by Matt Blake
I felt a twinge of nervousness in my stomach as I made sure my invisibility was triggered. I knew I was going to have to be careful. These guys were armed to the max, and they didn’t look like they were messing around.
I drifted down toward the craft, keeping my movement and my focus steady. I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. If I could just teleport inside that craft, I would, but I didn’t know a thing about it so I had to make sure I was staying as safe as I could.
That didn’t make me a pussy. It just made me not reckless. There was no room for recklessness.
I floated directly above the craft. Down inside it, I could see an opening right on top. That opening led down to even more darkness. There were forensics looking around it, but it didn’t look like anyone had gone in there yet.
I swore I could hear something coming from that opening. Something droning. Like a heartbeat.
I swallowed a lump in my throat and moved slowly down toward the opening.
When I was just ten meters away, a crackle of electricity sparked right in front of me.
The burning pain split through my body. I jolted back immediately. Damnit. There was some kind of force field erected over the crash site, probably by the army. Of course there was.
The guards turned around and looked in my direction, not directly at me but through me.
They lifted their guns.
And they fired.
I covered my face as the bullets peppered toward me. I jolted from left to right, clinging on to my invisibility, in no real direction, just pure reflexive reaction.
I kept on moving as more bullets fired at me. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to easily get through that force field. I was going to have to try something else.
I closed my eyes and dropped down to ground level. The guards were still firing above. Hope sparked inside me. That was a good thing. They couldn’t see me. The invisibility had worked just fine.
I took a few deep breaths, standing right before the guards now. My heart pounded. If my invisibility dropped just for a second, they’d see exactly who I was, and the secret would be out.
Sure, those three idiots had seen my face not long ago. But I figured they’d have put me to the backs of their minds now a goddamned alien craft had fallen from the sky.
I studied my surroundings. The army dudes were right in front of me. The police and the crowds, behind me. I was sandwiched in the middle of them.
But beyond the army, there were forensics people. So there had to be some kind of opening through this force field.
I waited, as painful as waiting was. Every second that passed, I became more and more paranoid that something was going to go wrong.
I had to wait, though. I had to see how they’d got inside.
I must’ve been standing there in silence for a whole fifteen minutes before I saw one of the forensics lift a hand and press it against what looked like thin air.
My body tensed. I immediately shot myself over there, so I was right in front of him.
As his hand was raised, I could see the force field peeling away, one piece at a time.
I held my breath.
This was my moment.
This was my chance.
The second the forensics guy stepped through in my direction… I moved right through him.
He staggered either side. He looked around.
“Jim?” someone to his side asked. “You okay?”
Jim scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah. Uh. I just felt, uh. A little light-headed, that’s all.”
I moved to the opening quickly now. The craft was even more fascinating and even more foreboding now I was standing right on it. It felt softer on my feet than I’d expected. Sure, it looked cold and metal, but there was a weird warmth to it. A warmth that felt like home.
I looked down into the opening. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
I had to go in there.
It was my duty.
I closed my eyes, held my breath, and I dropped right down.
When I landed inside, what I saw wasn’t exactly what I expected.
I’d pictured, in my mind, a wide open area, something unlike anything I’d ever seen. Some kind of fascinating alien structure.
Instead, I just saw walls of wires. Little flashing lights. Like this was all some kind of computer system. A very human looking computer system.
I walked slowly down the corridor. My heart raced at a million beats per second, or at least in that region. The wires and the lights were all different sizes, all different colors. It struck me, as I followed the narrow corridors of this craft, that it really was what I called it—a craft. It had been crafted by someone.
I heard something behind me.
A rustling noise. Like little metallic footsteps.
I turned around.
There was nothing there.
I swallowed a lump in my throat. I had to keep going and see more of this craft. I was imagining the sounds. It was probably just the noise from above reverberating down here.
I turned back around and stepped further down this tunnel.
As I got further inside, it started to narrow. I felt the wires brushing against my face, snakelike in their texture.
Then I heard the rustling behind me again.
I spun around, faster this time.
And this time, I saw something.
It was only for a split second, but there was definitely something there. Minuscule yellow eyes watching me through the wires.
I was so focused on those eyes that I didn’t see the other eyes right behind me.
I didn’t even clock the being as it punched me hard in the back of my head, smacking me down to the solid floor beneath, the metal echoing as I slammed against it.
I felt dizzy and dazed. I tried to turn around. What had happened? What had punched me?
I didn’t have to wait long to find out.
When I turned onto my back, I saw it.
There was a spherical thing right opposite me, with long tentacular arms. It was just like the craft I was inside, only smaller, just a little taller than me.
It pulled back its tentacle and went to slam it into my head.
Total fear overcame me. I stuck my hands out to cover my face, but none of my powers sparked. I was trapped; this was it.
