We’re traveling too fast. We have practically no fuel. There’s no way we can eject ourselves at this velocity. Alarms and warnings start to go off around the cockpit. I tap on the controls until I’m given a readout that helps explain what’s going on—we never properly rebuilt the thrusters during the restoration. I’ve got two front thrusters I can engage, but it’s a one-time deal, and they’ll only change the direction of our much-too-rapid descent slightly.
We’re going to crash.
Somewhere behind me the Chimærae shriek and Ella cries as the cockpit instruments make terrible whining noises that seem to say “It’s too late; you’re dead.”
I try to remain calm, going over options in my head. There’s nothing we can do—not even a reentry parachute we can deploy.
And then, suddenly, an image comes to me. Zane. His favorite way to scare me after he developed flight was to race towards the ground until I was screaming for him to slow down, to stop, always sure he was going to end up crashing into the lawn or street. He’d wait until the last conceivable second and then finally pull up, shooting past me horizontally. A tornado in the form of a little boy.
“Everybody get ready,” I say. “I’m going to try something.”
I hear them shout things at me, but I don’t listen. I have to be completely focused. We’re getting closer and closer to Earth, but I wait. I have only one chance at this. We have only one chance.
The sand is almost upon us now. Zophie screams. Crayton wraps his arms around Ella.
I punch the front thrusters.
We straighten out for a split second, until we’re parallel to the earth. That’s when I blow the last of our fuel in one hard boost straight ahead. It works—by some miracle, we don’t crash. Not exactly. The surface of the desert is a blur as we skim across it. We start spinning. I’m sure that at any moment the ship is going to break in half and send us spilling out, our bodies breaking against the sand. But it stays together long enough to smash into a giant dune. Sand covers us, blacking out the cockpit but for the still-beeping emergency lights.
Everything is calm except for the howling of the animals. And the child, Ella, cries.
I’m almost afraid to look away from the controls or let go of the flight yoke. And then I hear Zophie gasping for air and Crayton talking to Ella, and I know that they’re alive. I look at them. They glisten with sweat and their eyes are wide, but they’re okay.
I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding my breath, but I exhale finally, peeling my shaky hands off of the controls.
“You did it,” Zophie says.
And I can’t help but laugh a hysterical, confused laugh as I try to gulp for air.
CHAPTER NINE
GETTING OUT OF THE SHIP PROVES TO BE A challenge.
The only way we’re able to escape is thanks to Raylan’s weapons cache—one of the few boxes we haven’t touched in the year and a half of our journey. My landing might have kept us from crumpling against the earth, but it also deeply embedded us in a sand dune. The loading door is blocked, and without any fuel to punch the thrusters or engine, it’s impossible for us to dig ourselves out of the sand. After a little bit of brainstorming, I find an old incendiary grenade in one of the boxes from Lorien and blow a hole in the side of the cargo bay while we huddle in Crayton’s living quarters along with the Chimærae.
On one hand, it’s perfect that we’ve crash-landed in the middle of nowhere, with no humans to catch sight of us. On the other, seeing nothing but sand and dunes surrounding us isn’t the most welcoming sight imaginable.
“How’s the radar on Earth?” I ask as I jump down into the hot sand, wearing the T-shirt and black pants I had on the night everything changed on Lorien. They’re a little baggier on me now, but I hardly notice. It is so good to be breathing air that hasn’t been recycled and to feel sunlight beating down on my skin. I don’t mind the heat. I welcome it, just as I welcome the solid, stable ground under my feet.
“Their systems aren’t exactly unsophisticated,” Zophie says, climbing out through the smoking hole. “It’s possible someone caught our entry. We’re in northern Africa. Egypt. We’re close enough to their capital that they may have had eyes in the sky.”
“Can someone take her?” Crayton asks, and then he hands Ella down to Zophie.
Soon the three of us stand at the top of the dune our ship has crashed into. The sand stretches out for what seems like an eternity.
“Which way do we go?” Crayton asks. He’s now got Ella strapped to his chest, holding his hand over her head to shield it from the sun.
“I’m not sure.” Zophie bites her lip. “I was charting us visually from space once we were close enough.”
“Isn’t there something on the ship that can point us towards civilization?”
“None of our tech is made to work with the satellites here,” I say. “I might be able to reconfigure something, but I have no idea how long it would take.”
“If the humans tracked our entry they might be coming this way.” Zophie raises her hand to her eyes, squinting.
“Then we should move,” I say. “Try to find a populated area and blend in.”
There’s some kind of commotion below us, and I realize that the Chimærae have all flown out and are now stretching their bodies, morphing between shapes and wrestling with one another in the sand. They seem as happy as we are to be outside again. A few of them take avian forms and soar up in the air.
“I’ve never seen them so riled up,” Crayton murmurs.
“They should get it out of their systems here,” I say, “while we’re out of sight.”
I can’t help but wonder: What are we going to do with all these beasts now that we’re on Earth?
One of them—a giant blue bird—flies higher than the others, golden eyes shining like a beacon in the sky. It lets out a shrill call and then swoops down, looping around us in two tight circles. It flies so close to me that I can feel its wake in the air on my face. Then the animal is in the sky again, beating its wings against the wind but looking back at us.
