“Hey,” Riley whispered, opening one eye.
“Sorry. Did I wake you?”
Riley yawned and blinked so slowly Daryl thought she’d fallen asleep again. “No. What time is it?”
Daryl didn’t have a watch, yet he instinctively knew exactly what the time was. It was one of the many new talents he’d started developing. “Just after two am,” he whispered.
“Where’s Hath?”
Daryl shrugged. “In the back room, I think. I don’t know if he sleeps.”
Riley stretched and adjusted her hat. “Is Ash awake?”
They both looked at Ash, who let out a single snore in reply. “Guess not,” Daryl said.
“Ash,” Riley whispered. “Ash. Ash.” When she got no answer, she hissed it loudly. “Ash!”
Ash folded in the middle so he was sitting bolt upright. He raised both hands and frantically pointed them around the room. “Huh? What? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” said Riley. “Go back to sleep.”
Ash groaned and lay down again. “Ugh. I hate you both,” he said, rubbing his eyes with a finger and thumb. “What time is it?”
“Just after two,” Daryl said again.
“Where’s—?”
“In the back,” Riley said. “Or out somewhere doing weird alien stuff. We’re not sure.”
Ash sat up, suddenly more awake. “We should get out of here.”
Daryl and Riley exchanged a look. “What?” Daryl asked.
“I literally can’t spell it out any clearer than that,” Ash whispered. “We…” He gestured to all three of them. “Should get out…” He pointed to the door. “Of here.” He pointed to the floor.
“But Hath needs us,” Riley said. “The world needs us. We can’t just run.” She glanced at Daryl. “Can we?”
Ash sighed and swung his feet down. His bed retracted back into the floor as he stood up. “Of course we can. Do you really want to go through with this? Do you really think we can just zip over to an alien planet, kick their asses, then fly back home like nothing happened? We’re going to get ourselves killed.”
“If we don’t stop them, everyone’s going to end up dead anyway,” Daryl pointed out.
“You know what? Not my problem,” Ash said, shrugging like a moody toddler. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want it to happen—if I could choose if everyone lived or died, I’d want them to live—but realistically? There’s not a damn thing we can do about it.”
“We can try,” Daryl said.
“Great. And then we can die,” Ash spat. He stabbed a finger upward. “And if I get to choose to die millions of miles away on an alien planet, or at home with my family, then I choose here. I choose to go out with people who care about me, not as part of some wannabe Justice League—or worse, completely alone.”
Daryl and Riley exchanged another look.
“You two have got to have families, right?” Ash said. “Tell me you don’t want to go see them.”
Daryl realized he was wringing his hands and stopped. The truth of it was, he did want to see his dad, even if only to say goodbye. He wanted to tell him what he was doing—what he was—and maybe, at last, make him proud.
“I don’t have any family left,” Riley said. She looked at the others in turn and tried to smile. “I killed them.”
Ash stepped back. “You did what now?”
“Why?” Daryl asked.
Riley shook her head. When she spoke, her throat was tight. “Not on purpose. I… there was a landslide. There were a lot of rocks. I didn’t know it was… I didn’t know I was doing it until after. I mean, how could I know?” She looked at them hopefully. “Right? I couldn’t know.”
Daryl shook his head. “Um, no. No, it wasn’t your fault.”
“It was his,” said Ash, stabbing a finger toward the door at the back of the ship. “He did this to us. He abducted us and changed us into… whatever the hell we are. I didn’t ask for this. None of us asked for this. And her family is dead because of it.”
Silence fell. Riley looked at the floor, chewing on her thumbnail with her arms folded in front of her. It was a long time before anyone spoke.
“And what about your family?” Daryl said, at last.
“What about them?”
“They’re alive, right?”
Ash nodded. “Yeah, so?”
“So they’re not going to stay that way. This time tomorrow, or maybe the next day, or the day after, they’re going to be dead, along with you, me, and everyone else.”
Ash shifted on his feet and opened his mouth. He closed it again, choosing not to reply.
