by Elle Simpson
And speaking of – Creepy Bob was over by the windows, her big forehead resting on the glass of the centre panel, her big face weirdly peaceful.
Nothing for it then. I heaved up the tulle explosion and made my way over.
We were shooting up through the clouds at a ridiculous speed, almost too fast for my brain and my eyes to handle. But just as I reached Creepy Bob, the ship cleared the clouds and the view opened up. We weren’t in space, not quite, but we were so high up I could see the curve of the Earth anyway.
The sight of it all kinda boggled my brain. The furthest I’d ever been on a plane was to California. Now I’d been in space. Now I was heading to New York on an alien spaceship.
I put my hand to the glass. “Wow,” I whispered. Couldn’t help it.
And neither could Creepy Bob. “It is so very beautiful,” she murmured, quietly enough that she could’ve been talking to herself, but she murmured it in my head, so I guess she was talking to me too.
“It’s…” I didn’t have the words. All I could do was agree. “It’s really beautiful.”
Creepy Bob was quiet for so long it was like she’d forgotten I was there – until, at last, “It reminds me of home.”
(Thing is, you spend long enough with Akanarin, you begin to get the subtleties – the angle of the head tilt, the ultra specific blankness of tone – and I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time around Akanarin back then, but even still, I could tell that under the weird, empty accentlessness of Creepy Bob’s voice, I could tell she sounded sad. Really sad. And all alone.)
“It reminds me of home too,” I said as gently as I could. “Mostly, I mean, because it is my home.”
Creepy Bob’s forehead scrunched a little as she glanced at me. “Yes,” she said, “that is…Planet Earth is your home.” Her forehead scrunched just a little more. “It is the rightful home of all the Humans of Earth.”
I blinked, hardcore shook. Had to suck down a breath before I could speak again. “It’s not perfect.” I couldn’t help how urgent I sounded suddenly, this tiny little flicker of hope beginning to grow. “And humans, we’re, like, far from perfect. All of us. But Planet Earth’s our home, you know? It’s the only home we’ve ever had. I think it’s the only one we’d ever want.”
I’d lost Creepy Bob to the view again – I could see her breath fogging up the glass – but I hadn’t lost her attention. She said, quietly, “I miss my home.”
“Akanara?” my mouth said with no conscious intervention from my brain.
Creepy Bob did look at me then, and sharply.
I swallowed. “Just, you know. Like…uh, extrapolating? Like, logically? You’re an Akanarin so, I mean, you probably come from somewhere called Akanara, right?”
It took exactly two seconds for Creepy Bob to assess me and dismiss me. “Yes, Akanara is from whence I hailed.”
“Uh… I…” Was so not sure what to do with that Shakespearian-style nugget, but keeping the random, homesick conversation going seemed both major and important. “So…uh, why don’t you just go home for a visit then? If you’re missing Akanara so much, I mean?”
“If I could I would,” Creepy Bob said. “In the length of but one human heartbeat I would return. But I cannot. And I can never. None of us can. Akanara fell when we were all but children.”
I remembered – Colin had said something along those hella ominous lines too. The fall of Akanara, he’d said. “Something…something bad happened to your planet, didn’t it? It sounds like something bad happened.”
“An attack,” Creepy Bob said, “one utterly preventable, that left my home nothing more than a decimated shell. That left my people massacred. Annihilated. Gone.”
“Oh my god…” There was the distinct possibility that I could maybe, kinda, sorta understand the twisted, creepy logic behind the ‘terraforming Earth into a new Akanara’ thing now. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I can’t even begin to imagine how awful that must’ve been for you. For all of you.”
Creepy Bob bent her head, and there was the slightest hint of a glimmer on the surface of her big black eyes. “Thank you for your expression of sympathy,” she said in her robo-voice. “It is useless, of course, but I do understand the sentiment.”
“I…” Didn’t know what to say. How to possibly reply. But if I could keep her talking, then maybe – maybe then I could get through to her. Maybe I could—
A change in the thrum of the engines made the floor shift under my feet. It made Creepy Bob straighten up. And it made her eyes look as hard and as dead as they’d ever looked.
