by David Liss
“You’re going to jail for sure,” the soldier said to Jacinto. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to these kids. That’s for the county to figure out.”
“Can you at least loosen my cuffs?” I asked the soldier. “They’re really tight. I can’t feel my hands.”
He looked at me, and I could see he was suspicious. This was the oldest trick in the book, to be sure, but on the other hand, I was a kid, and if word got out that he’d been unnecessarily cruel to a minor, he knew it would be bad news for him.
The soldier peered down to study me. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”
I shook my head and tried to look like I was holding back tears.
The soldier leaned in with his key, and as soon as he made contact, I grabbed his wrist and whispered, “Zap him,” too quietly for anyone but Smelly to hear. Instantly, fifty thousand volts shot through my hand. The soldier convulsed, his eyes shot upward, and he fell to the floor.
“Sorry,” I said to the soldier, who clearly did not hear me.
“Zap him”? Smelly asked. That’s the command you give? This suit is the most sophisticated piece of technology currently on this ridiculous planet. It does not zap.
“Seems to zap pretty well to me,” I said. I willed the suit to give me superior strength and to shield my skin, and I pulled my hands apart, breaking the cuffs. They snapped like they were made of dry spaghetti.
“The key’s right there,” Jacinto said, gesturing toward the floor.
I shrugged. “I thought this would be cooler.” I took the key and unlocked Jacinto’s and Alice’s cuffs, and then I used it to rid myself of my own broken cuffs, which were dangling from my wrists like weird jewelry.
“You guys wait here,” I told them.
I wanted to act brave, but the truth was, I was really scared. Back when my friends and I had broken into a Phandic prison, things had happened too quickly for me to think much about what we were doing. Plus there had been several of us: Steve and Mi Sun, who could do most of the fighting; Charles and Nayana, who could tackle the strategic issues; and Tamret, who could figure a way out of just about any mess. It hadn’t all been my burden. Now it was. Alice was smart, and Jacinto was ex-military, but this was still my show. I was in charge. Jacinto and Alice were here to help me, but their freedom—and maybe, now that we’d attacked a soldier, their lives—were on the line. I couldn’t mess this up.
I turned to open the door. I stepped out and put my hands behind me, like they were cuffed. The soldier playing the game on his phone looked up.
“Hey, the other guy said I could use the bathroom,” I told him.
The two soldiers looked at each other. The one doing the paperwork shrugged. The one with the phone gestured toward a closed door across the room.
“Can you open it for me?” I asked.
He sighed and got up. As he walked over, I realized I hadn’t thought this ruse through too well, because if I really were handcuffed, this guy was also going to have to pull down my pants for me, and neither one of us was going to like that very much. In fact, as he put his hand on the doorknob, a look came over the soldier’s face, like he suddenly understood what he was going to be asked to do.
I decided not to let him worry. I put a hand on him and shot him full of electricity. The other soldier looked up at the crackling sound. The scent of something burning hovered in the air.
I could see the alarm in his eyes, and he reached for his sidearm, but I was already there, leaping across the twenty feet, hands out. I crashed into him, zapping him—that’s right, zapping!—and landed almost gracefully on my feet.
I ran back to the interrogation room and opened the door. “We’re good,” I said.
They began moving toward the door. “There’s no way to know how long before another soldier stops by,” Jacinto said. “We’ve got to move.”
I went outside alone to make sure no other soldiers were lurking. It was quiet. I grabbed a set of keys from a post near the door, and we went back out and got into the the Humvee.
It was time to find the UFO.
• • •
Things were going to get hairy as we approached the main building; there was no getting around it. Jacinto did a good job of getting us in, however. He said he remembered his way, sort of, and the rest he knew from studying satellite photos and reading secret documents. The UFO was housed in a massive warehouse at the north end of the base. Unfortunately, it would also be the most heavily guarded part of the base.
