One Giant Leap

by Heather Kaczynski

  Were they baiting the megobari fleets to come to Earth to force an end to the war? Did they simply want to take another world from the megobari?

  I wondered, not for the first time, why the vrag were like this. Maybe I couldn’t hope to understand the motivation of an alien intelligence; maybe their reasons would make no sense to me. Maybe they really were, as Luka had said, mindless killing machines. Maybe.

  But as far as anyone here knew, they hadn’t harmed a soul on Earth—hadn’t been threatening toward human lives at all except when we were on megobari ships. Perhaps they hadn’t meant to kill my crew? They couldn’t have known we were on board. Maybe we were just collateral damage.

  My thoughts, as always, circled back to Luka. Was he still out there? Had he made it back to Earth? Was he safe? Was he waiting for me at our meeting place, wondering what had held me up?

  Of all the scenarios we’d imagined returning to, this hadn’t been one of them.

  The not knowing was a bottomless pit. I could toss questions into it all day long and never get any answers. I had to shut off that part of my brain.

  By the time the car was pulling off the interstate and heading onto residential roads, my eyes were blurring with fatigue, the sky was growing dark, and my stomach groaned in weak protest.

  It felt surreal to pull into the parking lot of Mitsuko’s apartment complex—seeing the details of her normal, everyday life for the first time. This girl I’d considered a close friend but had really only known for a few weeks in a very strange, isolated environment.

  The forced intimacy of our selection had made us close quickly, but it had been a false kind of intimacy, a shallow one, based on a set of rules and circumstances that no longer existed. Was Mitsuko still the same person, here in real life? I braced myself to meet a stranger.

  She was standing outside, leaning on her building’s staircase as we exited the car, a lone figure in the cool blue light. The evening air was sticky and warm, the grass crunchy from drought. Birds flittered between the trees and the sun was melting into a warm puddle behind the apartment roofline.

  I’d seen that sun with no filter, like the brightest searchlight in the dark.

  For a moment I felt unsteady, until Hanna noticed me wavering and grabbed my elbow with a questioning furrow in her brow.

  I took in a long breath, filled my lungs with the scent of life. A scent I’d taken for granted, had almost forgotten. Life. Earth. The birdsong was so loud to my ears. The smell of the air, thick with scents of exhaust and tar and fast food and flowers.

  The very fact of our existence was a miracle.

  Mitsuko’s eyes slid over to Hanna and then back to me as we approached. I was wearing the same space suit I’d worn for days, maybe weeks, and carrying my helmet. I was bizarrely out of place. “Wow, okay. So you weren’t kidding.” She examined my face, smoothing back my hair, like my mother would when she was trying to see if I had a fever, then handed me a mug of coffee. “Drink this. I have a feeling we’re in for a long night.”

  Mitsuko pressed her thumbprint to the door lock and led us inside. It was a nice apartment, in a nice area. She must have found a good job. But then, of course she had. “Emilio will be over in, like, five minutes. He doesn’t live far.”

  The apartment was clean and nicely decorated, warm and chic, but I barely registered details. Her husband, Michael, was in the kitchen laboring over something on the stove that smelled like peppers, and my stomach reminded me that it had been a long, long time since I’d eaten cooked food.

  Mitsuko laughed, and the sound relaxed me despite the sense of urgency I still felt beneath the surface. “This is weird. Go sit. I’ll find you some clothes to change into. I have to say, I did not expect you to show up in a literal space suit, Cass.”

  I sank into the comfort of a well-worn couch, let my eyes close, and thanked everything that was listening for good friends and soft landings.

  But along with gratitude came the guilt. I’d brought the world’s problems to her doorstep, and it wasn’t her responsibility to deal with them. It was weird to intrude on her life like this. The amount of time I’d been gone was twice the length of time I’d known her.

  I’d been a little jealous, on that last day before launch, that Emilio and Mitsuko would continue on with their normal lives while I risked mine for untold and unknown dangers. And now here I was, in the heart of her everyday life for the first time. It made me realize, too, the starkness of our age difference. She was an independent adult, and I hadn’t even graduated high school.

