Invaded

by Holly Hook

  The Mars Identity leader also had a gun on his belt.

  The leader man did not hesitate to rush at Marv, who backed against the crater wall and tripped on debris. The Grounders watched as the newcomer leaned down, grabbed Marv by the collar, and forced him to stand. He drew the gun from his belt—and this one wasn't a heat gun. It was a pistol like the one Mom had tried to use against her kidnappers, an illegal one.

  Well, illegal on Earth.

  Not a single Grounder moved to stop him. It was a new development. I tensed. I had seen plenty of death, but not one of a human, and not one by a regular gun. I had heard horror stories about these weapons.

  Marv steeled himself. I couldn't make out his facial expression from up here, but it was there in his posture, in the way he faced the ground. The caped man shouted something, words that got warped by the crater and by distance, and raised the gun to Marv's temple.

  At the same time, the ladder descended from the other tripod. The newcomer watched as Celeste scrambled down, screaming. She hadn't expected this, either. The black vapor wouldn't help her now. There was no way for her to deploy it without killing Marv.

  I was about to throw up. It was an execution. It seemed like a lot for an offense like coming to Earth.

  “Our destruction is near!” the old man shouted from behind. He had wandered close to us. “We must allow justice to take place!”

  I jumped.

  At the same time, the newcomer looked up at our hiding place—along with every single Grounder in the crater.

  Marv caught the caped man with a uppercut and broke free, making the guy drop his gun. He ran towards the cylinder. Judging from the banging sound that followed, he had shut himself inside.

  “The plague we have inflicted on this world must end!” the old man shouted. It was as if he had filled with a new energy.

  “Shut up!” Matt shouted. The sounds of scuffling followed.

  Below, a group of Grounders broke from the others and ran towards the side of the crater. They climbed.

  The old man had given us away.

  He wasn't harmless after all. Whether or not he knew about the Grounders outside didn't matter.

  Mr. Skeleton pointed to my hiding place, to where the shouts had emerged.

  I scooted back, not caring about the creaking metal and crossbeams around me. The structure shifted, threatening to collapse, but I knew that the Grounders wouldn't come through that. They'd cut through Space Port Nine.

  “Tess!” Matt shouted.

  “They know we're here,” I said, facing the floor and pushing myself up on my hands. I was out of the tunnel, which proceeded to collapse a bit. “They're coming up for us right now.”

  I faced Matt. He had the old man in a headlock. The old guy was struggling to breathe in Matt's grasp.

  And in one horrible thought, I knew what we had to do.

  The Grounders had heard the old man. Not us.

  We had a mission, and he didn't. I would regret this for the rest of my life, but the lives of billions had to come first.

  “Let go of him,” I said. “We have to hide.”

  Matt got my drift. He let go of the old man, who staggered away and grasped at his neck. I hoped that the guy recovered by the time the Grounders got here, so they wouldn't figure out that someone else had attacked him. The old man staggered over to the holographic sun as if he were praying for it to save him. Jupiter and Mars drifted over his head.

  “A plague!” he shouted.

  I grabbed Matt's arm and pulled him towards the maintenance room, thrusting my hand into my pocket to make sure I had my key card. I hoped that it locked from the inside and that this was the only key card in the area. Otherwise, we were both going to die.

  We bolted into the maintenance room, which we had left open. I closed the door and turned it to make sure it locked. Matt and I backed towards the back of the room, where we had shoved things aside to check out the power tools. I knew that, even in my panic, we should grab something. I still had the electric baton, and I had hidden my pack behind the metal cabinet, but we had no exit strategy. Matt was already searching around. He grabbed the electric saw and held it in front of him, while I did the same with the baton. We might take down a few Grounders before they took us as prisoners.

  I wondered if Grandpa Luis would be proud.

  The old man shouted something else from outside, but he made no effort to follow us into the storage room. All Matt and I could do was hope that the Grounders assumed that he was the only one here, that they hadn't seen me up in my little hiding spot.

  We heard nothing at first. Minutes crawled past. The Grounders didn't have to hurry. They must know that the only way out of the museum was through the spaceport. They'd catch us no matter what.

  And Matt and I were using the old man as a cover. We had no choice if we wanted to save my parents and the rest of the world. I would hate myself for this later, but as an Earther, I had to do my job.

  At last, after what felt like ten minutes, the old man started to shout again.

  “Remove me from this world!” the man shouted.

  A Grounder woman said something that I couldn't make out. They had arrived. I was sure she was agreeing. The man shouted something else. He wouldn't stop.

  I held my breath and continued to hold Matt's arm. I wondered at that moment if he would ask me to kiss him again, but he stayed silent.

  And right then, I hated it. Why was Matt putting the distance between us?

  “We will remove you from this world,” a Grounder man said from not far outside the door. The crack underneath the door allowed the sound in, along with the light. My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I spotted the shadow of two feet underneath the door. “You may board a ship soon.”

  The old man was getting off easy. If the Grounders found us, they would do more than deport us.

  “He will not survive Mars,” a Grounder woman said. “We should do what is merciful.”

