by Page Morgan
The alien rockets backward, out of sight. There’s a telling crash as his exosuit slams into more lockers. A second shot fires off, though it sounds different—a hot, snapping noise instead of the hissing electric flare.
I’m still holding my breath when the locker door rips open, its hinges squealing. Rowan stands in front of me, his chest heaving. A slim compartment on the right thigh of his exosuit seals shut. Another weapon? A stream of something dark purple—blood—runs down his lips and chin. A gash has split one of his dark eyebrows, sending a trickle of the stuff into the crease of his eyelid.
“You distracted him,” he says.
I shrug. “I had a muscle spasm.”
If he believes me, he’s a complete moron. But I don’t think he is—not at all. Rowan reaches into the locker and takes my arm.
“We need to leave. Now.”
He tugs me out. The other alien is slumped in the corner, the face of his helmet smashed open just enough for me to see his tawny skin. It’s lighter than Rowan’s sandstone coloring, but nowhere near as pale as the Volkranian I’d seen earlier. Rowan jerks me around as he scoops up his helmet from the locker floor.
“Hey, careful,” I say. “Deadly fumes, remember?”
He loosens his grip and pulls me toward the swinging blue door. Out in the pool room, the other two aliens are dead. One floats in the shallow end while Cowboy slowly spins in the five-foot depth. Rowan steps around the other alien lain out on the tiles.
“Why did he kill them? Why did he try to kill you?” I ask as I follow his lead, jumping over the dead alien with the irrational fear that the dude might sit up and grab my calf, like in every cheap thriller movie.
We take the stairs, where the air turns crisp and the cloying chlorine odor evaporates. In the interior stairwell, Cherise’s hand still jams the door to the lobby. Rowan takes the time to pull her body aside, but he may as well have been moving an industrial-size sack of flour for all the remorse I see on his face.
I harden, my heart beating fast and painful.
I take a last look at Cherise. Her eyes are open, her lips beginning to blue. I shouldn’t have come in here. She might still be alive if I’d kept moving or found a different place to hide.
“There will be others coming for the chloromagnate,” Rowan says, already in the foyer by the check-in desk.
I look up. “He wanted the vial.” It doesn’t make sense. “Why fight you for it? Don’t you both want the same thing?”
Rowan stares at me, blank faced. When he speaks, he doesn’t answer my question. “It has a tracking device.”
“Yeah, I figured that out.”
“The time for negotiation is over, Penelope Simmons.”
My throat tightens with surprise. I’d told him my name in the treatment plant as a way to guilt him, to make him hear the name of at least one person he killed. I can’t believe he actually remembered it.
“Come with me to the cityship and live for at least a little while longer or stay here and die now.” The threat seals my feet to the faux marble floor. “The tracking device will lead more Volkranians right to you. I have not yet killed you because, believe it or not, I do not wish to.”
He’s right. I don’t believe it. He’s already killed Lee and Mr. Gainsbridge, that I know of. What’s one more human to him?
“The fleet commandment will question you about your involvement in the delay at the water treatment facility, and if you cooperate, I will recommend that you be released, unharmed.”
I hold my messenger bag closer, deliberating. If I don’t give him the chloromagnate, the tracking device will bring more aliens like the one in the locker room to us. I still don’t understand why Rowan put me—and his helmet—into a locker, or why he and the other alien fought. But I sense something more is happening. Something beyond me and the vial of chloromagnate.
“Will this fleet commandment listen to you?” I ask.
He doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
I eye his helmet. He’s holding it down, next to his leg. The visor is aimed away from me. “Why would he need to question me if this feed you mentioned is giving him all the answers?”
“The feed only relays images. Sound monitoring is not required for high ranking Volkranian officials.”
He’s high ranking. That much is obvious. Now I understand—he stored his helmet in the locker so it wouldn’t capture the fight with the other Volkranian.
He’s keeping a secret.
“I don’t trust you,” I say.
