Invaded

by Holly Hook

  I hoped that no monorails had been there during the landing. The place had sounded empty. It might have kept the fatalities to a minimum.

  I hoped. I had seen one dead (human) body and I didn’t want to see any more.

  “We won’t know that,” Matt said. “Hey. It's our chance.”

  I faced him again, done being semi-sick. I had to get it together. The universe had given us a chance, and we had better take it. The radicals inside this cylinder wouldn’t have a lot of ways to fight us when they opened the lid and crawled out, which might be hours from now. The Grounders wouldn’t try to stop the radicals. The two groups were on the same side. They wanted humans to have their future on Mars. Why on Earth would the two of them fight?

  But first, Matt and I stood there, getting our composure back. The war was toughening me up.

  Matt and I waited for the dirt and the dust to settle. That was when we saw the full extent of the damage to the museum and the monorail station. Both entrances had collapsed, leaving no signs of an exit. I could see outside a tiny bit through the debris, to the greenish-yellow sky, but nothing else. I didn’t spot any holes big enough to allow us to exit that way.

  A problem got bigger and bigger in my head.

  “Matt, how do we get to the radicals? They’re outside. We’re in here. We can’t get back to the transport belt or the monorail station from here.”

  “You’re right,” he said, turning in a circle. “We need a plan. Did you see anything in that gift shop that can cut through some of this metal?”

  “Sure. The place was selling all kinds of saws and drills and other industrial equipment.”

  “You don’t have to be sarcastic,” Matt said.

  “I thought you liked my sense of humor.” I dared to take a step towards the debris.

  “Careful!” Matt shouted. “We don't know if that's going to collapse.”

  As if on cue, a hunk of metal toppled out of the mess and fell like a descending guillotine blade. I jumped back, crashing into Matt and sending us both down to the floor. The fake sun shone above us again, and the holographic Mars floated over our heads as it continued its orbit. How fitting.

  The chunk of metal settled, making a loud bang and vibration on the floor. The whole wall on this side of the dome had fallen in. Despite the falling debris, I couldn't see a way through the wreckage.

  Matt and I stood again and waited several more minutes. Ragged metal and beams hung down, and the faint blue of Terminus floated across the mess, making a strange blue glow that made the scene even eerier.

  “Is there a way out of here that doesn't go through Space Port Nine?” I asked.

  “I thought you knew that,” Matt said.

  “Well, we could go through the spaceport, but it's full of Grounders. Plus, we have two problems.”

  “Which is?”

  “We left our heat guns on the walker. That's Problem Number One. And we don't have our gas masks. The Grounders can turn that crap on as soon as they know we're here.”

  “We still have the baton,” Matt said, eyeing my weapon in my belt. “We have the knife, too."

  I took it out and handed it to him. It wasn't like we had anyone to hide it from, and besides, knives were legal. Matt pocketed it and turned in a circle. “There might be another exit away from the spaceport. We can go around to the cylinder some other way.”

  “I like that idea.” I eyed the museums whose entrances hadn't gotten crushed. Of course (and just our luck) the Mars Exhibit's door remained open. Mercury and Venus's entrances had turned into a metallic garbage dump, but that left the rest of the planets' exhibits open. Yay.

  So long as they all didn't exit into the spaceport.

  I didn't want to go into the Terminus Exhibit again, due to the memory of getting my deportation notice in there, but it was the furthest from the Mars one and looked the most likely to lead away from the spaceport. I took Matt's arm, despite his protests, and led him over there.

  “We shouldn't hold hands,” he said at last.

  I shook his arm away from me. “Fine. We won't.”

  “It's nothing personal. We might die. If one of us does, then the other has to finish the mission. We can't have our emotions get in the way.”

  I faced Matt and pulled open the exhibit door. No one had locked it. That was a plus. Matt and I stepped in. “You have emotions for me?”

  I was getting bold. War had done that to me, too.

  “This isn't the time to have this conversation,” Matt said.