  I felt the couch cushions shift and opened my eyes to see Mitsuko beside me. Wordless, she gathered me into a tight, fragrant hug. She was a blur of glossy black hair and toned arms, until I blinked the tears away.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, Cass.”

  I smiled as best I could while my face was smashed into her hair. She held me longer than I’d expect a normal hug to last, releasing me only when Michael came in to announce dinner was ready.

  I’d seen Michael only once, when I’d said good-bye to Mitsuko before the launch, and I’d been a little too distracted to notice much about him. His hair was short and military-precise, his face angular and handsome. I thought I remembered her saying something about him being in law enforcement. He was taller even than Mitsuko, with broad shoulders and a generally stoic expression. I hadn’t heard him say more than a handful of words. I didn’t have the energy to talk just yet, so I was grateful to mostly be left alone while the others spoke in undertones around me.

  I changed into the spare clothes Mitsuko had brought me—everything was a bit too long, but after wearing the same skintight suit for days on end, it felt amazing just to be able to wear cotton that smelled like laundry detergent.

  We sat down at the dinner table just as their front door opened. Emilio had let himself in with the fingerprint lock—Mitsuko must’ve programmed him into the system. He made a beeline for me. I’d barely gotten out of my chair when he grabbed me in the most enthusiastic hug I think I’d ever received.

  When he pulled away, still keeping a grip on my shoulders, he was grinning. “It’s really you, Cass! You fucking did it! Look at you, all grown up and back from space. And I won’t even mention the fact that you called Mitsuko for help instead of me. Totally over it. Water under the bridge.”

  “Let the poor girl sit!” Mitsuko chided, whacking him in the arm with a cloth napkin. “She’s starving. Oh my God, Emilio, can you chill?”

  Still grinning, he settled into the open chair beside me. He’d let his hair grow back out, but the top where he’d once had a Mohawk was still longer than the rest. And other than being a little more tanned than when I’d first met him—we’d spent most of the competition indoors—he looked the same.

  I dove into my plate, unable to restrain myself any longer. “This is the best meal I’ve had in my entire life,” I said with my mouth full. “Just nobody tell my grandma I said that.”

  Mitsuko rolled her eyes.

  “Hanna drove me here,” I said by way of explanation, when Emilio spotted her across the table. “I was literally in a cornfield in the middle of nowhere. I wouldn’t be here without her.”

  “No, you’d probably be in some SEE containment facility, being interrogated by Clayton Crane,” Hanna said quietly.

  Mitsuko lifted her eyebrows, giving Hanna her full attention for the first time. “Then we owe you.”

  Mitsuko must’ve told Michael that I was vegetarian, because the burritos on my plate were full of beans, rice, and peppers. I’d inhaled half of one before I realized everyone at the table was quietly sneaking glances at me as they chatted, but no one was talking about the elephant in the room. My attention was torn between Emilio and Mitsuko catching up about work—apparently they worked together at some NASA contractor—and the TV in the other room that was still showing a never-ending stream of Alien News. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the footage, replayed every five minutes, of the vrag ship. A black, starless void, as see
n from the camera of a passing surveillance satellite. Had it really been here for months? Waiting, watching?

  And why?

  It hadn’t descended from low Earth orbit, hadn’t breached the atmosphere. There had to be a reason.

  I grew quietly restless, the easy conversations of my friends becoming an annoying background noise. I couldn’t just sit here like a normal person. There were murderers circling overhead and here I was having dinner with friends. Luka was waiting for me. Alone, in danger. With that specter of a ship up there looking for him.

  My leg started to bounce.

  “Earth to Cass? You want me to take your plate?”

  I snapped my grim attention back to Emilio. He’d been grinning at his dumb little joke, but the mood went somber as everyone else found what caught my attention.

