by Jason Parent
A short ride later, Connor was shuffled out of the car. He plodded blindly. His captors led him up a short staircase, down a few corridors and eventually to a door he couldn’t see but felt sure enough when they pushed him through it. Four more steps and he was thrown into a chair. His right hand tingled, pinched between his ass and the seat. He winced in pain, but realized no one could see his discomfort. Even if they could, he doubted they’d care.
The bag scraped beneath his chin as someone tore it from his head. Connor’s eyes adjusted quickly. He sat in an unadorned room no bigger than a single-car garage. There were no windows and only one door, which two serious-looking guys in U.S. Army fatigues guarded.
In front of Connor, a table stood about six feet long and four feet wide. It was battleship gray and fastened to the floor. The only other objects in the room were an empty chair of the same mold as his and a video camera propped on a tripod in the corner to Connor’s right. It didn’t appear to be recording.
Across the table, a gentleman in his early fifties stood with his arms crossed. He was balding, with dark stubble forming a horseshoe around his head. He wasn’t in a uniform. He wore a white button-down shirt tucked into navy-blue dress pants. Glaring at Connor, he rolled up his sleeves.
“Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you’re in?” he asked. “There are some who would label you an enemy combatant.”
“That thought had occurred to me,” Connor said aloud, but meaning it only for himself. The man heard it. He leaned over Connor and scowled.
Connor swallowed hard but kept his cool. Mr. Plain Clothes was obviously in charge, but Connor couldn’t guess who he was or what he wanted from him. The last thing he wanted to do was to provoke the man. He didn’t ask for any of this.
“They made me help them,” he blurted out. “They disintegrated my friend right in front of me. What was I supposed to do? I had no idea they planned to kill the President.”
“Relax, Mr. Gaudreau,” Plain Clothes said. He leaned back, giving Connor space. “We want their heads, not yours. But you are in a unique position to help us. For one, you know more about them than anyone else. Two, they seem to trust you.”
Connor didn’t know where his captor was leading him, but he was sure he didn’t want to go there. “This is crazy. Matthew—that’s Officer Simpson of the New Hampshire State Police—asked me to help him examine a meteorite. That’s all we thought it was at the time. I agreed, and the next thing I know, he’s dead, and I’m surrounded by aliens. Fast forward and now the President’s dead, and I’m being cuffed and thrown around like a criminal.” Connor huffed. “I’m a teacher, for Christ’s sake. I don’t plot to kill politicians. I mean, don’t I have rights here?”
“Not really,” Plain Clothes said. He turned to one of the soldiers at the door. “Uncuff him.”
The soldier helped him to his feet. Connor glared at the man, assuming he’d been one of the people who had brought him in, probably the jerk who shoved him through the door. The stinging in his shoulder was an unpleasant reminder.
Still, he was thankful to have his wrists free, afraid the cuffs and his body weight were cutting off circulation in his right hand. It took him a few moments to shake off the pins and needles. He rubbed his wrist where the handcuff had dug into it. The soldier returned to his post. Connor sat back down.
“What do you want from me?” he asked.
“Let’s start with everything you know about them.” Plain Clothes walked over to the video camera and set it to record. “Tell me everything you did, saw, heard, smelled, or otherwise experienced in the last seventy-two hours. Spare no detail. If you saw anybody, I want to know about it. If you went anywhere, I want to know about it. If you took a shit, I want to know about it. Leave nothing out, right down to whether it was a particularly difficult bowel movement, to whether it had undigested corn kernels in it, to whether it took you more than a single roll of toilet paper to wipe your ass. Understood?”
“I didn’t care for your example, but yeah, I get the picture.” Connor stared at the table, gathering his thoughts. He let out a deep breath. “Okay. Where to begin? I guess that day started out like any other day; I woke up. From there, it all went downhill.” And nothing will ever be the same again.
●●●
“So what do we do now?” Kazi asked. “They’ll be looking for us.”
“Give her some time,” Milliken said. “We just buried him.”
“That’s not how we do things. She’s our leader now, and she needs—”
“It’s the human way, Kazi. Like it or not, we’ve all been exposed to it.”