  “Well, you did ask me to kiss you. And you tell me the truth. I like that.” Right away, I blushed.

  Matt sighed and cut ahead of me, walking further into the Terminus Museum. No one had shut off the lights in here, and the fake stars shone overhead, twinkling just like the real thing. What was up with him?

  We walked past the NASA announcement from 2020 and through the museum, past the first probes that had flown past the extremely distant planet. The exhibit wasn't that long, but at last, we looped around, walked down a metallic hallway that was minus stars, and pushed open the door at the end.

  And we found ourselves staring right back into the half-crushed main chamber.

  “What the heck?” Matt asked, only he didn't use heck. “This just led us back around.”

  He stepped out, and I followed. The door we had emerged from blended in perfectly with the wall. When we let it close, it appeared as if there were no seams between the door and the rest of the dome. It was a fantastic design, and it made sense to let people out here in case they wanted to see the rest of the museum.

  But it might mean bad news for us.

  Matt sighed. He was about to say something about how we might starve in here once we ran out of crappy gift shop food, so I spoke first. “The Mars Exhibit isn't like this one,” I said. “Maybe some of the others lead somewhere else. We can't give up until we try them all. Space Port Nine is the last resort. And there might be an emergency exit in the management area.” The place was expansive, so there might be many chances to get out that we just hadn't found yet.

  We checked the Neptune museum and the other gas planets, but all led to the same thing—the main chamber. It was time to look in the gift shop area again, then. In silence, we walked over to the small hallway. I had left the Mars meteor lying on the floor because I felt like it deserved it. The planet had caused me so much grief, and cost all of Earth a massive loss of life. Matt snorted when he saw what I had done.

  “Is that the famous rock?” he asked.

  “I think so.” I kicked at it, but it was too heavy to slide very far. Matt opened the door, almost cutting himself on the broken glass. We entered the dark gift shop, daring to turn on the lights.

  “Look what doesn't sell,” Matt said, eyeing the Mars Facts T-shirts.

  “We think alike,” I said. I turned my gaze away from the images of the Red Planet. “They should have added pictures of Grounders or something.”

  Matt climbed onto the counter and ripped down the entire rack of shirts at once. The images of Mars and the printed facts all went toppling to the floor, making a soft thump in the process. “Let's see what they have for food,” Matt said, waving me over to the other side of the store.

  I hadn't expected Matt to be so angry at those shirts. Well, I couldn't blame him. “Maybe you can save those for the radicals,” I said. “They can use those as their new uniforms.”

  Matt didn't laugh. He opened a small fridge, which housed a couple of dozen drinks. Most were overpriced water (why?) and others were vitamin blends, so at least if we were trapped, we wouldn't die of thirst right away. A shelf next to the fridge held a bunch of overpriced candy bars and packages of salted, oil-bathed nuts. At least we'd have protein, but I estimated that even if we rationed this stuff out, we'd only have a couple of weeks to live before starvation hit.

  That was if no one came to rescue us.

  Or, to put it correctly, capture us.

  “Okay,” I said. “We took inventory.
Shouldn't we have found another way out first?”

  “Well, we always have to get ready for the worst,” Matt said.

  “Agreed,” I said. “We need to see if we can open these other doors.”

  Matt and I left the gift shop. Surely someone would come by and tear open this museum, getting us out—if they weren't too scared of the new arrival. Of course, the manager's office had gotten locked, but the door was glass, and thankfully we still had the meteor to break the glass with instead of our fists. Matt did the honors this time. His guy pride was taking over again. That saved me from having to do it.

  The manager's office was also empty and dark. Only a single table with a chair sat there, and the desk seemed to be collecting dust. I rubbed a bunch of it off, leaving a mark. No one had sat here for a while. Days or weeks, even.

  “Does this place even have a manager?” I asked.

  “I don't know,” Matt said. “I think Grounders run it.”

  “I agree,” I said, careful not to draw too close to him. Something was going on, something strange, and I couldn't put my finger on it.

