United

by Melissa Landers

  He’d done it. He’d left her behind—in front of witnesses.

  As he strode toward his quarters, Larish scrambled up from behind and tugged on his tunic. “I have to talk to you.”

  “What is it?”

  Before Larish could answer, Syrine jogged in front of them and spun around, forcing them to stop. “Wait.” She pressed a palm to Aelyx’s chest. “I changed my mind. I want to stay with you.”

  Aelyx blinked. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded while anxiously tugging on her pendant. “What’s there to go home to? My friends are here, and Cah-ra was right. You need my help.”

  Aelyx didn’t argue—he was glad she’d changed her mind—and yet something wriggled in the pit of his stomach, a warning that Syrine needed his help more than he needed hers. “All right. You know what to do.” He glanced at Larish. “What did you want to tell me?”

  Twin lines appeared between Larish’s eyes. “It can wait.”

  Elle caught up and asked Larish, “Did you bring my med-bag?”

  “Oh.” Syrine’s brows jumped. “And my box?”

  “Yes, it’s all in my quarters,” Larish said. “But we can’t take everything. We should meet in my room and separate the bare necessities.”

  Aelyx had everything he needed—his com-sphere and the clothes on his back—so he continued to his quarters and waited for Cara’s call. Alone in his room, he unclenched his jaw and took a seat on the bottom bunk. The reality of what they were about to do weighed on his shoulders until his muscles were in knots. He rotated his head in a stretch and mentally repeated his own advice: have faith.

  When his sphere buzzed, he shot upright so quickly he hit his head on the upper bunk. Rubbing his skull, he spoke his passkey and waited for Cara’s image to appear.

  She flickered to life in miniature form, her head and shoulders visible from inside the shuttle. “Okay, it’s done. I’m back in US airspace.”

  “Now enable the cloaking mode, like I showed you.” To be safe, he talked her through the procedure. “If it’s done right, you should see the icon displayed on the control panel.”

  “I see it.”

  “Good. You can come back now. The transport won’t detect you.”

  “I’m on my way. I’ll buzz you when I get there.”

  They disconnected, and Aelyx made his way to Larish’s quarters.

  “It’s time,” he told the group. Since none of them knew precisely when the transport would depart, they had to move quickly. He peered at the scattering of items on the floor, most of which were David’s belongings—sports magazines, loose change, photographs, and assorted electronic devices. He didn’t see the deck of trick cards, so he assumed Syrine had packed those in the bag slung over her shoulder. “Ready?” he asked her, using his tone to imply a deeper meaning: Was she sure about this?

  “Almost.” She scooped up David’s dog tags, then looped the chain around her neck and stuffed the necklace under her shirt. “Now I’m ready.”

  Elle hugged her med-kit. “This is all I need.”

  Larish strapped a bag over his chest and tossed a small duffel toward Aelyx. It landed at his feet with a light crunch. “I liberated a week’s worth of nutrient packets from the kitchen.”

  Aelyx slid open the door and darted a glance up and down the hallway. After finding it vacant, he and the others rushed to the stairwell, where they jogged up five flights of steps and continued to the washroom at the far end of the ship—the one with an oversize waste disposal hatch.

  They were all panting for breath when they reached the washroom. Aelyx felt perspiration forming across his brow, and he snatched a microfiber cloth from the hand cleansing station. “Wipe off any traces of moisture,” he told the others. “Or it’ll freeze on your skin once we’re beyond the hatch.”

  Elle nervously licked her lips, then caught herself and scrubbed her mouth with her shirtsleeve. “You’re sure Cara knows to meet us at the correct waste port? There are several different ones.”

  “I trust her completely,” Aelyx said, though it had crossed his mind that she might not be in the right position when they expelled themselves from the ship. They could survive the exposure for as long as ninety seconds, but not without lasting consequences.

  His com-sphere buzzed, and Cara announced, “I’m in position.”

  He brought the sphere close to his lips. “You’re sure, right?”

  “No boyfriend of mine is dying in space.”

  “Remember, the shuttle won’t let you open the doors unless you use the manual override.”

