Here

by Zolendz, Christine

  I move through the stone corridor quickly until I find the entrance to the fields where right now, moonlight is casting a soft glow over the surface of what has to be thousands of metal suits.

  Before I leave the safety of the room, I mute my emotion sensor, or at least I think I do. Strangely enough, when I reduce the emotion sensor, my real emotions seem to stabilize. I’d do well to keep my emotions in check anyway, just in case it’s all in my head. But imagine if I was right? Imagine these people being able to just shut off their feelings? What savages a species would become with no empathy or guilt or care for each other. They’d be reduced to predators and prey, simple animals.

  All the men have the same reading. Calm. Patient. Indifferent. They speak quietly in groups, relaxed.

  They seem to be waiting for something or someone.

  Shuffling on the balls of my feet, I shift between the roving bodies. My heart drums fast in my chest but I remain calm, continuously streaming a relaxed emotional state.

  “Do you think this is a deception?” a voice whispers close to me.

  I tilt my head slightly and face a giant of a man who is speaking to another in low tones. Neither seems to notice me slither closer to listen.

  “He’s demonstrating his new power,” the other replies. He nods his head up toward the sky and everyone surrounding us follows in the gesture. Quickly, I glance up too, still trying to listen to the conversation—but I can’t make anything else out.

  A pulse of light spreads out across my vision. It blocks out the sky and jerks my head back. I catch myself before I stumble back and alert everyone around me that I’m the enemy. A metallic ping reverberates through my mask and static fills my ears. A pinprick of white light opens into a large rectangular box and suddenly, a stream of video is playing in front of my eyes.

  The image before me is very familiar. Sharp features of an unmasked Rune, blue eyes wide, his forehead caked with blood. My body stills yet my pulse races beneath my skin. This is a video of when Rune was attacked—just before Claire was taken. Close up, the mask acts like a pair of 3-D glasses and I feel like I’m hiding once again in the shadows of that street. In the background I can hear my sister’s screams in surround sound.

  The fight is brutal, yet it’s not whole. There are only the parts where Rune is attacking and when his mask gets ripped clean off his face and tossed out into the street. Whoever took the footage wants whoever is watching to think Rune is the bad guy. I want to close my eyes to the rest. I don’t want to relive it, but just before I go to shut my eyes, my face takes up the entire screen.

  A low hush carries over the crowd.

  A sense of discomfort crawls down my spine as the men shift uneasily on their feet.

  The camera pans out until my hands are shown—they grip Rune’s mask tightly to my chest—the audience audibly gasps in unison. In the background my sister calls my name, but they never replay her getting plucked up from the ground. Just a still shot of my face smeared with dirt and scrapes, my hands full of Rune’s bloody mask. The last scene is Rune, lying in a puddle of blood as the word Expired blinks over his body.

  The close-up of my face fills the display again. Mission: Find Human.

  Oh my God. They’re all going to think I killed him.

  Before the little slideshow can blink out, I’m halfway through the crowd of creatures, hurrying to escape to a safe place. A quick yank on my elbow pulls me back and I bump into metal from behind. “I told you to leave,” Rune’s voice bites into my ear. His tone overrides the details that the electronic voice in my head is telling everyone about the human they must find.

  I freeze mid-run and glance over my shoulder.

  Standing behind me in a steel mask with bright green markings is Rune. It has to be; the sound of his voice, the stupid way he rumbles, I’d know it anywhere.

  Straightening my spine, I face him and nod a curt greeting. “Asshole.”

  “Why are you out here?” he asks.

  “I didn’t get what I came here for,” I say, stepping closer.

  “I told you I would find her.”

  “Sorry,” I say dryly. “I didn’t quite believe you.”

  His eyes narrow slightly but his expression remains blank. My display tells me his mask belongs to a man named Core and that he is relaxed and reflective. Cool metal fingertips wrap around my wrist and both of us tense.

