Alice opened her eyes and shifted under the covers as she came awake. Fumbling to the side, she felt for her phone and checked the time. Six am, she had woken up early. School didn’t start until seven fifteen. Lucky she woke up, since she realized she hadn’t set an alarm given everything. Everything…

“Jessica? Are you there?”

There was a rustling below her, and Alice leaned over to see Jessica crawling out from under the bed. Their eyes met, and the mental connection formed again. Jessica jumped onto the end of the bed again.

‘Good morning Alice. I just want to say sorry about last night again. I should have warned you first before throwing you in there like that.’

“No. Don’t do it again, but I get it. I still don’t really understand it all, but I get that the creature isn’t like the others. It’s the one you want to save, right?”

Jessica bobbed her little squirrel head in a silent nod. Silence

‘So, did you want to hear my plan of dealing with Infiltrator of Authority?’

Alice jolted upright. Right! What was she going to do, She couldn’t let her dad die, but Julia!

‘Calm down! Calm down, I’m sure it’ll work.’

Jessica crawled forward and put a paw on Alice’s thigh, and she calmed down a little. Right, the squirrel had a solution right? She had a plan. Alice looked down in desperation. “What is it?”

‘The most important thing is that you go to Julia so the Infiltrator of Authority comes here. But it’ll be a trap. I’ll be waiting and exposing its true form in front of all of the ADF agents when it approaches. My mental powers are far stronger than it, I just haven’t done so yet to keep myself hidden from it and its allies. It’ll be on the run from the ADF and too busy escaping to worry about you or Julia once that happens.’

Alice thought, her heart racing, “And… and what if it comes after us anyways? Ignore my Dad and instead just come to me directly?”

‘Well. It was a lot of effort, but I did prepare for something like this. Take me back to school with you today, and I’ll get it ready. After school, I’ll show you something so that you can protect yourself. Well, backup if you don’t already have one. The ADF will still be on you, just not enough for full protection. I’ll explain later. The door.’

Alice looked up in confusion as Jessica jumped to the floor and hid under the bed again as there was a knock on the door.

“Alice? You awake in there?”

“Yeah Dad, just getting up.”

“Good. Leaving in thirty minutes, don’t forget to grab some breakfast.”

“Ok.”

The footsteps went away from the door and Alice stepped off her bed and put her bare feet on the cold floor. She leaned over and opened the zipper of her backpack.

Jessica crawled in and started complaining immediately,

‘You wouldn’t believe how cramped it is here. All these books crashing together, pinching my tail. Stupid books…’

“Quiet. You got a better idea? It's weird enough what you did in front of Julia you know. Most people don’t just carry around squirrels with them.”

‘I know, But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.’

A few more seconds of shifting in the bag before Jessica settled herself. Alice leaned over and zipped it shut, and carefully put it on her back before going back out the door again.

Alice had a quick breakfast and was soon out the door. The car ride was silent as her dad drove her to school.

“Have a good day at school.”

“See you later, Dad.”

She walked forward and after the car drove off quickly kneeled down and opened the bag. Jessica darted away and ran into the nearby woods.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

‘See you later’

“Bye, Jessica.”

Alice resisted the urge to wave as Jessica disappeared.

“Alright, off to school.”

— — — O — o — O — — —

School felt odd. There was a test next week in chemistry, but how was she supposed to care about that right now? She was silent through lunch, which the others noticed but didn’t comment on. Julia was engaged in some deep discussion about their upcoming play and didn’t seem to notice Alice’s nervous state. What if she said no to the sleepover? She was sort of inviting herself over to Julia’s house, and everything would fall apart if she wasn’t with her on Saturday.

She wanted to ask at lunch, but it was too busy. Some people were already spreading rumors about the two of them, no need to feed them any more. Before she knew it, it was the end of the day. Biting the bullet, Alice took out her phone and texted Julia to ask her about it. Hopefully she would say yes. After that Alice was about to go to practice, but squirrel ran up to her before she could go.

‘Before practice, you got to get the thing I said from before.’

Alice opened her mouth to…

‘Don’t talk, there’s too many people around.’

