by Ella James
I backed against the wall instinctively—cornered prey. The wolf in front of me was panting, pale and weak, but it wasn’t enough to make me safe from him. He turned to me, and my heart stopped.
“I remembered,” he said, soft and low. “I’m not Gabe. Gabe died. I…borrowed his body.”
I was breathing harder than he was then. Trying to.
“I don’t…get it.”
I didn’t want to get it. I didn’t want any of this to be happening. Milo’s Great Adventure had become a nightmare.
And it got worse when he said, “This is not my world.”
The look on his face, the sadness in his voice—it seemed fake. Everything about this moment seemed unreal. As I thought that, something in the distance boomed; a helicopter exploding. I jumped, cried, “What the hell are you talking about?”
His eyes flitted skyward, toward the stars scattered above, and in a low and wistful voice he said, “This planet is not my planet.”
“That’s crazy!” My voice cracked. I felt outraged. Insane.
And the wilder I felt, the calmer Nick appeared. His body still trembled—so much I feared he might fall down—but the inner core of him was pure, hard steel. “Milo—I’m not…I’m not human.”
I gasped—a hiccup-gasp, a sort of laugh. The sound that crazy people make. “Are you saying you’re an alien?”
A small wince, and one word: “Yeah.”
I started cackling. He just watched me, and in the stillness of his gaze I noticed something new. Something that hadn’t been there before. Something that changed him.
I clenched my jaw. I clenched my jaw until it ached. And when I spoke again, I sounded furious. “So you’re an alien? What the hell?”
“I’m sorry.” He looked ashamed. I had to fight the urge to slap his face.
“You’re kidding me. You’re kidding, right?”
“No. Milo—”
“Stop it!” I backed up, bumping the wall. I held up my hands. “Don’t tell me that! Be quiet!”
He was saying something, but I didn’t hear him. I was walking backward. Tripping, getting up. Past the wall. The one wall he’d left standing.
Nick followed, and for a moment I didn’t have the sense to be afraid.
When thought returned, it was a mangled buzz. I was in what had been the back yard of the cabin, standing between two bushes that bloomed pink in spring. He was within reaching distance, and he had his arm out, like maybe he was going to touch me. I made a strangled, screaming sound— Just a burst of noise; nothing, really.
I was nothing compared to him, and it shook me to my core.
Gradually, through the thick veil of my shock and fear, I noticed he was still panting. His eyes were wet and red. His mouth was strained. He looked like he had run a marathon. I had an impulse to go to him—to, like before, ask if he was okay. Of course, it stalled. It crashed and burned.
Hysteria is different than crying. Different, even, than a sob. It’s like emotion bursting out. Volcanic ash, lava. Sounds poured from my chest, erupted out my throat, sobs and gasps and the pained sounds that dogs make when they’re left alone. This was not from sadness, or even necessarily from fear. I just couldn’t comprehend.
Nick started talking, quick and soft. “Don’t be scared. I’m not here to hurt you, Milo.”
I sobbed louder, and as I watched, Nick sank to his knees—out of steam. His body shook, but his voice was steady, strong.
“Where I’m from—We share a consciousness,” he told me, like we were talking about anything. “Everyone in my…race— it’s not even right to say ‘everyone.’ It’s more like we’re all different parts of the same brain.”
I made a frantic, shuddering sound, and Nick rose up and went for me. He tried to hug me, but I batted him away. I tried to run, this time, but my knees gave out; I fell back in the grass, and Nick stood over me.
“Milo, please. Don’t be afraid of me—please.” Every word he spoke was frightening. Looking at him scared me. “Please,” he whispered, crouching down. Above his head, I saw the stars; they sparkled and flared as my tears rolled. “Don’t be scared.” He touched my knee, and I stared at that hand. An alien hand. An alien.
I had a sudden image of us in the party store, eating ice cream. I remembered hugging him and felt so stunned, betrayed.
“There’s a system,” Nick said frantically; one hand dragged back through his wild hair. “There’s a system. We observe the planet, its inhabitants. If the life is intelligent, we leave it alone.”
He had meant to soothe me, but all that I could think was: “If it isn’t?”
Lips pressed tight. Eyes flitted down, into the grass. “If it isn’t then…we come.”
I stared at the warm hand on my knee. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear another helicopter. It seemed far away, far as Nick’s planet.
“What’s it called—your planet?” I asked hoarsely, and I could see his face relax, his eyes soften.
“It doesn’t really have a human name,” he said softly. “We don’t really speak in language. Verbal language,” he corrected. “But if you made it into a sound, it might sound kind of like Russian.”
I giggled a little wildly. Okay—a lot wildly. “You’re lying. It’s just so hard to believe!”
“I’m sure it is. But I’m not lying, Milo.”
