by M. K. Krys
“Woo-hoo!” Everleigh whooped.
Beacon joined in her celebration. But then he thought of Arthur lying curled on the ground back in that UFO, and his mirth died. How could he be celebrating when his friend was left behind? When all those other brainwashed kids were trapped?
Everleigh seemed to sense his change in mood and grew a somber expression.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” she said.
Beacon nodded.
“Okay, bring me up to speed,” she said after a moment.
Beacon didn’t even know where to start. Everything was so screwed up.
He gave her the full update, telling her everything from his and Arthur’s investigation into the vitamin injections, to their mission through the ventilation shaft of the church, to their discovery of Arthur’s underwater-breathing abilities, ending with the chase through the alien craft.
“So Dad’s in on it?” she asked incredulously.
Beacon nodded.
“I can’t believe it.”
“He admitted they gave him a shot. He acted like it was such a privilege, too.” Beacon shook his head. “You should have seen him. You remember when the CDC discovered that new strain of the West Nile Virus?”
“And Dad was lit up like a Christmas tree for a month?”
“It was like that,” Beacon said. “He was pitching it to me like he actually thought I’d be on board with this.”
“How could he do this to us?” Everleigh asked.
“I don’t know,” Beacon said, “but it doesn’t matter now. We just need to figure out what we’re going to do.”
“We need to call the cops,” Everleigh said.
“You mean Sheriff Nugent? The guy who shot me?” Beacon shook his head. “We’d just end up locked up in that place again.”
“Then what?” Everleigh said.
“We drive this thing to another town. The cops can’t be crooked everywhere.”
Or could they? Beacon remembered his dad saying he worked for the CIA. If the Central Intelligence Agency was in on it, they were doomed.
“Our best bet is going to be going far, far away from here. Back to LA, even. I’m sure Uncle Stanley and Aunt Deb would help us,” Beacon said.
“With what money?” Everleigh asked.
“Don’t you have anything saved?” Beacon said.
“I have twenty-five dollars.”
“That’s it?” Beacon cried.
“Why, what do you have?”
“Uh, like five bucks,” he said sheepishly.
More like none. Money management wasn’t his strong suit. He couldn’t ignore the siren song of convenience store candy.
Everleigh raised a knowing eyebrow. “It doesn’t matter anyway. My money is at the inn, and there’s no way there aren’t aliens waiting for us there in case we go back, so that’s out of the question.”
“Okay, it’s not a big deal,” Beacon said, as much to calm himself as to calm his sister. “We can hitchhike if we have to. We just need to get out of here. We’ll work everything else out later. We’re going to get Arthur and the rest of those kids out of there and take down those aliens.”
The pod jolted. Beacon wasn’t expecting it, and he banged his head against the window.
“Ow!” he cried, clutching his temple. “Be careful!”
“That wasn’t me,” Everleigh said. “Something hit us.”
“What do you mean something hit us?”
“I mean, something hit us.”
He whirled around, squinting into the water, but he couldn’t see anything. But something was out there, somewhere.
“Go faster!” Beacon cried.
“I’m going as fast as I can!”
The pod jolted again. Beacon pressed his face up against the glass. Nothing but blackness stared back at him. Then suddenly there was a streak of movement right outside the window. Beacon jerked back, following the wake in the water as it moved around to the front of the craft.
“Uh, Ev?”
“Yeah?”
“We have a problem.”
Beacon pointed through the front window. A creature had materialized in front of the pod, its massive tentacles undulating in the water. Everleigh’s eyes widened, and she wrenched the pod sharply upward just as the alien struck out with a heavy tentacle.
It was too late. It clobbered the side of their vessel. Beacon banged his head against the glass again, tasting coppery blood inside his mouth.
“What the heck? Is it trying to kill us?” As soon as Beacon said it, another thunderous boom struck the back left corner of the vessel. A crack splintered up the metal frame. Water rushed in from the gap as an alarm began blaring.
“It breached the air locks!” Everleigh said.
Frigid water gushed in, swirling up around Beacon’s bare ankles.
“We’ve got to surface,” Everleigh said. She leaned back in her chair, pulling the steering column hard toward her chest. But unlike before, when the pod jerked at every slight movement of the controls, the craft angled painfully slowly toward the surface, chugging against the current like a person trying to run through water. And they were only going to move more and more slowly as the pod took on water.
“This isn’t working,” Everleigh said.
Beacon cast around for something, anything that might save them. But it was useless. This pod would be their tomb.
“We need to jump out.” Beacon unclicked his seat belt.
“What?” Everleigh screeched. “I’m not going out there with that thing! And we’re in the middle of the ocean.”
“We’re going to be at the bottom of it if we don’t get out of here.”
Another jolt struck the pod, this time on the driver’s side. Everleigh jumped out of the way as the window splintered like ice breaking across a lake. The crack in the body had widened from the second blow, and water moved in fast from both points; in moments, it had traveled from Beacon’s kneecaps to his waist, swirling around him like an icy whirlpool. Beacon leaped up, and Everleigh frantically whipped off her harness and jumped onto the seat.
