While Sam begins to start her day in India, on my side of the world, I’m getting ready to sleep. We video chat on the phone, giving each other updates about what’s going on in our lives. Her sister is still in the hospital even after a month has passed. Sam won’t come back until her sister is back in stable condition. I can’t imagine what she’s going through. I wish I could fly over there and do everything I can to ease her stress, but my job has booked five major surgeries. Plus, the threat of Shendour and Rayan’s stupid plant monsters is keeping me here in the country.
“It’s worse than we imagined,” I say to Sam as I’m on the verge of falling asleep.
“How so?” Sam says. She props her phone against something so she can do her makeup. “Did something extremely terrible happen?”
“Terrible?” I say, thinking about the fight with the roided Cada man. “No,” I say, shaking my head. “The truth about everything.” Sam looks at me on the phone. I nod and say, “Yeah.” I briefly yet quickly summarize everything about where my power comes from, who Asteria’s real name is, my training with Eddie, and the strange fight with the Cada monster.
“Now I’m really worried. I think I should come home.”
“Stay with your family.”
“Nikki,” she says softly to me. “I miss you and you’re going through a lot.” My heart melts. My eyes fill with tears and my nose starts to somewhat run. I keep everything as I try to tell her I feel the same way.
“Maybe I should fly over there.”
“Are you taking a plane or yourself,” she says while snickering. I laugh at how silly the question is. I can indeed fly but only for a limited amount of time. Flights there are not cheap. They’re over one thousand dollars. I can afford several flights back to back thanks to Eddie and Egnima for the contracts.
“Plane, of course.”
“I know,” she chuckles then sighs out her nose. Even though she doesn’t say, I can see she really misses me. Her reassuring smile is baked with sadness. “I’ll let you go. Goodnight, babe.”
“Goodbye.”
I end the video call after we kiss a wave goodbye. Now I’m back to being lonely in an empty, quiet apartment. I pass out and wake up from my alarm. I’m too lazy to walk into the kitchen so I fly in there to make myself some coffee. While I wait for the machine to fire up its doohicky to make ten ounces of sweat-delicious chocolate coffee, I think about where the hell in the galaxy Shar’I comes from. A simple search of the closest Earth-like planets gives me too much of a broad result. I don’t have the patience to comb through every planet astronomers have found over the years. I need someone to explain to me like I’m a child about the best likelihood of life where an advanced civilization can come here.
I wonder if Professor Cox might have the answers I’m looking for.
Professor Cox is one of the biggest nerds of astronomy that I know. His knowledge and compassion to understand the universe outside our little world might be helpful. I just need to figure out how I can not leak information about the fact there are three aliens. Since it’s still early in the morning, I’m positive he’ll be teaching. I have to wait until the afternoon for his office hours. Unless his hours are different now then I’m fucked. Hopefully, he still runs on the same schedule.
While I’m waiting for time to pass before heading out, I kneel near my bathroom tub to safely play around with my fire and ice powers with my hands. After each attempt, I dunk my hands in the water to make sure the temps are back to normal. I have my phone recording across the room from the sink through a thermal reader app.
“That should be enough,” I say. I watch the recording while heading to the bedroom. My cold temps reach below freezing. The lowest it goes is negative fifty degrees. When my hands are on fire, the highest number reaches one thousand six hundred. Both temps stay contained around my hands. They never flare out. “None of this shit makes sense. How the hell am I doing this?” My powers continue to amaze me even after having them for several months. I feel like I’m witnessing just the tip of the iceberg of what I’m capable of.
----------------------------------------
I pose outside Cox’s office as if I’m a student waiting for someone to open the door. I’m the only one around in the hallway. I’m on time for his office hours according to what I can remember from his spring teaching schedule. Hopefully, I’m right because I rather not ask around when I’m technically not supposed to be here. I don’t want to draw the slightest attention.
