THE Humvee tore down the gravel road, a cloud of dust exploding from under the massive off-road tires. Sophie gripped the steering wheel as if she was holding onto a buoy for life. She steered hard to the right to avoid an empty minivan parked in the middle of the road and roared past it.
“Where are we headed?” Saafi asked.
“Haven’t figured that out yet exactly,” Sophie said.
“I want to check out the orbs,” Emanuel shouted from the back seat. “That’s our first objective.”
Sophie took a left and slid out onto the highway that led to Colorado Springs, kicking up another cloud of dust. “All right, keep your eyes peeled.”
The truck zipped over the street, its headlights illuminating the empty vehicles on all sides.
“Must have been a massive evacuation,” Saafi said, staring out the window. The empty streets reminded him of Somalia, where it was common for the government to shut down entire roads.
“But from what? I don’t see any sign of fires, and radiation levels are still minimal,” Sophie said. “In fact, I don’t see a sign of anything or anyone.”
The emptiness was eerie. She’d hardly had the time to think about it after they left the biosphere. But now it was beginning to eat at her, and as Cheyenne Mountain slowly shrank in the rearview mirror, she felt a sense of uneasiness crawling through her.
Sophie tore herself away from the mirror and stared ahead, admiring the silhouettes of downtown Colorado Springs. The outlines were oddly beautiful. Without lights, the buildings looked like metallic pyramids.
“There!” Emanuel shouted. “Watch out!”
Sophie slammed on the brakes, narrowly missing one of the floating orbs. The smell of burning rubber filtered into her helmet.
“What on earth is it?” she whispered.
“Fascinating,” Emanuel said. Sophie couldn’t see it, but she knew that behind his visor was a large smile. A discovery like this was what he lived for.
Before she had time to study the orb, he was walking toward it, the door slamming behind him.
“Wait up,” Saafi yelled, following him.
They wound their way between a pair of sedans and stopped a few feet from the floating ball.
“Shit,” Sophie said, putting the truck in park. She went to twist the key but opted to leave it running. If things got dicey, she wanted to make a fast escape. She opened the door and stepped out onto the street. Besides the idling diesel engine, there was nothing but silence. Nothing moved. The normal sounds of everyday life were gone: honking horns, chirping insects, sirens. The lack of noise was unsettling. “Keep sharp,” she whispered into her com.
The bright beam from the Humvee’s headlights helped her navigate the graveyard of abandoned vehicles. She peeked into a sedan’s windows. An open magazine, granola bar wrappers balled up on the floorboard, and an empty Pepsi bottle. There was nothing out of the ordinary—nothing to indicate a struggle or evacuation. The street was empty, too. Not even a single suitcase left behind, or a shoe lost in a hurried escape.
Nothing.
Sophie continued to the next car, finding the front windows down. She came up to the driver side window and stuck her helmet inside. There was more trash, a purse, and a pair of sunglasses.
“Come look at this, Sophie,” Emanuel said over the com. The words startled her, and she went to pull her head from the car. Then she saw it—the keys were still in the ignition. Her eyes darted over to the fuel gauge.
“Empty? What the hell . . .”
“Didn’t catch that, please repeat,” Emanuel said.
“Hold on.” Sophie hurried to the next vehicle. Through the window she could see the keys were still in the ignition and the fuel gauge was also on zero. The next two cars revealed the same thing.
What’s going on here?
An evacuation where people didn’t even have time to shut off their cars? She’d never heard of anything like it. During the solar storms of 2055, there were entire stretches of highway where people had been cooked in their vehicles, trapped during the CME. But this was different. There was no sign of a solar event—there were no bodies, no burned out cars.
Sophie ignored the eerie view and rushed over to Emanuel and Saafi. She placed her armored hand on Emanuel’s shoulder. Even through the armor, it made her feel safer. Over years of scientific research, she had seen some terrifying things, but this was unlike anything she had experienced. This was just . . . weird.
The sphere hovered two feet above Saafi’s head, putting it at about eight and a half feet high. Sophie studied it in awe. She had never seen anything that could float like that. The craft from her dreams crept into her thoughts, but she quickly pushed it away. Holly was right, they were just dreams, and this was nothing more than a coincidence.
“What do you make of it?” she asked, returning her attention to the glowing ball of light.
“It’s fascinating. It appears to be organic, with some sort of electrical current running around the shell.”
Saafi approached the sphere cautiously, his rifle pointed toward the blacktop. “What do you think is inside?”
“Don’t get too close,” Sophie warned.
Saafi craned his head to acknowledge her. “Relax . . .” he replied, pausing in midsentence as the exterior of the orb began to ripple. “What the—” he choked, stumbling backwards.
