by Erin Raegan
He could. He just didn’t want to.
Noah walked in then, his eyes hard. “Dr. Newman. Theodora.”
I avoided his eyes, glaring at the blood beading on my arm as the doctor removed the needle.
Noah looked at Mike. “Could you give us—”
A deafening alarm boomed through the room. So high and sharp, I slapped my hands over my ears in a feeble attempt to protect them.
Noah and Dr. Newman froze, both looking at the phone in Noah’s hand. He paled, looking up at me.
“What is it?” Mike asked.
Noah didn’t tear his eyes from mine. “They’re back.”
Mike wasted no time dragging me from the room, Noah and Dr. Newman racing after us. We went down the hall and into a large open room I’d never been allowed inside before. Dozens of guards and doctors filled the room, all of them eerily quiet and watching, pale-faced and wide-eyed, a wall containing over ten different television screens.
Mike slowed to a stop, his grip on my arm dropping. I looked from the others to the screens and felt my own face drain of color.
There were ships on the screens. The largest screen showed a city with a huge spaceship moving across the skyline. It was white and lemon shaped. Unlike anything I had ever seen. Each screen showed a news station in a different part of the world, and all of them featured spaceships invading their location. Anchors stared blankly at the incoming ships, their shock palpable through the screens.
This was the first time I had seen the news or anything like it in over a year.
“That’s them?” Mike asked me so quietly I barely heard him.
I shook my head numbly.
No. That wasn’t Killian. Those ships belonged to someone else.
Something else.
Run
Theo
They locked us in our rooms. Separated.
For days, we stayed apart. Not knowing what was happening. Not getting any information from the outside. I didn’t see Mike or Noah in all that time.
No tests. No more experiments.
Just two small meals a day, quickly dropped off by a silent, wide-eyed and trembling guard.
I was practically climbing the walls.
Aliens were here. Hundreds of ships. I had seen them with my own two eyes. Were they like Killian and his friends? Were they friendly?
I highly doubted these ones were stopping in for random car parts. The doctors and scientists and guards inside the compound had been too quiet for me to believe they thought this was a simple visit from an alien race.
This was much worse than that.
Then one day we lost power. The lights inside the compound shut off and the red emergency lights came on. There was barely enough light for me to see my hand in front of my face.
When I heard boots in the hall outside my cell, I practically threw my body against the glass door, trying to see who was coming.
“Unlock it,” Noah hissed.
Then Mike was peering inside the cell at me. His flashlight nearly blinding me. He typed in a code, then he and Noah heaved open the powerless door.
“What’s happening?” I asked as Noah dragged me from the cell.
“We’re being attacked,” he said, dragging me into a run at his side.
I looked back at Mike as he followed us. “By who?”
Noah looked at me with wide spooked eyes. “The fucking aliens.”
“It’s not them, is it?” I croaked.
It wasn’t Killian.
Noah glared at me and shoved me through a door. “No, it’s not fucking them.”
I knew it. But still, I was—what? Hoping? For Killian? After everything he’d done and lied about?
A year without him answering that stupid call and I was still hoping he would come. How stupid was that? He was the reason I was here in the first place.
“Who is it then?”
Mike made a weird croaking sound from the back of his throat as he helped Noah push open another door. “You don’t want to know.”
“Where are we going?” I asked as we turned another corner. I gaped as over a dozen people ran past us in the hall. Guards and scientists. Their eyes wide and panicked.
“Away from here,” Mike murmured.
They dragged me from the hall and out into a wide room. Several other guards were there, all of them armed to the teeth and toting rifles. Several vehicles rumbling. I looked past them to see my family behind them. All of them except Holden.
I ran to Sal and gasped as he squeezed the life out of me.
“What’s happening?’ Bets cried, pulling me from Sal. She looked at Noah, but my brother shook his head.
“Where’s Holden?” I asked them.
Sal looked back at a door behind him. I looked to Jeremy. He was a mess, pacing the floor with his eyes locked on the same door. Two guards had their taser guns aimed at him.
“We have to go. Now,” Noah barked.
Several guards started to drag us toward the waiting vehicles.
“Wait, Holden!” we all cried.
Noah muttered a curse and yanked me toward him, shoving me into the back of a van. “Now!”
“I’m not leaving without my brother,” Jeremy growled, shoving two guards away from him.
Noah stepped into Jeremy threateningly, opening his mouth, but then the door behind him opened. Jeremy stepped around Noah, running to Holden.
“You okay?” Jeremy asked, shoving the guard off him.
Holden hissed a curse and walked away from Jeremy and the guard.
I smiled weakly, my hands trembling, and climbed into the vehicle beside the one Holden was climbing into. Sal and Bets sat on either side of me and wrapped their arms around me. Two guards sat in the second row in front of us, and Noah and Mike climbed into the front seats.
Bets squeezed my hand so tightly I felt the bones creak, but I squeezed hers back just as hard.
Sal looked at me with a worried frown. “You stay with us, Boots. No matter what happens.”