  “I know,” Cara said. “It’s already done. And I set the ventilation controls so we won’t lose too much pressure when I open the door. We’re ready on this end.”

  More distantly from the shuttle, Troy called, “Jump. I won’t let you fall.”

  Aelyx pocketed his sphere, and the group strode to a locked maintenance door at the rear of the washroom, beyond which stood the waste disposal unit—a closet-size chamber flanked by two doors. Larish had already programmed his handprint into the ship’s system, so he pressed a palm to the keypad and the first door retracted into the wall. The air in the chamber was cold, indicating how close they were to the outside.

  “This is where we’ll stand,” Larish explained. He pointed at a second door, the hatch itself. “It’s a double airlock system, so the hatch won’t open until the first door is closed. Then someone has to push the release button from here in the washroom.”

  Aelyx frowned as something occurred to him. “Who’s going to stay inside and press the button?” Originally Syrine had agreed to do it, but she was no longer staying behind.

  “I’ll go last,” Larish said. “I might be able to trigger the release switch from the circuit panel inside the chamber. If that doesn’t work, I’ll stay on board and cover for the rest of you until the transport arrives home.”

  “Are you sure?” Aelyx asked, but then he heard the transport engines rumble to life, and he knew there wasn’t time to argue. He stepped inside the waste chamber and waved Elle and Syrine forward.

  They squeezed in together, shifting bags and stepping on toes until they were crammed far enough inside to allow the interior door to shut. Surrounded by utter blackness, Aelyx reminded them to link hands and close their eyes. He felt a small palm clasp his, and then the floor vanished from beneath his feet.

  His body lurched backward as if he’d been sucked through a drinking straw. Cold enveloped him, a chill so acute it burned. His face swelled, and his tongue throbbed as moisture evaporated from his mouth. Panic rose inside his chest, and the next thing he knew, a hand tightened around his elbow, and he was dragged inside the shuttle, towing Elle and Syrine behind him.

  At once, the pressurization released the vise at his temples. Warm air spewed from the surrounding vents, thawing his skin and returning him to his senses. He opened his eyes and helped Troy pull Elle and Syrine all the way inside. Once all four of them were in the backseat, the cabin doors sealed shut, and the vent blowers quieted to a gentle hiss.

  “That’ll wake you up,” Cara said, shivering visibly in the pilot’s seat. “Tell Larish we’re ready for him next.”

  Aelyx noticed the waste chamber hatch had closed. He used his com-sphere to contact Larish, and in response, a hologram of pure shadow appeared.

  “I’m inside the chamber,” Larish said. “Can’t talk. I have to trigger the hatch.”

  Then the connection ended.

  “What was that about?” Cara asked. She seemed to notice Syrine for the first time, and a look of confusion crossed her face.

  Aelyx explained the complication of the chute’s double airlock system. He hadn’t yet finished when he saw movement from his periphery, and he sat bolt upright. The transport was leaving.

  Cara muttered a curse. “What do I do?”

  “Follow it, just in case Larish releases the hatch.”

  Aelyx tried contacting Larish to tell him to stay on board, but his summons went unanswer
ed. Ahead of them, the transport increased velocity. Soon the shuttle wouldn’t be able to keep pace, and if Larish ejected at this speed, he might end up as a stain on the windshield.

  “Keep going, but change your position.” Aelyx calculated Larish’s potential trajectory and leaned forward, pointing at the belly of the ship. “Follow from below, so we don’t hit him.”

  Syrine gripped his arm. “He wouldn’t eject now, would he?”

  Until Larish answered his sphere, there was no way to know.

  The transport picked up speed, and Cara accelerated. From their path beneath the ship, Aelyx could no longer see the waste hatch. He’d begun to assume Larish would stay inside when he saw something small and dark shoot out from the top of the ship’s hull.

  Aelyx pointed. “It’s him!”

  “Everyone strap in,” Cara called while veering left. “Get ready to grab him.”

