by Travis Hall
They coughed and crawled away, finally collapsing next to each other, as the car exploded. Blood covered their legs and arms. The air was filled with the smell of burning gasoline and metal. They sat up and stared at the black, charred car that was still consumed with fire.
After a minute, a low growl echoed in the foggy night. It was a mix between a lion’s snarl and the sharpness of an eagle’s screech. The sound pierced more deeply than the cold air. Allora got onto one knee, scanning the black forest. Her heart beat faster, the adrenaline pumped harder, and her whole body became a sponge for the hadrons around her. She could feel the energy pulsating in the cold earth below. Fear no longer dominated her emotions. It was a secondary feeling that had been beaten out through constant training and preparation for this moment.
“Jenny, you were right.” Allora knew that what she said next would change this girl’s world, but she needed to get her out of there or else she could die. “Those creatures that you saw last year were real. They are not of this world, and neither am I.” Jenny just stared at her for a few seconds, expressionless.
“OK, now you’re just messing with me,” she said, getting to her feet. “Seriously, my car just blew up and you decide that now is a good time for ridiculous jokes?” She walked off toward her car to search the charred remains.
“Jenny, stop.”
“You know, timing really isn’t your strong suit.”
Allora noticed something moving through the fog. The red eyes were barely visible, moving methodically, like a hunter stalking its prey.
“Jenny.” Allora’s voice became tenser.
“I mean, really? Maybe my therapist was right. At least I’m not as crazy as you. That’s for sure.”
Allora sprinted, seeing only a small window of opportunity. She tackled Jenny just as the beast with the red eyes leapt toward the unsuspecting girl. The two rolled through the underbrush. The beast struck the black, burning metal, pushing it ten feet through the forest. It squirmed on the ground, trying to gain its footing. Allora’s purse had flown into the street, and the jade cube rolled along the icy asphalt, making a clinking sound. A very strong gust of wind blew down through the area, catching the cube and forcing it farther along the road. Strangely, the cube began to glow green with each gust of wind.
Allora got to her feet, focused hadrons within her palms, joined them into one large ball, and pushed the ball at the creature. An explosion of purple light lit up the forest and sent the creature flying through the air. Its body shattered a tree trunk, and the tree crashed into the road. As the wind stopped blowing, the jade cube stopped glowing. Allora pulled Jenny from the ground, grabbed the jade cube, and ran down the road. Both girls yanked off their heels. They didn’t notice the painful sting of the ice-covered ground on the bottoms their feet.
“What the hell is going on?” Jenny screamed as they sprinted through the dark, cold night.
“I tried to tell you.”
“Oh my God, oh my God.” Jenny started to hyperventilate. “I’m going to die!”
Her paced slowed, and she bent over and threw up. Allora rolled her eyes and went back.
“We don’t have time for this,” she said, yanking at Jenny’s arm. Another growl sounded in the night. This one was deep and loud, as if it were a call to others. A second later, a chorus of animal noises responded. “We need to go now!”
The sharp gravel was cutting their feet, and the frigid air took their breath away, slowing their progress. Allora glanced back and saw bobbing red lights through the forest behind them. There was also something moving in the forest ahead. They were surrounded. Jenny and Allora stopped, unsure of what to do next. Allora got into a fighting stance, preparing herself for the inevitable confrontation. She had never fought this many before, but that wasn’t going to affect her resolve. She focused the hadrons into her right palm and pulled it back.
Jenny’s mouth dropped. “You are an alien!”
Allora shook her head and pushed Jenny into the ditch to get her out of the way. Eight sets of eyes were converging on the purple light. As the beasts came into view, two of them launched into the air. Allora noticed a figure in her periphery launching upward as well. The glint of a sword caught her attention. The figure sliced down into the body of one of the creatures, halving the attacking beast. Blood and guts riddled the forest floor. Allora struck the other with her hadron burst, knocking it sideways into a tree. The figure in front of her was dressed in black, with a long ponytail tied tightly.
Three more beasts came at them. The woman leapt up, launching a barrage of yellow hadron bursts into the creatures. The woman spun wildly, flying over one beast while attacking from above. A dark-red liquid streaked across the ice as the creature went limp while sliding on the road, stopping at Allora’s feet. It was the first time Allora noticed its features. Its black fur was long, and it had feathers covering its back. The lion-like creature was huge, measuring about eight feet long and five feet high. Looking up, Allora watched the woman elegantly fighting off the remaining three creatures. They circled her, looking for their moment to strike. Allora squinted her eyes, trying to make out the woman’s features.
She had a skin-tight bodysuit with a helmet and mask. The bodysuit seemed to have scales, which would make it effective against the slice of a sword or other types of weaponry. The mask looked menacing. A black visor allowed for her vision, and the sleek helmet gave further protection. The sword began to glow yellow, illuminating the battle. One beast lunged forward. The woman did a backflip onto the creature’s back, puncturing its heart with her sword. The other beasts attacked. Allora ran forward, shooting her own hadrons and hitting one of the creatures before it had a chance to bite down on the woman.
