Duel Citizenship

by Cassandra Chandler

  He shook his head and lifted his hands briefly. “It wasn’t me.”

  “This is so weird. Maybe I did it in my sleep last night.” She closed the door and shook her head. “But that would mean I’m closer to actually being a crazy lizard lady than I’m comfortable with.”

  He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, drawing her closer. “You’re not crazy.”

  “Thanks, but I’m starting to wonder. I mean, who would come in here just to clean up and put my food away? And why am I the only one who ever sees the lizards in my tree?”

  “I’ll help you figure it out.”

  He had a feeling when they did, his own questions would be answered. Like, who had used an antigravity field to save her life the day before and why?

  Her head was resting on his chest and she was facing the window. A wave of tension flowed through her body. They had become so attuned, it was impossible to miss.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “Shh. Don’t move.”

  He didn’t know what threat they faced, but followed her order.

  “It’s Cerulean,” she said. “Don’t scare him off.”

  Ari’s heart thudded in his chest. Cerulean was one of the lizards she had told him about—the ones that sounded like Vegans. But that was impossible. Vegans weren’t real. He turned his head as slowly as he could, trying to not scare whatever it was away.

  Sunlight fell through the leaves, casting a scattered pattern of light and dark on the creature’s bright green scales. It crawled from the windowsill onto the counter, staring at them.

  She hadn’t exaggerated its size. It would be just about three feet tall standing on its hind legs.

  As it dropped to the floor, another lizard came through the window. And another.

  “Please tell me that you see them too,” Sarah said.

  “I see them.” He could barely believe it himself.

  Each had stripes along their sides in vibrant colors. Cerulean’s were a rich blue like the sky outside. The second one to come through the window had somewhat greener-blue stripes.

  And then there was Violet. He recognized her immediately from Sarah’s stories. How could a lizard look…angry?

  Their stripes didn’t catch his attention as much as the strip of silver running down their backs, along their limbs and tails, and framing their rib cages in a design that was too even to be natural.

  Exo-suits. Just like in the legends.

  “Solar Cross…” he whispered.

  He let go of Sarah and slowly lowered himself to one knee, placing his right hand flat on the ground and bowing his head in a show of supreme respect.

  “I know I told you not to scare them off,” Sarah said, “but this is a little—”

  She let out a little choked sound as the first Vegan, Cerulean, rose onto his back legs. Ari dared to lift his gaze enough to watch.

  The silver stripes along Cerulean’s back and limbs popped off of his body, becoming three-dimensional as they remolded themselves to his frame. He opened frills along his jaw and neck, which pushed his eyes forward so that his face looked flatter and more humanoid. His tail lifted behind him, flicking back and forth as he stretched into a bipedal posture.

  “Stars…” Sarah whispered.

  The other two Vegans stood as well, transforming in a similar fashion, until they were standing before them, looking like three tiny green people. With tails. And scaled skin.

  “Greetings, Sadirian,” Cerulean said. “We are pleased that you honor us in the presence of our chosen Protector.”

  Ari had to swallow a few times before he could speak. “Protector?”

  “Yes.” Cerulean smiled, his green lips stretching across his face. “The Earthling Sarah.”

  Oh shit.

  Chapter Ten

  “So, I’ve gone insane.” Sarah let out a high, brief laugh.

  “This isn’t what you think,” Ari said.

  He was still kneeling in front of the lizard people.

  Lizard people.

  “There are three little green men standing in my kitchen.”

  Cyan cleared her throat. “Actually, Violet and I are female. We thought we had conveyed this.”

  Sarah laughed again. She remembered Cyan making little irritated clicks at Sarah the first few times she’d used the wrong pronoun. They had been communicating without her even realizing it.

  Violet let out a string of clicks and hisses that sounded distinctly unhappy.

  Sarah was trying to maintain some sense of being grounded. She focused on her feet and the cool wood of the floor. On Ari’s reassuring presence close by.

  “Enough.” Cerulean cut Violet off with a brusque wave of his hand. His tiny green hand.

  “Speak so that Sarah can understand you,” Cyan said.

  Violet narrowed her eyes, her lips curling back from the rows of sharp teeth filling her mouth. She’d never been shy about communicating her dislike of Sarah.

  “What is your deal?” Sarah said. “Why do you hate me?”

  “You are not worthy.” Violet bit out each word.

  “Harsh.” Sarah shook her head, which was a bad idea. The room was already kind of spinny. “Wait, worthy of what?”

  In a much gentler tone, Cyan said, “Of being our leader.”

  “What?” Ari’s voice joined with Sarah’s as they spoke at once.

  Ari sprang to his feet, shaking his head. “Sarah is an Earthling.”

  “We are now of both Vega and Earth, as is Sarah,” Cyan said. “She is the bridge between our two sentient species.”

  Ari shook his head. “There’s been a mistake.”

  “There is no mistake,” Cerulean said. “She made the offer. We have accepted. Earth shall become our new home.”

  “What offer?” Ari and Sarah again spoke at the same time.

  “You welcomed us with your placard,” Cerulean said. “And then confirmed the invitation through your digital communications.”

