He crossed the room, grabbing a round white plate, and he filled it high with roasted chicken, potatoes, and peas. There was a dried-out piece of bread left, and he took it, seeing freshly whipped butter beside it. He checked over his shoulder and spread the butter on the bread, not even waiting to sit before taking a big bite.
When he sat opposite Monet, she slid him a napkin. “This is a rare treat. I haven’t had bread for years,” she told him.
“Me neither. I can’t believe they’re still making butter.”
“I’m glad you signed up, Dex. We need someone like you on the inside,” she said.
“How many of you are there?” he asked.
She narrowed her eyes, as if silently gauging him. “Tom asked us not to share too much with you. Truth be told, he hasn’t shared much with me either. I think a guy like Tom has managed to stay this quiet by only revealing the big picture to his inner circle. The rest of us are there to do his bidding, and I’m cool with that. If he can bring an end to this, I’ll do anything.”
“I heard you lost two good friends on the way here,” Dex said before taking a bite of the chicken. Was that rosemary? He took another bite, nearly forgetting what he’d said when Monet answered.
“I did. Jackfish and Crash. But I protected the kid, and the plans,” she said.
“The Gateway…”
“The Gateway,” she confirmed.
“Do you know who they are?”
“Who?”
“The twins.” Dex tried the potatoes and tasted what he remembered as garlic. Another blast from his past. He almost wanted to tell Tom the deal was off so he could remain at the base where there was fresh food on the menu.
“No, I didn’t. Alec was as surprised as anyone that he had a brother,” Monet told him.
“This Alec, is he a good man?”
“He’s stronger than he thinks. You have to understand… growing up under the Occupation isn’t easy. It wears on you until you have no free will; your body gets only enough nutrients to make it through the work shifts each day. Alec’s what I’d call a dreamer. From what I can tell, he clung to the belief he could escape.”
“And he did,” Dex said.
“Yes. He did.”
“With your help, of course.” Dex stated the obvious.
“He helped me along the way too.”
The mess hall emptied as the other remaining diners placed their dirty dishes near the door and walked away, leaving Monet and Dex alone.
“Let me ask you something.” Dex ate the last mouthful of peas, relishing each chew.
“Shoot.” Monet picked at her own food with a fork.
“All of this. Can it be real? Does Tom really think he can stop the Occupation? How? It’s twenty-five years too late. The aliens aren’t seeking a foothold; they have their entire damn leg embedded in our world,” Dex said quietly.
“It’s real enough. Even if we fail, isn’t it worth trying?”
Dex wasn’t used to being around such optimism, and he found it both unsettling and inspirational. “So you think we can beat them?”
“Truth time?” she asked.
He nodded, dropping his fork to the table with a clank.
“Not without an army,” she told him.
This was one thing they could agree on.
Chapter 3
Lina
Lina remained quiet in spite of the many questions she wanted to ask. There were too many people inside the packed room listening to the man in charge, the elder called Tom, who pointed at a large map on a screen.
The map was of their entire country, and just seeing it displayed on the wall made her feel very small, reminding her how little she really understood about anything.
Lina felt confused and ignorant. She occupied one of the few chairs in the room while others stood and tried to understand what was happening. She heard Tom’s words, but a lot of what he said didn't make sense to her, which only served to exaggerate how out of place she felt there.
She listened to his words, seeing his mouth move at a distance but hearing him speak through a black box high on the wall off to her left.
“It’s confirmed,” he said with excitement mixed with anger. “This is where the Overseers are building a device they refer to as a Gateway. Our intel can’t say definitively what this means, but it’s a safe bet to assume that we don’t want any kind of gateway for more of the bastards to come to Earth.”
Lina glanced around, recognizing the faces of the few people she knew there—the only people she knew anywhere—but that familiarity didn’t alleviate any of her feelings at being so far out of her depth that she may as well have been the alien. The display on the screen was too far away to make out clearly, but she’d only just located the letters that said New Mexico when the map disappeared and was replaced by complex white lines on a dark blue background.
“These schematics,” Tom said, “courtesy of Monet and Alec, show the device they’ve been building for so long using our people as expendable slave labor. While this is effectively an educated guess, our working theory is that this gateway connects to another one on their own planet.”
Murmurs rippled around the room, making Lina experience a sense of worry that she didn’t fully understand as she picked up on the subliminal shift in mood.
“If,” Tom said, having to raise his voice to cut through the chatter and regain control of the room. “If they succeed in completing this and they create a stable bridge between their world and ours, we might as well give up.”
“What do they want?” a voice asked from behind her, making her crane her neck to locate the speaker. She wasn’t used to this kind of meeting; she was more accustomed to a circle of people sitting around a low fire, all respecting one another’s right to speak uninterrupted.
“What do they want?” Tom asked with a snort of laughter that held precisely zero amusement. “What they’ve always wanted. Our water. Our air. Our wood, metal, people, oil… whatever resources we have is what they want. And if they open up this gateway, then they’ll be sending it all there and what happens when we’re done fetching it for them?”
