by Amie Kaufman
Hijack, my mind repeats. I could threaten one of them—they’re close, as close as me and Jules, and if someone held a gun to his head I’d do anything they asked. I don’t have a gun, but I do have …
Damn, damn, DAMN. I do have my multi-tool. I made sure to shove it carefully in the waistband of my pants before I pulled on the suit, because I didn’t want to leave it behind on the Undying ship. And now I’m all zipped and buckled up with no way of retrieving it.
Even an idiot would notice me stripping down right behind them in order to retrieve a knife—and these two are no idiots.
The little exterior jets are still rotating the craft, and abruptly the source of the glow out front swings into view, completely interrupting my scramble for a solution.
Earth.
Dazzled, my eyes can only drink it in, this glorious blue-and-white arc bisecting the screen. Fantastic landscapes of sculpted cloud glow in the sunlight behind us, casting shadows upon the oceans below. Like shapes coalescing out of the fog, the outlines of a continent show through the gaps, but in the strangest moment of confusion, I cannot for the life of me tell which continent it is. Earth looks nothing like the maps we memorize in school, with their neat, consistent outlines and conveniently colored countries and states. All I can see is a coastline. Somewhere down there, I think giddily, some kid is making a sand castle.
“This is really it.” Atlanta’s voice, usually so quick and decisive and bright, is soft now. So soft the microphones struggle to pick it up, delivering it amid a burst of white noise. “We’re really going planetside.”
I hear Dex’s intake of breath, and my own heart seizes. He’s going to tell her what he saw. He even shifts, helmet tilting as he looks back at us again. “It doesn’t really look like the pics, does it?”
“It looks enough like them,” replies Atlanta more firmly this time. “The protos have no idea. No idea what they got.” Her voice sharpens, the warmth draining from it. “No idea what’s coming.”
“We made it,” Dex agrees. “It’s gonna be beno, Peaches.”
His voice is so warm I feel sick. They have such affection for each other, these two soldiers in the army come to wrest our planet from us. And they look no older than we are, despite the enormity of what they’re doing.
At first I thought it was just something to do with their appearance—as I hurried through the shuttle bay, my first thought was that they all looked like teenagers because that was the image they copied when they altered themselves to look like us. But now … the way they speak, with bravado and fear all at once, the way they move, the affection between them—they act like teenagers, albeit exceptional ones.
It was easy to think of them as enemies when we were crouching inside the walls, eavesdropping, stealing food when we could. It’s a lot harder now, watching Dex reach out and brush Atlanta’s arm in exactly the way Jules tried to touch me.
“Oh chill, look—it’s a storm!” Dex’s voice is quick with boyish excitement, and he gestures at a seemingly stationary spiral of clouds hovering over a cobalt expanse of sea.
Atlanta’s body jerks as she twists to follow the line of his hand, gasping in delight. “Clouds! I can’t believe how easy they are to see—water vapor! On Hestia you can be mostways to the middle of an electrical storm and not know it until your suit kicks out.”
But as she’s speaking, Dex’s other hand moves, smooth with stealth, toward a control on the panel before them. A tiny touch, that’s all—but an indicator light winks out on the panel.
Atlanta’s leaning back again, tipping her helmet our way and asking cheerfully, “Did Cortes do surface training on Hestia?”
It takes me a moment to realize the question’s directed at us. I have no idea what Cortes is, aside from some vague memory of history class in fourth grade, and somehow I doubt that’s what this invader from an ancient alien race is talking about.
I glance at Jules, only to see him wide-eyed and frozen, mouth half-open. He recognizes the question, but doesn’t know how to answer.
“Don’t hassle them, Peaches,” replies Dex, as lightly as ever, his hand gliding over the controls, fingers stealthily touching a few more buttons. “Not everybody wants to chatter while fulfilling their life’s purpose.”
Jules’s mouth closes, and I hear him exhale—loud enough for the mics to pick it up. His eyes meet mine, and he lifts both eyebrows in a helpless shrug of an expression.
If it were any other situation, if the boy in the front seat wasn’t an alien wearing a human face—I’d think Dex was covering for us.