  “Wait, wait, wait.” Sarah put her fingers to her temples, pinching her eyes shut for a moment. “Are you talking about email?”

  She thought over the emails she had sent and received in the past few months. A few from friends, most from family, and some business emails…between her and the mysterious tech company that had out-of-the-blue started helping her because they were fans of her restaurant.

  “Are you my new web designers?” Her voice rose to a ridiculous level by the end of her question.

  Cerulean stood straighter, the blue stripes along his sides becoming more vibrant. “Our efforts have improved your operations on many levels.”

  Ari finally turned his full attention back to her. “Did you hire them to build some sort of web device for you?”

  “No,” she said. “I mean… They made me a new web site.”

  He stared at her blankly.

  “You know, on the Internet?” she said.

  “Of course.” He did that thing where he smiled just a moment too late. “The Internet.”

  She might have bought it if he hadn’t added that last part. But he was trying too hard.

  He didn’t know what a web site was. When they’d first met, he’d been confused about what The Old Oak was—he’d seemed confused when she offered to make him food after entering a restaurant.

  The markings on his watch, little things in their conversations from the night before. And most telling of all, how Cerulean had called him “Sadirian”.

  “You aren’t human,” she said. “You’re an alien. You’re all aliens.”

  “I can explain.” Ari was holding his hands out toward her as if to fend off an attack. He didn’t bother trying to deny it.

  “We are aliens,” Cerulean said. “We were clear. And you expressed your desire to join us.”

  Ari’s eyes grew wider. “You did what?”

  She started to laugh. She couldn’t help it. Nothing felt real, and the situation was utterly ridiculous.

  She remembered the email correspondence s
he’d had—apparently with Cerulean. It had been a back-and-forth conversation that had been going on for a few weeks now. Sometimes he’d been sitting on her shoulder during their exchanges. He must have had a way to reply instantly, reading her messages over her shoulder.

  He had seemed pretty squirmy sometimes.

  She laughed harder as she imagined him with a teeny phone, typing in messages behind her back so she couldn’t see. The laughter kept building, becoming impossible to control. Her sides hurt, tears streamed down her face.

  “I said…” She gasped for breath, trying to force out the words. “I said I wanted to be a vegan.”

  Ari turned to Cerulean, and said, “A vee-gan? What is that?”

  “An Earthling who does not consume the flesh or by-products of other animals.” Cyan sniffed. “It is spelled in a similar manner to Vegan.”

  “Similar?” Violet hissed. “The word is identical.”

  “It was capitalized on the placard outside her dwelling and in her digital communications,” Cerulean said. “We have the records. In English, proper nouns are capitalized, therefore, she was referring to a native or citizen of the Vega system, rather than the more general earth term.”

  Sarah was holding her sides. The room was spinning. She might be hyperventilating.

  All of this was because of a sign she’d put out to advertise a change in her menu and a type-error in an email she’d written hastily.

  “Vegans Welcome,” she said, wiping at her eyes as fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. She mispronounced the word on purpose, just to hear out loud what they had interpreted. “Vay-guns.”

  “She obviously meant these…vee-gans,” Ari said. “This will not stand with the Coalition.”

  “Do not lecture me on Coalition law, Sadirian.” The frills around Cerulean’s face started to quiver.

  Sarah couldn’t believe that the tiny lizard was able to intimidate Ari, but the huge Sadirian bowed his head.

  Oh my God. I had sex with an alien.

  “I mean no disrespect,” Ari said. “I speak only as a warning. I’m here because we detected odd readings around this tree and the surrounding area. Earth has been invaded by many trespassing sentients who mean to harm both Earthlings and their ecosystems.”

  “Wait…” Sarah shook her head. “What now?”

  “There’s a group of us working for Earth’s Department of Homeworld Security,” he said.

  “Homeworld?”

  He nodded.

  Her laughter had vanished. A heavy dread filled her stomach instead.

  “I think I need to sit down,” she said.

  Ari picked her up and set her on the counter, keeping his hands on either side of her legs. She could feel him staring at her, but didn’t want to meet his gaze. Not yet.

  She took a few deep breaths, then said, “When you came into the restaurant yesterday, looking at your watch, you were investigating those weird readings.”

  “Yes.”

  There was that honesty again. She had thought he was being straightforward with her. Now she knew he was hiding so much.

  “Is that why you stayed last night? To get a closer look at the place?”

  “What? No. Not at all. Sarah…” He gently lifted her chin.

  His eyes were such a warm brown. Lines of concern were etched at their edges, and the smile she found so disarming was gone. He was frowning deeply instead.

  “I stayed because I wanted to be with you. To be closer to you. It wasn’t about my mission or any of this.”

  “You didn’t tell me you were an alien.”

  “I couldn’t. And would you even have believed me?”

  She might have. She’d had suspicions.

  The important thing was that she believed him now. She pushed away the tangled knot of emotions twisting through her stomach, and focused on what she understood about the situation. What she knew about him.

  He had run to her aid when she’d fallen. He’d been overjoyed to talk about ways to improve the quality of life for the people in her community, advising her to increase her efforts to help more people. That made more sense now.

