by S E Anderson
Zander handed me the laser, passing it forward from Blayde, who said simply, “Turn them into poop bullets.”
“This is disturbing.”
“Hey, it’s your planet you’re protecting!”
“That’s not the disturbing part,” I shuddered.
Right. Planet saving. I could do this. All I had to do was channel that anger I was feeling: the knowledge that this clump of sand had impersonated doctors, people we were meant to trust, only to abuse their patients by terrorizing them and farming their fear. It was easy to be angry about that.
But even so, accepting that it was my turn to kill a living being? They might have been monsters, but they were alive, sentient. I was already a murderer, but I couldn’t let that define me. Just because I’d killed once in self-defense didn’t mean I was ready to kill again.
“Do you need me to do it?” asked Zander, but before I could say anything, Blade was already telling him off.
“Her planet, her turn,” said Blayde. “Sally, you know what the right thing to do is here. You can’t run around calling for justice if you can’t carry out the sentence yourself.”
She was right, though I didn’t have the guts to say it. I took a deep breath, raising the laser high. I pictured Daisy-May in my mind, her forced to relive Jeffrey’s taunts over and over again, never being free of this institute. She deserved justice. She deserved help from real doctors. I flicked the switch, sending a beam of light at the sand pile. The silicon glowed red for a few seconds before taking on a strange bubbly form.
“Guys, I think it’s working!” I yelled back. But as I spoke, the bubbles took on a shape. The sand began to form limbs, legs, a face with sharp cheekbones, a worn leather coat.
I was staring into the face of Zander, and I was killing him.
“Sally … please,” he begged, raising a boiling hand toward me, so close we could almost touch.
I wanted to scream. Zander was melting, torn in agony. I knew, logically, that this wasn’t him, wasn’t my Zander, just a poor facsimile of him. But it was still his beautiful face, his pain. I could see him in the library, so clearly, Nimien gleeful in his torture.
I was trembling like a leaf, but I couldn’t let go of the laser. If I had to do anything, just one thing, it was to squeeze that button down as if my life depended on it. Even if it meant watching Zander boil alive.
His face twisted. The pain was gone in an instant, replaced by frown lines and tight lips.
“You disgust me,” he spat. All attempts for petty pity points disappeared in the blink of an eye. “You and your whole family. And that little dog thing too! Yap yap yap all day long. And I’m not just talking about the dog.”
“Is that what I sound like?” Zander’s hand clutched my ankle—not tightly, just enough to show that he was there, grounding me in the moment, tying me to his warmth.
“You talk so big about wanting to see the stars then complain the whole time,” said the Zander before me. Even as we spoke, part of him turned brown, dead pixels on a screen glitching out one by one. “Well, guess what, Sally? I’m through with you. Done. You can stay here and do whatever you want for the rest of your miserable eternal life.”
He wasn’t going for my pity now; he was going for my heart. And it was working. My trembling had intensified. It wasn’t Zander telling me things, but now I would always have this memory engraved in my brain of his mouth forming those scathing words.
Because they came from somewhere. The creature only knew what we had told it, back when we thought it was someone we could trust.
“Sally, I’m right here. That guy in front of you is an imposter. Does my hair really look that bad today?”
“Plus, I could have any woman I want,” fake Zander sneered. “You were hot, but I’m already bored. You’re nothing to me now. Nothing.”
“Sally, I’m right behind you.”
“You think you’re the first?” He chuckled. “I’ve left hundreds of girls just like you across hundreds of galaxies, and I probably will keep on doing it when I’m done with you too. That’s just who I am. You were nothing but a number to me. You were nothing.”
“You’re everything to me.”
“I hate you, Sally Webber.”
“Sally, it’s not me,” my Zander said, anchoring me to reality with his hand tight on my ankle. “Don’t listen to what he says.”
“You know why he’s saying that, right?” said fake Zander, somehow, impossibly, smiling. “He doesn’t want you to know the things he told me in our session. He’s afraid you won’t like what you’ll hear. Won’t you, Zander?”