Tryst remained silent, barely aware of the conversation ensuing over her head. She sat on her buttocks, hugging her knees. She’d just buried her friend, her leader and her lover. Losing the latter hurt the deepest. She wanted to cremate Lenyx, to properly celebrate his life and death as he basked in the fires of the sun. It was her people’s custom, but the blaze they conjured had no effect on Lenyx’s corpse other than to warm it to her touch, a touch he could no longer reciprocate.
When cremation failed, Tryst forced Kazi to teleport to their ship, risking their discovery to retrieve the Symorian version of a flamethrower. The flames of the Symorian tool were infinitely hotter than those of its human counterpart, its fire glowing blue-white and dangerously clear at its edges. It could melt human flesh from bone as though it were butter, then melt the bone, too.
Against Lenyx’s skin, it failed. His skin sizzled like iron cooling in water after being tempered in a forge. It blackened until Lenyx resembled the ship he rode in on, a dark statue commemorating his former glory.
In Symorian culture, the dead weren’t meant to be commemorated or even remembered. The fallen were cremated and forgotten. They believed, as Tryst believed, that life was meant for the living.
But Tryst was unable to honor Lenyx with the Symorian rite. Given his body’s seemingly indestructible state, Tryst had no choice but to give Lenyx a human burial. It seemed almost blasphemous, and with the human ceremony came human-like grief.
I’m sorry. Through her tears, Tryst cracked a smile, remembering their private moments, the way he touched her, the secrets they shared. Her smile turned. She would have traded all of Symoria and all of Earth to be back in Lenyx’s arms. All the promise this world once held was snuffed out by a single bullet. And here, Lenyx would remain, planted within foreign soil.
Digging holes was nothing unfamiliar to the aliens. She sent Kazi back to the ship again, this time for shovels. The danger no longer concerned her. As Kazi explained it, he could teleport to any place he’d seen before, or that any human whose mind he’d digested had seen before. Popping back to the ship seemed effortless to him. Tryst hadn’t worked up the nerve to try teleporting. She wondered if Kazi could teleport home, if there was any home left. How she envied the dead they left behind.
The three dug the grave in silence. With Milliken’s strength, the act was done swiftly. He picked up Lenyx’s body and carelessly tossed it into the pit. Expressionless, he seemed indifferent to his commander’s death as he piled on the dirt. Tryst knew his callousness was not out of cold feeling toward Lenyx, but instead derived from his cultural upbringing, a need to forget the dead and show the strength required of him.
The same was required of Tryst. Death was a reality she’d always known might come to be. Their mission had been and remained fraught with danger and uncertainty. But not his death. Tryst ran her hands over the ground that separated her from him, smoothing over the surface with gentle strokes. Milliken and Kazi knelt beside her. Each pressed a handprint into the fresh dirt on the grave. Then, they stood and walked away.
Tryst dried her eyes. There would be no more tears, no more talk of Lenyx. Life was for the living. Three Symorians yet lived. The way Lenyx lived no longer mattered.
How he had died, however, still concerned her. As the group’s new leader, Tryst needed to know all threats to her team, even if they came from within.
/> “What happened back there, Kazi?” she asked. Behind her hysteria, behind all the chaos, and behind her subsequent despair, a suspicion had taken root inside her subconscious that, until then, had been incapable of exploration.
“Why are you asking me?” Kazi asked. “Your commander couldn’t help himself when it came to igniting humans. This time, he chose the wrong one.”
“You can’t really believe Lenyx intended to assassinate President Kennedy,” Tryst said, shocked by his callous explanation. “I saw his face when it happened. I knew Lenyx better than any of you ever did. The President’s death was not intended.”
“Are you sure? This planet has changed us—all of us, not just Lenyx. It’s given us abilities we never thought possible, power we could not have achieved back home. Perhaps Lenyx’s newfound powers changed him into something sinister.”
“That’s nonsense, Kazi, and you know it. Lenyx was a diplomat and a peacemaker. He wanted to ensure our survival, not provoke hostility with these Earth dwellers.”
