by Page Morgan
I shove the door to the pool with my shoulder and nearly fall down the set of steps that immediately follow. The muggy, chlorine-tinged air stings my nostrils. The dark stairwell closes in on me as I scamper down, my legs weak and bendy, like cooked spaghetti.
The aliens are everywhere. They’re going to kill all of us. Why am I even bothering to run?
I come out onto a tiled floor, and my sneakers squeal and slip through splashes of water. The humid air of the closed-in pool licks my face and neck.
The pool water is flat and serene, though a few Styrofoam kickboards have been left in the water, some hotel-issue towels spread out on white plastic reclining chairs. I run alongside the pool, toward two blue doors near the other end. Changing rooms, probably. I’ll just end up tucking myself into a corner if I go in there. There aren’t any other doors, though, just a few of those small, narrow windows like in the interior stairwell. The kind that don’t open.
“Get out of here!” Cowboy jumps out from behind a wall of stacked white plastic reclining chairs on my left. My sneakers squeak to a stop along the tiles, my fists coming up in front of me, ready to jab him in the nose and gut if he tries to touch me. But he doesn’t.
“You’ve got the alien bomb! They’re here for you! Get out of here!” he hisses.
“There’s nowhere for me to go!” I swing my arm toward the stairs—and my eyes land on two black-suited figures marching into the poolroom.
“Oh, hell.” Cowboy leaps back into his hiding spot, but it’s pointless. We’re both just running from the inevitable.
The two aliens walk toward me, their bodies gliding in sync with each other. Their suits are just as bulky and robotic as Rowan’s, their right forearms jacked with the same weapon he’d had. I can see myself in the reflective visors of their helmets.
Cowboy sobs softly where he crouches behind the stacked chairs, rocking back and forth as he hugs his knees. I take a breath, lift my chin, and watch myself grow larger in the aliens’ visors. They don’t raise their weaponed arms. Now that they’re less than two feet away, I notice their suits aren’t quite black. They’re dark gray. And their helmets are a little different too. They’re shorter, exposing their throats at the base. They wear collars, but they’re not like the one that had been woven around Rowan’s neck and through his skin. These are on top of their skin, not in it.
The alien to my right presses a button on the front of his collar. A robotic voice comes from underneath the helmet.
“You have something that does not belong to you. Give it to me. Now.”
The voice sounds so much like a synthesizer that I can’t tell if it’s a male or female. The absence of noticeable breasts on either of the aliens makes me guess they’re both male. Then again, maybe their females don’t have breasts. Maybe they don’t have females at all. What the hell do I know?
Cowboy stops crying. “She does.” He gasps for air, scrambling to his feet. “She has it. It’s in her bag! Take it and let us go. We won’t stop you. We won’t give you any—”
The alien to my left raises his weapon arm and aims it at the stacked chairs.
“No!” I scream as the flare of electricity reaches through the chairs and engulfs Cowboy. He lurches from the narrow hiding spot, his body shaking, his white, ten-gallon hat tumbling from his head.
I stagger out of his path, and he shakes himself right over the lip of the pool and into the water. Smoke curls from the surface as his body bobs back up. The aliens don’t even look at him. At the way his arms come floating to his sides, splayed out like wings.
“You didn’t have to do that! You assholes!” My voice pounds around the tiled room and hits me right back in the eardrums. It’s the worst insult I can think of. Because what do you say to the aliens who are about to kill you?
I shuffle backward, grabbing the stack of white chairs as I go. I drag them, keeping them between the aliens and me as if they can shield me from an electric blast. Still, it seems better to have some obstacle between us. The chairs grate across the tile. There’s nothing behind me except for some changing rooms, but maybe inside is another door that leads somewhere else?
I can’t stop hoping. I can’t give up.
The two aliens follow, neither of them acting at all upset that I’m not complying with the order to hand over the vial. They probably think this attempt to escape is going to fail miserably. It probably is going to fail miserably.