The surface pulsated, the solid blue glow fading into a translucent white. The sphere rippled again, the entire ball vibrating. Saafi took a guarded step forward, his rifle now pointed at the orb.
As he got closer a tremor ripped through it, shaking it violently. Saafi froze. “I think I can see something inside.” He moved another step closer and the sphere reacted again, the blue fading completely into white. “Yes, there is definitely something inside, and I think . . .” He paused to get a better look.
“What is it?” Emanuel asked, approaching it curiously.
The knot in Sophie’s stomach tightened. She knew whatever had happened to NTC and the people from the highway was probably related to the orbs. Nonetheless, she inched closer. She was a scientist, and far from a coward; she had to know what was inside.
Beneath the translucent white skin, there was a black entity. And it was moving. As the sphere stopped vibrating and the last hint of blue was gone, her heads-up display (HUD) glowed to life.
“Contact!” she yelled into the com. Whatever was inside had a heat signature—it was alive.
“Alexia, are you getting this feed?” Sophie asked over the com.
Short bursts of static broke out over the channel, but the AI did not respond.
“Shit. We must be out of range,” Emanuel said. “Or there might be some sort of interference.”
Sophie shrugged. “Just our luck. Guess we’re on our own.”
The three team members backed up simultaneously as the heat signature grew larger on their displays, Emanuel nearly tripping over his own feet.
“What the fuck is it?” he asked. “It looks almost like an egg,” he said, regaining his composure.
“I’m not sure what kind of eggs you’ve seen in the past, but unless dinosaurs have returned, this is no egg,” Saafi said sarcastically.
Emanuel moved his lips to respond but stopped. The black life-form inside was moving, curling out of its fetal position.
“Guys, it’s doing something,” Saafi said, pointing his rifle at the orb.
“Everyone back up,” Sophie commanded.
The entity continued to uncurl and moved closer to the skin of the sphere. As it got bigger, Sophie could see that whatever it was it had limbs. They were struggling to move through the substance filling the orb.
Emanuel craned his neck and surveyed the rest of the highway. There were dozens more orbs, all still glowing blue in the distance.
“Guys, I don’t know if you noticed, but the other orbs are still blue. Which means we did something to activate this one,” he said, a tremor present in his normally smooth voice.
“I think maybe we should get out of here,” Saafi replied, continuing to backtrack toward the Humvee, his gun shaking in his hands.
Sophie tried to think. She knew the orb could provide them clues about what was going on, but whatever was inside could put her team in jeopardy. It wasn’t a risk she was willing to take at this point, not without knowing more.
“Let’s get back to the truck,” she said.
Emanuel cocked his helmet toward her. “But—”
“That’s an order,” she shot back at him.
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Saafi replied. He dropped his aim and went to take another step backwards, his leg hitting the bumper of a car. The impact made him stumble and his finger squeezed the trigger of the rifle before he could stop it, firing off a half dozen shots. Five of them blasted into the sky, but the sixth tore through the white skin of the orb, tearing a hole the size of a melon.
“Holy shit!” Emanuel screamed over the com, rushing to Saafi’s aid. He helped the man up and they turned back to the Humvee, where Sophie was already waiting behind the wheel.
“Give me that,” Emanuel said, grabbing the gun from Saafi’s grips.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
The Humvee’s horn tore through the silence.
“Turn around!” Sophie yelled into the com.
Emanuel saw the gaunt, pale face of what had been a man staring through the gaping hole in the orb’s shell.
“It’s human,” Saafi yelled. He took off running to help the man before Emanuel could stop him.
“Wait!” Emanuel screamed. “We don’t know—”
Saafi halted, frozen in his tracks a few feet from a puddle of blue goo that had spilled out from the orb, staring at the opening. Through the hole, a face looked back at him. Or what had been a face. It was hardly recognizable as human. The man’s skin clung to his cheekbones like a piece of plastic wrap. His eyes had shriveled into his eye sockets, and the irises were nothing more than small, black specks. Even from several feet away, Saafi could see every vein in the man’s face extending like cobwebs across his skin.
“Sir, we’re going to help you,” Saafi managed to choke out, his stomach lurching beneath his armor.
But the man did not seem to hear him. In fact, he didn’t even seem to notice Saafi. His eyes remained unmoving in their skeletal prisons.
Saafi screamed as Emanuel’s armored hand brushed his shoulder. “Jesus Christ, man. You scared the shit out of me.”
“What do you see?” Sophie asked over the com. “I can’t see anything from my location.”
Nothing but the hollow sound of her breathing echoed over the open radio channel. Saafi and Emanuel didn’t know how to respond. They stood staring at the man, oblivious to everything around them.
“What do you see?” Sophie repeated anxiously.
Saafi pulled his gaze away from the man and looked back in Sophie’s direction. “It’s a man, but he appears to be very, very sick.”