“We have arrived,” she said. “Prepare for departure.”
23
The hotel hosting the gala was big and fancy, and looked straight out onto Central Park.
But I hardly noticed the big-money view. The trip from Creepy Bob’s ship to the door of the hotel passed in a blur of camera flashes, big screens, screaming crowds, and barely contained hysteria.
(I mean, you’ve seen the pictures. You’ve used the memes. You know I looked like a startled mole wearing a rotting gooseberry pavlova.)
I got to skip security, what with being the guest of honour’s guest of honour – which was lucky. Because it’s possible that I had a semblance of the most vaguest back-up plan ever, and that semblance absolutely did not involve a brisk frisking.
Some concierge-type guy led me and Creepy Bob through the lobby and out into what might’ve been a ballroom once. It was still a huge room in any case, all gilt on the walls and rows of chandeliers bigger than my house hanging far up on the miles-away ceiling.
There were tables laid out too, in a big squared-off U, with a podium down the front and TV cameras up the back. No one was sitting down yet, though. Instead, everyone was milling about in the empty middle, chit-chatting, doing some seriously VIP hobnobbing.
“Quite the crowd,” Creepy Bob said, as said crowd low-key freaked out in a VIP kinda way at the sight of her.
“Uh…” I managed, and then I did a double-take because I was pretty sure I’d just seen the Prime Minister.
(I had.)
And, wait…the Queen?
(Yup.)
“Like, very much totally quite the crowd. Wow.”
I wrapped my hand around the beacon and held on tight. Was it too soon? If I tipped my hand now and Creepy Bob picked up the signal, she’d totally know someone was on to her.
But on the other, non-tipped hand, if Col was on his way back and he heard the signal, he’d know to put the foot down. More importantly, he’d know to let the massed forces know to put the foot down.
But…no. I let the beacon go. Unclenched my hand. It was too soon.
I had to wait until I had no other choice.
I did some VIP mingling. It was painful.
(Don’t get me wrong, I’m an amazing mingler. I can mingle up there with the best of them. It’s just that most of the people I usually mingle with don’t talk about themselves in the third person.)
Queens and kings, prime ministers and presidents, admirals and generals, and every kind of pretentious hanger-on imaginable. It just reinforced to me – this wasn’t the VIPs we were talking about. It was the VVIPs
All of them together, stuck in a room with a four-knuckle whackjob who was so totally about to compel them into letting her take over the world and massacre the entire human race.
Of course, that was assuming she hadn’t already.
“Oh my god,” I whispered. “We are so completely and totally fu—”
“Hannah!” someone called, then a middle-aged lady appeared out of the VIP mishmash. And it took me a second, because the boring grey suit had been swapped out for the most amazing gold dress.
“Oh, you’re – you met Bob. You’re the official, uh, whatsit? Head of the Space thingy. You know my mum,” I finished, proud of myself for even managing that much.
“Dorothy Mensah,” the lady said, smiling as she shook my hand. “Head of the Office of Space and Outer Atmospheric Affairs. And yes, I do kn
ow your mum. In fact, when Tracy told me that you were going to be here this evening, I said to her, I so want to meet Hannah, and so here I am. And you came with our guest of honour, yes? What an honour itself.”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, wondering if I sounded as bleak outside my head as I did inside, “something like that.”
A waiter cut in with a tray of hors d'oeuvres. He twinkled at us in that weird aspiring actor kind of way. “Ladies, can I offer you a little something to eat?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t,” Dr Mensah said. “I’ll spoil dinner. Oh no, but look – you have those little soft pretzels.” She sighed forlornly. “I love a soft pretzel, but oh dear, they do not love me.”
“That’s like me and dairy.” I gave the profiteroles one longing glance then locked the lactose lust away. I did not need to be making friends with any American porcelain thrones when evil alien shenanigans were increasingly imminent.
But Dr Mensah was braver than me. “Well, perhaps just a few,” she said, helping herself to a napkin and a handful of tiny pretzels.
