by Lysa Daley
Fantastic. Not only did I fail to get the information we came to get on the Draconians, but I also gave away the crystals. To top it off, we’ve been ambushed.
“Go! I’m right behind you,” he yells.
I race out of the building back into the old bazaar. The street, packed with shoppers when we entered, is now a ghost town. All the shoppers are gone. The stalls are empty. Doors and windows are shuttered tight.
Where did everyone go?
I guess you don't get to be one of the oldest marketplaces on the planet unless you know how to avoid trouble.
I search the street looking for Ruby and Chad, but they're gone too. Fitz probably pulled them out at the first sign of trouble.
Footsteps pound toward me from down the corridor, and I’m really, really hoping it’s my uncle. I’m relieved when he appears and takes my hand without slowing his pace.
Running together back toward the market’s entrance we come crashing to a halt when we see four men and one woman, dressed in black suits with dark sunglasses, round the corner blocking our path.
“Horlocks,” I spit out.
“Damn it!” My uncle curses as we change directions. “Kraken sold us out.”
Sprinting back in the direction that we just came from, we spot three additional suits heading towards us. Now we’re trapped.
My uncle looks around. “Right or left?”
“What?”
“Those are your choices. Do we go right or left?”
Neither choice seems better than the other. Both directions mean we’re going to have to fight our way through the densely cluttered rows of merchant booths.
“Okay then… right,” I blurt out.
We head right, taking off down the narrow, curving passageway between an ancient two-story building. Unfortunately, we can't see straight to the end of the path so we may be running towards a dead end.
Our paths take a sharp left, and another street opens up in front of us. Just as we get to the end of the passageway, a beige Jeep comes screeching to a halt. Big burly O’Malley, the Eye in the Sky head of security, is at the wheel with Chad in the front seat. Ruby’s in the back holding on for dear life.
Chad leaps out and opens the back door, “Get in!”
He doesn't have to ask me twice. I practically dive head first into the backseat with my uncle right behind me. The door isn’t even shut before the jeep speeds away.
“Kraken double-crossed us,” my uncle tells them.
“Did you get the information?” O’Malley asks, getting right down to business. “We need a location.”
“No,” I reply.
“No?” my uncle asks surprised. “You didn’t get the intel? I just assumed since you were in there for so long…”
It isn't until right at this moment that I realize I still have the spoon in my hand. I've been clutching it so tightly there's a spoon-shaped indentation in my palm.
“Well, I sort of got it,” I say vaguely. “I got something.”
“Sort of?” my uncle presses me.
Ruby, who’s looking over her shoulder behind her, interrupts, “Why don't we discuss this when we’re someplace a little safer. Right now there's a big scary SUV gaining on us.”
I whip around and look out the rear window to see the black SUV. It doesn’t seem to care about anything or anyone around it as it plows into storefronts and merchant stalls. It completely takes out a giant planter and line of benches.
If a man walking his camel hadn’t gotten the animal out of the way at the last second, they’d both be Egyptian roadkill at this point.
“How did they get here so fast?” Chad asks.
“Same way we did,” Ruby says from the back. “A little alien technology.”
Speaking of which, I’m relieved to see our own personal U.F.O. waiting for us on the roof at the end of the boulevard. The jeep pulls to a screeching halt in front of a small European style hotel across from a park. Piling out of the jeep, we dash through the lobby then up the stairs to the rooftop where a helicopter waits for us.
Except, this helicopter isn’t just a helicopter.
“Let’s go!” The already spinning blades pick up speed as our fearless leader Fitz, in the passenger seat, waves us toward him.
Our group piles in the copter, and the door slams shut. Our pilot Tanaka struggles to steady the helicopter.
“What’s wrong?” my uncle asks.
“The wind has picked up, and the engines are straining under our weight,” he explains.
The helicopter slowly lifts off the rooftop, but the wind is making us lurch dangerously. We aren’t five feet off the roof when the suits come pouring out after us.
