by Jason Parent
Tryst teleported to the far room. The pool’s acid glistened, illuminated beneath the starlit sky. Kazi pranced along the rim of the pool, spritely and carefree, as if he felt he were invincible. But if Kazi had taught her anything, it was that Symorians were not invincible. For some, death had come far too soon and far too easily. For one, it couldn’t come soon enough.
Kazi leapt down when he saw Tryst, perhaps recognizing his own mortality. With an upturned palm and an arrogant wave of his fingers, Kazi beckoned Tryst to attack him. She was more than happy to oblige, ready to end his twisted ambitions even at the cost of her life. She crouched and disappeared, reappearing immediately beside Kazi. Surprise washed over his face. Did he really think he was the only one who could do that? It no longer mattered. She had him.
Without hesitation, Tryst propelled herself airborne, a bodily projectile aimed at a deadly angle. She speared Kazi like a linebacker does a wide receiver foolish enough to leap for a catch thrown over the middle. She connected hard, knocking the wind clear out of him, dazing him, she hoped. Her trajectory had been well calculated, jetting them over the rail and tumbling toward the acid-filled waters. There, death awaited both of them. Tryst welcomed it.
With Kazi in her arms, Tryst had cleared the railing with ease. But the splash she longed for never came.
She collapsed on top of Kazi, landing in what appeared to be desert sand. Hot sun blistered on her back, its light temporarily blinding. Kazi must have recognized his peril and teleported them to the first place that entered his mind. He must not have had time to alter the angle of his descent; Kazi broke both their falls. Tryst came down heavily on him. The sand cushioned some of the blow, but not all of it. She could hear his breath escape him.
After a few seconds, her eyes adjusted. Tryst had no idea where in the world she might have been transported, nothing but dunes around her in all directions. But she wouldn’t allow herself to be disoriented. She still had Kazi in her arms. She still had the advantage, and Kazi, for the moment, seemed stunned.
Plan B, then, she thought, recognizing the opportunity, a chance she might not get a second time. Teleporting the both of them directly into the pool crossed her mind, but Tryst would first try it Jonathan’s way.
In an instant, she was back at the pool with Kazi. Several loud clangs popped around them. Jonathan’s traps, six giant steel bear traps, had been set and activated, each hitting their mark. Tryst had teleported herself and Kazi on top of them, placed at the warehouse for that very purpose. Had Kazi been too full of himself to notice?
As if they were ravenous, the traps closed around Kazi’s limbs, waist, and head. Their angry teeth chomped against his body. They were not strong enough to pierce his skin, but bolted to the floor, they were strong enough to hold him temporarily motionless. Kazi squirmed, confused and helpless, his teeth gnashing angrily at the air.
Tryst was pleased with herself. She had bested Kazi, something she would have expected of herself in a fair fight. But on this planet, anything seemed to go. Tryst had to be smarter than Kazi. She felt she’d succeeded.
Her aim, too, had been perfect… almost. She’d made a slight miscalculation. Her right leg was caught in a trap along with Kazi’s. She had no time to waste with it, knowing that Kazi would soon figure a way out of the traps.
Lieutenant Westfield, she thought, calling out to the human with her mind. Do it. Do it now!
Tryst didn’t know how much time she had. Somewhere in her battle with Kazi, she rediscovered her will to survive. But oblivion was coming. She had just called out for it. She’d escape it if she could, but accept it if she couldn’t.
She reached for the trap that clamped her leg. It chomped down hard, but Tryst only needed it to give a little, just enough to wiggle her leg free.
Under normal conditions, Tryst had more than enough strength to pull back the trap. But her awkward position atop Kazi and the angle of her pinned leg forced her to reach behind herself at a debilitating angle to open the trap. Her circumstances made a moderate task infinitely more difficult. Kazi’s squirming beneath her made it damn near impossible.
“Well played,” Kazi said with a laugh, his head crunched in a horrific brace, an ear folded over itself beneath metal teeth. His arms and legs were likewise contorted and immobilized. All humor quickly left him, replaced by a toddler’s tantrum. His body tensed. His anger mounted. The floor shook beneath his wrath.