“Then why did you help me in the room of lockers?”
“Locker room,” I correct. “And I only helped because that other guy seemed...more dangerous.”
Stupid, Pen. They’re all dangerous.
Rowan walks toward the glass front doors and peers outside, his helmet still in his hand.
“Make your decision,” he says.
There’s only one way forward. I don’t trust Rowan, but at least he’s willing to recommend I be let go, unharmed. I doubt any other Volkranian who comes for this vessel will offer the same deal. And if he’s lying...well, I guess I’ll find that out soon.
“I’ll come,” I say. “But I hold on to the chloromagnate.”
I won’t hand it over until I absolutely have to.
He peers over his shoulder at me, his eyes clouding as the colors mix and separate. “For now, that is acceptable. It is time to go.”
He could change his mind at any moment, so I walk away from Cherise, just leaving her on the floor to hopefully be found by someone. If there is anyone left.
Outside, the silence makes the hairs along my arms and neck spring up. Bodies lay sprawled along the sidewalks and in the street, but there’s no movement. They look like they could almost be sleeping. The blackened scorch marks on their clothes and the bitter odor of burning skin and hair shatters that illusion.
There isn’t a single living soul in sight as far as I can see up and down Broadway. Just dozens of stalled out cars and taxis, a few that have crashed into one another, a motorcycle that’s halfway underneath a box truck, and a drone impaled in a car’s windshield. If a drone fell from the sky, what about helicopters and airplanes? I think back to the smoke plumes rising up from behind the skyscrapers and feel ill. It’s all so awful that my heart wants to stop beating. It keeps going, though. For now.
A giant black alien pod sits in the center of the street. Its spiraled nautilus shape is more pronounced now that I’m standing closer to it. Rowan pulls the helmet back onto his head as he takes purposeful strides toward it, the mammoth feet of his exosuit crushing glass and debris along the way. As he approaches, a gap in the center of the nautilus shell appears. The dark, brushed metal rolls apart like a pair of pocket doors in an old house. Three metal steps automatically unfold and touch the pavement. There’s a ripple in the air around the base of the pod, like heat rising up off pavement in the middle of summer.
Rowan turns just as he’s about to board, but my legs have a mind of their own. They decide to stop moving just after I hop the curb. This could be the last time my feet are ever on earth’s surface. I might never see my mom or dad again. My home. I could die up in that cityship. However, if I don’t get moving, I will definitely die here, with all these other people.
I don’t want to end up like them.
I take one step, then another, forcing my legs to walk me toward the black pod.
“You haven’t answered me yet. Why are your people fighting one another? Is it just over this chloromagnate stuff? I saw two more of you in the treatment plant arguing, too. One of them killed the other one.”
He holds up his arm, barring me from entering the pod. “Are you certain?”
I nod, and then, what sounds like a jet shakes the air overhead. Praying it’s a military fighter or some other airplane that can fire bullets or rockets, I peer into the afternoon sky, which is hazy from all the smoke.
It’s been a while since the first attack. Why hasn’t the army or air force shown up yet
? They should be here by now. Unless these aliens have arrived everywhere, and not just in New York. The horrifying thought leaves a rush of sick panic in my throat. But the sound is just another black pod. It flies out from over an apartment building two blocks down.
“Do not say anything about what you saw while we are in the transport. It is being monitored with sound,” Rowan says, his voice low. He wraps his huge gloved hand around my arm and hauls me up the few steps, through the gap.
Chapter Six
The door slides shut behind me, and I try to shake off Rowan’s hand. He holds on another moment, unaffected by my wriggling, before letting go. He makes a low sound in his throat, like a groan, and then moves toward the front of the pod—or transport, as he’s called it—where there’s a floor-to-ceiling windshield. From the outside, the reflective glass had a golden sheen. In here, the glass is clear with red and blue holographic images and symbols winking and scrolling along the glass. There aren’t any seats, just a podium with a control dashboard that’s angled like the fletching feathers of an arrow. Rowan steps up behind it, and as if sensing him there, the dashboard closes around his waist.