“Did I go completely insane in space or is that Chimæra beckoning for us to follow it?” Zophie asks.
“Possibly both,” I say.
“Her name is Olivia,” Crayton says. “She’s always been one of the brightest among them.” He turns to us. “I think we should follow her.”
Zophie and I exchange glances. She shrugs. “That direction looks as good as the others.”
Before we leave, I take a closer look at our ship. Or what’s left of it. Even without the gaping hole we’ve blown out of the back hull, the main propulsion units look like they were fried in our reentry. Without the necessary parts and materials, there’s no way the vessel is ever moving again.
“I think this ship’s seen its last flight,” I say, suddenly feeling very much stuck on this new planet.
“So do we just leave it, or what?” Crayton asks.
Zophie suggests we blow it up if we don’t want the humans to find it and suddenly come face-to-face with the realization that they’re not the only intelligent life in the universe. I can’t tell if she’s joking or not, but either way I argue that it’s a bad idea—I’m not exactly thrilled by the thought of destroying what might be one of the few remaining Loric computer systems in the universe. Besides, the ship is almost completely embedded in a sand dune anyway, obscured. After a few days, it will likely disappear beneath the sand completely. So we gather the few supplies we still have and distribute them among bags for equal carrying weight. There’s little food and only a handful of weapons—knives, concussion grenades and a few blasters. Raylan didn’t skimp on other resources, though. We split up the jewelry—rings, bangles, necklaces—and precious stones.
We walk. It is perhaps the first time that the enormity of our situation has dawned on me. We are now refugees. Four beings without a planet. We are a species on the brink of extinction. Trusting the guidance of an animal because we have no better plan or option. Even though
Earth has been our intended destination for months, being on its sandy ground feels surreal. It feels so foreign.
It’s been so monotonous on the ship that I’ve let old fires grow cold, but now that we’re on Earth, I remember all the hatred I had for the way Lorien was run. And for how it fell. I silently curse the names of each and every Elder. It’s something I’ve done countless times, usually thinking of Zane. Or for the Loric who died in the Mog attack—even those who were a part of the system, whether they realized it or not. At this moment, though, with the child crying and our feet sinking into the sand, I curse the Elders for me and Zophie and Crayton and Ella. For everything they might have kept from us. For getting us into this situation.
For thinking that we weren’t worth saving.
We follow Olivia. The rest of the Chimærae trail behind us. Eventually, when our pace slows, a few of them transform into four-legged beasts and carry us and our supplies. We march on until they too begin to grow weary. And then we camp.
Night falls. Zophie guesses that it must not be summer or winter, otherwise the temperatures in this climate would be extreme. It’s chilly, but we make do. One of the Chimærae morphs into a large animal with long, soft fur, and after a little hesitation I give in to leaning on it. I fall asleep quickly, my mind drifting to other times. Zane and I playing games at our grandfather’s home. Our mutual excitement on his first morning at the academy. Perfect afternoons on Lorien.
It’s the middle of the next day before we spot structures in the distance. Tall, sand-colored triangles jutting out over the horizon. When Zophie sees them, she cries out, running forward a few steps.
“The Great Pyramids,” she says. “They’re ancient constructions—one of the first projects the Loric spearheaded here on Earth ages ago when we were still trying to assess the capabilities of the life-forms here. This is it. The Chimærae led us in the right direction.”
And so we soldier on with renewed vigor.
A few hours later, we begin to pass small buildings and finally hit roads. The Chimærae shrink down to smaller sizes. Some scurry through the gutters as lizards. Others perch on rooftops above us as birds. I swear I see a small rodent crawl into one of Crayton’s pockets.
We stand out, with our bags and sallow expressions. A few men congregated in front of what looks like a small market ask us questions in a language I don’t recognize. But Zophie does. It must be one of the ones she studied on her own. She converses with them for a few minutes, finally laughing a little.
“What is it?” Crayton asks in Loric.
I shoot him a look. “That’s not our language anymore,” I say in French.
Zophie smirks. “They say we look as if we just walked across the desert. They say that would be a long journey indeed.”
“Ask them where we can find a place to stay.”
She goes back to talking. The words come rapidly, and it sounds as if things are getting heated.
“We’re in Giza,” she says. “I told them we need to find a place to sleep, but they’re trying to sell us a tour of some local landmarks. They think we’re visiting from another place on Earth.”
I take a few steps forward, scowling. I have several inches on these men, and when my boots plant in front of them, I can feel their apprehension. I reach into my pocket and remove a small, glittering ring from Raylan’s stash, holding it out to them in my palm.
“Tell them it’s theirs if they can get us to comfortable beds,” I say.
Zophie speaks. The men grin.
CHAPTER TEN
WE BARTER. WE SHOWER. WE SLEEP FOR WHAT seems like a very long time.
We try to adapt.
We check into three rooms at what I understand to be a nice temporary dwelling called a hotel using names Zophie assigns us. We split the Chimærae among us, letting them sleep at our feet in the oversize beds. We try to cobble together some kind of semblance of normalcy. After being stuck in a metal tube for a year and a half, the ability to wander around a city for an hour—just moving my legs and feeling the wind on my face—seems like a blessing.