  I try to hide my stiff stance as others walk by. I look up at the sky pretending to wait for directions on what to do like the rest of them. The electronic voice in my head has been prattling off my weight and height, eye color, and the fact that I was last seen dressed as Rune, his imposter.

  The grip on my arm tightens when the word CAPTURE flashes across the picture of me. “This human is wanted for questioning in the death of our General. She will be taken alive and used as my donor,” the voiceover states. I clench my jaw and squeeze my eyes shut. “My trusted guards are looking for her as we speak.”

  “As for other discussions…” a voice cuts through as a tickertape of text scrolls below a bright picture of a masked man. “Our inventory is multiplying. We will be able to finish final extraction and fulfill what we originally set out to accomplish.”

  A wave of rumbles quakes across the field as the men cheer.

  My eyes meet Rune’s. I try to focus on my hate and my need for my sister, because this Pious dude just brought it to a whole new level. And I’m about to lose my mind.

  “Before the next setting of the sun, each of us will be secured a mate for an offspring and our race will live on.” That’s when the gates open and in walk the women. My once beautiful, sweet sister leads the crowd.

  They barely look alive. Their bottoms are encased in tight metal leggings and they walk jerkily, their faces frozen in a state of shock. Each of the women struggle to move steadily. Some fall and continue to crawl in disturbingly jerky movements.

  I can’t look away from Claire. I have a vague recognition of how enormous the crowd of females is but my focal point remains on my one and only sister. She twitches violently with each step—hands and arms swing in wildly exaggerated arcs—her fingers bend and twist awkwardly at each joint like she’s in a tremendous amount of pain.

  The most demeaning part is that each one of these women wear no other clothing. Their breasts are on obscene display for these filthy perverted creatures. Every girl is stripped bare, save for the metal pants that seemed to robotically control the movements of their legs. Their bare feet are caked with mud and blood.

  My sister’s empty eyes stare back at me. Her hair is falling out in long strands, half bald like she had just finished a shitty round of chemo. Her swollen lips hang open loosely and are framed with bright purplish bruises that mar her cheeks and jaw.

  I’m frozen in horror and the only thing that snaps me out of it is my own voice screaming her name.

  21

  Kate

  Rune jerks me forward.

  I try to pull back, my heart thrashing furiously in my ears, my fingers raking his off my skin. But he doesn’t let go. He drags me even when I fall, my metal heels trailing wide tracks through the snow and mud. The metal mask tightens around my mouth in a vice grip, blocking and muffling my screams.

  I don’t care how many of them are standing around me. I want to kill them all. I kick out my feet, grappling with his legs, but still he rips me from the crowds. From saving my sister.

  Outside the compound, humans huddle around trashcan fires, rubbing their hands over the flames to keep warm. One of them looks a lot like my father, dressed in fatigues from head to toe, a shredded teddy bear dangling from his back pocket. I stop struggling, hoping to get a better glance, but the man disappears, melting into the dark silhouettes of others by the fires. The air is icy, and mist seeps past moving lips. Rune drags me down the embankment toward the water, the soles of my boots slipping over the noisy gravel. When we reach the water’s edge, I can finally yank away from him, and I stumble back with the effort. He sti
lls and looks back over his shoulder at me. “You need to get out of here, Kate.” He presses a small area on his jaw, releasing the mask from his face. Behind it his features soften, his eyes weighed down by dark circles and hollowed cheeks.

  “Claire was in there,” I grit out, the pain of the mask, pinching my jaw shut tight, stabs up my cheeks and through my ears, bringing tears to my eyes.

  Rune’s eyes widen and he reaches out to press the release on my mask. The pain instantly stops as the mask drops to the ground.

  “Why didn’t you let me save her?” I spit.

  “Save her? You would have gotten yourself killed,” he yells, leveling his face with mine. “You have no idea what you’re up against. You need a strategy.” Rune clenches his hands into fists.