I felt the tentacle hurtle into my body, and for a moment, I thought it was over.
That’s when I felt someone grab me from behind.
And then I felt myself being hurtled through a wormhole, teleported away from those crafts, far away from the crash site.
When I fell through the wormhole, I opened my eyes right away. I was in some kind of disused office block, a few stories off the ground. In the distance, I could see the lights, where I knew the crash site was.
“You’re an idiot for going in there alone,” a voice said. “But at least you’re willing to accept what’s real, now.”
My insides turned to mush.
My jaw tightened.
The man standing over me wasn’t just anyone.
It was Saint.
10
“You don’t have to look at me with such distrust anymore, Kyle. You and I are on the same side now.”
I had to admit, accepting I was on the same side as the dude who’d nearly obliterated the planet, and who hated humans with a passion—and me even more—was kinda hard to accept.
It was dark outside, right in the middle of the night. I was in a disused office block type thing that was run down and full of dust. There were stacks of paper and broken old office equipment that looked like it’d been in here for a long time, but like the place had just been abandoned for no real reason. It was strange, for sure.
The strangest thing, of course, was Saint, who stood over me.
I had to keep on glancing up at him to check it was really him. Whenever I heard his voice, I flinched. I wondered if he knew that, and he was getting some kind of deranged pleasure out of how baffled I was by everythi
ng. I hadn’t spoken a word yet. My mouth was too dry; my lips were too sore.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m back here. How I got back here. Well, mostly, that’s thanks to you.”
He turned and smiled at me. He wasn’t masked, revealing his pale, scarred face.
My skin crawled.
“The wormhole you sent me into was pretty much impenetrable to any ULTRA of Earth’s current capacity, granted. And that’s a credit to your abilities. But what you didn’t stop to consider was that it might not be impenetrable to… something else.”
“What is that thing?” I asked.
“Ahh,” Saint said. “He speaks.”
“No bullshit. Just tell me what’s happening here.”
Saint walked over to me. He stood right over me. For a few seconds, I actually felt afraid of his presence, recoiling a little. Then I remembered I’d beat him already, so there was nothing to fear.
Right?
“We don’t understand what it is. Not truly. But we do know it’s come from… from somewhere else. And we do know it’s exploited the wormholes you created as a means to get here. So congratulations, ‘Glacies’. You led it right here.”
He turned around and walked away. I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I’d brought that thing here? “What does it mean?”
Saint stopped. He was standing right in front of the door. He didn’t respond, not for a few seconds. Then he looked over his shoulder and faced me. “I guess we’ll have to find out for ourselves, won’t we?”
He opened the door.
“Who’s we?”
Saint didn’t have to answer.
When he opened the door, I saw Orion and Daniel standing side by side.
Orion didn’t have his mask on, but I recognized him from the time he’d showed me his face. Daniel wasn’t masked either. He was paler, and he looked malnourished, but it was him. It was definitely him.
I felt a surge of both relief and also pain that I’d thought these two were gone.
I hurried toward them.
Without being able to stop myself, I wrapped my arms around Orion and held him tight.
“I thought you were gone,” I said.
“Kyle,” Orion said. He patted me on the back of my head, like he was uncomfortable in the embrace.
“I thought—I thought you were gone. Both of you.”
Daniel half-smiled and nodded. “I guess you always were the emotional one, huh?”
We held each other a little longer, and I saw then that the dream I’d had was real. There was no other way about it. That hurt, in a way. Obviously, it was great, because it meant that Orion and Daniel weren’t dead.
But it also meant that Saint wasn’t dead.
And that meant that something terrible really was happening here.
“I’m all for grand emotional reunions,” Saint said. “Really, I am. But you have a decision to make, Kyle. You have a reality to face up to.”
My adrenaline dropped. I stepped away from Orion. “What decision?”
“You join us. And we get the Resistance—every single ULTRA left—together. We take the fight to the oncoming force.”
“The oncoming force?”
“You’ve seen it,” Daniel said. “Don’t play dumb.”
I lowered my head. “I had a nightmare. That’s… that’s all it was.”
“Or,” Saint said, dismissing my words. “You walk away and watch the world crumble.”
I frowned. I still couldn’t believe what Saint was saying. More than that, it didn’t sit right that Saint was giving the orders. “You killed… you killed Orion. My dad. And then you expect us just to follow you?”
“Erm. In case you haven’t noticed, your father is standing right here.”
I could barely look at Orion or anyone but Saint anymore. “No. This is wrong. Something’s… something’s not right here.”
“Believe whatever you want to believe,” Orion said, speaking in his deep, to-the-point voice. “But… differences aside, Saint is right.”
