Invaded

by Holly Hook

  “Most Identity people just want to make Mars better,” Matt said.

  “Except for the fact that they don't want us to come home,” I said, regretting it right away.

  “Well, there's that,” Matt admitted. Then he pulled on my sleeve. “Grounders!”

  I had been listening to the conversation so much that I hadn't seen them, or the glow of another pulse cannon straight ahead. About a dozen Grounders in their gray-blue uniforms and high collars waited, complete with two giant bulldozers blocking the road. Our green spotlight landed on the scene, and it was more horrible than I first thought. The Grounders stood there, expressionless, and it was clear that they had driven at least one of the bulldozers through someone's yard and decimated the side of the house. Splinters littered the dirt. An already struggling tree lay snapped in a tangle of red weeds. The green spotlight fell on the house as it swung back and forth without my control.

  I stopped the walker. A pink teddy bear lay among the wreckage, no doubt belonging to a child no older than I had been when one of these bulldozers took down our house in Rockville. All of these horrible details came to me in a split second.

  Hatred filled me. The Grounders did not move. Even at this height, we might not be able to step over the bulldozers without tripping. Yes, tripping. The bulldozers both stood taller than the house, with their lights off. The Grounders had brought them here as barriers.

  They were the same type that had destroyed our home. I remembered them well. It was as if the Grounders had read my mind and known what to inflict.

  "A blockade!" Calvin shouted.

  "Matt!" I shouted. "The gun!"

  He reached for the orange button.

  I searched for the Great Council member who had taken my parents. He hadn't shown up. He was wise, then, because he was one Grounder I wanted to kill. I didn't even care right then that I had murder on my mind. What the Grounders did to people was worse than death.

  "Back up!" Matt shouted.

  The Grounders all scrambled to run behind the waiting pulse cannon. The inside of its barrel glowed crimson as if it craved blood. Fitting, I thought. Pain flashed through my arm as my body remembered how much Grounders liked the stuff.

  “Matt, fire!” I shouted. He had frozen in terror.

  The pulse cannon brightened. It was charging. An orange target appeared on the glass of our window as Matt cranked the lever to aim at the Grounders. I cranked the other back, making our walker back away, but I messed up, and we lumbered in a big circle instead. Rooftops spun around and under us.

  Matt cursed. “Tess, what are you doing? I could have shot them!” The orange target danced on the glass, invading my vision.

  “Turn around!” Calvin shouted.

  I scrambled, thoughts breaking down. I had to get it together before that gun fired. I cranked the lever back again, hoping to gain some control over this walker. Maybe I should have let Matt pilot. He had more skill with this than I.

  A red beam roared past and under us, striking another nearby house. Our searchlight landed on the devastation as it happened. The house was a nice, big one modeled after the Victorian times. I recognized it as the home that belonged to the Chang family, who had a greenhouse at our park.

  The front disintegrated, and the roof toppled to the ground below. One second, a home stood, and the next, vapor scattered and settled to the ground. The roof landed with a massive crash.

  The beam had barely missed us.

  My heart broke. I knew that the family wasn't home, but now they had nothing to come back to. They would have to move away from their own personal Rockville.

  I had a job to do.

  After fumbling with the lever, we faced the Grounders again. The red inside the cannon faded as it got ready for another recharge. Something else crashed. Even up here, I could hear a lot of the happenings outside.

  I slammed my hand down on the round button that Matt had used to sound the horn. Stupid, maybe, but I wanted the Grounders to feel my anger.

  And then I plowed the walker forward.

  "Whoa!" Calvin shouted.

  The two giant bulldozers might block the street, but the Grounders didn't stop my progress. It seemed that fear was foreign to them, because they stood there at first, watching as we advanced. Matt struggled to aim, but my march made it difficult. Still, he fired the gun, and I spotted a glimpse of the heat beam sailing for the Task Force. Smoke rose from them. Grounders grabbed at their necks and wore expressions of agony. I forced myself to focus on the bulldozers as I cranked the lever forward and took one massive step.