Kazi’s words left a sour taste in Tryst’s mouth. She scrutinized him. He seemed nervous, evasive, like he was itching for an excuse to dismiss the conversation. She was certain he was hiding something.
“Kazi, I’m only going to ask you this once,” Tryst began. “Did you have anything to do with what happened to the American President?”
Milliken seemed apprehensive. Perhaps he sensed her anger rising. She would not appreciate an interruption from him at such a critical stage in her discussion. She gave him a glare that suggested as much.
Kazi shuffled his feet. He had already paused too long, further arousing her suspicions. He took a deep breath. Finally, he spoke.
“No,” Kazi said firmly, but Tryst detected the slightest waver. She was sure he was lying, and she knew how to prove it.
“Kazi, I want to look inside that head of yours. I want to see what you saw. I want to know everything you know.”
“What do you mean?” Kazi asked. His fingers tapped his legs, and his feet shuffled side to side. His eyes darted back and forth.
He’s looking for an escape. He’ll get none from me. “Let me into your mind,” Tryst said, a coy smile spreading across her face. She thought she had outsmarted him. “As your new commander, you will do as I say. If you have nothing to hide, this matter will be quickly and painlessly resolved.”
“No,” he said, sounding offended. Tryst was not fooled by the act. “Like Lenyx said, that’s an invasion of privacy. I don’t want you or anyone else dissecting my private thoughts.”
“I knew it!” Tryst shouted, sure she’d nabbed him, but enraged by his deception. “You did something, didn’t you? I saw your face when Lenyx met the human leader. You knew something would happen. What did you do, Kazi?” she yelled, grabbing Kazi underneath the seams in his uniform and shaking him violently. “Answer me! Are you responsible for Lenyx’s death?”
Kazi looked sheepish. “That’s absurd,” he said, trying to cower away from her.
“Then show me!” Tryst ordered, her anger mounting. “Let me see for myself what you’ve done.”
“I haven’t done anything,” Kazi said. “You’re acting crazy… no, worse than crazy: you sound like one of them. You’re acting human!” Scorn laced his words, yet he put his hands up, seemingly in an effort to placate Tryst. It didn’t work, but she let go of his uniform all the same.
“Milliken, look at her,” he pleaded to his crewmate. “She’s lost control. These human emotions… they’ve infected her. She’s not fit to lead, but I am.” Spit flew from Kazi’s mouth as he spoke. His eyes gleamed. Something feverish lingered behind them.
Milliken stepped toward them. “Don’t you dare,” Tryst warned. Kazi’s words rang true, in part. She was overwhelmed by grief and anger, unbefitting one in command. Kazi, too, seemed afflicted by this human disease. Only Milliken kept his composure. But Tryst would die before she relinquished command to either of them.
“Maybe I should leave you alone for a while,” Kazi said, perhaps sensing no assistance from Milliken. Alone, he wasn’t a match for Tryst. He turned his back to her and was punished for it.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Tryst asked, driving her heel into the back of Kazi’s knee. He stumbled forward with a grunt, barely maintaining his balance. Before he could turn to face his aggressor, Tryst spun him around herself. “We’re not done,” she said, hissing the words.
“Okay, okay. Let’s be reasonable,” Kazi said, his pleas sounding weak and lowly. Was he terrified of her? She hoped so. He had every reason to be.
“Let’s say you’re right,” he said. “Let’s say I did something to cause the President’s death. I would never have done anything to intentionally harm Lenyx. If, and I stress ‘if,’ I had something to do with what happened, Lenyx’s death would have been the result of an unfortunate miscalculation. What are the odds of a bullet entering his open mouth? How could anyone have predicted that?”
Tryst’s face teemed with anger. Her fists were balled up tighter than a pill bug. It was no longer a question if she was going to strike, but when. She could feel herself losing control, her mind giving way to the rage inside her.
Kazi shrunk, his hands raised defensively. His words came out in a flurry, undoubtedly spawned from fear. “He was shot by a human’s bullet, remember? You were there. You saw what happened. I didn’t kill him.”
