by Page Morgan
“What are you then?”
“I am a Volkranian male.” He stoops to pick a gray shirt up from the floor. He speaks as he tugs it on over his head. “We do not use slang terms for gender.”
Of course they don’t.
He finishes squeezing himself into the too-small gray shirt. It’s a Doctor Who shirt, screen-printed with a picture of the Doctor’s blue police box time traveling spaceship. I laugh. “Oh, the irony.”
He frowns. “What do you mean?”
I bite my bottom lip to keep from grinning. “Nothing.”
He inserts his arms into the sleeves of his suit. The front is still torn but the blood has been washed off the fabric. He finishes buttoning the clasps, covering up the Doctor Who shirt he’d stolen. It must have been a size XXL for it to fit him.
“You were supposed to leave, Penelope.”
I know.
“And you were supposed to kill me,” I reply, peeling off the blanket I’d pulled up at some point during the night.
Rowan’s lips stay sealed as I get up and grimace at the deep ache in my ribs, along with a lesser one around my knee.
“You’re injured,” he says.
“It’s nothing.” I limp around the foot of the bed, toward a smashed mirror. My reflection is fractured, but I still manage to see my wildly messy hair.
“You could have internal injuries,” he continues.
“If that were the case, I probably wouldn’t have woken up.”
As a nurse, my mom made a habit out of handing out tidbits of scary knowledge like that, casual as cake.
Where had she spent the night? The hospital? She has to be worried about me. With her all-too-common panic attacks, I can only hope someone is with her to help her through them.
“Really, I’m okay. It’s probably just a bruised rib.”
Considering he was supposed to have killed me by now, I’m not going to complain about it. Rowan approaches the mirror, his arms crossed, his reflection growing behind me. He reaches my back, but thanks to his freakish height, I can’t see his face in the mirror.
“It appears neither of us can do what we logically should,” he says softly. “I did not expect to wake and find you beside me.”
I shrug, the mention of the bed making my ears flame. “I couldn’t just leave. You were hurt.”
Rowan retreats a few paces, and his face comes into view. He looks distracted as he peers out the window. And uncomfortable. “I’m fine now.”
“Good. Then we should leave. I still have to find my mom, and you have to get back to your ship, right?”
He nods once. It all sounds so straightforward. But a new ache twinges in my chest.
I slide out from between him and the mirror and head for the hallway. In the bathroom, I take care of business, brush my teeth with my finger, and then splash my face a few times with icy water. It clears my vision and brings other things into focus too, like the wild ache in my legs and back, and the cramp of hunger low in my stomach. I need food and water, and soon.
“At least the warden didn’t find us last night,” I say as soon as I walk back into the bedroom. Rowan is at the window, looking through a gap in the curtain. His eyes are on the sky.
“By now the fleet commandant is aware that I have not returned to the cityship. He is also likely aware my transport crashed in the middle of a suburban neighborhood.”
“Do you think he’s sent out other Volkranians to search for you?”
He steps away from the window and toes a pair of jeans aside on the floor. Underneath is a pair of pink grannie underwear. Rowan narrows his eyes at the undergarment.
“They’re panties,” I explain.
He nudges them out of his path with the toe of his boot. “I am aware of that. The Victoria’s Secret females wear them in many of their photographs.”
I stare at Rowan, picturing him and some other Volkranian boys huddling around a computer, clicking through images of beautiful women in lingerie. And then I laugh.
“Well,” I gesture to the balled-up grannie panties, “some of us are Hanes girls. And trust me, in reality, women wear more clothing on a regular basis.”
He glazes my legs, stomach, and chest with a slow sweep of his eyes.
I fiddle with the top buttons of my plaid shirt. “Do you mind?”
His cuts off his inspection. “Mind what?”
“You’re looking at me.”
Rowan puzzles over my complaint before bowing his head and averting his gaze. “I was not aware I could not look at you.”
“Well, of course you can look at me, but just…when you look at me like that, it’s…different.”
And unexpected. Then again, I’d just finished inspecting him in the same way. The bedroom is getting warmer, and I know the furnace hasn’t kicked on. The digital clock on the bedside table is blank, and I’m betting the electricity is still out everywhere.
“I apologize,” he whispers, trying hard not to look at me at all. “You’re correct. I need to return to the cityship.” Rowan heads for the bedroom door and then the stairwell.
Downstairs, glass litters the floor. The furniture has been overturned, the cushions torn and mangled, and it looks like a television has been ripped out of an entertainment center in the living room.
Rowan reaches for the front door.
“Wait.” I push his arm aside. “You can’t go out there with that weird alien tech around your throat. Someone will see you and guess what you are.”
He blinks at me. “It is not weird. It’s functional.”
“Maybe, sure, but it still stands out. And yours is in your skin. I’ve seen others with just clip-on ones, and some without them at all.” I open a small closet and find a bunch of jackets and shoes. There’s a large windbreaker, but when he puts it on, it still manages to look two sizes too small.
“As commanding sentinel, I’m required to speak a number of languages in order to communicate with other species. Lower ranking Volkranians are not given this responsibility.”