  A bump followed.

  It wasn't quite like that. It was more like a squish or a crunch. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I heard the sound, too. It reverberated up the walker's leg and into my soul.

  I shook my head.

  I wanted to vomit.

  “Did I just step on a Grounder?” I asked as we squealed to a stop.

  Matt looked around Calvin as the heat beam died, leaving the air clear. We almost touched the two bulldozers now. “I think you did,” he said. “These things have big feet.”

  I thought of the round discs that the nanobots had constructed. Marv had almost used them to do this to us.

  Below, silence reigned, but Calvin slammed his hand down on the black button. A pop sounded from below us. I knew that, without looking, he had dropped a smoke bomb. The remaining Grounders would die before they could fire the cannon again.

  “I...” I managed. I had shot plenty of Grounders already, but the heat guns only destroyed the Grounders themselves, and not the human bodies they hacked, even though the hosts died as well.

  “It's okay,” Matt said. “That Grounder died faster than it would have with the heat gun.”

  I didn't want to imagine the foot of the walker right now, but I did anyway. For a few moments, I'd been a crazed savage.

  Why was this bothering me when shooting them didn't affect me as much?

  I backed away from the twin bulldozers and focused all my attention on trying to get around. The black smoke covered most of the ground, but the pulse cannon stood on a short hill, leaving the air there free. A single Grounder remained, a woman in her uniform, and she scrambled around the back of the pulse cannon without a trace of fear on her face. She was a middle-aged, slightly plump woman who might have a family and even grandchildren—or had. The oily vapor climbed towards her, continuing its spread. I tried not to look where I had stepped.

  So of course, I did.

  The black vapor covered the spot where the Grounder had died under the metal foot, but not before the image seared into my memory.

  “You have the controls,” I said, forgetting about the single surviving Grounder for a second. The survivor would die in seconds, well before she could charge the cannon. I got out of my seat and turned away while Matt took the controls. He had already proven that he was better at the piloting thing.

  I glanced to find the vapor already overtaking the Grounder. The world turned into a black expanse below. It looked as if we were sinking into a black void for a second, but then the vapor stabilized and hung over everything. Only the rooftops of the nearby houses poked over it, along with the twin bulldozers. Down there, the remaining Grounder was choking.

  "That stuff is nasty," Calvin said. "Effective, though." He had no horror in his voice, or he was just good at masking it.

  “We need to go.” I turned back to the controls and took the gun seat that Matt had vacated. Matt backed away from the bulldozers, making the green spotlight swing over the black cloud. It had flattened, conforming to the ground. I thought of any rabbits and plants and other life that might be under it, and I shuddered. I wished he would hurry. The vapor couldn't discriminate the way the heat guns could.

  “It's hard to see,” Matt said.

  “Just go!” I shouted.

  I horrified myself. Did Grandpa feel this way after trying to blow up the Great Council?

  Matt plowed us through the vapo
r. The leg hit something metallic but continued. We stepped over the rooftop of the half-destroyed house, leaving the vaporized one behind. I turned my thoughts to that. Of course, the Grounders deserved to get stepped on. They snatched bodies. They destroyed homes. They wanted to wreck our planet. Why was I feeling sorry for them? Mom and Dad sure wouldn't. Grandpa Luis sure wouldn't have, either. Sure, they were living, but they were an invasive species.

  I wondered what Grandpa Luis would have done in this situation.

  At last, Matt got us out of the vapor, but only after the walker's legs collided with two more houses. Walking through crowded environments was a weakness. Going through Landin might prove impossible. The lake would have to work.

  “Well, that went great,” Matt said, bringing us back onto the street. Far ahead, lights remained on, but dark homes still surrounded us. If anyone remained in this neighborhood, they were hiding out. I hoped that no one had been in the houses near the two bulldozers, for more reason than one.

  “We didn't have to drop the bomb,” Matt said to Calvin.