She glanced around, and it wasn’t crowded but people were still milling around nearby. Alice nodded to Jessica and sealed her lips as she followed behind with Jessica in the lead. They went into the woods nearby and walked forward until the school building fell out of sight.

“Can I talk now?”

‘Yes, we should be far enough now.’

“What even is this thing? Why are you being so mysterious about it?”

‘I didn’t want to freak out earlier. And you should already know what it is when you see it. It’s actually… Here.’

Jessica scrambled up a tree and stuck her head into a big knot in the tree maybe eight feet in the air.

‘You wouldn’t believe what a pain it was to get all the way out here. Here just let me…’

Jessica’s body was half inside the tree knot and Alice could see her slowly tugging something out. There was a silver flash as the thing finally made it over the lip.

Alice’s jaw dropped as it came farther out and Jessica began to awkwardly lower it to the ground.

‘A little help here? This thing is like twice my bodyweight here. I’m lucky I got some extra strength along with the rest of it too.’

In a daze, Alice stepped forward and took the silver object as Jessica struggled to not drop it. She stared down at it. Well she knew how to use it at least. The Neighborhood Watch had given her basic training in the normal weapons too while she was there.

‘I told you you would know what it was.’

“Jessica. This is a pistol. Where the hell did you even get this? I thought the Spawn could just heal, how will this help at all if Infiltrator of Authority comes for me?”

‘Well, just because it can heal doesn’t mean its human shell can. You damage it enough and it will be forced to transform and expose itself to the ADF. But yeah, a gun that small will only slow it down, not stop it once it's exposed. But the ADF has the heavier stuff to ward it off once there’s a confirmed sighting.’

Alice wondered how Jessica knew all of that. But it made sense. Even if the appearance was the same, it couldn’t regenerate from getting shot and still pretend to be a normal human.

“But how did you even get this? I’m not going to get arrested for it am I?”

‘Well it hardly matters if you expose Ted Taylor as a Spawn does it?’

“Jessica…”

‘Alright, alright. Fine. I stole it from that lazy mallcop you have guarding your school.’

“What? The school cop? Wha… How could that even happen?”

‘He was asleep and I just slipped it out of the holster and dragged it off. I was lucky that Infiltrator of Authority had deactivated the cameras on the school anyway. All the footage has been on loop for the last week.’

“What, why would it do that? How did I not hear about this?”

‘You think it didn’t know that conversation with you was suspicious? It didn’t want any evidence that it happened for the ADF to comb over later if you said anything to them. That conversation was anything but spontaneous. And I’m not really sure what happened with the school cop. He looked worried afterwards, but no one else seemed to have noticed yet. I bet you he still hasn’t told anyone about it yet.’

“Huh. I’m pretty sure that’s a crime to not report or something. No wonder he’s worried. But you’re right, the ADF will cover up everything as soon as a Spawn appears. They won’t care about smaller crimes like this. I guess I do feel a little better having some protection though.”

‘Why don’t you have your own gun anyway? I’m surprised you wouldn’t get one after everything that happened. I thought this would just be a backup.’

“The ADF said I shouldn’t have one in my ‘unstable mental state’. Also I’m not twenty one so I couldn’t get it even if I wanted one. My dad has one, but the gun locker scans his fingerprint so I can’t get in and take it for this.”

‘Oh, I forgot you were only nineteen. Well, did you ask Julia about the weekend yet?’

“Well, I texted her. I guess we’ll see. Tomorrow’s Friday, so I can still ask her then if I have to convince her more. Oh, Are you coming back home with me today?”

‘No, but make sure to not forget to bring me tomorrow. You have no idea how hard it is to travel when you’re this small. I can’t protect your dad if I’m not there.’

“I won’t forget,” Alice promised.

With that, Alice hastily shoved the pistol in her bag and quickly zippered it shut. The mental bridge snapped, and she looked up as Jessica ran farther into the woods. Maybe she was hungry, Alice hadn’t really fed her that much while she was at Alice’s house.

Well, time to go to practice. Hopefully she wasn’t too late, running warm ups on your own was always so embarrassing.