"Well..."
"Yea, that's what I thought."
The night seemed darker than before, as they left the lit hospital. Almost as dark as Miranda's eyes. Ellie looked behind her, back towards the light. Back towards the hospital where her father and her friends were. Back towards safety and security and everything she wanted out of life. Miranda's grip on her arm only tightened, intensified as she was dragged further away. Ellie almost didn't notice, though, as two familiar faces flitted out into view.
The man, standing to the left of the doorway, was older, almost as old as Ellie's father, the more senior agent of the two. He kept the woman back, holding her at bay. Ellie never remembered either of their names, but she knew that they were both HPS agents, working alongside Mare's father. They must have come with him when he came to the hospital. Must have stayed near the exit when Hank went to talk with Hero. Must have spotted Ellie as she was pulled from the building.
Ellie shook her head emphatically at them, trying to wave them off. She tried to warn them that Miranda was dangerous, that the two of them, trained and armed as they were, still wouldn't stand a chance against her. She wasn't even sure that she could stand a chance against her, despite her earlier gloating. Not deterred in the least by her warning, the two of them slipped out the front doors before they could close behind them.
"Oh, where is she?" Miranda asked. "She should have been here by now."
Ellie's heart fell. If she wasn't sure she could take Miranda, it was obvious that she wouldn't have been able to take two of them. She had been wondering earlier what had happened to Rebecca Anne. Not that both of the aliens would have fit in the already overcrowded ambulance. It made sense, though, that one of them would come in the ambulance while the other drove. However, it also meant the window they had to work with was closing fast.
"I know you're both back there," Miranda said, not bothering to look behind her. "I don't know what your plan is, but it's not going to work. You'll both die long before you can rescue the girl."
"Threatening a federal officer is a serious offence," the man said. "Let the girl go and put your hands over your head."
"Run while you still can," Ellie said, feeling very much the villain when she said it. "You don't stand a chance against her."
"We're the ones with the guns," the man reminded her. "Now let go of the girl."
"Fine," Miranda said.
Miranda shoved Ellie aside. She stumbled a few paces, falling flat on her rear in the middle of the road when her foot inadvertently found the curb. Before she could get up, before she could voice a warning, Miranda was already running at the agents. Two bullets rent the night, one from each gun pointed at the girl. If Ellie had blinked, she would have missed Miranda seeming to flicker. It was the only sign that she dodged the bullets heading her way. And, then, that was it. Her hand was already around the man's neck, hauling him up off of the ground.
"I warned you," Ellie muttered, at a loss for what to do.
"Let go of him," the woman said. She swung at Miranda with the butt of her gun, not thinking to try to shoot her again at a closer range.
Miranda, not even bothering to let go of the man, swatted the woman with a backhand. The woman went flying, end over end, for a few feet before disappearing in midair. Miranda was stunned for a moment. She looked around for where the woman had gone to, looking for signs of her, or what was left of her. It took her, and Ellie, a few moments to realize what had happened.
"Damn stupid magic users," Miranda cursed into the night.
Behind her, a crowd was forming at the windows, all gaping out at the alien teenaged girl holding the full-grown man aloft. Camera flashes blinked as people started to take photos of the incident. Though the cell networks were still down, the cameras on their phones still worked just fine. With a grunt of annoyance, certainly not effort, Miranda tossed the man off to the side like he was little more than a ragdoll.
Miranda headed over to Ellie, grabbing her forcefully around the forearm and pulling her up to her feet. "Come on," she said. "We're going."
"Aren't you worried about the photos?" Ellie asked, pointing back towards the hospital and the growing crowd.
"Not particularly. They'll be debunked in a few days. Remember those old pictures of that actual alien back in '01? The one climbing down the bridge in broad daylight? No one believed those either, and that was obviously an alien."
"Yea, but that was before the demons and everything else that's been happening these past few decades. People are a lot more likely to believe in wild conspiracy theories these days. Just look at Remember Sami."
"What about us?" Miranda asked. "We are Remember Sami. Hulandans started it. Hulandans run it. It's centered around getting revenge for a dead Hulandan and stopping all magic users from being the plague on this world that they are."
"Yea," Ellie said, snarkily. "Says the real plague on this world."
Miranda ignored the comment; they both knew that any generic comment Ellie made about the Hulandans was about herself as well. They didn't have to go far into the night, just past the first row of cars before a set of headlights flashed at them. As they left the hospital behind, Ellie's eyes had started to adjust to the low light. Miranda pulled her forward towards the car, towards the passenger side door. Rebecca Anne was staring out at them from the driver's seat, glaring pointedly at Ellie.
"Come on," Rebecca Anne said, yelling through the closed door before Miranda opened them. "Bring the girl. We're late."
"Late for what?" Miranda asked. She shoved Ellie into the back seat before climbing into the front. Ellie tried to make a run for it, but the doors slammed locked before she could get to one. As soon as Miranda closed her door, Rebecca Anne sped away from the spot.
"She's in town," Rebecca Anne said. "And she's pissed."
"Who?" Ellie asked, but no one bothered to answer her.