“Can you open the hatch like you did before?” Beacon asked Everleigh.
She nodded, a stunned expression on her face.
“Okay. Good,” Beacon said. “When it opens, you need to swim up as hard as you can. Push off the pod to get momentum.”
Everleigh swallowed.
“You’ll be okay. You can breathe underwater, remember?”
“Unless being electrocuted messed with that.” Everleigh said.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter anyway.” Beacon said. “We have no choice but to ditch this thing.”
“What if it gets us?” She looked out into the black water with huge, horrified eyes.
“It won’t,” Beacon answered with more confidence than he felt. “It’ll be too distracted attacking the pod.”
Beacon almost said goodbye, but that felt too much like admitting they were probably going to die. So he just said, “See you at the top.”
Everleigh pushed the button on the dash, which was just millimeters away from being flooded. The hatch glided open. Beacon took a deep breath, just as water overtook them.
The cold was shocking, paralyzing Beacon on the spot. Through the dim electronic light of the dashboard, he saw Everleigh flailing wildly in the water. He gave a sharp tug on her shirt before diving through the hatch out into the open sea.
It was intensely dark outside the pod. He felt more than saw Everleigh slide out of the hatch after him, then launch herself off the metal body of the pod, her sneakers scraping his arm as she torpedoed up. Beacon followed suit, pushing his body hard and fast, his hands steepled toward the surface as he cut through the water.
He kicked his legs as hard as he could, but the cold made his movements frustratingly slow,
as if someone had hit the slow-motion button on his life. Pressure compressed his chest. Despite the bone-chilling cold, his lungs felt as though they’d been set on fire. The urge to breathe was overwhelming. He frantically kicked through the water, but it wasn’t enough. They were just too deep. Black began to creep into the edges of his vision. Any moment now, and he would be forced to breathe.
Beacon couldn’t believe that this was how it was going to end. That he would die under the ocean, just like Jasper had.
But soon, light fractured off the water and hope shot through him.
They must be getting close.
He burst up, using the last of his withering strength to overtake his sister. But just as he was reaching for the surface, his fingers caught on something.
At first he thought he’d become tangled in seaweed. But that didn’t make sense. They were too close to the surface. And then he saw it: the frayed edges of a rope. He realized it was a net, just as it closed around them.
15
Beacon jerked back like a fish snagged on a hook. He kicked and punched, but his arms only tangled further in the thick rope net. Before he knew what was happening, they were spit out into a room. There was a loud whoosh as all the water sucked out from drains in the floor. Beacon and Everleigh sat gasping and coughing in a wet heap on the metal floor of another craft.
Everleigh pushed herself up raggedly, doing languid laps around the tiny room and beating her fists on the walls and the door.
“I knew we should have stayed in the pod!” she yelled.
“Oh yeah, because we would’ve been way better off in a pod that was flooding with water,” Beacon shouted back.
“At least we would have had a chance!”
“Us versus a monster squid—I’m sure it would have been a real contest. And how about a thank-you?”
“For what?”
“I just saved your life!
“Saved my life? I saved your life. If it weren’t for me, you would still be inside that UFO. You never would have figured out how to drive that pod!”
“If it wasn’t for me, you would still be a Gold Star!”
The twins glared venom at each other.
Beacon opened his mouth to argue more, but all at once, the heat went out of him. He just couldn’t be mad at his sister. Not after everything they’d been through. All they had was each other.
“I’m sorry,” Beacon said. He wilted to the floor. A violent shiver racked his body. He was so cold. He cradled his fist to his stomach; the cuts on his knuckles pulsed with pain.
Everleigh sighed.
“I’m sorry, too.” She sat down next to him and put an arm around his shoulders. Her teeth chattered hard, her lips taking on a bluish hue.
For a while, they said nothing. But Beacon knew what they were both thinking. This was it. The last time they would be Beacon and Everleigh. Would they be turned into Gold Stars, or would the aliens just get rid of them? They certainly hadn’t seemed like they wanted to keep them around ten minutes ago, when they were clobbering their pod.
The slow rush of water came into focus.
“Remember when Dad rented that RV?” Everleigh said after a while.
“And forced us to visit all the sights of small town America?” Beacon said.
Everleigh smiled dimly. “Like that giant penny, and that little village where water runs backward.”
“I forgot about that place,” Beacon said. “That was pretty cool.”
“Jasper was so mad,” Everleigh said. “He didn’t talk for, like, a whole week.”
He hadn’t wanted to leave his friends behind for an RV trip with the family.
“Not until that amusement park in Delaware or whatever,” Beacon said. “I remember riding the Twister with him, and he was trying so hard not to smile and then he just couldn’t help it. We laughed so hard.” Beacon felt a smile curl the edges of his trembling lips, even as a mournful feeling gathered in his chest. Those were good times. Jasper was alive. Everleigh was okay. They were all together. They hadn’t realized how lucky they were then. That in a few years, everything would change. Beacon would give anything in the world to go back to that stupid little RV without air-conditioning or running water and just freeze time.
