Violet City

by Page Morgan

  VIOLET CITY

  Volkranian Chronicles: I

  Page Morgan

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Page Morgan

  Copyright © 2021 by Angie Frazier

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2021

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-7336820-1-5

  Print ISBN: 978-1-7336820-0-8

  www.PageMorganBooks.net

  For Amalie,

  my “One Brain” sister who always has my back.

  Chapter One

  I can’t believe I’m going to die in a sewage treatment plant.

  That’s my first thought when the black, hulking ship appears in the sky over New York City. I’m with the rest of my biology class on a dock in the Hudson River, and there’s zero doubt that our field trip on human waste composting has just been cut short. Under any other circumstances, I’d be grateful.

  “Pen?” My best friend grabs my sleeve and tugs me against her side. “What the hell is that?”

  I don’t know why Tana’s asking me. I’m gaping up at the ship along with everyone else. It’s enormous. And by that, I mean it’s at least twice the size of Central Park. A new, warm wind blows down over us, whipping the surface of the water and pushing my long hair into a billowing cloud around my head.

  The dry dock seems to tilt beneath me as the ship fully blocks the sun. Instantly, we’re plunged into early evening. Shouts and cries of alarm start up in the park on top of the underground wastewater plant, and the rest of my class starts to freak, too. Every cell phone is aimed at the belly of the ship, where dozens of interlocking red lights wink on and off and rotate in circular patterns.

  “I have no idea what it is,” I finally answer Tana, reaching into my back pocket for my own phone. The screen stays dark. I hold the power button, my finger turning white from the pressure, but nothing happens. It’s dead.

  “Mine, too,” Tana says when her phone won’t turn on. No other phones are working either. Our teacher smacks his and shakes it, the screen totally black. Mr. Gainsbridge swears under his breath.

  “Everyone, stay calm,” he says, his voice warbling as his red- and gold-striped tie flutters up and smacks against his chin in the strange wind.

  I want to be able to tell Tana that the ship is just some government-funded flying aircraft carrier. Or maybe an obnoxiously huge, high-tech hologram some mega-billionaire created, hoping footage of it will go viral. I want to suggest that it’s something—anything—other than what the panicked voice in my head screams it is.

  “Stay calm?” Greenly Harris, Alton High’s drama club captain, screeches. “It’s like, freaking aliens or something!”

  Aliens. Greenly dared say it first, though come on, we’d all been thinking it.

  Tana squeezes my arm as the ship comes to a complete stop in the sky. “It can’t be aliens,” she whispers.

  “Definitely not,” I reply, even though it’s like a big budget space movie has come to life over our heads. But Tana is scared, and whenever she’s scared, it’s my job to reassure her. That’s just how we work. She’s the one who worries, and I’m the one who rationalizes.

  I press closer to her, expecting a fleet of news and police helicopters to go flying toward the ship at any second. But there’s nothing else in the sky. Just some new plumes of thick black smoke in the distance, behind a clump of skyscrapers.

  “Maybe they’re friendly,” someone behind us says. It’s Jared, a guy who makes farting noises whenever Mr. Gainsbridge sits down behind his desk.

  “Maybe you’re an idiot,” Greenly replies.

  Jared is an idiot, and the ship doesn’t look friendly. It isn’t a thin, Frisbee shaped thing. It isn’t dinging out a five-tone musical message or drawing a gelatinous force field up around its perimeter. It’s tall and stepped, like a mountain formed out of black volcanic metal and reflective glass. Call it gut instinct, but everything about that ship screams that it wants to kill us.

  “Dude, we should get out of here.” This excellent advice comes from Lee, known for the nervous habit of drumming his pencil eraser and fidgeting in his seat until someone has to kick the back of his chair.

  “And go where, back to school?” I gesture to the ship. “That thing is hanging over Eastham, too.”

  We could run for miles and still not get out from under the ship. It seems to be positioned more on the New York side of the Hudson than the Jersey side, but I bet my mom still has a clear view of it from our front yard in Eastham—where she’s probably freaking out right about now. I look at my dead cell again, wishing I could call or text her. A simple message, and I could deflect another one of her panic attacks. They’re usually over nothing, or what most people would consider “nothing.” But ever since Ollie died, it doesn’t take much to send her into a downward spiral. This isn’t “nothing” though. This is most definitely something.

  “I just don’t think we should be standing here, okay?” Lee replies. I’m sure he’s right, but none of us move from the dock. Our feet are planted, our wide eyes and open mouths turned up to the sky, all of us waiting for something to happen. Whatever, or whoever, is in the ship is going to want to make contact.

  Aren’t they?

  A boom, like the deep blast of a trumpet, shakes the air. Tana drops my arm to cover her ears, and I do the same, along with everyone else on the dock. The powerful blare rattles my teeth, and the reverberations reach up from the ground, tingling and itching in the small bones of my wrists and ankles. I squint at the metal ship as the tremors quake through the ground, and through me.

