Earth

2018

Nothing in the world–in the universe–existed except for the methodical beat of Rory's warm breath bouncing off the glass against her face. It was only the beat of her breath and the square of world visible outside her window. Desert sand glowed with moonlight in a sea of glass beneath unending stars. Strangely bright for the night. She'd never noticed that about the desert before.

Not even the wind stirred. All was still. No sign of intruders.

Her hand curled around the glass bottle she'd broken against the wall. Carefully, she had stepped around the shattered debris and had crept from one window to the next. Now Rory stared out at the eastern night sky, waiting. For what? She didn't know.

The attack probably wasn't something she could see. It could have been Russia or North Korea taking down their power grid. Or hackers infiltrating the network, forcing the military to cut power to the system.

But Rory waited for the soldiers to come. The world agreed on little, except that the United States didn't have the right to decide the fate of their world. They could not have sole control of Rory just because she landed in their country.

Not that the US would listen.

Maybe someone was here tonight to ensure they did.

In the stillness, she expected fear to strangle her limbs at any moment. Instead, peace slid over her body. This felt familiar. Much more familiar than pretending to be normal online with people who didn't really know her.

It wasn't just the familiarity, though. It was also right. This was reality. Not dinner with Theo and quiet midnight strolls in her backyard. Rory was not safe. Earth was not safe. Living in the danger harmonized her life where every day before this had been a discordant clash of notes that didn't belong together.

Not even a full minute had passed but time moved so slowly that it felt much longer. So it wasn't very much time before Rory realized she wasn't alone in the house. It wasn't that she'd heard anyone in the other room. She didn't remember noticing a sound. Rather, she'd felt the presence. Simply known.

Twisting, she raised the jagged edges of the bottle like a knife, clasped her wrist to strengthen her stance, and flattened against the wall as she carefully picked her way toward the entrance.

Did she feel confident in her combat skills? Not exactly. Rory didn't think she was a skilled fighter, even if she seemed to know some basics. But she wasn't going to let anything, including that, stop her from fighting off whoever was coming.

This time she did hear a sound. The barely audible squeak of a loose floorboard in the kitchen.

Her heart lodged in her throat as she leapt through the doorway and jabbed her makeshift weapon into the exact spot she knew the intruder to be. Her bottle blended into the darkness of the kitchen, pointed directly toward a light blue eye. The man already had his weapon trained on her, but her bottle was close to his face. Had she made a mistake in rushing? Was this impatience and frustration like what she'd felt in the game tonight? Maybe Rory was done waiting. Maybe she was ready for it to be over. Or she'd forgotten this was real, not the computer.

She shook off the doubts. The noise had given the soldier away. It was this or flee, and not once had running entered her mind.

Rory wanted to look the threat in the eye and demand answers.

Except the man's gun shifted away from her as he continued to scan the room. "We're with the US, ma'am." Other figures stepped into the kitchen, all clad in black.

Rory's glass bottle wavered slightly in the air before she lowered it.

"General Price wants to move you to a secure location," the soldier said.

"Then I want to speak with the general." Rory hardened her voice.

Another man nodded at the one close to her and he unclipped his radio from his vest. "Yes, ma'am."

"General Price?" Rory asked. If it wasn't him, she wasn't sure what her options were. It was stupid not to run. Had she thought any good would come from stabbing out a man's eye with a glass bottle? Of course, no one would have come alone, and so what was her plan after assaulting the first soldier? Then again, where could she have run to outside? There were no good options. That had been what really drove her deep down, hadn't it? That Rory had no hope of escaping, only the satisfaction of drawing a bit of blood before they took her.

"Rory, we need to move you stat." There was no question that it was the general.

Her shoulders relaxed and she set the bottle on the counter.

The soldiers finished searching the house, announcing clear as they secured each room. Within minutes, several jeeps arrived, and the men sheltered Rory as they ushered her into one in the middle. They raced through the base as if they were actively escaping a pursuing enemy.

A garage door opened and they skidded to a stop inside. Rory followed the soldiers down the hall, into an elevator, and many floors below.

When the doors opened, she walked into a large room with a conference table in the middle, several computers on one end, and a wall lined with screens on the other. Bland concrete walls closed them in on all sides, save for the one elevator, and a door on the opposite of the room.

"A bunker," Rory said quietly.

General Price paced in front of the screens. "That's not good enough," he yelled into the phone. "Someone mobilized them. It's not a coincidence that they show up when we've been attacked."

She stepped closer, a cold sweat now rising on the back of her neck. The safety of the bunker allowed the rush of danger to finally hit her. There had been security concerns before, but nothing that actually came to fruition. No bunkers or cut power lines or soldiers racing her across the base.

