Vera stuck her chin out; she looked very pretty, even with her mascara all over her face. “Don’t bet on it,” she said.
Nick squeezed my hand before returning both of his to the wheel. The THUMP THUMP THUMP of the helicopter was louder, the helicopter closer. I rationed my breaths, seriously worried I might hyperventilate.
“Their positioning system is so sloooow,” Vera taunted, making little sense to me. She was looking at Nick, who was looking in the rear-view, his face dotted with sweat.
Seconds later, a sonic boom rocked the truck, and the mountainside somewhere behind us blew apart. As my arms covered my head, I caught a glance out Vera's window, where a majestic fireball crawled over the shadowed cliffs on the other side of the metal railing. I realized it was the helicopter.
Nick made the helicopter crash. I gaped at him even though I had seen it before, back at S.K.’s cabin. But then they had been so far away, I hadn’t really seen it. Not like this, up close, with a big, Hollywood-sized fireball.
When his hand came down to cover my knee, I jumped. I felt terrible, and the look in his eyes—wounded—made me feel worse, but there were people in that helicopter. I remembered Nick’s face, twisted with pain on the gurney at the DoD compound, and put my hand over his knee.
“Vera, are you going to help?” Nick asked in a voice I could tell was carefully controlled.
Vera snorted. “I’m not contributing any more to this farce.”
“Milo.” Nick’s eyes hopped from the road to mine, holding for an intense second. “I understand that you're afraid. But— Milo, I need you to drive.”
I laughed, then my laughter collapsed into hiccups. “Is that a—” hiccup “—JOKE?!”
“Can you do it?” he pleaded. “Try?”
Hiccup. “Why!”
He took a deep breath, then, in a kind of rush said, “There are a few more helicopters on the way.”
“What! How many?”
“Just a few. Can you do it?”
“I don't know,” I cried. “Of course I can't, I'll crash!” Nick must have been going at least ninety miles an hour, and we were in a huge truck pulling a huge camper, whipping around hair-pin curves. I was a decent driver, but I wasn't Danica Patrick.
The road straightened just a little, and again, I found Nick's gaze on mine. “Can you try? Please, Milo?”
He might have been an alien, but his handsome face had worked its way into my heart, so when his mouth tugged down and worry filled his eyes, I still felt like Milo, Saving The Day; Milo, Saving The Lost Boy. I still wanted to be that person, like I still wanted him to be Nick as I’d imagined him to be.
I nodded once, my head jerking. “I’ll try.”
“You’ll do fine,” he told me warmly.
He sort of stood in his seat, and I went low, so, after a warm brush of his body over mine, I settled behind the wheel. We'd eased off the gas pedal as we switched places, but now, as I tried to become one with the twisty-turvy road, I pressed a little harder.
Nick gave my arm a squeeze. “You can do this. Just stay focused, and only drive as fast as you’re comfortable.”
That was like fifty, tops, but I nodded.
Nick switched places with Vera, and within seconds, I felt the ground shake. There was a loud boom, and somewhere behind us, the sky went orange and red as Nick began picking helicopters out of the sky.
I flew around one curve and then another, keeping my eyes trained on the yellow lines and not the massive hunk of mountain to our left, nor the steep drop-off beyond the railing to our right.
Vera was using a piece of her dress to wipe the mascara off her cheeks, clearly unconcerned by the life-and-death situation that seemed to have even Nick a little bothered. He was crouching on the far end of the bench seat, his head and shoulders hanging out the window. As a straight shot turned into a harrowing curve, he slowly stood, moving more of his body out the window.
“Holy shit.” My legs were shaking so hard, I could hardly keep pressure on the pedal.
“Here comes another,” Vera said, almost a taunt.
“I don’t see anything,” was Nick’s response.
A second later, the chopper Nick didn’t see was pulling down close to the peaks beside us.
“Shit, Nick!” When I glanced over at him, and I could only see his legs.
“Careful,” Vera taunted, and I cursed as the left side of the truck—my side—scraped rock, and I heard stones knocking the roof.
