First Song

by Blaise Corvin

  Burgess looked at Noah as if he were crazy. In response, Noah nodded at the dead Aelve on the ground.

  Surprisingly, the exchange seemed to be enough for Burgess to collect himself. The man smoothed his short, silver hair and adjusted his tie. “Fine. And what do you suggest? What now? You are an expert, yes?”

  “I’m going to need you to do something. In fact,” Noah said, looking at both Johnny and the Merriweather agent, “you guys technically haven’t met. Johnny, meet Burgess Goodrich, my boss. Boss, meet Johnny.”

  “Dude,” Johnny replied, a little fear in his voice. “What do we do?”

  Noah shook his head. “Info first, orders second. Long story short, the Shift means no electricity. Guns don’t work. Explosions don’t happen. Other stuff—basically technology is dead. The Aelves’ mean danger for everyone here. There are still at least two left.” He didn’t tell them that he’d barely killed this one, and had just gotten lucky. He assumed that his Magic Resistance stat had allowed him to survive the flame weapon the alien had used.

  Burgess pointed at the inhuman corpse. “Aelves?”

  “Yes. All you need to know now is they’re monsters with superior everything—technology, bodies, and magic.”

  “Magic? You’ve got to be—” Goodrich began but then looked at the corpse again, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay.”

  “Alright,” said Noah. “We don’t have a lot of time left. The other two could be back any minute—”

  “Can we help?” asked Johnny.

  Noah said, “You are going to help by taking Danielle and getting her to safety.” Johnny already had his had his arm protectively around their school’s top student. “Just follow Burgess. The Aelves are cloaked, you guys can’t probably even see them right now, the living ones anyway.”

  Noah hustled over to the dead Aelve and took the strange, mossy bag off the corpse’s armor, adding the seed pod he’d grabbed out of the air to the rest in the bag. By this point, he’d realized that they were communication devices of some kind. Noah desperately hoped the other Aelves didn’t have any of their own. He jogged back to Burgess and handed him the bag. “Take these, take Johnny, and Danielle, and lead them into the protected area under your office.”

  “That’s classified.”

  “Not anymore, and that is the strongest area for miles, probably. I believe the bag has Aelve coms devices. Keeping these things away from the others may be critical, and more important than anything else right now.”

  Burgess searched Noah’s eyes with his own before saying, “You know, I still don’t believe you are bad, kid. I am going to trust you.” His mind apparently made up, Burgess holstered his pistol and put a hand on Johnny’s shoulder, reaching up to do so. “Come on, young man, let’s go. I don’t understand this, but let’s get the young lady to safety.”

  Noah felt deeply grateful for the man’s decisiveness.

  Johnny turned, his expression unnaturally serious. He said, “Be careful, Noah.”

  “Always.”

  “Alright. Later, Brains.” The big boy looked like he wanted to say something more, but stopped.

  “Later, Brawns.”

  As the other three humans left the tree line and hurried to the Merriweather office, Noah took off the other direction, toward the residential area. More people were starting to come outside, realizing that something was deeply wrong–by instinct if nothing else. Noah remembered the feeling.

  He darted between houses and hopped a fence before running across a residential road. His current course of action would put people’s lives in danger, but they were already in danger. At this point, risk for everyone in the world would kind of exist on a constant, sliding scale. Still, Noah’s decision now would be one of many that would probably keep him up at night for years to come.

  If he survived.

  He was absolutely terrified, his guts roiling even as he ran. Worm would have been long gone, running away and hiding ages ago, but Noah Henson had people to protect.

  Chapter 25

  Noah ran around to the rear of his safe house, a hidden stash of gear hiding in plain sight. He’d learned a few lessons since Burgess had cornered him in a similar building years before. After he got inside using a key that had been hidden in a tree outside, the wounded youth ran to the upstairs master bedroom. Survival gear was located downstairs in the basement, but Noah needed weapons.