“This is all guesswork, though, right?” another voice asked. The man sounded like he wanted the explanation to be a simple one, as though there could be a resolution without conflict. She thought that kind of hope was more like cowardice than good sense.
“Not entirely,” Tom admitted, “but the assumptions are based on what we’ve uncovered about our enemy. Ask yourself this; when they’ve got what they came here for, what do you think will happen to us? What do you think will happen to the hundreds of thousands of people, trapped in their work camps all over the United States? All over the world?”
Tom stepped down from the dais, looking each person he approached directly in the eye to see if they had an answer for him.
“Wake up,” he said without malice. “This is it. This is their end game; if we don’t stop them now, then we all die. Whether it’s quick or slow, do we want to go meekly into the light without having fought for what’s ours? Without having fought for our home?”
The murmurs shifted, swelling in anger and resilience but now in agreement with Tom instead of against him in fear. Lina relaxed a little, feeling the mood turn in a direction that didn’t frighten her.
“How many people can we bring against them?” a voice she recognized very well asked. Leaning forward, she saw Cole, the young man she had walked for days on end beside, who had saved her life and she had saved his. Cole was the only other person on the planet she hadn’t just met.
“Right now?” Tom asked in loud response for everyone to hear. “About eight hundred.” Noises erupted from the room, which took Tom almost half a minute to quiet.
“Eight hundred from here, but more from other places.” With a nod, the schematics on the wall behind him disappeared to be replaced by the map again, but this time, it had blue icons marked on it all over the continent.
“We have fighters hidden in Rave
n Rock,” Tom said, “but we have no intention of starting a fight we can’t win.” He turned and pointed at the icons on the map. “These are pockets of survivors. Little parts of humanity left that the Overseers either don’t know about or haven’t gotten around to hurting yet. If we unite these people, if we bring in the Freeborn, we’ll have the numbers to make this work.”
“Freeborn?” another voice asked, less hostile but skeptical. “How do we even know if these people can fight?” Tom didn’t answer, but his eyes found Lina in a heartbeat as if he was keenly aware of precisely where she quietly sat.
“Lina hasn’t been trained in battle like we have, yet she made it here over hundreds of miles with Seekers, Trackers, and Roamers on her tail. Don’t underestimate anyone. There are Navajo all over this region of Arizona, at least six large villages, and I’m sure they’ll join us.”
“That still only leaves us with hundreds, maybe a couple thousand,” a man who sat near Lina said. “And the Overseers have that and more. Not to mention their drones and any birdbrains in the area.”
At the derogatory mention of the aliens, the mood in the room dropped again, to even lower than when the man had mentioned the drones. Lina fought to control a shudder as her body recalled the feelings of being pursued relentlessly by the Tracker.
“Will they join us?” the man introduced to her as Alec asked.
“They will if we send one of their own as an envoy,” Tom said, his eyes burrowing into Lina’s soul. She’d already agreed to do what he’d asked her, mostly because there wasn’t any way she could say no. She had no home to return to, and she couldn’t expect these strange new people to let her stay in their underground village if she wasn’t prepared to work. Her only grievance was that Cole wouldn’t be coming with her.
“Lina has agreed to go to these villages and unite the Freeborn to our cause,” Tom said. “Monet will accompany her.”
At the mention of the tough woman’s name, Lina’s eyes scanned the room until she found her. She seemed angry, her own eyes shooting fire at Tom as though the news of her accompanying Lina was a surprise. Tom seemed to ignore her as Alec asked another question.
“Is that going to be enough?”
“I doubt it,” Tom said, “but there’s another faction we need to reach out to if we want to make this work; and make no mistake, we need this to work.”
“Who?” Alec asked. “With the Reclaimers and the Freeborn, who else is there? Can we liberate the work camps?”
“Not them,” Tom said. “Not yet. I’m talking about the Roamers.”
The room erupted again in noise. Lina was frightened by the rising volume, as her whole life had been spent keeping a low profile out in the open, but here, safely underground, these Reclaimers made far too much sound for her sensitive ears.
“Cole will head to Chicago with Captain Soares, and they’ll convince the Roamers living underground there to join us.” He nodded again, and the map changed to another image, which was a mixture of the schematic and the map on a small scale. Lina hadn’t seen anything like it before and waited to hear more.
“Our intel, which is pretty solid before anyone asks, is that they occupy the old subway system. We could be looking at anywhere up to two thousand people.”
Noise broke out again as everyone tried to shout a question all at once. An older man, one close to Tom’s age, Lina guessed, finally stood and hollered at the room for stillness in a voice so powerful, so commanding, that Lina found herself frozen to her chair.
“Control yourselves,” the man roared. “Show some goddamn respect and shut your pie-holes.” Satisfied that he’d silenced the room for Tom to speak, he gave him a nod and took his seat again.
“Thank you, Captain,” Tom said. Lina saw his eyes and sensed there was some kind of unspoken communication between the two men. She suspected that Tom was telling him he could’ve managed that himself. The guy he’d called Captain smirked like he didn’t have the time to wait. “As I was saying,” Tom went on, “we could add thousands to our forces if we’re able to coordinate our attack.”