After an hour of twiddling my thumbs and bringing my phone battery to less than fifty percent, I hear Cox’s voice coming down the main hallway. He’s talking to himself like he’s reading a book about someone discussing random theories. His mind is so occupied that he doesn’t notice me until he turns to close the door behind him.
“Oh! I’m sorry,” he says. “Do you need something from me?”
“Hey, Professor. Do you remember me? Nikki Atkinson?”
“Ah, I do,” says, nodding his head with a smile. “My… are you eating a lot of protein?”
“I got a good coach.”
“Nice! What brings you here?”
“Are you… into talking about conspiracies about aliens?” I say to get to the point. He looks down both hallways and swings his head towards his office. He checks the hallway again before closing the door. His cautious demeanor is giving me an uneasy feeling. “So.”
He adjusts his glasses before saying, “Are you here about those sightings?”
“Which one?” I say to make it seem I kind of know what he’s saying.
“This one.” He scrolls through his phone before handing it to me. It’s a shaky-quality recording of my encounter with the monster at Evening Star. Luckily, I can’t see my face. “Rumors are floating around saying that the government is making super soldiers.” I pucker my lips to prevent myself from smiling. “But I don’t believe that nonsense.”
“What about the electric guy or that super old woman?”
“Man O War is a wildcard. He’s an accident gone wrong.” He takes his phone to stop on a frame of me in the air. “She reminds me of Nematoria.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes,” he says, softening his shout by saying through his teeth. “The historical consensus believes she was contacted by extraterrestrial over two thousand years ago.” Whoever those historians are, they sound like they’re on the correct path to finding the truth. Once I’m done here, I need to see what information they think they have on her.
“Any idea what they could be? Like a name or something?”
“No name,” he says, tapping his lip like he’s trying to think of something. “But they were worshiped like gods.”
“Ah, okay.” This explains why Shar’I and her race use Roman names but doesn’t shed light on the reason for it. “Do you think they were other humans?”
“Other humans?” He scoffs, whiffing the air. “Doubt it.”
“Well, think about it. Maybe there’s a habitable planet nearby full of people that look like us.”
“Nikki,” he says and turns to turn on his computer. “You might be on to something.” He opens a colorful-looking website about planets in our solar system that might support life. The background is an array of bright stars. In the middle of a page is a list of exoplanets in numerical and alphabetical order.
“There’s so many.”
“Unfortunately, millions of light years away.”
I shoo him to the side so I can take a look. Most planets are under the same name as Kepler. Gliese, Proxima, and Trappirst are a few different names on this list. Proxima is the closet. It says it’s four lightyears away from Earth. This might be the one where the Ovese comes from.
“I gotta contact her,” I say without thinking.
“What?”
“Thanks for your insight, Professor. I wish I knew more about those aliens.”
“Here.” He hastily writes something on a yellow notepad and hands me a scribbled yet legible list of books. They all deal with Roman gods and Nemetoria’s history surrounding potential alien contact. “Those might help.”
Great! I might have to lay low for a while.
“Thanks, Professor Cox. I’ll give them a read,” I say.
I leave the main building through their fire escape route stairwell. The bottom leads to mostly empty office floors and a small parking lot. It’s somewhat of a hike back to the main garage, but I prefer to not swerve around people to get where I need to go. The college hallways hit their peak student capacity around the afternoon during the week. Their main garage can get crazy with all the cars entering and leaving. Lucky for me, I make it to Sam’s car through a gap of cars entering the garage.
For an hour, I sift through all the readings inside the car. My ability to move fast helps me read hundreds of pages without a problem. One thing that’s common between these authors is that they believe a few of the Roman gods are not entirely fictional. They reference one moment in Nemetoria’s life where she talks about her heroic life with Lucrezia Borgia as a Roman warrior during the Roman’s peak supremacy back in one hundred seventeen AD.
“I seriously need to find a way to contact Shar’I,” I say. I call Eddie to see if he has any way he can reach her.