  The clank of metal knuckles popping enrages me. “I’m not scared, Rune. I don’t care about anything but getting Claire!” I whirl around, ready to rush back, fists blazing. I’m just going to run straight in there and—

  He grabs me so fast that I see only blurs until he has me pinned down on the ground, the full weight of his body pressing into mine. “No,” he breathes, the heavy rise and fall of his chest pushing into mine. “I won’t let you.”

  This close, his scent makes me dizzy, and for the life of me the only thoughts in my head are his lips and teeth against my skin. “I should hate you. I should hate you for all of this.” The slight grind of his body over mine makes heat pound between my legs.

  “But you don’t.”

  I watch his Adam’s apple move up and down. I don’t know why I’m focusing on it. Something doesn’t feel right. I’m not myself.

  “The armor, Kate. It’s making us desire each other. That’s what’s happening. It has to be what they are programing into it. They changed all the plans.”

  I try shoving my hips upward to move away from him, but it only makes the sensations between us worse. It spreads the heat between my thighs to ache deep inside my chest, and a low gasp slips through my lips. “I’m just some scrawny, irritating human to you, try and remember that. Now let me go,” my voice shakes.

  He lowers his head and touches his lips softly to just under my ear. “I’ve been trying, Kate. The problem is, I just can’t.”

  And with the world kicking and screaming around us, I feel his tongue slip out and caress my neck where his lips had been. My universe narrows to that one spot, that one tiny sensation, and feels nothing else. My body turns to liquid under his. The touch—the sound of his breathing hot against my skin—is hypnotizing.

  I should be afraid. Terrified.

  But it feels like I’m floating, tingling, vibrating, my entire body glowing with his strange supernatural heat.

  It lasts only a moment then he pulls himself up, a deep rumble sounding from his chest. “Come on, Kate. Let’s go make a plan to get your sister so I can rid myself of you.” The words sound awful, but he’s smiling and the spot where his lips were against me turns cold and empty. My skin puckers and hardens—I’m almost too weak to stand.

  Suddenly, I can’t see where the enemy stands. The lines have blurred and I feel as if I’ve had my very first taste of some strange new drug, and I’m instantly addicted.

  These suits make you feel things, things you shouldn’t feel.

  “Kate, come on. I know where your father is.”

  22

  Kate

  “Private?”

  I turn to see my father. He’s got retro green army men arranged in strategic positions on a flattened cardboard box. A dozen men stand around the makeshift battlefield and listen intently as my father makes shit up as he goes. All I see is mud-stained faces and blood-caked boots. The lot of them listening to a madman with desperation in his eyes.

  When Rune found him, my father introduced himself as the head of the Great Alien Resistance and shook my hand like we were strangers. “Happy to have you on my team,” he grumbles then hands me a fully loaded gun. Who gave the psycho his own arsenal?

  Now he’s got a camp full of followers ready to fight back. “I’d say after the first wave of gunfire we have—”

  “This isn’t Afghanistan, Dad, please stop,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady.

  “Private, the mission is simple. Get in, get out, or get dead.” He thinks he’s humoring me; he thinks this is all real. It makes me sick to my stomach. How the hell am I supposed to fix all this?

  “There are women in there. Innocent women, Dad. Claire is in there,” I warn, pointing my finger towards some nonexistent point on the wall. He can’t just go in there and start shooting anything that moves. I don’t want to even think about what could possibly happen.

  “Then let me help you save her,” he grumbles. For a slip of a second, I see my father, a wisp of the man who used to carry me on his shoulders and sneak me half a chocolate bar right before dinner.

  I nod, blinking back tears. I get it, I think. It’s the only way he knows how to help us. “Sir, I’m sure your family loves you very much. I’m sure they miss you and need you at a time like this. Please, sir, can’t you just—”

  A glazed look melts over his features. “Private, I am married to the American people…I have no other form of family. They are all my—”

  I walk away. I can’t help him. I can’t stop him. And I sure as hell can’t stand there and take the utter disappointment and abandonment I feel because my father can’t help me when I need him the most. My heart can’t take being forgotten, even when I know he’s suffering from that stupid messed-up disorder. Knowing the name of it or how it works doesn’t help me feel any better. I just want my dad back. I want someone to help me through this hell.

