by Laura Pohl
I try to guess her feelings, but there are too many of them. And I don’t know Avani well enough to guess.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say. “Not by yourself.”
“You don’t get it,” she says, stronger this time. “I didn’t fight back.” Red burns on her cheeks—shame. “I could’ve done something. But I didn’t fight. I thought I had everything under control.”
“It’s not your fault.”
She brushes my hand off her shoulder, turning away.
“I’m not like you guys,” she says. “I’m not brave.” Her lower lip trembles. It looks like she’s about to cry again. She takes a deep breath. “I wanted to do something. Every single day for six months, I stared at the walls of this compound and wondered if this was what the rest of my life was going to be. Staring at these walls, forever. Not knowing what happened on the outside. Not caring what happened. Until you showed up.”
“I ran away for six months,” I tell her. “That’s what I did. I went from town to town, running and never looking back. The day the aliens attacked, I ran away when my only friend went up in dust.” I swallow. “I didn’t try to fight them.”
“But you want to now.”
“Yes, because I think it’s the best option we have,” I say quietly. “It’s not because I’m brave… It’s just… It’s just what we got.”
Avani is calmer now, and the redness in her eyes is starting to clear. “I wish I could do things like you guys can,” she says. “Handle weapons. Fight. But that’s not who I am. I’m just the science girl, you know?”
I shrug. “And I’m the girl who crashes cars. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Avani looks back at the alien, still locked inside the cold cell, its chamber covered in frost. The machine is beeping, running scans.
“Adam and I came here together,” Avani says, her lips in a tight line. “I met him first, two days after the aliens attacked. He offered to help me, even though he didn’t even know me.” She smiles at the memory. “We met Brooklyn a couple of days later at a gas station. And he offered to help her, too. That’s when I knew that the three of us would stick together. He never minded the driving. Brooklyn had this crazy idea about going to Area 51, and Adam never said no. He just said, ‘I’ll take us there.’”
I appreciate her sharing this memory with me. As if sensing that she’s in pain, Sputnik walks up to Avani and sits next to her. She smiles down at the dog.
“That’s just who he was,” she says. “He never questioned what we wanted to do, or whether we would even find anything here. He had more faith than all of us put together. And he never gave up on me.” She looks up, wiping her tears away. “I’m going to miss him.”
“Me too.”
I think about Violet’s words and how much they ring true. I can’t change the past. I can’t change the fact that aliens invaded or the fact that they took my grandparents, Noah, and now Adam. They’ve taken too much from me.
All I can do is thank Adam for his sacrifice. Thank all of them for their sacrifices.
And make sure that none of it was in vain.
“So, do you want some help or not?” I ask.
This time, Avani gives me a smile.
“Yeah,” she says. “I think I could use it.”
Chapter 34
I spend the next day helping Avani and Flint in the lab.
It’s easier than I thought it would be. The frozen alien doesn’t bother me much. Avani starts figuring out ways to take it apart, and we discover that they’re not as unbreakable as we thought. We’re able to remove pieces of their metal legs with lasers, but no such luck with the upper body. The brain scans seem to be working, and slowly, Avani studies and analyzes the data. She doesn’t like to share what she finds, and we all respect that.
On the fifth day after we captured the alien, Rayen convinces me to ask Violet about the alien gun that we stole. It’s not like we have anything to lose by asking.
When I get to Violet’s office, the door is ajar. I’m about to push it open when I hear voices.
“You promised me.”
I know from that statement alone that it’s Andy. I peer inside and see her and Violet standing on opposite sides of the desk.
“I know what I promised,” Violet responds. “But things change, Andy. We can’t just stay here until we starve. You know that. We’d be killing ourselves, the slow way.”
“Well, not Adam.”
The jab hits home, and Violet winces. I straighten up, my back to the door, and hold my breath. Andy’s words are more than just angry—they’re cruel. Cruel in a way that I never thought she could be.
“None of us meant for this to happen.”
“He’s dead because of you,” Andy spits. “You promised me.”
“And I kept that promise for as long as I could,” Violet snaps back, her voice rising even as it breaks. “I waited seven months. I thought you’d come around.”
“I’m not going to come around. Those things killed everyone. Everyone. I’m not going to try to play hero now, when everyone else is dead.”
“We’re not trying to be heroes.”
Andy snorts. “Yeah, right,” she says cynically. “We were safe!”
“We weren’t!” Violet bites back. I take another quick glance inside. She sits in her chair now, massaging her temples. “We’ve never been safe. Security isn’t enough. We got lucky. And our luck isn’t going to last forever.” Violet looks up at Andy. “I’d rather face them on my terms, Andy.”
Andy’s jaw is set, her hands balled into fists. I decide to make my entrance, before they catch me listening. I knock on the door, and they both jump.
“Sorry to burst in like this,” I say. “Rayen is asking about the alien gun.”
Violet drops her attitude, sighing heavily. “Sure,” she says, pointing to a box in the corner of the room. “But it isn’t working.”