“Nada,” he says.
“What about Nemetoria?”
“I do.”
“Awesome,” I say, turning the car on to blow the stuffy air out of the air. “Send her my number and have her call me, kay? I need to talk to her about Shar’I.”
“Uh, alright,” he mumbles with some hesitation. “I haven’t spoken with her since those assigns came. I’ll try.”
“Thanks.”
----------------------------------------
Seven hours later, I’m still waiting for Nemetoria to call me. It’s eight forty at night. I’m two hours late making dinner for myself. My stomach won’t shut up. I have to swallow the saliva in my mouth every other second while I cook pasta. The ground turkey is cooked, and the garlic break is backed, but I’m forcing myself to snack on them until everything is done.
The waiting pays off. All is done and ready to stuff my stomach with mouth-watering joy. I throw everything into a bowl and hop on the couch to watch whatever football team is playing at the moment. My food doesn’t last five minutes in my bowl.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Damn,” I say with a mouth full. I use my telekinetic powers to float garlic bread over to me. “So handy,” I giggle. The second I snatch it out of the air, my phone rings. I don’t recognize the area code. It says that it is an unknown caller. “Hello?” I answer with the phone on speaker.
“It’s me,” Nemetoria says. “Eddie said you wanted me.”
“Yes. Can we talk at my place? I have concerning questions I’d rather not talk on the phone for.”
“Uh… sure.”
I tell Nemeotria to meet me on the balcony. My heart is pounding from anticipation. I’m unsure if she’ll be driving or flying, so I check everywhere I look. The skies are clear. A car red car pulls into the apartments from the main road. They park in a reserved spot and a man steps out with a woman that’s not Nemetoria. I recognize the man. He lives five doors down from me. But, the woman is new.
“He’s got himself a girlfriend,” I say, thinking out loud.
“Or a hookup,” Nemetoria says right behind my left ear. She grabs the top of my head before I can turn around. Her grip is tight but not enough to keep me from turning my head. “Hey, there,” she says with a cheeky-looking smile. She’s floating in the air with her feet nearly pointing toward the sky. She taps my head like she’s petting a puppy. Her taps are gentle yet enough to make my head bob.
“How did I not hear you? Aren’t we like the same?”
“No,” she scoffs yet chuckles. “I can’t wield fire and ice from a thought,” she says, lifting my hands to examine them as she slowly touches the ground. “You are more like her.”
“Asteria, right?” She nods a few times. “I need to know some things about you and her.”
I step inside the apartment and close the sliding door behind her once she walks inside. Her outfit catches my attention as I walk over to the couch. This is my first time seeing her in casual clothes. She’s wearing a white tank top tucked in her bright orange sports shorts. It’s a simple outfit yet she wears it well. Her stomach is flat. Her butt is plumb. The width of her thighs looks massive from the side. Lastly, she has a better physique than I do.
“Did you just cook?” She says with her thumb pointing towards the kitchen.
“Uh… Yeah. If you’re hungry, get yourself a bowl.” She lazily points her finger and goes in a circle with it.
“I’ll take the bread.” Once she grabs it, she takes a long glance at the pot of pasta on the stove. “Did make this because I was coming here?” She with the bread in her mouth.
“No. It was what I had.”
“Anyways…”
She plops on the couch with her right hand holding the bread and her left arm stretching across the top of the couch behind my head. There’s about a four-finger length of a gap from her knee to my thigh. I feel uncomfortable in the sense it’s not enough to make me move away or question why she wants to sit close. I’m not scared of her, despite knowing the violence she can pull off on someone who’s not like us. If she turns out to be a crazy psychopath after getting to know her tonight, at least I can be someone she’ll not want to fuck with.
“Shoot,” she says.
“Do you know what Asteria is?”
“A goddess.”
“Oh dear,” I sigh. “This could be a long or a short talk.”