  The first thing I did was a hunt for a door. Only a closet with some pollution masks bordered the room, and none of them were the crinkly gas ones that Matt and I would need to run through Space Port Nine. We had nothing useful here.

  And guess what? There was no door leading out of here. The builders had counted on this place to have three exits. Fair enough. By law, every establishment needed at least two. What they hadn't banked on was having two of them blocked for what looked like the rest of time, and having the other lead to a Grounder nest. Or maybe Grounders had built this place.

  Matt and I left the office behind. The only thing we hadn't explored yet was the area beyond the Mars Exhibit. It was the only hope—but that hallway was also where Winnie and my other friends had passed out from the gas. The Grounders would turn it on again, and we'd go down.

  “What do you think our chances are?” I asked Matt.

  “I don't know. Maybe five percent for getting out of here. And I'm optimistic.”

  “That's great.”

  “Well, we have to face it,” Matt said. “I say we shouldn't go any further than the exhibit itself.”

  “That got gassed, too,” I said, shuddering. Matt and I had climbed into that tripod to escape from the Grounders, but the gas had gotten up there, too. I remembered watching the fog clear. “We might want to try digging out of the wreckage. We could find a shovel or something. Part of what's blocking us off from them is the dirt.”

  We emerged into the half-crushed dome again. The Solar System continued its orbits. A solar flare rose from the holographic sun as if warning us back. Things might have settled. I liked the idea of digging better than that of cutting through Space Port Nine, which Matt and I didn't know very well. I was sure there weren't plenty of doors labeled with the classic red exit sign. The Grounders wouldn't want people to access the outside at all.

  But Matt and I walked into the Mars Exhibit, listening for any signs of boring lecturers, but the place remained silent. We stepped past the case I had broken. We passed the fossilized microbe mats they had brought back from Mars and we finally came to the door of the little theater, where I never sat due to sneaking off and leaving Winnie to her doom.

  “Shall we open it?” I asked.

  Matt nodded. “Ladies--”

  I slugged him on the arm. “I thought we weren't supposed to be friendly with each other.” Matt was fighting his own rule.

  But I opened the door.

  Ambient space music floated out, and my heart leaped into my throat.

  Someone was in here.

  Credits rolled on the holo-screen, with stars in the background, and the screen shut off, leaving only a platform in its place. A man sat in the front row, staring at the platform with his hands folded in his lap. He sat slumped as if a million worries weighed him down, and he had a long beard that reminded me of Darwin. Well, the pictures of him in our lessons that I could no longer access. The distressed look on his face told me that we were not dealing with a Grounder, but an actual human.

  I still reached for the electric baton on my belt. “Hello?”

  The man jumped and faced us. He must be twice the age of my parents. I wondered what the heck he was doing here, watching science movies, but then a thought hit me that he must be trying to educate himself on the whole invasion and the Grounder thing. He wore a dark blue uniform with an emblem on the front. Gold embroidery told me that he was an employee of the Solar System Museum. Golden planets decorated his patch as if it were a badge of honor.

  The guy rose. His eyes had legions of wrinkles around them. I had never seen a Museum employee before. Before, it had only been Henry and his drone. I was relieved to see another person in here. He might have keys to the maintenance room, or he knew a secret way out.

  Or he might be working with the Grounders and the radicals.

  “What are you kids doing here?” the man asked, squinting at Matt. His jaw fell open. “Are you with the Grounders?”

  “No, sir,” Matt said, making an effort to sound as polite as possible. The guy didn't look armed, but it helped to be careful.

  “The people helping the Grounders are green,” the man said. He gripped one of the seats.

  “I'm not with them,” Matt explained. “I'll be honest with you, though. The two of us came in the first cylinder, and we killed some of the Grounders. Tess and I were on a mission to take the Earth back from them, but some people on Mars don't want that to happen. After Tess and I left, the people who wanted to stop us followed, and now they're helping the Grounders."