  When she neared Larish’s somersaulting body, she slowed and engaged the override to open the doors. At once, the vents whooshed, pressurizing the craft with heated oxygen. Aelyx’s door slid open, and frost skittered across his skin. He was closest to Larish, so he loosened his harness strap and leaned into the void, reaching out an arm. He clenched his teeth against the burn and gripped Larish’s collar, then towed him inside, where he landed on several laps. The shuttle doors sealed shut, and Aelyx watched in amazement as Larish’s bloated face returned to its normal proportions.

  Larish shivered violently on their laps, his teeth clattering so hard it was difficult to understand when he spoke. “D-d-didn’t go as p-p-planned.”

  Elle chafed her hand over his back to warm him. “It’s all right. None of us died in the cold void of space.”

  “I call that a win,” Troy said.

  “So what now?” asked Syrine.

  Cara steered the shuttle toward Earth and began a steady descent into the atmosphere. “Now I find a Wi-Fi connection and upload a new blog post. Once everyone thinks you’re gone, it should take some of the pressure off. Then we’ll hit Jaxen and Aisly while their guards are down. Oh, and I need to call my mom and dad.”

  “Sleep,” Troy interjected. “Let’s squeeze that in.”

  “Okay, first sleep,” Cara agreed. “Then we’ll start saving the world.”

  Chapter Nine

  Cara paused with her fingertip suspended an inch from the smartphone screen. She stared at the publish button, unable to pull the trigger on her newest blog post. She knew she didn’t have much time before the military tracked her signal, but despite that, her instincts told her something was wrong. And she had a pretty good idea what it was.

  “I can’t do it,” she said. “I can’t tell people about the Aribol. What if Colonel Rutter is right and it causes riots and hoarding, just like when the L’eihrs made contact?”

  When no one inside the shuttle answered, she glanced around and found Aelyx asleep at the wheel and the entire backseat in a collective drool coma. Despite the weight pressing on her own eyelids, she couldn’t help smiling. Larish slept with one cheek stuck to the window, the glass dragging his face into a comical grin. Beside him, Syrine’s neck was tipped back and her mouth was hanging open like a flytrap. Elle slumbered at the opposite end of the seat, her mile-long lashes settled atop her cheeks. Her head was propped on Troy’s shoulder while his head rested atop hers.

  Adorable.

  Cara used the phone to snap a picture, figuring Troy would appreciate the memento. Not that she gave her brother’s romantic life much thought—because gross—but this was probably the farthest he’d ever made it with his crush.

  With time ticking, she let the others sleep and drafted a new blog post with a smaller dose of truth and a larger dash of emotion. If she wanted help from her readers, she would have to make them feel, to pluck at their heartstrings instead of exploit their darkest fears.

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 11

  Save Calyx

  This will be a short post, in part because the government is tracking me, but mostly because my heart is too broken for words. Yesterday the Earth Council expelled all L’eihrs from our world, including Aelyx, the boy I loved enough that I traded my human life for one as a colonist. Now his transport is gone, and for reasons I can’t disclose, I was forced to stay here.

  My insides are shattered, but I’m not ready to give up, and I hope you’re not either. I’m sure the government will remove this post soon, so I encourage you to screen-shot it and plaster my message across the Internet. Which is this: The president and the Earth Council have been misled—I’m not a threat to anyone, and neither are the L’eihrs. We’re a thousand times stronger together than we are apart.

  Please make your voices heard. Contact your Council representative and demand the reinstatement of L’eihr visas. If my words won’t convince you, then maybe these pictures will. I challenge anyone to look at my last moments with Aelyx and tell me that separating our people is the right thing to do.

  Don’t let hate win. Save Calyx.

  Posted by Cara Sweeney

  Cara didn’t know how long she’d slept or where Aelyx had taken them, but she awoke with the sun beating down on her window and found herself alone in the shuttle, surrounded by an ocean of sand. She yawned and squinted, taking in the rolling dunes that stretched all the way to the blue horizon.

  The view made her thirsty.

