by Sean Platt
He threw his hands out, pressing on the door, trying to keep Mary from shoving him inside.
“You wanted to see inside my head, right? Well, why don’t you take a look into the mind of the man holding your daughter?”
“No!” Paul screamed, closing his eyes and throwing himself to the ground, making it harder for Mary to push him into the vault.
“Fine!” She slammed the door and silenced the screams.
Their vault was again dark and silent.
Paul looked up. “What was that?”
“That was a peek inside the head of the man with your daughter. I swear to God and all you hold holy, if anything happens to me or Paola, he’ll make that seem like a children’s birthday party in comparison.”
Paul stood, trembling, staring at Mary, uncertain how to respond.
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how I can help you.”
“You’re going to find a way, Paul.”
Paul left Mary’s cell, afraid and shaking. What kind of monster was this Boricio? And how long could Emily possibly stay safe with him near? Further, what the hell did she expect him to do? Betray Desmond?
And do what, exactly?
It wasn’t as if he could just set her, or her friends, free. Even if they did somehow get away, they were on a mothership with no less than one hundred armed Guardsmen aboard. And nearly a thousand aliens. The rebels were outgunned and outnumbered. It would be suicide to join them.
As he walked down the hall to the observation room where Desmond waited, Paul’s fear gave way to indignation.
She wants to threaten my daughter? I’ll show her. I’ll find her precious Boricio and kill him in front of her.
Paul stepped into the cell.'
“So, what happened, Mr. Roberts?”
“I got inside her head.”
“And?”
“A man has my daughter. His name is Boricio Wolfe, and he’s very dangerous.”
Desmond smiled. “I know this man well.”
Fifty-Nine
Boricio Wolfe
The girls were sitting with Boricio at the rectangular kitchen table, waiting for him to answer their question: What do we do now?
Boricio sat there, shoulders slumped, head in his hands, feeling Fucked with a capital F, bold, italicized, and highlighted.
It was the bottom of the ninth, and Team Fucking Boricio’s entire squad was dead, wounded, or captured.
Mary was still missing, hopefully not gone forever.
Keenan was already rotting.
Marina had turned on them, likely hijacked by an alien.
Jazz was now just a body.
Barrow and Jevonne were both presumed dead.
And the alien cocksuckers had Luca, Brent, Teagan, and the kids.
The benches were clear, with zero pinch hitters on deck.
Boricio thought about putting a distress call to the other rebel teams, any who might answer, but all the best people were already dead or taken by the aliens. Only scrubs were left, and fuck a duck and watch it waddle if Boricio was going to war with scrubs at his back.
Lisa was a warrior, but she was also wounded, and Boricio wasn’t sure how much she could take without ripping her fresh stitches and bleeding out all over the place.
He had to do this himself.
He had an awful idea, but you took what you had when you got it.
Boricio opened his eyes and answered the question.
“What are we going to do? We’re going to do what we’ve always done. We’re battered and broken, but we ain’t dead and buried. We’re gonna swing with all we have, and if that ain’t enough to knock a fucker’s head from his shoulders, well, at least we’ll leave ‘em ugly and scarred.”
“Yeah, that’s not exactly inspirational,” Lisa said, sitting across from Boricio.
“Well, Hallmark fired me. You want inspiration, go dig up Tony Robbins and ask him to give you a ditty. This is all I’ve got.”
“So, do you have a plan beyond swinging with all we have?”
“Yeah.”
Lisa looked at Emily. “Do you believe this guy? Normally, you can’t shut him up, but now that I want him to talk and give us details, he’s all Silent Bob.”
Boricio grinned. “I’m pretty sure you stole that line from me.”
“I know who Kevin Smith is.”
“You do?” Boricio was genuinely surprised. “I never pictured you as a cineffecianado.”
“What did you picture? And that’s not a word.”
