by Page Morgan
“No!” I scream and instinctively reach for him—but logic stops me. That and the memory of Tana on the dock, so close to me, quivering uncontrollably, her voice warbling into nothing but a hiss. I couldn’t save Tana, and I can’t save Rowan. Not unless I want to scramble my own insides. And I really, really don’t.
The electric net explodes into fizzling sparks, and Rowan drops onto the grass. He moans, pushing himself onto his elbows.
The warden approaches, his strides eating up the grass. His hand pulls a different contraption from a panel in the thigh of his suit. In the locker room, Rowan had been closing that same panel on his own suit after killing the guard. The warden removes an oblong device; clearly some kind of gun. He aims it at the back of Rowan’s head.
I grip one of the loose bricks and chuck it. It hits the warden on the arm—and the second brick I throw slams into the side of his head. I’m hurling the third when Rowan recovers enough to get to his feet. He body-slams the warden, and they stagger back as one sprawling unit onto the back-porch steps. Rowan pins the warden’s arm to keep him from taking a shot.
“Go!” he roars at me, mashing his knee into the chest plates of the warden’s exosuit.
I scramble toward the corner of the house, my one clear path, as the warden headbutts Rowan, making him go limp. I don’t look back. My feet just go, my legs fly, and I definitely don’t breathe. My lungs are searing when I pass Rowan’s cloaked transport in the driveway—and a black gap yawns wide in front of me.
Heavy footsteps pound behind me and my brain short-circuits. It’s the only excuse I have for what I do next: I leap through the gap and into the transport.
A hissing pop, like a grease bubble splattering on a hot skillet, sounds directly behind me. My legs are rubber bands when I finally come to a stop in the transport, near the cockpit. I turn around, bracing myself for the sight of the warden. For the realization that I’ve gotten myself cornered. But Rowan stumbles inside, a bloody arm crossed against his stomach.
He slams his hand against a black and orange steel disc set into the wall before staggering to the control board. He hasn’t pressed that disc before, so I can only hope it’s some kind of important emergency lock, maybe to keep the warden from getting inside.
Rowan works fast at the levers and buttons, and the transport whirs to life as the warden stumbles, head bleeding, in front of the windshield. He raises his arm toward the reflective glass—and fires. The electrical net shivers across the windshield, and I hear it wrap around the entire craft. The buzz reaches through my feet and up into my legs. It’s only as powerful as a static electric shock, but the lights and holographs inside the transport flicker.
“Hold on,” Rowan rasps, and the next second, the metal floor pushes up, sending me flat onto my stomach.
We rocket straight into the air, the velocity of the upthrust locking me against the floor. I try to push onto my hands and knees, but it’s like an elephant is on my back. I can’t even crawl toward the foot podium.
A loud clunk hammers through the transport, and the sound of snapping metal announces what I’m guessing is a serious problem. The floor tilts sharply, sending me into a slide just seconds before gravity hooks the transport. My whole body comes up off the metal grated floor, and through the windshield in the seconds before I slam back down, I can see the ground rushing up at us.
We’re going to crash.
“Brace yourself!” Rowan shouts as the transport rocks and whistles, dips and lurches.
A chemical-scented smoke rises up through the small square grates that my fingers dig into to try to hold on to something, anything. The floor shakes and somewhere overhead an alarm wails out a warning. All I can do is roll onto my side and curl into a fetal position.
And then, we hit.
Chapter Twelve
The crash pounds through my bones and muscles, knocking my skull with such ferocity I can feel the roots of my teeth shift. Air drives out of my lungs. My ribs scream when I try to gasp in more. It hurts too much. Blinding pain seals my eyelids shut.
The transport rocks to a complete stop, but the vibrations from the crash still work through my body.
“Penelope.” Rowan’s voice is at my ear, breathless and urgent. Warm hands cradle my cheeks. “Penelope, open your eyes.”
When I do, a sheen of sweat glistens on his forehead and across the bridge of his nose. He blinks rapidly, his irises churning and sparking like an electrical storm in miniature.