My time is limited. I want to aim for a two-hour window. Sam will probably want to speak before I head to sleep for work. My shift starts tomorrow morning with the first of the monthly animal surgeries.
“Asteria isn’t a goddess,” I say after checking the time on my phone. It’s nine-thirty. “She’s an alien from a different planet.”
“Okay?” She chuckles. “Her home is the heavens.” When she says that Shar’I lives in the heavens, she glances at the ceiling. “I do understand that. But, an alien? Come on.”
“Listen. I’m serious.” Her smile isn’t making me think she’s going to take what I want to say open mind. “Nevermind. I don’t think I’ll have the time for this. And you don’t seem to care.”
“Hey,” she says in a soft voice. “Speak. I can see it in your face that something is bothering you.”
“As I said,” I say halfway rolling my eyes. “Asteria is an alien. I need you to open your mind, okay?”
“Speak,” she says again but she drops the smile.
I lead by saying Asteria’s real name is Shar’I before trying to deconstruct Nemetoria’s world. Two hours isn’t enough to shed light on the situation of understanding that Shar’I and the people surrounding her are not what Nemetoria thinks. She wants to hold on to the belief that Shar’I isn’t a liar because of the hundreds of years of history they shared. My evidence about what the scholars think of them isn’t enough to make Nemetoria see Shar’I as someone not from Earth. I might need Shar’I to do all of the talking for me.
“This is getting nowhere,” I say, forcibly rubbing my eyebrows with the tips of my fingers. “What if Shar’I told you? Would you believe her?”
“Nikki,” she smirks, looking off to her left where the balcony is for a moment. “She won’t say that.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“My house, most likely.”
“Take me to her.” I stand with my hands on my hips. She mirrors me but her right hand is down on her side.
“Don’t you got work tomorrow?” She says with a hint of sass leaking through her minor frown. I slap my face when I realize she’s one hundred percent right. “Hey, I’ll ask but I think this is all in your head.”
“Go talk to her!”
“Settle down puella (little girl). I’ll tell her what you think of her.” She exits through the balcony and flies straight up out of view.
It’s too late to call Sam. I’m not going to let Nemetoria’s preconceived ideals ruin my night. I hope Shar’I can get the message across because I’m not going to try talking to a brick wall for a second time. One time is enough for me.
----------------------------------------
The first major surgery of the month is done. Dr. Zero leaves the operating room to notify the owners that he removed a chuck couch cushion from their pit bull’s small intestine. Dolly helps me clean up the operating room before we attend the regular visits. My job is to place all surgical items through three different disinfection baths before handing them to her for manual drying.
“That’s the last of them,” I say. I rinse the last utensils with water to wash off the disinfectant. Dolly takes the basket they’re in and starts air-drying it. “I’m gonna get a quick snack from the vending machine.”
“Could you buy me some Rees when you get back?” She says. “I’ll pay you back,” she says and smiles behind her mask.
“Sure.”
The vending machines are to the left of the entrance. Most of our consumers tend to not use them while they wait. Our team is the ones who eat between breaks or during slow hours of the day.
“Jenny,” I say, coming down the main hallway after washing my hands. “Do we have anyone waiting?” My question doesn’t get answered not her, but by Shar’I and Nemetoria standing shoulder to shoulder. Nemetoria has a black pug on a leash.
“Nikki, look!” Jenny says with joyous jumps and clapping. “It’s Wonderous!”
“Yeah,” I say, looking Wonderous in the eyes before momentarily glancing at Shar’I as I pass them to buy snacks. I punch in the numbers to get Dolly and my snacks.
“Nikki, we need to talk,” Nemetoria says.
“I’m at work. Talk to me afterward.”
I walk back to give Dolly her snack and head into the back room to eat mine away from everyone. My ears pick up Jenny talking a mouth full about how excited she is to meet Nemetoria in the flesh. She’s a die-hard fan who admits to having all sorts of things like posters, books, and shirts with her face on them.
