by Page Morgan
“For fifteen minutes!” I hiss.
“Quiet. Monitors,” he whispers.
I glance around the elevator. I don’t see anything that looks like a video camera.
“It is fifteen minutes more than any other Volkranian would have offered you.”
I clench my jaw and grit my teeth. I glance up. One floor left.
Rowan leans forward. “Penelope Simmons. Please.”
Damn it. I shouldn’t have told him my name.
I reach into my bag and grip the glass vial. If I smash it right here, right now, I can take out half the cityship. Maybe more. I’d be dead, too, sure, but I’m going to die anyway. The closer we get to that glass ceiling, the more the reality of that sinks in. Maybe when I’m dead, I’ll see Ollie. The thought has crossed my mind countless times. That one day, when I die, I might be with him again. But I’m not ready to die. Not yet. If there is any way out of this, I have to try. My mom is down there, and I have to get to her. The need is so strong, my heart and lungs feel ready to burst with it. I have to do what I can. Risk everything.
I extract the vial and hold it low, so Rowan can see it. He looks at the black glass and the blinking red neon light around the cap.
“Thank you.” He plucks it away with a nimble hand, somehow barely touching my skin.
The glass ceiling above our heads slides open like a pair of elevator doors lying flat on a floor. As we clear the shaft, there’s a periphery of orange blinking lights around the elevator opening. A bell chimes and the platform lifts us into an enormous atrium. It looks a little like the inside of a mall, with soaring ceilings and multiple levels. There’s a strange, clear, curving pipeline that snakes between the different floors, too.
Volkranians fill the esplanade in front of us. Men and women and children, moving about their business in so familiar a way that I could easily be standing in Times Square and watching the masses there instead.
As the platform halts, the chiming sound cuts off. Eyes catch on Rowan and me. Legs stop and heads bow, canting slightly to the left as those below in the cargo bay had done.
He steps off the platform. “Follow me.”
Chapter Seven
I stick to his heels, sweaty hands clutching the canvas fabric of my messenger bag. He parts the crowds as quickly and fluidly as he had in the cargo bay, and again, doesn’t acknowledge any of the stares we’re attracting. It’s as though he’s used to the attention.
The noise level falls off dramatically, a hum like a busy city street now as quiet as an empty field. I glance up at the bright glass atrium ceiling. There are four levels and a bend in the atrium up ahead. Beyond the ceiling is a blue sky and clouds. My sky and clouds. Where is the rest of the world? Why has no one come to help? Rowan had said his people were here for survival; that they didn’t have a planet of their own. If they want Earth to be their new home, I’m going to guess they’re not just in New York, but everywhere. So that probably means we’re on our own here.
As Rowan marches through the atrium’s main floor and toward the base of the wide, clear pipeline, Volkranians scuttle back multiple steps, bumping into one another in their haste to get away. From me or from Rowan? Probably me. To them, I’m the alien.
Rowan ignores them with cool detachment and presses a series of buttons on the glass chute. A curved door rolls open. It’s another elevator. How…utterly normal.
He stands aside and gestures with his chin for me to enter. There’s no way I want to stick around here with Volkranians eyeing my back, so I jump inside. Only then do I notice how fast my heart gallops. It’s the freaking Kentucky Derby inside my chest as Rowan comes into the circular elevator and stands, facing me. The door arches shut.
“What is this thing?” I look up into the clear pipeline above us. It extends to the top-most level, but there are other pipes that shoot off from it, and then others that branch off from those.
A holographic panel pops up next to Rowan. He taps a sequence of commands, each tap sending out a chirping tone.
“It will take us to the fleet commandant,” he answers.
The floor trembles and we shoot up, but as we hit the second level there’s a jerky halt and tug. My shoulder slams into the wall as the elevator slurps to the side, into one of the pipeline’s offshoots.
Rowan, standing with his legs slightly apart and looking as admirable as a sea captain in a storm, raises one brow. “I am glad the chloromagnate is back in my possession. I am astounded you made it as far as you did without killing yourself and thousands of other humans.”