“Ever hear of doctor-patient confidentiality?” I stammered, clutching the laser even tighter in my fist.
“That’s my girl!” Zander said. “I’d come over there and beat you myself, but she’s got you all on her own.”
“What the hell is going on up there?” asked Blayde from way behind us. “Did Zander short-circuit?”
“I loathe you, Sally Webber,” said the Zander before me. “You’re nothing to me.”
“Sally, I love you.”
I turned my head around to stare at the real Zander behind me. His lips were a tight line, his brow furrowed in concentration as if he himself were holding the laser. My frustration was his own.
Zander loved me. He loved me.
“You do?” I stammered in response.
“With all my heart, I love you.”
Despite it all, I found myself grinning so wide I couldn’t feel my cheeks. “I love you more.”
“I do not want to be a part of this,” Blayde muttered. “Is anyone dealing with the Pachoolee problem?”
She seemed to have caught a glance of the real problem over my shoulder now because her tone changed quickly.
“Dang, that’s a bad hair job,” she said. “Okay, you two, break it up. Angry sand Zander still needs to be dealt with.”
I returned my gaze to the sneering creature in front of me. I sneered back at him.
“I do not fear you,” I announced. “You are nothing but a nightmare. Get off this planet.”
The form started to change.
Zander was gone. In his place, some green chick with wavy blond hair jeered at me, her teeth long and pointed, the long wings on her back fighting the constraining space of the tiny ventilation shaft. Her pointed pixie face was red with hatred, which was a feat indeed, since the rest of her skin was an eye-popping forest green. Her tiny frame quaked with fury.
“Okay, start backing up!” I called, turning my attention down the line. “They’re now a tiny, winged green chick who doesn’t seem to like us butting in on her space. The laser’s not working fast enough!”
Zander leaned over for a closer look, and I could see his confidence draining from his face.
“FAIRIES!” he cried in terror.
The girl had very sharp nails when she grabbed at my arm. I sliced off the whole hand with a quick swing of the laser, and I backed up, Zander pulling my ankle, but we weren’t fast enough. She slashed and bit at my face, ripping out clumps of hair as she screeched an ear-splitting siren.
“Out here!” Blayde ordered, backing out of the vent and pulling Zander out behind her. He grabbed my waist to pull me down after him and slammed the grate down in front of the fairy.
“Run!” he ordered, taking his command to heart and rushing down the corridor with actual fear propelling him forward.
The fairy burst from the vent and flew at Zander, still screeching. She was not alone; two other green ladies followed her out of the air duct, shrieking like a pack of banshees, smaller than they’d been.
“Fairies? That’s your real fear?” I asked as we pelted down the staff corridor.
“Have you seen them?” he asked. “Now you understand why I don’t get Shakespeare!”
“Bill was sweet,” said Blayde, pumping her arms at her side.
“I never said he wasn’t! I just don’t like his obsession with—this!”
I didn’t have time t
o think over the implication that fairies were real because at that moment, we rounded a corner and crashed into the last person I expected to block our path: the one and only Foollegg.
We collided at full force, sprawling to the ground in a scene worthy of an anime meet-cute. Though there was nothing cute about me fully body-tackling the head of the Agency’s security in her full-body gear.
“Get off me, Terran!” she ordered, before her eyes had time to catch what had been chasing us this whole time. I didn’t think they could get any larger than they already were, but I was proved wrong. She gasped as the three angry green fairies came veering around the corner, trying to dive-bomb us.
I didn’t think. I pulled the two of us through the fabric between dimensions, tossing us down the hallway to gain precious seconds on the arriving bunch. Zander’s arm reached out of nowhere and pulled me into an empty room by the scruff of my neck, Blayde shoving in Foollegg before slamming the door shut behind us.
“What the void was that?” Foollegg stammered, pushing herself to her feet. Zander was already pulling off his shirt—of course—and using it to stuff the bottom of the door in case the not-really-fairies tried to get in that way. It wasn’t enough fabric to go all the way around; they would get in eventually.
