by C. S. Nelson
The world was ending. And not just Earth, which had ended a long time ago. Her world, her friends, her acquaintances, the people she had known her whole life. Her family, whoever they were in this little bubble. She had once hoped that in the future she would be able to find out who her parents were. But it didn’t matter anymore. They were all being sent to another planet. Their Earth lives were ending, and they were being reborn somewhere else. Whether they would survive there, no one was sure.
Annie began to sing as she twirled down the street. She hadn’t sung since before the Test. She chose a song that had been passed down for hundreds and hundreds of years, which they had sang to the children in the nurseries when Annie was growing up. “You are my sunshine,” she sang to the empty streets. “My only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are grey.” Her voice echoed off the walls of the Shield, bouncing back to her, making her feel truly alone. “You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.”
“Who’s your sunshine?” a voice asked from the darkness.
Annie stopped turning. “Zed?”
He stepped out into the moonlight. “How’d you know?”
“You’re the only one who hides in the shadows until I come around,” she said. “Seriously, do you ever sleep?”
Zed chuckled. “Here and there. I’ve got nothing to do all day. Just months and months to waste until the ship arrives.”
“Must be nice,” Annie said sarcastically. The high she had been riding since she left the meeting was dissipating. She was coming back down to Earth, back down to reality, and it didn’t feel good.
“Where have you been?” Zed asked playfully.
Annie sighed, struggling between the warning the president had given her, that telling a single person would result in the death penalty, and feeling the need to speak to someone else about the injustice that was occurring in the Henderson Shield. She looked into Zed’s cool grey eyes for a moment. She didn’t know why, but Annie felt she could trust him. “I need to tell you something,” she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him behind her.
They arrived at the tree house that Kevin had showed her, outside the Shield, just as the sun was setting. She missed him terribly as they walked through the tunnel, remembering the conversations she had with him last time she was here. Kevin had made her feel so safe. Zed had seemed nervous about taking the underground tunnel, but Annie had done her best to reassure him, promising that there was no way for the aliens to be able to claw through the concrete that surrounded them. They stepped up to the ladder leading up to the treehouse, and Zed stopped.
"Come on," Annie said, pushing him forward. She couldn’t wait to reveal the information she had just been given. "Nothing is going to hurt you."
"This is really embarrassing," Zed mumbled, scratching the back of his head as he looked up at the ladder. "I'm deathly afraid of heights. Even being just a couple of feet off the ground..." He shuttered.
Annie smiled. "Don't be embarrassed. The view is worth it, trust me." She gently led him to the ladder and he took hold, grabbing onto the rungs so tightly that his knuckles turned white. "I'll help you up."
Zed hadn't been kidding when he said he was afraid. He clumsily made his way up the ladder, almost as if he had never attempted to climb one before. Annie had to push him up most of the way. It took many minutes, but she tried not to judge him. She was sure that he was embarrassed enough already. Once they reached the top, Zed was out of breath and sweating, more from the nerves than the climb itself. "Thank you," he said between gasps for air.
"Didn't you come from a Shield with skyscrapers?" Annie laughed, completely out of breath herself.
"I lived on the first floor." Zed's face went red before he looked out into the forest. "Wow," he said.
It was a special thing, being able to sit in nature without fear of being attacked or killed. Annie had only been to the treehouse once before, and it had been so calming. She was sure that Zed had never experienced it, from the way he looked around. She felt safe that no one from the Shield would be able to hear their conversation. She could share what she heard.
They sat, looking out at the empty forest, saying nothing for many minutes. But Zed was patient. He knew that Annie had something she needed to say, but was trying to figure out how to say it. So he waited as she swallowed, over and over and over again, unsure of how to get the words out.
“Okay…” she said eventually. “This is going to sound strange to you.”
“Go for it.”
Annie looked around nervously, checking for any signs of someone listening. She was being ridiculous, she thought. The president wasn't going to casually wander by. They were sitting on a few pieces of wood nailed to a tree. The people in the Shield, for the most part, didn’t even know that this place existed. “I’ve found out the truth about the ship arriving to save us.”
Zed adjusted. He was interested. “Okay?”
“You won’t be getting on the ship that’s going back to Mpho,” Annie said. “You’ll be getting on a different, larger ship, with most of the rest of the community, and you’ll go to a different planet.”
Zed’s forehead wrinkled. “What?”
“You’ll be the first generation of a new experiment. Just like Earth was a couple hundred years ago. They’re going to erase your memory and fill it with lies. Pretend you’ve been on this new planet for thousands of years. See if the planet is habitable for the people of Mpho.”
Zed breathed a heavy sigh. “Repeating the mistakes they made on Earth.” He didn’t look as surprised as Annie had expected. He didn’t express the same reaction she had given to the people in the meeting.
“What do you mean?” Annie asked.
“Humans took over this planet, pretended they had been here all along. The ‘soul suckers’ put up with it for a while, but once humans began destroying the planet…you know, knocking down trees to cultivate livestock, pollute the oceans, and the local creatures had determined that they had enough, that’s when they decided to exterminate the humans.”
