by Alex Bratton
Lincoln scanned the surrounding trees. These days, he always kept an eye out for Halston. “I don’t know. He’s very loyal. I would hate to put him in that position.”
“Ask Nelson what he thinks,” Carter advised.
“That’s a terrible idea.” Nelson said later in front of the tents. “We’re this close to getting out of here.” He pinched his fingers together. “What if he blabs?”
Baker and Schmidt conferred a few feet away, giving the group time to talk. After a few minutes, Schmidt walked away.
Lincoln shot Nelson and Alvarez a warning look as Baker turned back to them. She walked over and sat in her camp chair beside Carter’s. As always, her uniform remained neat and clean despite their primitive living conditions, and her hair was pulled back into its usual tight bun. She relaxed into her chair, crossing her legs. If Lincoln had met her outside of this place, he would have thought she was pretty. Perhaps even asked her to dinner.
Bad idea. Lincoln rubbed his eyes and twisted in his seat, stretching his knotted back muscles. His exhaustion was getting the better of him.
Baker looked around at the group, and he wondered if their sudden silence had alerted her.
“Find anything today?” Baker asked. She asked the same question every day as if they would forget to tell her if they had a breakthrough.
“No,” Alvarez replied.
“A couple more days of hard work and you should have all of it copied. What’s the plan after that?”
“Captain,” Lincoln said, “maybe someone else in camp would like to take a look at these drawings. At this point, we could stare at them until our eyes pop out of our heads, and we still wouldn’t know what they mean. Would you care to examine them?”
“I have looked at them. I don’t know what they mean, either.”
“Someone else in camp who has an eye for patterns, then. Why not use some of the people who’ve returned from the recon missions? Let them have a go.”
Baker uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. “I think it’s unwise to tell the camp you don’t know what you’re doing.” She left unsaid what everyone else was thinking, that several of the recon teams were more than a week overdue.
Lincoln returned Baker’s stare. Dinner? What had he been thinking?
“At least you’re acknowledging it. We’ve been trying to tell you for weeks,” he said.
“You’ve put on a good show of knowing what you were doing. I thought you had an epiphany.”
“We did,” Lincoln said through gritted teeth. He paused, remembering his conversation with Alvarez, and sighed. He would try to be civil. “But it has come to nothing. What do you suggest, Captain?”
“I was thinking about the wall in Corridor A and how we’ve never been able to open it. Might be time to try it now.”
“Do we have anything we could use to tear down the door?”
“Sure,” Baker answered. “We have explosives. A little risky, though, considering the instability of some of those tunnels.”
“Maybe we should try to pry it open first.”
“What do you think is down there?”
“I have no idea.” Lincoln rubbed his hands together. “I’m hoping we’ll find some answers. Maybe a storage room.”
“That’s it? Storage?”
“Just a guess. I can’t really think of anything better I’d like to find, aside from some kind of alien manifesto explaining what the heck they’re doing.”
Nash walked up and stood next to Alvarez’s seat.
Baker jumped to salute.
“What would you like to find?” he asked.
“Research, explanations, anything to tell us what’s going on around here.”
Nash frowned. In the twilight, he looked tired, his face lined and sagging. “So would I,” he said.
“Nothing on the radio?” Alvarez asked.
Nash sat on the ground, brushing dirt off his boot. “Nothing at all.”
“Here, sir.” Baker offered her chair.
Nash waved her off. “Sit down.”
An expectant mood circled through the group. Although Nash had expressed more interest in the team lately, communicating mainly through Alvarez and Carter, this was the first time he had joined them at their tents.
“I don’t mind admitting things could be better,” he said, looking around at the team. “This whole op’s pointless. Food’s scarce. Soldiers are muttering. Three recon teams never returned. At this point, I think it’s safe to say they deserted. Not that I didn’t expect it to happen.”
“Do you want me to go find them, sir?” Baker asked.
“No. I need you here.” He looked Baker in the eye. “Unless you want to move on yourself?”
“No, sir!”
Carter fiddled with a short pencil. “Colonel, can you tell us what the recon teams found? Maybe it’ll help us.”
“They found more refugees. Looks like some of ours holed up at an abandoned hotel in the next valley, so they’re doing all right. Other teams found burned towns and destroyed roads and bridges. No power anywhere, of course. No sightings of the invaders that we know about, either, unless the missing teams ran into them.”
“Are the Glyphs gone, do you think?” Alvarez asked.
“I seriously doubt it. The invaders didn’t travel trillions of miles to Earth to destroy it and then move on. I don’t know anything about aliens, but I do know that invading forces always have a purpose.”
Nelson quietly interjected, “What’s the point, Colonel? What are we still doing here?”
Alvarez shook her head and muttered, “Nelson…”
Nelson held up his hand. “No. Hear me out. Even if our wildest dreams come true, and we find heaps of research and manuals and explanations behind that door, what are the chances we can use them for anything? Even if we got detailed instructions on how to destroy the invaders, how would we carry them out? We’re crippled here.”
Nash nodded as he listened, staring at the ground. “Depends on the instructions. Why are you in such a hurry to leave?” He turned to Nelson. “You have something better to do?”
