Invaded

by Holly Hook

  “That doesn't make sense,” Matt said. “Radicals would have come out by now. Maybe the Grounders already killed them with whatever secret plan they have.”

  “Possible,” I said. “If Fiona took over again, and help has arrived, they should have fought back by now.”

  “Maybe they're outnumbered,” Matt said. “I agree with you. Radicals would have had a walker built by now. The Grounders must be waiting for something.”

  “It might be important,” I said. “Things could have changed on Mars. Let's root for Fiona.” I knew Matt had been worried about her. “Maybe she's back. If that's the case and we can get into the cylinder, maybe we can radio her. Let her know you're okay.” I knew that Matt hated that he made her worry. She wasn't like his father, who was gone all the time.

  Matt's eyes bugged out. “You're talking about going down there.”

  “Not right now, but as soon as we get the chance.”

  “Well, I know what you mean.”

  “We're not going to reach the Great Council otherwise,” I said. “It's not like we can walk there and knock on the door. I bet they have the best security in the world.”

  I didn't have to say that not only did we need to rescue my parents. I had some hope that they might not have gotten converted into Grounders, but my fear about them getting those blobs stuck to them had gotten replaced by a bigger one: the death of everyone left on Earth. Matt and I were the only ones who knew. Us, and the crazy old man who hadn't even told us his name. I still didn't trust the guy, but he hadn't sold us out yet.

  But my mind was clearer now and the room no longer spun around me. That helped.

  My stomach rumbled. “We should go and eat while we figure this out,” I said. “We still have the electric baton and the knife, but that will only take down one Grounder at a time.”

  Matt and I headed back to the gift shop, and I eyed the row of snacks.

  Something was wrong.

  A good one-third of the packages were missing. I had counted enough for almost two weeks, including Matt, but I did another tally and found that about ten of the packs had gone missing.

  “The old man,” I said.

  Matt contorted his green features into anger. “He should have talked about this with us first,” he said. “What does he need with so many snack packs?”

  I guessed that the remaining food might get us by for a few more days. If the Grounders continued their standoff with the cylinder, we might get in trouble. Starvation wouldn't help our minds or bodies function. Within a few days of not eating, we might not even be getting up.

  “We've got to hide the food,” I said.

  “I agree.” Matt shoveled the remaining snacks off the rack and looked around for a tote bag. He found one that displayed the holographic Solar System, complete with animation, and threw them in. It turned out that much of the water was missing as well, along with some energy tabs. The old man had taken more than he needed for the day. Matt and I had the right to hoard, then.

  In the end, we shoved the food behind the cabinet in the storage room. “Okay,” Matt said. “We figure out how to get the Grounders out of the crater. If we paralyze them, they'll only stay down for a few minutes, as Calvin did.”

  I felt sick, thinking about the young Enforcer lying in that burning red weed. Calvin might have been crazy, but he had been human.

  “Then we'll have to restrain them,” I said, my mind spinning. “Can we lure a couple up here at a time? We don't think they can release any of that sleeping gas in this room.”

  “But they can do that in the monorail station,” Matt said. "Some of that gas could seep in here."

  “You have a point,” I said. Matt had experience with that stuff, more than I had. We had never seen if this room could fill with the gas, but I turned in a circle. The dome remained smooth—the parts of it that hadn't gotten crushed in—and I saw no vents anywhere. Then again, the vents could be like the exit doors to all the exhibits, smooth and hidden until they opened. Last time, the Mars Exhibit had filled, but the gas had cleared by the time Matt and I had walked out into the main Solar System room.

  I turned, eyeing the free doors. The Terminus Exhibit was still open, as were most of the others. I hadn't checked those for vents, but the only exhibit that led to the spaceport was the Mars one. It wouldn't make much sense for the others to have the gas vents.

  “Do you think we could lure a couple of Grounders up at a time?” I asked.