“You know this won’t hold me much longer,” he said, his teeth grinding.
“It won’t have to,” Tryst replied, pushing at the clamp binding her to her enemy with all her might. It creaked open ever so slowly, but it was enough. She shimmied her leg back and forth, pulling it out as though it were a cork stuck halfway out of a wine bottle. Her efforts not wasted, Tryst wrestled her leg free. Once out, she slammed the snare shut, re-trapping Kazi’s leg.
She was about to teleport away when a thought forced her to reconsider. Tryst needed to be sure Jonathan’s plan had worked. She had to witness its culmination. She needed to see his death for herself.
By the time Tryst noticed that all of Kazi’s clamps were retracting as if by their own volition, Kazi’s left arm was free. His right arm followed, then the clamp around his waist began to recoil.
“No,” Tryst mouthed, unsure how she should react. “Not yet.”
Kazi struggled to sit up. He snarled, releasing a low growl that wouldn’t quit. His eyes were wild, his actions unpredictable. The clamp around his head tore from the floor. When Kazi was seated upright, he crudely ripped the clamp from his head. He laughed, holding the steel monstrosity in his clenched fist.
“It was a good try,” Kazi said. “A valiant effort, but you failed.” He threw the trap at Tryst. She dodged it easily, but by the time she turned back to Kazi, he had worked his left leg free. He reached for the last trap. Tryst smiled.
“You’re too late,” she said. She could hear their deaths coming.
“Am I?” he asked, his right leg still clasped to the floor. “Too late for what?”
Tryst ignored the question. She closed her eyes. For only the second time since they had landed on this God-forsaken planet, Tryst felt at peace. The blast would wash them clean, erase their sins. She was ready to bathe in its warm fires, the extinction of her kind but a moment away.
But the explosion didn’t come. The fleeting peace she felt departed, in its place only darkness. She opened her eyes.
“Where did this come from?” Kazi asked as arrogantly as ever. He laughed. His hands were raised in the air, his eyes locked on the object above them. There, a few feet above Kazi’s head, a massive bunker-buster missile hovered stationary in the air, set to explode on impact. The letters “U.S.A.” were printed across its side. It never hit its target. Its warhead never activated. Jonathan’s plan had failed.
Worse, it had armed Kazi with a weapon capable of bringing about hundreds if not thousands of deaths. Tryst gasped. She wondered what he planned to do with the missile.
And if she could stop him.
“Look, Tryst, a firework,” Kazi said, his face marked by lunacy. Everything seemed to be a game to him, with countless human lives his playing pieces.
“What do you think I should do with it? Drop it on the Pentagon? How about the White House? Maybe if I sent it over to the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun it would have a more worldly impact. I bet those North Koreans would be really uptight if an American bomb went kaboom on their leader’s home. Iran might be good, too, if you believe all its hype about its nuclear capabilities. I bet this world burns a whole lot faster than our own.”
“Put it down, Kazi,” Tryst said, her voice sounding defeated. She felt like she was.
“Yeah, you’re right. I should probably just return it to its owners. After all, it’s the right thing to do.”
The missile began to spin in the air. Slowly, delicately, Kazi rotated it, aiming the explosive back out the way it had entered.
Tryst had had enough. Kazi would do what he
would with the missile, but as it captivated his attention, she would do what she could with the pool. It began to quiver. Then, it started to rise. Kazi didn’t seem to notice. Humans would probably die before she could dump the acid on them, herself as well as Kazi. Death comes to all creatures. It appears our time has come. A quick shower and that would be that.
Suddenly, Tryst felt another’s presence. Startled, she dropped the pool back onto the floor. Kazi paused, the slamming of the pool apparently alerting him to Tryst’s activity.
“I was afraid this might happen,” Jonathan said, bursting into the room.