  “The world’s gone topsy-turvy since you left, Cass,” Mitsuko said quietly, putting down her plate. She put a hand on my knee to stop its anxious bouncing, her eyes full of worry—an expression I wasn’t used to seeing from her. “I guess that’s why you’re here.”

  My eyes slid to Michael, an unasked question.

  “We can trust him,” Suko said, without her eyes leaving mine. “He knows everything that I do. Which isn’t much,” she prompted.

  I caught them up on everything I’d told Hanna: waking up on the alien planet, meeting Luka and his family, and their deaths at the hands of the vrag.

  Other than saying “Holy shit! Really?” when told about Luka’s identity, Mitsuko and Emilio took it all in without comment.

  “So now SEE, and a lot of other people, are probably looking for me. Which means I can’t go home. And the vrag are definitely looking for me. I need to meet Luka at his family’s safe house as soon as possible, so we can figure out our next move.”

  “Holy shit,” Emilio said again, putting down his can of Coke. “I might need a stiffer drink.”

  “They’ll be looking for me, too,” Hanna added. “And probably everyone in this room.”

  There was a moment of tense silence.

  I nodded once, decisive, dreading what I had to do. “So thank you for dinner, everyone. But I can’t stay.”

  Mitsuko leveled her calm gaze at me. All trace of mirth had gone from her face. “What do you need us to do?”

  I blinked. “You’ve done plenty. I can’t ask you to do more. You’ve already put yourselves at risk just by letting me stay here.”

  “Cass. Where are you going to go? Where are you going to stay?” Mitsuko’s voice was flat. “You don’t have a car or money, or even any clothes that fit you.”

  “We’re gonna help you regardless, so you might as well tell us what you need,” Emilio said. “What else are friends for, if not helping you escape from a mad scientist’s corporation, the US government, and a mother ship full of murderous aliens?”

  “If your friends don’t show up to help you save the world, you need to get new friends,” Mitsuko agreed.

  On the way here, I’d doubted they would even believe me, much less drop everything to help me. Would I have been as welcoming to someone I barely knew showing up without warning six months after we’d said good-bye, telling the kind of story I had?

  “Wherever you’re going, I’m going, too,” Hanna said, adamant. “I can’t exactly go back now.”

  They were all staring at me expectantly. Waiting for me to tell them the plan.

  I bit back a smile and forced my exhausted, overloaded brain to fire up a few more synapses. “First, I need to get to Luka. I have GPS coordinates for a safe house where we’re supposed to meet. We’ll plan our next move there. Second, I need to figure out how to convince the world that the vrag are not our new best friends and we need to get rid of them.” I didn’t tell them about the third thing: that Luka and I brought an alien weapon back with us, and I still hadn’t figured out what it did or how to turn it on.

  “You know that Crane has been working with the feds,” Hanna told the others quietly. “SEE handles so many contracts for NASA, they basically are NASA now. The only functioning part, anyway. I heard that as soon as that vrag ship was spotted in orbit, Crane got a call directly from the president. Crane is her number-one man for dealing with the alien threat.”

  Emilio groaned. “Oh, boy. So Crane is a phone call away from mobilizing the feds to come find you guys.”

  Mitsuko stood up. “Well, then we need to leave, don’t we?”

  “What—right now?” Emilio looked perplexed.

  “Didn’t you hear her? Cass, how far away is this safe house?”

  I told them the coordinates.

  Michael pulled out his phone and began typing, but Mitsuko ripped the device out of his hands and threw it out of his reach. “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t type those numbers into Google.” She rolled her eyes. “Were you not listening? SEE is working with the feds.”

  “I’m a fed,” he replied, a little insulted.

  “Not like these guys,” Hanna said darkly.

  Mitsuko ignored them both. “The NSA is probably watching our phones right now. We need to get burners, stat.” She started to wordlessly count out something on her fingers. “Okay. We need supplies and a rental car. Though it’d really help if we knew how far we had to drive.”