  She searched for a bottle of water to unglue her tongue from the roof of her mouth, eventually finding one in the backseat. The liquid was warm, but so delicious she chugged the entire bottle in a few gulps. Wondering where the others had gone, she wiped a hand over her mouth and peered out the side windows.

  The girls were nowhere in sight, but she spotted her brother talking with Aelyx and Larish beneath the shade of a canopy they’d built from a tarp and some retractable support poles from the shuttle’s supply compartment. The cabin had grown stuffy, so Cara opened her door and stepped outside … right into a brick oven.

  There was no other way to describe the intensity of the desert heat. The air leached the moisture from her skin, making her face itchy and tight. Her feet shifted on the dunes, and in the time it took to circle the shuttle and duck beneath the tarp, her ballet flats were half filled with sand.

  Now she knew where Aelyx had brought them. To hell.

  “Good morning.” Aelyx greeted her with a smile, his stunning face somehow enhanced by the sheen of perspiration glistening on his brow. He had no right to look so gorgeous under the circumstances. “Or rather afternoon,” he added. “It’s past three.”

  Cara mumbled hello and leaned against the shuttle, emptying her shoes one at a time. She didn’t want to know what she looked like. Or smelled like. Her mouth was starting to feel as though something had died inside it. “I don’t suppose anyone packed a spare toothbrush.”

  “I brought enzyme mouthwash,” Larish said, making him her new favorite person in the universe. “Elle and Syrine have it at the moment.”

  Cara glanced around. “Where are they?”

  Troy, apparently the only person as exhausted by the heat as she was, flapped a hand listlessly toward the rear of the shuttle. “Over there somewhere making a pit stop.”

  “Oh.” Cara’s bladder suddenly made its presence known. “I’d better go, too.”

  She slogged down one dune and trudged up another as sand filled her shoes again. The grains rubbed her bare feet raw, and she grumbled to herself, wishing she’d stolen a pair of flip-flops instead, or maybe some sturdy boots.

  It turned out the girls had ventured farther than she’d thought. She heard them long before she saw them, but they definitely weren’t engaged in friendly bathroom chitchat. Judging by their raised voices, they were arguing.

  Cara paused, not wanting to eavesdrop but uncertain whether she’d walked far enough to cop a squat in privacy. She stood on tiptoe and couldn’t see the shuttle, so she decided to risk it. She tried not to listen to the argument while she answered nature’s call, but she couldn’t stop snippets of L’e
ihr from reaching her on the breeze. She understood enough to know that Elle was upset because Syrine wouldn’t use Silent Speech with anyone.

  “What you’re doing is unnatural,” Elle said. “I can tell you need help.”

  “I don’t want to share the contents of my head with you. There’s nothing unnatural about that.”

  “But why? Your grief won’t shock me. It’s nothing I haven’t felt before.”

  “Just leave me alone.”

  “Are you having another breakdown?”

  Clearly Elle had plucked a nerve because the pitch of Syrine’s voice climbed high enough to break glass. “No!” she screeched. Then she either called Elle a h’ava beast or told her to go fornicate with one; Cara couldn’t tell.

  Either way, she didn’t want to be there when the girls came storming over the next sand dune, so she zipped up and returned to the shuttle as quickly as she could.

  Troy tossed her a nutrient packet and muttered around a bite of food, “Breakfast is served.”

  “Unless you’d prefer pork rinds,” Larish added. “I brought a bag of those as well. I find them oddly addictive.”

  “I’ll stick with this, thanks.” Cara devoured every last crumb and resisted the urge to ask for more. To take her mind off her hunger, she pressed a hand against her growling stomach and asked what she’d missed while she was sleeping.

  “Quite a bit,” Larish said. “Jaxen and Aisly have been busy.”

  “They hit six manufacturing plants in the last twelve hours,” Troy added. “And guess what they all had in common.”

  “Fertilizer.”

  Aelyx used his com-sphere to display a map of the United States. The image floated in the air between them, each factory represented by a red dot. “Here’s the interesting part,” he said, pointing to the first few dots. “These factories were destroyed in the same approximate timeline as these.” He indicated the second set of site markers. “Which can only mean—”