I pick up the box. Glancing between the two, the tension is obvious, and I move back toward the door. Before I shut it, I can hear them taking up their argument again.
“You promised me that I wouldn’t have to,” Andy says quietly. “You promised me.”
“I’m doing what I can.”
“It’s not enough.”
* * *
When I get to the lab, I find Flint engrossed in his work, analyzing some of the metal that he and Avani managed to take from the alien’s legs.
I drop the box with the gun on top of the table. Sputnik sniffs it with minimal interest, then trots off.
“Did Violet just let you take that?” Flint asks, frowning.
“She was in the middle of an argument.”
“Let me guess. Andy.”
I raise an eyebrow. “How did you know?”
Flint puts down his scalpel and raises his safety glasses, resting them on top of his head. “It’s not the first time they’ve argued. I mean, I’ve seen worse. Back when there were still adults here.”
“This looked pretty bad,” I tell him. Andy’s words were sharp and edged, like knives.
“You should’ve seen them before. They’d have full-on shouting matches,” Flint says. “There were about forty kids here at the base, but those two were always like sisters.”
“Andy said that we’re trying to play heroes.”
Flint looks up at me, then shrugs. “Aren’t we?”
“I’m not doing this to look heroic.”
“Being a hero isn’t just about looking heroic, Clover,” he says. “Sometimes it’s just doing what you think is right. Even when it’ll get your arse killed.”
He meets my eyes, and I know that we’re both thinking about Adam now. He saved Violet. He pushed her out of the way. Even if he wasn’t trying to be a hero, he still wound up as one.
“Don’t see it as something bad,” Flint says.
He adjusts his glasses back over his face. “It’s just the way things are.”
He’s right. I look over his shoulder at his work.
“So what exactly are you doing?”
He sighs. “Decomposition of elements. But Avani says the machine isn’t working…”
“This one?” I ask, pointing, and he nods. I look it over. I might not be the best with scientific equipment, but there doesn’t seem to be anything obviously wrong with it. “It looks fine to me. Give me your blood sample.”
He frowns, looking up again. “Say what?”
“Blood sample,” I repeat. “Come on. Gotta be quick.”
“I just said that it isn’t working.”
“Well, Avani won’t mind if we test it twice.”
Flint heads to the medical part of the laboratory and finds two syringes. He draws his blood first, then I offer him my arm so he can take mine.
I put both tubes into the machine and ready the analysis. “Very simple.”
Flint doesn’t bother responding. He shakes his head and goes back to his metal sample.
Rayen walks in, plopping down on a stool and dumping a huge weapon on the table. It’s bigger than a bazooka, and I can’t even begin to fathom where she finds these things.
“No guns on the table,” Flint says.
Rayen glares at him, her brown eyes daring him to contradict her. “So?” she asks. “Did Violet let you take the gun?”
“Yeah, it’s over there.” I point to the box. “She says it isn’t working.”
Rayen curses. “I’m tired of things not working.”
“Get in line,” Flint mutters.
She rolls her eyes, then goes over and sits up on the workbench, next to Flint. She pokes him in the arm, and he looks up, irritated.
“What’s going on?” Rayen asks, eyeing the microscope. “What have you got?”
Flint’s whole manner changes, as if Rayen has just said the magic words.
“The aliens’ legs are just metal,” he says excitedly. “No organic material. It’s stronger than anything I’ve ever seen. But it turns out that it’s not immune to lasers. That’s how I got this sample.”
Rayen cocks her head. “You sawed off its leg?”
Flint nods. “Yeah. You know what’s even more fantastic? It’s a one hundred percent pure material. They have no nerves or anything that would allow them to control how they work,” he says. “Of course, this led me to theorize that the legs might not have been part of their original species design. I’ve been discussing it with Avani.”
Rayen and I exchange a look.
“Has he been like this all day?” she asks, unimpressed.
I nod. “Yesterday, too.”
“They’ve altered their own species to make it better, Rayen,” Flint says, like a little boy at Christmas. “How brilliant is that?”
“So what?” She shrugs. “I have six tattoos and I don’t see you getting excited about that.”
“They’re scrap metal,” I say.
“Exactly,” Flint replies, completely missing our tone. “Which makes me wonder if they haven’t altered the rest of their bodies, too.” He gestures toward his face to indicate the strange human faces that the aliens wear.
“Why would they want to look human?” Rayen asks. “They could be like the Terminator, and they choose to look like us? Makes no sense to me.”
Flint shakes his head. “I don’t know. But it’s interesting, because they’re controlling their legs remotely. The metal is full of smaller articulations, but it’s motorized. That’s why we’re able to short-circuit them. I’ll have to cut it up to find out where exactly the motor is.”
The day passes easily. My blood samples are still being processed, and I don’t want to rush the results. Maybe that machine really is broken. Flint picks apart his alien leg sample until he has all the pieces laid neatly on the worktable. He was right—the entire thing is made of wires and metal.