The waiter twinkled off to audition elsewhere. Dr Mensah made the kind of effortless, totes diplomatic, still-physics-but-physics-in-actual-plain-English small talk that totally explained why she was Dr Dot of the Amazing Job Title and why Mum mostly just spent her days making cooing noises at one-hundred-metre-tall telescopes.
Truth was, though? Beyond nodding and the occasional encouraging grunt, I was too freaked and on edge to really pay Dr Mensah much attention.
And whatever little attention I’d had became none at all when I clocked a familiar figure ducking through the curtains behind the podium – ducking, then walking in a way that could only be described as ‘walking’ if the overgrown alien flamingo doing the walking was drunk and not entirely sure how either of her legs worked.
“Des! Over here!”
Deeke stopped, turned, spotted me, came drunk-flamingo walking towards me – all separate movements, all jerky, nothing flowing.
“Hans,” Deeke said, faintly and fuzzily. She sounded so far away. Kinda like Toni after he got his wisdom teeth out, but not even slightly as funny. “You are here.”
“Yeah, of course. I didn’t know you were coming, though.”
“Our Honoured Leader requires my attendance.”
Dr Mensah put a hand on my arm. “Hannah, I’ll leave you to catch up with your friend, but we must speak later, yes? I want to find out what your mother’s been getting up to in that observatory of hers.”
“Drinking too much coffee,” I said. “Probably summoning physics demons.”
“Oh, goodness!” Dr Mensah walked off, laughing gaily, like that was an actual joke instead of the actual truth.
I took a quick glance around. No other Akanarin kicking about, and no one else had gotten off the ship when me and Creepy Bob did. But here Deeke was.
“Guess Bob wanted some moral support?” I said. “For the big speech?”
Deeke cocked her head, but so slowly it was as if she was moving in slow motion. “Speech…”
“Yeah, the one Bob’s gonna make, like, over there, I’m guessing.” I pointed to the podium, from where I was sure without one single shadow of a doubt that the creepy plan for world domination was about to get underway.
(I was right. Just fyi.)
“Speech,” Deeke said again. “Our Honoured Leader will make…a speech?”
“Yeah.”
“To you?”
“To everyone here, Des. That’s kinda the point of speeches.”
Deeke’s eyes lost focus. She went completely still. I could see the cogs trying to grind together like a frozen-solid water mill. “A speech…”
Then Deeke did move – so suddenly it made me startle backwards. But Deeke caught me, hand on my shoulder. And with the other hand, she poked a big spindly fingertip smack to the middle of my forehead.
“Ow! Des, what—”
But Deeke didn’t let up. If anything, she ground her fingertip in harder. “You should not listen to her.”
Oh god. Deeke – she was trying to fight the compulsion. Trying to help me. I could see it in her eyes, a hint of brightness starting to bloom in the centre.
“Who?” I prompted. “I shouldn’t listen to Bob? Is that what you’re saying?”
“She will only hurt you.”
“Why, though?” I said, desperately trying to break through. “Why would she do that? Why, Des?”
Deeke shook her head. Hardly at all but she shook it. “I cannot…”
“You can.” I reached up, grabbed her hand between both of mine. Deeke’s fingertip didn’t shift but I clung on anyway. “Deeke,” I whispered. “You can tell me. Please, Deeke, I can help you.”
I only realised the slip when Deeke’s eyes fixed and focused on mine. Just for a second. Just a blink. Just a tiny clearing in the muddled blackness. But enough. I could literally see the compulsion slipping.
“Deeke—” I began.
But Deeke interrupted. “Do not listen to her. Hans, you must not listen to her.”
She pulled her hand away, but I didn’t let go. “Deeke.” My forehead felt highkey weird, my skin tingling where Deeke’s fingertip had touched, pins and needles that I couldn’t shake. “Deeke, what did you…?”
I trailed off. Deeke’s head was cocked to the side, away from me, listening to something I couldn’t hear. To someone I couldn’t hear. And when she looked back at me a second later, her big black eyes were blank again. Blank and getting blanker.
