“Wait a minute,” I interrupted, swatting his bicep with my open hand. “Are you for real here? Do you hear yourself? So you’re saying it’s okay for these aliens to abduct and experiment on humans as long as they’re not people we know?”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s not like that. There’s been reforms and shit, I dunno. You know I don’t like to get involved in politics. Besides, it doesn’t involve us. Our family declared neutrality. The treaty—”
“Neutrality? Do you hear yourself, Tonio? How can we be fucking neutral when there’s stuff like this going on?”
“Laura,” he said, his voice severe—more severe than I’d ever heard out of Tonio, “this war is as stupid as every other war going on on this planet right now. It’s no stupider than the shit going on in the Middle East, or the shit going on with North Korea, or with Russia, or anywhere else. War affects everyone. The only way ordinary people get by is by staying the hell out of it.”
My blood felt like it was going to boil. Literally boil. I could physically feel my blood pressure surging. I clenched my teeth, pain shooting through my gums into my sinuses.
Tonio glanced over at me sidelong. “You’re not going to stay out of it, are you?”
“No,” I said firmly.
“Laura—”
“They have my big,” I said.
His eyebrow rose. “You sure about that?”
“Yes, I’m sure. So obviously your neutrality treaty isn’t as important to them as it is to you. And besides,” I added, “there are others. Janice, and Shailene’s friends. I can’t just leave them.” He made a noise and I glared at him. “Don’t you care about what happens to humanity? Do you really want to just sit back and let everybody be enslaved to some kind of… alien overlord?”
“Well, I mean, depending on how the election turns out in November, that might be preferable.”
“Tonio!”
“I’m just saying. I get you have noble intentions, Lee, but you need to be careful. I don’t think you really understand what’s going on here. You’re not going to be helping anyone if you turn it into War of the Worlds.”
I didn’t respond.
He exhaled noisily through his nostrils. “Fine. All right. So where am I taking you?”
“The Anesidoran base.”
Tonio shook his head and drummed his fingers across the steering wheel but made no comment. He turned up the music and we rode in silence apart from the throbbing bass from the radio for a couple miles.
As we passed the City limits, and tall buildings gave way to houses and then the trees and grass of the foothills, I finally dared to speak again. “Tonio, who’s Andronicus?”
He sighed. “My dad’s youngest brother.”
It didn’t feel like a surprise, not after everything else I’d learned tonight. I nodded, trying to ignore the stone-like weight in my stomach. “Your uncle.”
“Yeah. We’re not exactly close, though.”
Part of me wanted to know more—like how my grandfather had met Lola, or what had happened to him—but I couldn’t bring myself to ask. Not now. I was still too hurt and too angry. I’d have to get answers from my family at some point, but not tonight. Tonight, I just needed to get Ana back. That was all that mattered.
“So, do you have any kind of plan as to what you’re going to do when you get to the base?” Tonio asked.
“Yeah, but you probably won’t like it.”
He pressed his large lips together until they formed a thin line. “Probably not. But I’ll help you anyway. That’s what family’s for. And we owe it to you, after the way everyone’s been lying to you for the last six years.”
I quirked my head at him. “You mean that?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Listen, Laura. What happened to you in eighth grade… I thought it was messed up. You were really upset. You didn’t want to just forget. But when I tried to argue with Mom and Rosie about it, you know how they get. And then you seemed like you were better afterward, and I thought, I dunno. Maybe it would be okay.” He sighed. “But then your dad came home yesterday and it was like it was happening all over again. I could hear him and Rosie and Mom all arguing, and I thought… this is bullshit. You’re old enough, Laura. They can’t keep running your life.”
I didn’t say anything, but I smiled at him, my eyes stinging. He glanced away from the road, smiling back at me.
“Okay, so,” he said, “what’s the plan?”
I didn’t really have good directions for Tonio past the little town Shailene and I had stopped in earlier, but Tonio knew his way from there. He drove down one long, narrow gravel road after another, each more remote and less actual-road-seeming than the last. Finally, he turned onto an unpaved driveway marked by a rusty old sign reading Private: Do Not Enter. A short way down, the road was blocked with a tall gate flanked by chain-link fencing topped with barbed wire.
