Cheerleaders From Planet X

by Lyssa Chiavari

  I wasn’t sure whether to be amazed or terrified.

  Damien followed my gaze and said, “The sentries are the only ones who can cloak themselves to appear human. The others have to stay aboard the ship. At least, until negotiations are completed. A.k.a., never,” he muttered under his breath.

  Outside the transport ship, Andronicus was talking to a broad, muscular cyclops and an otherwise human-looking person, both in a uniform. “The technician is waiting for her on level two,” he said as we passed.

  “Sir,” Damien said, nodding his head—but not saluting him, I noticed. Whatever Damien and Andronicus’ relationship was, they must be something close to equals.

  Damien led me out of the docking area and onto an elevator. He pressed a button, and the doors swished quietly shut. I gripped the railing, still not quite over my bout of motion sickness from the brief trip through space.

  Damien watched me, a bemused expression on his face. He seemed to hesitate, for just an instant. Then he said, “You feeling okay, Laura?”

  “Excuse me?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. But he just smiled that frat-boy smile of his, not even batting an eye.

  “You might have fooled Andronicus, but that’s only because he’s not good at reading other people. I could tell right away you weren’t Striker Peterson. Your body language is all different.”

  “Um, that’s creepy, analyzing our body language,” I said. Then I shook my head—still Shailene’s head. I wasn’t about to give up this cover yet, even if Damien did see right through it. “But if you knew who I was, why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I wanted to talk to you,” he replied. “I’ve wanted to talk to you since yesterday, when you ran into us outside Beta. That’s when I realized that Ana’s little was one of the grandchildren of Xandros the Great.”

  I blinked at him. “Excuse me?” I said again.

  He cocked his head. “You don’t know about your grandfather’s legacy? He’s a hero to the Anesidorans. Especially for people like us.”

  “People like us,” I repeated flatly.

  “Yeah, you know. Hapas. Mixed. Part human.”

  I pursed my lips. So, Damien was part human. And, evidently, part Asian like I’d initially suspected. Unless he made a habit of throwing the word “hapa” around under false pretenses. I wouldn’t put it past him, human(ish) trash fire that he was.

  “Look, I don’t care about any of that,” I said slowly, trying to keep my voice even. He was grinning at me like he expected me to be his friend just because we were both part Anesidoran. Well, I had news for him: It wasn’t going to happen. “Where’s my big?”

  “Ana?”

  My teeth crunched painfully as I ground them. “Yes. Ana. I know she’s on this ship.”

  “Yeah. She’s with the other test subjects on level four.” Each syllable hammered into my head like a spike. She was here. She was here, specifically, to be experimented on. He’d just admitted it, like it was no big deal. Like this was the Beta house and we were having a mixer. Whatever, right?

  Before I could stop myself, I whirled on him, grabbing him around the throat with a speed and strength I didn’t know I had—like Shailene had grabbed the sentry back at the base. I slammed him bodily against the elevator wall just as the door pinged cheerfully open behind me.

  “Take me to her. Now.”

  * * *

  I didn’t let go of Shailene’s form, not until Damien opened the door to the small room and I saw Ana sitting at a round table, reading something on a tablet. She looked up, quirking an eyebrow at me. I shot a glare at Damien, and he nodded, closing the door. He’d agreed to stay outside while I talked to her. Once the door was latched, I relaxed, my skin rippling as I morphed back into myself.

  “Laura!” Ana said in surprise.

  I rushed forward, throwing my arms around my big’s shoulders. The tears I’d been trying to hold back all day finally started pouring out. “Ana, I’m so sorry,” I sobbed. She hugged me back, patting my shoulder. I pulled away, looking her over. She didn’t seem to be hurt, but after what had happened to Erikka, what could have happened to Shailene, I wasn’t sure. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She stared up at me, her dark eyes round. “I’m fine. Are you all right?”