I grimace at him. And yet, for some reason he’d let me hang on to it, even after I’d agreed to go with him to his cityship. I rub my shoulder as the elevator runs parallel to the second level of the giant atrium, then gets sucked up into another branch of pipeline. The pressure makes pancakes out of my knees.
“Hey, elevators aren’t supposed to go side to side as well as up and down,” I say, my stomach beginning to scramble. “And don’t pretend you’re concerned about me or other humans, okay? We both know that’s bull.”
“This is not an elevator. It’s a pneumatic transport module,” he replies flatly. “Also, I do not pretend. In anything.”
I believe that. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of person to pretend or lie. He’d rather flog with blunt honesty.
At the third level, we jerk to the right. At least this time I save my shoulder. “Module…elevator. Whatever it is, it sucks.”
Rowan’s lower lips curves down into a contemplative frown. “Yes, it does suck. However, I believe you intended that statement to be a complaint rather than a fact.”
I clutch my stomach. What a wise ass.
We sail through the pneumatic transport module—a.k.a elevator from outer space hell—toward a section of pipeline that is opaque black instead of clear.
As we’re sucked up into it, an electric blue light brightens the module, compensating for the sudden darkness. The circular glass walls reflect us. I haven’t looked in a mirror for hours, and it definitely shows.
My hair, straightened before school that morning, has reverted to its pre-product stage of coarse frizziness. A wide black streak of dirt covers my right cheek, and I have a long, deep scrape near my hairline. I touch it with my fingertips and wince. The blood is crusted, so it’s been there for a while. I’d felt a little pain, but I hadn’t known it was that bad. A number of shallow, bloody scrapes along my neck are probably from when the window on Broadway blew out. I touch one of the bigger scrapes, and then try to fix my hair.
Rowan watches me in the glass’s reflection, his expression once again pensive.
“Does your appearance matter?”
I continue to brush through my hair with my fingers—then look at my hands and realize they’re covered in grit, too. It’s even worked in under my nails.
“It would be nice to at least be clean when—” My throat closes off before I can finish the sentence: When I die.
Rowan stays quiet. Maybe he knows what I intended to say, and really, there’s nothing he can say in return to make me feel better. The fleet commandant might allow me to leave the cityship, but he could also refuse. Rowan, of course, could very well betray his word and not even ask.
The module slurps to a stop, and my pulse flutters in my neck. The glass doors slide open to a huge control room. Walls of holographic, paper-thin screens filled with symbols flash everywhere, while white-suited Volkranians behind computerish-looking podiums and desks busy themselves. I follow Rowan out into the room, my sneakers squeaking against the glossy black floor. The white suits are a full-body fabric thing—totally different from the armored exosuit Rowan wears. They don’t have translator collars at all.
The white suited Volkranians seem to be monitoring the rapid-fire of images filling the three-dimensional screens. They don’t stare at me the way the others did, but they do pause to look up. Pulsing images fill the screens. Aerial views of Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge; street level
views of the Financial District and SoHo and Broadway; smoke plumes and fires burning in the middle of streets; looters smashing storefront windows; a guy just sitting on the curb of a street sipping from a Starbucks coffee cup, like the world isn’t collapsing around him.
They’re monitoring the attacks. Viewing their progress.
There’s a pulsing at the base of my skull and a sharp ringing deep in my ears. Within a few seconds, I’ve lost all feeling in my hands. My whole body feels like it’s lifting up, far away from the horror flipping by on these screens. This is it. This one sight of the aliens sitting here, watching themselves destroy and kill the way I’ve sat at home watching The Great British Bake Off or Golden Girls re-runs in my pajamas, is going to do me in. I’ve made it this far, and this is going to make me faint?
I close my eyes, swallow hard, and force myself to breathe.
I’m closer to the panic I’ve been shoving aside and running away from than ever, and it scares the living hell out of me. I can’t look at those screens. If I see what they’re doing down there, I’ll crumble. I’ll think about Tana and her convulsing body and Greenly’s smoking hair and Mr. Gainbridge’s warbled cry, and I can’t, not now. Don’t let your weakness show, Pen. Not here. Not now.