The remaining creature paced back and forth, surveying its prey, and then took off into the forest. The figure in black got down from the dead beast and walked up to Allora. The visor slid up, the mouth guard slid down, and then the helmet rotated back into the shoulder plate, revealing a familiar face.
“Mom?”
“You all right?” Milly asked, prodding and picking at every one of her daughter’s limbs. Allora was covered in blood, cuts, and ice burns. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“What about her?” Allora asked, pointed to the shocked blond girl who was hiding in the ditch and shaking uncontrollably.
“You’re not going to harvest my organs, are you?” Jenny said, shaking from both the fear and the cold. “If you even get near me with a probe, I’m going to scream!”
Allora chuckled at the thought. She even debated whether or not to have a little fun with Jenny, but her mother’s disapproving glare made her think otherwise.
“Everything is going to be fine, Jenny,” Allora said. “We are not going to hurt you. Trust me. We are the good guys.”
Jenny slowly inched out of the ditch, maintaining some distance. Milly led them to her car and quickly sped off toward their home. After they got to the house, Jenny sat on the couch with a blanket and a cup of tea. She didn’t take her eyes off them, though. Allora ignored her and went to the kitchen.
“Mom, you were amazing!”
Milly smiled slightly, handing her daughter a cup of tea.
“I mean, the way that you flew through the air and how you took down those things was just so incredible. What were those nasty animals?”
“Sphinx,” Milly said, walking into the living room and motioning her daughter to take a seat. “Somehow they were able to get through a hole in our perimeter. A few were taken out, but that pack slipped through.”
Jenny was tense, listening intently. Her hands shook as she took rapid sips of tea.
“You are safe,” Milly said, placing her hand on Jenny’s knee. “You don’t have to be scared anymore.”
Jenny sat back, lifting her eyebrows.
“Safe? My car just blew up, I was attacked by a huge cat that I thought only existed as a statue in a desert, and I’m sitting next to two aliens who can shoot colorful lightning out
of their hands. And you think I’m safe?”
“Well, when you put it that way, it does sound a little intense,” Allora said.
“I gotta go,” Jenny said, throwing off her blanket. “I need to go home. I just don’t know what to think right now. Please, can I just go?”
There was a knock at the door, and Jenny raced to it. Sheriff Newton stepped in, and Jenny hugged him profusely.
“Sheriff, these people are aliens. I just got into a car accident and was attacked by these terrible creatures, and these people—oh God, please get me out of here.”
“Everything is going to be all right, sweetheart,” Sheriff Newton said, placing a band around the panicked girl’s wrist. Jenny’s eyes rolled in the back of her head, her knees buckled, and she dropped. Sheriff Newton caught her fall. She dragged her to an armchair and gently placed her feet up. Milly dressed her wounds, put a blanket over her, and then went to the kitchen to get the sheriff some tea.
“What did you just do to her?” Allora asked.
“She’ll be fine. It’s just a memory inhibitor. Jenny will wake up tomorrow with a slight headache and only a distant dream of what happened. We did it to her before, when she was in the hospital. Unfortunately, the effects aren’t permanent, which means she may begin to remember things again.”
“It would probably be a good idea to take her to the hospital,” Milly said, handing a cup of tea to the sheriff. “You can just say that she lost control of the car on the ice, and she hit her head.”
Just then Bartimus came through the kitchen window.
“Can’t you just use the door?” Milly asked.
“Too predictable,” Bartimus said, taking a bite out of an apple on the kitchen table. “I hate sphinx. They are such disgusting things.”
“How did they get through? I thought that our perimeter defenses were impregnable.”
“The air defense is, but there is too much ground to cover for those types of creatures. Somehow they knew exactly where our screens and sensors were. They overloaded the hadron generators in multiple spots, at varying distances, and at exactly the same time.” Bartimus stood on the chair, his knees bent. He continued to eat the apple, staring blankly at the floor. “It’s highly suspicious, Milly. The only point I see for sending these creatures was to test our capabilities.
“I don’t like this at all,” Sheriff Newton said. “Maybe we should ask the guardian council for more security personnel.”
“You may be right,” Milly said. She paced along the carpet with her hands on her hips.
“What if they were testing our defense codes?” Bartimus said. “That would explain the scanners that I found on one of the sphinx corpses.”
“Those are the same as…,” Milly asked, stopping her pace and staring at Bartimus. “Could those security codes leave Shangri-La vulnerable?” He nodded. “You’ve got to get back there and change them. And you need to do it without anyone finding out.”
“Are you kidding me?” Bartimus said, leaping from atop the chair to the loveseat. “That would be treason. If anyone found out, I could be put in jail for the rest of my life. Can’t we just tell the council?”
“No,” Milly said. “It’s probably the same person who had Pipmar assassinated, which means that the person is in a place of power within the guardian government. No, this must be done in secret. Bartimus, if we don’t do anything, Salazar will be able to take out the main defense of this planet in one fell swoop. Shangri-La is really the only hope that Earth has against a complete invasion.”