Chapter Fifty-Three
The I of the Storm
The aliens had invaded Ellie's inner sanctum. Perhaps oblivious to the meetings she had had in that room, the history she had with that room, the lecture hall was packed with more aliens than Ellie would have figured existed. There were several battery powered lamps set up around the place, lighting the entire room up as brightly as the overhead lights did, when they were working. As she gazed up at the full rows of seats and a couple dozen people standing along the back, she wondered if the new converts had been included in this otherwise impromptu meeting. Perhaps, with the group contained within, the city without would have some respite from the destruction they were causing. For a brief moment, she fantasized about running to one of the chemistry labs, letting the gas for the Bunsen burners fill the building so a single spark could settle the Hulandan problem once and for all.
Ellie was flanked by Miranda and Rebecca Anne, both tasked with keeping her contained. Keeping her on track to arrive with the others. As the three of them came in the front door to the lecture hall, a general din of conversation hit them like a wave. Everyone was talking amongst themselves, oblivious to Ellie's arrival. No one seemed to notice, or to care, that the erstwhile member of their species had finally come home.
Miranda quickly pulled Ellie along, up the stairs where George had fallen before. There was no sign of him anywhere in the group, no sign of his blood or any such distress on the stairs. Ellie hoped that was a good sign. Despite his betrayal, she did not wish him any ill will, just that he'd stay far away from her. Still, the stairs were a not so subtle reminder that all of her so-called friends had turned on her in one way or another. All her friends, save one, who, for all she knew, hadn't survived knowing her.
Though the rest of the lecture hall was packed to overflowing with aliens, no one dared so much as set foot in the area in the front of the room. It was like there was some kind of force field there. Even when a conversation off to the side of the front row turned into a shoving match between two aliens, with one alien pushing another from his seat. Those around the pushed grabbed hold of him
, pulling him back into the safe area before he strayed too far from it.
The three of them came to a stop in the far corner of the room, taking up what little space was still available. The place had the same feel of the Remember Sami rally she had seen. With the group packed together, a general hum resonating through the group that went quite beyond the discussions that continued around her. She wondered if that was from the spores, its collective mass in an enclosed area building upon itself, flourishing in numbers as Miranda had said. Knowing that Remember Sami was Hulandan, that Sami herself had been Hulandan, sets a whole different tone for those rallies. A tone that goes far beyond the racism and bigotry that she had known of them before.
"What is all this?" Ellie asked, knowing she wouldn't get a response from her captors.
"Leadership is in town," someone said from the crowd around her. The voice was almost worshipful, devoted beyond reason. "She came here to speak to us."
"She?" Ellie asked.
"She came to congratulate us on the destruction of the city," someone else said, ignoring the question.
"No, stupid, she came to chastise us," said another. "We've been showing ourselves way too much. We were supposed to be laying low, like always, not taking over a city."
The words reminded Ellie of something Miranda had said earlier. She looked over at the alien standing next to her, but Miranda's eyes were directed forward, towards the front of the room. It was as if Leadership, whoever she was, was already there, already waiting for them to quiet down so she could yell at them. Whoever this Leadership person was, though, Ellie had no doubt what was really happening there. The adults were finally coming to town to tell the kids to behave. She only hoped that that would include them releasing her and let her return to the hospital, to her father and her one remaining friend.
Ellie yawned broadly as a wave of fatigue fell over her. Several people around her gave her a stink eye, as if asking who would have the audacity to be tired when Leadership was on her way. Well, she wasn't there yet, and it was looking like Ellie might collapse before she did. She looked up to the clock on the front wall, amazed to see that it was closer to dawn than dusk. Even if she left right after the meeting, even if the meeting out took minutes, she wouldn't be able to get to her bed before the sun was up. She leaned heavily against the wall, letting her eyes slip shut for just a moment.
An elbow jabbed her solidly in the stomach, shocking her awake. At first, she thought that it had been just a couple of seconds, but the clock had seemed to jump forward several minutes. Ellie looked around, trying to see if anyone had noticed her sleeping. Everyone was staring right at her though, the lone lamb amongst a den of wolves. At the front of the room was a woman wearing a long, flowing white dress. From the wrinkles on her face, visible even from the back of the room, it was clear that she wasn't from their generation. She would have been a convert, perhaps the oldest of them still alive. She glared openly and fiercely up at her, as if she had the power to wake her up and flail her alive just by that look alone. From the looks of the others in the room, Ellie figured she wouldn't need it.
In the general quiet the room had fallen under, with the woman waiting for the opportunity to speak, the general hum of the space had only increased. Ellie could hear something, a quiet hushed voice that was just barely audible in the silence of the room. She strained her ears to hear it, trying to hear what those near her were whispering. However, no one was whispering. No one was saying a word in that hushed space. The words were just there, somewhere, just out of reach.
After a moment, the look on the woman's face softened, breaking into a light smile. Two men flanked the woman, neither of which loosened their own glare as they followed the woman into the center of the room. They were in perfect lockstep with the woman, never leaving her side more than a foot. The maneuver looked well-rehearsed, or perhaps that was another power that Leadership had. When she got to the center of the room, right below the clock, she raised her hands in front of her, motioning for those that were standing to sit down.