Quick checks over my shoulder show that I’m nearly to the first blue door. A little plaque indicates it’s the men’s changing room. Wonderful. Now I’m going to die in a stinky men’s changing room instead of a stinky water and sewage treatment plant. The grass is definitely not greener.
I kick back and shove open the swinging door. I’ve got one foot in when a third alien descends from the stairwell and into the pool room. He’s tall and broad shouldered, and he walks toward us like he, too, knows exactly what I have in my bag. He spares Cowboy’s floating body a swift glance but continues to head for this side of the pool room. I dart into the men’s changing room, letting go of my plastic chair shield, and the door swings shut. Inside, there’s a row of blue lockers, a plastic mat on the floor, a couple of benches, and a tall mirror. No exit.
Double crap sundae with a cherry on top.
The stacked chairs outside the changing room scrape to the side, and the door swings open. I clutch the messenger bag to my stomach and scuttle back, my heels tripping on the thick rise of the plastic floor mat. My shoulders slam against a metal locker as the new, tall alien enters the locker room. The other two are still outside when the door swings shut again.
This one wears the deep black suit and longer helmet that Rowan had been wearing. Wait—is it him? I check out the strange etched symbols on the armored chest plate. Yep, it is.
I press my spine into the metal locker, staring up into his reflective visor as my face balloons into view. God, I look terrified. I don’t want to die afraid, like Cowboy had. I want to die knowing I at least tried to fight. So, I scowl. Although, I end up looking like I’ve just been punched in the stomach.
The alien reaches for his helmet and takes it off. Just like I thought. “Rowan.”
I swallow hard. Under these fluorescent lights, the irises of his eyes look less green and more blue, but they each still swirl around a black pupil. They’re so strange and beautiful, and as I stare up into them, I think I see the colors actually blending and then pulling apart again.
“What is Rowan?” he asks.
“You. I mean, it’s a name, and your nametag—” I raise a shaking finger and point to the rectangle on his jumpsuit where the strange symbols are.
“My name is not Rowan.”
“I figured that; it just looks like it says Rowan. At least it did at first.” I lower my finger and feel stupid for having called him that out loud. Then I feel stupid for feeling stupid. He’s a freaking alien. Who gives a nutty squirrel dropping what I call him?
His eyes briefly drop to the bag clutched against my stomach. “You have the vessel.” They glide back to meet mine again. “I require its prompt return.”
Stall, Pen, stall. He hasn’t shot me yet, and I’m thinking it’s because of the vial.
“You require its prompt return? You sound like a robot. You could just say, ‘give it back’ or ‘hand it over.’”
Rowan steps closer, looming over me, his expression somber.
“Our exosuits are composed of robotic mechanisms, however Volkranians themselves are not artificially intelligent. Also, our translating devices are pre-set for cordial and proper exchange.”
Volkranians. So that’s what they call themselves.
“Well, we all know how important it is to be ‘cordial and proper’ while destroying a city and killing all of its inhabitants,” I say while slipping my hand underneath the flap of the messenger bag and feeling around for the black vial. I find it and latch my fingers around the glass.
Rowan cocks his head in yet another disturbingly hum
an fashion. “Our translating devices are also pre-set to detect and dismiss sarcasm. Now, if you would please hand over the vessel.”
Please? How cordial.
“Why? What is it?” I wonder why he’s bothering to ask for it at all. He could snap me in half like a twig and take it for himself.
He draws in a deep breath, and his nostrils flare in exasperation. “If need be, I will reclaim it from you using force.”
“So why haven’t you already?” I tighten my grip on the vial. “Whatever’s inside this little vessel is important to you. Probably valuable, too. Those two alien thugs out there—”
“Volkranians,” he interjects.
“Volkranian thugs,” I echo. “They didn’t blast me, and neither have you. I’m thinking it’s because they don’t want to damage this vessel.”
The blinking neon red band around the cap is probably some super sophisticated alien tracking device. That’s probably how they found me. Damn it. I sealed every last person’s fate in that stairwell the moment I chose to walk into this hotel.