“Get back to the Humvee immediately. He could be infected, and I’m not taking any chances.”
Saafi nodded and grabbed Emanuel. “Let’s go, man. You heard her.”
But Emanuel was captivated by the orb and the man. Not even the strange creatures he had studied that lived in the thermal vents of the Pacific Ocean compared. Whatever the sphere had done to this man was terrifying. More than that, it wasn’t natural. This was something alien.
“Come on man,” Saafi pleaded, tugging at Emanuel’s shoulders.
“Look,” he replied.
Saafi glanced back at the man inside the orb. His skin was changing. It was getting tighter, and the veins were getting more pronounced. The man’s lips were turning white and slowly beginning to crack, blood dripping out of them.
“Oh my God,” Saafi said. “We have to help him.”
“Don’t go any closer,” Emanuel said, putting an arm in front of Saafi. He knew there was no way to stop whatever was happening to the man. All they could do was watch.
A popping sound broke through the silence as the man’s eyes exploded in their sunken sockets. His lips quickly followed, bursting in a spray of red mist. Next went his skin, shrinking until it had no more room to stretch. It snapped like a rubber band and peeled off his face, vanishing into the orb, taking what was left of his scalp and hair with it.
Saafi’s stomach lurched. He couldn’t watch anymore and turned to run. “I’m fucking out of here, man.”
Emanuel, however, couldn’t pull himself away. He watched the man’s bones liquefy and sink into the blue goo before he, too, turned to run.
“What the hell happened?” Sophie asked as the passenger doors slammed, jolting the vehicle.
“Get us out of here!” Saafi yelled.
“Hold on.” Sophie wasn’t going to wait around for an explanation; the look on their faces, even through their visors, told her they were in trouble.
She gunned it, punching the gas with all of her strength. For a second she considered heading deeper into the city, but she quickly decided against it, turning the steering wheel 180 degrees. The Humvee’s oversized tires had no problem pulling up onto the curb, nor did they protest when the vehicle launched back onto the highway and into the bumper of a sedan, sending the smaller car into a ditch.
The old engine protested as Sophie navigated the graveyard of the abandoned vehicles.
They were almost back to the gravel road that led to Cheyenne Mountain when she heard it—the same high-pitched sonic blast she had heard in her dreams. At first her brain could hardly register what was happening. Surely her ears and mind were playing tricks on her.
But when the second blast drowned out the sound of the engine, her mind knew what she had tried to deny for so long.
“What is that?” Saafi asked, gripping his ears as his eyes darted back and forth to get a look through the windows of the truck.
“It’s some sort of ship. Blue, just like the orbs,” Emanuel replied. “And it’s headed right for us!”
A flash of heat rushed through Sophie’s body. Her eyes darted to the rearview mirror, where she could see the shape of the craft tailing them.
“Sophie . . .” Emanuel paused. “It looks just like what you described from your dreams!”
She didn’t reply, instead opting to punch the gas even harder. If this thing was real, then she knew what it was capable of.
The truck ripped onto the gravel road, fishtailing and sending a cloud of dust into the sky. Sophie pushed down harder on the pedal, the vibration from the powerful engine mixing with the adrenaline pumping through her veins.
A little farther to go, then they would be back to the Biosphere.
Back to safety.
But the ship was fast and caught up with the truck in seconds, hovering over it. The hum of its anti-gravity engines once again overpowered the whine of the Humvee’s diesel. Saafi opened his window and craned his neck outside, studying the ship in awe.
“Its surface is just like the orb!” he yelled over the com.
“And that surface is starting to pulsate,” Emanuel pointed out.
Sophie trained her eyes back on the road, trying to ignore everything except getting them to safety. The truck began the climb up the winding path leading to the blast doors. If they were lucky, the trip would take only a couple minutes—minutes she knew they might not have.
“The surface is rippling!” Emanuel shouted again.
Sophie took a hard left as the road snaked around the mountain. The ship broke to the right, and for a second it looked to be moving away. But as the road straightened out, so did the ship, and it was hovering on top of them again before she could blink.
Saafi stuck his head out the window again, watching the surface of the blue ship transforming into a solid. He jerked his head back into the safety of the truck. “That thing is not human engineered!”
“You don’t know that,” Emanuel said, shooting him a glance over his shoulder. He gripped the pulse rifle tightly in his hands. The rational side of his brain told him that what Saafi had suggested was ludicrous, but his intuition told him maybe it wasn’t so far from the truth.
A blue beam shocked Emanuel back to reality. As soon as the light reached the truck, the diesel engine began to whine.
“It’s dying,” Sophie yelled, punching the pedal harder.
The truck eased to a stop, the gravel crunching under the weight of the tires. Sophie shot Emanuel a look through her display. “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching for his hand. He stared back at her, and even through his glass visor, she could see the fear in his eyes.