  “She was going to fire that cannon,” he said. It was clear that the Enforcer wanted to be in charge here.

  “Those cannons take a few minutes to charge,” Matt said. “The vapor kills everything that breathes, including other people.”

  “There weren't any other people around.”

  “Could you stop arguing?” I asked as we plowed forward along the smooth pavement. I did not doubt that ahead, the Grounders were setting up more defenses. They might fire a cannon as soon as look at us, now that they knew how dangerous we were. And we still had the other radicals up ahead, who the Grounders knew were coming to back them up. We couldn't count on any fighting in between them.

  Calvin glared at me. I liked this Enforcer less and less. “I have Academy experience, young lady.”

  “You remind me of Marv,” I said. “This isn't Academy experience. War sucks.”

  Calvin reached for his electric baton but thought better of it. He must have figured out by now that the heat guns only burned off Grounders. I couldn't tell. Matt and I hadn't told him the full truth—only parts of it. But he was also older than us by a few years, which meant that he had elevated himself to the leader. At least, he had in his mind.

  The guy turned away from us and looked straight ahead. I didn't think I was that intimidating. But Calvin was tapping the side of his head to adjust his contact display.

  And then he swore in an unprofessional manner.

  “Any updates?” I asked.

  “I knew something like this would happen,” he said. “The Great Council is relocating my entire unit to Mars.”

  Chapter Four

  “Your entire unit?” Matt asked.

  We continued to walk through the dark. The houses got larger and closer together, keeping us stuck on the street.

  “Woking Enforcer Unit Twelve,” Calvin said. “That's thirty of us. They're telling the whole unit to report to Space Port Nine, or they're going to come and get us. They must know what I saw! I wasn't the only Enforcer there, either. Scotts was there. Boseman was there. I don't know if she witnessed what I did, but they're not screwing around.”

  “I'm not surprised,” Matt said. “If you behave, you can stay with us. And you still need to smash your contacts. You're endangering all of us.”

  The hazy sun peeked over the horizon, making me squint. The morning had arrived. The Grounders ran their deportation ships during the day. The tall buildings of Woking's downtown loomed. We would cross into the Market at any time, where danger must lurk.

  Calvin pulled out his contacts, dropped them to the floor, and stepped on them. Reality had hit. I knew how that felt. Smashing your link to the outside world wasn't something that you thought of doing in normal circumstances. “We have to go and defend my unit,” Calvin said. “They must know about these Grounder things if they're getting sent away. Let me sit at the controls.”

  “We have to get to Landin,” I said, thinking of my parents.

  “Let me sit at the controls,” Calvin said, drawing his electric baton.

  Matt stopped the walker. We stood a few hundred meters from downtown. The transport belt moved, not carrying anyone at this time of day. “We need to get to the Great Council,” he said. “We can't be messing around on the way. Once the radicals get their walker going, we're going to have a much harder time.”

  “I said, give me the controls,” Calvin said. “I saw what those heat rays do. I know they can't hurt me. I'm not a Grounder.”

  We had made a mistake. Calvin was as unstable as I feared—or maybe he was just afraid. He might feel the same way about his colleagues as I did for Mom and Dad. He wanted to save them, but they weren't at the Great Council. Slowing down and taking a diversion would give the radicals time to get ready for us. Calvin might sabotage the plan to save the Earth.

  “We can't do that,” I said. I stood up tall and tried to look confident like Mom always did. It was what Earthers were supposed to do. “If we take too long, we're going to miss our chance to reach the Great Council, and then we'll all end up on Mars eventually. Or dead. If we overthrow the Grounders, we can bring your friends back from Mars. They should live long enough.”

  “She makes sense,” Matt said with caution. “Listen to her.”

  Calvin didn't have it. He wove the baton around, which hummed. My hair stood on end as he brought it within centimeters of my arm, but I didn't pull back as I had with Marv and his girlfriend. Showing weakness hadn't benefited me much. “You're going to give me the controls,” he said, “or I'm going to make sure the two of you stay paralyzed on the floor for the duration of this mission. Back away, and let me sit in the seat.” His eyes shone with both terror and determination.

