie looked down at Miranda, sitting there, too close to her feet for comfort. She wondered why she was there, what more could Miranda do to her than she already had. Then, she remembered more of the details of the events that led up to her injuries. More importantly, she remembered something that seemed very important, given the level of testing that might be happening at the hospital. Would they be able to detect what she is? Did her alien sideshow up that easily? It couldn’t, though. There were too many of them out there, with no one the least bit wiser to their presence. If a simple blood test could detect them, there would be no way to keep it a secret for so long. Or was that why Miranda was there? Making sure that Ellie went to the right doctors, her doctors? Or would she simply co-opt the testing that would be flagged, that would risk exposure of the group?

  Ellie's eyes drifted between Miranda and her father, trying to impart the questions that were flowing through her head to Dave without tipping off the paramedic. Dave simply shrugged heavily, though Ellie wasn't sure if that meant that he didn't know or that he didn't understand what she was trying to say to him.

  "I really hope they get the whole thing squared away before long," the paramedic said, seemingly oblivious of the exchange. He nodded at his tablet, obviously satisfied with whatever he was seeing there, before flipping the band off of Ellie's wrists. "The place is just a madhouse out there. It's one of those shifts that just won't end, and it's barely just begun. You know? Of course, you don't know. You've probably not worked a day in your life." He eyed her up and down, taking in her outfit, which wasn't exactly high fashion, but had still cost a pretty penny. Ellie wondered briefly if that was how she had first reacted to Becky when she had seen the smartwatch she had been wearing. "Anyway, barring any more traffic, we should be hitting the hospital shortly."

  As if on cue, the driver slammed on the breaks, bringing the ambulance to a quick stop. The gurney that Ellie was lying on slid backwards under the force, slamming into Miranda. She gave out a low grunt of pain and annoyance, which just made Ellie smile.

  "Sorry," the driver called back. She then pulled the ambulance forward again, driving around whatever it had been that made her stop short.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  The Hospital

  While the hospital did have power, they kept the lights low, saving the excess drain on their limited generators. Still, Ellie could easily see that the emergency room was packed. Every room, every stall was occupied with someone that had a much worse situation than Ellie or Dave. By the time they had gotten there, Ellie was well enough to walk around on her own, but the doctors and nurses all insisted that she stay on the gurney, with the brief exception of when they had her move from the one from the ambulance to one for the hospital. Still, she was stuffed in a corner of the hallway and generally ignored by the people bustling past. Dave sat down at the foot of her bed, in the large amount of extra space down there. Miranda, however, just leaned against the wall at her head. Their swapping of positions from the ambulance was weird and disorienting at first, especially since their concerns for her were polar opposites.

  While she lay there, Ellie watched the other people as they passed. It was clear that the extended blackout in the city was making things hard for some of the people there. The worst of it was mostly from car accidents, people trying to drive down the silent, dark streets like they were in the country, the only people on the road. There was also talking, and yelling, about bullet wounds and stabbings, people trying to break into houses that they thought were abandoned. Those people, there at the hospital, were the real victims, the real cost of what the aliens had done. Yet, Ellie didn't need to look up at Miranda to know that she didn't care. That none of the aliens cared about the damage they were causing. That was the real reason, beyond any childhood allegiances, why she would always be on the side of the humans.

  "Ah, there you are," a nurse said, as she came over to the three of them. It was like Ellie had been the one wandering around all night, instead of being stuck there in the corner the whole time. "Sorry about the wait. It's a bit crazy in here tonight, as you can imagine. Anyway, I'm just here to draw a little blood, if that's alright."

  "Umm..." Ellie said. She looked up at Miranda, which was awkward given where she was standing. Miranda just continued to stare off into thin air, not the least bit concerned about anything that the nurse was doing. "Sure?" Ellie asked. However, the nurse hadn't been waiting for a response. She was already halfway through putting the tourniquet on. The rest of the blood draw kit was splayed out on the bed. Her experienced hands were a flurry over the tools as she inserted the needle, sticking the vial in right after it was in place. Ellie glanced up at her eyes twice just to make sure that she was human, though she was certain that there was at least one alien working there in that hospital.

  "You just sit tight," the nurse said, patting Ellie's arm where she had just taken out the needle. "There's a bit of a line for imaging, but someone will be right by to take a look at that head lac soon." She collected what was left of the kit before quickly disappearing again in the crowd around the group.

  "Aren't you worried?" Ellie asked. She didn't look up at Miranda, though she knew that the alien would be paying close attention to her, no matter how she looked.

  "About what?" she mumbled.

  "About the blood. Isn't something going to show up in it?"

  "Sure, if they look at it under the right light, while it's thin enough. Our blood has a distinct orange tint to it if the light catches it just right. But, in a vial like that, they won't see anything."

  "But, the tests?"

  "None of the tests they'd be running here would detect anything. By the time they even section out the blood, the spores will have died off. They don't last long without a suitable host. The process that they will be putting the blood through be
fore running their tests will make it no longer suitable."

  "That makes it sound like the... spores would be able to survive in normal blood," Dave said. "You know, outside of the body." Despite his best efforts, he was in full geek-out mode. He still looked at Ellie with concern, but whenever he looked towards Miranda, the bearer of answers, he got a look in his eye that he usually saved for the latest sci-fi movie or convention.

  "Survive, sure. I've heard talk that it can survive on plain metal, given enough of it in one spot. It needs a biological host to thrive, though. As best as we've been able to figure out, it thrives best in the second gen."

  "Why is it that the... the first gens die off like that?" Dave asked. Ellie perked up at that question, one of the many that were coursing through her mind. Why was it that, had her mother not died on that mission, she still would have left her at a young age?

  "We don't know," Miranda said. "If we did, we might be able to stop it. It's what most of the researchers are working on, though most won't survive to see their work come to fruition. Of course, that's why so many of us came to U of C. Their pre-med and biology programs have become the best in the country as of late, even more than the ivy leagues. Plus, like the spores, we work best, survive best, in large numbers. The larger the better, like, say, a city."

  "But, how does it spread? How was Edith infected?"

  "Dad, can we not do this here?" Ellie asked. She felt uncomfortable talking about the sensitive subject within earshot of so many people. However, despite the fact that they were talking about what amounted to an alien invasion, none of the people around them seemed the least bit interested. They all still swarmed around and past them, almost oblivious to their very existence amongst them.

  "Don't worry about them," Miranda said. "They're just humans. If any of them catch wind of us--"