“Hath’s plan is good. It can work. We can make it work. We can go up there, and we can stop it. We can save everybody.” Daryl stood up. “I’ve never been anything special—”
“Well that’s obvious,” Ash auto-piloted.
“—and I’ve never really wanted to be. I just wanted to fit in and be normal, but none of that matters now. I don’t even know if there is a ‘normal’ anymore. There’s just a choice. We use the powers we’ve been given, or we let the world die. That’s the choice we’ve got.
“And yes, it’s probably a pretty good bet we’re going to die whichever one we choose, but there’s a chance we won’t. There’s a chance we can save everyone. And, well…” Daryl realized Ash and Riley were both watching him intently, and felt himself blush. He sat down. “…I think I’m probably going to give it a go.”
“That was shaping up to be a pretty great speech,” Riley said, her voice still sounding a little wobbly. “But it sort of fizzled out at the end. Still, marks for trying. Oh, and I’m totally in, by the way,” she said. “Even if nothing else—alien planet! Am I right? You know I’m right.”
She and Daryl both turned to Ash. He shook his head, then cast his gaze up to Yufo’s featureless ceiling. “Fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “Let’s go kill ourselves in outer space.”
He turned toward the door. “But if you think I’m spending my last night alive in a hole in the ground, you’ve got another thing coming.”
“Where are you going?” Daryl asked.
“You mean where are we going,” said Ash. “I’ve got a house here. We can go there. Get a hot shower, change of clothes, phone home, whatever. Nice food. Whatever you want.”
“Sounds good,” Riley admitted. “Where is it?”
Ash hesitated. “Hmm?”
“Your house. Where is it?”
“London,” Ash said. “It’s my London pad. I’ve got houses all over.”
“Well, obviously it’s in London,” Daryl said. “But where? What’s the address?”
Ash stayed silent.
“You don’t know, do you?” said Daryl.
“You don’t know your own address?” Riley asked. “How old are you? Four?”
“I’ve got lots of addresses,” Ash protested. “Someone picks me up at the airport and drives me there. Why would I need to know where I’m going?”
“Great,” Daryl said, sighing. “Just great. Do you remember anything about it? Anything at all?”
There was a long pause as Ash strained to remember the details of his house. “There’s a six on the gate,” he said. He frowned. “Or is that Paris?”
“Well, that’s a massive help. Well done,” Daryl said.
Riley slumped back onto her bed of living foam. “I’m going to try to get some sleep.”
“Wait, no, don’t,” Ash said. “So we don’t know where my house is. So what? My point still stands. I’m not spending my last night alive in a hole in the ground.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “So, the three of us? I say we hit the town.”
Twenty-Two
A little over an hour later, Daryl, Riley, and Ash stood huddled together under the neon gaze of Piccadilly Circus, wondering just what part of town they should hit, exactly.
“I thought it’d be busier,” said Ash, gazing around at the almost empty street. A couple of homeless people had curled themselves up in doorways, and th
ey could hear drunken singing off in the middle distance, but other than that—and the occasional black cab speeding by—it was a ghost town.
“To be fair, it’s three in the morning,” Daryl pointed out.
“But come on, it’s London,” said Ash. “It’s a party city.”
“Yeah, but it’s a Tuesday. No one parties at 3am on a Tuesday, do they?”
Ash shrugged. “There must be something to do. Bars or clubs or something.”
“We’re fifteen,” Riley reminded him.
“So? I can get us in. No problem,” Ash crowed.
“Right,” said Daryl. “So you—a guy currently all over the front pages of newspapers worldwide, and being hunted by a covert military organization—are going to stroll right into a nightclub and say, ‘Let me in. Don’t you know who I am?’ That’s your plan, it is?”
Ash shifted. “Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know. We can’t just stand here all night.”
“No, but we could’ve stayed back in the ship,” Daryl said. He turned. “I’m going back.”
“No, wait,” said Ash. “There’s got to be somewhere we can go.”
“What about there?” suggested Riley. She pointed to a neon yellow M above a brightly-lit shop front. “I could go for a burger.”