The helicopter's swishing blades were almost deafening, but I couldn't look to see how close it was to us, or why Nick hadn't brought it down yet. Then the truck jerked hard right, and I screamed Nick’s name. The front right tire felt like it was going flat; we were losing speed, and I could still barely keep the wheel steady.
Nick dipped back into the cab, saying, “It's okay,” even as the chopper flew right in mothereffing front of us, and my side-mirror lit up with what looked like a hundred brilliant stars.
Oh, shit.
Those stars were headlights!
“There are people behind us!” I screamed. Terror overtook me as the helicopter maneuvered out in front of us like a monster on the big-screen, curving around the mountain-face as we did.
My words hung in the air for a few seconds before a screeching sound reverberated through the truck, and then suddenly we jerked forward. It took me a second to realize Nick had disconnected the camper, all without his feet leaving the truck's seat, where he still crouched. I flicked my gaze to the rear-view just in time to see the camper flip, then roll right into the handful of vehicles on our tail.
Nick was still hanging out the window, and the helicopter was still hovering in front of us, keeping perfect time. Swift as a lightning strike, something exploded. For half a second I thought the helicopter had blown up; then the ball of fire was swallowing us up.
I realized numbly that the helicopter must have shot at us.
My eyes closed on their own, popping open milliseconds later as something struck the roof, and the truck shook so hard I rammed into the mountain side. I spun the steering wheel, trying to right our course. Vera was turned toward the window. She was yelling something I couldn't hear because Nick was screaming.
Oh, God. My stomach lurched as his screams filled the cab. He was crumpled against the passenger's side door, and Vera was leaning over him, her long hair whipping in the wind, obscuring him but not his blood.
Shiny, everywhere—all over his pants, Vera, the seat, the floor.
My throat collapsed on itself as I tried to keep my eyes on the road. This couldn't be happening. It just couldn't be happening. None of this was real. A second later, my frenzied thoughts were drowned out by a vast BOOM as the helicopter fired again. “Oh SHIT!”
I don't know how the missile didn't hit us. Actually, I do. I have some freaky, non-memory, memory of Nick waving his arm, which must have directly preceded what I actually do remember: an explosion hitting the road in front of us.
I screamed again as the impact bounced and spun us, and we smacked the metal railing to our right. I fought with the wheel, I tried to, but my arms were so weak I could barely move them. The helicopter hovered over us, and Nick groaned, “Hold on,” and he must've been driving with his mind, because I wasn't. The car shuddered, righted itself, and I did nothing, my mouth hanging open as it cut a path through the firs at the base of the mountain, the trees simply lying down in front of us as we went around the huge hole in the road, finally swerving back onto the asphalt.
I was shaking hard, but I made my hands grip the wheel, because Nick was hurt and he shouldn't have to drive for me.
“Vera, do something,” Nick moaned. He was breathing in short, painful gasps, barely able to squeeze out words, and I thought he'd meant do something about my driving, but then he arched back, like he was trying to look out the rear window, and he said, “Do something...Vera!”
“We can leave this place together.”
The helicopter had settled directly in fron
t of us again, and my fear had returned full-force, swallowing me whole. It would hit us this time. I knew it would.
“You might rejoin The Rest,” he said. “But in this body, I don’t think I will.”
His eyes pleaded with her, and after a second that seemed like a century she made a noise of disgust. “Ughhh.”
The next second, she disappeared.
I gaped, stunned, and then I saw Nick’s right arm. That’s where all the blood had come from. The jagged nub where his hand used to be.
Bile rushed up my throat, and everything spun. Like, tilt-o-whirl spun. Oh my God. This can't be real. “Nick...”
At that moment Vera appeared back in the truck. She didn’t seem concerned for Nick, who was shivering violently and only looked half-conscious. I rubbed my hands over my face, stifling a sob, and looked up just in time to see the helicopter fall out of the sky.
“That's the last time I'm helping,” Vera said.
