2
After my shift, I dressed up in my ACU.
It took a while to change in such a cramped room. My co-workers dumped their school bags inside their lockers and called it a day, but I didn’t want my combat uniform to smell like old vegetable oil and heavily fried food during my classes. I turned my phone back on since my manager didn’t allow them during work. I was immediately bombarded by text messages from Jason, Alonso, and Amelia. They were seconds apart, asking about what was taking me so long, and the last message was less than a minute ago.
I immediately knew something was wrong.
When I walked out of the staff room, I first noticed the kitchen staff’s absence. Most of the pans were set aside, and the stove was all turned off, but it was clear they had left in quite a hurry. I dashed toward the main cafeteria and found everyone glued to the TV screen. Several people were crying, and others desperately tried to contact their families on their cell phones. The hall’s mood did not sit well with me, and I couldn’t help but shiver.
I looked up at the TV screen, and my stomach dropped.
It didn’t register in my eyes what I was seeing. A colossal object hovered above Manhattan, extending for thirteen hundred feet and as big as two football stadiums fused together. It looked like quartz-shaped spikes as thick as skyscrapers, glowing in crystalline violet and emerald and protruding from a slab of rock. Or was that metal? I wasn’t sure from the various video feeds the news was showing. Experts from different fields weighed their professional opinions about these new visitors with excitement and a bit of fear. Everyone whispered about aliens and first contact around the cafeteria with worry and astonishment.
Four more ships of the same size hovered above Beijing, Mumbai, Paris, and Johannesburg. The news said they arrived forty minutes ago. There were five more ships from orbit: megastructures shaped like an inverted tetrahedral pyramid and a thousand times larger than the ships hovering above the cities. The news called them their motherships. However, these weren’t made of crystalline hulls but smooth gray rock and steel. I thought I’d just be drowning in debt until I grew old and died, but I would never have imagined that aliens visiting Earth would be a part of my life’s story.
I found Amelia by the window table, talking to Jason on the phone.
“He’s on his way here with Rachel, Tom, and Alonso,” she said, ending the call. “Can you believe this?”
“Tell me this is all a joke, right?”
Amelia shook her head. “I wish, Tony. I mean, look at the freaking size of those things.” She pointed to the feed showing one of the inverted pyramids floating above London’s skyline, which looked half the size of the full moon looming next to it. Crazy.
“Do you think they’ll be more of them? Only five ships are orbiting the atmosphere. There’s gotta be more.” Even though my mind was buzzing about how significant this was for humanity, I couldn’t contain my muscles from shaking. It was hard to tell whether it was from anxiety or excitement.
Amelia shrugged. “I don’t know, but people are freaking out online, and the university is canceling all the classes. Are we under attack?”
“They haven’t fired at us so far, and I haven’t heard anything about mustering the National Guard. Wait, why are Rachel, Tom, and Alonso with Jason?”
“Rachel invited us to go to the gun range, remember? Both of us said no because I’ve got classes, and you have that—”
“—test, yes,” I interjected. “I remember.”
“Well, you don’t have one now. Hell of a way to get out of a test.”
“Can’t say I welcome the circumstances. I better check up on Dad.” I pulled out my phone and dialed his number. However, I couldn’t get a hold of him. “Damn. The phone lines are busy.”
“Yeah, it took me a while to get a hold of Jason, too. Everyone’s calling everyone at the same time.”
A large group had already walked out of the cafeteria and onto the open courtyard to get a better look at the motherships. More students pour out of the entrance doors from the other lecture buildings surrounding the yard. I couldn’t help but feel great that I’m missing a test I hardly studied for, which was a big chunk of my grade. Yet looking at the TV screen, my relief was quickly washed over with dread and adrenaline.
I opened up the browser on my phone. At least the internet was still up. I first saw a blurry image of a massive object taken from dozens of orbiting satellites. More blurry objects across South Africa cropped up on my screen, of fleeing civilians from the five affected cities and more fringe experts weighing in about the visitors. News about these aliens flooded every conversation online, and NASA was busy trying to form a rescue for the two astronauts stuck out there in space.
I quickly spotted three men from my cadet platoon—Seth Keston, Freddie Grasso, and Ryan Kwan—sitting across the cafeteria, already decked in their ACUs. Maybe they heard more things about what was going on than me. “Come on. Follow me.”
We walked toward the three men.