Rowan considers me another mute moment, the only sound the buzzing wink of the fluorescent lights overhead. I look up. There’s electricity in here, but nowhere else. Just like in the treatment plant. I glance at the alien again. Is it because he’s here?
He eyes my messenger bag. “The vessel you have is filled with a highly concentrated form of chloromagnate.”
The glass is cold against my sweaty palm. “What’s chloromagnate?”
I aced chemistry last year, and that element had definitely not been on the periodic table.
“A natural and necessary component that was in the drinking water on our home planet of Volkron,” he replies.
I drag in a full breath of chlorine and sweat-tainted air. They need this chemical element in their drinking water, and our water doesn’t have it. That’s why he’d been in the wastewater treatment plant.
“You were there to contaminate the water,” I say.
Rowan blinks, and somehow nods, even without moving his head.
“But…we can’t drink chloromagnate. Can we?”
He glances toward the locker room door. “Can you drink the water in that basin used for recreational swimming?”
I grimace. “The swimming pool? Of course not.”
“Then, no. You cannot drink chloromagnate.”
I’m about to launch into another obscenity-laced tirade when he gestures toward my bag and says, “You should be aware that there is enough chloromagnate in that one vessel to alter over three hundred million gallons of water. The concentration is so high that if spilled, the fumes will kill every living thing within a one-mile radius.”
It suddenly feels like I’m holding a spider or snake or some other poisonous thing. But I can’t let go of the vial. My fingers are stone.
“Volkranians included?” I ask.
How many aliens could I take out? Three, for sure. But what about people? There have to be thousands of them within one square mile. Rowan calls me on my bluff.
“You will not kill your fellow humans.”
He’s right. I won’t.
“I’m also not just going to hand it over.” The vessel isn’t only valuable—it’s deadly. The risk of it breaking is the sole reason he hasn’t taken it from me by force. It’s my life insurance policy.
“Give me something in return for the vessel,” I say, even though I have no idea what could possibly be an equal trade.
He takes a step closer. God, he’s huge. The shoulders of his exosuit are twice the width of mine, and my head barely reaches the middle of his chest. He’s intimidating, and he knows it. But I’m the one holding a deadly alien chemical compound.
“You are a negotiator,” Rowan says.
I frown. “I’m a high school student.”
A new expression uploads onto his face: a quirk of his mouth. Amusement? It shocks me more than the fact that he and the other aliens all look like us. It shocks me because on some deeper level, he understands that I’m being sarcastic. He gets my totally human humor. And that makes him and his species one step closer than I’m okay with.
“Very well,” he finally says. “What is your request?”
“Leave New York.”
“Not that.”
I shrug. “Stop killing people.”
“That is not within my power.”
Okay. That could be true. However, he’s more powerful than those other two Volkranians standing outside the locker room. His suit is better, his helmet looks more high-tech, and with his voice translator collar being woven into his neck, and a real voice instead of a synthesizer, I’m thinking the ability to communicate easily with other species is a part of his job.
“Then what can you do?” I ask.
He thinks for a few seconds. Then answers, “I can take you to my cityship.”
My grip on the black glass vial loosens. “You want to take me to your spaceship?”
A dagger of ice streaks down my spine. Go there? No way. I don’t want to visit it—I want it gone.
“Cityship,” he corrects. “Volkron Six.”
“Why the hell do you want to take me to Volkron freaking Six?”
The coils of Rowan’s blue and green eyes spark. Literally. Two white bursts, each the size of a pinprick, light his irises like camera flashes. “Why do you not fear me?”
I flatten my shoulder blades against the lockers. Is he blind? “Of course I’m afraid of you. You’re murdering everyone.”
He sighs. The sound is drawn out, and if I’m not mistaken, it holds a twinge of surrender. “You do not act afraid. Not here, and not in the water treatment facility.”