Annie listened very carefully to what Zed was saying. It made sense, but how did he know all of this? She had only just found out that humans had been sent here instead of evolving here like she had always been taught. How did Zed know this secret? Was he from a Shield where all had known the truth? “How do you know that?” Annie asked.
Before he could respond, there was a crack between the trees just out of sight. Zed squinted hard, looking out into the dusk for the source of the noise. Then he ducked down underneath the window, so that he was hidden from view. “Stay quiet,” he hissed.
Annie looked out, and saw a figure approaching the tree house. “Were those voices I heard?” said a man, coming out into the moonlight.
Annie had experienced this before. She looked down at Zed, who had his hands cupped around his knees, lying on the wooden floor. The poor boy was petrified with fear. Maybe when he had protested climbing the ladder, she shouldn't have pushed him. “Keep walking,” she called back to the man on the ground.
The man looked up at her, grinning. He wasn’t even attempting to pretend that he was a lost human looking for help. “Come down here so I can speak to you,” he taunted.
Annie laughed. This time she felt no distress. Perhaps being without Kevin had caused her to become more independent. “Disappear, sucker.”
The man’s face twitched when he heard the word. Annie had been told in school that the term was derogatory. That the aliens, or, she supposed now, the original inhabitants, despised it. It had been possible, at one point in time, to reason with the creatures. Maybe back in that time people would have refrained from using the term in order to keep the peace. But there was only mutual hatred now.
“You will die, human,” the man spoke calmly. “Your Shield will break down just like the rest of them. You will wake one morning and I will be in your home with you. You will all suffer. Your souls will be ours.” He appeared to be experiencing gre
at joy in telling her all of this. Like playing with one’s food.
“I thought I told you to fuck off.” There was no more fear for Annie. Her three options were to get on a ship and go to a planet full of traitors, get on a ship and go to a planet where she likely wouldn’t survive, or to die here. But she wouldn’t let herself think about it, she couldn’t. Now was not the time to break down into tears. She had to be strong.
The soul sucker laughed, and then chattered his teeth together. “I can’t wait to taste you,” he hissed, before turning and disappearing into the darkness.
Annie patted Zed’s arm to let him know it was safe. He sat up, breathing heavily. “We need to go back.” He pulled her arm and started to get up.
“Zed, it’s fine, none of them can get to us up here.” She smiled. “If they could, we would already be dead.”
“That’s not why I’m afraid.” Zed stood up, too fast, and slammed his head into the roof of the small tree house.
Annie jumped up after him. “Are you okay?” she asked. Zed clutched the top of his head but said nothing, staring at the wall opposite of him. Tears began welling up in his eyes.
“Are you bleeding?”
Nothing.
Annie grabbed his wrists gently, and Zed let out a small cry. “It’s okay,” she promised him. She had been through first aid training during orientation at the ranger camp. She could have stitched him up right there if he needed it.
Zed lowered his hands and, after a long pause, unclenched his fists and showed her his palms. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. His hands were covered in blood. Blue blood.
Annie, still holding his wrists, stared at his hands for a long while. The blood was dripping melodically to the ground from his ring finger and pinky. She knew what she was seeing, she knew what it meant, but she didn’t want to believe it. It was betrayal. “You’re…sorry?” she eventually managed to get out.
“I wanted to tell you so badly, Annie.” He nodded, trying to reassure her. “I just needed to know that I could trust you first.”
“Trust me? Trust me?” Annie threw his wrists down, where they hung at his sides. His alien blood dripped from his human fingers onto the floor. Suckers can’t climb. Kevin’s words rang in her mind. Zed had tricked her. She felt foolish, trusting every word that he had said, helping him up a ladder that he struggled with like no one she had ever seen. How could she have been so trusting? “You’ve been lying to me since the day I met you, and you needed to know if you could trust me?”
“Please, listen to me for just a moment.” He held onto her arm, and she could feel it, the blood, sticking to her skin. It made her feel sick. “I don’t want to hurt you, any of you.”
Annie felt tears welling up in her eyes. Her lips were quivering as she spoke. “The fact that you are standing in front of me in that body means that you already have.”
Zed lowered his gaze. He knew that she was right. He was disguising his true alien self in a human body. A boy with curly dark hair and grey eyes, the straightest teeth that Annie had ever seen, and three prominent freckles in the shape of a perfect triangle on his right cheek, had died in order for him to be standing here before her. He had taken the boy, looked into his eyes, pressed his disgusting, greedy lips against this boy’s perfect face, and had sucked the life right out of him.
“That was a long time ago. And I hated it. I hated it so much I promised myself that I would never do it again.” She watched as he rubbed the blood against his trousers, as if she could forget what she was looking at.
No longer a who. A what.