  After reaching his destination, he grimly nodded. The room looked like any other sparsely decorated bedroom. Furniture was covered in plastic, like whoever lived here wouldn’t be back for a while. Of course, Noah knew nobody lived here. The other rooms hid weapons too, but this one had gear specifically for him.

  With a grunt of effort, he punched through the drywall in a few spots. He remembered stashing gear in this wall, but not exactly where. With the help of his knife, he tore apart entire sections, making a huge mess. The picture-perfect, showroom-style bedroom had been destroyed, but now Noah had a collection of shields and swords on the floor to choose from.

  Out of the shields, he grabbed a round shield made of layers of thin plywood, a thin lattice of steel, and several layers of thick leather, all laminated with modern epoxy. The center boss was fairly thick steel.

  For a sword, Noah chose a short, broad falchion with a knuckle guard. The blade wasn’t much longer than a machete, so he could still move easily with the weapon slung, but it had some heft to it. The nasty little chopper could deliver staggering bows.

  After securing his weapons, Noah attached the falchion to a baldric and set the shield to the side, adjusting its strap so he could hang it from his back later. Then he drew the sword and used it to cut up part of the ceiling. He worked quickly, feeling every second tick away, aware that the Aelves could find their dead comrade at any moment.

  Finally, he managed to cut through the ceiling enough that the whole section crashed down, revealing a number of wooden boxes that had been stored in the attic. Insulation and dust continued to rain from the ceiling, further soiling the previously immaculate room.

  Noah popped open all the chests and tried to decide on a weapon, eventually strapping on a brace of three heavy throwing knives that acted as a sort of bracer, secure in thick kydex sheaths. A Venu-designed dazzler completed his ranged weapon loadout. Working as quickly as possible, Noah tensioned all the rubber bands and loaded all three cylinders of the dazzler with wicked bolts. Half the projectiles had nasty razor heads, and the other half were long, needle-like bodkin points. Then he loaded the dazzler itself, attached one cylinder magazine to the back of his belt, and set the last to the side to hand carry.

  Last, Noah threw the empty dresser to the side and pried up two sections of floor. By this point the room was almost completely full of rubble. From the hidden space in the floor, he withdrew a chainmail hauberk of his own design, Dragon Mithril. Arms up in the air, he shimmied into it. After the armor was on, he hissed, realizing he’d forgotten to take off his belt knife–now it was covered in the armor’s alternating titanium and steel links.

  Noah had no idea how much time had passed. He breathed heavily as he relocated the Spyderco knife from his belt to his sword baldric. The Aelves could have already found their dead comrade. Anything could be happening outside—anything at all.

  He’d killed an Aelve. The youth had expected to feel more after actually fighting. Ultimately, in addition to the stress and responsibility he felt, and anxiety from preparing to fight, he felt happy and thankful to still be alive.

  Finally fully kitted, dressed for war, Noah grabbed the last of the weapons he planned to take, a cloth sack with three Molotov cocktails. The glass bottles had been filled with flammable liquid and pitch, making the firebombs extra nasty. Noah always kept a ferro rod in his pocket, just in case, and today it would come in handy.

  He bounded down the stairs, and stopped when he heard a loud boom outside. After a pause, Noah hurried out the door of his safe house and his heart sunk when he heard Aelves speaking in th
e distance. The alien voice sounded like its volume had been enhanced, like through a megaphone. He could hear them without using [Listen].

  One of the voices from before was speaking, hissing in fury. “—if you do not come, we will keep killing. There is no way a human of this planet could kill an Unaleshi, and in the first fourth-cycle after a planet-wide suppression? No, you must be the one that Kahlek, the Voice, sent us to hunt. You took the sat-flowers. We have nothing to lose, so we will just keep killing your kind until you scurry out like vermin. This is your fault, human.”

  Then in heavily accented English, barely understandable, the voice said, “You come or more humans die.” The Aelve went quiet, and Noah reasoned that the creature would try taunting him again soon to call him out.

  If Noah hadn’t spent his entire life preparing for this day, the situation would have been jarring, surrealistic, and terrifying. But he just felt sick; rage and fear for the people in this neighborhood moved him forward.