  “I don't know,” Matt said, thinking. He eyed the tools all around us. The smell of cheap shampoo filled the room, making it smell a bit like home for a moment. “If they notice some of their own missing, they'll launch a search party, and all we have is that baton and a knife.”

  “Are you sure?” My mind worked. Now that we weren't in immediate danger and I had gotten some sleep, I could think. “Maybe there's something in here we can use. Look at all these power tools."

  “Tess, you think like a guy. And I mean that as a compliment.” Matt smiled and turned in a circle, surveying the room. He paused on the bulldozers designed to move sand and the forklifts. Then he eyed something that looked like a blowtorch. “I'm glad I'm fighting beside you.”

  I blushed. I had never really gotten a compliment from a guy before, not like this, and it seemed like Matt was breaking his own rule about not getting too close more and more. But when we were stuck together, how else was that going to work?

  “I'm glad to be fighting beside you, too,” I said. My mind drifted back to the kiss, even as we stared at the saws, blowtorches--and the gas masks. “There are gas masks!”

  “Huh?”

  “Over there.” I pointed to several of them hanging right behind a metal cabinet labeled DANGER. “Look. It's those crinkly ones like the one you put on me in that corridor.”

  “You're right,” Matt said. “It makes sense that the maintenance people would have them. They probably have to crawl through the vents. We might even be able to go through Space Port Nine with those on.”

  “There will still be too many Grounders,” I said. “And there was that tub with a bunch more inside of it. They're getting more of them from somewhere.”

  “Probably the—never mind.”

  “Never mind what?” I turned to face Matt.

  “The mines,” he provided. “They take shelter in those.”

  “Makes sense,” I said. The Grounders came from Mars's underground, so Earth's underground must be cozy for them, with plenty of iron and disgusting gases. It was no wonder the government had started so many new ones, especially the ones that went way underground.

  I picked out two of the gas masks. There were five, probably one for each maintenance worker. We'd have them on hand if we needed them. That, of course, wouldn't help against so many Grounders. But it would help against the gas. We had solved one problem. Now we had about twenty more.

  “So, luring the Grounders,” I said. “We'd have to pick them off a little at a time, but they might just covert more people if they notice their numbers going down. What we need is a heat gun.”

  “I agree,” Matt said. He picked up one of the electric saws and turned it on. It made a loud buzzing sound as the light blade spun, blue and casting a glow on the surroundings. “This might be gross to use against them, but I'm keeping it.” He turned in a circle, brandishing his new weapon. “Let's see any Grounders want to approach me with this.”

  “I don't want to dismember people,” I said. I wanted to fight the Grounders, yes, but I also didn't want to disfigure the people they had once been. “I've never heard Grounders scream, but if some walk in here and see a bunch of blood, they're going to know what's up."

  “I think they're afraid of us,” Matt said. “Well, as afraid as Grounders can be. They don't have emotions.”

  I liked the thought. “To get the Task Force here," I said, "we'd have to get them to come through the spaceport. It's the only way. What if they wander off one or two at a time for bathroom breaks? We need another loo
k out there."

  “I'll go first this time,” Matt said once we got to the tiny wreckage tunnel. We both couldn't fit at the same time. It would take some noisy work to make that happen, which we couldn't do with the Grounders all out there. Matt stayed in the tunnel for a long time, while I waited.

  And in the meantime, the former museum manager wandered into the room. I held back a sigh. He was back to muttering, and he was eating out of a bag of peanuts—one he had taken without permission. Then again, we hadn't set any rules. The man wasn't coherent, so what was the point?

  I tuned him out. If he stayed away and minded his own business, muttering about how we deserved to die (why?), I'd live with him.

  But then he spotted me and strode over, moving faster than someone his age should.

  “Back off,” I said. “I don't want to listen to you right now.”

  The man widened his eyes. “Are you feeling it yet?”

  “Feeling what?”

  “The death!” he shouted in my face. “The underground death!”