Annie sniffed and wiped tears from her eyes. She had just vowed to herself that she wouldn’t cry today, that she would be strong. She was supposed to be taking a break from all the stress. The fact that he had caused her to do this only made Annie feel more betrayed. She pulled her lightening gun out of its holster on her hip, holding it at him and squeezing down slightly on the trigger. She wasn’t sure what she was thinking, what was going on in her head, but she was ready for whatever ended up making sense in her brain. “I’m not going to kill you, Zed,” she said after a few moments, her voice shaking. “Even though I really, really want to.” Zed let out a whimper that if she had heard only moments before may have broken her heart. Now, she felt nothing. “But if I ever see you in the Shield again, I swear to God I will.”
Annie didn’t want to know how he had gotten into the Shield, how he had fooled everybody. She didn’t want to hear his reasons why. Why he chosen her to talk to, why he wanted to interact with the humans. It didn’t matter what he had to say, he wouldn’t be able to change what was going to happen to the humans in the next couple of months. He was not a revolutionary sucker. He was just a sucker. She dropped the lightening gun to her side and gave him one final hateful glance before turning on her heel.
“Annie, please,” Zed begged, reaching out towards her.
Annie dodged his touch and stepped towards the ladder back down into the tunnel. She had helped him, a monster, up to her favorite spot. “Never let me see you again, you…you…” Her voice trailed off. She was going to call him a soul sucker, but she couldn’t do it. She felt as though she had known him, his sense of humor, his smile. She couldn’t find it within herself to call him something so hateful. It made her angry with herself, in fact, to find herself still feeling empathy for him. She shook her head as she looked into his grey eyes one last time. Annie left the tree house with Zed still calling after her.
Chapter 16: Mpho
In another galaxy, Captain Jansen sighed in frustration. “What do you mean, it’s the last one left?”
The young intern gulped. “Three of the Shields went down on Friday, and the last Shield in Europe was destroyed early this morning. The only one that seems to be left, Captain, is the one that was created for the Henderson family.” She put down her sheets of paper, thankful that she had done research on the Shields on Earth the night before. Eliza hadn’t expected to be questioned by the captain at work today. She placed her hands underneath her thighs so that the Captain Jansen wouldn’t see them shaking.
Jansen rubbed both his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, removing his hat. He had asked one of the interns to turn down the temperature in here three times already. “How long does that one have?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“Well, according to my calculations, the reason this…um, specific Shield has lasted so long is due to the small size. All of the shields that have gone down in the past months have been far smaller than the ones that have disappeared over the last several years. If this one is to follow a similar trend…” She flipped her pages over until she found the graph she had hand drawn. “This one has between one and two months left.”
Jansen swore so loudly that the other interns looked up from their desks with a jolt, but only for a moment. Outbursts were not uncommon by him. New to his position, trying to impress his father who had been in charge of inter-planet relations for four decades. Why did everything have to go wrong as soon as I took over? Jansen thought. “And we were scheduled to arrive…?”
“Just over fourteen months from now, sir,” she said, drawing an X on the graph. It was well outside of the curve.
“And how slim is the possibility that it will survive until then?”
Eliza pushed her glasses up her nose, and dug through papers and fast food wrappers to find her calculator. She punched numbers for a few seconds then gulped. “It appears to be 2-3%, Captain.”
“Fucking hell,” Jansen mumbled under his breath. “We need those human samples. Otherwise this entire Earth mission will have been a complete waste of our time and money.” And his father was going to snap his neck.
Eliza nodded. “Excluding those who have survived in the wild, which are few and far between, those in this Shield are the last of the Earth human race. We can count on some of them surviving for the next fourteen months but it will be difficult to pick them up without risking the lives of our crew. And we definitely will not have the
two hundred live specimens that the king needs.”
“Well it’s already not going to be diverse like the king wanted. They’re all coming from that puny little Shield,” Jansen wiped the sweat off of his brow. “Imagine all the interbreeding that has gone on in there. Absolutely disgusting. Where else are we going to rally up hundreds of people for the king and thousands of people to test out Zeta?”
Eliza swallowed, putting her hand on Jansen’s tense arm. “Can I give you a personal opinion?” she asked. Jansen gave her a dirty look, and she pulled her arm back immediately, her face going red.
“What?” he hissed, looking around. If the other interns could hear their conversation, they were pretending not to. They had learned from his previous explosions to never get involved unless they absolutely had to.
“Move the mission up. Send the ships to pick them up now. It will cost a little extra money but you’ll have all of the samples you need, plus all of the humans for the coming experiment on Zeta. They’re already giving up on their own testing. They aren’t going to find a cure in the next fourteen months. Between now and then is just dead time.”
Jansen’s lips tightened. This girl had only been working here for a couple months; he wasn’t even sure of her name yet. But she was right. He needed to get to the people of Earth before they were all dead. And the only way to do that was to move the mission forward. Due to the time warp between Earth and Mpho, fourteen months for the people of the Shield was only a couple of weeks for them here. Which meant they needed to leave soon. Tomorrow, or the next day. No one was ready, but it was their only shot. “That’s going to be a lot of paperwork.”