“Lieutenant Westfield,” Tryst said. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“What’s that you’ve got in your hand?” Kazi asked. Tryst hadn’t noticed anything in Jonathan’s hands until Kazi mentioned it. Then, she saw what Kazi saw, a small black mechanism hidden almost entirely by Jonathan’s grip. Tryst guessed that Kazi was doing the same thing she was doing, probing the Lieutenant’s mind for information. But Jonathan revealed the answer himself.
“A remote detonator,” he said. “Tryst, it’s time for you to go. Now!”
Kazi looked terrified. His right leg still pinned to the ground, he couldn’t teleport. The missile began to move. Kazi’s mind was fast, but if he had tried, he wasn’t fast enough to stop Jonathan from activating the warhead.
“No!” Tryst screamed as she teleported beside Jonathan. “You can’t. You’ll die!”
But it was too late. Jonathan had pressed the button.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
News of the explosion at an abandoned commercial property on Route 9 in Concord interrupted Connor’s nightly dose of the Late Late Show. He hadn’t been able to sleep the last four nights, not that it had been any different the countless nights prior. But the matter keeping him awake was novel. Connor worried about Tryst.
The explosion came as no surprise to Connor. He’d been waiting for news of the warehouse since he last left it, sent away despite his protests. The devastation was minor, a demolished building and parking lot with no reported deaths. Connor had expected much worse.
Reports blamed the explosion on a gas leak, but Connor knew better. He pressed his face against the television, scanning the rubble for any sign of a body, a hand reaching out of the debris, a leg amid splintered wood. But even the building’s foundation was unrecognizable, the property nothing more than a crater pilfered with shards of the former structure. Connor doubted even a Symorian could have survived a blast like that. Even so, he still wished he’d been there.
With no word from Tryst, he began to worry. Connor thought to drive to the warehouse. Maybe he could sneak by the military presence, an unusually large force dispatched to handle a suburban gas leak. And the government wonders why nobody trusts it. It needs to tell better lies.
He had just gotten into his car when he received the message. A soft voice called out to him from only God knew where… Tryst’s, he supposed, though at first it was too faint to be certain. When he was certain, Connor was grateful that it was her voice that played momentarily in his head and not the other’s.
Connor? Her voice echoed as if it were wading through a crowd, seeking him out. It grew louder, more focused. Connor knew Tryst had found him.
She said only two words. They weren’t poetic, they weren’t inspiring, but to Connor, they were enough.
I’m okay, she whispered inside his mind. Then, Tryst was gone. Connor went back inside. He lay on his bed, letting his head sink lazily into the pillow. For the first time in many nights, he fell fast asleep.
●●●
“Connor was worried. I let him know I was okay.”
As the cool water splashed around her, Tryst knew she was alive. She’d thrown herself around Jonathan as his handheld detonator beeped, fearful of the blast to come. And it came quickly, the percussion before the fire, sending her and her suicide-bombing companion flying. She had offered her body as a shield from the blast, not expecting either of them to survive it.
As they hurled through the air, she could feel a wave of heat approaching behind her. With it would come their ending. Rubble pelted her back, all fire and embers. Tryst remembered thinking of the only place she’d been able to find tranquility on this planet. As the fires of Hell reached out to engulf them, she twisted so that Jonathan was above her, ready to take the brunt of the fall that was to come. Nearby, Kazi screamed.
A moment later, Tryst heard nothing. She found herself submerged, her hands still latched around Jonathan’s back, clutching his shirt. They were deep underwater, and Jonathan was motionless, dead weight. Tryst wondered if he was dead already.
With no time to waste, she swam for the surface, pulling Jonathan’s limp body along with her. The surface breached, she heard Jonathan gasp for air. Tryst let out a gasp of her own, with it releasing a fraction of the stress and heartache she’d accumulated. For some reason, she knew not why, she was thankful Jonathan had survived. She let him catch his breath as she notified Connor of her safety.
After Jonathan finished wheezing, his eyes took in the environment around him. He splashed noisily, turning and twisting in the water as he came to grips with his circumstances, his instincts, she assumed, causing him to tread water.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
“I don’t appear to be, thanks to you. Where are we?”