“Need I remind you what we’ve been trying to tell you?” Blayde spat.
“You saved me,” Foollegg mumbled, rubbing her stomach where I had tackled her. “You just saved my life. I was going to arrest you, and you saved me.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said.
“Hate fairies,” said Zander, shuddering.
“You?” Foollegg asked.
“Seriously, did anyone actually see them? All those teeth and nails? Or am I just talking gibberish?”
“They’re freaky,” I agreed. “Also … real?”
Blayde flicked a switch. I hadn’t realized that we were standing around in the dark until then. “Sally, is that a human escape pod?”
I turned where she was pointing. “That’s a boiler.”
“Then we’re celestially screwed.”
“Got a plan anyone?” I asked.
Foollegg let out a heavy breath. “I’ve lost contact with my team. The building seems reinforced against all outgoing transmissions.”
“Barker should have told you as much,” said Zander. “Didn’t you listen to any of his warnings?”
“And let Snooke get all the platinum? Not hardly.”
“So, no help from the Agency, then?” asked Blayde.
“Well, you have me.”
“So, no help from the Agency, then,” she repeated. “Okay, good. We can do this.”
“This isn’t good,” Zander muttered, peeking through the keyhole. “But it’s better than fairies. It’s not targeting me anymore. Now it’s just some … bogey-monster.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know”—he mimed—“big shoulders, brown leathery skin, looks like crap.”
“Bad design?”
“No, it legitimately looks like human excrement.”
“Any idea how we can stop it?” Blayde turned to Foollegg. “My laser is too slow. If they get out, we may never catch them. They’ll start over in another city, another continent.”
“I know the stakes, all right?” she spat. “What do you want me to say? That I believe you now?”
“No, it’s too late for that. I need you to fix this. You’re meant to be in charge. Tell us what we need to do.”
She scratched her dry skull with her pale hand. “I’ve never dealt with their kind before. I have a Terran gun—can’t bring anything else Earthside, lest our weapons fall into Terran hands—but that’s no use against a silicon-based life form.”
“Then what good are you?” I couldn’t keep my rage from bubbling up inside. Screw the consequences; she couldn’t blow my parents up from in here, anyway. “What is the point of having you, the Agency, at all? You never do anything! It shouldn’t be up to me to fight off every threat that makes its way to Earth!”
I turned to Zander and Blayde, fuming. Literally, my face was so hot I’m sure my hair was starting to singe. “Look. We need to burn this sucker. We’re in the boiler room. There has to be something we can do.”
Blayde snapped her fingers. “Lightning through sand. Electric current!”
I tossed her the laser, and she cut a slice straight into the boiler’s belly. Hot water spilled out into the floor, scalding to the touch. The four of us scuttled out of its way, jumping on shelves, gripping onto pipes.
“We need a charge,” said Blayde. Zander’s hand rested on the door handle, ready to spring it open. “A battery. Anything. Anyone. Quickly.”
Full credit to her, Foollegg instantly pulled the translator from her neck. Half wrapped around one of the shelves, she pulled the guts out of the small device, saying nothing. Must have been some kind of tiny power generator, not tech I was used to. A curt nod to Zander, and he ripped the door open.
The bogey monster was even worse in person, just a steaming pile of brown goo grinding toward us, somehow, impossibly, grinning as it saw Zander in the doorway. It started to transform, a fairy head opening on his shoulder, another on his stomach, pulling away from the brown conglomeration, ready to reach, to attack.
Foollegg shorted the translator, tossing it into the water and crushing it underfoot. The thing about an electrical current is that you don’t know it’s there until it finds an obstacle, and that it most definitely did. All we needed was a single spark, a powerful burst. It sprung and traveled through the water, through the soaked sole of the sand conglomeration, up and through and—
The creature screamed, each of its three mouths arching in horror, the three fairies trying to drag themselves into the air, failing and flaying.