  I closed my eyes. Sunny didn’t have access to Odysseus’s sensors or GPS satellites anymore, and could only access her memory plus whatever I had stored in my brain. But maybe she had something in her memory that would help. I repeated the coordinates in my mind like a question and reached out, curious, searching for any hint of a foreign presence.

  It didn’t even take effort. The answer was simply in my mind, as though I had known it all along. “About eight hours. It’s western Texas, somewhere outside Big Bend National Park.”

  Emilio whistled, impressed. He didn’t ask how I knew. “Isolated. That’s desert country out there.”

  With the dishes cleared, we moved the conversation to the living room couch. The softness of its cushions was calling my name, but I forced my eyes to remain open.

  While Mitsuko busied herself making lists, Hanna excused herself to the restroom, and Emilio came to sit beside me, handing me a cold can of Coke. His energy was quiet and serious, so different from the kid I’d known him as. Now I saw that he’d aged considerably in the last few months. “Hey, bud. You okay? I mean, really. It sounds like you . . . you’ve been through a lot in the past few days.”

  “It’s been rough,” I said, barking a laugh to cover the break in my voice. “I’m really sorry about this, by the way.”

  His lips tightened and he studied me. “You know it’s not an issue. Cass, come on. I told you that we’d gone through some serious shit together and I’d never forget that. You saved my life. That doesn’t just . . . go away.”

  “It’s just been so long that I . . . figured you guys would forget about me. Move on.”

  He raised his eyebrows at me expectantly. “I’m really glad to see you again. Even under these circumstances. And I’m glad you’re okay.”

  I popped the can open. The sugar hit my tongue in an explosion that made my eyes water.

  I’d been nervous that maybe the friendship we’d formed had been in my imagination, or would’ve faded with time and distance. But, again, I’d been wrong. I’d been wrong a lot.

  I leaned my head back against the couch and just let myself be in the moment. Not since I woke from stasis had I been able to let my guard down even for an instant. But now I was safe, with friends, and had other people sharing my burden. It felt . . . nice.

  I let my eyes slide closed.

  Then the last few moments before I escaped in the pod flashed before my eyes, the moment lasting longer in my memory than in reality. The unmoored, stomach-dropping feeling of being shot out into space. And then that last view of Luka turning the ship away from Earth.

  Please be okay.

  I forced my eyes back open. Would I forever see the most traumatic moments of my life every time I clos
ed my eyes?

  Thankfully, Emilio and Michael were having some kind of discussion and didn’t notice me startle out of my reverie.

  “And this is better than you stealing parts from work . . . why?” Michael asked.

  “Everyone uses the 3-D printer for personal stuff. I mean, you’re not exactly supposed to, but they do. So it won’t be out of the ordinary. As long as I space it out and maybe do it a few times when people aren’t around. You never know when you might need an extra screwdriver.”

  “I didn’t hear any of this,” Michael said, going into the kitchen and returning with a can of beer for Emilio.

  “You gotta stop buying this cheap shit, Mike.”

  “I buy it special for you. I know you secretly like it.”

  “Thanks for looking out. Asshole.” But it was good-natured, friendly. Emilio grinned and popped the top of the can.

  I watched the exchange with curiosity. This was like being inside a zoo exhibit full of animals I’d only ever seen from far away.

  So this was what it was like to be an adult and have friends who lived in their own apartments, had their own jobs. It seemed nice. I’d never had much luck on the friend thing up until now. But maybe there was hope for my future.

  Assuming we had a future.

  Hanna returned, holding her phone aloft. “Whatever plans you all are making, you’d better hurry. The vrag are upping the ante. Cassie’s name and picture just went up on the internet as a wanted person.”

  Nineteen

  MITSUKO GAVE A decisive nod and pushed to her feet. “Okay then. Target closes soon. I’m off to get supplies. Cass, you want anything special? Em?”

  We both shook our heads, and Mitsuko swept out the door without asking Hanna if she wanted anything. Hanna didn’t seem surprised, but I was—that Mitsuko could hold on to a grudge this long, under these circumstances.