“I dunno. I figured you were a junior survivalist or some shit, learning to assemble rifles, hunt mammoth, maybe driving monster trucks, I dunno. And you knew what I meant; that makes it a word.”
“You so don’t know me.”
Emily burst into their back-and-forth banter: “Will you two get serious? What are we going to do? Luca and the others are in trouble.”
Boricio turned to her. “I know. I’m just trying to shoot a few womp rats before heading to the Death Star.”
Lisa sighed. “What’s your plan?”
Boricio looked at them both then said, “You’re not gonna like this.”
“Come on,” Lisa said.
Boricio turned to Emily. “Tell me, kid. Do you think you could teleport me, or you and me, onto the Death Star?”
“You mean the big ship?” Emily’s eyes widened, as if the thought scared her. “I don’t know.”
“You teleported you and Luca somewhere, then you teleported away when the Guardsmen stormed the tunnel.”
“Yeah, I did. But I couldn’t control it either time. If I could have, I would’ve saved the others, too.”
“Okay,” Boricio said, “then onto Plan B.”
Lisa said, “What’s Plan B?”
“Me and the kid will head down to the docks. Guardsmen are always eyeing the area, as if someone would be dumb enough to boat on out to The Island. We’ll be dumb enough and get ourselves caught.”
“Caught?” Lisa asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then what?”
“Not sure. I like to play things by ear.”
“Going on the ship with no plan isn’t playing things by ear, it’s a suicide mission!”
“Ain’t nobody bringing Boricio down.”
“Okay, now you’re just being stupid.”
“Hey, it’s got me this far in life.” Boricio spread his hands wide to indicate their shitty surroundings in a rundown house.
“So, you’re gonna get yourself caught and brought onto the ship. Then what? You think they’re gonna hand you the keys to wherever the hell they’re keeping Luca so you can walk in and escort everyone out? How do you know they won’t kill you on the spot?”
“Because I won’t let them.”
Lisa turned to Emily. “What?”
“I won’t let them. I can convince them to keep him alive.”
“And then what?” Lisa asked.
“I don’t know. They bring us on the ship, my father welcomes me with open arms, and I’ll try and find some way to save Boricio, and the others, from the inside. Maybe we trick them into thinking that Boricio was trying to bring me to the ship in exchange for the others.”
“They won’t make an exchange,” Lisa said flatly.
“I know they won’t. But that could get us onboard. After that, we’ll figure out what’s next.”
Boricio leaned back in his chair, turned to Lisa, and smiled. “Now that sounds like a fucking plan!”
He raised his hand to get a high-five from Emily. She stared at his open palm, clearly perplexed.
“It’s a high-five. You never gave someone a high-five?”
Emily shook her head.
“Kids these days.”
Lisa ignored him. “I don’t like this. You’re gonna get yourself killed. I’m going with you.”
“So I can get both of us killed?”
“I won’t take no for an answer.”
“You’re in no shape to come with us. Th
at wound needs to heal before you’re back in the field.”
Lisa began to object, but Boricio shut her down.
“Sorry, princess. Me and Chewie are going without you. You’re staying put.”
“Here? In this house?”
“Well, we can’t trust that our sites aren’t compromised if the aliens are interrogating fuckers for information.”
“What about your other teams?” Emily asked. “Aren’t they compromised?”
“No, we don’t have locations of any team other than Beta,” Lisa explained. “They all operate as cells, more or less unaware of one another’s identities and locations, to prevent a situation like this. I can call this in and report that the church is no longer a sanctuary, set something else up.”
“Good,” Boricio said. “You do that while I go see what I can scrounge up for you before we set out.”
Boricio left the house and set out to find whatever food or medical supplies he could gather. Searching through the scant remains he could find, he tried not to consider his plan’s many flaws.
He’d always rolled the dice and gone with his gut. He’d been joking when he said his cavalier attitude had got him that far in life, but there was plenty of truth to it, too. Sure, he was fucked up, but flying over the Cuckoo’s Nest had kept him alive longer than most.