  I storm out of the makeshift tent, which is really a floral-printed sheet attached to a My Little Pony one, both tied to the lowest branches of two trees. Fewer than fifty tired male eyes watch me leave, weapons of all kinds dangling from their hands. I can’t believe this is my only hope. These people—this group of old men—this is the alien resistance.

  We’re all going to die.

  It’s gotten even colder outside and a sprinkling of snow is just starting to fall. Within the few feet I walk to clear my head, I can feel the weight of its iciness heavy on my hair. When I reach the water, I lean my back against one of the piers of the bridge and shiver from the cold. Out at the water’s edge, the tide is so low that small boats that were floating in the waves days ago are now stranded on the shores.

  Rune appears from the shadows, mask in his hand, chest armor dragging behind him. He’s wearing a t-shirt that says I’m hot as hell—which incidentally, is where I was spawned.

  His eyes lock tight on mine, unrelentingly, making it impossible to look away.

  I can’t read Rune’s emotions. I’m not sure if he can read mine without his mask. I find myself wishing I was wearing mine, just so I could tell what was going on inside his head. It’s easy when you know what people expect of you. You don’t have to guess anything; your mask tells you everything. It’s like your brain; those creatures rely on it for everything. “I can’t imagine living in a world where a mask you wear can show intentions so clearly. Or the idea that it can strip you of your emotions so you feel nothing. Or make you feel things you really don’t.” I don’t know why I’m saying it. The way he’s looking at me is making me babble idiotically. Then it just plain pisses me off. “It’s the most inhuman thing I’ve ever heard. Taking what we have—our thoughts and emotions—the biggest thing that would separate us from other species, and numbing it.”

  “It doesn’t show intentions clearly any longer.” He shakes his head and looks out over the dark waters of the Narrows. I follow his gaze, immediately feeling deprived of it, and coming away empty and needy. The thought turns my stomach, so I force myself to stare alongside him, into the cold black depths.

  Somewhere, far on the other shore, a flicker of light shines out. It’s probably a signal for help; one that will probably never be answered. My fingers and arms flex as I glare back at it. There might be othe
rs who need our help and we can’t offer them anything.

  Rune ignores the light and tilts his head back toward me. “Even you, wearing it for just a few moments, found a way to override things that have been installed for decades. I’ve been blind.”

  Blind?

  I say nothing in return. There’s a swarm of mixed emotions spiraling though my thoughts. Giving him my attention and listening to his feelings seems too personal. I have too much anger toward him…and yet…there’s a part of me that wants to know everything. It needs to know everything.

  “I told you before here I hadn’t seen my own flesh; not since I was a child. I hadn’t even seen another’s,” he whispers.

  What a horrible, lonely existence. I breathe in deeply and tighten my jaw. There’s no way I want to feel empathy for him. My eyes squeeze shut. I don’t want to be friends with this thing. It’s too confusing. The way he looks at me and the way I react to him. Hate. Want. Lust. It’s all too much. This suit—having this alloy seeping through my skin—it’s making me feel things that can’t be real.

  A soft feathery touch brushes my temple. I squeeze my eyes tighter, making a blast of color and light dance behind my lids.

  “It’s so soft,” his voice whispers. He must have stepped closer because I feel the warmth of his body from my head to the tips of my toes. “Beautiful,” he says hoarsely, trailing his knuckles down my cheek. “I never really thought you were scrawny.”

  My eyes flutter open but I look away from him, back out over the water. He’s not talking about me. Just how human skin feels. That’s all. I wish his emotional status popped up so I could see. I try to remember that it once flashed disgust when it looked at me.

  I clear my throat and lean away from his touch. “What about your mask? What’s wrong with it?”

  “It won’t stay on any longer. It’s rejecting me.” The tips of his fingers are still on my skin. They’re making a strange flipping feeling burn through my chest. It’s the same feeling I get when I’m on a rollercoaster just about to plummet into its first loop.