  His regular hearing could have lead him to the Aelves, but using [Listen], he had a much more precise idea of where they were. People in the neighborhood were milling around, some of them heading toward the noise. Noah agonized, not knowing what to do even as he hid behind some bushes. If the people saw him, armed and armored like he was, they might raise a commotion and give him away, but they also might currently be walking to their doom.

  For the first time in his life, Noah truly felt what it was like to hold immediate power over people’s lives with a mere decision, and he hated it. Using [Listen], he could pick up muffled crying just like he’d heard from Danielle when she’d been restrained. Noah’s lips firmed into a straight line, and he resolved himself to see this through.

  The Aelves, or Unaleshi as they apparently called themselves, could not be allowed to do whatever they wanted. As he crouched, hiding, Noah reasoned through why the Aelves were still even here. They seemed to have orders to find him or kill him. Maybe if they returned empty-handed they’d get in trouble. That seemed to make sense.

  He’d gotten lucky. If the Aelves still had the bag with the communication devices, they might be telling their alien friends about Steelton and attacking in force instead of calling out Noah now.

  Fine. If they wanted a fight, they’d get a fight. The fact that Noah absolutely had to kill the two remaining Aelves weighed him down, but at least he could be fairly sure there weren’t any others. If there had been more nearby, these two would have gotten reinforcements or just used the others’ communication devices.

  Actually, he took that back. He couldn’t be sure there were only two left, but he decided to hope. If there were more, the town was probably doomed anyway. He needed to know what he was dealing with either way.

  Noah couldn’t believe his terrible luck to run into Aelves right after the Shift in this lifetime. Then again, it sounded like they’d been looking for him for a long time, so maybe in a way he’d gotten lucky that he hadn’t seen any until now. The thought of near-invisible killing machines running around with freaky vine knives and magic flamethrowers among his family and friends made his heart stop for a moment. His resolve strengthened, though. The terrible creatures had started the fight, but Noah was determined to end it.

  Crushing uncertainty and stress ran through his body as he crept from house to house, climbing over fences and proceeding unseen. Moving quietly was not easy while weighed down with over forty pounds of armor and weapons. [Stealth Travel] and [Stalking], both at level five helped him remain undetected. [Listen] picked up more muffled distress, so at least the Aelves weren’t killing people right away… at least he hoped not.

  Noah savagely shook his head. This was the Shift. There was no way he could save everyone. That thought made him remember his parents, Krystal, his friends…he knew that if he failed here, everyone he cared about would be in much greater danger.

  The Aelve began shouting again in the other language, and Noah carefully watched the scene around him again. People from the neighborhood talked in groups, some of them speaking quietly, hushed. A few were loud. Obviously, most of them hadn’t seen any planes go down and might still think the Shift was a power outage. Some moved toward the shouting, but a number didn’t. They couldn’t understand the voice, and people paying attention must have noticed the dead cars in the street and other weirdness surrounding them.

  There. Noah saw a flicker of motion as a mother and her son disappeared around a corner. The thundering Aelven voice was ordering, “—must come to our location and give yourself up, human! Even now, we capture your people, and we will kill more of them the longer you take to show yourself! Come to the location of my voice, give yourself up. Return what you stole, and we will minimize damage to your kind!”

  Noah rolled his eyes. Yeah, right. Now that he knew at least one of them was camouflaged, he started watching for the telltale shimmer, continuing to carefully move in a way that wouldn’t rattle his gear. He managed to cross the street without being seen, and quickly climbed a house near where the Aelves were shouting from. His [Stalking] and [Stealth Travel] skills came in handy again, as well as [Climbing] and [Quiet Exertion]. He’d acquired the last skill at age ten, when he’d been practicing guitar without actually playing, all to avoid waking his parents. The name of the skill still seemed weird.

  He wasn’t going to complain, though.