Others hemmed and hawed, analyzed shit for strengths and weaknesses. Boricio dove from the plane, parachute or no.
He’d find a way, like he always had before.
Sixty
Brent Foster
Brent opened his eyes to the sound of Ben’s crying.
His entire body, save for his head, was immobilized. He was also standing straight up, naked in a glowing red gelatinous goo holding him in place in some sort of black metal pod mounted to the wall.
He looked to his left, right, and across, seeing the others also confined in black pods, their entire bodies, save for their heads, in the glowing jelly-like material.
Ben was directly across from him, softly sobbing. Luca was between him and Becca, still asleep, if not dead. There was also a black metallic-looking brace around Luca’s head, covering his mouth and nose, reminding Brent of Hannibal Lecter’s mask in The Silence of the Lambs.
“It’s going to be okay,” Brent said to Ben, another in an endless string of lies.
Ben looked up. “No, it’s not. They’re going to kill us.”
That drove Becca to tears.
Teagan, on Brent’s left, said, “No they’re not, honey. We’re going to get out of this. Don’t worry. You need to be strong. Can you do that for me?”
Ben sniffled, “I dunno.”
Brent tried to help out. “We’ll find a way out of this, guys. We always do. But for now, I need you to be quiet so I can think. Can you do that?”
They both nodded.
Brent surveyed their surroundings. They were in a long dark, narrow room that looked more like a corridor. The walls were black, red, and bumpy, with hundreds of small amber lights just under the surface. There were at least a dozen pods on each side, though the others were empty, of both people and jelly. He thought of the aliens’ skin and how the walls seemed almost organic. He shivered, thinking of Jonah inside the belly of a whale.
The floor was a tough, bumpy black metal, like the roof. The room’s only light came from the walls and the jelly holding them in place.
He strained to move his arms then found some momentary give. But then the jelly buzzed around him, seeming to tighten as if in response.
The walls began to make an odd swooshing that reminded Brent of the sound he’d heard when he went to the gynecologist’s office with his wife and saw the ultrasound showing them Ben. The jelly in all of their pods began to pulsate, lights brightening and dimming in a pattern to match the swooshing.
“What is that?” Becca asked, starting to cry again.
“Nothing to worry about.” Teagan’s expression said she was merely hoping. Brent figured the kids could see through it.
He had nothing to substantiate his guess but spoke anyway. “I think it’s keeping us hydrated and healthy. It’s not trying to hurt us. If they wanted to hurt us, we’d be hurting already.”
Ben said, “Maybe they’re trying to fatten us up, to eat us.”
And Becca, of course, cried. “I don’t want them to eat me!”
“They’re not going to eat us,” Teagan assured her.
“How do you know?” Ben asked, probably disagreeing with Teagan to calm his fears.
Brent wasn’t sure what to say. The way he saw it, Ben’s assumption was as good as any other. Given what the aliens had already done to two worlds, their intent was surely malicious.
Still, that wasn’t something they could tell the kids.
As the swooshing continued for another few minutes, Brent felt his exhaustion. Ben yawned, followed by Becca and Teagan.
Perhaps these pods weren’t helping them after all. Maybe they were draining their energy.
Luca’s pod glowed a brighter red than theirs. There was a sudden jolt as the cube came alive in a bright spiderweb of crimson lightning.
Luca’s eyes shot open, and he looked up at them as if in shock.
Then, in an instant, his eyes closed again, and his head leaned lazily to the side.
The swooshing stopped, and the pod went dark again.
Brent had another theory. The pods weren’t hydrating or keeping them healthy so much as using them as batteries to recover Luca’s consciousness. And if that were the case, how long before they ran dry and were disposed of?
Brent watched the others drift off to sleep, trying his best to stay awake, as if doing so would keep anything bad from happening.
As if Brent could do anything at all.