Lina saw Cole gaze directly at her, his own face registering the same kind of shock hers had, but Tom spoke again before he could say anything.
“And I’ll be going to the West Coast with Alec, where there are more like us, only they’re more interested in hiding than fighting.”
The man who had yelled for quiet turned out to be called Soares, and he dismissed everyone. Lina found herself beckoned to the front of the room where six of them remained: her, Monet, Alec and Cole, Soares and Tom.
Tom met her gaze and appeared to recognize that she had questions.
“Yes, Lina?”
“How…” she began, her voice uncertain. “How are we supposed to convince anyone to do anything? If they’re safe where they are, why would they fight if they don’t have any idea what’s happening?”
“Because we have a secret weapon,” Tom said with a wry smile.
“What weapon?”
“Hope, primarily,” Tom said enigmatically.
“How can we give them hope?” Alec asked.
“We can’t,” Tom said. “You and your brother can. Just like you did the last time you were together.”
Chapter 4
Tom
“Thanks for meeting with me, boys,” Tom said, staring at the twins from across his desk. It was early in the morning, but that was impossible to tell from inside the mountain. His nephews were so different from the last time he’d seen them in the wild. Although it had been longer with Cole than Alec, it was the short-haired boy that appeared so much older. His eyes were brighter, no longer subdued and constantly scared.
Tom remembered seeing Alec for the first time and how sad the occasion had been. He hadn’t been able to tell the young man he was his uncle. All he’d been able to do was be a supportive ear and shoulder during his own tenure at the Detroit facility. Leaving Alec alone there had broken his heart, but he had always known he’d find him again.
Cole had been another story altogether. Even now, the glowering looks remained. He hated people telling him what to do, or how to do it, though Tom didn’t think the man realized it.
Neither of the brothers said a word, and Tom reclined in his chair, placing his hands behind his head. “Boys… I owe you both an apology.”
“Damn right you do!” Alec stood up, knocking his chair to the ground. “I thought you were dead! I… I was so close to giving up, so many times.” His posture slackened, his chin dropping to his chest.
“I understand, Alec, but don’t you see why I did it?” Tom needed them to understand. “It’s about so much more than any of us as individuals.”
“True, but that doesn’t make it any easier.” Alec righted his chair and seated himself grudgingly.
“I had to scout the facility and I couldn’t take any chances. When I tracked you there, I needed to see that you were okay,” Tom said.
“But I wasn’t okay, Tom.”
“You will be.”
“Listen, we could sit around all day talking about how shitty life has been, but can we move past this? I have preparations to make if I’m going to make it to Chicago on this insane schedule,” Cole interrupted.
Tom saw the spark that never went out in Cole’s eyes. There was no way he was going to fail in this mission. He couldn’t. “Without the Roamers, we’ve already lost,” Tom told him.
“Agreed. What did you want to talk to us about?” Cole asked.
Tom sighed. “Your parents were incredible people.”
Alec leaned forward, and Cole brushed his hair from his face.
“Your father’s name was Travis Mason. He was a congressman in Washington, DC. Powerful man. I’d figured he might have had to cut a few proverbial throats to rise to the top at such a young age, but I did the same thing to make Colonel by thirty-five,” Tom said.
“What’s a congressman?” Alec asked, and Tom smiled at the young man. He often forgot how much of their history was
lost already. It was a travesty. Returning their humanity was going to take several generations, even if they did vanquish the invaders once and for all.
“They are members of the House of…”
“Who cares what they did? It’s a dead occupation,” Cole said sharply. It was clear that Cole wasn’t as thrilled to hear about his lineage as his brother.
“It doesn’t matter. That was only his job, not the man. He was caring, passionate, and a loving husband,” Tom said. “He always stood up for the little guys, and would drop anything if you needed him. It was one of the reasons your mother fell in love with him.”
“You knew them?” Alec asked.
“I should hope so. Travis… your father… was my little brother.”
“Are you kidding me?” Cole asked. “That makes you… what?”
“Your uncle,” Tom told them.
Alec stared at him, unmoving. Cole had averted his gaze.
“You’re my nephews. And that’s why I tried to be there for you.”
“Tried. You came and went as you pleased, and from what I hear, you only spent a short time with this one and didn’t even say goodbye, let alone tell him who you were. Some family.” Cole was angry, and Tom couldn’t blame him.
Alec ignored him. “Tell us about our mother.”
“She was a gem. Born Elaine Rachael Bartholomew, in Queens, New York. They met at Harvard years later, and he stood up for her after she was nearly kicked out for a controversial essay on modern politics.”
“What did they look like?” Alec asked, while Cole continued to glower silently. It was obvious Cole was soaking it all in, nonetheless.
“Your father looked much like you did, especially at your age. He was trim but in shape. He loved running. That was his thing since high school.” Tom settled on Cole, who was a fantastic long-distance runner in his own right. You had to be with Trackers chasing you. Tom used a key from his pocket to unlock a drawer, sliding a rusty metal box out. He opened it, removing a stack of photos. There were only a few, and they were worn and faded.
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