  Everything did.

  He wanted to help Earth, to help humanity. Little snippets of their conversation came to mind, where he’d spoken vaguely about where he was from. He’d let her know that he wanted to help others as well. His people. Other…aliens.

  She was in this deep. Little green men—and women—were standing in her kitchen, looking to her to see what would happen next. They were probably wondering if her mind would snap at the sudden weight of all this knowledge. Maybe they thought she’d be too afraid to do anything but what they told her to. Violet would probably love that.

  But that wasn’t Sarah.

  She slid off the counter and turned to face Cerulean. She took Ari’s hand in hers. Standing next to him helped bolster her confidence.

  “Why are you here?” she said.

  Cerulean folded his hands in front of his green body. “You invited us.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Why were you on Earth in the first place?”

  “We were not on Earth.” Cyan stepped forward. “We were in the vicinity, conducting scans of your planet. We, too, noticed many sentient species, and thought perhaps Earth had begun inviting beings from other planets to live here. The ecosystems are diverse and the planet is rich in resources. It could easily support a variety of lifeforms.”

  Violet let out a string of hisses and clicks. Cerulean wheeled around and responded in kind. Their tails lashed back and forth behind them, and they crouched as if they might attack each other.

  “Peace.” Ari held up his free hand. Both reptiles turned to him, their eyes narrow, pupils barely visible slits. Ari tightened his grip on her hand and shifted closer to her.

  Hadn’t she seen this in some movie? It hadn’t ended well for the human…ish people. Even tiny lizards—in large groups—could take down large prey. There were at least a dozen Vegans living in her tree.

  And of course they were carnivorous, based on how the bugs had vanished after they moved in.

  “Let’s focus here,” Sarah said. “You were poking around and saw my sign and decided to move in. Is that about right?”

  “Yes.” Cerulean cast a withering stare at Violet, who merely hissed at him in response. “We have observed your planet, your peoples, and their diverse civilizations. Earthlings are on the cusp of a great shift. One that we wish to nurture and support. And we have been wandering for too long. We wish to rebuild our society, integrating with the Earthlings when their own development can handle it.”

  “Solar Cross…” Ari said.

  Sarah was missing something. Something big, based on how Ari was acting. “There are only a dozen of you. How do you expect to rebuild your society?”

  “There are a dozen serving the Protector and living with you in your tree,” Cerulean said. “The rest are on the Life Ship.”

  Ari gasped. “The Life Ship is here? On Earth?”

  “It is cloaked, off of the coastline.”

  Sarah shook her head. “How many people are we talking about?”

  Accidentally inviting a dozen lizard-aliens to live with her in her treehouse was one thing. Letting Earth be overrun by an alien species was another.

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand.” Cyan looked at the ground, her shoulders hunched. “Our entire population.”

  “That’s all?” Sarah’s heart lurched in her chest.

  It didn’t matter that they were vastly different life forms. She could feel Cyan’s grief—all of their grief—filling the tiny room.

  There were cities in Florida with more people than that. And that was just one state in one country on one continent.

  “Our numbers have dwindled over the generations,” Cerulean said. “If we can not make Earth our home, we face extinction unless we take…drastic measures.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. Neither did Ari, based on the way he stiffened beside her.

/>   Violet, on the other hand… Violet might be smiling.

  “We have been looking for a new home for a very long time.” The hope in Cyan’s voice, and the way she wrung her tiny hands in front of her chest, were heartbreaking.

  “I don’t have the authority to invite you to live here,” Sarah said. “I mean, surely you’ve spoken with our leaders or something.”

  “You are a leader in your community, and that is where we will begin. When we have finalized our arrangement, we will approach your First Contact committee.”

  Her mind was reeling. She wanted to help Cerulean and his people. But she had no idea what she was getting herself—or her planet—into.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Ari took in a quick breath, his grip tightening on her hand. He leaned down so he could whisper in her ear. “Say ‘yes’.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Ari had a plan. The beginnings of one, anyway. A plan that would protect Earth and the Vegans. Moons, if things worked out as he hoped, he and Sarah could help all of the sentients in the galaxy. All of them.

  But only if she could trust him.

  “How can I do that when I have no idea what I’d be saying ‘yes’ to?” Sarah said.

  “I know more about the situation than I can tell you right now.” He turned to her, resting his hands on the warm skin of her arms. “But you know me.”

  “Do I?”

  He winced under her glare, but then nodded. “I understand that this situation must be overwhelming. Believe it or not, I feel it, too. But there’s much at stake here. More than you can imagine.”

  “Oh, I can imagine a whole heck of a lot.” She looked over at Cerulean and his group, a tiny furrow between her eyebrows.

  She was focused on protecting Earth and helping the Vegans. He was sure she would do what she could to that end. But she didn’t know that the Reckoning was on its way.

  Earth was about to become the center of alien politics, one way or another. If the Vegans wanted to offer Earth their protection, it might give the Coalition pause. It could buy them time to figure out some other solution than letting the entire human populace know about aliens and all the promises—and hidden dangers—they presented.