Ed gave Shaun a pointed look, then everyone settled in to see what the news was saying about current events. As Shaun expected, it wasn’t pretty.
There was a reporter on location standing in front of what used to be a shop. The only thing that pointed this out was the sign that normally hung above the front of the entrance. Instead it had been ripped down, support pole and all, and had been crushed like a tin can. The glass storefront was also obliterated, and pieces of merchandise were thrown into the street as if projected by an air cannon. To Shaun’s disbelief, this shop was one of the many comic shops in the area. Individual comics were blasted apart, along with action figures and pop culture collectibles.
So much destruction, thought Shaun. And this wasn’t even a neighborhood. This was just a store. Citizens were no doubt going to lose their homes and the people they loved and cared for. All it would take would be an incremental shift from Zolyn and another part of the city would be destroyed in her search for new victims. Did she even know that they were gone yet? Maybe not, but it was only a matter of time before they were found again. Shaun only hoped that putting so much distance between them and Zolyn would buy them a bit of downtime to recuperate.
The reporter spoke with anxiety in her tone.
“This was once a beloved hub of pop culture, and now it’s scattered to the wind. The owner has said that the destruction is total, and even his insurance would only cover a portion of the damage to the building. Everything that he was going to sell is now beyond salvage, leaving him and many other shopkeepers in the are in the midst of instant bankruptcy. Who knows how many more businesses and lives are going to be destroyed in the coming hours and days?”
“Who has done this?” asked Terry as she placed a hand on Mrs. Boding’s back to rub it comfortingly.
“You said aliens, Neil?” Ed brought a hand to his lips as his eyes remained glued to the television.
“That’s right,” Shaun cut in. “They haven’t shown it yet, but it’s really just a single alien, from what I know.” He left out the part about Xara.
“Single?” said Neil. “That was just one alien?” Even being in the midst of the action, the big picture was a mystery to Shaun’s mother and Neil. They were too close to the action to really see what was going on, and without the explanation of how these aliens worked, it would appear that the collection of tiny spherical pieces wasn’t just a single alien being, but rather an army of them, which explained their confusion.
“I’m sad to say it, but yes,” Shaun replied. “That’s the work of just one alien. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“But, there were hordes of them!”
“Those were just tiny pieces of a single alien entity,” Mae chimed in. “I heard some people talking about it when we were listening to the radio in the car. There’s some sort of forcefield keeping all the pieces together, kind of like a school of fish. A hive mind. I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense on the surface, but it’s a single organism controlling all the pieces.”
“What’s the point of having all those pieces?” Neil continued. “I don’t understand. I guess an alien can be whatever it wants to be, but seems strange to me.”
“It makes the creature harder to attack,” explained Shaun. “Whenever someone tries to fire at it, the alien spreads itself out so that the projectile passed through them.”
“Crazy…” Neil’s eyebrows raised as he continued to watch the news footage. “Makes me wonder if any of our weapons are going to be useful against it. I would have never thought of all those floating orbs as a single organism when it demolished the restaurant we were eating at.”
Ed’s face paled as he listened.
“You’re saying that the four of you were in the epicenter of this attack?”
“Sadly, yes,” said Mrs. Boding, getting to her feet for the first time since the night before. “And we were having such a great night before all of this started. It’s a real shame.”
“Careful, honey!” Terry said, helping Shaun’s mother as she gained her footing. “Careful, easy does it. You all must have been terrified.”
“It was pretty scary,” Mae agreed. “And it’s not over yet.”
“Not by a long shot.” Shaun pressed his lips together as they continued watching the news broadcast. It had changed to another person back in the studio giving a rundown of all the things they had missed while they fled the city.
The suited man read off from the teleprompter.
“Citizens of Boston fled the destruction, with many lucky just to make it to neighboring towns. Traffic was gridlocked for hours in the early morning, with some stretches where vehicles were only able to move a few feet before being stopped. Many ran out of gas in their rush to escape. Back in the heart of the city, citizens that remained took the opportunity to document the situation as it unfolded in real time. Here we have some footage captured by an onlooker. Just a warning to our viewers from across the state, the images may be disturbing. Please use your discretion if you have children in the room.”
There was a brief pause where the footage transitioned from the news anchor to a staging-frame of gray with the warning in text, then onwards to the grainy footage. The quality was due to the fact that it was recorded at night with parts of the scene illuminated by a few street lights and the headlights of cars in the vicinity.
Shaun watched as the onlooker tried to zoom in on what was obviously Zolyn, separated into her many pieces to allow for easy flight. The cloud of her spheres zipped through the night sky with the all-familiar glow, then she came down onto a group of onlookers. These people tried to scatter, but there was so much commotion and so many people crammed into such a small space on the walkways that nobody was able to get very far. Most just stumbled over each other, falling to the pavement.