  The old man's posture relaxed. “So, it's you,” he said. “Word is spreading about the true state of the government, but many rumors are spreading as well. People are in a panic. Most are trying to flee the area.”

  “You know about Grounders,” I said, just now realizing that he had mentioned them before we had. Most people, before we had landed, didn't know that the government was a literal puppet of an alien race. The Earthers did, but people like my parents weren't allowed to get the word out to people. The government monitored everything and deported people who were a threat. Somehow, this man knew the truth, but I spotted no Earther patch on him anywhere.

  He must have worked beside Grounders, then, the same way Matt's father had.

  “Yes,” the man said. “I know about Grounders. I used to own this museum until I got government orders to hand it over.” He spoke faster with each word as if he were losing his sanity. “Now I can only stand by as they run things. I come here a lot and spend my time, because I love the planets, and they allow me so long as I don't cause trouble.”

  I wondered if the dusty desk in the manager's office had once belonged to this man. “I know what you feel like,” I said. “The government can take whatever they want."

  “Well, they have the right,” the old man said, pacing past Matt and me. He walked out into the cold Mars Exhibit. “They can take what they please. We only borrowed from them.” He walked faster. “They want us to pay. Of course, they want us to pay!”

  Matt cast his gaze over to me, looking at me from the sides of his eyes. “He's nuts,” he whispered. “And we're stuck in here with him.”

  “Great,” I hissed.

  “Um, sir?” Matt asked, running to catch up. We left the theater behind. “Is there a way out of here?”

  The man whirled around. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Well, you'll see. It's not nice. Something happened after Tess and I entered the museum. We were just running from one of the radicals which are helping the Grounders, and, well, we think one of their cylinders landed and wrecked a lot of stuff.”

  The old man paused there, mouth falling open. He didn't even notice the shattered case and the missing meteor. He would, soon enough, but it wasn't like we had destroyed it. Repair nanobots would fix the display right up. But if this man could lead us out of here without going through Groun
der Central, I'd repair the case for him.

  The old man broke into a run.

  He had already had his museum taken from him once, and how he might experience that again. I understood how he felt. I could feel his anguish. It only made me want to get to the Grounders even more.

  The old man exited the Mars Exhibit and stopped, facing the wreckage that now made the Solar System Museum look like a caved-in, metallic basketball. From the inside, that was.

  And he fell to his knees and sobbed.

  Chapter Seven

  “We're trapped,” the old man said, over and over. “The Grounders have gathered in the spaceport. There are hundreds of them, and they are capturing everyone who tries to go through. We're trapped!”

  It was just my fear. Now this old man was here, making everything worse. He had already confirmed that we had no other way out of the museum.

  We were stuck in here, just standing around, while Mom and Dad were at the Great Council, getting information extracted from them. We couldn’t sit by and let that happen. More radicals were arriving, and if we wanted to get to the ones outside, we had to think of something.

  “Wait,” I said, trying to keep a level head. So far, I was succeeding. I was keeping up a good Earther face. “Do we have anything that can use to dig? There must be something in the maintenance room that can pry apart some of this metal.” Even so, it looked hopeless, but I wasn’t going to give up just yet. All this was assuming that no one came near us.

  And that might be possible, depending on how far the panic had spread. The Enforcers might have believed Calvin’s warnings, and the Grounders would have told everyone to avoid the walkers from the start, at least until the radicals showed up. Or everyone might be confused and avoiding both the walkers and the Grounders. It was hard to tell what was going on out there. I should have asked someone while I rode the transport belt. The old man also wasn't wearing contacts. I studied his eyes as he surveyed the wreckage.

  So far, no one was shouting from outside. The hiss from the hot cylinder floated in through the cracks. The old man hyperventilated, and I feared he would pass out and die from his emotions, but he didn’t. I had seen a medical kit in the managers’ office, but only one, and I wasn’t sure if the nanobots would fix a significant medical problem. They were great at cuts and broken bones.