“My my, Jenny,” Nemetoria giggles. “You flatter me.”
“I love you so much Wonderous!” Jenny shrieks. “Could you sign my shirt?”
“How about a handshake?”
“Could I get a hug too?”
I’m shocked by what I’m hearing. I can’t keep myself from snickering. Dolly joins in on the shenanigans. She wants everything Jenny wants. Dr. Zero orders them to get back to work but they don’t listen. He has to get out of his office to direct Dolly into the back room with me.
“Nikki!” Dolly screams as she shuffles over to me. “O.M.G.”
“Settle down!” I say.
“Oh, Nikki,” Nemetoria says playfully down the hallway. She enters the back room with her dog cradled in her arms. “Let’s talk.” She hands the dog off to Dolly without looking and says, “Yearly shots, thank you.”
“Right away!” Dolly says. Once she rashes out of the room to the main area where we hold all animals and rushes down the hallway to our medical supply room, Shar’I wonders holding her right forearm. A circular metal device around her forearm lights up whiteish blue when she turns it. Nemetoria locks both doors leading into the room before a transparent shroud-like cover surrounds me.
“What is this?” I say, putting my first over my chest.
“It’s a privacy field,” Nemetoria. “No one can hear us talk. So let’s make this quick.” I relax after hearing her the sound of the space we’re in not echo in the slightest. The only sounds within the room are the restling of our clothes and our breathing. “You’re right. Asteria isn’t what I thought,” she says with her arms crossed, looking directly at Shar’I. “She told me everything she told you.”
“So… are y’all good? You seem…”
“Mad?” I nod. “No,” she chuckles then stops suddenly stops smiling when Shar’I opens her mouth to speak.
“Yeah… Y’all are not good.”
“It’s complicated, given our history,” Shar’I says.
“Thousands of years of lies,” Nemetoria says under her breath as she looks up at the ceiling.
“Nemi…” She touches Nemetoria’s shoulder, soothing it with gentle compressions. “We’ll have this discussion later. Nikki, I need you.”
“Oh boy,” I sigh. “Whatever it is, I can’t. This whole entire month will be busy for me.”
“I found Shendour.” For a moment I forget who that is. I try saying his fake name to only stutter like a babbling morone.
“Ele blah blah! That dude! Where is he?”
“Bermuda,” Nemetoria says. She shows me a local news network on her phone of a picture of Shar’I’s name written in blood on a sidewalk. “We need to go apprehend him.” She curls in her finger like she wants me to follow her right away. Shar’I reaches for her arm to do what I’m assuming is to turn off the device.
“Whoa! Wait!” I place my hand between her hand and forearm just in time. “I can’t go. I’m working.” Nemetoria pulls Shar’I’s arm to her to shut off the device. A low-tone wabble rumbles my eardrums. It lasts one second before the normal sounds of the office come back. “Hey! Doctor!” Dr. Zero opens the second door leading into the room and peeps his head around the door. “She’s coming with me,” she says pointing her finger at me and then slamming her thumb into her chest. “She’s needed urgently.”
“What for?” Dr. Zero says. He looks at me confused. I shrug in hopes he’ll figure out a decision for me. “Did you get in trouble, Nikki?”
“No,” Nemetori and I say together but my voice cracks. I say the word longer, pitch it higher, and shake my head to emphasize my response.
“Wonderous needs her special set of skills,” Shar’I says.
“Nikki.” Dr. Zero says.
“Yes?” I say. He swings his head, authorizing my leave with a silent glance before walking back to his office. “Just like that? Wow!” I swear if she uses her hero status on me again when I’m at work, she’ll regret it. “Y’all are going to get me fired.”
“You’re being overdramatic,” Nemetoria says.
“Screw you.”
Dolly enters the room with Nemetoria’s dog cradled in her arms.
“He’s ready to go!” Dolly says.
“So are we,” Nemetoria whispers directly in my face. She tips my sunglasses down with her finger. They nearly fall off my face. I place them back over my eyes before Dolly can notice they’re not normal.