I zip the jacket all the way up to his chin, covering the voice translator, and then step away. “There. That should work.” I take a breath and dive into what I need to know before setting off on my own. “Do you believe what the warden said yesterday?”
Rowan pulls on the cuffs of the jacket and frowns. “I haven’t known the warden to lie in the past.”
“What about your father? Do you trust him?”
He’s quiet for a moment, then runs a hand through his hair in a very human gesture of frustration. His eyes meet mine and hold them. “My father lied to you about letting you and your mother go safely.”
The statement answers my question in a roundabout way—I think. “So, are you going to try to talk to him?”
He slants a look of doubt at me. “Yes. But there are others on Volkron Six I trust, and perhaps I should align with them first.”
Good. It sounds like a plan. At least then someone up there might have Rowan’s back.
“Okay. How do you get up there? Go out in the street and wave your arms around, trying to get someone’s attention?”
Obviously, that’s not how, but I can’t even start to imagine how he’s going to get back onto the cityship without a transport.
“Nothing so primitive as that. I have been training for this settlement since I was released from my chamber, Penelope. One of the first rules of survival all of us learn is the procedure of reuniting with the cityship. There are multiple rendezvous points constantly being watched by our monitors.”
I want to know where these rendezvous points are, but something else takes the upper hand in the curiosity department. “Released from your chamber?”
He passes me on his way to the back of the house.
“Volkranians do not give birth as humans do,” he answers.
I follow him into a kitchen. “Don’t tell me you’re all test tube babies?”
He doesn’t seem at all offended as he opens cupboards left and right. “It is a mercif
ul practice. Fetuses develop in simulated wombs, receive the proper rationing of nutrients and medical advancements, like the ability to self-heal, and once ready for release, they are born without inflicting pain and suffering.”
There’s a can of Pringles set deep in one of the cupboards. Rowan closes the cupboard without taking it out. I sigh and hop onto a counter, kneeling to reach it. My ribs complain, but it’s worth it—you can’t just ignore a can of Pringles.
“That seems a little cold.” I take out the can. Sour Cream and Onion. Score. “I mean, if babies are grown in tubes—”
“Simulated Amniotic Chambers,” he interrupts.
I consider the acronym. “SACs? Seriously? You guys are grown in SACs?”
Rowan stops sniffing a bag of Pirate Booty and scowls at me.
“Okay, okay. So, you’re grown in SACs instead of real wombs. It makes the whole process of having a baby sound like a… I don’t know, a science experiment.”
I pop a Pringle as Rowan returns the crumpled bag of Pirate Booty to the cupboard. I wonder what Volkranians do eat.
“It is how procreation is handled amongst Volkranians.”
There’s a basket of bananas and apples on the counter; I grab one of each. “But what if a Volkranian woman does get pregnant?”
Rowan slides open drawers, removing utensils and boxes of plastic sandwich baggies, and then replacing them. He takes sidelong glances at me, the muscles along his jaw and mouth tensing.
“We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want,” I say, peeling the banana. Maybe he doesn’t want to exchange any more species secrets. Honestly, I’m not sure how we even got started on this topic.
He lets out a sigh. “Volkranian women cannot become pregnant the way human women can.”
Oh. “But...what does that mean?”
He lifts his chin and averts his eyes.
“We do not—” Rowan pauses, either waiting for his collar to hand him a translation for the word he wants or hesitating because he’s uncomfortable. He kind of is squirming. I bite the corner of my lip to suppress a smirk. “We do not have relations in the physical capacity in which your kind so readily engages.”
I hack through the jungle of convoluted English he’s just thrown at me, and stare at him, dumbfounded. “You don’t have sex?”
He allows a bare second of eye contact before pretending to be interested in a jug of cheese balls. “It is simulated.”
“Like…not real sex?”
He crosses his arms, the windbreaker sleeves rubbing together and making a zip noise. It seems abnormally loud in the quiet kitchen.
“The sensation is real,” he answers, still not looking at me completely.
“But you don’t actually, you know, do it?”
God, I’m talking about sex with an alien. The world really has turned upside-down.
“The act carries a high risk of transmitted diseases, something Volkranians cannot afford to set loose on a contained craft such as the cityship,” he says quickly.
He tends to fall back on long-winded sentences and proper words whenever he’s not comfortable.
It’s kind of cute.
I bite into the banana. “That’s very logical of you. Almost Vulcan. I should call you Spock.”
He takes an apple from the fruit basket. “I prefer Rowan.”
He pierces the red skin with his teeth and chews, his forehead scrunching. “This is delightful,” he says with a full mouth.
I stifle a laugh as he swallows and, with his thumb, wipes a drip of juice from his lower lip. My eyes follow the motion with a little too much awe. I clear my throat.
“Your rendezvous point. Do you know where it is?”
“There are twenty-two in the New York City area, but Norris Cemetery in Eastham is the closest.”
“I know where it is. It’s on the way to the hospital.”
Rowan bites into the apple again. He holds my gaze as he takes an excruciating amount of time to chew and swallow.
“We could travel together,” he finally says.
I stick my hands in my pockets and ignore the swirling sensation in my stomach. It’s not relief. It’s just common sense to walk together if we’re going in the same direction. “Sure. For a little bit.”
