by Azalea Ellis
On it, I saw the small figures of Sam, Blaine in his mecha suit, and two smaller children and a blonde girl surrounded by people with guns. Sam and Blaine were in protective stance, the three rescuees placed between them.
“It was a nice try, Eve. But did you really think we weren’t keeping tabs on the Rabbit group Moderator? He was sneaky, sure, but opening that door was kind of a giveaway. It’s too bad you didn’t all come from that direction. We could have captured you immediately, and none of this,” she gestured around to all the bodies and general destruction in the courtyard, “would have had to happen.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So you got a couple of my team. I let them attempt the rescue for their own satisfaction. A kind of reward for the work they’ve done. In fact, it has no bearing on my larger plan.” I stood up, looking down at her. “And do you really think you could have captured us all? Do you realize the situation you’re in?” I sent a quick Window to Sam, telling them to sit tight and not do anything stupid.
I could still save them. They may be caught, but they weren’t captured, and they weren’t dead. “Do you know what my teammate was doing down below, besides just shooting those spectacular lightning bolts? He was gaining access to your computer system. The whole thing. Including the whole slew of data and records of what you’ve been doing. In five seconds, we could have that streaming to every link in the nation.” I pointed to the girl collapsed on the ground. “I’ve got a hostage of my own.” Then I put a hand on the sphere. “And this thing that you use to send us to the Trials? A few more pushes from me, and it’ll be nothing more than a crushed lump of metal. Do you think you can win against me?” I shouted down.
She smiled, an expression that chilled my blood, and waved her hand in the air. “You’ve done spectacularly. Truly. You’ve got a higher score than almost any Player before entering NIX. And I’m particularly curious about that Skill you just used. But did you think we’d just allow you to run wild? You created some leverage to get what you want. I’ve done the same.”
A familiar thwump-thwump-thwump sound headed our way, filling the sky. Soon after, three heli-pods came into view, and sank to the ground of the courtyard behind Nadia.
My heart sank in my chest.
The heli-pod in the center’s belly opened up, and three men stepped out. Two of them held my brother restrained between them, and the third held a gun to his head. Zed’s mouth was covered, but when he caught sight of me, he renewed his struggled and muffled shouting, till they kicked his legs out from under him and forced him to the ground.
Birch was being held in a soldier's arms, and when he saw me, he began his little scratchy roaring again, and managed to struggle free, racing out of the heli-pod.
“Your brother,” Nadia said. “From what I know of you, that’s an awful big bargaining chip of my own.”
How dare they? My tenuous control of my temper slipped, and I grabbed the gray-skinned girl by the back of the neck and jumped down from the platform.
Soldiers rushed up to Nadia Petralka’s side and pointed their guns at me as I strode forward, dragging the girl, but I ignored them.
I continued to move until I was close enough to smell the commander’s skin and feel the warmth of her breath. I could see the beat of her heart from the pulsing in her neck. I dropped the girl unceremoniously at her feet.
Nadia Petralka’s eyes followed downward with concern, but I stepped forward those last few inches, until I could look down right into her face, almost nose-to-nose, and brought her attention back. “You have no idea the hell I’ve traveled through, the things I’ve done. If you want to deal in threats, I should let you know that I’ve got the bigger gun. What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time? That power that you want so desperately for yourself, the power of a god? I’ve got it. And if you cross me, I will annihilate you, and NIX, everything you’ve ever worked towards, and everything you’ve ever loved.” I looked pointedly to the pixie girl, who shared Nadia Petralka’s hooked nose, and probably shared a father, as well. “So if you want to deal in threats, think again.” By the last bit, I was literally snarling into her face.
She swallowed, but didn’t back down. “It doesn’t have to be a threat. If you cooperate, none of them have to get hurt. They’re still alive as a gesture of my goodwill to you. I want to talk, and I want to show you some things, and I want you to listen. If you’ll do that, I can assure you, no harm will come to your team.”
I smiled in my head, but kept it from my face. “You want to talk? Talk.”
“Not here. Come with me, alone. Your team can stay here. This information is highly classified.” She said it loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Hell, no!” Adam said.
“Don’t listen to her, Eve,” Jacky said. “We’ll find another way to save him. We can do it, I promise.”
I stared into Nadia’s eyes for a second, and then turned my head back to Adam and Jacky. “I’m going. Don’t worry, I promise I can handle it.”
Nadia looked down to the girl at our feet. “Take her down to medical!” she snapped at one of the guards whose gun was still pointed at me.
He stepped forward, but I raised a hand and he stopped in his tracks.
“Let me return your gesture of ‘goodwill,’ Commander,” I said. “One of my team you’ve got surrounded down below has a healing Skill. Send them up, and he’ll see to the girl. Of course, feel free to keep your men with guns on them.”
She stared at me for a second, and I knew she understood my meaning. The girl’s life, which she obviously cared about, would depend on my team, and therefore, on me. If Nadia tried to pull a trick, she’d pay the price. She gave the order, and Sam and the others stepped into the courtyard soon after, escorted by the armed guards.