“I’m not interested in being a hero. Besides, we have families to look for. Friends.”
“And I don’t have a family?” Nash’s voice rose, and he paused for a moment. A war of anger and sadness raged across his face. “You think that’s what all this is about? That the rest of us want statues and monuments named after us? Aliens invaded Earth. They’ve taken over. We’re fortunate to be alive. Did you ever think, Nelson, that we’re alive for a reason? If we somehow find a way to drive off the largest and most intelligent invading force in the history of mankind, the likeliest scenario is that we’ll die in the attempt. No one will know it was us. I’m not looking for glory, just a little payback. That’s the only way I know to help my family.”
Alvarez blinked back tears. “Do you know where…”
Nash turned his steel-blue eyes on her. “No. I do not.”
Chapter Eleven
BLUISH-WHITE LIGHT BURNED THROUGH Mina’s eyelids. A machine hummed. She felt groggy, weighed down, but her chest no longer hurt. She tried to open her eyes. At first, she didn’t see anything except blue light and a shadow. Then, her eyes focused on something—a complicated swirl. The same symbol the Glyphs had on their bodies. As she watched, it moved. Terror rose up inside her. Despite the grogginess, Mina tried to sit up, wanted to run. She flailed her arms. Something rough tangled around them, trapping her.
“Mina! Don’t struggle. The blanket’s not attacking you.”
The symbols in front of Mina’s eyes didn’t go away. In fact, as her eyes adjusted, they came into sharper focus. Then, they disappeared. Mina blinked, and Doyle came into focus. She relaxed.
“I thought you were a Glyph,” she explained weakly, her head sinking down.
She lay on a bed. No, a table. A coarse white blanket covered her. Doyle stood next to her, mud clinging to his shirt and hair. The dirt contrasted sharply with the room, which at first
she took to be in a hospital except something about the place seemed wrong. Or everything.
A long metal arm beeped and retracted above her. Her eyes followed it to a stone wall. She couldn’t see any other equipment. The ceiling was lit but not with firelight or any kind of light she had seen before. Instead of lamps or bulbs, the entire ceiling glowed blue. Something must be wrong with her eyes still.
“Did you find a hospital? Where are we?” she asked.
“Just somewhere safe,” Doyle said. “How do you feel?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Mina tried to sit up, but her body still refused to cooperate. Doyle helped her. Realizing she wasn’t wearing a shirt, she clutched the blanket to her chest. When she inhaled to speak, a slight twinge of discomfort shot through her side.
Then Mina remembered the Glyph and Doyle carrying her. Maybe she had dreamed it. Her head was still fuzzy. “What happened?”
“A broken rib punctured your lung, but you’ll be okay.”
“I don’t feel like I broke a rib.” In fact, she felt stronger every second she was awake.
A nagging suspicion began to take a hold of her. Mina tried to shrug it off, but the harder she tried, the more unsettled she became. The Glyph. He killed it with just his knife. How?
Doyle tossed Mina’s shirt to her, and she caught a glimpse of a faint tattoo through the large tear in his shirt.
“Where are we?” she asked again, sinking down under the blanket to slide on her shirt. When Doyle didn’t answer, Mina asked, “For once, would you explain things without me having to pry them out of you?”
“It’s not easy to explain.”
“Try.”
Doyle ran his fingers through his shaggy hair and looked directly at her. “On one condition,” he said.
“And that is?”
“You hear me out. After that, if you don’t want anything to do with me, I’ll respect that, but let me tell you everything first.”
Mina didn’t know what to say to that, but she sensed something momentous was about to happen.
Without waiting for an answer, Doyle took a deep breath and pulled off his bloodstained t-shirt. Confused, Mina stared at his muscled chest and lean stomach. Then, her mind focused, and she saw that what she had mistaken for a tattoo were patterns drawn on his chest. No, not drawn on him. Part of him. Complicated circles of raised skin covered Doyle’s chest below the collarbone, extending to both shoulders.
Mina eased off the table and reached out her hand. She glanced into Doyle’s eyes, and when he didn’t object, she brushed her fingers over the patterns. The beautiful designs were the same as the ones on the Glyphs. They were almost like scars but not accidental, instead perfectly formed and intentional. As she touched him, flashes of trees and sky popped into her mind. Shocked, she retracted her hand.
“What did they do to you?” she asked.
“Nothing. I’ve always had them.”
Mina glanced around the room again, trying to make some sense of his words. The strange, sterile room only intensified her discomfort. “You’re like that man I saw on the road. You’re working for them, and they’ve done something to you.”
Doyle took a deep breath, his dark eyes holding her gaze. “That man you saw on the road wasn’t a man, and I’m not just working with the Glyphs. I’m one of them.”
“What?”
“I mean I am not just a man who is helping the Glyphs. I came here with them.”
Mina’s entire body grew cold with shock, like she had just jumped into a frozen lake. Her eyes darted around and found the door.
Doyle quickly continued, “I have been questioning the Condarri for some time now.”
“The…”
“Condarri. The real name for the Glyphs.”
Mina focused again on the patterns on his chest.