  The red blinking lights on the belly of the ship spin like cogs, going around and around. As the violent blare continues, each circle begins to descend.

  Oh God.

  “What is it doing?” I shout, my eyes watering from the thundering concussion. Tana shouts something back, but I can’t make it out. My ears throb, and I can’t look away from the lowering circles, distending far enough to look like platforms; like stalactites dripping down from cave ceilings—something I learned about on another field trip, believe it or not. What I wouldn’t give to be stumbling around inside some cave right now.

  The blare stops, though my ears continue to ring. And then smaller, black things begin to pour out of the ship. Dozens of them roll off the lowered platforms and fall like rain.

  “What the hell are those?” Tana gasps as more screams erupt up in the park. The blood in my ears is too loud. My heartbeat starts to drown out everything else.

  I can’t reassure her this time. I can’t shrug any of this off.

  They keep coming, a deluge of flying objects swarming the sky. Round pods that look like black bees spread out in dark sheets over the city and across the river, into New Jersey. But they’re not just stretching out and hovering like the big ship is. They’re coming lower to the ground. A bunch of the pods veer t
oward the wastewater treatment plant, so close their golden reflective windshields become visible. There have to be hundreds of them, all made of the same black metal.

  Aliens. Holy rattlesnake crap, they’re real.

  Within seconds, the sky is on fire. Blinding white flares crisscross over our heads. They strike the ground, the buildings, the water—and then three successive flares hit the sewage barge right in front of us.

  “Get down!” I scream, yanking Tana into a crouch as the barge slams against the dock. The impact sends two crew members flying through the air, and they land and roll like Hollywood stunt doubles on the paved dock at our feet. Tana screams and falls back onto her butt, while I topple to the side. I immediately jump up and start for the closest crewman to help him.

  “Pen!” Tana wraps her hand around the ankle of my jeans to hold me back. “Don’t—look!”

  Sparking electrical static shivers over the crewman’s arms and legs. The other crewman, a few feet away, is convulsing too; the same white bridges of electricity travel from one foot to the other, and branch from fingertip to fingertip. The men’s shaking, guttural sounds of pain are nearly lost behind the rest of the shrieks filling the air.

  Tana lets go of my leg, and I stare at the closest crewman, unable to breathe. He jerks around on the dock, white foam spittle streaking his cheeks. I tear my eyes away, my heart throbbing against my ribs.

  “Let’s get inside!” I shout to Tana, thinking only of getting a roof over our heads; getting away from whatever these white flares are. Electricity. Powerful enough to move a barge and fry someone.

  She tries to stand, but one of her legs gives out beneath her. Tana slams back onto the dock, grasping at her ankle and wincing. “Damn it, I think it’s twisted!”

  “Come on.” I reach for her. “I’ll carry you if I have to, let’s just go!”

  Her hand is inches away from mine when a white flare hits her square in the chest.

  Tana’s thrown off her feet and onto the ground. I scream so loud my throat burns. Briars of electricity climb over my best friend’s body as I bend toward her, my arms outstretched, knowing I have to save her, but also knowing I can’t touch her. Can’t save her. Not now.

  Someone tackles me to the ground. “Stop, Pen! No!”

  It’s Lee. I smell his Axe spray as he holds me down and pins my reaching arm back in, tight to my side. I watch with my cheek against the concrete dock as Tana shudders and convulses. Her brown eyes, wide and disbelieving, are locked on mine as electrostatic consumes her. I struggle against Lee’s weight, screaming, but I can’t break Tana’s stare. I can’t leave my best friend alone.

  Tana goes still on the pavement, her eyes no longer quite fixed on mine. Instead, they’re dull and unseeing. Tendrils of smoke rise from the crown of her head, and when I finally drag in a gasping breath, I smell burned hair.

  “No! No, Tana!”

  Behind her, the barge groans and cracks as it lists to the side and begins to sink into the river. Lee’s weight lifts from my back and his sweaty hand pulls on my arm. He hauls me up and toward the metal doors leading back inside the underground treatment plant. “No, let me go! I can’t leave her!”

  White flares strike a couple guys on my left. Brandon and Mitchell, from my biology study group, go down. They land on the cement and start convulsing just like Tana and the two crewmen had. Another flare strikes the entrance Lee is dragging me toward, and static crawls over the metal before fizzling out.

  “Stop!” I scream to Lee, but he doesn’t.

  “She’s dead, Pen! Dead! We’ll be dead next, so come on!”

  No, no, no, not Tana. This can’t be happening.

  Greenly shoves herself in front of Lee, her pin-up blond bombshell hair bouncing wildly.

  A white flare strikes her in the back.

  Static shivers through her, freezing her in her tracks. Greenly’s scream sounds like a radio station losing its signal before going completely silent. She collapses just inside the entrance and Lee jumps over her shaking body. When he doesn’t let go of my arm, I’m forced to leap over her perfectly coiffed head, the electricity burning her roots.