When I open my eyes again, Rowan is looking at me. He seems to be waiting for me to pull my act together and keep walking. So, I put one wobbly foot in front of the other, and after threading around two monitoring podiums without letting my eyes drift to the screens, we come to a circle of gunmetal gray chairs set in a sunken portion of the room. It’s like one of those ‘70s-style living rooms where you step down onto funky shag carpet. In the center of this sunken circle is another control station, with three more Volkranians standing around it. None of them wear helmets, but they’re in black exosuits, like Rowan, and have translator collars woven into their skin. They turn toward us, and my sneakers squawk to a halt when one Volkranian locks eyes on me.
His hair is bleached white, his skin so snowy it’s nearly translucent. Huge, dilated pupils with thin rims of silver hold my stare with icy interest. I freeze, just like I had when he’d seen me in the treatment plant. Right after he’d snapped the other alien’s neck.
I’d known he was pale, even in the revolving red-and-white light of the treatment plant, but this close, he looks deathlike. Scars line both cheeks, though they don’t seem like injuries from battles. For one, they match—each scar is an upside-down J. Underneath the upside-down J scars, four deep gouges dimple his cheek like the four corners of a square.
He and the other two Volkranians don’t seem overly surprised to see me, thanks in part to Rowan’s visor feed, I’m sure. Rowan’s already walked down into the sunken circle, his back to me. There’s no possible way to tell him that this is the guy I’d been talking about.
He keeps those cold, purple eyes hinged on me as Rowan and the other suited Volkranians—one of them short and built like a refrigerator, and the other slightly taller and reed thin—begin to speak in their pop, click, and hiss language.
The pale alien doesn’t look happy to see me in the least. Sweat erupts on my palms and across my chest. If he recognizes me, and knows I saw something I shouldn’t have—and it definitely feels like I did—he might want to silence me before I can say anything to anyone.
Rowan joins in the conversation and all four of them begin to talk over one another. Their voices elevate, speeding up in intensity and what sounds like anger. I’m positive they’re discussing me, even though none of them look my way. Not even the pale one. I hate not knowing what they’re saying, especially considering my life hangs in the balance.
I glance over my shoulder. The rest of the aliens in here are bogged down with tasks. I could try to slip away, but I’d never get farther than the pneumatic tube thing. Escape isn’t a possibility. Right now, everything hinges on the fleet commandant’s good graces—and Rowan’s promise to vouch for me. I’ve walked right into the lion’s den, and all because Rowan’s stupid vial of chemicals rolled its way into my messenger bag.
As if he senses I’m getting restless, Rowan spins around and touches the metal panel covering the front of his throat.
“Penelope Simmons, join us.”
It’s not a brusque demand. Oddly enough, I hear a ‘please’ on his tone. I take a shallow breath and descend the three metal steps into the sunken circle. The short, stocky Volkranian has a head of silver and black hair that cascades to his shoulders. His long beard is all silver. I assume this is the fleet commandant.
He walks toward me, his hands clasped behind his back, the way Rowan has been standing. “You helped preserve the commanding sentinel’s life.”
I nod without thought. Commanding sentinel. Rowan. Is he talking about the locker room, when I’d distracted the other alien? He’d hidden his helmet in the locker with me though, blocking images to the visor feed. Why do that if he’d planned to tell the fleet commandant anyway?
“Your aid is not logical. It is not understandable,” the fleet commandant goes on.
I nod again, even though I’m confused. However, being agreeable might get me off this ship faster. The pale alien is still staring at me, the violet rims of his irises having broadened. Silvery threads swirl through them like storm clouds.
The fleet commandant begins to pace one half of the sunken circle. “In accordance with the Volkranian code for conduct and honor, the commanding sentinel is now honor-bound to you.”
The fog I’ve been wheeling in for the last minute or two clears. I suck in a breath. More thorny vines of confusion wrap around my brain. Honor-bound. Rowan. To me.