“Let’s do this thing, Tanaka,” Fitz commands. “Get this bird in the air.”
“I have to lose the cloaking if we’re going to make it out of here,” Tanaka counters as the Horlocks take aim at us.
“Then lose it,” Fitz yells.
“Yes, sir!” Tanaka punches some buttons, and the helicopter instantly transforms into a supersonic alien limo service.
Now we’re rock steady in the air. The wind is no longer a factor.
“Maybe get us out of here before too many cell phones can get a photo of us,” my uncle suggests.
“No worries, sir,” O’Malley says. “I just sent a small magnetic pulse to knock out all electronics within a two-mile radius for the next 90 seconds.”
“What’s that mean?” Ruby asks me.
“It means everyone is trying to figure out why their cell phone isn’t working,” I say.
She pulls her phone out to find she has no signal. “Huh? How often do they do this?”
I'm wondering the same thing. “I’m pretty sure you don’t want to know the answer to that.”
Now, in its alien form, our craft shoots up above Cairo. From up here, it's a beautiful view. We swing left flying over the Nile then past the pyramids cutting north over Cairo University.
By the time were over the desert, Tanaka accelerates, speeding west across the rough Atlantic Ocean heading back toward our new base on the East Coast.
Chapter 4
A commercial airplane flies between 30,000 to 40,000 feet off the ground. Just before we begin our descent, our craft is effortlessly gliding along at roughly 90,000 feet above the Earth. Oh yeah, we’re also traveling at just over 2500 m.p.h. so our trip has taken us under an hour.
Unlike a conventional helicopter in which you can barely hear yourself think, the interior is like riding inside noise-canceling headphones. Whisper quiet.
The craft slowly decelerates, and O’Malley turns from the pilot’s seat to tell us, “We’re approximately one hundred miles outside of D.C. In two minutes, conversion tactics will begin.”
“What’s that mean again?” Ruby leans over and asks.
“It means we’re changing back into a helicopter. He’s going to reactivate the cloaking, so no one will see a space ship landing in Washington D.C.”
Two minutes later, we’re hovering in mid-air at approximately 40,000 feet, the cloaking mechanism kicks in turning us back into a regular old, standard-issue helicopter.
The only problem with this procedure is that helicopters normally can't fly 40,000 feet above the ground. But I guess no one is really watching, or we have clearance to continue with our little charade.
Soon we’re back to being just a regular helicopter zooming over the D.C. skyline. Lucky for us, it's a cloudy day over Washington DC. And while it's true that Washington is a city with highly restricted airspace, for obvious national security reasons, it's also a city that's used to seeing lots of helicopters flying by. This means nobody on the ground pays much attention to us. We’re a totally unremarkable sight.
Which is exactly how we like it.
The helicopter lands on the roof of a luxury hotel called the Adams-Day. It’s situated spitting distance from the White House.
For most of my life on Earth, I've lived out in the middle of nowhere. Mostly in small towns
off the beaten path or bland little suburbs outside of medium-sized towns. So when we took up residence a quarter of a mile away from one of the most protected buildings on the planet, I was a little surprised. To say the least.
I was even more stunned when my uncle brought me down to a secret bunker, the size of a Walmart, located beneath the hotel. It was built to house important government officials in a time of extreme crisis. With rations that can last 30 years, this bunker was built during the height of the Cold War to be a place for political bigwigs to hide out in case of nuclear war.
And for a bunker, it's surprisingly swanky, complete with a swimming pool, exercise room, spa and sauna, bar and café. I'm not kidding when I tell you there's an ice cream parlor.
I share a two bedroom suite with my uncle. It’s small, but it’s still a suite, complete with a tiny living room and a kitchenette. It's decorated in colonial chic with lots of cherry wood and overstuffed butter yellow furniture. Still, it takes a while to get used to the fact that there are no windows.