I nodded jerkily, staring into the determination in his gaze. I didn’t know why we were leaving. Where we were going. What was going to happen. But I wasn’t wearing handcuffs. No zip ties. None of us were.
There were guards in front of me. Both of them heavily armed. But for the first time in a year, their eyes weren’t on me. They weren’t tracking my every move.
This could be it. Our chance to escape.
The first chance we’d had in almost a year.
We drove up the underground tunnel. I’d been sedated when they’d brought me here. Just like I was for every move. I hadn’t seen anything outside my cell and the labs in too long, so my eyes ate up every turn up the tunnel. My fingers tingled and my knees knocked together from the anticipation of seeing the bright sunlight for the first time in months.
The tunnel was long. The facility had to be almost a mile underground. When I finally saw the first burst of sunlight, I was holding my breath, my chest tight.
And then we were outside.
Bets and Sal looked out the van windows with the same longing on their faces I was wearing.
It was snow. Snow everywhere. Miles and miles of nothing but ice and snow. Mountains of it.
It was glittering.
“Where are we?” Bets muttered.
“Alaska,” one of the guards grunted. His eyes were also glued out the windows. But they were flicking all over the place. Tension oozed from his tight shoulders. He looked at everything and nothing all at once. His gaze constantly flying to the sky.
Mike and the other guard did the same as Noah sped onto the long icy road. I turned around to peek out of the back window and watched three more vans and an SUV pull out of the mountain behind us. Looking at it, you would have no idea there was an underground facility down there. It was completely hidden.
The van rocked with Noah’s speed. Coupled with his erratic driving, we were bouncing all around in the back seat.
Sal reached around me, and trembling, he pulled
my seat belt across my waist, quietly ordering Bets to do the same.
“How close did the report say they were?” Mike asked over the rev of the engine.
Noah shook his head. He was leaning over the steering wheel as he drove, his eyes bouncing from the road to the sky. “Too close.”
“What is close?” I shouted to them.
Noah looked into the rearview mirror sharply. He shook his head. “We don’t know what they are or where they came from, but they’re everywhere.”
Mike turned in his seat. “It’s not good. They’ve completely invaded every country in the world. Most places lost all communications yesterday. We thought we were better off holing up underground. We didn’t think they could find us. But just before we lost power, a report came in that a ship was on its way here. We can’t be here if they’re able to track us underground.”
A white cloud moved up ahead. It shimmered at first then lowered. Noah hit the brakes and my chest strained against the seatbelt painfully.
“Fuck.”
“What is that?” Bets screeched.
“I-I think it’s aliens,” I mumbled to her.
Not the friendly kind.
The ship lowered toward the road and tried to block us. White specks dropped from the bottom and slammed into the road.
Noah swerved wildly, narrowly missing slamming into one. My face was glued to Bets’s window. Both of us were smashed against it as we sped past the tall white figure.
Dozens more dropped down. Then they ran at us, sprinting toward our speeding van.
“What the fuck is that?” one of the guards shouted.
“A fucking alien,” the other, Shawn, hollered back.
Both of them aimed their guns out of the now-open window and fired. Sal shoved mine and Bets’s heads down. The gunfire was deafening.
“It’s got a hold of my window!” one guard screamed. “What the fuck?”
His voice broke and I looked up just in time to see a white willowy figure pull him straight out of the window by clawed alien hands. Bets and I looked back and witnessed the horrifying sight of that white alien taking a bite out of him.
Shawn and Mike shot at anything that moved. I turned and watched Holden and Jeremy’s van. They seemed okay, but the vehicle behind them was being overrun. In seconds, it flipped over end from end and dozens of those aliens converged on it, ripping the guards from it like they were nothing more than sacks of flour.
“Drive!” Mike screamed. “Get us out of here!”
“I’m trying!”
“They’re not following us,” I said quietly, watching arcs of red liquid coat the road behind us.
“What?” Noah shouted back.
“They’re eating them.”
“Don’t look, Boots.” Sal pulled me away.
I sat down, panting and wide-eyed. There would be no running. Not now. Not without lots and lots of guns.
Ten days after Killian left Theo behind
Kil
“How long has it been?” I asked Oren on a rasp.
“Too long,” he replied, his throat just as parched as my own.
We’d been trapped on this godforsaken rock for so long I’d lost track of time. It meant nothing and everything to me.
I thought of nothing but escape.
And her.
Always of her.
“This is what we get,” he grated, hanging off of Leovin’s stumbling form. “Should have fixed that damn beacon the last time it flicked out.”
We both looked to Leovin. It was his area of expertise.
He glowered, ignoring us both.
We’d crashed here just days after I’d left my Theo crying. Too anxious to leave but too anxious to stay, I’d been careless. We never should have traveled so far without inspecting the hasty repairs.
Now we were stranded until someone answered the pathetic excuse for a beacon Leovin had fastened from spare parts.
Of all the places in the universe, we were crashed on dry land. Nothing as far as the eye could see but lifeless desert.
Nineteen days after Killian left Theo behind.