“Oh,” I said. I hadn’t thought about this. There’d been no chain link the way Shailene and I had traveled, but that route was decidedly off-road. “Maybe we should try going around? I know that fence doesn’t completely circle the base.”
“Nah, it’s fine,” Tonio said, putting the Oldsmobile in park and opening his door. “You’ve gotten to show off your powers, but I haven’t had a chance to give you a taste of mine.”
“Your—come again?”
He winked and trudged over to the gate, sizing it up. Then he squared his shoulders and stepped forward.
I started to cry out—that gate could be electrified, and I didn’t want him to shock himself—but the noise died in my throat as Tonio passed through the metal.
Seriously. Just passed through it.
He walked up the drive a short way to where a box with a digital display on it stood—obviously designed to work from the inside, preventing intruders—and pressed his hand to the screen. A second later, the gate rolled open. It must be designed to recognize Anesidoran DNA, like the one I’d used earlier.
Tonio strolled back to the car, looking pleased with himself.
“You’re freaking Shadowcat,” I said when he opened the door.
“Yup,” he replied.
“So, what, are you telling me that Stan Lee is an Anesidoran or something? Is that the deal with all these superpowers from comic books?”
“I dunno. Let me know if you figure that one out,” he said, grinning as he turned the car back on and continued up the drive.
The dirt drive wound its way precariously up the hill that the base was built into. It was narrow, and its lack of shoulder made me nervous. Tonio’s boat didn’t exactly have the best turning radius in the world. But I reminded myself that big trucks like the one Shailene and I had stolen somehow made it up this road without a problem, and tried to still my pounding heart.
At the top of the hill, the big door to the loading area was still open. Fear shot through me at the sight of it, and for a minute I thought, What the hell am I doing? I got away from this place, and now I’m running right back to it. But I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t go back now.
Andronicus stood at the top of the dirt track, peering at us with narrowed eyes. The cut on his head had already faded into a thin, crusty scab. He must have seen us coming, realized who it was when Tonio was able to open the gate. He looked irritated, but not combative. I refused to meet his gaze.
“Tonio,” he said once we’d parked and my uncle had opened his car door. “I assume Rose filled you in on the pandemonium into which your niece has thrown this facility?”
“Hey, Andre,” Tonio said casually, kicking the heavy driver’s door of the Oldsmobile shut. “Yeah, sorry about that. Laura went a little crazy.” I bristled, climbing out of the car but standing behind the open passenger door like a shield, and tried not to glare at him.
“I don’t believe the council is going to accept ‘she went a little crazy’ as an excuse,” Andronicus replied through gritted teeth. “Not when negotiations are as strained as they are. There will be repercussions. Your line
is in violation of the neutrality clause of the treaty.”
“Yeah, well, I should point out that your severe lack of chill probably made things a lot worse.” Andronicus looked like he was going to protest, but Tonio cut him off. “Don’t worry about it, though. We got Laura home and I brought this one back for you.” He gestured to me, and I nervously closed the passenger door, letting Andronicus see me.
His eyebrow flew up, and he looked me up and down. I shot him as convincing a glare as I could, trying to channel Shailene’s inner bitchface.
“That one,” he repeated, an unreadable note in his deep voice. “She just came with you?”
Tonio shrugged. “What can I say? I can be very convincing.” He put his hand up to his mouth and added in a stage whisper, “Laura had a little something to do with it.” He winked.
I felt my face turn fifty shades of scarlet, and I glared at Tonio. He laughed, and I realized that my reaction—on Shailene’s face—probably provided just the confirmation Andronicus needed for that insinuation. He nodded, gesturing two sentries forward. Both carried the same weapons I’d seen earlier. They grabbed my arms with their free claws.
“Do not let her out of your sight, even for an instant,” Andronicus barked. “Put her directly on the transport ship. The lead technician aboard the Okeanos is waiting for her.”