  Not real. Not real. This isn’t happening.

  It’s cool inside, like the cave I was wishing for just a minute ago. And it’s quiet. Too quiet. There had been a steady humming sound coming from all the vats and machines working together to clean the millions of gallons of water that comes sliding into this one treatment facility every single day. And now, there’s nothing but distant and muted screams. I stumble over the lip of a walkway as Lee leads me between two huge water tanks.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, panting. I’m running too fast and not breathing right. The edges of my vision are fuzzy. If I don’t stop, I’m going to pass out.

  I force my arm from Lee’s sweaty hand and grasp the metal railings along the bridge. He slides to a stop.

  “Wherever they won’t find us!” He points toward the ceiling to indicate the alien ship.

  His voice bounces off the tanks, and I look around. There isn’t a soul in here with us. The giant room had been busy when we’d walked through before, Tana poking me in the side every time the technician talking to us had said the word “feces.” I’d tried to ignore her and pay attention to what the technician was saying, knowing Mr. Gainsbridge would quiz us tomorrow. Tana could care less about her bio grade, but I want to maintain my steady A status.

  And now she’s dead. Out on the dock, dead.

  “Pen!” Lee shouts. “Those smaller ships were landing. They’re coming. We need to go!”

  I adjust the strap of my messenger bag and search for the door we entered earlier on the tour. “We should go up. Get out of here.”

  Lee throws back his head. “What? No! We go down. There’s like, twenty underground stories or something.”

  “Six,” I say, remembering the random fact from our tour. Numbers tend to stick in my head. “There are six stories, and no, we need to get to the top. What if Mr. Gainsbridge and the others—”

  Lee lunges and grabs my arm, tearing my hand from the railing. “Are you stupid? They’re dead! You saw them! All of them!”

  He starts to move again, and I let him pull me along. They can’t all be dead. Not all of them.

  He shoves open a door and leads us down a dark, never-ending set of concrete stairs. On every landing, the darkness gets thicker. Four stories, maybe five go by, with only two people rushing up past us. They’re going up and we’re going down, and even though they look at us like we’re doing something wrong, they don’t say anything. Neither do we. Lee just barrels past them, taking me along with him.

  There’s a whisper of sound all of a sudden; a soft hum of electricity. A red emergency light starts revolving on the ceiling. Is the power back on? My knees hurt from pounding down the steps, and Lee’s fingers are latched onto my arm painfully. I think maybe we’re just going to keep going, keep descending into the bowels of the earth. Just like waking up from a nightmare and burying myself under the covers, going down these stairs feels like pulling layers of cloth and cotton batting over my head. Neither one is strong enough to protect me from a monster.

  It’s pointless.

  I tug back when we hit the next landing, this one made of grated metal. “Stop, Lee. Let’s just stop and think.”

  Though all I can think about is Tana, getting tossed off her feet by a white flare, and whether or not my mom is safe. My dad is in Connecticut for a work thing. New Haven, I think. He’s always at a conference or meeting somewhere. Anywhere but home. But my mom is still across the river. What if she was in the yard looking up at the little pods when they started firing? I squeeze my eyes shut.

  My mom is fine. She has to be fine.

  “There’s nothing to think about,” Lee says, pulling me down a few more steps, into a giant basement with a maze of pipes. “We stay down here, and then maybe in a little while we’ll go up. Or call someone.”

  He takes out his phone and swears. �
��Still no signal.”

  Of course there isn’t. Even if our phones were working again, like the alarm system that just turned on, we’re too far underground. I take another look at my phone, just in case, but it’s still useless. I’m never without my phone, and it feels like I’m running up against a wall. Trapped. Sweat blazes across my chest and palms. I need air. Fresh, cold air, just like what I hunger for when I’m buried in a post-nightmare blanket cave.

  Down here, the alarms sound distant. The flashing emergency lights trip between red and white, one second a wash of crimson, the next, incandescent white. Steam curls off some of the pipes; the vast room looks like it could be Smaug’s cave.

  I imagine Tana shoving me and calling me a nerd. We’d met the first day of freshman year at Alton High. Tana had been in the bathroom stall beside me when her toilet started to overflow. Water pooled around my feet, washing over the tiles, and we’d both screamed and bolted from the bathroom before anyone saw us. She’d flushed a tampon, she explained, laughing. We ate lunch together that day. Ever since, we’d been inseparable.

  And she’d been there after my little brother died. Tana was my only friend who didn’t eventually pull away when things didn’t get better, the way people expected them to and promised they would, especially when Ollie’s accident became old news to everyone but me and my parents.

  A sharp twinge in my throat makes me stop breathing for a few seconds. Maybe Tana isn’t dead. Maybe she’s just…stunned. When we finally meet up, she’ll yell at me for being stupid and ditching her on the dock. I have been stupid. I shouldn’t have let Lee drag me down here.