The craft slowed to a stop. Beacon’s breath hitched in his chest. The twins shared wide-eyed glances.
There was a clunk, clunk, clunk from the other side of the door. The kids scrabbled back like crabs until their spines hit the opposite wall. The door slid up toward the ceiling. Beacon had been expecting to see the UFO’s sterile white halls, or even that delivery-bay area where they kept all the pods. But when the hatch opened, they were outside. The craft floated a few feet from a rocky stretch of shore Beacon didn’t recognize. Across from them, an unmarked black van was parked in waist-high yellow grass, its side door open and waiting. Their dad stood knee-deep in the murky water. A gull cawed as it circled and swooped in the dark clouds above him.
“We’ve got to hurry,” he said, jerking his head at the van. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
Beacon started to climb out, but Everleigh grabbed his arm. She glared at their dad.
“Why should we trust you? You’re the one who got us into this situation. You’re being controlled by them.”
“Because I just stole an alien submarine for you,” he said. “And they’re going to notice it’s missing any minute, if they haven’t already. We need to hit the road before they realize we’re trying to escape. I can explain everything later.”
Everleigh crossed her arms. “How about now.”
He sent a pained look to the road, then heaved a sigh. “Listen, all I can tell you is that I really believed it was the right thing to move here. I wanted to keep you safe, by any means necessary, even if that meant taking away your control. But then I saw them chasing you—saw that Sov striking your pod again and again. It didn’t make sense—they could have killed you! The influence of the antidote has its limits. I couldn’t let any harm come to my kids.” He shook his head, a stupefied look on his face. “I don’t know what to believe anymore. All I know is you two are the most important things in the world to me, and if I don’t have you, I don’t have anything. I won’t be manipulated by anyone who would try to harm you like that. Now, I can understand if you never trust me. I’ll even understand if you never want to talk to me again. But if we don’t get out of here, the Sov will catch us.”
Beacon and Everleigh exchanged a glance before they climbed out of the craft, splashing after their dad and into the van. Once their dad got into the driver’s seat, the vehicle jerked into motion.
The twins scrambled to latch their seat belts. It was a mark of just how scared their dad truly was that he hadn’t waited to make sure they were properly belted before taking off.
The world streaked past outside the windows, a blur of green and black. Beacon’s heart pounded in his ears. He swung around wildly in his seat, searching for cars, trying to see if anyone was following them.
“What about Arthur?” Beacon asked when he could finally think straight. “My friend is still back there.”
The van careened around a corner, kicking up dust.
“Arthur Newell?” their dad said.
Beacon sat up straighter. “You know him?”
“I heard people talking in the cafeteria. It sounds like they’re very interested in his immune abilities.”
Very interested. That was one way to put it.
The van jerked to a stop. Beacon blinked at his surroundings. They were parked in the loop in front of Blackwater Lookout. The peaked roof of the bed-and-breakfast rose up into the thunderclouds, the dark vines twisted around the house like a snake choking its prey.
Beacon hadn’t been paying attention to where his dad was driving, and now his stomach dropped to his knees.
“We’re stopping here?” Eve
rleigh squeaked, echoing Beacon’s thoughts. “Won’t they look for us here?”
“We need to switch cars,” their dad said, unbuckling his seat belt. “Can’t exactly keep you kids safe if I’m arrested for grand theft auto. Let’s go. Grab whatever you can in one minute, and we’ll hit the road. Hop to it, no time to waste.”
Everleigh shook her head, then jumped out of the van.
“Wait!” Beacon cried. “What about Arthur? We need to help him.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” his dad said. “His case got moved to a higher security clearance. There’s no way I could even get close. Victor is very strict. Trust me, you don’t want to mess with him. Now let’s go.”
“But the Sov are hurting him!” Beacon cried.
“I’m sorry, Beaks. I know he was your friend. But we have to get moving. Now.”
Was. Past tense.
“So that’s just it, then?” he said, following his dad out of the van. He practically had to run to keep up with his brisk pace. “We just leave him there? Just pretend like Arthur Newell never existed? Maybe send his grandma a sympathy card every year at Christmas?”
“I don’t like it, either, Beaks, but there’s nothing we can do about it. Only a four-star clearance can get close to him—I’ve never even been down that wing of the ship. There are armed guards at the entrance. When we get out of here, we’ll make some calls. Now go up to your room and grab a few things. We need to be fast.”
He banged open the front door of the inn.
Make some calls. That was it.
Beacon had never felt so helpless. It was as if a powerful current was carrying him away, and he couldn’t break free, no matter how hard he tried. He didn’t know whether to scream or cry.
There was a prickling sensation in Beacon’s eyes; he was dangerously close to crying.
“Isn’t there anything you can do, Dad?” Everleigh pleaded. She stood on the landing of the stairs, holding a duffel bag with clothes poking out of the zipper.