  I nodded, sniffling and looking around the room, already trying to think of how we were going to get out of here, get away from Damien. He bizarrely seemed to think I was on his side—maybe we could use that to our advantage. “Don’t worry. I’m going to help you escape. I won’t let them do anything to you.”

  She tilted her head to the side. “Laura…”

  “I’m so sorry I let this happen, Ana,” I said. “It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have left you alone. I should have told you.”

  “It’s not your fault, Laura. I can understand why you wouldn’t have wanted to tell me something like this. You couldn’t have known that I—”

  “No, it’s unforgivable,” I interrupted. “I promise I won’t keep any more secrets from you. We just have to get you out of here, and then I’ll tell you everything.”

  “But, Laura—”

  “I knew that Damien guy was bad news from the beginning. I should have warned you. I shouldn’t have left you alone with him. I never should have let him do this do you. I—”

  “Laura!” Ana broke in. I stared at her in surprise. Her expression was weird. She almost looked offended. “You’re not letting me talk.”

  I flushed and put a hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry. Go ahead.”

  “Laura, I don’t know what you think is going on here, but I think you have it all wrong. Damien hadn’t done anything to me.”

  My jaw dropped. Flabbergasted, I said, “Um, he abducted you and brought you aboard a space ship. Don’t you remember?” I balked, wondering if they’d done something to her memories like they’d done to mine. Oh, God, what was I going to do if that was the case?

  Ana shook her head. “He didn’t abduct me. I came here by choice.”

  I blinked, moved my mouth soundlessly, then blinked a second time. “What?”

  She nodded.

  “But why?”

  “Damien told me about the Anesidorans, and… I wanted to help.”

  “You wanted to what?” I came around the table, crouching in front of her and looking up into her face. She’d been brainwashed. She had to have. This was absolute insanity. “Ana,” I said, incredulous, “they’re aliens.”

  She quirked her head. “You’re part Anesidoran.”

  I gaped. “You know?” As soon as I said it, the answer seemed obvious. “Let me guess: Damien told you.”

  “Yeah. And he’s part Anesidoran, too. So you don’t have to hide it from me. I want to help you guys.”

  I jumped to my feet. “Okay, there are about a million things wrong with that sentence. First of all, there is no ‘you guys’. I may be part Anesidoran—through no choice of my own, remember—but I am not on their side.” I started to pace around the small room in agitation. “Secondly, why would you want to help them? They’re alien invaders. They’re trying to take over our planet. They’re kidnapping innocent people and experimenting on them, turning them into… into…” I struggled to come up with the right word, but there was no delicate way to put it. “Into freaks!”

  She peered at me in confusion. “Laura, that’s not true. I thought you would know, since you are Anesidoran…”

  “Know what?”

  She chewed on her lower lip, like she wasn’t sure what to say. “They’re not invading Earth. They’re trying to come home.”

  “What?”

  She nodded. “Laura, Anesidorans are from Earth originally. They’re human.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said immediately. There was no way. That had to have been some kind of bullshit excuse Damien had given her to try to win her over.

  The door opened behind me. “It’s true,” Damien said, coming into the room and shutting the door behind himself.

  I glar
ed at him. “Eavesdrop much?”

  He rolled his eyes. “You were yelling. And besides, someone obviously needs to explain this to you. No wonder you’ve been tearing up the Peninsula, ruining half our operations.” He shook his head. “Didn’t your mom ever tell you about your own family?”

  “My parents have been a little reticent with me,” I snapped. “But it’s not important. None of this changes the fact that Anesidorans have been kidnapping kids all over the world for the last century, trying to force them into a life they don’t want. Trying to force them to become their army.”

  “That’s not true,” said Damien. “The abductions were stopped decades ago—by your grandfather, Laura. Xandros the Great.”

  “You keep saying that,” I said. “It’s a little creepy. What, was he like a king or something?”

  “He was a prince.”