The screams died down to silence, leaving nothing but a terrible statue in its wake.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Deus Ex-traterrestrial
Zander swung from the doorframe he had been clutching, landing lightly into the water below, a tiny splash breaking our silence. We were all breathing heavily, as if from running a marathon. The threat had come, and we had conquered. But the award for most dangerous in the room went to the next highest-ranking player, and she was stepping off her shelf with the grace of a gazelle.
“He just couldn’t get past the language barrier.” Zander shook his head apologetically, placing a hand on the glass monstrosity. It didn’t budge. Victory was ours.
“That doesn’t work.” Blayde snorted. “Seriously, Stop.”
“Fine. Foollegg, you all right?”
“Chug quuc.” She paused, breathing heavily, and launched into a long and possibly beautiful speech. I didn’t know; I couldn’t understand a lick of it now that her translator had sacrificed itself for us. She turned to me, her eyes going wide. “I’m fine. Though my reality is shifting slightly, so I need a minute. The patients … you could have run from us, but you stayed to save them.”
“Well, we got to know most of them pretty well. Daisy-May was particularly sweet.” Blayde grinned as she admired the statue. The creature was frozen mid-shapeshift, three winged creatures pulling away from a thick central mass, their faces twisted in expressions of horror and hatred. Ugly as a turd. She turned to Foollegg, her face suddenly serious. “You probably want to arrest us now.”
Shit, did we have to fight? I poised myself, eyeing the distance between me and Zander, gauging if we had time to escape. But the thought hit me like a train. Foollegg still had my parents. I couldn’t go. None of this had saved me from her.
“I would love to.” She took a step forward, checking the strange and hauntingly beautiful glass sculpture that had been trying to kill us mere moments ago. “But I can’t.”
But Foollegg sounded calm, even sweet with her next words. Not that one could easily deduce expressions from another species you knew nothing about. I stared at Blayde instead, and she seemed cool and collected.
“How so?” asked Blayde.
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“You saved my life,” Foollegg replied, flicking her forked tongue the way I would flick my hair. “I’ve seen something the Alliance has been hiding from us for years, centuries. And I would hate to put it behind bars.”
“And what’s that?” Blayde asked.
“Hope. Truth. To be honest, I’m not sure. But arresting you now seems unwise. Now, run before the adrenaline runs out and I realize what a terrible mistake I’m making. Enjoy the off-grid of Earth.”
“What makes you think we’re staying planet-side?” Zander asked.
“Does it matter what I think? Goodbye, Iron and the Sand. And Sally Webber.”
“No nickname?” I asked.
“I haven’t found one that fits yet. But trust me, it will be catchy when I do. I hope I’ll see you again on better terms.”
“When you’re not holding an anvil over my parents’ house?”
She flicked her tongue again. “Just don’t cause any more trouble. Now, go!”
With that, she spun on her heels, bounding out of the boiler room and leaping down the expanse of hallway, slipping for a split second in a patch of water. Zander shrugged, placing a hand on my shoulder.
“You look puzzled,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“We have to go,” said Blayde. “Come on, before she gets back.”
“What just happened?”
Blayde was already grabbing my hand and reaching for Zander’s. I ripped mine away, flying backward down the corridor a good jump away out of her grasp.
“We can’t just leave,” I spat.
“She only gave us a small window here,” said Blayde. “We have to run.”
“My parents!”
“You heard her. They’ll be fine!” She dashed for me, and I sidestepped, rushing down the hallway.
Oh shit. I couldn’t outrun Blayde. Why was I even running away? She jumped, as I knew she would, and I did the same, landing just a foot to the right and rushing back the way we came.
“Just–stand–still!” Blayde hissed.
“We can’t leave!” I stammered. “We could end up anywhere! What’s the point of that?”
“Being chased by someone is our default these days,” said Blayde. “So long as they don’t get in our way, who gives a crap? Will you stop with the running?”