“Lead the way,” I said, clamping a clawed hand on her shoulder.
* * *
Zed’s eyes followed me as I walked by, and I gave him the most reassuring smile I could. “I’ll be back soon.”
Birch mewled at me, but stayed with Zed as I asked him to do.
Nadia led me through the concrete door they’d blasted open, turning back once to take in the scene of destruction and carnage. “It’s going to take a lot of time and money to fix all the damage you caused. The Shortcut alone…” she sighed. “Not to mention the loss of life.”
I noticed a familiar face watching from the windowed halls across the courtyard.
Vaughn grinned and threw me the victory sign, forefinger and middle finger spread in a V. So that’s where he disappeared to.
“What’s a few lives lost, to you? It’s nothing new,” I said.
She shot me a look of controlled ire, and turned her back, heading farther into the hallway. “Every life is my responsibility. Whether they die in the Game or defending our base, it’s still on my shoulders. Whatever you think, I’m not running from that fact. But I realize there is a greater good at stake, and a reason that we are willing to sacrifice a few, in the hopes that we might save many. In the prayer that we might save us all.” She was muttering by the last bit.
I stared at her back and snorted, and then took a few quick steps to catch up. Getting separated from her might not be a good idea. Any attack on me would be a possible attack on the Commander, if we were close enough together.
“What do you know about the Game, Eve?”
“I know enough.”
“Well, then. Let me tell you what I know.”
We turned a corner, and stopped at a door, which Nadia opened by pressing her thumb to a fingerprint pad. I started to mentally track our route and the necessary security passes in my head, in case I needed to leave again, without a guide.
“The Game is more than just the Trials,” she said. “You know you’re all being monitored?” When I didn’t respond, she continued. “Of course you do. You managed to slip out from almost all our avenues of observation. You’re only the thirty-fourth to ever do so. But the point is, we keep tabs on you because your actions outside of the
Trials are also part of the Game. Your reactions to the situation, the danger, the artificial stimuli, the almost inevitable solitude…it’s all part of a calculation. A score. A ranking, if you prefer.” She stopped at the next door and swiped a card from within her jacket pocket, gave a full handprint scan, and a retinal scan.
The door beeped sharply when I stepped through behind her, but she said, “Allow guest,” and continued walking.
I looked back at the door closing behind us and caught a glimpse of my face. The whites of my eyes had turned blood red, every little vein and capillary burst within them. The light blue of my eyes stood out against them creepily.
“We’re looking for a certain type of person,” she said.
I turned my head forward again just in time to stop myself from smashing into her, as she’d stopped to get through the security of yet another door. “What type of person? Why?” I asked, distracted from my tactic of biting silence mixed with sarcasm.
“Why don’t I show you?” she said, instead of answering.
The door opened onto an immense room that seemed to be a mix of mechanical workshop, laboratory, and hangar. I saw what looked to be a jetpack on one side, huge glass tubes of colored liquid that looked like the cloning tubes I’d seen in movies on another, and a smaller sized attempted replica of the teleportation sphere in another.
But what really caught my attention was the plane at the back. At least I thought it was a plane. I’d never seen anything quite like it. It was a gray so dark it would look black without the bright spotlights shining at it from every direction. It looked kind of like what an airplane might look like if it was actually a stingray-shaped crustacean. Or made of a giant crustacean monster’s hollowed out shell.
“Yes. Quite the oddity, isn’t it?” Nadia Petralka said. “We’d never seen anything like it before, either.”
“This is your top-secret lab, right? Where are all the people, the scientists?”
“They evacuated, Eve, along with physical documentation of their work up to this point, and anything else they could carry. They were on their way out of here as soon as the alarms went off. Without being able to monitor you properly, we weren’t exactly sure of your plan. But I believed you’d survive your little “excursion,” even if no one has stayed there and lived before, so I didn’t let down my guard. From where the Rabbit group Moderator was tampering around, we thought they might be at risk.” She walked to a huge table in the center of the room and started tapping away at it, turning on the touchpad screen. “I’d like to show you something.”
I moved to stand beside her, and looked at the surface of the table as a video expanded atop its surface.
“I apologize for the quality of these first few clips. It’s a bit difficult to make out. We weren’t sure at first, either. We thought maybe it was debris in the upper atmosphere, or an unauthorized mission from another country.”
The video was indeed blurry, shaking as something small and indistinct flew across the screen. The next clip was clearer, though the image was still bad. Something gray shot through the sky far above a line of tall buildings, dipping out of the worst pockets of smog clouds every few seconds. The next was even clearer, and showed the strange plane slicing through the air, avoiding the shots and missiles of the fighter jets racing after it.
The dark grey aircraft flipped up some of the joints on its tail end, dipped one wing, and turned on a dime to shoot back at them. They fell out of the sky like fiery spitballs.