  That stopped me in my tracks. Seriously? Now I was supposed to believe that I was not only part alien, but apparently part alien royalty? Are you freaking kidding me here?

  “Laura, hear Damien out,” Ana said, looking at me in concern. “Please. Whatever you think is going on here, I think it’s just a big misunderstanding.” She took the tablet she’d been looking at and handed it to Damien. “Here, show her. Maybe if she knows the whole story, she’ll realize why I came.”

  Damien met her eyes, his expression changing—softening, sort of. “Okay,” he said, taking the tablet from her. He turned to me. “Like Ana said, Laura: Anesidorans weren’t originally from Nibiru. We used to live on Earth. We were humans, but we were born different. Genetic mutations made us stronger, just like they say in the comic books. We’re all over ancient mythology—they used to call us demigods. In the old stories, we were heroes.” He sighed. “But then things changed.”

  He swiped a few times on the tablet, then handed it to me. Some kind of animation was playing on the screen, a CG simulation showing planets moving through space. “Have you heard of Planet X before?”

  “Before three days ago, you mean?” I looked up from the tablet. Damien was pacing around the small room in a circle. “Yeah, here and there. It’s kind of a tinfoil hat conspiracy, right? Some kind of doomsday planet on a collision course with Earth.”

  “That’s a bit of a bastardization, but it’s not completely off base. Nibiru is on a highly elliptical orbit. It takes thousands of years for it to make its way around the sun, but there are periods every few millennia where it passes close to Earth. The last time was about three thousand years ago.” He reached over and tapped something on the tablet. The video skipped to another CG sim. “As you can imagine, a celestial event like that… it didn’t just pass by peacefully. It brought horrible cosmic storms, meteor showers, you name it. The weather changed, and crops failed. Things on Earth had already been changing for a while, anyway. Culture and religion was evolving, and more and more people were distrustful of superhumans—demigods, Anesidorans, whatever you want to call us. Perception was shifting. Our powers were starting to be seen as a curse rather than a blessing.”

  On my screen was a depiction of what looked like an ancient Greek village. As I watched, the sky turned dark, and balls of fire started cascading down. It reminded me of a video we’d watched in World History class in high school about the destruction of Pompeii. The ground shaking, buildings collapsing, roofs caving in, people screaming. It wasn’t pleasant.

  “When Nibiru passed, it made for the perfect opportunity for the non-Anesidoran leaders to scapegoat us. They made the people believe we’d caused this. We’d opened Pandora’s Box and brought this on humanity. They started hunting us. They cast us out.”

  I looked up from the video on the tablet, which had switched to some kind of cheesy movie depiction of a battle, complete with a close-up decapitation. It was clearly designed to manipulate the viewer emotionally, but I wasn’t buying it. This was just an Anesidoran recruitment video with a Hollywood budget. It was propaganda.

  “Okay,” I said, “so if I decided to believe you that any of this happened—and I’m not saying that I do—how exactly did the Anesidorans get from Earth to Nibiru? Even if it was as close as the moon, this was three thousand years ago. People didn’t exactly have space age technology back then.”

  “You know we all have different powers. Some of us have the power of teleportation. When Nibiru was on its closest approach, they helped the rest escape.”

  “Oh, come on, Damien,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Interplanetary teleportation? Seriously?” Even after everything I’d seen this week, that one was a step too far. There was no way. That was impossible.

  “He’s telling the truth, Laura,” Ana broke in. She’d been so quiet, I’d almost forgotten she was still in the room. “I’ve seen it.”

  I stared at her. There were so many layers to that sentence, I couldn’t even begin to dissect it. What did she mean, she’d seen it? I wanted to press her on it, demand to know the details—How could she have seen it? And when? How long had she known about this? And if it had been a while, why had she kept it from me?

  But then she looked at me, her expression earnest, and a wave of guilt washed over me. I had been keeping secrets, too, and for probably the same reason. There was no reason to blame her any more than I should be blaming myself, yet here I was, letting that pettiness consume me again. It was like the remorse of the past day had made no difference. I still wasn’t listening to her, still wasn’t trusting her. That had to stop.