“They are called adarre. On the Condarri, they are called adarria.”
“What are they for?” She could not think of anything else to say.
“Mostly for communication. A few have significance only to me, like tattoos on humans. When you touched me, you saw what I was transferring.”
He put on his shirt again. The adarre were still visible through the large tear in the fabric.
Doyle seemed to be waiting for her response, but all of Mina’s questions jumbled together in her head until she couldn’t distinguish between them. After the way he had fought the Glyph, obviously he was not a normal human being. As her initial shock turned into anger, her head cleared.
“You said you were military.” She wanted to question him, to understand. Anything to keep from lashing out at him.
“Technically, Condarri military.”
“You’re working for the Glyphs?” Her voice rose despite her attempt to control it.
“Not anymore, though they still think I am. After today, the Condarri may figure it out.”
“What are you, then, a Glyph that can change into a human?”
Doyle shook his head. “I am an engineered hybrid—half-human, half-Condarri. Able to integrate with Earth’s population for reconnaissance to bring down Earth’s infrastructure.”
“So that’s what you were doing on the trail,” she began, putting the pieces together. “You weren’t fleeing the city. You were sending those men to their deaths. And that last camp, you were spying on them all along!”
“No. The Condarri had already found them. They didn’t need my help. Actually, they had been summoning me for some time, but I didn’t respond. Finally, when they were too close to ignore, I slipped off in the dark and went to see them.”
The questions poured out of Mina in a rush. “That night before we went into the camp, you met with the Glyphs? All that time you pretended to keep me safe, you were leading them right to us! And then, you marched me into the camp while the Glyphs waited over the ridge to strike? Why would you do that if you weren’t working for them? You knew they were going to attack, and you didn’t warn those people!”
“It wasn’t like that! The Condarri were going to attack regardless. When they summoned me, they were unhappy I had been out of contact, so I told them I had been in the camp, finding out about other groups. I asked them to let me spend a couple more days getting information. The invasion is over, Mina. The Condarri don’t want to waste resources at this point, not if there’s no direct threat. If I had warned those men what was about to happen, the Condarri would have suspected me and attacked when they saw them run. Then, they would have hunted me down and killed me without thinking twice about it. When the camp rioted, the Condarri saw it and attacked anyway.”
Words stuck in Mina’s throat. She grabbed the table behind her, something solid to hang onto. Doyle moved to help, but she held out her other hand to stop him. He frowned but remained silent as Mina tried to take it all in.
A burned face rose in her mind—the old man Doyle had shot in the name of “mercy.” The man had claimed Glyphs had attacked his camp.
“How many camps?” she asked angrily. “How many camps did you destroy while I was with you?”
Doyle’s angular face tightened, and Mina wondered if he would tell the truth.
“Three,” he said, exhaling.
A lump swelled in Mina’s throat, but she pressed on. “And how long have you been… you know… here?”
“On Earth? I was sent here as soon as I was trained.”
“And how did you get here?”
“On a spaceship.”
Mina snorted. It all had to be another horrible dream.
But those flashes, they’d happened every time she’d touched his chest beginning when they were at the cabin. And there was no other explanation for how he’d healed from that dog attack or battled the Glyph in the forest.
“I will tell you anything else you want to know, but not now. More Condarri are on their way. Mina, will you come with me?”
Part of her was desperate to run from him, but when Mina looked into Doyle’s eyes, she remembered all the times he had
saved her. Why had he done that? At the very least, he could have abandoned her to her fate.
Mina pressed her hands against her eyes. If he left, she would never find out why. She had nothing. Lincoln was dead. Everything and everyone had disappeared, except Doyle. Mina dropped her hands.
“If it makes a difference,” he whispered, holding out his hand, “I hate the Condarri just as much as you do, and I want to stop them.”
With that, something resolved itself inside Mina’s chest. The fear was still present. So were the anxiety and confusion. But for the first time in a long while, Mina felt genuinely hopeful. Maybe things could change after all, and she wanted to be around when it happened.
With fresh determination, she took Doyle’s hand and slid off the table.
The door to the room opened automatically for Doyle, and they walked into a short tunnel that led outside. Mina looked back. They had been in some kind of bunker cut into the mountainside. The door closed again behind them, melting seamlessly into the rock. The bunker looked as if it had been abandoned decades ago, but Doyle explained that all of them had been left that way in case humans accidentally stumbled across them. Thick trees and brush hid the outside door from prying eyes. The rock dropped off in front of the door, and they had to carefully pick their way down narrow stone handholds in the fading light.
“So there are more of these?” Mina asked.
“We placed them strategically throughout the mountains as rendezvous points.”
“Who is we?” Mina asked as they finally reached a spot where she could pause to rest her burning muscles.
“The other hybrids.”
“The others—There are more of you?”
“That only makes sense, doesn’t it?” he asked, returning to his usual sharp tone. “What good would only one of us do? Weren’t you even listening in there?”
“I’m sorry. I was a little preoccupied with the fact that you’re an alien, Doyle. Is that even your real name?”
“Yes. But I also have a Condar name. Dar Ceylin.”
“Dar?”