THE HELICOPTER CRASHING down the side of the mountain didn't rattle me nearly as much as it might have if I hadn’t just seen Nick’s wound. I guess I was primitively human enough that seeing someone in pain still rattled me more than seeing a big machine fall out of the sky. My mind grappled with thought, trying to form it into an emblem of our situation, but my attention quickly boomeranged to Nick.
Blood was all over him, coating his scrubs, splattered onto his face, mixing with his sweat and dripping back down onto him, so he looked like a doctor coming out of a horribly unsuccessful surgery. We went around a particularly sharp curve and gravity pushed him against the door, making him moan.
“Do something,” I cried to Vera.
She looked down her nose at Nick. “The regeneration process would be much faster and more comfortable if you were in the right vessel.” She tsk’d. “How exactly did you end up in this 'body?'”
Nick stared down at his wounded arm, which he was hiding behind his raised left knee. I caught another glimpse, though, and immediately averted my eyes, because I almost drove us of the mother-loving gosh darn fracking mountain! It—I had seen it growing. It looked sort of like his arm was being squeezed slowly out of a tube of toothpaste.
But the tube of toothpaste was also his arm.
Oh. Holy. Shit.
“I’m okay,” Nick grunted, sounding weak, and Vera made a disgusted noise. “I don’t understand you. Why you’ve chosen this way. Why your concern for this insignificant human—”
“SHUT UP!” I screamed, finally tired of playing Nice Milo. “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!”
Her eyes bulged—and so did Nick’s. I even surprised myself.
“You—you human!” Vera's face flushed, and there was so much hate in her eyes that I suddenly remembered who I was dealing with.
“Vera—” Nick gritted, but she cut him off.
“That singular name is not mine, Nick. And this—” She waved between Nick and I “—this is completely unacceptable! Unfathomable! You have violated rules that have existed longer than our variations!”
“Vera—”
“I can't believe we're discussing this in human language! What happened to the vessel we made? I want an answer this time. What is this?” She thumped him on the chest.
Nick sat up a little straighter, and when he met her gaze, I lost my breath. I think he had intended to give her a hard, cold look—the only kind of look one of them should know how to give. Instead, his eyes were filled with reckless emotion. He looked vulnerable. Upset. Angry. He held her gaze only for a moment before breaking to me.
His face was twisted like he was trying to solve a difficult problem, but he just couldn't figure it out. The same look he gave me—four nights ago? Standing in my room as I rushed up the stairs, his brown eyes burning when he’d confessed: “I shouldn't have come here, but I didn't know where else to go.”
When he lied to her, I could hear a hint of strain in his voice. “I made a miscalculation. There was something wrong—”
“That’s a lie!” she snapped. Then she gasped. “You—you lied to me!”
I squeezed the wheel as I guided the truck down a rare straight-shot. It was a lie, and I wondered was it for him or for me? Vera obviously thought the idea of us having anything romantic was abhorrent. What if she knew Nick had ditched his special alien body for me?
“I don’t know what happened; I lost the data when I made the leap,” he said. “There have been similar errors.”
I thought she would insist he was lying, but instead, she answered in the snippy, high-horse tone I was beginning to identify as ‘Bitch Alien’. “You could have aborted.”
She didn't seem to notice Nick glance at me again; this time, he looked guilty. “That's true,” he said. He clasped the back of his neck, the way he did sometimes when he was stressed, but it only took him a second to find his neutral face. He met Vera's eyes, and he looked all business, sounded totally matter-of-face as he said, “I could have aborted, but I found this vessel and I made it work.”
“It's a human body!”
“The theory is sound. I just botched the execution.”
Before Vera could get another word in, he leaned in close to her. “Blow the whistle again. Hear me out.” His eyes were soft, his tone urgent, his handsome face in kissable proximity to Vera's as he quietly said, “I'm not asking for a lot of time. Just enough for you to consider something things you might not want to.”
I was steering around a steep curve, so I wasn't watching anymore, but I could hear the layers in Nick's tone. I could tell whatever he was saying was significant somehow; beyond simply acknowledging humanity’s right to exist.
