by R. E. Rowe
Jayden noticed that a distant light in the sky appeared as suddenly as it had the night before. Even the slight breeze returned. “It’s time,” he whispered.
Parker moved closer to Cleo and gazed upward. “Get ready, Cleo. They’ll be here in a minute.”
“Who will?” she asked.
“We’ll all see soon enough," Parker said. “Just stay close.”
The three of them huddled together and watched the small pinpoint of light grow.
Jayden squinted as the dark, house-sized helicopter from the previous night came into view. The craft landed in the identical place as before. The door opened, and he watched the same small-framed, elderly, African-America lady with the large, black-rimmed glasses step outside. She gestured for the crowd of teens to follow her into the ship.
“Who’s that?” Cleo asked.
“Come on,” Jayden said as he started towards the ramp.
Parker and Cleo joined him and strolled with the crowd up a metal ramp and through the door of the giant, bladeless craft.
Jayden jumped when the heavy door closed in a blast of air once everyone was aboard, sending a windy echo through the large, circular room.
An instant later, the older lady disappeared in a flash of white light.
Jayden scanned the circular room that looked twice as large as his garage back home. Metallic spiral stairwells reached up to a second level metal walkway. On the second floor, he noticed colorful blinking lights, displays with changing red digits, and projections of sensor gauges and fluctuating numbers. Hundreds of holograms beamed from panels surrounding the second level that reminded him of pop-up windows from a World Corp game.
They were in! Step one—accomplished, Jayden thought. He was about to give Parker a fist bump, but noticed his best friend had the same wide-eyed and confused expression as the other hundred teens from the observatory’s parking lot. “Look for Nora,” he whispered to Parker.
Parker nodded and searched the crowd while Jayden did the same.
Suddenly, the lights went out, and a few of the other recruits screamed. Jayden felt Cleo grab his arm when a flickering image, resembling a funhouse mirror, appeared over their heads. He watched as the image stretched into a ribbon that shifted and moved like a strip of a Mylar balloon in a light breeze.
When Jayden peered again at the second level, he made out other shifting shapes. Each one sort of resembled a person, but he couldn’t focus on any of their faces. His eyes went wide when the image overhead morphed into a slim man well over six feet tall.
The man wore a tight black jumpsuit like the bus driver, but Jayden thought this guy looked seriously scary. His smooth bald head, boney jaw, and tiny nose appeared to stretch long, then contract.
The mysterious guy flickered and buzzed on a floating platform above them.
Jayden’s stomach sank as he peered at the man's eyes. Amber reptilian pupils with unnatural vertical slits shimmered gold. He was willing to bet the dude on the platform was no human being at all.
An avatar hologram? Jayden wondered. Maybe the creature was part of World Corp’s elaborate marketing hype for the new game. He watched in amazement as the hologram creature floated above the crowd. Now and then, the image buzzed and flickered, confirming that it was a high-tech projection.
“Welcome!” the large hologram thundered. The floating dude’s lips puffed on a stick the size of a long carrot as though it were a cigar. Several of the recruits around Jayden and Parker pointed at the hovering hologram and began shouting questions: “Who are you? What is this place? Where are we going?”
“Silence!” the hologram roared.
Jayden froze, as did Parker. The perimeter of the circular room lit up and more long, flickering holograms fluttered around the room. Jayden could tell they were shifting images of creatures, but he couldn’t make out their details. He was seriously impressed. World Corp’s new 3-D tech was amazingly immersive.
The whispers around the room turned to shouts, and a couple of kids laughed. Jayden noticed one of them was Creep. “Laughing is seriously a bad idea,” he muttered.
“I said ‘silence!’” This time, the hologram’s booming voice made Jayden’s ears ring, vibrating through his entire body.
The room went silent, but Creep continued to snicker. “Screw you!” the kid shouted.
The creature overhead ignored the hecklers. “My name is Nuk’ana. I am ruler of the Space Expeditionary Combat Command, known to us as Space Command. You will call me Leader from this point forward.”
Jayden tapped Parker. “Nuk’ana? Stupid name.” He shook his head. “Pretty cool tech though.”