"Take them all into custody. I don't care how it looks." He pinched his eyes. "Then figure out who the ring leaders are and take them into fucking custody."

He slammed the phone onto the table and wheeled around. When the general saw Rory, he froze, and then he heaved a sigh.

"Rory. Don't worry. You're safe in here," he said.

"What about Theo?" Rory swallowed hard. "You've thought about him, right?"

"What? Yes. Just hang on. I need to make another call." The general spoke quickly on the phone, arguing once again for making arrests.

As soon as he hung up, Rory spoke. "Don't arrest them. Wheover it is, don't take the bait."

"You don't know the situation, Rory."

"No, but do I need to know? If someone is telling you not to take them into custody, then I assume it's normal civilians."

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

He groaned and threw his hat down on the table. His hair was uncharacteristically messy. Likely, he had been asleep when this started. "There's protestors trying to climb the fence half a mile out. They want to free you. Counter protestors showed up carrying shotguns and rifles, saying they're the people's militia. Some of them are saying they'll come here to kill you themselves. Others are saying they're protecting the security of the base. No one has been hurt yet, but it's tense."

Rory pieced together what she'd heard so far. "But it's not connected to this power outage."

"No. We've been hacked and we need to investigate more, but it's clearly military. They took down our power grid and tried to gain access to our internal systems. This was advanced. Those protestors spitting on each other in the sand didn't do this."

"Maybe it's like the fight that broke out in New York a few months ago. The one where the Russian operative posed as a local activist online and planned a protest in favor of me."

The general nodded. "And also planned for that local college chapter of that group that thinks you're a planted actor to play flag football at the same place."

"A girl almost died. It was a terrible fight that broke out. If this is Russia, why wouldn't they try that play again?"

"This isn't the kind of war we're used to fighting." He ran his hand through his thinning hair. "It's a massive psy-ops disinformation campaign aimed at causing chaos. Death by a thousand cuts."

"Which is why you can't let your temper rule you tonight. Your enemies would love for you to arrest all those people and further divide the country."

He watched her for several seconds. "You sure you're from a different planet?"

"I'm guessing we have politics where I'm from too."

"You're too calm again, just like the interrogation. Do you realize that?"

Rory bit the inside of her cheek. "Wasn't it your people who came to the conclusion that I must have had some sort of military training? You shouldn't be surprised."

He watched her for several seconds and then looked away without responding. Rory was reminded again of two off-key hums as they sheltered together, strategized together, and ignored the fact that they very might well have been from two enemy militaries on two different planets.

The elevator doors opened then and Rory flinched at the sound. But soon her breath caught. Theo stumbled forward, looking lost, and dishelved in his sweatpants and plain black t-shirt.

"Rory." His eyes widened when he saw her. He moved for her and she caught his hands.

"You're okay?" she asked.

"Yeah. You?"

"I'm fine. Did soldiers sneak into your house too?"

"They called me."

Her tone flattened. "Lucky you. I almost stabbed someone's eyes out tonight."

His brows twisted like he couldn't figure out if she was joking or not. "I'm just happy you're safe. Is anyone else from the team coming? What about–"

"It's just you," General Price said. "We'll stay here until we know what we're up against. There's no indication of a physical attack right now, except for some protestors. But we're not taking chances."

"Why am I the only one? The rest of the team needs to be safe."

"Because you're a target." The general crossed his arms over his broad chest and leveled a look at Theo. "You come up often enough in the chatter we monitor."

Theo pushed his glasses up with a twisted expression. "Me? I'm a target? Why?"

General Price's glance skittered between Rory and Theo. "Well, you know," he said.

Theo straightened. "Because I'm lead on the task force?"

Rory had to hold back her chuckle at the tight look of discomfort on the general's face and the way obliviousness somehow made Theo look five years younger instantly. "They think we're dating, Theo."

It wasn't close to the first time Rory had managed to silence a room. She'd become quite good at it. But it was the most she had managed to shock her friend, and that was saying something considering all the scientific discoveries that she had ushered into his life.

His mouth opened and then closed. He blinked several times. "They?"

"People. Random people. You haven't seen the memes?" Rory sank down into an office chair and drew her legs up. "They're of you in the background of my streams. There's a series with your face just poking into the edge of the frame."

As she was talking, the general had slinked away to the other side of the room and turned his back to them, and Theo's expression had fallen from confused to quiet panic.

"Don't take it like that, Theo," Rory said. "They aren't making fun of you. People think it's cute."