  I pointed the heat gun at him. Fiona hadn't planned for this sort of thing. “You must want the Grounders to win,” I said. “Look. I get it. They took my parents to the Great Council. Your friends are only going to get deported. My parents might get Grounders attached to them. Your friends only have to board a ship. We'll crush the Great Council, and then we'll get them back. My friends got sent to Mars, too."

  Reason didn't rule here. Calvin lunged forward and swung the baton, growling.

  Matt couldn't catch Calvin fast enough. The weapon struck my arm, and a jolt ripped through my body, stealing away all use of my muscles. I collapsed to the floor, dropping the gun, unable to move my arms to push myself up. I felt like a limp rag doll, helpless while Calvin turned the baton on Matt.

  “Hey. I haven't been here for two years, but that should still be illegal,” Matt said, trying to sound cool. “You can't commandeer the--”

  Calvin swung. I could only see the side of his face from here, but it was enough to see the determination in his eyes. At that moment, I feared I was more like Calvin than my parents, willing to do anything to save my friends and family.

  Matt went down, crumbling as his motor nerves turned off. He landed only a meter from me, maybe less, with his face turned towards me. He moved his eyes and breathed. Both of us lay there, helpless, as Calvin climbed into the pilot's seat, turning all his attention away from us. I tried to speak, but the electric batons shut down your ability to do that, too. My only consolation was the fact that the weapons didn't shut down your bladder control. Scientists had struggled with that problem for decades, at the beginning of the Enforcers.

  But this effect was supposed to last for ten whole minutes. My nerves would turn back on and send signals to my muscles. Until then, paralysis was our prison warden. Even when it wore off, we would have trouble moving for some time.

  Calvin might have just put the world in more danger.

  “I'm sorry I had to do that,” Calvin said, tucking his baton back into his belt. He cranked the lever forward, and the floor vibrated as the walker strode forward again. “I need to get to the Enforcer headquarters. I'm not letting those Grounders take my colleagues."

  I struggled to speak, but could only make a faint hmm
sound. I couldn't work the muscles in my tongue or jaw. I felt worse than a baby. Calvin was right. The Grounders might deport anyone who might have heard his story. They were doing everything to keep the truth about the Great Council from getting out.

  I wondered if they had done my grandfather in.

  It was all I could do was think. And breathe. And make faint grunting sounds. Calvin ignored me and continued to pilot the walker. He spun it around as I had, but I couldn't even tense. It would be several more minutes, and I feared the guy would crash us into the side of a skyscraper. Matt flicked his eyes to the side, trying to see Calvin, but he was just as useless as me. We could only sit here for the ride.

  “We're downtown!” Calvin shouted. “We're going to strike back against the Grounders! I see the Task Force by the headquarters right now!” He cranked the lever, and the hum intensified as we picked up speed.

  I groaned again, partly because Calvin was getting way too into this. He craved glory. The rookie wanted to have someone erect a statue of him once this war ended. He was fighting for the wrong reasons.

  Calvin stopped the walker.

  A thought hit me.

  If those Grounders had another pulse cannon, the three of us were dead. Calvin was running on pure emotion, not logic.

  Then again, so had I when I stepped on the Grounder in front of the Changs' house. It made me hate watching Calvin even more.

  Calvin got out of his chair as Matt continued to try watching. He was absorbed in the fight. At last, the rookie Enforcer was getting a chance to prove himself. I feared that he would drop a smoke bomb in the middle of downtown, but instead, he pressed the orange button to fire the gun. I watched him struggle with the controls as he moved the orange target across the glass and aimed at the ground. Even from the side, I spotted the crazed expression on his face.

  He had gone over the edge. And for a brief moment, so had I.

  I managed to move a finger. What if Calvin had to dodge? He couldn't do the jobs of three people. Matt and I could barely do it.