The arc of Earth’s horizon is gone, above the edge of the viewscreen now, giving us a rectangular cutout of sea, cloud, and land. It’s even more impossible to tell now what part of the planet we’re seeing. The colors seem strangely muted, and as I narrow my eyes in an attempt to clear my vision, I realize my arms aren’t floating anymore. They’ve settled gently back against the armrests, and the rest of my body is no longer pressed against the harness but rather cradled once more in the embrace of the seat.
The landscape below is tinted a rosy orange now, and it’s not until I lean out to look through the side port again that I realize everything is that same pinky-tangerine color, and that the stars have vanished. It’s not that the Earth is glowing red—we’re in the atmosphere, and it’s burning.
The drag pushes us down into our seats all the more, the plasma outside glowing hotter and hotter until, with an innocuous little beep at the console, some automatic system kicks in and all the windows go black. Some kind of heat shield, I hope—I’m trying not to think about it, but I can feel sweat pooling at my throat.
You’re imagining the heat, I tell myself furiously. If you could actually feel it, you’d be dead.
The pressure against my body keeps growing, long past the point of normal gravity, until drawing a simple breath is an effort, and my vision starts to sparkle warningly. My peripheral vision starts to narrow, and when I realize I can’t see Jules anymore, even out of the corner of my eye, I lose even the ability to breathe.
“Brace for chute deployment,” comes a voice through my helmet. In the crush of G-forces and the jolting and shuddering of the craft, I can’t tell who’s speaking.
I only have a moment to drag in a little air before my harness grabs me by the shoulders and yanks me backward. The heat shielding has vanished, and through the screen I see a wild jumble of colors and shapes zigzagging every which way. Someone gurgles something—maybe it’s me—and then the shifting scenery settles a little. We’re swinging side to side, the horizon tipping one way and then the other. I see a city in the far distance, nothing more than a jagged skyline at the edge of a distant expanse of ocean. Trees, or a plain, below. Clouds. Sky.
The Undying seem more irritated by the violence of reentry than utterly destroyed, like I feel. Atlanta’s the first to speak, and she gives a gusty sigh and mutters, “Only think, this is how they all made planetfall just a couple hundred years ago. Primitive.”
Dex chuckles, though his voice is a little shaky and he’s slower to move, uncurling his hands from the armrests. “Primitive but tough, our founders.”
Atlanta snorts, and when she answers, her voice is much darker. “Gods, compared to the protos.”
Dex doesn’t answer. Nor does he turn and look at us. But as we dangle from the parachute, basking in the sudden calm, he’s far more tense than Atlanta—she just seems eager. Excited, like a kid on Christmas morning.
Until she stiffens, examining something on their dashboard. “Dex—Dex, this is all wrong. We’re off course.”
Dex makes a good show of alarm, but I saw his surreptitious use of the controls. If we’re off course, he’s the one who made it happen. “Sirsly? This lixo shuttle—it must have something wrong with one of the thrusters.”
Atlanta’s poring over the dashboard, movements frantic. “We’ve gotta do something—”
“The chute’s already out,” Dex protests, flashing her a helpless look. “We’ll
land where we land. If we’re off course, we’ll find a way to shift to our assignment.” He pauses, watching her stricken face. “I pledge, Peaches. We’ll make it.”
The horizon swells slowly against the view screen, like a line of water rising in a fish tank, until I can no longer see the sky. There are mountains all around, but different from anything I’ve seen—bulbous, swollen stone instead of the sharp, crisp peaks in the Rocky Desert back home, or the gentle rolls of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I’m half expecting a burst of panic from Atlanta or Dex, for surely this can’t be a safe place to land—and then the soft green of a valley comes into view.
Choking back my panic, hoping none of it was audible over the mics, I watch the ground rushing up toward us with rising certainty that this is going to hurt.
We’re going home, I tell myself, chanting the words over and over in my mind. More often than not over the past few weeks, I thought I’d never get to say those words again. I try as hard as I can to concentrate on that.