I can see up Broadway through the windshield, past the holographic images and symbols like the ones on his nametag. I assume it’s a language and wonder what Rowan’s name badge really says. Then again, why should I care what his real name is?
The transport pod thing that had been flying toward us is now in a holding position. It hovers over the street about fifty yards away, and it definitely feels as if it’s watching us.
“Stand over there,” Rowan commands. His hands furiously skip over the insane number of buttons and dials and knobs on the dashboard. His feet are locked into place, and he’s able to rotate the base of his podium, turning from one side of the dashboard to the other.
I look around the interior of the transport to see where “over there” might be. Other than the holographic windshield that makes my eyes water and the podium, there’s nothing overwhelmingly alien about the transport. It resembles the cockpit of an airplane. Honestly, it’s kind of a let-down.
The floor of the transport vibrates along with the unmistakable singing of an engine.
“Secure yourself,” he says, and this time, he turns away from the controls to point to a raised pedestal like the one he’s standing on.
I go over, step up, and put my back to the wall. Two armrests emerge from the wall and curve inward, in front of me, while a force pulls at the soles of my sneakers, suctioning my feet to the pedestal. I wiggle them, but they’re stuck, good as Gorilla Glue. I’d felt trapped in the basement of the treatment plant with Lee, and with Rowan and the other Volkranians since then, but not having control over my own feet makes me hot with panic.
The transport lifts off, straight up like a rocket, and gravity pushes against the crown of my head. I cling to the armrests as my vision swims, my gut kicking around as the transport fishtails.
“What’s going on?” I shout. “Can’t you fly this thing?”
Rowan messes around with more of the dashboard’s controls, sending the transport into a sharp, right-sided dive. I scream, certain we’re about to crash into a building, but the transport levels out and continues to ascend.
“My navigators are both deceased,” Rowan shouts back. The rooftops of Broadway disappeared from view, along with the other pod transport. “I can pilot, but I am a little corroded.”
Another burp in his flying skills makes my stomach roll.
“Corroded?” I repeat, a bubble of air in my throat. Oh. He means rusty.
I assume the two aliens from the pool room had been his navigators. “You said you’re high ranking. How high, exactly?” I’m desperate to keep talking and stave off the nausea creeping up my throat as the transport dips to the left. It begins to climb, the black base of the cityship now so close that dozens of small windows and staggered floors are visible. It looks like a few city blocks of apartment buildings, hanging upside down.
Rowan glances over his shoulder. “I am commanding sentinel,” he says. Whatever that means, it sounds important.
He faces forward, the transport now rising with the grace of a soap bubble toward a kind of cargo hold area. It feels like I’m on the Millennium Falcon, entering the Death Star.
The transport glides into the cargo bay, and despite its cavernous size, a minor attack of claustrophobia sets in, similar to what I felt in the basement of the waste treatment plant. Like I’m never going to breathe fresh air again. Like I’m never going to leave this ship.
I can’t let myself fall apart, so I force my attention to what’s around me. Dozens of identical black transports are lined up deep into the bay at an angle. It’s larger than two or three football fields in here, and to my relief, no one is wearing Storm Trooper armor. The Volkranians gesturing for Rowan to steer his transport toward an empty space on the cargo bay floor wear gray and yellow jumpsuits and no helmets. Just like Rowan and the other alien I’d seen in the treatment plant, they look human, their skin colors ranging from pale white to sky blue to ebony.
The transport lands on the floor with a clunk and thunk that rocks the base of my skull, and the dashboard around Rowan’s waist opens wide. I drag in a breath as the suction of the pedestal cuts off, releasing my feet, and the armrests retract. I stumble off, grasping my bag as Rowan walks toward me. He removes his helmet and spears me with his freaky, color swirling eyes.
“It is important that you stay with me at all times. If you try to escape, I cannot promise your safety.”