Parker made a jerky nod and continued searching the room. “Feels like we’re really inside a game.”
Jayden watched carefully as Nuk’ana paused and relit his smoking stick. The creature puffed on it as though he were a locomotive, then cleared his throat with a gurgle. “If you fail to obey the—”
“This is all a big World Corp trick,” Creep said. “Someone’s playing a lame joke on us. Way lame.” He raised his voice. “I need a smoke. Yo, Leader, can you pass me whatever you’re smoking?”
“Shut up,” Cleo murmured. “Do you want to get us all killed?”
Creep smirked at Cleo. “Oh, please. This corporate Muppet doesn’t scare me.” Creep yelled louder. “Eat this!” He waved his middle finger at the hovering creature. “Yo, pasty-face, down here!”
What an idiot, Jayden thought.
Suddenly, a flash of bright white light hit Creep full-on with an ear-piercing pop. The unruly kid vaporized into a black dust cloud about a foot away from Jayden.
Jayden nearly fell over. He grabbed his ears when Cleo screamed bloody murder and noticed Parker had gone white as a sheet. A disgusting smell hung in the air. It reminded Jayden of Fourth of July fireworks with a touch of barbecue.
He felt queasy and he saw Parker gag. At least half of the teens around the room started crying. One even threw up. Game promotion? No way.
When Jayden removed his hands from his ears, he heard a deep, clicking purr and a hiss coming from Nuk’ana. The creature’s distinct jawline stretched and extended as if it was made from rubber. “Silence!”
Nuk’ana screamed with extra bass.
The entire room went silent.
“Good,” Nuk’ana said, and then took a long drag from his smoking stick.
Jayden struggled to get enough air as he watched Nuk’ana’s jawline transform into something alien then back to a natural, human-like shape.
Nuk’ana grinned. “I have your attention now, yes?” Nuk’ana raised his voice and twisted his face, making his golden eyes shimmer like a snake about to strike. “Fail to obey my rules, or to listen when I speak, and you’ll become well acquainted with the vacuum of space or vaporized like your disrespectful friend, Johnny McFeay, aptly known as Creep.”
Jayden rubbed his face. “Space?” he wondered.
Nuk’ana cracked his jaw without moving his head, then continued. “Poor Creep. He won’t be missed. Now, I shall begin once more, yes?” A gurgling sound escaped the creature's throat.
Leader’s voice changed. This time it was full of excitement as if Jayden was listening to a science fiction infomercial. “Welcome, Space Fighters! I am pleased to tell you that your international assignment was . . .”
The creature paused, lowering its voice, its words drawn out. “All . . . a . . . lie. You are now traveling in space, deep into your solar system.”
Whispers spread through the crowd like wildfire.
Cleo leaned over to Jayden. “What’s going on? I mean, we’re not really in space, are we?”
“Silence!” Nuk’ana sucked harder on his smoking stick and exhaled a cloud of smoke. A hiss followed every few words. “You are our newest group of Earthling space fighter recruits. Today is the first day of your new life. From this point forward, you will be told what to do, what to say, and where to go. You will be told when to eat and sleep. If any of you disagree, you
shall meet the same fate as your late friend, Creep, yes? If you didn’t know him, it doesn’t matter now, does it?” Nuk’ana’s laugh sounded hideous with deep vibrato, originating from his core.
This is so not good, Jayden thought. He refocused on their mission and shifted into planning mode. Find Nora. Find the tablet. He repeated this over and over to himself.
Nuk’ana's laughing faded with a snort. Muffled cries came from two husky boys next to Jayden. Both of them looked like they could easily kick Jayden and Parker’s butts, but they were crying like kindergartners.
The smell of BBQ lingered in Jayden's nose. For a second he thought it smelled of hickory, just like the popular BBQ rib place in downtown Los Gatos. Then he remembered it was Creep and nearly puked again. No doubt they needed to work out an escape plan, but first they had to find Nora.
“If you little Earthlings haven’t noticed, we are on a spacecraft. Our allies, known as the Ga3si, donated this technology to our cause.”
Jayden tried to absorb the bizarre facts that Nuk’ana was spewing.