Above the bunker, the hotel has a ton of security because a lot of foreign dignitaries stay here. No one even bats an eye at the guards with guns stationed all over the place. This made it easy for our Eye in the Sky group to move in.
The helicopter powers down on the rooftop helipad. We're so close to the White House that I can see the armed snipers dressed in black on the rooftop. They're strategically placed so that it's really hard to spot them from the ground level.
But don't kid yourself. They're there.
We take the service elevator down to our bunker. Fitz gives us a 15-minute break to wash up and grab a bottle of water before we reconvene in the conference room to debrief.
“Oh score!” Ruby says, rummaging around in the refrigerator of the kitchen off the cluster of rooms that make up the command center. “I got the last two Diet Cokes. Want one?”
“Thanks,” I say as she hands it to me then tosses Chad a Mountain Dew.
Chad pops the can open and takes a big swig. “That sure hits the spot after our little Middle Eastern adventure.”
We’ve been living in the bowels of this hotel for nearly four months. Ruby and Chad are my only two friends. You might think that so much constant togetherness would get on our nerves. But, if anything, it’s made the three of us much closer.
After washing the Egyptian dust off our faces, we head into a conference room that’s been turned into a high-tech command center.
Fitz and my uncle are deep in conversation when we enter.
“Did they track us?” Fitz asks, standing in front of a dozen monitors continuously updating their various information.
“They tried. Looks like the Horlocks lost you just past the coast of North Africa,” Simmons says. She stayed behind to monitor our progress from here.
Fitz already knows that Kraken didn't give me the information we were hoping for.
“Let’s see it,” Fitz asks, holding out his hand.
I sheepishly pull the small white spoon from my pocket and hand it to Fitz. He turns it over in his hand, holding it close to his face to examine the delicate little utensil.
“My grandmother used to have spoons like this. They’re for something special.” Fitz says, running his finger over the smooth surface. “I don't remember what for.”
Everyone seems perplexed and until Simmons says, “That's for caviar.”
“Those little raw fish eggs?” Chad frowns. “You're supposed to eat them with a special spoon?”
“It's mother of pearl,” she explains. “It comes from the lining of a mollusk shell. I’m not sure if it’s oyster or abalone…”
“How do you know that?” Chad asks her.
She shrugs. “What can I say? I’m a well-educated woman.”
Tanaka is typing into his computer. “Two substances, one mineral and the other organic, combine to create mother of pearl. Tiny hexagonal plates of aragonite, a form of calcium carbonate, are arranged in layers alternating with conchiolin, a flexible protein similar to silk that is secreted by the mollusk. Aragonite on its own is very brittle, but combined with the protein it forms a strong, flexible material that can withstand hard use.”
“What mollusk is it from?” my uncle asks.
Tanaka scans his screen. “Pearl oysters and abalone are both sources of this substance, which is widely used as an inlay in jewelry, furniture, and musical instruments. Mother of pearl comes in several natural colors, but is often bleached and dyed for decorative use.”
“Is this a joke or something?” I ask. “Why’d a big scary alien give me a tiny spoon for caviar?”
Fitz shakes his head, “Kraken may be a son of a gun, but he dislikes the Draconians as much as we do.”
“Except he double-crossed me and tipped off the Horlocks.”
“He’s also all about the money,” my uncle adds. “They surely offered him a good chunk of change if he’d let them know when you came a calling. But, there’s got to be a reason he gave this to you. I’m sure of it.”
“There are over a hundred varieties of oysters alone on this planet. Some come from very specific regions,” Tanaka says.
“Maybe it’s a sort of map,” my uncle suggests. “Can we find out the exact species that this spoon is made from and where it lives?”
“Let me send it to the lab,” Tanaka answers. “It’ll take a day or so, but we can do it.”
Fitz nods. “Alright people. Priority number one is still locating the Draconian base and getting BrightSky back from Calliope.”