We drove without drawing any unwanted attention. We were in a military vehicle and it was dark outside, so no one could see into the car. We pulled into a parking lot maybe a quarter of a mile from the warehouse and got out. I had Jacinto and Alice walk close to me, each of them draping an arm around my shoulders as I activated the stealth field. It was a little awkward, but we simply walked up to the main base, slid past the barrier at the checkpoint, and approached the warehouse. We were going to walk into one of the most secure locations in the country, and no one would know.
Not at all surprisingly, the door was locked and required a keypad entrance. Smelly used the suit to scan the keypad and projected a probable entry code. I punched it in, and the door clicked and slid open. It was that easy. We stepped into the building.
Inside was not a huge warehouse, but a corridor. I figured there were numerous rooms and projects in here, but there had to be some kind of UFO hangar somewhere. I looked at Jacinto, but he shook his head.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen this part of the building before. We’ll just have to wander around until we find something I recognize or some clue to where we should go.”
We made our way forward in the dim light, avoiding obstacles, and sticking close together to remain invisible. The corridor was long and industrial-looking, with concrete floors, cinder-block walls, and metal doors. The lights were dim, but it seemed like the hallway went on almost forever, and there was no UFO THIS WAY sign anywhere.
The darkness was also the reason I tripped. It would be nice if I hadn’t been to blame, but it was me. I stumbled on a slightly raised step—the kind with a black-and-yellow stripe to keep idiots like me from tripping—and went lurching forward. I stayed stealthed, but for just that instant Jacinto and Alice were visible, which allowed them to be picked up on security cameras or motion detectors or whatever they had.
That was all it took.
A jarring claxon sounded. Red lights began flashing.
Way to go, you idiot.
Jacinto looked around. Even in the dim light I could see that his face was drawn. “I think we need to hurry.”
“Stay behind me,” I told them, unstealthing. It would be harder to protect them if they had no idea where I was. We reached another locked door, and I punched in the key code Smelly fed me. It didn’t work.
“They must be on lockdown,” Jacinto said. “You probably need an emergency code to gain access now.”
I nodded. I was already moving to plan B, and Smelly was feeding me instructions. It told me to try to break the door down, and with no time to argue that I couldn’t do that, I slammed my shoulder into the door, which flew forward. Our way was clear. Except for the six soldiers waiting for us, rifles out. And they were firing their guns, which were shooting actual bullets, at us.
Jacinto and Alice dove for cover. I ran toward the soldiers. The field generated by the suit stopped the bullets in midair. They fell to the floor like a handful of bolts while I ran past the soldiers, one hand out, like I was giving a team high five. I made contact with the first man, dishing out a blast to render him unconscious, and then moved on to the next one. It took about thirty seconds, but they all went down.
The alarm was still sounding, but at least gunfire had ended. I let Jacinto and Alice know we were in the clear, and we continued on.
“You should have kept one of them conscious,” Jacinto said. “Maybe he could have told us where to go, so we’re not wandering around here forever.”
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It was a good point, and I wished I’d thought of it. When we entered the next room, it was what I had in mind. I went ahead to scout and found two soldiers, who were surprised by my bursting through the door, sending it off its hinges. I tased one right away and then knocked the weapon out of the hands of the other one.
“Where’s the UFO?” I demanded, lifting him off the floor by his shirt, which wasn’t easy, given he was easily a foot taller than I was.
“I don’t know!” he cried.
It is lying, Smelly said.
“I know you’re lying,” I said. “Tell me!” I shouted this last part, trying to sound fierce.
“Two flights down,” he said. “Follow the signs for section C-Eleven.”
Now it speaks the truth.
I let him drop. “Come on, guys!” I shouted. I then turned back to the soldier to knock him out. I realized, in a terrible moment, that I’d done those in the wrong order. I should have flooded him with electricity first, because in that one instant when he had turned away, he had taken a hand grenade off his belt and tossed it on the floor in front of Jacinto and Alice.