The harsh voices of the other Volkranians filter in through the walls of the transport.
“Don’t bother with the safe talk, okay? Maybe you haven’t killed me yet, but you’ve already slaughtered who knows how many humans, including my best friend.”
My voice trembles on those last words. Tana is dead because of this ship, because of these people. No, not people—Volkranians. He stares at me. It’s invasive and intense, as if the pause button on the world has just been hit. I stare right back, a throbbing pulse swishing through my ears as his strange eyes observe me. My body can’t remember how to breathe. I want to claw out those eyes as much as I want to keep watching them.
“I can guarantee that you’ll be safe for at least the next fifteen minutes, so long as you remain at my side,” he says.
Fifteen minutes. He’s just put a time cap on my life. What happens after that? I’m not sure I want to know. When the world is ending, maybe it’s better to live in fifteen-minute increments.
The door to the transport slides open and a whoosh of air, cold and sharp, blows into the little alien craft. I follow Rowan, taking the three steps down with a pair of feet that don’t feel attached to my body. I’m not ready to face more aliens, but there’s no choice. We emerge from the transport, and every last Volkranian in sight—at least a couple dozen of them—drops what they’re doing. They stare with wide, shocked eyes, and I realize they probably weren’t ready to see me either.
They quickly back up and away as Rowan cuts a path through the open cargo floor. I stay on his heels, clutching my bag to my stomach, and try not to meet many of the Volkranians’ gazes. Most stare at me with a mixture of awe and fear, but a handful of others aren’t shy about grimacing and pulling back dramatically, like I have some contagious disease.
Rowan doesn’t slow down to speak to any of them, but every last alien in the cargo bay lowers their head and turns their cheek to the left as he strides by.
An industrial-grade, open-sided elevator is directly ahead of us. The platform is a huge rectangle of something resembling steel, only it glimmers with streaks of gold and bronze. A school bus could probably fit on this thing, but we’re the only two who step onto the platform. I crane my neck; there’s a shaft directly above us, and at least three or four stories up, a glittering glass ceiling.
Rowan stands with his arms behind his back, his legs wide—the universal stance of a soldier, I guess—and stares out over the hushed carg
o bay.
“They have never seen a human before,” he says softly. “Except for on your world wide web of information, images, and videos.”
I look up at him, at the imperial lift of his chin and his regal expression of cool disregard. Fury bubbles up and drowns my fear. “So, you’ve taken the time to learn all about us, and yet, you’re still one hundred percent fine with killing us?”
The platform jerks into motion, rising up from the cargo floor and into the shaft. I stumble to the side, my legs having morphed into a pair of bendy Twizzlers. He catches my arm and steadies me before I can collapse onto one knee, or worse, roll off the platform.
I shove his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
“Be cautious. I allowed you to hold on to the chloromagnate,” he says. “Though now, it is time for you to give it to me.”
The platform rises into the shaft, pinching out the last view of the cargo bay.
“Not yet.” It’s my only leverage.
“Penelope Simmons,” he says, his voice so hushed I barely hear it. “You need to give me the vessel before we reach the top.”
I hold the bag closer to my stomach. “Not until the fleet commandment agrees to let me go.”
Rowan breaks his soldier stance and turns to stare down at me, his voice still a low murmur. “You have no bargaining power here. I cannot enter the fleet commandant’s presence without the vessel in my possession.”
“Why not?”
He wants to strangle me. I can see it in the flare of his eyes and the grinding of his jaw. “It would make me appear weak.” His voice is lower than a whisper. “And if the fleet commandant believes I am weak, he will never agree to my request to release you, unharmed.”
Oh. He has a point. A quick glance up shows the glass ceiling getting closer. About two levels away now.
“Incompetence is punishable by death.” He’s so quiet and standing so close that I can feel the heat of his breath. “I don’t wish to harm you, but I also will not die for you. This is as far as my benevolence extends. I have promised you safety—”