  Maybe he wasn't getting off easy. The old man babbled, and I caught the sound of footsteps as he faded. The Grounders were taking him away for execution.

  My stomach tied in such a tight knot that I almost vomited all over the concrete floor. Matt pulled me back so that we stood by the cabinet where we'd found the gas masks. Several cardboard boxes lay stacked in the corner.

  “Hide,” he whispered.

  I understood. Matt and I scooted carefully, trying not to betray our position, as we moved behind the boxes. The smell of dust and cleaning solvents filled the air was we ducked together in the tiny space between them. I couldn't tell if any Grounders remained outside at first, but then I heard more speech.

  “The gift shop door had been broken,” a Grounder man said in a monotone.

  “As is the office,” another said.

  “There is a meteor on the floor,” said a third.

  They were conducting an investigation. The baton hummed, giving off noise that the aliens might detect if they opened this door.

  “Food is eaten.”

  “The man has placed the office chair in the wreckage.”

  The monotone voices all blended, making dumb conclusions. I couldn't even laugh at how moronic the Grounders sounded. Not now. I put the baton back in my belt, silencing it. I wasn't sure if I could draw it fast enough if we got discovered. I thought of the things that would happen to Matt and me once they found us. I wanted to follow my grandfather, but not into death.

  “We must check every room,” a Grounder said. “We need a key card for this door.”

  And then another Grounder said the worst thing ever.

  “I have one.”

  A moment later, the storage room door clicked.

  The Grounders were entering.

  Matt and I squeezed even closer together, far beyond awkwardness, and my heart raced. I feared that the Grounders would sense the vibration of it. Those plants could, so why not them?

  The door came open. Light spilled in. I felt as if it were the cold ligh
t of death if that made any sense.

  Matt and I ducked down further. If a Grounder peered down here, we would have no room to maneuver.

  “I do not think anyone has been here,” a female Grounder said.

  “We must check,” a man replied.

  A few pairs of footsteps scattered around the room. They were thorough. Stuff scraped against the floor as Grounders moved things around. Unlike the time when Matt and I hid in the model tripod, we were on the ground. No fear of heights would stop the Grounders from finding us now. It had been what had saved us before.

  They drew closer to our position. Matt and I had tucked ourselves into the farthest corner of the room.

  I found his hand and squeezed. He did the same. A Grounder shuffled, very close to where we were hiding, and something swept through the air above me. The wind ruffled my hair. I held my breath and willed my heart to calm.

  “It is barren in here,” the Grounder man said.

  “We cannot be too careful,” the woman told him. “There may be invaders hiding anywhere in the complex.”

  “The manager is not an Earther.”

  “He is cooperative, yes, but he speaks of those who deny the truth.”

  “The boy and the girl invaders are still on the loose,” the man said. “The girl is dangerous. We do not know her identity, but she may have a connection to Luis the Murderer. She landed on the property of his daughter. Mars Identity Leader Kassem is unable to tell us who has come here with his son. He has not seen his son for many weeks, and thought that he was staying with a relative.”

  Even though Matt already had my hand in a death grip, he tensed.

  I had to keep myself from sucking in a breath.

  Matt's father was the Mars Identity leader?

  The two Grounders seemed to have forgotten about us. A third seemed to be still standing by the door. “We must hurry,” the third said. “Leader Kassem may need our assistance in removing the radicals from their hiding places.”

  “We are getting a pulse cannon ready for the female radical,” the man said.

  Footsteps rushed away from us. Grounders might have the most boring, monotone speech in the universe, but they could move fast if they needed. One of them still had the thought to close the storage room door, which was fortunate for us.

  Matt and I didn't let go of each other for what felt like minutes. At least, I wrenched my hand from his.

  “Why didn't you tell me this?” I asked. “The man outside is your father? He's the leader of the Mars Identity Movement? I thought you were honest, Matt.”

  Matt and I stood, facing each other, our faces only inches apart.

  It was the first time Matt had lied to me. I felt like the world we had built together had been shattered. Again. Nothing held together for more than a few days anymore, and I didn't know what to believe.

  "My dad's outside?" he asked. The light came back on, detecting our movement.

  "Yes," I said. "And you told a major fib."

  “I never lied,” Matt said. “I told you he was in the Mars Identity Movement, and that I had to hide my activities from him.”

  “You didn't say he was the leader,” I said.

  Matt sighed and climbed over the box, eyeing the closed door for a moment. “I thought you would figure that out on your own. I dropped hints. I didn't think it was important right now. I guess I should tell you the full truth. My dad founded the Mars Identity Movement right after we arrived on Mars. At first, it was just all about making Mars a better place to live. But as more people arrived and got dejected with their futures, some Identity people got radical. They embraced the whole Mars Identity thing because it made them feel like they belonged to something special. My father has been trying to calm these people down for months, but it keeps getting worse. He's losing control.”

  “Well, he came out of the cylinder,” I said. “I take it you've figured that out."

  “He's still out there?"

  “Yes,” I said. “Complete with his black cape. And he was talking to some Great Council Grounders.”

  “My father's not a villain,” Matt said. “He's just...never around!”