• • •
Time seemed to slow down. I felt like I stood there forever, looking at the grenade as it spun lazily on the concrete floor. Jacinto and Alice looked up, horrified, as realization washed over them. The soldier was already fleeing, pin in his hand, which meant the grenade was going to explode and nothing could change that.
Smelly immediately sent a flash of images to my mind. It was a jumble, but I understood them. I did not have time to get the soldier, retrieve the pin from his hand, and neutralize the grenade. My only choice was to run.
Except I wasn’t about to let Jacinto and Alice die because they had tried to help me. There was only one other choice, and I took it. I threw myself on top of the grenade.
This sounds much braver than it felt at the time. I didn’t feel brave; I just wanted to protect my friends. I also believed, or hoped, that the suit would keep me from getting killed.
I distantly heard Smelly objecting, but by the time I’d leaped forward, it was too late for it to do anything about it. Smelly might have been able to manipulate my body, but it couldn’t do much about the laws of gravity. I landed hard, feeling the grenade like a lump under my stomach. Then there was a bright light, and heat washed over me, and I had the nasty feeling of my back hitting the floor. Except that I was looking down at the floor, and I figured out that I’d just been smacked against the ceiling. Which meant that the floor was below me, and I was rushing toward it. When I slammed into it, the experience was unpleasant.
I picked myself up slowly. My pants and shirt were in tatters, like I was a skinny-kid version of the Hulk. The suit underneath was torn as well, completely shredded in some places, and I had no doubt it had been destroyed. There was no sign of blood, missing limbs, or mangled organs, so that went into the plus column. Alice and Jacinto were looking at me, stunned, unable to believe what I’d just done, but there was no time to waste marveling. My suit was ruined. I now had no way to protect us from the soldiers.
You are even more of an idiot than I dared believe, Smelly said sadly. You broke my suit.
“I had to do something,” I said, feeling kind of whiny. I would let Smelly berate me more later.
“Time to move,” I said, as though I knew what I was doing. I didn’t. We were now inside a government base housing the greatest secret in the world. I’d set off alarms, taken down soldiers, and caused a whole lot of super-secret military property damage. The one thing we had that was going to keep us safe was gone. I had no idea what I was doing, but I figured we had to find that ship fast and get out of there, or we were all in big trouble. I followed a staircase down, and then we entered another floor, full of corridors. We followed the signs to C-11 and somehow, miraculously, we encountered no resistance.
When we rounded the corner, we came to a key-coded door. Not waiting for me to ask, Smelly projected a series of lights onto the keyboard, and I punched them in the order it showed me. The door opened, and we went through.
On the other side was a massive chamber—it seemed as big as a football stadium. There were forklifts and golf carts and metal shelves piled high with machines whose purpose I could not even guess at. There were shelves filled with boxes containing alien artifacts, or the lost ark, or who-knows-what. And there, in the center, was what I had most hoped to find: a Phandic cruiser. The black saucer sat in the center of the cavernous room, somehow still menacing despite looking forlorn and beached. For an instant my heart leaped with joy.
Then that joy vanished, as I realized what I was looking at: not a working Phandic cruiser, but the remains of one.
Pieces were missing; the hull was full of holes. Wires and fibers and strands of metal hung loose from entire sections. People had been working on, tinkering with, and straight-up dissecting the vessel for decades. The Phandic ship sat crooked, broken and lifeless. It wasn’t going to take me anywhere.
I hardly had time to let despair wash over me before I heard the sound of boots tramping the floor behind me. We were trapped. This had been my one shot at escaping, and it had come to nothing. Now I was caught with nowhere to run. I’d led myself, and people who trusted me, to ruin.
I held up my hands, and Alice did the same. After a moment Jacinto held up his arm. I turned to face whoever was coming for me. Would they be Phands, or would they be government operatives in their service?
Instead I saw the familiar face: haggard, stern, and scarred. A patch covering the right eye. “Hello, Mr. Reynolds,” said Colonel Richard Rage. “We’ve been looking for you.”