"Good morning, Hulandans," she called out to the group.
"Good morning, Leadership," they called back, in perverted unison. Fortunately, no one noticed that Ellie hadn't joined in.
"Would anyone care to guess why I'm here?" she asked. Silence greeted her from the crowd. As Ellie looked around her, around at the group that had been causing havoc all over the city, none would so much as look up from the floor. "Would anyone care to guess why we're here, at this school? No? Do you not remember how important this mission is, how important everyone being here is? We sent you to this school, above all the others, because of its excellent biology curriculum. We sent you to this school to learn. We, those of us in the original generation, your forebears, your founding mothers and fathers are relying on you to find a cure. To find a way for us to properly assimilate the spores that give us life. That give us purpose. That set us apart from the mud dwellers that have almost destroyed this planet in their attempts at becoming something greater. They wish to become greater."
"We are greater," everyone called out with her. Ellie almost felt like she wanted to, almost felt like she belonged there, amongst the throng, amongst the aliens, amongst the Hulandans. Those weren't the words, though, drifting to her from the quiet. Suddenly, she felt like she really had been missing out, like they had told her. Missing out on a society, on a family that went beyond blood. It was intoxicating to be a part of that scene, a part of that group, even as they were being chastised by their leadership.
"But, now, I hear that you're not happy with your lot in life, with your place in life. The edicts were put in place for a reason, for your safety, for our safety. We were not to make ourselves known. We were not to spread our spores beyond our own collective. Whether or not a cure can be found, we will not be going back to converting the humans. We will not be going back to making them into us, shaping them in our own image. This is us. This is who we are. We will out breed and outperform the humans. Make them doubt themselves. Make them inferior to us in every way, as they already are in all but numbers. When the humans breathe their last breath, it will not be because we have killed them. It will be because they were selected by nature to die off."
The crowd was following along with the diatribe, nodding their heads and hanging on her every word with bated breath. Ellie had no way of knowing how much of this speech was new. How much of it was recycled from earlier speeches. How much they repeated every time they met. If she hadn't grown up amongst the humans, as a human, she might have believed every word she said. As it was, the feel of the crowd, the draw of her blood, made her want to believe it. She wanted to believe every word. Wanted to believe that the humans were inferior to the Hulandans. They were nothing compared to them, a blip on the pages of history. And it made sense. It felt right, especially given what she had seen them do, had done herself. Humans would stand no chance against the Hulandans in a fair fight. And, if they were right, if the conversion did nothing beyond shorten their lifespan, if Ellie was the same person that she would have been had she been born human, what was so wrong with making everyone Hulandan? What was so wrong with letting the normal humans just die off on their own? What benefit came from being human over Hulandan?
"And, yet," the leadership continued, "there have been reports, from both humans and Hulandans, that certain members here today have been threatening this great mission. You have been drawing attention to yourselves. These rallies, these meetings, these riots that you have caused, have perpetrated upon this school and this city. The destruction only draws the eyes of the humans. Our numbers are still small, will be too small for many generations to come. The population of the humans still grows faster than we can catch up with. We cannot afford to be discovered, not yet. Even now, there are agents, national authority, national recognition, in this very city looking into these reports. They cannot just be disappeared, for their absence will be noticed.
"Worse still, even more heartbreaking than this,
were the reports of new conversions."
She stopped there, letting her words sink into the crowd. Gasps and denials filled the room, muted at first, but as Leadership didn't immediately stop it, it only got louder. Everyone looked around the room, trying to find the guilty parties so that they might present them to Leadership as a prize. Ellie slinked back further into the corner, hiding behind the guilty, behind Miranda and Rebecca Anne. She was certain that Barry was somewhere in the group as well, but she had no idea where.
After a few moments of collective indignation, Leadership raised her hands once more, dropping the room into immediate silence. "It is true," she said. She tapped one of the men flanking her on his shoulder and he headed over to the door. His head stuck outside into the hall for a moment and, when it returned, he was no longer alone. The girl from the hospital, the one that had only just been there to report that she was raped, followed him into the room. She looked lost, scared, as she looked around at the full room in front of her.
Looked around at that room with eyes as black as everyone else’s.
"I've met with the new converts myself,” Leadership said, gesturing over to the girl, evidence against their denial. “Amongst them are Mayor Obama and Police Commissioner Wiggins. They were, of course, deeply concerned by the downsides of their new status, and rightly so. We do know the responsible parties involved in this most recent of infractions and they will be dealt with in due time."
Miranda gulped loudly in the dead air after that statement. This drew the attention of those around them. Ellie had never seen the level of scorn and hatred aimed in their direction before, certainly not framed by those hideous black eyes. She had thought some of the looks they had directed her way over these past few weeks were scary. These looks put them all to shame.
"The simple fact that I'm here, that I had to come all the way over here, to tell all of you what you should already know, what you should have always kept in mind, is beyond me. I am completely, totally, beyond disappointed in each and every one of you."
Light Through the Window Page 35