“What is this supposed to be?” I asked, having a feeling I already knew the answer. That aircraft wasn’t like anything I’d seen on Earth. But in the last few months, I’d been introduced to a lot of things I’d never seen before. In Estreyer, the Trial world.
The Commander was staring at the screen intently. “This is the first recorded and verified alien invasion of Earth. We’re calling it Breach Zero.”
There was a huge, silent explosion across the screen then, as something hit one of the ships and blew up. The blast seemed much too big and violent for the relatively small size of the ship. When the shock wave reached the recording camera, the video cut out in a short burst of static, and another clip took its place.
“The attempted air strikes, seven years ago…” I trailed off as my mind whirled.
“P.R. had to put some sort of spin on it. Something the public could understand, something they could deal with. Terrorists have always been great news. And the outcry allowed us to put more defensive measures in place against the real threat.”
On the table’s huge screen, men in hazmat suits, machine guns in hand, walked toward the downed alien ship. The camera was obviously attached to someone’s faceplate, because it dipped up and down with every step, and swung dizzyingly when its wearer looked around. The picture was grainy, and static kept rolling across the screen as if someone was waving a large magnet close to the camera.
But I could see clear enough as they pried open the side of the hatch with a large machine and inched inside, their weapons at the ready. The cameraman stepped inside after them, and the view dipped and swung as he maneuvered the makeshift entrance. Inside, the gray walls rippled, shining like silk, but hardened instantly at the touch of one of the suited men. There wasn’t much left loose, but what there had been was strewn about. A small tree with orchid-like flowers was bent in two, leaking sap onto the floor, and vases filled with colored sand had tipped and broken, spilling their contents.
They walked farther in, and saw a small dead animal on the floor. Its mouse-like body had been crushed under a piece of fallen furniture, its bushy tail sticking straight up in the rigor mortis specific to its species. There was nothing like it on Earth, but I recognized it as one of the rare semi-friendly creatures from Estreyer. A lump in my throat was making it hard to breathe, but I kept watching.
The cameraman moved past the creature as someone else bagged it in a vacuum sealed hazmat pouch. They moved into the cockpit, or command center, or whatever you wanted to call it. In the back of the room a large metal sphere hung from the ceiling, with floating bands of different colored, different shaped metals orbiting around its axis.
“The Shortcut,” Commander Petralka said. “Kind of a goofy name, but when one of our scientists figured out what it did, he started calling it that, and the name stuck.”
The strangely designed controls in the front of the cockpit were abandoned, and when the cameraman stepped farther in, the body in front of the metal sphere came into view.
On the floor lay a giant, beautiful blonde man with shoulder length hair and a golden beard, trimmed neatly. He was laying on his back with one arm underneath his body, and one leg twisted oddly. He had obviously been injured and fallen, and seemed to be unconscious.
I remembered the force of the explosion and amended my assessment. He was very likely dead. I felt sick.
Then the video cut, and it was the man again, this time bound and chained and locked on a huge metal slab in the center of a room. The camera was high above, at an angle, as if it was placed at a corner of the ceiling. The man had wires and patches and tubes running all over and piercing into him. His eyes were closed, but I knew he couldn’t be dead, or they wouldn’t have restrained him so.
A much smaller man in a white coat came in with a clipboard and poked him in the side with a metal rod.
The man—was it a man? He woke in an instant, and I saw the spark of electricity jumping from the end of the rod as the man in the white coat jerked it back.
The giant looked around, straining against his bonds, roaring at his attacker with enough force to send the normal-sized man staggering backward. His huge muscles bulged and strained, and then the shackles around one wrist started to bend, twisting both the metal clamp and the slab it was melded down onto.
Before he could rip the arm free, armored men burst into the room from doors in each of the walls and started to shoot him with little darts that I supposed were tranquilizers, while ushering the white-coated man out.
There was another clip of him, snarling at a camera held at a lower angle, as if by a human. “My people…will kill…you all!” he snarled in English with a strange lilting accent.
The video clip cut off, and this time no other replaced it.
“The last one was taken a few months after we downed his ship and captured him. It seems his race is significantly intelligent, to learn our language so quickly. Or maybe I should say his species?” Commander Petralka, who I’d almost forgotten about, shrugged beside me. “Breach Zero hit most major military facilities around the world. We’re fairly positive it was only a scouting mission. A test of our responses.”
She chuckled bleakly, and turned away from the table. “Unfortunately, we failed that test miserably. Come on, the tour isn’t over yet.”
I followed her silently, for once at a loss for words.
“Almost all of their ships escaped unharmed as we scrambled to do something, anything, to counter their attacks. We destroyed a couple of ships, but managed to take this one mostly intact, along with some of their technology, like the Shortcut. After that, every single nation of the world banded together military resources in preparation for the coming war.”
“War coming, when?”
“Soon. Less than a year. Maybe less than six months. We’ve got a rough idea of when the ones that escaped will be bringing reinforcements. That is, if none of the other ships had some different form of FTL communication or transportation that we don’t know about.”
