by Page Morgan
As we step into the module, I settle on a few questions that might be okay for the moderators to overhear.
“This is one fleet of Volkranians?”
The module descends in the pneumatic system. This time I’m ready for the rough start, with my back pressed against the curved glass wall.
Rowan stares at a holographic screen beside me. It shows what looks like a subway system map. A blinking yellow dot moves along the screen. That’s our module, I bet, and this map must be showing where we are within the pneumatic system.
“Yes. One of the largest,” he answers. He hasn’t lowered his voice, so apparently this isn’t classified information.
“What other cities are you attacking?”
His attention slides from the holographic map and hits me. “We have eighty-five ships spread out over the planet, concentrating on cities that have a population of four million or more.”
The module jerks to the right, flinging me off the wall and toward Rowan. He braces my shoulders, so I don’t smack into him. As soon as I have my balance back, I throw off his hands.
New York has over twenty million people and ranks somewhere in the top ten. Eighty-five ships like this would cover a lot of ground.
“Why didn’t we see you coming?”
Nearly a hundred of these ships flying toward Earth hadn’t raised any alarms? Either we were totally incompetent, or they had invisibility shields.
Rowan takes a breath and crosses his arms as the module sinks down into the tubing again. “Your monitors did see us, though at our rate of speed they were not given much warning. Less than six hours.”
NASA and the government—probably all governments across the globe—had known. The people hadn’t though. They hadn’t been warned. I’d watched enough apocalyptic movies to know why: panic. They hadn’t wanted the populations to go berserk. It would have been absolute chaos.
“They didn’t try to stop you?” I ask.
Because, you know, in Armaggedon, they sent Bruce Willis and his gang of oil miners to blow up the asteroid hurtling toward Earth. The President or someone in charge would have at least tried to fight these cityships. Right?
“We disabled your satellites, defense technology, and computer systems immediately. Launching an attack against us was not possible. It still isn’t.”
“An EMP.” Just as I’d suspected earlier.
He nods. “Of a sort.”
Everything is computerized, so now everything is paralyzed.
We’re dead in the water.
The module comes to a stop, and I follow Rowan into the atrium. More Volkranians are in the wide promenade now, and immediately, their murmuring falls silent. They’re all standing still. Watching. I don’t look up or make eye contact with any of them as Rowan leads us through the crowds again, back toward the elevator to the cargo hold and transport pods.
Rowan’s going to take me home to my mother. I should be more excited. But knowing our city will be decimated within the day, along with every other major city, effectively wiping out more than half of the human population…well, I don’t know how to breathe after a thought like that. What’s the point of breathing? What’s the point of fighting? If the most powerful people on earth haven’t been able to stop these ships from entering our atmosphere, what the hell am I supposed to do about it?
The open-sided elevator platform is waiting for us. I step on and Rowan comes to stand beside me, his hands clasped behind his back. He keeps that blank, imperious stare of his aimed at the crowds, waiting until we’ve slipped into the shaft and out of sight before angling his body toward mine.
“We take no pleasure in any of this, Penelope Simmons. We were once in your place and suffered as you are. Deciding to take this planet the same way ours was taken from us was not an easy decision,” he says, his voice cast low.
“It’s just Penelope. You don’t have to say my last name every time.” I look up at him. “And what, your planet was attacked by another species?”
“The Inoori,” he says with a nod. “A species from a neighboring galaxy. There are many Volkranians on board this cityship that remember. They have shared their stories with those who were born on Volkron Six, like me.”
He looks like he’s twenty or so. Older than me. Maybe that’s just because he’s so much taller and broader. Or maybe they age differently.
“What kind of people survive an awful attack like that only to then turn around and do it to another species?” I ask. “Are the Volkranians that heartless?”
The elevator continues to lower toward the cargo hold. Rowan’s no longer looking at me, but straight ahead at the shiny shaft wall as it scrolls by.
“Emotions cannot come into play when the survival of species is at risk. Only instinct and necessity. The Inoori were far more advanced than we were. Only a third of the Volkranian population was able to escape the wars. The rest were decimated.”
He sounds like he’s reading from a script. I can picture Rowan as a boy, sitting in a classroom somewhere on the cityship, learning to memorize this explanation of his people’s history. This is what you’ll tell the humans as an excuse for why you must kill them. Don’t worry, they’ll totally understand.
“Earth matched Volkron in a number of ways. It was the closest option, and it was soon clear its inhabitants and technology were far inferior.”
I can’t help it. I make a fist and punch Rowan in the arm. My knuckles scream after contact—his exosuit is like titanium. Rowan merely turns to me, and frowns.
“We are not inferior,” I say. “If we had your technology—”
“You are four centuries away from making those kinds of advancements. And if you place one finger on me while we are within sight of the cargo artificers, I will have no choice but to kill you immediately, honor-bound or not.”
I hold his unflinching stare while flexing my fingers. My knuckles ache and my wrist, too, but the threat to kill me hurts more. I hadn’t realized until this moment that I’d actually started to feel a little bit safe with him.
How could I have allowed that to happen?