“Any chance they’ve left the planet?” my uncle asks.
Simmons replies, “We’ve been monitoring all crafts leaving the planet, and there’s been no outgoing traffic in several days.”
“They’re not going anywhere,” Fitz says, his voice dropping. “Not as long as Astrid is still alive.”
I swallow hard. That’s not exactly a comforting feeling.
Chapter 5
All I want to do when I get back to my suite is take a long hot shower then curl up on our comfy couch with our fluffy white afghan and a book. Maybe even take a nap.
But before I’m even inside my room, Ruby comes running up after me. “Hey! I just talked to Chad. He said he’s going for a swim.”
She slips inside with me as I lock the door. “So?”
“So I thought you might be able to get in a little alone time with him. It’s been the three of us all day. I can get out of your way, and you can hang out with him by yourself.”
I shake my head, “I’m not up for any ‘alone’ time right now.”
“What?” She sounds incredulous.
Yes, it’s true that Chad has been my serious crush since the moment I laid eyes on him almost two years ago at a party, but I just don’t have the energy for it right now. Plus, lately, things between me and Chad have been a little odd. A bit off.
Ruby picks up on this. “Did something happen last night? I thought you two went for a walk with Tom.”
Every night I take Tom, my Valarian shapeshifting Drolgon, out for a walk. He’s pretty much recovered from the injuries he got when he fought Calliope’s larger Drolgon named Raki. Still, to help his recovery, Tom changes into a shaggy shepherd mutt, and I walk him like a good dog so he can get a little exercise. Sometimes Chad and Ruby come with us. Last night, Ruby bowed out, so it was just me and Chad.
“Oh!” she squeals with delight. “Something did happen.”
“No, nothing happened.”
“Like… nothing?”
“Yes. Nothing.”
The truth is there was a moment last night when I thought Chad might actually try to kiss me. A perfect moment when he was standing so close I could smell his earthy pine cologne mixed with his own musk. We locked eyes, and I was sure he was going to kiss me.
But then the moment passed.
I don’t know why. Was it him or me? The energy just seemed wrong.
We let Tom do his business down by the Potomac then we just turned around and headed
back to the hotel. Our strained conversation made the long walk back even more awkward.
Still, I’m too embarrassed to explain that to Ruby right now. She so badly wants to see us together.
Either way, it was a pretty big disappointment.
“I don’t think he likes me,” I confess.
“Yes, he does. I know for sure that he does.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Well, not exactly. But I know I’m right,” she says with a remarkable amount of confidence. “You just need to take the lead.”
“Take the lead?” I vigorously shake my head. “No way. I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Honey, it’s not 1992. I think he just needs a little nudge.” Ruby tries again. “That’s why I think you should go to the pool so you guys can have some time together.”
“I’m really tired.”
“Wait, I have something for you.” She takes a seat on the chair across from me and pulls a little bundle wrapped in crimson tissue out of her bag. “I picked up a little something for you on our trip.”
I unwrap a folded square of golden silk embroidered with flowers made from fine thread. It tumbles open into a beautiful colorful scarf.
“Oh, Ruby! This is gorgeous.”
“I’m so glad you like it,” she smiles brightly. “Even though I was working undercover in Cairo, the sweet lady who owned the scarf stall felt like she still needed to pay me. So she let me pick out two of these scarves as compensation.”
“That was nice of her.”
“I thought this one would go really well with your skin tone and be a killer sarong wrap for your bikini.”
“Thank you. I love it.” She's not wrong. The scarf is gorgeous. Ruby has exquisite taste. I really couldn’t ask for a better friend. “But I'm still too tired to go to the pool right now.”
“Okay fine. Have it your way.” She sags, realizing she’s not going to win this one. She sweeps towards the door. “I'll let you get your beauty rest. But I'm not giving up on you two.”
I lay down on the couch ready to take a nap, but as soon as my eyes close, it occurs to me that I'm late for a meeting.