“We have to get out of here!” Saafi yelled frantically from the backseat. A flashback from his youth raced into his mind. The memory was vague, but he could still see the armed men cornering his parents’ car before peppering it with bullets. He had escaped by running away; in some ways he had never really stopped, always moving from one place to the next. As fear overwhelmed him, he unlocked the door and opened it, jumping out onto the gravel road.
“No!” Sophie screamed, turning to stop him. But he was already running down the path. The humming of the craft roared back to life as it shot after him. It was on him in seconds, the beam consuming his body before he had a chance to run more than fifty feet. Emanuel and Sophie sat frozen as the light lifted their friend off the ground.
“We have to do something,” Emanuel said, gripping the rifle and opening the passenger door.
“No! You don’t know what that thing is capable of,” Sophie yelled, twisting the key desperately.
“Saafi, get out of there!” Emanuel barked into the com, ignoring her.
But he didn’t respond. He couldn’t. The light had paralyzed him, and he could feel his skin constricting as it gripped him tighter. He tried to move his lips, but the more he resisted, the more the beam squeezed him.
“I’m going after him,” Emanuel said, jumping onto the gravel.
Sophie watched him run fearlessly toward the craft with his rifle drawn. “Shit,” she said, unlocking her door. “If I didn’t love him, I’d—”
A deafening roar tore through the night. It was the same high frequency she had heard in her dream when she’d been captured just like Saafi. She dropped to her knees, pulling her helmet off and gripping her ears in pain.
Another beam blasted out of an opening in the craft and took Emanuel before he had a chance to fire off a shot.
“No!” Sophie screamed, falling on her stomach and crawling toward her two teammates. It couldn’t end like this. She wasn’t going to let it. If there was a way to free her friends, she was going to find it.
She dug deeper, pulling herself through the gravel. With every heart beat the pounding in her head got worse. She swore she could feel her blood pulsing through the vessels in her head. But she didn’t let the pain slow her down. “I’m coming!” she yelled.
The frequency of the sound intensified, and she screamed in pain, rolling to her back and gripping her ears again. Tears welled up in her eyes. She had to go on—she couldn’t lose him.
She flopped back to her stomach and forced herself toward the noise.
One hand at a time.
The blue beam holding Saafi brightened, and drops of liquid began to race toward the craft. It was just like in her dream. The craft was sucking the water right out of him.
She pulled herself another foot and collapsed back onto her stomach, panting. The noise was getting louder, and the pounding in her head worse. She knew she had only a few minutes before the pain would be unbearable. An image of an autopsy she had seen in graduate school popped into her mind. The deceased was a soldier who had been hit with a sonic bullet. It was only meant to stun him, but his eardrums had ruptured under the frequency.
Sophie shook the thoughts out of her head. She could see the beam that had Emanuel was getting brighter too, beginning to rob him of his precious life source. Time was running out. She had to find a way to get them out of the light.
The frequency amplified again. This time it was too much. She collapsed face first into the dirt, completely disabled. Her mind drifted to random memories of the past: a vague recollection of holding Emanuel’s hand on the deck of a naval vessel after they had snuck out past curfew, an image of the first night they ever made love, of shaking Dr. Tsui’s hand as he welcomed her to the team at Houston.
And then another thought pried its way into her mind, but it was not a memory—it was a dream. The red surface of Mars. She closed her eyes, tears flowing down her face, her ears pounding with pain. It was the dream that hurt the most, knowing she would never walk on the red planet.
She blinked and opened her eyes just in time to see a rocket hit the side of the craft. The solid side cracked, and the blue glow of the electric barrier returned, pulsating violently. The beams dropped Saafi and Emanuel to the ground and the sound faded away.
Sophie tried to pull herself up but collapsed, watching the scene unfold with her face in the dirt. Two soldiers ran toward the craft, their pulse rifles spitting blue tracers at the ship. The ultra-hot bullets tore into the surface, which vibrated in protest. Sophie realized the blue exterior was some sort of force field.
Another rocket raced through the sky and exploded into the craft, sending it tumbling through the air. The engine at the heart of the ship began to thump rapidly. A sonic boom followed, and the ship disappeared into the sky, vanishing over the horizon.
Sophie took a deep breath, spitting chunks of dirt out of her mouth. She rolled to her back and stared up at the starless sky. Instead of darkness, she saw a face staring down at her. It was a rough face, belonging to a middle-aged soldier with a scar running halfway down his cheek. Then she noticed his piercing blue eyes. They sparkled almost like one of the orbs.
His lips began to move, but she couldn’t make out the words. He reached down for her hand as she began to slip into unconsciousness. The last thing she saw was the name stitched on his camouflaged uniform: Sergeant Overton.