“Nikki, you’re leaving early?”
“Unfortunately,” I say. “Nemetoria here,” I say purposely mispronouncing her name. “Needs me, so I gotta leave early.”
“Oh, awesome! I’ll hold down the fort for today.”
I give Dolly an unesthetic thumbs-up before heading outside. The only cars in the parking lot are mine, Dolly’s, Jenny’s, and Mr. Zero. I don’t see any car near the other business I recognize.
“Did y’all fly out here?” I say, looking around the parking lot for other cars. My eyes spot something black through the front window of Sam’s car. It’s on the trunk. “What the hell is on my car?”
Once I take a step towards Sam’s car, Nemetoria runs past me. The speed is nearly unseable. It looks like her body is almost a brown blur. She comes back to me with the black thing in her hands. Now two blurs are standing beside each other. I try to focus on the first blur, but when I do, I’m looking at the clear sky. Another blur sweeps across my face twice. This one is grey and not brown. I try to follow it the best I can but it is beyond any speed I can comprehend. A moment later, I’m back facing Sam’s car. The black thing behind her car is gone.
“Uh?” I say unable to comprehend what’s going on. When I point at the car, I notice I’m wearing the hoodie I use to fight the plant monsters. My pants and shoes are on my body as if they magically appeared. “Did I just go somewhere?”
“Three feet off the ground,” Nemetoria says as she hands Shar’I my work clothes. I quickly look around to see if there’s anyone looking at me then jump on the roof to hide.
“Did you change me out of my clothes in a second?!” Nemetoria winks. “I barely saw anything!”
“I told you she would freak out,” Shar’I mumbles to Nemetoria. “I’ll take this back to her place and come join you two.”
“Alrighty,” Nemetoria nods to Shar’I as she hovers up to the roof. She turns around and points on her back. “Strap on, Nikki.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’ll make it easier for you.” She gets on her hands and knees. “Let’s go.”
“Goddamnit,” I say through my teeth. I’m unsure what to do. I sit on her back at first. She laughs at me and tells me to lay flat on my stomach against her back. “Ugh! Where should I put my arms?” She floats laterally in the air. We soar several feet into the sky. I wrap my legs around her hips and my arms around her stomach.
“I’ll put Nikki’s stuff back at the apartment then come join you guys!” Shar’I says. She zips away faster than the fastest fighter jet.
“Nikki, squeeze me as tight as you can.” The second I do, she sours in the air like a positive uptick in a graph. I can feel the G-force pushing my stomach into my esophagus. She holds my arms tighter against her stomach as she continues to gain speed.
“Oh my god!” I scream and laugh. “This is insane!”
“Are you doing okay back there? I can slow down.”
“No!” I giggle from my guts being tickled by the G-force. “Go faster!”
“Hang on!”
In a flash of instantaneous speed, we jet through the sky. My eyes can’t register the world. Everything is a blur. The blue sky is nothing but an animated smear with the occasional white dots. The ground alternates between, grey, brown, and green like a shuttering camera. After a while of seeing nothing, Shar’I creeps up behind us from our right side. I can focus on her better than my surroundings. Her hair is flapping all over the place behind her head.
“How?” I say out of complete shock. “Just how?”
“I’m very quick,” Shar’I says with her hand patting my back. “Nemi, slow down. I need to tell you two something before we get there.” Nemetoria eases off the speed. We’re still going extremely fast but at least at this speed, I can see.
“What is it?”
“This could get bad.”
“You tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” Nemetoria says. Shar’I smiles at her before giving me a serious look.
“Do as I say, okay? Do not trust or listen to this man’s words.”
I nod my head several times out of anxiety. Nemetoria’s unhinged aggression and the seriousness in Shar’I’s voice are making my stomach turn. What am I about to get myself into? Why can’t I just say fuck them and leave them to their shit?