“Can you move?”
I test my feet. Next, my legs. They ache, but they work. Rowan slides his arm underneath my shoulders to help sit me upright. My vision spins, and there are two, no three, of him crouching beside me.
“We have to leave. I’ll carry you if you can’t walk.”
I push at him. “I’m okay.”
Besides, how is he going to carry me? His arm is bleeding. My vision is still blurry, and sounds aren’t coming through just right, but it’s not the time to sit and recover. Not with the warden on our heels. I stand and stumble to the side. Rowan tries to pick me up, reaching down to hook the back of my legs with his arm. I wrench away.
“I said I can walk.” And the less he touches me, the better.
He lets go, and I nearly topple to the side. “Then walk,” he commands, before slamming his hand against the black and orange disc again. The door slides open, only this time it squeals with effort and gets stuck three quarters of the way to completion.
We hobble outside, into the sickly wash of an ultraviolet light. The sky glows with it, and I realize it’s coming from the belly of the cityship. It’s a giant nightlight, hanging there in the sky. The transport is no longer cloaked. It’s also half-buried in someone’s backyard. The scent of newly turned earth mixes with chemical fumes.
“We can’t be far from my neighborhood,” I say as Rowan leans heavily against the downed craft. He clutches his side with his hand, but his palm isn’t large enough to hide the gaping black hole in the abdomen of his suit. Smoke trails up from it, and his deep purple, nearly black blood stains his fingers.
“You’re hurt.” I reach for the hard exterior of his suit but pull my hand back just before I can touch the scorched material. “The warden shot you.”
“I’ll be fine. We need to move. Fast.” A series of clicks and pops follows, like air decompressing. He’s shedding his suit like he had on the ship, in his room. The chest opens and spreads, each arm splitting and springing apart. The legs of his suit also crack and spread until he can step out of it. I catch him as he stumbles.
“It’s traceable,” he explains. We leave it behind and start across the lawn, toward a line of hedges.
The abdomen of his full body jumpsuit also has a charred hole, but he moves easier without the robotic gear weighing him down.
“Can the Warden trace the transport, too?” I ask, my pulse ratcheting. With every step, pain rockets up my legs and through my back. My toe catches on the edge of a kid’s turtle-shaped sandbox, and I topple forward, my knee digging into the soft sand.
Rowan grips my arm and hoists me to my feet. “Yes, so stop being stubborn, and let me help you. We need to get as far away as we can,” he whispers, half dragging me through the yard.
It borders a parking lot to a Dunkin’, abandoned cars still lined up for the drive-through. Once we’re through the lot, I lead us to the right, up the sidewalk. A few candles and low wattage lights, probably battery-powered camp lanterns, shine out from behind windows up and down the road. Davis Street, I think.
Rowan grunts in pain every few seconds, and the farther we walk, the more labored his breathing gets. He’s no longer helping me walk; I’m helping him.
“We need to find a place to hide,” I say. “You can’t walk much farther, and I definitely can’t carry you.”
“Are you injured?” he asks as we head up a side street.
The right side of my ribs sears with pain whenever I take a deep breath, but I shake my head. “No, you just weigh a ton. Wh
at are you made out of, brick?”
I seal my lips, remembering the bricks I’d hurled at the warden. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d just stood by and let him shoot Rowan in the head. Maybe the warden would have let me go. Maybe he would have shot me because I was a witness. All I know is that I don’t know anything. I just have to trust my gut.
“Let’s find some shelter,” I say.
The pavement looks wet under that violet glow, and there are lumps in the road. I know what they are and look away, my throat tight. Rowan grunts and one of his legs gives out, taking us reeling to the side. I wrench my ribs and gasp in pain but manage to get us moving again.
“How bad is it?” I ask when I have my breath back. “Because it looks bad. Really bad.”
“It is a moderate injury.” He groans and leans a little bit more on my shoulder.
“Now who’s being stubborn?” I mutter.