“At three in the morning?” said Daryl.
“Every time is burger time,” Riley said.
Ash puffed out his cheeks and looked around, just in case a better opportunity was about to present itself. When it became clear that one wasn’t, he shrugged. “Fine. Yeah. Better than nothing.”
“Daryl? You in?” Riley asked.
“Yeah,” Daryl said. “Yeah, why not?”
Five minutes later, having realized they only had enough money on them for a child-sized chicken nugget meal, Daryl, Riley, and Ash sat around a table, slowly picking away at the fries.
“This place sucks,” said Ash. “McDonald’s back in the US has a way bigger menu.”
“Not that it would’ve made any difference to us,” Daryl pointed out. “Since we barely had three quid.”
“OK, I get it. I didn’t think the cash thing through,” Ash said. “It’s not something I usually have to worry about.”
“What do you usually have to worry about, exactly?” asked Daryl, taking a bite of his single chicken nugget. “Anything?”
“I’ve got worries. You don’t know about my problems, OK? You don’t know the pressures I’ve got to deal with.”
“Which yacht to buy, which country to have your private jet collect ice cream from…” Daryl said.
Ash snorted. “Believe what you want. Do you honestly think I sent a private jet to Italy to get ice cream like the papers said?”
“Yes,” said Daryl. “I saw the photographs.”
Ash hesitated. “Well, I mean, yeah. On that occasion, maybe. But that was one time.”
“Was it good ice cream?” Riley asked.
Ash dipped one of the fries in a little plastic tub of ketchup. “Don’t know. By the time it got back, it’d melted.”
Riley laughed. It started as a stifled giggle, then grew until it sounded like it was coming all the way from her toes.
“What?” Ash asked. “It’s not funny.”
“It’s frickin’ hilarious,” Riley wheezed. “All the way to Italy. And it melted.”
Ash shook his head, but couldn’t stop himself smiling, too. “Yeah, yeah. Go ahead and laugh it up. At least I’ve got a private jet.”
“Pity it hasn’t got a freezer,” Riley said, then she exploded with laughter again. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She tried to compose herself, but every time she came close she’d burst into a fresh fit of the giggles. Daryl started to chuckle, too, laughing as much at Riley as at Ash’s melted ice cream.
“You’re both total dicks,” Ash said, which only served to set them both off again.
Eventually, the laughter faded. Riley wiped her eyes. “Wow. I enjoyed that.” She popped her chicken nugget in her mouth and chewed on it. “Some last meal, huh?”
Daryl and Ash both looked down at what was left of the Happy Meal. There hadn’t been much of it to start with, and now there were just a few fries and a single chicken nugget left.
“Yeah. Some last meal,” Daryl said. “But it won’t be our last meal. I trust Hath. His plan can work.”
“Oh, you trust him, do you?” said Ash. “He abducted you, all of us. He killed you. But you trust him.”
Daryl nodded. “I do. He did what he had to because he knew what was coming. He gave us a chance. It’s up to us, what we do with it.”
“Is anyone going to eat this other nugget?” Riley asked. She picked it up before anyone could answer, and shoved the whole thing in her mouth.
Ash leaned his head on his hand and watched her eating. “What’s with the hat?” he asked.
Riley paused, mid-chew. “Hmm?”
“The hat,” said Ash. “You’re always wearing that ugly hat.”
“It’s not ugly,” Riley said, swallowing. “It’s a great hat.” She shook her head from side to side, making the fuzzy bobble jiggle.
“It’s hideous,” Ash insisted. “Do you ever take it off?”
Riley shook her head. “Not in a while.”
“You should,” Ash urged.
“Not going to happen,” Riley said.
“Why not?”
Riley picked up the cup of coke which had come with the meal and put the straw against her bottom lip. “My mum made it for me,” she said, then she sipped the drink and turned her eyes down to the lid of the cup.
Ash and Daryl exchanged a glance. “Um. OK,” said Ash. “Sorry, I guess.”