He looked down and cleared his throat. "How many memes are there?"

"Don't worry about it. I told people we're just friends. Addressing it makes it worse, honestly. Let people have their fun and ignore it."

"It doesn't embarrass you?" he asked. "Not at all? That people think you're with me?"

"Why would it?" She crossed her arms. "It's refreshing that they think I'm human enough for love. You only ship the people you like. It's a compliment."

By the slight red in his cheeks, Rory realized that Theo was much more embarrassed than she had expected. He'd made comments and jokes occasionally about how awkward he'd been when he was young. That he still felt like that backwards kid no matter how successful he became. Despite that, Rory couldn't see any weakness in Theo. He was a brilliant and accomplished scientist who was spearheading one of the greatest inquiries of mankind. And he wasn't socially awkward, either. Not to Rory. This must have felt like reliving some high school nightmare to him, though.

"I should have told you." Rory lowered her legs and sat up more, stomach bunched with regret and sympathy. "How are you supposed to have a dating life when people are talking about us? I can't believe I was so thoughtless."

His expression scrunched. "A dating life? I don't care about that. You think I have the time? I just…" He fumbled with his words for a moment. "I don't like the attention."

Everything had become so overwhelming in the past few months that Rory had retreated from herself and from the chaos churning beneath the depths of her spirit. She'd buried herself in the little she could find of this world that wasn't mired in the scandal that was her entire existence. So no longer did she allow herself to ruminate on the grief of losing her world and her identity or to worry about what the future held. Rory had been surviving one moment at a time, like a rock climber clinging to the cliffside without any ropes. Hiding online felt much easier than facing the world, and she'd managed to ignore the seriousness of many situations by finding the irony of them or the humor or simply refusing to take it seriously.

Seeing Theo forced to take refuge in his pajamas in a bunker, cheeks warm from countless strangers speculating about his personal life, all that Rory had wanted to avoid crashed into her. It was as if she clung to the rocky cliff by only her nails with the wind threatening to rip her down into the abyss below.

Panic rushed up hot over her face and pounded with her heartbeat in her ears. It wasn't just her life anymore. Theo could have just been the leader of the task force. Instead, he'd shown her kindness. He'd shared stories about his life and brought the world to her when she couldn't leave to explore it herself. His kindness has bonded him to her and now their fate had been tied together. Because the people who wanted to hurt Rory would do the same to him.

Concern dried up the look of self-consciousness on Theo's face. Before he could ask her how she was, before he could put away thoughts of himself like he always did to look after her, Rory spoke.

"I didn't realize how much danger I'd put you in." Noise filled the bunker as the general and his officers spoke over the phones and radios, but it was quiet between Rory and Theo. "You couldn't have known what you were getting into when you first talked to me like I was a person, and not a specimen."

"You're not responsible for this, Rory."

"Responsibility isn't based on fairness. It comes to us all. We either take it or we don't. And when we don't, it falls onto someone else. I've let it fall onto you because I've been hiding. I brushed off the rumors about us, but now look. Someone out there is taking it seriously enough that you aren't safe in your own residence."

Theo's jaw bunched. "I'm no victim here. Certainly not your victim. You think I didn't know what I was doing when I extended friendship to you? You were being held captive by the US military, Rory. I knew. I chose to stand beside you and I would choose it again."

The question nearly spilled from her lips. Why? Why would he do that for her? Only Rory wouldn't insult him for asking, not when the same had been asked of her so many times. Why did she care about Earth? Why had she submitted to the interrogation? Why was she patient with the very people holding her captive?

To ask Theo why assumed that he wasn't capable of self-sacrifice and she would not do that to him. Instead, she reached forward for his hand, and gripped it for a moment between them. Her eyes met his.

"I'll stand with you too." She let his hand go, but their eyes didn't stray. "And if anyone comes into this bunker to hurt you, I'll shoot them with one of those M16s I apparently know how to use."

As lighthearted as she'd made it sound, it wasn't a joke. Rory trusted that they were safe tonight, but whatever was happening here was the beginning of something. The danger wasn't over. It was just beginning. The world had not simply been watching and biding their time. Earth had prepared for her and there was more to come.

And who knew what lurked beyond Earth?

Rory wouldn't watch anyone get hurt, whether they were people she knew or didn't know. There had been so many people she talked to over these past nine months and though she was not well acquainted with many, she did care. The world was full of people who deserved to live their lives in security. She would do what she could to protect them. But when it came to Theo, it was different. Rory would not simply fight.

She'd annihilate anyone who came to hurt the one true friend she had on this planet.