To me, he was. And as long as we were playing pretend, “I’ve got another question.” Behind Nicks’ head, the last wall trembled; I ignored it. “What… uh. What happens if the people— creatures. What happens if they aren’t smart enough?”
He hesitated, which was all the answer I needed. “How do you measure?”
“Several ways.”
I sat up straighter, leaning on my arms; my palms pressed into the damp grass. “What about us? Humans? Are we okay? I mean, do we pass?”
He was silent for a long time, his face hollow and drawn. “It depends,” he said finally. “It just depends on how you calculate it. By traditional standards, maybe not.”
My head buzzed. “So we’re going to be exterminated?!”
“No. No. Well, it depends. It depends on a lot of different factors. Beings evolve so differently. The scale has to be re-imagined for all of them.”
“Who re-imagines it?”
Nick looked down: heavy, shamed. “For this planet, I’m one of them.”
“You are?” I felt relieved, then sick all over again.
“Me and someone else. My…partner.”
“Where is he?”
Nick stared down at his tattered jeans, picking at a loose thread with the hand that wasn’t swollen anymore.
“I was supposed to meet her,” he said quietly.
Her. “So why didn’t you?”
“Because,” he said, and looked at me. “I wanted to see you.”
I stared at Nick’s face, re-playing his words, and I felt my pulse quicken.
“Me?”
His hair rustled in the breeze, coppery, beautiful, so human, like the oh-so-subtle tightening, then curving of his pretty lips. His gaze dropped to his leg; he was kneeling now, his arm propped on his knee. He fiddled with his shoe and glanced back up at me.
“I…care about you, Milo.” I watched his face tighten, then relax, like a boat’s sail flapping in an unknown breeze. His shoulders rose, then fell, and he finally brought his gaze back up to mine.
Those brown eyes made me feel off-balance. “We need gold. My kind, we’re like your Internet—in maybe 500,000 years. We’re all connected. You may have heard of it described as ‘hive mind.’ We’re not corporeal anymore, not really. It’s—” he frowned, clenching his fist. “It’s hard to explain. There are language limitations. Anyway, the core of us—our heart, you might say— We still need metal, a conductor. To funnel that much energy, we need gold.
“We’ve figured out how to make it last,” he said. “We only need a small amount—a relatively small amount—and we have bacteria that even make it. But we’re so large. There are so
many of us.” He did air quotes around ‘many,’ subtext of a concept I couldn’t begin to comprehend. “And what we’re doing—compared to other beings, anyway— What we’re doing is complex. We’ve sucked our planet dry, and we’ve mined others, too. I’m kind of your version of Christopher Columbus or…I don’t know, Neil Armstrong. Except I don’t go anywhere usually. I use our knowledge base to scan other planets. That’s what I was doing when I saw you.”
He stared at me, like he was trying to impart some great truth.
“It was approximately 66 days ago by how you measure time. You were at that big, flat rock. You were crying. I was over Golden, scanning and I…zoomed in, I guess you could say. I wanted to see things through human eyes, and I could simulate…a little bit. When I saw you…”
He shook his head. “I could see your sadness. Like a color. It was orange. Bright. Like…a candle in a dark room, but a hundred times as big. I was…intrigued.”
“Intrigued…” I echoed.
“We don’t have feelings. Emotions. Not the way you do. Some of us are more susceptible than others. I…my function is to scout and assess. To do so I needed a certain separation from the rest. A certain...inquisitiveness?” He tried the word, then shook his head. “A certain interest, maybe.”
His mouth tightened, and I could see his shoulders rise a little. “There’s no easy way to explain it. And I’m not sure why you…had the effect on me that you did. I wasn’t in a position to know the history of Us. I don’t know if any part does. But it’s possible that whatever we evolved from…might have related to the world in way similar to humans. And something inside me, some residual…humanity, was drawn to you.”
He blinked, those solemn brown eyes large—as he tried to explain. “I’m kind of…an important winkle on the brain,” Nick went on. He smiled, totally humorless. “I’m kind of a big deal. There aren’t many of us—the ones who seek resources. So I wasn’t noticed…when I started watching you.”
“I was supposed to go to New York. My partner was going—probably still is in Tokyo. But I changed course. I think I… Well, I kinda had you on my ‘mind,’ and right as I was coming in—coming into Earth, I mean— Coming into consciousness, your human consciousness— I noticed a body being vacated. It was just about the age I needed. Just about your age.”
Against all reason, I felt a burst of warmth.
“I just jumped in, without preparing. I was just going to see you. Just once, get a look at you,” he said, smiling, almost silly. Then his torso tightened and he sped up. “I reworked the body, moved it to you, and I tried to jump inside. I brought all the data, all the knowledge that I needed with me. I’d programmed my mind in advance to know everything I’d need for Earth. Right down to the clothes. I’d created the suit for Wall Street. But using Gabe’s body… Using a foreign vessel, one I hadn’t studied…” He shook his head. “I messed up my consciousness, and I lost my memory completely.”
