Hena Day One

by Odette C. Bell

  To the Centauris, only one characteristic mattered, and it was one they spent their entire lives perfecting.

  Selflessness. The willingness to sacrifice one’s life for the many. It was the glue that bound their society together, that saw a race ascend from its basic instincts until it found something greater than the need to survive.

  Amal didn’t stop staring into his friend’s eyes until finally John looked back.

  Amal took a breath.

  Unconsciously, John took a breath, his body tuning in to Amal’s.

  “Focus, friend. It doesn’t matter what the news says. We only have one duty – the same as always. Let us serve and protect.”

  John was still slicked with sweat, his heartbeat pounding through his muscles, pulsing into Amal’s hand as he kept it weighed there.

  But finally John nodded.

  Amal pulled back. Then he tilted his head up and looked at the sky.

  He could feel it in the clouds, despite the dark. More than anything, he could feel it reflected through the people of the city.

  The Centauris had a peculiar ability. They could connect with any living system. Humans did not have an equivalent concept, though a psychic connection came close.

  As Amal tipped his head back and stared at the dark, cloud-streaked sky, he could feel millions of Londoners doing the same throughout the city. All their collective fear and uncertainty, it brushed against him like a wave.

  But it didn’t buffet him back. It pushed him forward as he waved John down the street.

  Above them, the clouds continued to boil. They were moving in fast, scattering along the horizon as if they weren’t being driven by wind – but were rather being collected together by invisible hands.

  There was now no doubting that the invasion had begun.

  All around the world, in every corner of the globe, they were coming.

  But not for human strongholds – capital cities, governmental centers, army bases – points of strategic purpose.

  No. The invaders would first come for those just like Amal. Aliens who had been living amongst the humans for centuries.

  Some would’ve crash landed, others would have come here secretly, seeking salvation behind the fold, seeking a peace that should not have broken.

  But it had broken. Something had happened to the Fold, and the earth was being invaded.

  John remained a few steps behind Amal’s towering form. Though John’s heart rate had dropped to a manageable level, Amal could still feel his fear. He could still sense the fear of every single man and woman in this city. Growing greater with every moment. Turning from uncertainty into desperation. Tearing down the collective doubt in people’s minds until they appreciated what was happening to their planet.

  “Get inside, ma’am. Now,” Amal said as he encountered a woman with her child standing outside their townhouse, the both of them staring up at the billowing, glowing clouds.

  When the woman didn’t react to his words and instead kept staring in dumbfounded shock as the clouds built and built, Amal took a breath. He stretched his mind toward her. He allowed his emotional senses to synchronize with hers.

  He didn’t have to speak again.

  With brief eye contact, the woman rushed inside, carrying her son as she closed the door and locked it.

  On the face of it, there was little Amal could do. He was one simple alien. But he was not alone.

  There were others like him. And even if the invaders successfully managed to wipe them out, Amal would still have hope.

  For without it, there would just be despair.

  Behind him, he twisted his head as he heard the blare of sirens.

  “What team is that?” John had time to question just as a loud boom echoed out over the city.

  It wasn’t an explosion.

  It was the sound of two Army jets flying in low overhead.

  Behind him, he saw a squad car hurtling past on the practically empty street. And behind it, he heard the crunch of heavy tires. Tilting his head to the side, he saw two troop carriers rolling in.

  “Jesus Christ,” John said as he brought up a hand, gripped his collar with white-knuckled fingers, and stared in horror.

  Amal reached forward once more. He locked his hand on his friend’s shoulder, and he stared at him. “All we must do is serve and protect.”

  Behind him, down the gap between two houses, Amal heard a clatter. Metal on metal. The grind of joints. The imperceptible hiss of breath trapped inside armor.

  He half closed his eyes and breathed.

  “You are a good friend,” he told John. Then Amal took his hand off John’s shoulder. Though beat cops didn’t usually carry guns, considering the situation, they’d been handed out. Amal grabbed the gun in his holster, pivoted on his foot, and started firing long before the alien in invisible armor launched itself toward him.

  John jolted, wincing but quickly going for his gun.

  Out in the street, the two Army transports responded to the sound of gunfire, their brakes squealing as they rammed up onto the pavement.

  Amal had no idea what level of armor he was dealing with. But he didn’t need to understand the armor to know that there was a sentient being in front of him. Even through it, he could feel the mind within. The mind of a killer.

  Despite the fact Amal didn’t stop firing, he whispered one word under his breath. One word that chilled his soul. “Cartaxian.”

  All Amal’s bullets could do was slow the Cartaxian’s armor down. He would not be able to blast through its holographic invisibility field – not with his simple gun alone.

  “What—” John began.

  Amal reached into his friend’s mind. Then he reached beyond, into the minds of the troops lining up on the street outside.

  He grasped hold of their emotional selves, and he connected.

  The Centauris have always known the secret to survival. Working as one.

  As his mind spread first into John, then the soldiers behind, they all toted their weapons and started firing.