My jaw dropped. I looked between Saint, Orion, and Daniel, awestruck.
“We come together. Or the world falls. It’s as simple as that.”
Part of me wanted to believe these three. But something was wrong. There was a look in Orion’s eye, and in Daniel’s eye, that made me wonder if this was all some kind of illusion. Maybe it was Saint pulling the strings.
Or maybe it was something else…
“No,” I said.
Orion frowned. “What—”
“I said no.”
“You can’t just—”
But I didn’t stop around to hear what else Orion had to say.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and vanished.
This wasn’t my battle.
This wasn’t my fight.
Saint, Orion, and Daniel stood together in that disused, abandoned office block.
“Should we go after him?” Daniel asked.
Saint took a deep breath and sighed. “He’ll come back. As soon as he realizes what a grave mistake he’s making.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
Saint looked right at Daniel. “Then God help us all.”
11
I didn’t want to think about what I was doing. I just knew there was no other option.
I had to get away from the crash site, and I had to get Ellicia, Damon, Cassie, and Avi as far away from that crash site as possible.
I shot through the night sky back toward my place, where I knew Cassie and Ellicia were staying. The rain was falling heavily now. In a way, it felt warmer than it usually did, which only went to make me wonder even more. Was the warmth something to do with the craft—or the being, or whatever it was—that had fallen from above? Possibly. Was I reading into this stuff way too much, giving it more credit than it was worth? Probably.
Whatever. I had to get Ellicia and Cassie away from here. Then I had to get Damon and Avi away, too.
I opened my eyes as I teleported myself back inside my home.
But something happened.
I wasn’t back inside my home at all.
I was on the street outside, lying flat on the ground.
I scrambled to my feet and looked around. What was I doing lying down in the road? Was I so rusty and out of practice that I couldn’t teleport effectively anymore? No. That couldn’t be the case. I’d teleported a few times since getting back to reality. I’d even managed to teleport myself from the Antarctic wastelands back to New York. It had to be something else.
I looked around. It felt like there was something pulling at me, a force from above dragging me out of place.
I shook my head. “Whatever. Damned excuses.”
Then I went to teleport myself inside my home.
A splitting headache pierced through my skull. I fell to my knees, the rain splashing up against me. I could taste blood on my lips, as the sounds of honking horns nearby were louder and more pronounced than I knew they were in reality.
“What the hell?”
The pain was still intense, but it was better now I’d stopped trying to teleport. It still felt like there was something above me, affecting my current, like some kind of weird, draining magnet.
Whatever it was, I didn’t like it. I wasn’t going to play nice with it if it wasn’t going to play nice with me.
I decided against teleporting inside my home and opted for the more human approach of taking the stairs.
I ran up the stairs. But the higher I got, I felt the breath beginning to drift from my body, the steps getting more and more cumbersome. I didn’t want to slow down, but I found myself falling before I had a say in the matter. I put my head in my hands and panted for air. What was happening to me?
I tried to keep on moving, keep on climbing. The tiredness and the fatigue weren’t easing. Maybe it was something to do with how long I’d been out cold. Perhaps it had affected me in many more ways than I could’ve imagined, and only now was it truly catching up with me.
Or maybe it was something to do with the fallen craft.
I swallowed a lump in my throat when I thought of the craft.
I didn’t want to believe it was as much as a threat as Saint—if it even was Saint at all—claimed it to be.
Yet at the same time, I didn’t want anyone I cared about being anywhere near it when shit went down.
I forced my way to the top of the stairs and reached Cassie’s door.
“Kyle?”
I turned around and saw Ellicia frowning at me.
“What… Are you okay?”
She hurried over to me, her steps gradually picking up in pace.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m okay.”
“You don’t look okay. Cassie? I think we need to call an ambulance.”
“No, wait—”
“Cassie!”
It didn’t take long for Cassie to get to Ellicia’s side. And when she got there, I heard Ellicia saying things, mumbling things about how she needed to go and get help, and I wanted to intervene and stop her, but I was just too weak. The pressure in my head was intense, like someone was squeezing either side of my temple, the juices inside my skull on the verge of bursting out.
And then in my blurred vision, I saw Ellicia leave, and I was alone with Cassie.
Cassie and the Force.
The Darkness.
The…
No. What was I thinking?
I felt something crack across my face, then. A sharp slap. Cassie’s backhand.
“Hey,” she said. “Bro? You need to pull yourself together.”
“I can’t exactly pull myself together when…”
I realized something weird had happened, then.
I had my strength and my energy back. In fact, it was as if I hadn’t even lost it at all.
I stood up and walked over to the other side of the room, over to the door that Ellicia had left through.
“Um, Kyle?” Cassie said. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Ellicia,” I said. “I need to go get her. We—we need to get out of here.”