And then we slam into the earth with all the force of a truck hitting a rock wall.
WE ALL SIT PERFECTLY STILL FOR A LONG MOMENT, SHOCKED BY THE force of the impact. I can still feel it reverberating up and down my spine, the pain running through my jaw where my teeth clashed together.
All is quiet, except for a soft pinging noise, as the shuttle cools around us.
Atlanta’s the first one to speak. “Let’s shift. Quick-like, we need to compren where we are and shift to Prime-One.”
And then it’s a flurry of movement. I fumble for my straps, hauling them off over my shoulders, and beside me Mia’s moving with the same urgency. She squeezes between our two seats, yanking the release on the hatch behind us. As soon as there’s room, I rise from my seat too, trying to block Dex and Atlanta’s view of her slender, too-small frame.
But Dex knows. I saw the moment he knew. And so did Mia. Why he hasn’t said anything I don’t know, but there’s no way his silence can last. In a moment we’ll all be outside the shuttle—in a valley, as best I could tell through the window.
The greens look European to me, remind me of home—we may be off course, but I think we’re still on the continent they intended to land on. And as soon as we’re all standing on that green grass, Dex and Atlanta are going to get a clear look at Mia, and there’ll be no hiding what she is. There’ll be no hiding what I am either, as soon as they try for an extended conversation.
Mia’s out the hatch, and I clamber through after her. We both turn, making our way around the curve of the small shuttle, putting a little distance between us and the others as they climb out, keeping her behind me.
Dex is through next, and he glances in our direction, then back at Atlanta, who’s following him.
She, however, doesn’t spare us a glance. She reaches up to flick the releases on her helmet, yanking it off and tossing it casually back through the hatch. It clatters against the inside of the shuttle as she takes two steps, and folds to her knees, ripping off her gloves so she can press her bare hands to the ground.
“Grass!” Her voice sounds like a prayer.
Dex sounds wry, taking his helmet off more slowly, taking out his hairpins so that his braid can fall back down his neck again. “You seen a plant before, Peaches.”
“Yeh, in a lab, or on a grow-ship,” she retorts, reaching up to undo her hair as well now the helmets are unnecessary. “Not the same.”
I glance over my shoulder at Mia, saying a little prayer of my own that when we make eye contact, she’s going to look like a girl with an idea.
Do we try to get away from Dex and Atlanta? Do we try to bring them with us? Given that we just crash-landed in an alien spaceship, it won’t be hard to convince the local police to call in the International Alliance, and then this whole invasion will be their problem. But if we did have Atlanta and Dex with us, they’d yield up physical evidence even a small-time country doctor could unravel pretty damn quickly. They might look like us, but the resemblance is only skin-deep. Mehercule, they bleed blue.
Atlanta’s on her feet again, peeling out of her suit to reveal simple clothes beneath, different from the jumpsuits we’ve seen the Undying wear up on the ship. This is a pair of navy blue pants, sturdy brown boots, a lighter blue T-shirt, and a brown jacket. They’re not particularly fashionable, but they could pass for regular clothes most places on the planet. They did mention watching our TV, studying our internet—these outfits must be the fruits of their labors.
“The grav’s what we expected,” she says, giving her arms an experimental swing, as if testing out her ease of movement. “Trained just right.” I can hear her grin in her voice. “It’s gonna give the olders ten kinds of hassle, when it’s time for them to shift here.”
“Tragedy,” Dex says, dry. He’s peeling out of his suit as well, revealing different shades of brown and blue, a shirt buttoned over an undershirt. He turns to shove both suits in through the hatch.
When I meet her eyes, Mia lifts her hand, jerking her thumb over her shoulder, suggesting we put some distance between us and the two aliens. And I know she’s right. We can prove what we need to without Dex and Atlanta, as soon as we get to the authorities. The two of them are bigger than us and stronger than us, and if it comes down to it, I don’t doubt they could outmatch us. If we stick with them, more likely than not we won’t make it to the authorities at all.
“Suits,” Atlanta says, glancing our way.