  I was beginning to understand.

  Was Matt here partly to cry for help, to get the attention of his father? He had sure done a good job of that.

  Or was he here to rebel against him?

  “Your father was going to shoot Marv,” I said. I could sense Matt's pain. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to have your parent not involved with your life. I knew that it happened to people, but Matt was the first I'd encountered. “He came across millions of kilometers of space in a dangerous spacecraft to take revenge on the people who tried to kill us. He's here to find you.”

  Matt turned in a circle and brought his hand up to his face. “I bet Fiona called him when she knew the radicals were coming after us. She risked the whole mission so that she could save my sorry butt.”

  “That means Fiona is alive,” I said. “She obviously cares about you, Matt, enough so that she did this to save you. She never wanted to send us on this dangerous crap.” A part of me had itched to go. Maybe Matt and I were more alike than I initially thought. Had I come here to seek attention from my parents? Validation?

  Matt faced the wall and sighed. I sensed that he was collecting his emotions.

  “Okay,” Matt said. “I'll come clean.” At last, he faced me. “I like you, Tess, and I didn't want you to judge me because my dad's the Mars Identity leader. I saw how you reacted when your parents finally let you see real life. I didn't think you'd like it if you found out about this. Some truths suck. I know what it's like to go through them. When my father told me about this whole, um, Grounder thing when we got deported, I was upset with him for weeks, mostly because he embraced it. He knew I hated it, but he kept trying to push Mars on me."

  I wondered how I'd feel if one of my parents led the Mars Identity Movement, the opposite of what I wanted. The thought was strange. I couldn't imagine us Earthers wanting to do that.

  But I knew one thing.

  Matt's father would want to take us both back to Mars. Well, Matt. I wasn't sure how he would feel about me, an Earther, coming along for the ride. He might broker a deal with the Grounders to let him take Matt. They'd get to keep me and do whatever.

  If they found out I was Luis Volker's granddaughter, things would go downhill very quickly.

  “Okay,” I said. “I get what you're saying. I was just shocked, is all. Is there anything else we need to clear up?”

  Matt hesitated. “Not right now.”

  “Then we need to figure out what to do next,” I said. “My parents are still captive. Will your father help us rescue them?”

  “He's not going to help take back Earth,” Matt said. “He must be here for me, and me only."

  “As I said, I believe you when you say he's not a bad guy.” It was going to complicate things. “Why don't the Mars Identity people want to fight the Grounders?”

  “They work together."

  “They shouldn't,” I said. “If we can find your father and tell him what the Grounders are planning, he might change his mind. If the Mars Identity people don't want us all to die, they'll have to help, right?”

  “Maybe,” Matt said. “They might have different ideas, though. They'll want to move more people to Mars. They won't want to fight the Grounders. It's better than nothing, though. My father might work out something with the Great Council.”

  “You're thinking of going down into that crater,” I said.

  Outside, a massive crash sounded, along with metallic squeals. I had forgotten about the standoff. The Grounders must have blasted one of the tripod's legs off, sending Celeste's getaway to the ground. Down there, Leader Kassam was waiting to execute her, if he hadn't already, not knowing that he stood among even worse enemies.

  “I'm still not sure about it,” Matt said. “I don't think the Grounders will hurt me in front of my father, but we know they might do something sneaky.
And I'm not leaving you alone.” He walked up to me and slipped his hand into mine.

  I blushed. Matt grinned.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said, a rush of terror and excitement washing over me.

  “I agree.” He gave my hand another squeeze. “They're distracted, so it's time to go."

  Matt and I walked across the storage room. Matt didn't bother with the whole ladies first thing. He pushed open the door and peeked into the light of the museum. “It's clear,” he said. “Maybe now's the time to cut through the spaceport.”

  I heard nothing from outside. Of course, the alien vegetation out there would absorb most of the noise. The crater might be the only reason we heard anything at all in the weird acoustics.

  The place seemed empty without the old man walking around, babbling.

  “I don't know about that,” I said, pulling the gas mask out of my pocket and putting it on. It would help. “Getting another walker would have been a better idea.”

  “Marv is in the cylinder, with all the nanobots,” Matt said. “Only he has access to heat guns right now. Who knows what else he has? We might be able to paralyze him, but the Grounders would see us enter. He's even more trapped than we are unless he gets creative.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “The nanobots can do all sorts of things,” Matt said. “If he knows any illegal programming and has a tablet, he might be able to get them to make deadlier weapons. Of course, there's a good chance the Grounders will point a pulse cannon at him.”

  “Won't he use the black vapor?”

  Matt's eyes widened as we stepped into the main room. Thoughts of his father displayed all over his face. “I have to check.”

  He crawled into the tunnel. He had far more right to do that than I did. While I waited, I watched the debris to make sure that it didn't collapse on him. The office chair sagged more than before.

  Matt scooted back out ten minutes later. “There's a standoff,” he said, standing. “The Grounders have Celeste captive, but she's perfectly alive. I think they're using her to make sure Marv doesn't release the black vapor. He won't want to kill his girlfriend.”

  “That makes sense,” I said.