“No one is permitted to purposefully touch the commanding sentinel, least of all a human. Death is the required punishment,” he whispers as the elevator floor clears the shaft and the cargo bay comes into view.
Cold, fresh air hits me, and I take a step away from him.
The artificers, as he’s just called them, stop and stare a lot faster than last time. They try to look busy as we walk through the enormous cargo hold, but I can still feel their eyes hitting my back as soon as I pass.
We arrive at the same transport pod Rowan had flown before. At least I think it’s the same one. Two charcoal gray uniformed Volkranian guards flank the open door, their shorter helmets already on. They stand with their legs apart, their hands clasped behind their backs, and like everyone else has done so far, they lower their chins and angle their heads to the left as Rowan approaches.
He touches his translator collar and speaks a rush of Volkranian words. The two guards glance at each another swiftly but neither makes a reply. They simply move aside, allowing Rowan through the door. He pulls his own helmet on and turns to me, and with a jerk of the helmet’s pointy chin, gestures for me to enter the transport.
It’s a world different from the gentle, thoughtful way he’d cleaned my scrapes and insisted on removing the shard of glass embedded in my skin. When we’d been alone in his room, I’d nearly forgotten that I was a prisoner. He’d talked to me. Touched me—even though it’s apparently a punishable offense.
It’s a show.
He’s acting the part of commanding sentinel for the eyes and ears that are here, watching and listening. Alone, when there had been no monitors, he’d been someone else entirely.
I suddenly want to strangle myself. What do I have in my head, rocks or brains? He’s an alien. I don’t know anything about him. So what if he acts one way with the others and another way with me? None of it is good. It’s not like I can tr
ust him. He’s got his own agenda, and I’m nothing but an obstacle.
I get into the transport and find my way to the small podium where I stood last time. The two guards don’t follow us in.
“Are they not coming?”
Rowan is already standing at the controls and prepping the small ship for flight. “I am honor-bound to you. They are not.”
Fine by me. The fewer Volkranians, the better. I adjust the strap of my messenger bag and step onto the podium. It suctions my feet into place, and the inward curved armrests emerge again for me to cling to.
“Where do you live?” Rowan asks.
The transport hums and rattles, the tremors reaching up into my feet and vibrating through the armrests.
“What, you can just punch an address into your GPS?” I ask.
He touches a few more knobs and levers. The craft lurches and then purrs forward. It’s hard for me to see beyond the confusion of those holographic screens and tickers lighting up the inside of the windshield, but Rowan doesn’t seem to mind them at all.
“Global positioning is archaic technology,” he answers.
“Thanks. I nearly forgot how primitive we are.”
He turns toward me, and though his expression behind the yellow-bronze shine of the reflective visor is hidden, I can still picture him glowering. He faces forward again just in time to guide the transport through the mouth of the cargo hold and into the shadowed sky over Manhattan.
“Your home location,” he commands.
I open my mouth to answer. Then stop. If my mom is safe there, I’ll be bringing an alien to her doorstep. What if Rowan hurts her? He killed Lee and Mr. Gainsbridge right in front of me. He just threatened to kill me if I touched him again.
He swivels on the control podium. “Penelope.”
He’s remembered he doesn’t need to say my last name, I notice. It makes him sound more human, which makes me more uncomfortable.
“You can just drop me off at the corner of Grove and Hale Streets in Eastham.”
Rowan’s visor dissolves; it just melts away completely, revealing his face. He stares at me.
“Penelope, I will deliver you to your mother.”
I lick my lips and go for it. “I don’t want you near her.”
He swivels back to his control boards and the transport purrs to the left. The whole craft tilts, pressing my ribs against the armrest holding me in place. Through the windshield, the distant city skyline is darkly stamped against a muted, cloudy sunset. Below the ship, the buildings are draped in thick shadow and a strange ultraviolet light. Transports are everywhere, each one designated by a winking red light. There aren’t any jets of white electrical flares like before though. They’re simply cruising around, and some have landed atop the roofs of buildings. But that violet light brightens everything, sharpens it, like white clothes under a black UV bulb.
Thanks to the EMP, the skyscrapers are full of darkened windows. Pockets of firelight and plumes of smoke flicker on nearly every block, making the city look like a miniature film set for a post-apocalyptic movie.
The transport shifts and dives toward the Hudson’s gray waters at the same angle as a theme park roller coaster ride. My stomach does a cha-cha up into my throat before Rowan levels the craft again. It felt curiously like a punishment for not giving him my address.
“Why does it matter if you don’t bring me straight to my mom?”
“I have orders,” is all he replies. I can’t tell if he’s angry, but at least we’re heading toward the Jersey side of the river.
There’s a small whirring noise, and a panel the size of an iPhone tilts open at Rowan’s hip. He deftly pulls something out of it before the panel seals shut again. It’s the thin, pin-like thing he’d taken from the desk drawer in his bedroom. He fastens it to the exterior hip of his exosuit.
“What’s that?” I ask.
The Hudson disappears beneath us. We’re officially over land now. The horizon is just as smoky and desolate as the aerial view of the city had been, though there seems to be half as many transports in the sky here.