  “No,” I said, not getting it. “I'm not feeling any death, but we all will if you don't stay quiet. Matt's looking outside right now.”

  “Then they have not yet unleashed it,” he said, turning away before I could ask him anything. Matt and I had already tried to extract answers from him, but it was useless, so I wasn't going to attempt anymore. The man spoke in riddles. I wondered if the Grounders had given him something to ruin his sanity. Some secret drug, maybe. He knew too much.

  And judging from what we'd heard in the vent, the Grounders didn't like to kill, but they would if they felt like they had to. Like me. We had some things in common, and I hated it. They almost hadn't sounded evil.

  Matt crawled out of the tunnel, backward, as the chair holding up some of the wreckage creaked and shifted. I tensed and grabbed Matt's leg, pulling him out the rest of the way. By then, the old man had wandered into the gift shop, leaving me alone.

  We faced each other, with Matt on the floor and me with my hand on his leg. The whole awkward moment only lasted about a second, because Matt shook his head. “The Great Council has arrived,” he said. “I saw the Grounder who took your parents.”

  “You what?” I asked. “He's here?” I thought of the almost skeletal man in the black hooded robe.

  Matt nodded. “I didn't see your parents, and I scanned all of those faces.”

  "What else? How many of the Great Council arrived?”

  “There are six of them,” Matt said. “It looks like it was a committee. The question is, which committee?”

  The Great Council was one big governing body, but there was a committee for each social issue. One handled taxes. Another handled housing, and so on. No one knew who belonged in each group like the Great Council wanted it that way, so there was no telling which one had arrived. But my favorite guy was in it, so it must have to do with deportations or something. Maybe the Great Council had an interplanetary committee.

  “I have to see,” I said.

  As much as I didn't want to crawl back through the tunnel, I forced myself. Once I got to the rocky, packed dirt, which was complete with Matt's handprints, I peered out into the grimy daylight. Most of the Task Force Grounders remained as before, and the cylinder remained closed, even though it must have cooled by now. But the Task Force Grounders had backed away from it. They stood in a ring around it, the best they could in the wreckage from the monorail station.

  I spotted the Great Council people a second later.

  Robed and hooded, the six of them stepped through an opening the other Grounders had made for them. They walked in two lines, three in each, and side by side as if they had rehearsed this. They looked as if they were ready to meet a dignitary from another world.

  Maybe they were.

  “Tess?” Matt asked from behind. He had crawled into the tunnel, too. “You might not want to linger there. What's happening?”

  I was high up enough not to get heard so long as I didn't yell, so I responded. “The Great Council's walking up to the cylinder. It looks like they're going to meet someone. Maybe it is radicals inside after all.” I thought of the people they were planning to kill and betray. Perhaps the Grounders would be nice and let the radicals go back to their precious Mars before they unleashed whatever death the old man had mentioned. They could even be here to broker some deal about that.

  But weren't the Grounders keeping it a secret from the radicals?

  The Great Council stopped in their tracks and waited.

  Silence fell. Once upon a time, long ago, birds used to chirp and fly overhead in entire flocks. A bird was a rare sight nowadays. Most had died, a few had gotten shipped to Mars for research purposes, but the few survivors of the Grounder invasion hiding in the alien forest remained silent.

  The Great Council waited for what felt like a few minutes. I held my breath. It wasn't as if the air outside was nice to breathe, anyway, even though my pollution mask stopped that.

  Then a very faint popping noise followed. The hatch must be opening. The one Matt and I used had done the same thing.

  Since the hatch must face away from me, I didn't see the man walking out of the cylinder at first. But then he appeared, complete with a gray uniform, several patches, and a black, flowing cape. The man had a cloth bandage wrapped around his head as if the rough landing had injured him, and he was just as green as ninety-nine percent of the population on Mars. I squinted and realized that he wore a sash around his uniform, a red one that matched all his patches. While I couldn't make out his patches from here, the color scheme gave away the fact that he must be a Mars Identity guy.