Rowan takes a few steps toward the front hall, then stops and faces me again. His brows furrow. “Do I look human enough?”
I stare at him, lips parted, mind spinning. “Yeah. You’re, uh...passably human looking.”
It’s not a lie. He has his quirks, his unusual height and his mass, and then those color-mixing eyes...but he’s not all that different from a human man. And that’s what’s making everything so complicated.
I’m not attracted to him.
He’s not handsome.
What happens to him after I leave him at the cemetery isn’t important. Finding my mom and making sure she’s all right is.
I brush past him on the way to the door. “Let’s get moving.”
Chapter Fourteen
Outside, the black ship hangs lower in the sky than I remember it being the day before. Or maybe I’m just imagining things.
“How long will it be up there?” I ask as we walk swiftly. We’ve seen a few people since leaving the bungalow, but they keep their heads down and move fast.
Beside me, Rowan is on full alert. Like a Secret Service agent, his eyes never rest in any one place for more than a second.
“For the foreseeable future,” he answers.
“What about the towns and cities that aren’t metropolises?” I ask, thinking of my dad in Connecticut. New Haven is big, but not large enough for a cityship to park itself over.
Rowan is quiet as we hurry through a parking lot of abandoned cars, some with their doors wide open, looking desolate and ominous. He won’t glance my way. “You do not want to know our objectives, Penelope.”
“Or maybe they’re just your father’s objectives. Realistically, is there anything you can do to stop him, if what the warden said is true?”
A man and woman with full-to-bursting plastic bags of groceries step through the shattered glass doors of a corner Stop-n-Shop and rush down the cement steps. Rowan angles his head away while taking my arm and steering me to the opposite side of the street.
“It seems the warden has organized against him,” Rowan whispers once we we’ve gone ahead. “If I can convince him that I’m loyal to the Sovereign first and not the fleet commandant—”
“If he doesn’t kill you the second he sees you.” After their battle in my backyard, I don’t trust the warden not to. I don’t trust any Volkranian. Except Rowan—which might be catastrophically stupid. Then again, we only have about ten minutes until we reach Norris Cemetery. Ten minutes before he rockets back up to the cityship, and I never see him again.
We walk without speaking, but it isn’t silent. People are emerging from their houses, gathering in groups, and staring up at the belly of the ship. It really does seem lower today, though there’s no place that ship can land without crushing at least two or three square miles of houses and trees—and people. The ones we pass have their shoulders hunched, their expressions pinched. They’re wary. I feel the same way. I just happen to know a little bit more about our invaders than they do. I’m not sure that makes me any better off, to be honest.
Heads turn toward us as we pass, but even though a few curious eyes linger on Rowan, thankfully, no one tries to talk to us.
The cemetery gates come into view up ahead. I drag my feet to a stop.
“This is it,” I say.
An ear-shattering blare swallows Rowan’s reply. It shakes the ground beneath our feet, scratching over my skull, and tunneling down into my spine. I clamp my palms over my ears and wince up at the cityship. I want to retch when the cloud of black transports pours from the bottom of the ship.
“Keep moving!” Rowan takes me by the arm and drags me through the cemetery gates. The horn blares on, vibrating through my bones. My bruised ribs spasm as Rowan
pulls me toward a maintenance shed. The padlock snaps with one yank, and he practically tosses me inside. He closes the door just as the blare stops. My ears feel like they should be bleeding, but when I uncover them, my palms are clean.
At the window, through about an inch of cobwebs and built-up grime, the black beetle looking transports fill the sky. Hundreds of them, like that scene in Charlotte’s Web when all her spider babies hatch and then fly away in the breeze.
Rowan comes up behind me and braces the window with both palms, caging me in as he peers up into the sky.
“We stay here.” His breath ruffles my hair. “The lasers are heat seeking and programmed to track and fire on anything in motion.”
So that’s how they work.
The transports seem to be descending over the city skyline mostly, but a small cloud of them is headed this way. We’ve only seen handfuls of people on the streets here, but in the city, I bet there are people everywhere. I close my eyes for a second, fighting a swell of panic and nausea. Wherever my mom is, I want her to be inside. Motionless. Safe.
A laser beam fires from underneath one nearing transport, but it’s not white or the hissing noise that I remember from the previous attacks. It’s phosphorescent green and sounds like the high-pitched scream of an engine. I hold my breath—and then a fireball erupts two blocks away, producing a mushroom of flame and smoke and debris. The rumble of it tickles my soles. A house. The transport has just blown up a freaking house. With people inside? My fingers dig into the windowsill, and I can’t breathe.
“No,” Rowan whispers in my ear. “No, not yet.”
He pulls away from the window, and I spin around. “What do you mean, not yet? What’s happening?”
Rowan tears off the windbreaker as another screaming laser whistles outside, and another shuddering explosion shakes the shed. I whirl back to the window. The fireball is closer this time.
“The next phase. The humans are closing themselves up, causing the number of casualties to dwindle.”
The taste of sour cream and onion Pringles rises into my throat. Another explosion rocks the ground; the shelves and tools rattle inside the shed.