“What is time?” Oren asked sifting a mirage of vegetation through his fingers. Lost to delirium. As we all were. My crew scattered about the desert, ambling around on the brink of death. “Does it truly exist?”
Leovin glared at him where he lay in the sand. As we all were. He had not shut his mouth for what felt like ages.
I did not think we could stand much more of this.
It took quite a feat to a kill a Kilbus. Even more so a Xixin. But yet here we were, death looming at our backs like a merciless plague. Waiting.
That this would be my end was a true mockery. How low I had fallen. Desperate to escape my longing for a human so far from me it was an effort to stave off the agony. It felt like her loss should have been my end.
But no. Thirst would claim me instead.
“Look!” Oren whispered in awe, pointing up at the unforgiving stars circling this hell hole. “A rain cloud.”
“Kill him,” Leovin rumbled viciously. “Kill him before I do it.”
One by one my crew followed Oren’s madness, cheering at the sky that had not gifted a single raincloud since we’d fallen here.
“Look!” They crowed.
I looked up, begging to be lost in their madness. Anything was better than here. In agony and so far from the one being in all the universes that could cure me.
I chuckled then. My own madness and relief tearing through me. “Not merciful rain, my friends,” I told them. “Just a future Dahk King.”
Twenty days after Killian left Theo behind.
“Name your price,” I told Uthyf, the Dahk Prince, wearily. “Name it and be gone.”
He glowered at me. Pity and shock fighting dominance. If I had not grown the minutest of respect for him that day he challenged me for the death of his commander, I would kill him for all his pestering. But I could tell he wanted something. Something he hesitated asking for. I owed him. He’d saved me and my crew, and though it galled me, I now owed him this one thing he wanted from me.
“You already know what I want,” he said, bitter that he suspected I could read his thoughts.
But I could not. I’d led him to believe otherwise in the past, but Uthyf was very strong minded. It was why he should hold the Dahk crown over that sniveling brother of his. One day I knew he would.
I smirked at him, not denying it. “Ask it anyway.”
“Alliance,” he spit. “I want your future alliance with my kingdom.”
“Done,” I said, waving him off. “Run back to your kingdom now. Our debt is complete.”
He stood unmoving, shock rooting him to the floor of my scrap of a ship. He’d towed us to the nearest port for repairs. I no longer had need of him.
I raised my brow at him and he narrowed his gaze on me, disbelief and shock ruling him. “Whenever I call, you’ll come.”
I chuckled, this young future king, still so unsure of his own mind. That would change with time. “Yes, Prince. Call me and I will come running to your side.”
I held my hand out before he could speak. “But only once,” I warned him. “Use it wisely.”
Roughly one year after Killian left Theo behind.
His call came in the night. I was prepared. A foreboding cloud following me, warning me like a vicious siren.
“Help the humans,” he’d asked. “Help us defeat the Vitat and our debt is paid.”
I’d agreed.
For I was already on my way.
My Theo was there. In danger. And as promised, it was time I came to collect her.
What I had not anticipated was to find her missing.
She was gone.
And I could do nothing but scour a dying planet before I lost her forever.
Nearly One Year Since the Vitat Invasion
Theo
“The big purple guy is looking for you, Sal,” Iris called from the doorway.
Sal groaned as he got up
, pointing sharply at the game board. “Play for me, would you?”
She nodded with a bright smile and walked into the room, her boots slapping across the wood floor. “Are you losing?”
Sal grunted a laugh. “Yup.”
She rolled her eyes but still smiled at him. Turning to me, Iris wound her red hair into her fist and twisted it out of her face.
I pushed my chess piece across the board as she settled into her seat. “What does he want him for?”
She shrugged, palming her chin as she looked over the board. “Something about fixing that old car.”
I chuckled. She must have been talking about Lahn. He was a Dahk—one of the many alien races that had shown up to stop the Vitat invasion. Nice guy, but kind of dense. He had a hard-on for an old hatchback. It was a butt-ugly car and worth nothing, but Lahn loved its bright yellow paint. Problem was, he had no clue how to drive it. He was an alien after all. But Kayd was also a Dahk and could drive our cars just fine—those that they could get back up and running. Lahn was huge though. Every time he sat in that hatchback, he weighed it down so heavily the engine wouldn’t even turn over. I didn’t understand why he wanted to drive it at all—his chest alone prevented him from palming the steering wheel.
Grunts echoed through the little window to our left, and Iris and I looked that way. Her brother ran by, his long bushy beard flowing behind him in the wind. A loud crash followed him.
Iris and I jumped up and popped open the window, chilly air blasting us in the face as we leaned out.
“Hey, dolthead!” she shouted. “You better clean that up!”
I looked past her to see the shed a few buildings down was on fire.
Kayd stood just outside the building, watching the fiery blaze in shock, his purple face twisted to show his fangs in a grimace. “I did not do it, Iris!”
Iris shook her head and sighed. “I know you didn’t, big guy, but could you go drag my brother back and make him clean it up?”