“Quebec.” Tryst nodded toward the shore. The broken remains of the cabin she’d once loved lay scattered about the beach. She had traded one demolished building for another. The wound left from the cabin’s destruction still stung as though it were fresh. Though Tryst didn’t think it possible, she hated Kazi all the more. She was glad he was dead.
“That makes sense,” Jonathan said, his sarcasm evident. “Thanks for grabbing me by my clothes, by the way.”
Tryst smirked. She hadn’t thought of that. She just wrapped herself around him and got him away from the blast as quickly as she could. He had no idea how lucky he was to be alive, having by sheer luck avoided an explosion and her touch, information Tryst thought best to keep secret.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of the water. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
“Just drop me off by the nearest highway. Someone will pick me up eventually. If I’m spotted by police, they’ll probably assume I’m a survivor of the massacre that occurred last time I was here, which isn’t too far from the truth. They’ll get me home, the slower the better for your sake.”
“You’re soaking wet. I can’t just leave you in the middle of nowhere.”
“You can, and you should. It will give you time to disappear and me a chance to come up with a story to explain why I’m still alive and a thousand miles from my post.”
Jonathan sighed. He looked at Tryst with the eyes of a wounded dog. “I won’t forget what you did. Not only did you save my life, but you upheld your end of the bargain. I’ll uphold mine. I’ll tell them you were injured in the explosion, that you died from your wounds, died saving me. I doubt they’ll believe me without a body, but—”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Tryst smiled sincerely. She didn’t doubt his words but could hear in his tone the message that hid beneath. They’ll send someone after you, she inferred. Jonathan would do what he could to stall it. She believed he’d make every effort. But no matter how deliberate Jonathan would be, he couldn’t mold steel without lighting a fire.
“Do you think he’s dead?” she asked, no longer certain.
“He should be. A blast that close from one of those missiles would reduce a tank to its component parts.”
Tryst sighed. She didn’t share Jonathan’s confidence. She had been partly exposed to the blast herself and remained unscathed. But Jonathan had done all he could. Sparing him additional worry, Tryst kept her doubts to herself.
Grabbing Jonathan’s sleeve, Tryst teleported them to the brush beside the nearest highway, just as Jonathan had suggested. “Are you sure about this?” she asked, thinking the Canadia
n highway an unwise and unsafe place to leave an American soldier, regardless of his combat and survival training.
“Yeah.” Jonathan offered her a smile. “If I can’t make them believe you’re dead, I will never stop trying to make them believe you’re a friend. I hope you have someplace you can go. Probably best you don’t tell me. You’re a hero, Tryst. I wish you the best of luck.”
A hero? Tryst sure didn’t feel like one. She shunned the title. She’d have traded it for solitude, no matter how brief, if she could. Friendless and surrounded by enemies, Tryst just wanted to withdraw from human civilization.
“Goodbye, Lieutenant,” she said. The image of Jonathan standing roadside, soaking wet in full uniform, burned into her mind as she vanished away. Unlike so many others in the last month, it was one of the few images Tryst wanted to remember.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Six months later.
Not a day went by where a black sedan hadn’t been parked somewhere on the street outside Connor’s house. Connor was no fool; he knew they belonged to federal agents, hiding behind sunglasses and windows as darkly tinted. It was such a regular occurrence that Connor began to recognize faces. He even made up names for some of them, like Mr. Serious for the man whose face never changed its sullen expression or Agent Smith for the guy who looked like the villain in The Matrix.
Sometimes, Connor would even wave or shout, “Hello.” As of yet, no agents had responded. They never showed him any real interest. It wasn’t him they wanted. They wanted the alien that got away. They wanted Tryst.
But Connor wasn’t about to give her up. He’d found her the place not long before the warehouse exploded, but well before he had disgustingly obvious surveillance placed on him, and that didn’t include all the eyes he couldn’t spy spying.
To find Tryst her hideaway, Connor had used library computers under a false name a few towns over. He purchased the property through several straw men, never visiting it or communicating directly with anyone about it. The land had been subject to foreclosure, so Connor was no more impersonal than the bank he bought it from, the latter only caring about receiving its money, not from where it came.