“They go by the name, Ga.” Nuk’ana took a long, deep inhale from his smoking stick. Smoke exited from slits below the creature’s chin.
Well, that’s a cool party trick.
“The Ga provide us with technology to travel the vast distances between the stars,” Nuk’ana continued.
“Their tech is . . . out of this world.”
Nuk’ana laughed and opened his arms wide. “The place where you stand, you feel no movement, yes?
Again, Ga technology. But know this for certain: we are indeed flying.”
Jayden didn’t get what was so funny. He nudged Parker.
Parker’s lips tightened, and he frowned. He waved off Jayden and continued searching the room.
“We call the craft you are on a UFO, mostly because you Earth children call them UFOs when you see one flying in your sky. On this craft, you’re in an atmospheric gravity bubble, isolated and stabilized. The bubble is configured to simulate Earth’s gravity and oxygen levels.”
Nuk’ana paused for a long moment and leaned down as if his hologram was talking with someone that they couldn't see. He stood straight and cleared his throat. “We will be at the space base on Saturn’s moon, Dione, in ten minutes.”
Dione? Like the password? He took stock. One, they were in space. Two, they were nearly to Saturn, as in planet Saturn!
“That’s right,” Nuk’ana said. “We’re already orbiting Saturn. Fast, huh?”
Everyone in the room seemed to be holding their breath.
“Now you’re starting to understand,” Nuk’ana said.
A white light lit up a nearby wall, where at least two hundred phones, tablets, and laptops rose from the floor. The mobile devices had been stacked high near two open doors spaced about ten feet apart.
Jayden’s eyes went wide. He searched for his dad’s tablet in the pile.
Nuk’ana pointed. “Stack your mobile devices along the wall. They won’t work where you’re going. Girls proceed through the left exit door, and boys take the right.” The creature’s voice lowered. “You will be given what you know as earplugs. Push them into your fleshy ears. They are universal translators with a few million languages configured to help your tiny baby brains.”
Leader sucked on his smoking stick and blew out puffs, waiting for his recruits to move.
No one did, including Jayden.
“Move, Earth children!” he thundered, forcing smoke out of his tiny nose and chin slits.
Cleo took off toward the left exit door. Jayden and Parker caught up with her.
Jayden stepped in close and whispered, “If you meet a girl who goes by the name Nora, or Zeekmo, tell her Jayden and Parker are coming to rescue her.”
Cleo stopped and turned to Jayden. “Who—?” she whispered with a puckered brow. “Rescue?”
“A girl named Nora or Zeekmo,” Jayden repeated. “Just tell her we’re coming for her.”
Parker lowered his voice. “She has a birthmark that looks like a wasp tat on her lower back.”
Cleo’s eyes shifted out of focus, her breathing short and rapid. She was coming apart at the seams.
“Breathe, Cleo. We’ll figure out a way to help you too,” Parker said.
They walked together, joining the enlistees around the mobile devices.
Cleo nodded, then placed her mobile phone on the stack and followed the other girls through the door.
Jayden scanned the stacks closer. Jackpot! The unique mini-tablet was near the bottom of the girls’ pile.
Cherry red. The red gloss paint with gold specks was one of a kind. “Nora had been here!” he thought, and tapped Parker’s shoulder, then pointed in the tablet’s direction.
Parker didn’t hesitate. He stumbled on purpose into the neatly arranged piles near the left door, pushing over three stacks of mobile phones and tablets. The devices crashed on the floor causing everyone near them to scatter.
In one quick motion, Jayden snatched the red tablet, lifted his sweatshirt, and secured the tablet into his tshirt’s hidden rear pocket. “Thank you, Rosa,” he muttered.
Parker jumped to his feet, dusted himself off, and glanced at Jayden.
Jayden jerked his head upwards as aliens morphed from fluctuating silver ribbons into real-life physical forms with smooth white faces, boney jaws, and tiny noses. Some were tall, some short, but they all had Nuk’ana’s steely, amber snake eyes and scaley skin. Each one began shouting commands and directing traffic.
One creature pushed Jayden and Parker behind the boys rushing to get through the open door.