  I let out a weary sigh. “Okay. So the Anesidorans escaped from Earth to Nibiru. I’m with you on that. But why did they—you—uh, we want to come back? Why try to return to a planet that hates us so much that its inhabitants drove us away?”

  “Nibiru’s not a great place to live, Laura,” Damien said. “I haven’t spent a lot of time there, but the time I have, I’ve hated. The weather is out of control. The orbit is so elliptical, there are periods of boiling hot and freezing cold. The animals that lived there already were monstrous. We had to fight to survive there. We still are, even with our advanced technology. We can’t stay there. It’s not where we belong. We belong on Earth.”

  I looked back down at the tablet, not really focusing on the images on the screen.

  “The Return started a little over a hundred years ago. The royal family thought that if we could make the rest of Earth like us, they would help us. Obviously we see, now, that that was a bad idea. But a lot has changed over the last hundred years—on both sides. You know that. Look at life a hundred years ago, two hundred. You know there were a lot of bad ideas running the show.”

  I shrugged. I couldn’t argue with that, much as I wanted to.

  “Your grandpa was the one who changed all that. He was the crown prince of Nibiru, but he abdicated when he became involved with a human woman—your grandmother. He wanted things to change. He didn’t believe that turning the whole world into Anesidorans by force was the way to get them to accept us. He believed in diplomacy. At his urging, the royal family and the high council changed their policy. Now they only accept volunteers who want to help strengthen human-Anesidoran relations by unifying our genetics. There have been no abductions for the last thirty years because of him—”

  I’d been leaning against the round table, but I jerked upright at those words. “Now that? That is a lie,” I snapped, cutting him off.

  “It’s true!” he protested.

  “No, it’s not. I have proof of that one.” I prodded him in the chest with my index finger. “Shailene and the other Strikers. All the kids at Bayview University. They weren’t volunteers, Damien. They were kidnapped.”

  He grimaced. “Laura, I hate to be the one to tell you this,” he started.

  But I never got to hear what he was going to say. Because the door behind us opened abruptly, and standing in the doorway was Andronicus.

  And behind him were my parents.

  “So sorry to interrupt,” Andronicus drawled, “but it’s time for this charade to come to an end.”

  I
looked past him at my parents standing in the stark, white hallway. Somehow, seeing my mom and dad here, on a freaking spaceship, was too much for me to take in. It was like a damn parent-teacher conference aboard the Death Star. “What are you guys doing here?” I asked.

  “They’re taking you home,” said Andronicus. “For, I hope, the last time. You have caused more than enough trouble for one lifetime, young lady.”

  “Andre, shut up. I’m the one who chews my daughter out, not you,” my mother said, looking haughtily at Andronicus. Then she turned to me. “And as for you—you are in big trouble, young lady. You know how much stress I’ve been under this week. And you pick now of all times to find your rebellious streak? When we’ve got a houseful of company? Now your poor grandma has to entertain them by herself, and at her age.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. I was so angry, I didn’t even care that we were airing our dirty laundry in front of my big and a practical stranger. I marched out into the hallway to meet her head-on. “You have got to be freaking kidding me. Do you even hear yourself? I just found out that you people have been lying to me about who I am for half my life, and all you care about is what the cousins think? And, for real, you know Lola is more than a match for them, so nice try.” She’d married an alien, after all. If I’d had any doubt about my grandma’s demonic powers before, it had been wiped away now. If any of them crossed her, she’d probably body slam them like The Rock or something. My mom didn’t get to play the guilt card there.

  “You should have come to us if you had questions,” Mom argued.

  “I didn’t get a chance!” I shouted back.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” my dad said, inserting himself between us. He glanced beyond me to Ana and Damien. Apparently, he did care about saving face, even if I didn’t. “We can talk about this when we get home.”