  The Cartaxian almost reached Amal, but under the combined, concentrated fire of the soldiers’ high-powered assault rifles, the Cartaxian’s armor started to crack.

  With imperceptible patters, almost like marbles striking stone, the holographic filters broke, one after another, until, in a cascade of sparks, they were obliterated completely.

  The Cartaxian appeared, its jet-black armor glimmering under the strikes of sunlight making it in through the broken cloud cover.

  Though Amal had reached into the minds of the men around him, he was not controlling them completely, and as they collectively saw an alien in armor appear in front of them, their fear rose like a strike of lightning blasting through a cloud.

  But they did not stop firing.

  Amal wouldn’t let them.

  Though the Cartaxian was withstanding the combined volleys for now, its armor was starting to break, hairline fractures appearing over the metal faster than it could heal itself.

  The velocity of each combined bullet was enough to stop the Cartaxian from throwing itself forward.

  But they would need more.

  Amal stretched his mind further, penetrating the psyches of the soldiers behind him, then up into the house beside him.

  He reached the mother’s mind.

  She’d just climbed into her car with her crying son in the back.

  Amal grabbed hold of her fear. And he pulled it toward him. He pulled that one string that turned fear for oneself into fear for others.

  He heard a car door bang as she took her son out of the car, placed him on the pavement and told him to run.

  Then she got back in the car.

  Its engine roared, unheard over the constant sound of gunfire, unheard over the click of John running out of bullets and the soldiers behind switching desperately through magazine clips.

  Then her car appeared around the side of the laneway. A flash of metal. The glimmer of a single street light cast over the bonnet
of her SUV. The tires crunched and pounded over the concrete of the laneway.

  He saw through the windscreen, right into her wide open, tear-brimmed eyes, and right past into her mind.

  Amal shifted to the side, using his full speed as he wrapped an arm around John’s body and hauled him backward.

  Just at the same time, he stopped the soldiers behind, their blaring gunfire ceasing with the click of his mental fingers.

  The woman’s SUV struck the Cartaxian, the sound of metal on metal screeching through the quiet suburban street, the dampening effects of the Cartaxian’s armor having switched off after its holographic filters had shut down.

  The Cartaxian was pinned against the front of the SUV as it plowed forward and slammed into a parked car.

  The SUV jolted to the side, its passenger door crumpling into a low brick wall that ran around the front of the woman’s house.

  “Get the woman,” Amal instructed John, his voice low and deep, a vehicle for his mind as he slid past John’s fear and activated his sense of protection.

  John pushed to his feet. He ran toward the driver’s side of the car, managed to open it despite the deformed metal, and helped the woman out as he pushed against the deployed airbag.

  Amal walked around the side of the SUV. He climbed over the broken wall, his lithe form having no trouble.

  He reached the Cartaxian just as it pushed back against the car, the massive metal body of the vehicle groaning as it shifted back.

  The Cartaxian reached a hand forward, but before it could activate its pulse gun, Amal shoved forward and clamped his large hand on its helmet.

  The impact of the SUV had finished off what the soldiers’ bullets had started. There was a crack in the Cartaxian’s armor. And that’s all Amal needed to get in.

  As his palm slammed down against the smooth surface of the metal helmet, he pushed past it into the mind of the creature within.

  There was nothing the Cartaxian could do.

  Amal pushed in and pulverized its mind.

  Chapter 6

  Nick Hancock

  Nick woke.

  As his breath blasted through his chest, shaking through his torso, he rocked forward, his muscles like tight springs that had just been snapped.

  He panted. But then he stopped breathing. Entirely. Seconds ticked by. He didn’t die. He didn’t fall unconscious again.

  Then he took another single breath.

  He was… he was….

  He tilted his head down and saw the puddle of blood beneath him.

  … It was his blood, wasn’t it?

  As he twitched to the side, his body remembering the violence he’d just survived, he saw that bastard in his mind’s eye.

  He remembered his white lips spreading into a smile as he’d smashed Nick’s head against the concrete.

  Jolting, still breathing so infrequently, he shouldn’t be alive anymore, Nick brought a hand up and pressed it against the back of his skull. He expected to feel bone shards. He expected his fingers to press up against torn flesh.

  But they didn’t. His hair was coagulated with blood, dried and flaky as his nails scratched against it. But there was no wound.

  “What the hell?” Nick managed as he dropped his hand and stared at it.

  He should be dead.

  Dead a thousand times over. But he was alive.

  And he was still barely breathing.

  Nick tried to be alarmed. He tried to give in to the soul-crushing sense of terror that should be ripping through him.

  But it felt dampened.

  Not by drugs. Not by some head injury.

  But by reality.

  Nick’s body felt strong – stronger than ever. His senses felt sharp, too. Though he wasn’t about to do long division in his head, he couldn’t detect any cognitive fault.

  He pushed to his feet.

  He didn’t fall, even though reason told him he would.

  He stood strong and tall.

  He brought his arms up, his body never shaking, and he stared at his fingers once more.