  Once up on the roof of the house, Noah lay flat and carefully set aside the Molotov cocktails against the chimney. The roof’s grey shingles were rough against his palms but gave him excellent traction. While avoiding making too many scraping noises, he gingerly eased himself forward, and peeked over the edge of the roof.

  The Aelves had set up shop in a large yard. Along one fence, Noah saw about a dozen people restrained and gagged like Danielle had been. Since they were at the bottom of the fence line, he couldn’t see them all that well, mainly just the bottom of their shoes. The way they moved made him believe that they were all still alive—for now, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

  A big male Aelve stood on the lawn in front of a concrete patio. His armor appeared to be like the Aelve that Noah had just killed. Noah didn’t see any more of them and carefully watched.

  He observed the male Aelve touch something on his armor before hollering another challenge. The reason for the big banging sound earlier proved to be because of the Aelves, at least Noah assumed so. A car had rolled down a hill and crashed into a house. So I guess they know about cars. Noah found that thought highly disturbing. At this point, based on the conversation he’d heard before among these Aelve scouts, they had been on Earth for a while, and the car proved they’d been studying humanity.

  Noah carefully watched a while longer and checked behind him. A few people from the neighborhood were still milling around, but most were not approaching his direction anymore—the curious folks must have already been captured. Most people just seemed confused, and Noah was thankful for small favors. Nobody noticed him. People rarely look up, even while stressed—a fact that Noah had learned a long time ago through his self-study on stealth skills.

  Suddenly, an immobilized middle-aged man got dragged through a gate and into the yard, seemingly by nothing. Noah narrowed his eyes, and spotted the strange, oily spot in the air where he knew the Aelve had to be. His heart burned and rage coursed through his veins as the restrained human got thrown against the fence with the rest of the people from the neighborhood. The sheer arrogance of the Aelves, brazenly announcing their presence after the Shift made Noah sick.

  He wondered if the monsters had acted like this in his past life. If so, the main reason their existence had been rumors, not a well-known fact, must have been because of how fractured humanity had become, or how few survivors the Aelves had left behind. Both possibilities made Noah angrier.

  The high voice that Noah had heard before seemed to come from the empty air. He could hear it clearly with [Listen]. “Fentesh, here is another one. This should be plenty to kill for some time. Do we really need m
ore?”

  “No, but you do not have much else to do, so it is a good use of time. Plus, if you keep moving, you might be able to spot the human before he makes himself known.”

  “How is that possible?” asked the cloaked Aelve. “We do not know what the human looks like other than the drawings that the Voice distributed.”

  “Perhaps, but staying mobile is good since we know of an enemy. He has already killed one of us. Plus, we are only scouts, and do not have war armor. We are alone so we must remain vigilant.”

  “It is only a human. Reemeht must have been incredibly careless. But even with your reasoning, why don’t we just leave and report?”

  “As I said before and you know, if we go back now after Reemeht has been killed, we will suffer great dishonor.”

  “Reemeht was a fool!” hissed the hidden Aelve.

  “Yes, but all Unaleshi life is precious.”

  “That is true, but how do you know that the human will come if you keep yelling?”

  The big male said, “I do not know anything for sure, but you have been watching these humans like I have. They alternate between caring nothing for life and being obsessed with it. I believe he will come. At least we will give it another fourth-cycle. Then if we go back with nothing, we can say we tried. We can also take the element from these humans we have collected for sustenance.”

  “This is logical. I accept your reasoning.”

  “You did before as well,” said the visible Aelve, a bit of what sounded like irritation in his voice. “I lead. Follow.”

  The hidden Aelve’s distortion in the air stayed in one spot for a moment before moving again, heading back out of the yard. From another spot in the neighborhood, Noah noticed at least a couple men with rifles beginning to wander around, confused but checking on people. If they figured out that people were missing in the direction of the foreign yelling, they might come to investigate. Oh no, Noah thought. The Aelves weren’t killing anyone yet, but if any people attacked, they probably would. What’s more, people with guns would have no idea that their weapons were useless. Time was running out.