We hobble on for another ten minutes or so, only crossing paths with two people the whole time. I tense, but without his suit and weaponed arm, Rowan doesn’t look like an alien anymore. The people pass by without a word.
“There,” I finally say as my eyes hitch on a small, one-story bungalow. The front windows are smashed, and the door is ajar. There aren’t any battery-powered lights coming from inside, either. My legs are going to collapse if I try to walk any more, and Rowan is about five seconds from passing out. We’ll just have to risk it.
I lead him off the sidewalk and across the street. The front steps to the bungalow bow in the middle, and the porch is stuffed with junk. As we approach the door, Rowan grunts and abandons my side. He staggers forward to enter the home first. I step in behind him, listening for voices.
“Hello?” I call out, though to be honest, it’s more of a whisper.
Rowan braces himself against a wall. “We are alone.”
There’s a small bathroom to the immediate left. I go in and rummage through the mirrored medicine cabinet.
“I have to look at your wound. Is there a bullet in there, or did it go through?”
They always go through in the movies.
I’m really hoping this is like the movies.
“No bullet,” he says, short of breath. “A laser. From a lambent.”
I lurch back into the hallway and stare at him. “A freaking laser? How the hell am I supposed to fix that?”
“You don’t need to fix it. The wound was cauterized on contact. I just require sleep.” Rowan pushes off the wall and stumbles to the bottom of a staircase. “Rooms for sleeping are generally located on the upper levels, correct?”
I’d started to notice him relaxing his speech, even using contractions now and then. But now he’s beginning to sound like a robot again. It’s probably not a good sign that he’s regressing.
I help him up the stairs. It’s not easy, especially with my own injuries. But I’m not the one bleeding. “Why do you have to sleep? Shouldn’t I try to close up your laser wound instead?”
I get woozy at the idea of inspecting his wound as Rowan slowly climbs the carpeted steps. My mom’s the one with a steel stomach, not me.
Cat urine and cigarette smoke hangs in the air on the second floor, and I’m kind of glad for the lack of any real light. It’s just the ultraviolet glow coming through the windows in each of the three upstairs rooms. I peek into the closest one and see a large bed. Big enough for Rowan, I figure, so I steer him inside.
He flops backward onto the mattress, his feet still on the floor. I try hefting his legs up, but they’re like granite hitching posts. He has to help my efforts, and by the time he’s lying fully on the bed, his boots hanging off the end of the mattress, I feel like collapsing beside him.
I don’t though. Instead, I kneel in the center of the bed and watch the rise and fall of his chest. It’s shallow and quick, and his eyes are closed. His hand rests on the charred spot of his suit.
Rowan’s eyes slit open.
“You saved my life,” he whispers. “Again.”
He’s talking about the bricks. I’d thrown them without thinking. That’s not really true though… I’d been thinking how I didn’t want Rowan to die. Even though he’s the fleet commandant’s son. Even though he’d been ordered to kill me and my mom.
“You need to stop doing that, Penelope. I am not…” He takes another shallow breath. “Your ally.”
His face contorts, and he arches his back and groans, the sound ripping from his throat. Then every last muscle in his body goes slack. His arm slides away from his laser wound. Just above his left hip, the flesh is black and goopy, the crater gory enough to make me gag. I have to do something, so I pull open the clasps on his jumpsuit down to his waist, exposing a white layer of cloth underneath. I lift it from his skin, pushing it up until the wound is fully visible. Even in the strange violet light, I can see pink flesh along the edges of the crater. As I watch, more swatches of pink emerge.
“Rowan?” I whisper. The wound is healing itself.
“Self-mending renders the patient…unconscious,” he says with barely any strength.
“That’s why he was aiming for your head with that laser gun,” I say once I’m certain I’m not going to dry heave. “I’m guessing your body can heal, but your brain can’t.”
“Lambent emulsifier,” he says. He then moans something else incoherent. I shuffle up toward the pillows on my knees.
“What is it?”