Seth was the first to notice me, standing up and nodding, “Staff sergeant,” he said. Ryan and Freddie followed after. “Know anything about what’s going on, Tony?” He asked.
I shook my head. “I got no fucking clue, man. I’m hearing about this the same way as you are.”
“Fuck. If the staff sergeant doesn’t know anything….” Freddie muttered.
“You’re still on active duty, right? You aren’t being, you know, called in?” Ryan asked worriedly.
“No word.” I checked my phone for good measure and showed them my lock screen. No calls from the top brass. No calls from Dad either.
“You think they took out the grid? The internet?”
“We can still access them,” Amelia said. “I don’t think that’s it.”
“I was hoping you three know more,” I said.
“Sorry, staff sergeant. We’re on the same boat as you,” Seth answered.
Even though the four of us were sophomores, I was the only one still on active duty, which meant I got to keep my rank and a sliver of its authority when I was an enlisted Marine, but my duties had changed to those of any cadet in the program. Furthermore, they were much younger than me; all three were between nineteen and twenty (I had seven years above their heads), and though it wasn’t in regulation, my platoon had substituted me for their big brother, which meant when they got into any hiccup with the other NCOs, it fell on my sorry ass.
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“Mind if we sit with you, guys?” I asked.
“Not at all,” Seth said, and I sat beside him. I introduced Amelia to the others.
Seth had been called Pure German in the platoon for his bright blonde hair, pale skin, and blue eyes, even though the guy was a full-blooded Scandinavian and a Scot. He was tall and lean with a narrow face and a small nose. He shared a similar build with Ryan, black-haired, brown eyes, but with a larger nose, and the man was a literal foot shorter than me. On the other hand, Freddie was two inches taller than me and looked like he ate six thousand pounds a day, packed with beefy muscle probably from rolling a boulder up a steep mountain a billion times. He had brown eyes, dark hair, and warmer olive skin.
“Is this an alien invasion? Are they friendly?” Ryan asked.
I shrugged. “The news said that they haven’t communicated with them yet.” One student switched the channel to a news segment about the military mobilizing the National Guard and the Air Force.
“Fuck. I hope they are friendly,” Ryan said, but his face dropped. “If they’re gonna do the draft, dude, I don’t know what to think.”
Freddie’s face lit up. “But, man! Wouldn’t That be awesome? I mean, fighting aliens?”
“Don’t speak too soon, Freddie,” Seth said, shaking his head. “They might be hippie aliens.”
“There’s no such thing as a hippie alien if they came out here with that.” Ryan pointed at the TV screen with the floating motherships. “Nothing friendly about it, dude.”
“If they’re gonna attack us, I’m gonna fuck them up,” Freddie said, grinning while he took another bite out of his BLT sandwich. “Can’t say I’ve placed alien invasion in my bingo card this year.”
“How can you eat at this time?” Seth asked Freddie.
“Oh, this?” He raised his sandwich. “My tuition paid for this shit. Might as well finish it off, you know?”
“Should we get out of here?” I asked Amelia.
“I mean, the aliens are not in LA. We’ll just wait for Jason and the others to get here.”
“He’s driving, right?”
“Yes.”
“We can hitch a ride back to my apartment and wait for this one to die down.” I paused. Poor Choice of words. “Unless I get a call from my regiment….”
“Okay. Sounds like a plan.”
For another ten minutes, I watched the news and skimmed over the articles worldwide with pictures from different angles of hovering crystalline ships. While I was busy serving lunch for students for the past thirty minutes, the world had been imploding from one unified existential crisis. Some called it a hoax, officials tried to downplay the panic, others celebrated the existence of another life in the universe, and countless government agencies denied the alien invasion stories spreading over Twitter and other social media. So far, only five cities had ships floating above them, and the rest remained in orbit. I tried calling my dad again, but the network was still overloaded with traffic. Seth, Freddie, and Ryan helped me search for any answers online.
We ended up with nothing.
An hour passed since their arrival, but the aliens still hadn’t communicated with us, and neither did my regiment. They let their presence known worldwide, but why would they stay quiet? It made me nervous. The government might have a direct line of communication with them, but they were not sharing their conversation with the rest of the world. Over Manhattan, fighter jets had already circled around the ship like wheezing flies, and a US fleet had arrived in the harbor. The National Guard had been mobilized to evacuate the city and all eight million residents. Traffic jams blocked every exit out of the island. The same might be happening in LA, too, with many people fearing the aliens might be coming here next. I’ve seen too many alien invasion movies where LA always got caught in the crossfire first.