I don’t know how to reply. He truly seems perplexed, and a little insulted.
“You haven’t answered,” I remind him, because we’re clearly at a stalemate with this whole vial of deadly chloromagnate thing. “Why do you want to take me to your spaceship?”
“Cityship,” he corrects again. I roll my eyes. “My visor feed is being monitored. I will need to explain why I have been tracking you. The fleet commandant will have questions.”
“What kind of questions—”
The familiar sound of an alien’s electric laser cuts me off. It comes from outside the locker room, where the other two aliens have been waiting.
Rowan stands at attention as their gutting screams, broken up by electrostatic, die off. He rushes to the full-size locker to my left and wings the door open. He tosses his helmet into the space before turning to me.
“Get in. Stay hidden. And if you want to live, stay quiet.”
Chapter Five
I jump into the locker with barely enough time to clutch my bag to my chest before Rowan slams the door. His helmet is between my feet, the roundish bulk of it pressing against my calves. Why had he put it in here? My visor feed is being monitored. Others have been watching us through his helmet’s visor?
The locker room door flies open and cracks against the wall. There are voices, but they aren’t that. Not really. They’re harsh clicks of the tongue, short vowels, and way too many consonants. There seems to be only two voices—I can’t tell Rowan’s from the other one—and they’re both raised in a heated exchange, like the argument I’d witnessed between the pale alien and the one who’d ended up dead.
Is this new alien the one I saw earlier in the treatment plant? I rise onto the tips of my sneakers and try to peer through the slanted slits in the locker grate, but all I see are a pair of legs and feet. The new one has a dark gray exosuit, like the others in the pool room.
It doesn’t matter who it is, I guess. They’re both Volkranians, and they clearly have a beef with one another. If Rowan loses, this new alien may leave the locker room, never even realizing I’m here.
Sudden relief unfurls in my chest, and I close my eyes, nearly breathless with hope. I’ll wait a few minutes until the coast is clear, and then I’ll run and try to make it home to Eastham to find my mom. I want to find her more than anything. I want
to know if she’s okay, and I want her to hug me and kiss my forehead, just like she does every night before bed.
She’d stopped tucking me in when I was eleven or so. Ollie had trouble falling asleep when he was little and always wanted her to sit with him. She’d usually drift off on his bed with him, and I’d be long asleep by the time she woke up. But now she stays up late, past midnight, unable to sleep, and she always pops into my room to give me a kiss and turn out the light.
The last few hours everything in my world has been crumbling and chaotic, but as soon I see her, I know it will all be better—even if an alien ship is still in the sky.
But…logically, this new alien will know Rowan hasn’t been hanging out in here alone. No. He won’t just up and leave. He’ll tear the lockers open until he finds me. And he’s dangerous. Rowan shut me in this locker for a reason. He’d known a threat was going to storm in at any second.
Had he helped me?
Shut up, Pen. He’s only protecting the vessel of chloromagnate. Though, why would he hide it from another Volkranian? Why shove me and his helmet into a locker? He clearly doesn’t want the visor feed to see what he’s doing.
The new alien leg-swipes Rowan, kicking his feet out from underneath him with startling finesse. He slams onto the floor, but rolls and leaps back up a split second before a flare of white electric light strikes the floor where he’d fallen.
Another flare hits the row of lockers. Electricity instantly trembles through my sneakers and into my legs. The voltage is only enough to make me shiver and twitch, but a yelp still climbs up my throat. I swallow it.
If you want to live, stay quiet.
Rowan believes this new Volkranian will kill me. When, on the other hand, Rowan is open to bringing me to his cityship for questioning. It’s a no-brainer. I’d rather be questioned by aliens than killed by one.
Which means I should probably help Rowan win this fight.
I make a fist, scrunch my eyes shut, and pound on the inside of the locker door. The knock is hard and fast, and my ears rattle from the noise. I open my eyes in time to see the new alien freeze. In that millisecond of an opening, Rowan’s weapon arm fires.