Nothing Kazi could have said would have tempered Tryst’s anger. “I’ll kill you!” she shouted, sweeping his legs out from under him. Instinct took control. An animal inside her awoke. Tryst was atop Kazi before she even realized what she was doing, her hands wrapped around his throat and squeezing hard. When she realized her actions and the circumstances resulting from them, she had no regrets. Instead, she squeezed harder.
“Lenyx was too weak to lead us, to do what needed to be done,” Kazi said between coughs. As forcefully as Tryst choked him, he should not have been able to talk. Yet he was. “The humans did us a favor.”
His words provoked Tryst further. She squeezed with all her might, hoping his head would come off in her hands. Uncontrolled violence was not the Symorian way. Her people had abandoned their savagery, united for survival. It wasn’t their way, but at that moment, Tryst liked it.
She tried to dig her nails into Kazi’s skin, but the force caused them to break against his impressionable but impenetrable flesh. She felt Milliken grab her from behind, pulling her off Kazi. She clawed at the arms around her while simultaneously kicking at Kazi as she was dragged away from him. Her crewman would not release her.
“Milliken!” Tryst shouted. “Let me go!”
“Kazi, get out of here,” Milliken said, holding Tryst firmly as she wriggled and squirmed for her freedom. She kicked her heels backward into her captor’s shins without effect.
“I’ll calm her down,” Milliken said. “You should leave now. Come back later, when things are… quieter.”
Kazi stood. He appeared to be crying, but Tryst couldn’t be certain. All she knew was that she wanted his head.
Kazi scowled at the both of them. He tried to speak through coughs. “These humans… They’re weak, pathetic, undisciplined. We could rule them. In fact, we should rule them. Are you too foolish to see that?”
Tryst refused to let Kazi escape punishment, one worthy of his crime. Her efforts to break free from Milliken’s hold intensified. The rage pushed her body to new limits. She felt strong, tireless. But Milliken was too strong. She couldn’t break free. If she only could have, Tryst would have done all she could to relieve Kazi of his miserable existence. She spit the foul taste in her mouth onto Kazi’s face.
“Go,” Milliken said.
Kazi wiped the spit from his cheek. His body trembled. His shoulders heaved. That gleam behind his eyes shone brighter. Even then, she saw his mind working, the beginnings of schemes that could bode well for none. He turned and disappeared into the woods.
“Let me go,” Tryst said, redirecting her ange
r toward Milliken as she dug her elbows into his chest. She dropped from his bear hug, but he latched onto her wrist, stopping her from going after Kazi. She spun around to face him, seduced by a ferocity not yet yielding. Her fist was raised, ready to strike. But she held it back in spite of her instincts. Milliken was not her enemy.
“Please, Tryst,” he said. “You’re in command now. We need you to lead us, not divide us. We still have our mission…”
“Our mission?” Tryst could hardly believe what she was hearing. Milliken was as stubborn as a child, still clinging to that false hope. “Our mission is simple: to survive.”
“There’s still a chance that—”
“There is no chance,” Tryst interrupted. “Even if our home hasn’t been completely destroyed, our ship is no longer operational. Do you think we’re going to find the parts we need on this planet?”
“Kazi could fix it with our help, I’m sure. Or he could fix the com. We could call for help. Leave this planet.”
“Let it go, Milliken. It’s useless. Don’t you see? We failed them. Even if our kin are still alive, they’ll die waiting for their disgraced heroes to return. We failed them. We failed ourselves.”
“We can’t just give up,” Milliken said. His frail optimism in their bleakest moment was a slap to the face of reason.
“We’re not giving up. I’m changing our directive. We now have but one: survival. Not only ours but our race’s. We’ll succeed at this directive no matter the cost to this planet or its indigenous life.”
Tryst examined the strong, durable Milliken. He was more powerful than a Clydesdale and sleeker than a dolphin. Survival of the species required procreation. She needed a replacement, someone to fill the hole left by Lenyx’s absence. He’ll have to do, she thought, her incisor digging into her lower lip.
“To fulfill our new directive, you will take over as my suitor. We shall consummate our bond and begin breeding this evening.”
Milliken appeared at a loss. “I’m honored that you would choose me, but Kazi outranks me and is more qualified to be your mate. Custom dictates a pairing between the two of you.”