Bartimus leaned back into the loveseat, looking down at the ground.
“I can probably set up a security patch into the exterior shield defenses of the mountain using a complex variance algorithm without raising any red flags. That would at least protect it from an air attack. I can’t do anything with the interior checkpoint security protocols. They have the servers so tightly guarded that no one can even access them without authorization from all members of the council.”
“That’ll have to do,” Milly said. “Also, I need you to increase the interior defenses here. Should anything get through, we’ll have a backup system in place. And go find those giants. They should have been on patrol.”
“Right away,” Bartimus said. He saluted Milly and then leapt out of the kitchen window.
Sheriff Newton took Jenny to the hospital and had his deputies follow up and take care of the creatures’ bodies.
“What do you think?” Allora asked, taking another sip of warm tea and rubbing the frigid ends of her toes.
“I think that things are getting far too complicated,” Milly said, flopping down on the couch. “I think that our presence in Shangri-La has left us too exposed.”
“So then what do we do now?”
“If someone is trying to figure out the perimeter’s weaknesses, then they may be planning to infiltrate the town.” Milly thought for a minute. “We need an exit strategy.”
chapter
FIFTEEN
Kiss
“We interrupt your regularly scheduled show to tell you about breaking news from the Korean Peninsula,” the newscaster said as Allora, Milly, Aunt May, and Bell sat watching intently. “We go now to our foreign correspondent, who is in Seoul, South Korea, to give us more information. Jerry?”
“Thank you, Sally.” The picture went to a blond man with a microphone who was standing on a road while tanks drove behind him. “Reports are coming in from North Korea stating that there has been a massive explosion at the imperial palace in Pyongyang. The South Korean prime minister has denied any involvement in the blatant attack at the heart of the city. They have mobilized the entire military in response to a buildup at the DMZ along the border to North Korea. Diplomats from many governments have urged both countries not to do anything rash until an investigation can be made into who has perpetrated this attack. We are not sure about the exact yield of the explosion, but reports are stating that it was large enough to take out the entire palace. We are not sure whether the supreme leader of North Korea was one of the casualties, but if he was, military leaders in North Korea may look to the south for revenge.”
“What is the mood there in the city?” Sally asked.
“Very tense,” Jerry replied. “I spoke with a store owner who has boarded up his windows and is taking refuge in a storm shelter in his basement. There are some very frightened people here right now. I think that everyone hopes there will be dialogue in the coming hours that will hopefully stop any sort of military campaign in retaliation for an attack that came out of nowhere. The American president has condemned the attack, and the Chinese are advocating for an investigation. Both militaries have been put on high-alert status.”
“Well, we hope you stay safe, and keep us updated,” Sally said, drawing a nod from the split screen of Jerry.
“And so it begins,” Aunt May said with a blank look.
“What do we do?” Allora asked.
“We prepare ourselves for war,” Milly said.
The following weeks were a mix of Katie’s sarcastic, brash comments about her now-infamous kiss with Marcus and Tanner completely ignoring her in the halls at school. Allora wouldn’t give up, though, and kept harassing Katie as she was walking through the parking lot.
“Why are you so mad at me? I didn’t do anything. He’s the one who kissed me!”
“You really think that that is the reason I’m so pissed off at you? Over a kiss?”
“Why else would you be mad?”
“You are unbelievable!” Katie said, continuing to walk away from Allora toward the old wishing well.
“I’m unbelievable?” Allora stomped ahead, grabbing Katie’s shoulder and spinning her around aggressively. “I was almost killed by large lion creatures, and you haven’t said anything to me. With everything that’s going on right now, you are being a terrible friend.”
Katie’s anger boiled over, and she pushed her hands forward, feeling the energy flow from within. A gust of wind took Allora o
ff her feet, knocking her back onto the hood of a car and smashing the windshield. From her pocket, the jade cube flew out and began to glow, sending a beam of green light toward the wishing well for a half a second.
Katie’s mouth opened wide as she stared down at her hands. Allora struggled to get off the car, clutching her sore back. Katie ran over.
“I’m so sorry,” Katie said, grabbing Allora’s arm and pulling her from the shattered glass windshield. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
“At least you’re starting to absorb more hadrons,” Allora said, rubbing her bruised lower back. “Can you at least tell me why you’re so angry?”
“Tanner found your note. He told me that you are thinking about running away.”
Allora’s eyes grew wide. “He wasn’t supposed to read that.”
“Then it’s true.”
“Katie, if I’m gone, then you all are safe. You heard the Shifter last year. They want me. They are coming here for me. I can’t have everyone’s death on my conscience. I just can’t do it, especially since I don’t even know why.”
“It’s not your decision to make, though,” Katie said, grabbing Allora’s shoulder. “Those in this town sacrificed a lot to keep us safe, and it’s not just you they are protecting. This whole thing is greater than we even realize.”