Zolyn took the opportunity to scoop up a few people here and there, surrounding them with her spherical body so that they were trapped within a web of pieces. Then, like a giant metallic prison, her netted body rose up and transported the people through the air, upwards towards the night sky, while they kicked and screamed for help. It didn’t matter what they tried — there was nothing that could be done by the people on the ground.
Suddenly a square portal opened up beside Zolyn and her hostages. This was one of those strange alien doorways that led to a square prison….at least, that’s what Shaun assumed based on what he had experienced. So many questions ran through his mind.
Were these prisons all the same? How large could they get? Would all of humanity eventually be stored in one of these space-bending structures, capable of being transported in a person’s jacket pocket?
One by one, Zolyn added her hostages to the room. They fell through the glowing light within, then were swallowed up. As the camera shook and people exclaimed in the background, Shaun spotted someone that he recognized among those who were taken.
“I know who that is!” he said, pointing at the screen. Mae frowned at him.
“What do you mean?”
“There — that girl. She was the one who confronted me on the street before I made it to dinner.”
“Confronted you?” asked Mrs. Boding. “About what?”
He couldn’t tell her the answer, so he settled for, “It doesn’t really matter. I think I just got in her way. But, the point is, I know her. And I’m sure all of those people are important to somebody. We’ve got to do something about it.”
“What can we do?” asked Neil. The question was an obvious one, especially since a lot of what Shaun was talking about was in relation to the secret Aberrants in the room. “We’re just average people. This is a job for our armed forces. I think we should focus on keeping ourselves out of harm’s way.”
“You’re right,” said Mae. “There’s not much we can do here besides keep ourselves safe. The ones who can do something will do something.”
She reached out a hand and placed it gently on Shaun’s arm, motioning with her eyes to the kitchen down the hall. Inside was a back do
or to the yard. Once that plan was obvious, Shaun heard Mae’s voice in his head.
Let’s get you, me, and your grandfather outside to discuss everything properly. Sound like a plan?
Shaun locked eyes with his grandfather, who nodded firmly in acknowledgement.
Sounds fine to me.
22
The Rundown
“Give me all the details,” said Ed Boding once he, Shaun and Mae were far enough away from the house so that they wouldn’t be overheard. “You two know that you don’t have to sugarcoat anything with me. Just get it all out in the open and we can go from there.”
They had walked down by the water, which was a pleasant refrain from all the destruction they had witnessed on the television. The ambience of the area was peaceful, from the lapping of the water gently against the pebble-strewn shore, to the sounds of birds calling out to each other from the trees surrounding the lake.
Shaun couldn’t miss the opportunity to take in a massive breath, practically tasting the fresh air. Would this be the last time that he could enjoy such a simple thing?
“Mae? Do you want to take the reins this time?” he asked. He was getting pretty tired of explaining, especially when he barely was able to make sense of such a rapidly changing set of circumstances.
Mae acquiesced and recapped the events of the night before, from their interrupted dinner, to how she and Shaun was captured by Zolyn. There was the bit about their powers being harvested, and then the explanation of how parts of the Vestige were now missing, confiscated by Zolyn.
“So, they’re after your power,” said Ed as he scratched his stubble. His mind was clearly trying to work out how all the pieces fit together. “If I were to guess correctly, I’d say that this alien woman is using the lost parts of the Vestige to test out her hostages. If she is looking to assemble an army of Aberrants to siphon from, she will need at least a single piece of the Vestige to do the testing. That way she’ll find out who has a positive reaction, and who doesn’t.”
“And for the ones that don’t show signs?” Mae looked at Ed expectantly.
He shrugged with a pained expression. “My guess is that they will be discarded. No sense in keeping what you can’t use. It just means that they would be able to come together to rebel. Can’t say that I think this Zolyn creature wants that. She just wants the powerful ones. Seems like a precarious situation, if you ask me.”
“How so?”
“Well…she only wants the powerful ones. It stands to reason that if she gets enough of you together, you can rise up and overpower her. How is she storing you all? She can’t possibly have enough restraints to lock you all up the way that she did to you and Mae.”
Shaun shook his head and replied, “No, that’s true. Remember on the news? That footage that the person filmed with their phone? There was a floating opening in the sky that she put the hostages into. Those are like some sort of collapsible prison cube. I was put in one before Zolyn got to me.”
“But, you got out of it. That doesn’t sound like a very sound way to trap people. How did you escape from the prison?”
“I was let out,” said Shaun. “By an ally. Xara. She was another alien. But, she died.”
“Taken down by you, or someone else?”
“Taken down by Zolyn. I guess they were at war with each other. Now there’s only one, and she’s able to do whatever she wants with no opposition.” It was a depressing thought.
Ed shuffled his foot in the dirt as he mulled everything over. It was admittedly a lot to become acclimated to in a short period of time.
“Alright…” he started. “There’s got to be a way to take down this creature. Whether she be killed the same way that she took down her own kind, or maybe we can trap her in one of those cube things. Do you know where to get one?”