The sentries pulled me forward, squeezing my arms painfully with their vice-like pincers. I didn’t dare look back at Tonio; I didn’t want to give anything away to Andronicus. But fear still gnawed at me, and I struggled to not shoot one last glance at him. I didn’t know what I was getting into, whether I would see my uncle again.
They dragged me back into the base I’d left only hours before, through the storage room with its maze of boxes and crates. Many of these had been upended. They lay on their sides, lids off and packing grass strewn across the concrete floor. The mad search for Shailene and me had made a mess of the facility.
The metal balcony overlooking the docking area had two staircases, each across the wide space from the other. The sentries led me to the closest, prodding me down it with a weapon to my back. It was narrow and rickety. I tried not to look down as we descended, and was glad to have my feet on solid ground again. Two of the three space shuttles I’d seen the sentries loading with boxes earlier were gone now. The sentries steered me toward the last remaining one, and my eyes widened as I realized how much bigger it was up close than it had seemed when I’d looked down on it earlier. It was about the size of a commercial jet, but wider and squarer, with wings that folded into themselves to take up less room in the hangar. Spaceships always seem so shiny and flawless in movies, but up close, this one had some visible wear on it. Dings, discoloration—the sort of things you’d see on an older car that had several hundred thousand miles on its odometer. This ship had seen more than one takeoff and landing, and that made it seem more real somehow.
This ship was going into space. And I was going with it.
I looked down at my feet as the sentries marched me up the gangplank and aboard the ship. The back area was a cargo hold, where the storage crates I’d seen the sentries loading earlier were being stowed. The hold took up about half the ship’s length. Beyond it was a door leading to an airplane-like cabin with rows of seats. Most of these seats were filled with sentries, but near the front of the cabin, I saw a familiar dark head with neatly-gelled hair. Damien. My eyes bored into the back of his skull.
Ana wasn’t with him. For a moment, my heart leapt into my throat. Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe she wasn’t here after all. But by the same token, I didn’t see any other humans on this transport ship, and there’d been people in those cells upstairs.
She must be aboard the Anesidoran mothership, wherever that was. I couldn’t risk it—I had to make sure.
“Sir,” one of my guards said in their weird language, approaching Damien. “We have the last Striker in custody.”
Damien stood and turned, his eyebrow quirked in surprise. He looked me up and down appraisingly. I glared back at him.
“Right. I’ll take care of her. Thank you,” he said, and the sentries saluted and left us. I looked at Damien in surprise. I hadn’t ever heard Andronicus thank a sentry. From my experiences with them, I didn’t know if the sentries even had enough brain power to appreciate a thank you.
“You’ve been a slippery one, Striker Peterson,” Damien said, flashing me a grinful of those too-white teeth. “I was beginning to think we were going to have to forget about bringing you back to Nibiru with the others.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. What would Shailene say? I settled for a glower and, “Sorry to disappoint.”
He laughed and gestured me into the seat beside him, and I sank into it, positioning myself as far away from him as I could—which, considering how narrow these seats were, wasn’t far enough.
“Strap in,” he said, indicating the crisscrossing seatbelts on my chair, a lap belt and a five-point harness like on an aerobatic plane. “We’re going to be taking off soon.”
I buckled myself in with sweaty fingers and looked around the cabin. A moment later, Andronicus appeared in the doorway to the hold, looking damn smug. “The last Striker,” he said as he approached us, a hint of amusement in his smooth voice. “The council will be pleased. Though I don’t know if they’ll be pleased enough to overlook all the trouble you and Miss Clark caused us earlier.”
“What, do you want an apology?” I snipped.
Andronicus sighed. “It will be a pleasure to get you aboard the Okeanos and have your inhibitor adjusted.”
“Oh, you don’t like it when your slaves talk back to you?”
He gave me a withering look and turned to Damien. “I’ve had about enough of this one. Can I entrust her to you?”
“Yes, sir.”