He took a deep breath, then held out his hands to say, All done.
There are thoughts that should have gone through my mind. Thoughts you would expect someone to have, when hearing what Nick said. And I would have them all—later. When I had time to really think, I would feel like Nick had in that field. Who was I, and what was I doing in that place? And everything I knew was gone. And I would never get it back. Nothing would be the same again—for any of us.
But in that moment, all logic was suspended—mired in Nick. All I could see was him. There were tears in my eyes, blurring his face. Tears of shock. I rubbed them away. Inhaled. I asked him, “Was I worth the trouble?”
“Yeah. Yeah, you were worth it. Are.”
I stood up, feeling warm and fuzzy, feeling also the heat of the blaze a few hundred yards away from us. The insanity of it was right there below the surface of my mind, and I could feel it seething; but over it was the immediate: Nick and I, what we would do. We needed to get moving. Get away.
My feet didn’t move. We stood, staring at each other, both transfixed—and for such different reasons.
“So I guess we know why those people are after you.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “You need to go.”
“I can’t let them take you.”
He smiled sadly. “I don’t think that would happen, Milo.”
Well, duh. Of course not. Alien. The thought of it still sent a shock-wave through my paltry human brain.
“What are you going to do?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine how anything worked now.
Nick shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“But you can do…like, anything, right?” The helicopter sound was getting louder, but I couldn’t get my feet to move. I felt rooted to the grass, rooted here with Nick.
“You can do things…with your mind, I guess?”
Nick nodded.
“That’s really weird. And cool.”
“You aren’t…angry?”
I shook my head. “If I was, would you care? I mean, if you don’t have emotions…”
He stepped a little closer. “Even though I’m…something else… I feel things like a human when I’m in a human body, when my consciousness is human. I’m not functioning like I would on my planet. It’s impossible, within the confines of your mind.”
He grabbed my hand. “I can’t process a fraction of what I could before. Not as fast. And my mind… it’s clouded by you, Milo.”
He stepped closer, put his hands on my waist, and gently turned me, pressing his chest into my back. I went limp, inhaled smoke and grass and him.
“There’s something about you… Whichever form I’m in, I like you, Milo. I’m drawn to you.”
I smiled, still feeling totally schizo. “I’m not too…unevolved?”
“Not at all.”
“None of this makes any sense.”
And then it didn’t matter. Nick jerked, and he dropped down over me, and I heard a bullhorn as I felt the grass and heard the guns and felt Nick moving off me, standing up and sweeping them away. I looked up and saw him struggling.
His eyes drooped shut as a handful of men and women landed several dozen feet away. He knelt down, arms spread over me, and darts flew at his back. One hit me, too. And I was so, so heavy.
29
At first, when my eyes opened and I looked around the room, I thought I was on a band trip. I blinked up at the dappled hotel ceiling—just a little too low over my head. A quick sweep of the room revealed two double beds with paisley bedding; a cherry wood dresser, armoire, and entertainment system; and a royal blue armchair with a small, round footstool. Mirrors covered every wall. I found my reflection in the one across the room and, for an odd moment, wondered why no one was with me. Our school’s head band director, Mr. Kline, usually stuffed us at least four to a room—five if there was space for a cot.
The table between the beds, bearing a small pull-chain lamp, a yellow pad, and a pen, should be littered with bags of gummy worms and empty soda cans. My heart-rate kicked up a notch as I realized something else was missing: curtains. The room didn’t have windows. Weird.
I jumped out of bed in a panic, and before I could make it to the mirror, I saw the dirt smudge on my cheek, right by my lip. That brought the whole thing flooding back.
Nick. The people in the helicopters. The—oh, boy—Department of Defense. My rattled mind spun, remembering Nick when he’d been ill. I felt a burst of worry for him, followed by a rush of worry for myself.
I jogged to the door and tried the knob, knowing before I touched it that it wouldn’t open for me. It didn’t have a peek hole. And the mirrors… If I stuck my face right by the long one on the wall beside the vacant bed, I imagined I saw shadows on the other side: people, watching me, observing.
Knowing but not knowing was terrible. I knew there could be people behind or one of the mirrors. But I didn’t know if they were there now. Maybe they were out. Maybe there was just one grad student, and she’d fallen asleep at her desk.
Maybe there were half a dozen scientists.<
br />
I sank onto the vacant bed and looked down at my feet. I was missing my shoes, which meant someone had taken them off for me. I stood, again, in front of the mirror, searching my body for clues. I rubbed a sore spot on my neck, spotted a small, red ring there: where the dart had hit me.
I had to assume they had me in kind of facility. Where? And where was Nick?