Behind him were at least ten soldiers, their short automatic weapons raised at us. Colonel Rage waved them down. “No more trouble from you, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You don’t need the guns.”
“You made quite a mess,” the colonel said.
I shook my head. “All that talk you gave me about wanting to protect America,” I said to him. “And now, what? You’re going to turn me over to the enemy?”
“The enemy?” he barked. “I’m not handing you over to any enemy, son. That’s not how we do things on my watch.”
“Coming through,” said a voice I’d thought I’d never hear again. “Let him see I’m here.”
From behind the line of soldiers came a being the likes of which had never been seen on Earth before. He was barely five feet tall, but broad-shouldered, built like a predator. His boarlike snout was adorned with sharp tusks, and his open mouth revealed gleaming white teeth, sharp as needles. Thick, ropy hair hung from his head, and he regarded us with unreadable black eyes.
It was my old friend Urch.
• • •
Apparently there were no space-orc Phands coming with their PPB pistols out, ready to blast me into submission—just Urch and a bunch of American soldiers. Breaking into Area 51 could have ended a whole lot of ways, but I hadn’t predicted this one.
Urch, looking predatorily dapper in his Confederation uniform, gave me an affectionate clap on the back while Colonel Rage and the soldiers watched nervously.
“Urch!” I shouted. “Man, it’s good to see you.”
“You as well, my friend,” Urch said to me, making wild gestures as though that would somehow make his meaning clearer. “I like your planet.”
“It has its moments,” I told him.
Urch looked at me funny, and it occurred to me that he hadn’t expected me to understand him. He’d been talking to me for his benefit, not for mine. Now he was going to have questions, and I wasn’t sure I had answers.
Listen up, meat boy! Smelly suddenly announced in the inside-your-head equivalent of a shout. It is imperative that no one from the Confederation know about me. They might attempt to remove me from your head, with knives and burning lasers, and the damage to you would be irreversible. It wouldn’t be good for me, either, but since you’re inherently self-absorbed, it’s in the interest of your survival to keep me
a secret.
I did not want anyone cutting and burning things out of my head, so I figured it was a good idea to follow this advice.
“All right,” Rage said gruffly. “You two are pals. That’s terrific. Now we have a few things to discuss, so if Reynolds is done tearing up our base, let’s go find someplace to sit down.” He turned to one of his soldiers. “And find the kid some clothes or something. I don’t like chaos, soldier. Or looking at underpants, for that matter.”
“Yes, sir,” the soldier said.
We were escorted into an office whose walls were covered with shelves containing stacks of documents, each bound by tape marked CLASSIFIED. The space had a slapped-together, industrial feel, but even so it was large and well air-conditioned, which I appreciated. Breaking into a legendary military base and destroying a supersuit is sweaty work. Before I could sit, a soldier called me out of the room and handed me an olive-green T-shirt with a US Army insignia on it and green uniform pants that were several sizes too big. I looked like a little kid playing dress-up with his father’s clothes, but it beat the shredded wet suit and visible undies.
The colonel sat behind a wooden desk, while Alice, Jacinto, and I were invited to sit. Colonel Rage had somehow acquired a steaming cup of coffee, which he seemed to enjoy sipping. It was, after all, the middle of the night. A hot drink sounded good, and I had hoped someone might offer me a hot chocolate, but no luck there.
Urch continued to stand, but he appeared excited, in a good way. He kept opening his mouth to show his sharp teeth, and thrusting his tusks upward as if he were disemboweling an invisible antelope. I knew him well enough to understand that these were signs he was happy, but the others . . . it suddenly occurred to me that neither of them had never seen an alien before. I looked over at Alice, who was staring in undisguised shock.
“He’s an alien,” I told her, keeping my voice quiet, like this was a secret. “He comes from another planet.”
“Yeah, I got that,” she said, her eyes practically doing cartoon spirals behind her glasses. “You were telling the truth about everything.”