  He ran his hand over the back of his head, this time pressing in, allowing his short nails to scrape over his skull.

  Nothing but the wet press of old blood.

  “What the hell?” Nick managed again. He breathed when he spoke, but as soon as he stopped speaking, he only needed to breathe about once a minute.

  There was no one to explain this to Nick.

  As he pressed a finger into his temple, he picked up the last discernible traces of that ringing. He could remember it now – the way it had shaken through his skull as that man had smashed his head against the concrete.

  Nick tapped his temple once, then twice.

  He… didn’t feel right. It was like his skin was too hard.

  He didn’t bother to ask what the hell was happening anymore. He walked forward. He didn’t stagger. Even if he’d mentally felt as if he was incapable of walking, his body was stronger than ever, possessing a poise it had never possessed before.

  Though Nick had always been a strong man, and an athletic one, too, he felt like a frigging Superman now.

  He… needed to get to help, didn’t he?

  No, wait. He needed to stop that man. His assailant. Presumably he was still out there in the airport.

  It was that – Nick’s latent sense of justice and protection – that finally saw him push forward.

  He headed around the air conditioning equipment and straight for the door.

  Then he stopped.

  He stared at the electronic keypad on the side of the door.

  He stared at it because he could… see something through it. Right through the stainless-steel metal casing – this… light.

  But it wasn’t coming out of the panel. It was… inside of it.

  Nick brought up a hand, clamped it over his eyes, pressed his finger joints hard into them, and dropped his hand.

  But the view didn’t change.

  Nick took a step forward, then another, but no matter which angle he stared at the device from, he could still see that… residual light. It was almost like he was detecting the heat or electricity within the panel – or both.

  It reminded Nick of using night vision goggles.

  He rubbed his eyes again, but that glowing aftereffect would not shift no matter what he did.

  And no matter how much he rubbed his eyes, he couldn’t see stars.

  Nick stood there and tried to force himself to breathe through whatever the hell was happening to him, but his body simply did not need to breathe.

  The only thing that broke him out of that reverie was a scream. He heard it clearly – as if it was right by his ear.

  It came from further out into the airport.

  In a blast, Nick remembered his attacker, and he pushed forward, wrenching open the door.

  Except the door had been locked, but that hadn’t mattered. As soon as Nick had yanked on the handle, the lock had broken.

  He stared in shocked alarm at the warped, mangled remnants of the lock and handle.

  Then he jerked his head up and heard more screams out into the airport.

  He heard footfall and watched as several pale-faced, completely shocked people ran past.

  He pushed out of the room and straight toward them. “What’s going on?”

  The woman of the couple faced him, and he could see right into her eyes, right into her soul.

  Nick had been around enough death to know that look. It was the look of a family member who’d just been forced to see one of their own cut down in front of their eyes.

  Terror pulsed through his heart.

  “The news,” she said, voice trembling.

  It took Nick a moment, then he remembered. “You mean the meteorite?”

  She brought a trembling hand up, and Nick’s attention locked on her wrist as it spasmed, on every fine muscle into her fingers as they twitched back and forth. He could see the heat of her skin, chart the warmth of every capillary opening and clo
sing.

  She clamped her hand over her mouth, her fingers sinking into her lips until they whitened to the color of dead flesh. “I mean the invasion.”

  Something clicked in Nick’s head. That wasn’t to say he came to some conclusion. It was to say that he actually heard a click reverberating through his skull. He felt something pulse through his body, too, this sudden rush of nervous energy that cascaded down his spine, broke through his legs, blasted into his feet, and rushed up his torso. It was like swallowing lightning.

  Nick… he started to see things.

  Transposed over the woman. More than her heat signature now, he could pick up the tiny micro-movements of every muscle. He could pick up the heat of her breath warming the cooler air then dispersing.

  But more than that – more than that. He could… see the sound waves of her every breath and muttered words. He could pick up the sound waves of every scream out into the airport. The way they bounced off objects. The way they met in the air.

  And all the while, one word echoed in his mind.

  Invasion.

  Invasion.

  Invasion.

  Every time it echoed, it magnified, bouncing around his mind like a snowball growing as it turned into an avalanche barreling down a mountain.

  He brought a hand up and clutched at his face.

  “Aliens are invading,” the woman said. “All around the world. Ships. In the sky. Above the ocean. Above cities. We’re going to die.”

  The woman’s partner locked an arm around her middle and pulled her forward.

  The couple ran off.

  Nick stood there staring at them. He couldn’t blink. He didn’t need to. He got the impression that even if he put his face in a furnace, his eyes wouldn’t dry out.

  It took him seconds, maybe a minute to take a step backward, then another.

  The section of corridor he was in didn’t have any windows. So he slowly walked to one that did. He passed other passengers, huddled together or running away. All wearing the exact same expressions of total terror.

  And that ringing in Nick’s head grew louder.

  He saw a window in front of him.

  Nick paused, incapable of pulling himself the meter forward it would take to close the distance between him and the window.