Jayden grabbed Parker’s arm and whispered, “We have some serios problemas, amigo. ”
Chapter 9
Jayden and Parker walked through a second set of doors into a large, octagonal-shaped room lined with marble walls that rose up three stories. A smooth, silver dome in a spiral design shimmered brightly over their heads, but it was the flaming torches on the walls that caught Jayden’s attention.
The door slammed shut behind them and the floor jerked upward.
Jayden quickly realized they were in a room-sized elevator. He exchanged glances with Parker.
By the expression on Parker’s face, he could tell they were both thinking the same thing. Their situation was still going from bad to worse.
When the floor rattled to a stop, two retractable doors opened at one end of the room. Jayden scrutinized what resembled another blurry, funhouse mirror stretched into a silver ribbon. When the shape abruptly morphed into a tall, thin creature in a black uniform resembling Nuk'ana, Jayden's heart climbed into his throat and his legs went rubbery.
The creature’s creepy reptilian eyes matched the leader’s eyes, but as it stood near the entrance gesturing for them to follow, its mushy, wet dog smell confirmed this creature was no hologram.
Jayden joined a single file line that had formed, and Parker marched behind him.
The alien shouted in a combination of gibberish and hisses. Jayden had no clue what the alien was saying, but it had his attention. As he reached the strange-looking being, it handed him two earplugs. Jayden squeezed both of them. They looked and felt like the soft earplugs his mom used to block out his dad’s snoring. He pushed one in each ear.
The plugs felt as though they’d come alive, automatically implanting deeper into his ear canals.
Jayden winced. “So gross,” he whispered. But as weird as they felt to him, the translators didn’t hurt at all.
The alien’s nonsense noises suddenly changed to English. “Let’s go, boys. This way. Move along,” the creature said.
Jayden stared at the alien. It was like watching a foreign karate movie where the words weren’t in sync with the actor’s lips at first. But before long, the creature’s lips somehow synched up. Cool trick, he thought.
Jayden and Parker’s line of teens followed behind another tall creature dude with a limp. The creature was en route to a large, open hallway with white metallic wal
ls, at least twice as tall as Jayden.
When they marched to the end of the hallway and stepped through the entrance, the room opened up into a massive space four times the size of a typical classroom. Jayden could see himself in mirrors that lined the walls and covered the ceiling twenty feet above his head. He seriously felt trapped in a twisted funhouse.
Against the far wall, four amber-eyed creatures stood behind empty leather chairs. Each one wore a solid black uniform and a black hat with SECC printed in white, and gripped an electric hair clipper with three webbed fingers. At the end of each finger, Jayden noticed a dagger-like fingernail that could inflict serious pain.
The four aliens grinned and turned on their buzzing hair clippers at the same time. “Line up in front of a chair, Earth children!” one yelled over the drone of the clippers.
Oh, man, Jayden thought. Not the hair. He touched his shoulder-length, sandy-blonde strands. Parker looked at him and shrugged.
The aliens pushed the boys into four lines, each one starting in front of a chair. Jayden was first up in his line, and Parker stood behind him.
“Welcome to Space Command Basic Training, Earth babies,” a shape-shifting alien called from the far side of the room. “You will be prepped and fitted in our standard blacks. Then training will begin. First child in each line, take a seat.”
Jayden didn’t move and neither did the other recruits.
The creature hissed. “Sit on your brains!”
Jayden figured he meant butt though he wasn’t about to correct the overzealous alien. He dropped into the seat facing Parker, who gave him a cheesy grin and a reluctant thumb’s up.
Jayden gagged when he took a whiff of the alien’s body odor. It reeked. Sort of like leather polish with a drop or two of clorine. The alien immediately pushed the vibrating buzzers across Jayden’s head. Thick locks fell to the floor. Jayden jerked forward, but the creature shoved him back into his seat and snarled. It dug its claws into his shoulders. He got the message.
The alien was not only shaving his head bald, the creature was doing it like his dad’s gardener mowed the lawn every Saturday afternoon: one row at a time. He felt a sudden stick like a bee sting in his left arm.