Sixty-One
Boricio Wolfe
It was nearing nightfall as Boricio and Emily navigated side streets and alleyways toward the docks.
Boricio carried a pistol, and a blade strapped to the small of his back. Emily carried a blade in a boot sheath, just in case they ran into any trouble along the way. In Boricio’s experience, if shit could happen, it would, so as they drew closer to the docks, he found himself surprised that nothing had yet to stand in their way.
She’d spent the first half hour of their trek explaining the difference between the aliens they’d been calling The Darkness and the aliens who came on the ship, the Pruhm, all of it enlightening even if Boricio didn’t quite know what to do with that info just yet.
“So, you really don’t have a plan?” Emily asked.
“Nope.”
“Are you always this impulsive?”
“Yep.” Boricio grinned. “Before all the shit hit the fan, there were two kinds of men. Those who would spend months, or years sometimes, learning everything they could about something, never committing to anything until they knew every possible outcome. And then, and only if the situation was perfect, would they pledge allegiance to the plan. Then there were guys who didn’t research shit. Guys who jumped into the fire. Guess which one I am.”
“Interesting.”
Boricio wasn’t sure if Emily was being sarcastic or not and waited for her to say something else as they kept walking.
When she didn’t say dick, he asked, “Really? You think that’s interesting?”
“Yeah. I wish I could be that brave. I’ve spent years trying to figure out a way to get off the spaceship, a way that wouldn’t cause problems for my father, and, well, I never would’ve done anything if you all hadn’t come along.”
“Well, don’t feel too down on yourself. Hell, I’m not even saying my way’s the right way for everyone. It just happened to work for me. There’s something to be said for playing it safe.”
Emily stared at him then said, “You don’t really mean that.”
Boricio grinned, “Nah, not really. Safe is for pussies. Fortune favors the bold.”
Emily laughed.
Boricio liked the sound but told himself not to get too used to
it. Soon, she’d be back on the ship, and the odds of her coming back with them were thinner than Kate Moss in a concentration camp.
“So,” he asked, “let’s say this all works out. You and your daddy figure a way to get us off the ship; what then?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping we could come with you.”
“You think your daddy’s gonna want to leave his cushy spot in the sky for this hellhole?” He waved his hand across the torn-up roads, broken-down cars, and half-destroyed houses surrounding them.
“Then maybe we don’t leave. Maybe we take the ship for ourselves.”
Her eyes were bright and hopeful. Obviously, she’d been sitting on this idea for a while.
“Go on … ”
“Well, as I said, there are a ton of Guardsmen and aliens onboard, so we’re obviously outnumbered.”
“So far, so good,” Boricio joked.
“Well, I’m thinking they all answer to Desmond, right? I mean, there are aliens above him, but Desmond’s basically running the show.”
“Okay.”
“And my father has a vital role. He’s in charge of making sure the hosts are sufficiently softened when an alien takes over their body.”
“Softened?”
“Yeah, the way he explained it is that the stronger a person’s psyche, or the more messed up their life was, the harder it is for the aliens to stay in the body. After a while, the host rejects the alien. A lot of times, the host brain goes crazy and gets violent or suicidal. This doesn’t just endanger the host but also the alien inside it. The Pruhm can be killed by stress from the host body. Dad uses his gifts to weaken resistance, to ensure hosts give the alien as few problems as possible.”
Boricio nodded.
“So, in short, the aliens need my father. Maybe more than they need Desmond. So, what if we kill Desmond?”
“Oh, that’s definitely part of my plan,” Boricio said. “Let’s say we do. What makes you think the aliens won’t kill us? I mean, if Desmond’s in charge, they must need him for something, right?”
“Desmond helped corral and control the Ferals after they killed most of the planet. He eliminated a lot of them, though I’m not sure how. Basically, he got them to stop reproducing and destroying all the resources, what they were designed to do. If he’s done that job, then I’d say he’s no longer needed, right?”