The face of Rowan’s visor fills in like a shimmery liquid, and the reflective glare is back in place. “Something I devised to create static interference.”
He continues to fly the transport, veering slightly right and showing me, unfortunately, that he does know where Eastham is.
“Static? You’re breaking up sound transmissions right now?”
“Correct,” he answers.
The monitors on Volkron Six can’t hear us. Of course, they might still be able to see my mouth moving.
“Let me guess,” I say, trying to keep my lips as still as possible. “More ancient technology.”
He tacks to the left, and the bell tower of the elementary school just three streets away from my house, comes into view.
“Highly unauthorized ancient technology,” Rowan answers. “StatStix would be considered items of treason. All information and discussion occurring onboard the cityship and its radial crafts belongs, by right, to the fleet commandant. Purposefully withholding it is a punishable offense.”
I frown, but not at the fleet commandant’s Big Brother moves. The fact that Rowan has one of these StatStix, and that he’s been hiding it in his room, means something.
“You don’t agree that the fleet commandant should have access to everyone’s secrets?”
He pauses before answering. “Not all of them.”
He’s a rebel. And, apparently, an inventor. I suppress what feels like the beginning of a smile. “You made that?”
“It was a fairly simple mechanism to construct. Any monitor attempting to listen in right now will hear silence.”
“What about the surveillance cameras?” I ask, thinking they must have some fancier name for them.
“They can still see us, so I’m going to keep my visor in place, and you’re going to try to remain quiet.”
The emphasis he places on “try” bothers me. It’s almost as if he already knows me well enough to know staying quiet is going to be a challenge—and I don’t like it.
“I am honor-bound to you, but the well-being of the Volkranians aboard the cityship is my top responsibility,” Rowan says as the elementary school and the other familiar rooflines of Eastham get closer.
“The New York City fleet commandant answers to one person—the Sovereign.” Before I can ask who that is, he explains, “The Sovereign is commandant of Volkron One, the Tokyo fleet. Our mission, all of our orders, come from the Sovereign.”
I bite my lips to keep them from forming more questions.
“As I said earlier, the guard from the room of lockers claimed we do not have orders from the Sovereign to release contaminants into the humans’ water supply. That none of the fleets have been given that order.”
“But why would—”
Rowan quickly interrupts me. “He accused the fleet commandant of sedition. Of willfully diverting from the Sovereign’s strategy for settling on this planet.”
There’s another strategy, then? Something that doesn’t include ruining our water supply? Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s a peaceful strategy. But if the guard was telling the truth, and this Sovereign person really doesn’t want to ruin the water, even though Volkranians can’t drink it, that’s a good sign. Right?
The transport begins to descend toward the roofline. The roads cut a neat, paved grid with blocks of homes and buildings and patches of green lawns. The intersection of Grove and Hale streets is visible through the windshield, where the wreck of a green Prius and a blue pick-up truck clutters the center, surrounded by shattered glass and broken taillight covers. It looks like the truck creamed the Prius—probably during the EMP.
The transport hovers over the intersection. Rowan swivels on the moveable podium to face me.
“The warden was not supposed to be in the water treatment facility. The only other Volkranian with me was one of my own personal guard. I could not locate him before I left to find you and t
he chloromagnate.”
If Rowan’s personal guard was the one the warden broke like a piece of dry kindling, then that might mean the warden is also a threat to Rowan.
“I need to deliver you to your mother so I am no longer honor-bound, and I can investigate the actions of the warden and the accusations against the fleet commandant. Tell me your home location.”
He’s saying he has more important things to do. I can practically feel his restlessness. The transport is only about twenty or thirty feet from the ground. The air streaming down to keep it in hover mode batters the trees and ripples the grass on the postage stamp lawns.
Once I’m home, safe, I don’t want the warden to be able to track me down. I’ve seen him kill someone…probably Rowan’s personal guard. Is he worried about what I could possibly do with that information? From the way he glared at me on the cityship, I’m thinking the answer is yes.
“If I give you my address and you punch it into the GPS, the warden will know exactly where to find me.”
“I won’t enter your address, Penel—”
A loud crack and a sharp ping cut Rowan off. He spins around, back toward the windshield. Two men kneel behind the wrecked Prius, each aiming a rifle at the transport pod. A second bullet strikes the craft and I flinch, but it sounds as harmless as a rock pelting a metal surface.
Rowan reaches for a lever on the control board.
“No! Don’t hurt them!” I shout.
I know how easily one of these transports can fry someone on the ground, and there is absolutely no way I could live with myself if I was aboard a craft when it killed people. I struggle to move my feet from the podium. If he fires on them, I’ll stop him myself—if I can get free, which at the moment, I can’t.
Rowan mutters under his breath as he works furiously at the blinking lights and buttons and knobs on the control panel. A muffled rushing sound, like water, fills my ears, and then the two men outside stand up from behind the Prius. They lower their rifles, and their eyes chase something in the sky to the far left. They then hunch back down behind their blockade, out of sight.