“I don’t—”
Rowan snaps his head toward me like I’ve screamed. I seal my lips. There’s a warning in those eyes of his.
“Being honor-bound to a human is most…unexpected for the commanding sentinel,” the fleet commandant goes on. “However, it is Volkranian law. He will bow to one of your requests as payment for your aid.”
Rowan has to do something for me?
There’s a tremor of life inside my stomach and chest that wasn’t there a few minutes ago. It beats and claws for escape. I almost don’t want to breathe and risk chasing it away.
“What is your request?” the fleet commandant asks.
I have to speak now, I know, so I clear my throat while thinking. What can I possibly ask for? All of the things I’d asked Rowan to do in the locker room—leave, stop killing people—are out of his control.
“Rowan’s already said I’m going to die,” I say. “That every human is going to die.”
The fleet commandant’s lined face pulls into a frown. “Rowan?”
Rowan broadens his shoulders and makes a little sound of annoyance in the back of his throat. “It is the name she has given me.”
The fleet commandant’s frown deepens, and he twists to check the reactions of both the pale guy and the reedy Volkranian. Their expressions match his own of distaste.
“She would not be able to pronounce my name, and there is no logical translation,” Rowan says. I can’t help but hear a defensive tone.
“Then she should address you as commanding sentinel,” the pale alien says. His voice isn’t as Arnold Schwarzenegger as I expected. It’s more raspy and cunning.
Rowan doesn’t reply to him, and I wonder where they each fall in the chain of command.
“Your request,” the fleet commandant repeats. I guess he isn’t going to address what I’ve just said about dying no matter what.
I want off this ship, so my request should be something that will put distance between me and this floating city.
“I’d like to find my mom,” I say. It’s the only thing I’ve wanted since all of this started.
The fleet commandant looks to Rowan. “You will deliver her to her mother.”
My heart pounds out a relieved throb, and I miss a breath. I choke on it, coughing once, eyes watering as the fleet commandant speaks in his own ugly language again. I don’t know what he says, and
I almost don’t care. I’m going home. But then, surprise leaks over Rowan’s expression. He pins the fleet commandant with a stare that says something I can’t begin to translate. Rowan presses his lips into a thin seam and nods once.
“Come,” he commands me, and then brushes by, out of the sunken circle. With one last sideways glance at the silver-eyed alien, I quickly follow. My pulse drums against my neck as I chase Rowan through the control room, around podiums and Volkranians, and right into the pneumatic module behind him.
“Do not say a word,” he murmurs as the module’s doors seal us in.
Chapter Eight
The module free falls, and my feet nearly lift off the glass floor. But then it bounces to a stop and jerks to the side, and I’m on my knees, the strap of my bag around my neck, palms smarting from slapping so hard on the glass.
“What the hell? You guys need to work on this module crap!” I push myself back up. Rowan grips my arm and tugs, but I wrestle free. “What, exactly, happened back there?”
His eyes do that electrical, sparking thing again. I’m starting to guess it only happens when he’s angry.
“We’ll leave for the transport shortly,” he says, looking away.
He’s going to take me to my mom, which is great. It’s what I’ve been hoping for, and that twinge of homesickness, the kind I used to feel at sleepovers when I was little, starts to finally unclench. Though, whatever last thing the fleet commandant said in his own language to Rowan seems to have upset him.
“Hey, what did he say to you?”
Rowan looks at me with obvious reluctance. The green and blue tinted irises swirl around his pupils. They look like a Weather Channel radar image when satellites track the path of a hurricane out at sea.
“Nothing I can discuss.”
I raise my eyebrows and am about to retort that I really don’t care anyway when the sonorous blaring of a horn fills the module. Its vibration shakes the glass floor, working up into my legs and spine, and reaching the base of my skull. My gums itch and ears ache, and I cover them the same way I had back on the ground, the first two times. Here inside the cityship the blare is muffled, but only slightly. Even Rowan winces. Each time it blew before, the ship had released the pods.