The deferential way he spoke to Andronicus made fury blaze inside my chest all over again. I couldn’t believe Ana had ever fallen for this jerk and his fake nice-guy act. “Oh, I like animals”—what a joke. He’d been playing her to lure her into the Anesidorans’ trap. Guilt that I hadn’t been there for her, hadn’t figured it out soon enough to warn her, washed over me once again.
Just make it to the ship, Laura. Get to the ship, get away from Damien, and rescue her. That was all that mattered. Never mind that I had no clue how I was going to do that. Somehow, hot-wiring a space shuttle seemed a bit more daunting than stealing that delivery truck had. But I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
The ship began to vibrate, and the lights over our heads flashed and dimmed. We were taking off. I half-expected a flight attendant to appear at the front of the cabin and start going over safety procedures with us, but of course there was no one. The ship just silently shuddered to life.
Through the small windows, I could see the massive hangar door start to swing open, revealing the dark night sky and a hint of moonlight. The ship rumbled forward, its wings unfurling as it moved. It rolled down a platform far shorter than an airport runway, but apparently long enough for an Anesidoran craft, because a moment later the shuttle was in the open air, rising up over the hillside like a bird.
I gripped the arms of my seat with white knuckles and clenched my teeth. We were ascending quickly, the lights of the City spreading out beneath us like a glittering Christmas village set. Everything grew smaller and smaller as we continued to rise, and the force pressed me painfully down into my seat. Clouds wisped their way between us and the City, and I squeezed my eyes closed, terrified of getting any higher. The shuttle shook and rattled, and then—
Nothing was holding me down except the seatbelt and harness. It was bizarre, like I’d been thrown into a pool of water, and everything in me was trying to float away. Outside the windows, everything was dark; but then the ship turned, and the massive blue orb of the Earth came into view, terrifying in its enormity. The straps of the harness chafed against my shoulders, restraining me. Then there was a beep, and my weight returned in an instant. The sudden jolt m
ade me nauseous, and I closed my eyes again, trying not to puke.
Beside me, Damien laughed. “Artificial gravity. You get used to that,” he said almost cheerfully.
I didn’t respond. I kept my eyes closed and focused on keeping my dinner down.
He laughed again. “We’ll be docking soon, don’t worry.”
My nausea had only just started to subside when the shuttle began to rock again. I opened my eyes to see that we were approaching an enormous vessel—like, the size of a Star Destroyer in Star Wars. This must be the Okeanos. The Anesidoran mother ship.
I craned my head, looking through the various windows in the sides of the cabin. We were still close to Earth. The Okeanos must be orbiting the planet like the International Space Station. How had they managed to keep this a secret for so many years?
The shuttle grew closer to the Okeanos until it blocked all view of everything else, swallowing us up like some kind of ocean-dwelling predator. I squeezed my eyes closed once more as the ship rattled and jolted.
It felt like an eternity, but then, at last, we were still. In the rows behind me, I could hear sentries getting to their feet, unbuckling their seatbelts and unclasping their harnesses. I stayed riveted to my seat until I no longer felt like the world was spinning around me and it seemed reasonably certain that I probably wouldn’t throw up.
When I opened my eyes, Damien was standing over me. “There, not too bad, right?” he said.
“Just take me wherever the hell we’re going,” I snapped.
He led me back through the cargo hold, down the gangplank and into the Okeanos’ docking area. I looked around myself in alarm. So far, my exposure to Anesidorans had been limited to just sentries, apart from Damien and Andronicus (and, you know, my whole family). I’d seen the anatomy charts in the doctor’s office back in the base, but that still hadn’t prepared me for this sight now. Dozens of creatures milled around us, unloading the crates from the other two transport ships docked alongside the shuttle we’d just disembarked: minotaurs, centaurs, cyclopes, all sorts of sort-of-humanoid-but-not-quite creatures that I recognized from Greek mythology. Two small satyrs and a tall, broad, green-skinned woman bustled past me, not even glancing my way as they moved to unload the shuttle’s cargo hold.
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