This is about to go badly wrong. They’re going to get a look at our faces, at our clothes, but if we refuse … and for all we know, they’ll have a way to track us if we keep the suits on. Not to mention there’s definitely no way we could outrun them if we were encumbered by spacesuits.
Slowly, I reach up and release the catches on either side of my helmet. I lift it off my head, the warmth of the sun kissing my skin. There’s a hint of a breeze, something I haven’t felt in what seems like a lifetime, and just for an instant it’s bliss.
Then I begin to peel out of my suit, and behind me, Mia’s doing the same. She passes hers forward, keeping me between herself and the others, taking another step back around the curve of the little spaceship. Dex takes our gear, turning to lean in through the hatch and settle them on the floor inside the shuttle.
My heart’s thumping madly. It’s time to make our move—to run, to hope they’re not armed. But before I have time to even turn away, Atlanta’s speaking.
“What’s that?” Her voice is sharp.
As one, we all turn in the direction she points. A dirt road curves around the edge of the valley, some distance away, and along it a convoy of all-terrain vehicles is raising a cloud of dust.
“Land-based transports,” Dex says. “Incredibly inefficient.”
It’s not their efficiency that’s worrying Atlanta. “Are they coming thisways?”
A flash of hope leaps inside me, and I lean to one side to see around the Undying better. Could we possibly be that lucky?
But Dex is shaking his head. “It’s only a road. They’re not coming thisways. Nobody saw us. We’re just one more piece of lixo falling from the sky.”
I realize with a start that that’s how the Undying scouts have been getting down. Everyone knows that pieces of the old comms arrays fall from the heavens on a daily basis. When you’re not in the midst of the city lights, you see them arcing across the sky at night, like shooting stars. They’re from a time orbital tech wasn’t regulated, and a lot of very questionable workmanship ended up circling the Earth.
Now, it’s all falling down. And the Undying shuttles are posing as just a few more pieces of junk each day.
Atlanta studies the road, then nods, satisfied for the moment that the vehicles aren’t turning our way. She swivels toward us, and I see the instant that she registers something’s not right.
“What the …” Her voice trails away, and she’s gawping at us like a fish out of water, her mouth open—closed—open again, like she’s gasping for air. “Dex, they’re protos. How
—”
She looks across at him, and that’s when we realize that he’s not looking at the three of us. Instead, he’s turned back toward the cars. “The transports are off-road. They are coming thisways.”
All our heads snap around, and he’s right. The convoy has turned our way, bumping over the grass toward us at speed.
They’re military vehicles.
Atlanta responds first. “Dex, the destruct! Hit the button!” An urgent wave of her hand takes in the ship.
That must be how they’re stopping people from finding the shuttles, once they’re down.
Dex springs to life, tossing his helmet in through the hatch after the rest of our gear and yanking a plate off the smooth outside of the hull, revealing two dials and a red button beneath them. The button’s protected by a clear hatch, presumably indicating it shouldn’t be pressed accidentally.
A voice rings out over a loudspeaker. “Fora del vehicle! Aixequeu les mans!”
I recognize the language as Catalan and realize we must be somewhere along the mountains in Catalonia. Perfututi. It would be one of the languages I don’t speak. But when the man repeats the order in Spanish, a wild desire to laugh strikes me, as I comply with the command. Step away from the vehicle? Mehercule, it’s a bleeding spaceship!
“He says they’re armed,” I lie. “He says hands up.”
Beside me, Mia raises her hands. “Never thought I’d be glad to have someone tell me to do that,” she mutters, and I grin. The authorities will handle Atlanta and Dex, and all we have to do is tell someone in charge about the Trojan spaceship in orbit over our heads. The impending invasion will be the IA’s problem—and whatever the Undying’s plan is, it clearly hinges upon stealth. If we expose them, then surely … surely the IA can stop them.
The all-terrain vehicles—there are four of them—pull up in a semicircle before us. The troops inside wear the black of International Alliance forces. The front doors of each vehicle fly open so the soldiers can use them for cover, sighting us down the length of their rifles through the open front windows. Turns out I wasn’t lying.