“Go,” he whispers. “When I wake…I want youtobegone.” Each word nudges into the next. “Notsafewithme.”
“It’s not safe anywhere.”
Walking the streets of Eastham on a regular night is dangerous; add an alien invasion into the mix, and it would just be plain stupid. If I leave this house and try to make it to the hospital to search for my mom, I could run into all kinds of trouble. There might also be another transport attack. It’s been a long time since the last one, so we’re probably due.
Besides, when Rowan wakes up after his body has self-healed, I plan on asking what he’s going to do about the things the warden said back at my house. As much as I dislike the warden, he’s right about trying to stop the fleet commandant. Maybe by saving Rowan’s life a second time he’ll be honor-bound to me again. Maybe he’ll have to grant me one more wish. If so, I’ll ask him to do something to stop his father.
Rowan’s eyes close again. He looks peaceful and, beyond the sharply defined angles of his nose, jaw, and cheekbones, utterly human. His lips especially. They’re full, the top lip bowed into two soft crests. His mouth barely moves as he makes one last murmur: “Wasnevergoingtokillyou.”
I sit back on my ankles and stare at his closed eyelids.
I bring my feet out from underneath me and, wincing from the pain in my ribs, wrap my arms around my knees. Looking at this Volkranian, in a deep, body-healing sleep, I wonder if there can be any more surprises in life after something like this. I should hate Rowan. I should want to kill him in his sleep. Tana is dead. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people—innocent people—are dead tonight because of Rowan and the beings he leads up on that cityship.
He is my enemy.
I could leave. Get up, go downstairs, and raid whatever is left in the cupboards and fridge. I could search for a steak knife or some other kitchen tool that could be used as a weapon, and I could take off, into the violet night, toward the hospital. But there are no guarantees. I may never find my mom, or my dad. I’m too tired to keep going. Too tired to be angry or vengeful or afraid. I’m not even that hungry anymore. Exhaustion has burned that need right out of me.
The bed is a queen size, and Rowan’s only taking up half of it. I crawl to the far side of the mattress and don’t think about the state of the pillowcase or sheets as I lay down. Rowan’s suit reflects the alien light coming through the sheer window curtains. I try to keep my eyes open long enough to see if he’s breathing. But soon my lids drop, and there’s nothing to worry about anymore.
Chapter Thirteen
A weak orange
haze filters in through the curtains, touched by gold and blue when I open my eyes. I smell cigarette smoke and cat pee, and there’s a water-stained ceiling above me.
The bungalow. A stranger’s house. The alien attack.
I jackknife into a sitting position, and my head churns. My stomach starts to growl next, and I remember I’m starving.
I see him in my side vision: Rowan, sitting on the edge of the bed.
He isn’t wearing his jumpsuit.
He isn’t wearing a shirt, just a pair of white, long-john looking pants that hug his hips. His broad, bare back is turned to me. His smooth, light caramel skin looks like it’s spent time in the sun. While he isn’t made of pure muscle, the guy has plenty of it. I also never would have imagined a hole had been lasered through his side the night before. His back is completely unmarred.
“You’re all right.” My throat is sore and bone dry, my mind still fuggy.
“Well enough to function without difficulty,” he says as he stands up. He turns to face me, and I try not to gape, open-mouthed, at him.
I fail, miserably.
He watches me closely as he reaches for the black suit, draped over the foot of the bed. “Is something wrong?”
Yes. Something is most definitely wrong. “You look…like a guy.”
He has abs. Not exactly washboard abs, but I-do-a-lot-of-sit-ups-on-a-daily-basis abs. His chest and shoulders are sculpted, and he doesn’t have extra nipples or gills or scales, or anything else someone might expect of an alien. My eyes coast south of his belly button, over the new pink skin of his healed wound, to the defined vee of his hips.
“I am not a guy.” He shakes out the legs of his suit and steps in, then takes his sweet time bringing up the waist, giving me another few seconds to ogle his…well…anatomy.