  A high-ranking one, that was.

  The leadership must have discovered Fiona's invasion plan.

  The man stood tall. He was also thin, like Matt, with dark hair. I hadn't yet seen an overweight person from Mars.

  The Mars Identity guy walked up to the Great Council without an ounce of fear. In fact, he looked confident. He nodded to the hooded people and gestured like he was speaking. He faced the wreckage for a bit. I wondered if he was apologizing for wrecking the monorail station and part of the museum.

  The man continued to speak for a long time. He was waving his arms now, almost like he was desperate.

  I bit in a cry as a large shape emerged from the smog, towering overhead as three tentacle-like legs landed in the red vegetation without any sound.

  One of the tripods had arrived.

  The man in the sash backed away to stand behind the Great Council, staying out of sight of the oncoming tripod. It stood there and blasted its horn as if announcing its presence. Even though he was hiding from it, the Mars Identity man shook his head as if someone had told a very not-funny joke.

  The horn noise reverberated through me as the sound waves bounced off the walls of the crater, unimpeded by the red vegetation behind it. The tripod remained still, its green headlight adding an eerie glow to the pit. From my angle, I couldn't see the top of it, but I could watch as the bottom hatch opened and the ladder descended on its own, unfolding and planting itself in the red weeds.

  I wished I could hear what they were saying down there. It must have been a planned Mars Identity and Grounder meeting. But Matt had told me that the leaders of the movement weren't like the radicals. They were supposed to be more moderate and not want to kill people.

  The ladder remained down, but no one descended.

  And then a second tripod emerged from the fog, looking like a metal jellyfish that had lost most of its tentacles. It joined the first and stopped, but didn't blast its horn. It remained a bit behind the other, waiting.

  “Huh?” I managed.

  “Celeste is here, isn't she?” Matt asked.

  “Yes. And one other.”

  “What?”

  It didn't make sense. We'd arrived in the first cylinder and this man in the fourth. Celeste had come in the third one. I didn't know if anyone had come with her, so maybe the nanobots in her cylinder had made anoth
er walker for one of her crewmates. I couldn't imagine riding in one of those rickety ships alone across millions of kilometers of space.

  The two walkers stood there while the leader remained hidden behind the Great Council

  The Grounder who had taunted me years ago faced the two tripods and then made a hand motion for the occupants to climb down. They had a rapport. The Grounders had planned this meeting.

  “What's happening?” Matt asked.

  “I'll tell you,” I said. I had to focus on every detail.

  “Tess, back up. Please.”

  I could hear the worry in Matt's words, but I couldn't obey them. Not now. If we switched places, we might miss something important.

  The occupant of the first tripod descended. Green and dressed in a gray uniform, he climbed down with confidence.

  I gulped.

  “Matt—I think Marv survived the black vapor.”

  Chapter Ten

  I had to check again to make sure that it was him. Check. He had Marv's green complexion, of course, but he also had Marv's cocky stance, even on the ladder, and Marv's dark hair.

  His tripod had fallen into the black vapor after I blasted out its legs. Marv had landed right in it, and no gas masks could protect you from the stuff. He shouldn't have survived unless the tripods were airtight.

  Now that I thought about it, they might be. Matt and I had traveled across a smog-draped landscape for kilometers, and I hadn't coughed once inside the tripod. All this time, Marv had been lying in wait, knowing that we outnumbered him.

  “Back up,” Matt begged.

  I wanted to see what Marv and this leader had planned. I didn't budge.

  Marv stood at the edge of the crater and then slid down. The caped man remained hidden behind the crowd. Only once Marv reached the bottom did the Grounders part to allow the caped man to step forward. This newcomer had the stage right now.

  Marv froze. The caped man waved him closer with harsh motions. Even from up here, I saw Marv's jaw fall. He hadn't expected this guy.