“I’d expect they would be stored on her ship,” said Shaun. “We didn’t really take the time to look around.”
“What about you, Mae?” asked Ed. “You’ve got those vision powers. Have they told you anything about what we should do? I hate to say it, but Neil is wrong. We can’t depend on our armed forces against a threat like this. This is unlike anything we’ve ever faced. You said that we can’t damage them because of how they can spread out to avoid being struck. That rules out missiles. They would only miss and then destroy our own territory and people. I think the key is that we need to use their own technology against them.”
“I have already seen a few things,” Mae said, taking out the crushed piece that was once the heart of Xara, their ally, from her pocket. She held it out for Ed to see. “This was the central nervous system of Shaun’s ally. I expect it is the same for our enemy. When I first touched it, I got flashes. Visions of things that might happen. Not a lot of it made sense because I don’t recognize their technology, but maybe if I can draw it out or something, we can figure out a plan of attack.”
“Yea, and preferably before we are hunted down here,” added Shaun. “When we left, Zolyn didn’t know that we had escaped. But, I assume she must know about our jailbreak by now.”
Ed nodded.
“Fine. That’s as good a leg-up as any other.” He looked to Mae. “How’s about we get you some paper and the three of us can work out a plan. I’ve got nothing more exciting to do in my retirement anyway.” He winked at Shaun, who had to chuckle.
“How are you able to crack jokes at a time like this, Grandpa?”
“Shaun, when you’re as old as me, and you’ve seen as much as I’ve seen, you realize that keeping a sense of humor is just as essential to being victorious in life as training with weights, or eating the right food. Laughter is a good break for the mind. Now, let’s get to it.”
23
Drawing The Future
Once Mae was equipped with a good sized stack of printer paper and a ballpoint pen, Ed brought her, along with Shaun, to the quietest part of the house.
The study was a grand room where Ed stored all of his most important books and papers. The color pallet was so different from the rest of the house that one would have thought they had stepped through a portal into another dimension, what with all the various dark umbers and burgundies. The room practically dripped with deep thinking and philosophy — the development of grand ideas.
Mae supposed that having an environment such as this room was essential when nurturing new ideas, especially when they were so far away from a large public library or even what Shaun and his mother would call civilization.
The peacefulness was inviting. Taking a seat at the large, and extremely heavy, oak writing desk took no effort on Mae’s part. She was ready to use this rare time away from all the commotion, the end of the world and all of that, to help them find a way through this mess and out to the other side.
How hard can it be? she thought with just a tiny smidgen of irony.
Allowing herself that brief moment to let sarcasm take the lead, Mae straightened up in the leather chair and focused. This part of the job was not the flashiest, of course, but deciphering clues and determining a path was what her powers were best utilized for.
She glanced up at Shaun and Ed, both of them staring at her intently in their own way. Shaun was fiddling with the hems of his shirt, practically bouncing off the walls with nervous energy, while his grandfather was the exact opposite. Ed stood stiffly, very statuesque, and crossed one arm over his chest while the other was propped up in order for his hand to rest just below his mouth.
“Alright, alright,” said Mae, waving a hang. “I can’t do this with so much pressure! You two need to lighten up and relax.”
“I’m doing my best,” Shaun replied.
“I know,” Mae shot back, not unkindly, “but, you need to sit down or something. Go over by the armchair. Please!”
There was a single leather armchair over by the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and Shaun reluctantly took the seat. Ed leaned against the edge of the bookcase, dong his best to stare at the floor instead of at Mae. She appreciated the effort.
What I need is calm, she told herself. It was difficult enough to channel her mental powers when she was filled with anxiety. She needed to push that emotion out of her head to make room for her visions.
That process didn’t take long — only a minute or so. She accomplished this through heavy breathing, and closing her eyes. In one hand she took out the remaining Vestige shard that they had recovered and gripped it tightly. Her other hand rested palm-down on the desk with her fingers pressing down firmly. Just beyond her fingertips was the broken, mangled heart of Xara.
The more that Mae focused on her breathing and the darkness behind her eyelids, the more her Abrrant ability charged up. The darkness was beginning to filter into glowing light, swirls of magenta and brilliant emerald green. Soon those flowing lights would solidify into the images that she would draw on the page. Soon…
They just needed the input.
As was the case with her ability in the past, she needed to reach out and touch an object to get a reading. It had happened before, back when she didn’t know how to control that power. The visions would consume her, and she would quickly find herself exhausted.
But, now she knew how to regulate her powers. There was nothing holding her back.
With enough calm behind her, she reached out her fingers and placed them on top of the cold metal casing that was once Xara.
Immediately the lights in her mind constricted and began forming images. They flashed by at rapid speed, so quickly that she only had seconds to scribble what she was seeing. The ballpoint pen raced across the first page in her stack. Once that was filled with her scribbles, lines criss-crossing here and there, she pushed the page away and continued on the second. Then the third.
The Aberrant Series (Book 4): Super Invasion Page 14