I sell much of Raylan’s stuff to pawnshops around town once I discover what a pawnshop is. A few of the nicer things I take to places that specialize in jewels. The shop owners there look at me suspiciously when I say they were heirlooms passed down from my family in what I’m sure is butchered English. They buy things from me anyway, and we amass a stockpile of the currency used in Giza—though, to be honest, the wads of paper and coins are fairly meaningless to me without context of what it costs to survive on this planet. But Zophie’s the one in charge of the finances, and she says we have plenty of money to live on for now.
The city itself seems safe enough, but I take to carrying one of Raylan’s blasters in my pocket whenever I leave the hotel. I’ve learned too well how everything can change in an instant. Also, Earth doesn’t have the most reassuring history when it comes to violence and war.
I take a portion of the money to buy a laptop, which on this planet is considered state of the art but to me is an archaic machine that I imagine my grandfather might have used. Still, primitive as it is, some of its hardware is based on Loric systems I know well. I disassemble the computer that must weigh more than Ella and reassemble it¸ incorporating components from the two data pads we had on the ship. The result is a decent upgrade.
The communications systems on this planet are just as rudimentary as the computing gear, but they’ll suffice. I get to work harvesting data, scouring the internet for any information on the other ship, anything that might be related to the Loric at all. But this planet is so large, with so many places to hide, in so many different languages. Progress is slow. I feel at home, at least, back in the world of ones and zeros and code.
But the days wear on Zophie. Each hour that goes by without an idea of where her brother might be puts another crack in her shell. It’s unsettling to see. In the ship, we were frustrated because we were trapped, unable to do anything. But now on Earth, where we can actually do something, our inability to find any leads weighs heavy on her. It doesn’t help that—although she is the specialist in otherworldly cultures and affairs—I am the one who is plugged in. The one she has to rely on. She might be able to type something into a search engine, but I can really navigate the internet on this planet. I know its back doors and recognize the things that are hidden in plain sight. She feels helpless. With each day, the bags under her eyes grow larger.
It’s a few weeks into our indefinite residency at the hotel that I finally find a solid lead to Janus and the others. I run across a forum of people posting “evidence” of close encounters with alien species. Most of the photos are grainy and blurry, and I can see the wires hanging from a few of the flying saucers users are trying to pass off as legitimate extraterrestrial spacecrafts—what a strange thing it must be to live on a planet without any knowledge of what cultures and species exist in the universe. But I find a picture from a few weeks ago that’s got an unmistakable silhouette in it. A Loric ship.
Spotted in the United States.
Zophie and Crayton are out buying grocery supplies. Ella sleeps behind me in a crib rolled in from Crayton’s room. I’m alone and can focus on the task ahead of me. My fingers fly across the keyboard.
Through a little digging, I track the IP address of the user who posted the photo. This points me to a small county in the northern part of a state called New York. A population map tells me the place is secluded, sparsely inhabited—the perfect place to hide a ship. I continue investigating, trying to find more information on the user who uploaded the picture. He hasn’t responded to any of the comments on his post—most of which are banal or useless. In fact, his online presence on the forums seems to completely disappear a few days after the picture goes up, which is strange, since I can tell he’s normally a heavily active user. When I email him through the address connected to his username, I get an automated response saying the message was “undeliverable.”
I pick out clues about
the man’s identity based on the large amount of personal data he leaves behind in his comments on the forums and track his username across several other websites. It doesn’t take long before I discover his true identity: Eric Bird. After a little research, I dig up property records in the New York area with his name on them.
And a home address.
It’s not much, but it’s something to go off of.
There’s a phone number attached to the address, but when I call it, I get a busy signal. I keep trying, every ten minutes, for the next hour. Eventually, Zophie and Crayton come back. When I tell them what I’ve learned, Zophie drops her groceries and rushes over to me. She’s hugging me before I can even get out of my chair.
“I knew you’d do it,” she whispers. “Oh, thank you, thank you.”
I can’t help but smile. Zophie has needed news so desperately. It feels good to be able to deliver it to her.
“We’d need certification of some type to go to another country, right?” Crayton asks. “Identification?”
“Passports,” I say. “We need passports. I can handle that.”
“How?”
“Earth isn’t so different from Lorien. There are people willing to do anything for the right price. I’ve been investigating a portion of the internet most humans probably don’t even realize exists. It’s mostly used by criminals on this planet. I’ve found people nearby in Cairo who will help us.”
“We have to go,” Zophie says. “We have to find Janus and the others.”
“We don’t know that they’re still in the United States,” Crayton says, his voice full of skepticism. “Besides, I don’t feel comfortable trusting Ella’s life to the hands of . . . what, some counterfeiters? Criminals on a planet we barely know?”
“It’s the best lead we have.” Zophie slams her palm down on the desk, her voice getting louder. Crayton stares at her for a few seconds before turning to me.
“When was this picture taken?”
I hesitate, glancing at Zophie. “A few weeks ago.”