He slides open a machine to analyze the metal, and sitting inside it is the brick I gave him. I blink in surprise. With all the events of the last week, I’d forgotten about this. Adam was the one who had been helping me hide it.
Flint tosses the brick to me carelessly. “There you go.”
I turn it in my hands. “Find anything?”
“Nothing at all,” he says. “Regular brick, through and through. About twenty years old. Can’t be more specific than that.”
Twenty years old. That places the false wall in the same time frame as the information blackout. But this might be enough to piece together my theory.
I keep turning the brick in my hand. Then I notice that Rayen is watching my face closely.
“Spill it,” she commands.
“What?”
“You have the same expression my brother used to make when he was hiding candy in his room,” Rayen says. “Sweet Jesus of Spaceships, Clover, if you’re hiding a Milky Way bar, I will kill you.”
I shift my weight. “It’s kind of bigger than that.”
Flint, who has only been half listening, looks up from the worktable and asks, “What?”
There’s no other way I can put this.
“There’s a spaceship in our basement.”
Flint drops everything he’s holding.
Chapter 35
Flint and Rayen stare openmouthed because, of course, there’s no other way to look at a spaceship that’s sitting in your basement.
“It’s fucking huge,” says Rayen, as if those are the only words that she can actually think.
“Bloody hell,” Flint says. “And you found this a week ago?”
I nod my head. “Adam and I found it.” Saying his name feels like a forbidden reminder.
“You should have just told us, ” Rayen says, her eyebrows scrunching together.
Flint seems stunned. He taps the spaceship, then moves his hand over its smooth underside.
“So interesting,” he mutters. “It’s made of the same material as their legs. But somehow…” He shakes his head. “You said that brick came from the rubble?”
I nod. “Yeah. The ship was hidden behind this wall the whole time.”
“So this has been here for twenty years.” He exhales in awe, pushing his hands through his hair, leaving it a mess of black curls. “Twenty years. This bloody changes everything.”
I nod my head. It does. They were here before. And someone made sure that we wouldn’t find out about it, because all the reports were wiped out. One week, twenty years ago, was redacted from our history, and we’ll never know what happened. There are no remaining pieces to the puzzle, because the house caught on fire and burned to ashes.
“It doesn’t have to, though,” says Rayen quietly. “It doesn’t change the fact that they came and annihilated us.”
Flint nods in agreement.
“But if people had known that aliens came here all those years ago…” I pause. “If we’d known, we could’ve prepared. We could’ve been ready for the attack that was coming, and we would’ve been able to fight back.”
Silence falls. Flint mutters something unintelligible as he knocks his fingers against the spaceship.
“It’s not the same,” he says, turning to us.
“What?” I ask.
“This is not one of their spaceships.”
“What do you mean?” Rayen asks.
Flint just shrugs, as if the answer has been right in front of us all along. “It’s not one of their spaceships.”
“Explain yourself,” demands Rayen.
He nods. “I’ve seen enough of them by now that I can tell the difference. This ship is made of softer material. Not to mention how much bigger it is than all the others. Right, Clover? The aliens’ ships have very practical designs, without a single shred of elegance. They’re built to be effective a
nd fast. Beginning with the wings.”
I nod slowly, starting to see what he’s looking at. Flint has immediately pinpointed what had felt vaguely wrong to me. The design of the wings, the curve of the nose—this ship has style.
“The ships that invaded and attacked us… They look like an imitation of this one.”
Flint nods. “Yes. And now that we know that these things are willing to change their bodies in order to improve them, why wouldn’t they copy spaceship designs for the same reason?”
I evaluate the ship, cocking my head. “Considering the shape and the wing design, it would make sense. If this thing can fly”—I jerk my head toward it—“it’s going to be a hell of a lot faster than any jets that we have.”
“Not only that,” Flint says. “The material is different, not as hard. The aliens have made their metal look the same as this, but it’s not. The metal on their ships is the real deal, though. It’s bloody impenetrable.”
“So what are we looking at?” Rayen asks. “Two different alien species?”
Slowly, Flint nods. “Looks like it. Two alien cultures that have had close contact for a while. Maybe thousands of years, for all we know.”
I narrow my eyes. “What are you saying?”
Flint turns to us, his dark eyes indecipherable. “What if the owners of this spaceship are still here?”
* * *
There’s something deeply unsettling about not knowing what lurks in the dark.
Before, I knew they were out there, waiting for me to be careless or make a mistake. Now, there are more of them. An unknown species that may or may not be hiding out on Earth.
The spaceship is proof enough.
After making Flint and Rayen promise that we’d talk about this later, that we’d tell the others about the spaceship and what it means, I head to the dormitory.
It’s empty when I get there. I’m dying for a shower, so I grab some clean clothes, and just as I’m heading back out, Andy comes in. She looks exhausted, and dark circles are visible under her eyes.
I remember the argument earlier.
“Hey,” I call out. “You okay, Andy?”