More students entered the cafeteria, watching the six TV screens plastered along the walls. Various experts and talking heads had been called in to contribute their theories about the aliens’ intentions while the country was waiting for the government’s response other than the standard “Do Not Panic” and “Remain Calm” spiel they said earlier. Rumors began to spread that riots were starting across the major cities. The situation was quickly getting dangerous by the minute, yet there was still no word from the aliens. As advanced as they are, they sure loved giving us the silent treatment even when we could see them in plain daylight.
“Turn the TV to Channel 6! Quick!” One girl cried out from the back.
The same student who controlled the remote switched to Channel 6. The talking heads segment got interrupted by breaking news over Beijing. In his Oxford blue tailored suit, the anchor read over the translations from a Chinese news anchor, paraphrasing that the aliens’ intentions were malevolent and that the Chinese government was quickly mobilizing its army in Beijing. Taken nine minutes ago, multiple videos from the citizens caught on the ground showed fighter jets engaging the ship. Gasps and screams echoed through the loudspeakers as people fled from the chaos, missile barrages firing against its hull, and various explosions could be heard.
My grip tightened on my phone as I watched, my mouth gaping as the scene unfolded. The missiles hit some invisible barrier. Only two of the rockets struck the ship’s hull directly.
Shields, I thought. The aliens got some kind of force field.
There was a rippling cheer across the cafeteria from a group of men closer to the TV screens, including Seth, Freddie, and Ryan, but mostly everyone did not know how to react. Was this a good thing that we’re attacking them directly? I felt Amelia’s hand on my arm. I wanted the ship to go down immediately from that hit, wanting to scream at the pilots not to give it any chance to retaliate. But it stayed up in the air, hovering above the city as small bursts of explosions reverberated from the area where the missiles hit it.
The vessel let out a vibrating groan, almost like a roar of a dying animal when it got hit. Chunks of the protruding quartz-like structures fell off and slammed on top of buildings, taking out six blocks of the city and raining them with dust and debris. Still, the ship did not crash. Instead, it slowly turned around like a chugging machine, facing the fighter jets flying in formation from the east.
Beams of faint violet light shot out in two-second flashes. It took out three of the jets in an instant. Two got their wings clipped, veering off from their tight formation. One slammed against a commercial building, while the other crashed onto a busy highway filled with fleeing civilians. Other shocked gasps echoed across the cafeteria while a few shouted and screamed at the TV. I was trembling.
The fighter jets split up, trying to hit the ship from different angles, trying to flank it. Then, the video switched to another recording from a crowded flea market where the alien ship started firing down on the city, destroying multiple blocks. One image showed a horrified mother shielding her daughter from the falling debris before a plume of fire engulfed the market square, and the video cut out. Another video showed the aftermath in five minutes, people as mere husks of blackened flesh as their skin fused onto the cement, the ship continuing to fire at several buildings and districts.
The people fled for their lives.
The anchor returned again, apologizing for the horrible images his viewers witnessed. Behind the camera, I quickly caught the sounds of sobbing as the news crew was undoubtedly shocked by what they had seen. The anchor called out the current administration, demanding a response about what they should do to the ship above Manhattan and protect those trying to escape the city. In the middle of his rant, he stopped, pressed a finger over the earpiece on his right ear, and blubbered like an idiot the following words that rattled me.
New York was under attack.
The TV switched to a view from a helicopter flying above the city. The US Air Force was already engaged in combat with the vessel, which rained down a barrage of ammunition all over Lower Manhattan. The same faint violet beam cut through an entire skyscraper like nothing, splitting it in half from the middle, and I watched in horror as it fell on top of four smaller buildings, burying the people fleeing from its choking cloud of debris. One of the beams caught the helicopter’s tail, and the last image before they cut the feed was the news crew going down the Hudson River. Several footages of similar attacks began to crop up in Mumbai, Johannesburg, and Paris. A surge of panic arose from those cities as beams of lights shot down at a crowded avenue, obliterating highways and city centers and burning everything in its path.
All we could do was watch in silence as death unfolded on those six screens, one after the other.
I looked around the cafeteria. To the sniffling and gaping huddled mass of students too stunned to move.
It’s not safe here, I thought. Five alien ships just attacked five major cities. Los Angeles might be next.
I grabbed Amelia and told her to move.