“Deeke,” I said, hearing the panic in my voice, “Deeke, please. You have to—”
But Deeke pulled her hand out of mine and took a wobbly step back. “Do not listen to B’oab,” she said, and every word sounded like a struggle. “You must not listen.”
Then some bell rang. The dinner bell apparently, because it made the VVIP crowd surge towards the tables. And somehow they managed to gobble Deeke up. I lost sight of her until the moment she reached the curtains behind the podium.
Then she ducked through them and slipped away, as if she’d never been there at all.
24
At dinner, I was sat next to a lovely guy who was definitely the prince of somewhere Scandinavian.
(But that’s all I’ve got. Sorry, Your Majesty. Bit preoccupied during introductions.)
His Royal Scandinavianness helped me figure out which fork to use while we were served ten courses of minuscule amounts of stuff that didn’t really look like food anymore – just smears and foams and teeny, tiny vegetables. The sort of food that made Toni as angry as he ever got.
(Which is, like, the level of a grumpy puppy, but you get my point.)
I didn’t eat much. My stomach was on strike over unfair working conditions vis-à-vis the whole evil alien invasion situation.
Creepy Bob didn’t eat either – and I really didn’t want to think too hard about how that would work – but every so often she dipped her index finger into a glass of water, and the waiters kept filling up her glass, so there must’ve been some sort of drinking involved.
(Aliens drinking through their fingers. Legit not even approaching the weirdest thing I’d seen that week. Or since. Like, not even in the top ten.)
But when she wasn’t going wild on the H₂O, Creepy Bob just sat there making polite conversation with the little old man in charge of the U.N. He was the same guy who made a speech after dinner that I’m pretty sure lasted at least an hour. And all I could do was wish he’d stretch it out an hour more. Because I watched, heart setting up camp in my throat, as the big gilded clock on the far wall ticked past midnight.
Colin had left early yesterday afternoon, so thirty-six hours meant he was due back soonish, right? But how soon was soonish? How much longer? God, was he even coming back at all?
I sat there, just holding there, right at the edge of snapping. My tummy hurt, my jaw, my teeth, all from the strain of keeping myself still, from the awful, bad wrongness of it all.
From the waiting, waiting, waiting…
And then it happened. Between one stuttery heartbeat and the next, every light in the ballroom shut off. The two technicians manning the camera stand behind me started whispering frantically.
Then—
A light switched on. Just one. A spotlight pointing straight at the podium – where Creepy Bob was standing.
(Because seriously, what evil supervillain worth their salt doesn’t have a dramatic spotlight at their beck and call?)
A pressure started to build outside my head suddenly. Horrible. Familiar. Unfightable
High Compulsion.
Oh god, this was it. I made a grab for the beacon. But in the end, all I managed to do was drop it instead – so I could reach up and clutch at my forehead.
“Oh my god. Ow!” I whispered.
The spot where Deeke had touched was killing me. The distant, numb tingle had flared into a burn, this hot, angry, searing pain.
Creepy Bob began to speak. “You will be still,” she told her suddenly enraptured audience. “You will not move. You will utter no sound. You will only listen.”
And I could feel the compulsion she was pushing, feel the hardcore power of High Compulsion behind it, feel it trying to amplify in my head – but then breaking before it could, flowing around me, a weird, whispery mist that never got close enough to touch.
It was touching the VVIPs, though. The blank look of epic mind-whammy fell over them. They sat there, completely still, only moving to blink and breathe.
I had to tear my hands away from my head and sit on them to keep from moving too. The pain in my forehead was fiery and awful, but…no pain in my head. No compulsion in my head.
How, though? It wasn’t me fighting this compulsion, I knew that, because this was High Compulsion. No fighting that.
So…Deeke then? Had to be, right? Whatever she’d done to my head. But if this was Deeke’s doing, then that meant she’d blocked Creepy Bob’s compulsion somehow. And not just any compulsion – High Compulsion. How could Deeke possibly…