Silence fell over the table. The restaurant was practically empty, aside from a couple of staff members and a handful of people scattered around the thirty or more other tables.
“Can I ask you something?” said Daryl, looking across the table at Ash. Ash shrugged. “What does it feel like?” Daryl asked.
“What does what feel like?”
“Your energy blast thing. Does it hurt?”
Ash glanced down at his hands. “Hurt? No, it doesn’t hurt. It feels—I don’t know. Good, I guess. Like, important. Or something. Whatever.” He nodded to Daryl. “What about you?”
“I don’t know. I can’t really explain it,” Daryl said. “It’s like, a couple of days ago I was completely different, but still the same. You know what I mean?”
“Not the first clue,” Ash said.
“Yeah, terrible explanation,” Riley agreed.
“OK. It’s like… I was me, but I was in a prison, and… and everything was dark.”
“I was literally in a prison and everything was dark,” Ash said.
“Until the break-out kings busted you out!” said Riley. She held up a hand for a high five. “Go break-out kings. Am I right?”
Daryl and Ash glanced up at her raised hand, then Daryl continued.
“It’s like everything’s suddenly in high definition, but not just things I see. Smells, sounds, everything,” he said. “I know stuff, stuff I might have seen once in a book ten years ago, now it’s right there.” He tapped his head. “And everything I see now, it’s like a photograph, just there for me to look at.”
“What do you mean?” asked Riley.
“The menu above the counter,” Daryl said, not looking around at it. “Pick a word on it.”
“Burger,” said Ash.
“No, don’t tell me,” Daryl said. “Just pick one, then tell me where it is. How many lines down, how many words across.”
“Three lines down, two across,” said Ash.
Daryl sighed. “Burger.” He turned to Riley. “Pick another one.”
“Eight down, three across.”
“Iced,” said Daryl.
“Impressive,” said Riley. “Although I can’t actually see it from here, so I’ll have to take your word for it.”
“That’s just the start of it,” Daryl said, leaning in. “It’s like my personality
has been put in a different brain, and--”
“Wow. Bored now. I wish I’d never asked,” Ash said. He nodded at Riley. “What about you? What’s your rock thing feel like?”
Riley sat back. “You’d laugh.”
“We won’t,” said Daryl.
“Nah. You will,” Riley insisted.
“Jesus, just say, already,” said Ash. “We’re not going to laugh.”
Riley shifted in her seat. “Fine,” she said, at last. “It’s like the rocks talk to me.”
Ash and Daryl looked at each other. “They talk to you?” Daryl said.
“What… like a conversation?” asked Ash.
Riley shook her head. “No. Not like that. It’s more like… singing.”
“They sing?” said Ash. “The rocks sing?”
“Yeah. They sing.”
“OK, then,” Ash said.
“The rocks sing. Cool,” said Daryl.
Riley rolled her eyes. “Just get it over with.”
Daryl and Ash both laughed. To their credit, though, it only lasted for a few seconds.
“We should probably get back,” Daryl said once they’d stopped laughing. “It’s late. Three-forty-nine, right?” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the clock.
“Bang on,” said Riley.
“Woo-hoo,” said Ash, waving his hands sarcastically.
“Big day tomorrow,” Daryl said. “We’ve got a world to save.”
“There’s a payphone by the door,” said Ash. The others looked at him.
“Was there more to come in that sentence?” Daryl asked.
“We could phone home. You and me, I mean, obviously not…” He gestured to Riley, then his voice trailed off. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“We could call home,” Ash continued. “Say hello. Or goodbye. Or whatever.”
“We don’t have any money,” Daryl reminded him.
“Then we call collect,” said Ash. “You know, like reverse the charges.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” Riley pointed out.
“Not in LA. Besides, won’t your parents just be happy to hear from you?” he asked Daryl. “Do you think they’re actually sleeping right now?”
Daryl looked over at the phone. His dad probably would be sleeping, he knew. Or passed out, at least. But the thought of hearing his voice, of telling his dad he was OK, and making sure that he was, too, was sorely tempting.
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