Whatever he was trying to impart, the nuances seemed lost on Vera.
“I'll tell you what I see! One of Us, expressing an interest in an animal that I can only assume is sexual.” She said ‘sexual’ like it tasted bad. “Please tell me you aren’t considering copulation—”
“You’re going too far!” Nick fumed, and I had to agree. “I’m not an animal!”
She ignored me. “You are the one who has gone too far! Remember what we're here for! Think about The Rest! We’re facing fragmentation, and—”
I heard Vera gasp, just as I steered the truck into a tunnel; I’ve been afraid of them all my life, so I kept my eyes on the road, even when something banged against the truck door. When we emerged into moonlight, I glanced at them, and what I saw made me go cold.
Vera had Nick pinned against the passenger's side door, her fingertips pressed into his chest. Nick was breathing hard, his face a mask of shock.
“Tell me it isn’t true,” she shrieked. She leaned in even closer, and I couldn’t see what she was doing—she didn’t appear to be doing anything—but a moment later she pushed away from him with a gasp. “You advocate fragmentation!”
With a small twist of his lips, Nick shook his head. “It would be the end of all we know.”
It was weird to hear him speak like that, in monotone, when his eyes were catching on fire again. I could see him struggling to extinguish his feelings. I could see the moment he succeeded—but he wasn't fooling Vera.
Whatever passion had lit his eyes, she had seen it, too.
“Holy shit,” she panted.
Nick blinked at her, the picture of detachment, and Vera gripped her head, hunching down like she'd been stricken with a migraine.
I waited for her to say something, probably something cutting, hopefully something to explain what the crap they were talking about. I waited for a long minute, watching her shoulders rise and fall with deep, furious breaths. I could feel her rage at Nick. Her desire to lash out at him. So I was surprised when she turned to face the road, drew her knees up to her chest, and sobbed.
I wasn't fluent in alien-speak, but my guess was 'fragmenting' meant some kind of end to their network of minds. That’s the conclusion I was left to draw, anyway, as neither Nick nor Vera were handing out explanations.
I knew they needed gold. For their hive mind to exist, they needed it as a c
onductor. Vera clearly thought Nick wanted the whole thing to go kaput. I wasn’t sure what he wanted, but I was sure about the look in his eyes. It was an angry passion that scared me.
What did it mean? Was Nick really some kind of alien…revolutionary?
And if that were true, did that mean everything he’d told me was a lie? All that ‘I saw you across the stars’ stuff… Had he deliberately fudged his mission for some kind of alien political issue?
I couldn't bring myself to look at him, in case I saw something that confirmed my fear. I kept my eyes on the road while Vera cried. She sounded so heartbroken, I felt a stab of sympathy for her—and then I felt like a traitor to humanity.
A few seconds later, Nick spoke over her crying. “Milo, would you mind if I drive for a while?”
Nick’s hand, I confirmed, was fine. At least, it looked fine. Five fingers, all moving the way they were supposed to. This skin was pink and, yes, “fresh” looking, so I tried not to look.
“It’s okay to stop?” I had almost forgotten about the DoD.
He nodded, and I found understanding in his eyes. “Yeah. We're in the clear for now. I thought you might like to get some sleep.”
I laughed, more a cackle really. “Sleep?”
I raised my eyebrows in the direction of Vera, who was crying more quietly now, then slid my gaze to Nick. How in the world did he expect me to sleep?
“Nothing will happen,” he said quietly.
“How do you know?”
One corner of his mouth tugged up. It was tired but intimate, the facial equivalent of a gentle squeeze of his hand over mine. He mouthed, “I know.”
I had never felt more confused, but I didn't want to talk about it with Vera around. I pulled off when I found a lookout point and climbed out of the truck, half expecting to be pounced on by aliens or knocked out by men in black. By the time my feet hit the snow-caked dirt, Nick had already made his way to my side.
The engine was loud, it was freezing cold, and we were standing in a cloud of smog. Nick looked into my eyes, and I was waiting for him to give me a clue about what I should expect when his hand smoothed my hair back off my head.