WE PASS A FEW OTHER HOUSES AS WE SPEED away from the ranch. They’re secluded, just like Yellowhammer was, and separated by miles and miles of fields and land. All of them have little trails of smoke rising from their yards and roofs. Not completely destroyed like my base, but definitely messed up.
The Mogs must have narrowed our location down to one area and then systematically searched for us house by house. My brain shuts down as I start to wonder who lived in these homes. Who the Mogs slaughtered in their effort to find us.
It takes everything I have not to puke my guts out.
We ride in silence for a while, listening to BK’s panting in the backseat. I think both of us are in shock. Finally, the quiet is broken when Sarah’s phone rings. It’s John.
“Before you say anything,” she says when she answers, “I just want you to know that I’m okay.”
She talks to John on the phone, and I strain to try to hear what he’s saying on his end. She tells him a little bit about what happened and where we’re going. I’m glad she doesn’t give him any specifics, because I don’t know how new her burner is or how careful John and the others have been about using them.
Safe houses won’t keep us alive, apparently. Paranoia might. Though I don’t even know if I can call any of us paranoid, since our fears are totally justified.
“Tell John to kick some Mog ass,” I say.
When she’s off the phone I ask her how her alien boyfriend is.
“Fine,” she says.
“Are you worried about him?”
“Every second.”
We cross the state line into Georgia around dawn. Sarah yawns a lot but doesn’t sleep. I offer her an energy drink from my stash in the backseat, but she turns her nose up at it. I down a can in one gulp.
Not long after that my fever comes back, and I start to feel a little woozy. My arm is so sore that I can hardly use it to drive, and Sarah makes me pull off the highway and into a drugstore parking lot. She goes in with some cash and comes out a few minutes later, demanding I move to the passenger seat. I down a few Tylenol at Sarah’s insistence and despite the energy drink I’ve guzzled, I pass out.
I wake up to Sarah poking the side of my face. We’re almost there. The landscape looks eerily similar to what it did at the ranch house. GUARD definitely has a knack for finding secluded hideouts. We come to a gate among a bunch of trees, and the GPS beeps that we’ve reached our destination. I can just make out a few structures through a dense thicket of incredibly green trees. Old signage says something about the place being a peach-and-pecan orchard.
That must be the place. GUARD’s base.
“I can’t believe I’m finally going to meet the man himself,” I say as we start up an old trail that cuts through rows of thin, dead trees. I’m feeling groggy and drained, but knowing GUARD must be just a couple of yards away fills me with adrenaline.
“You sure this is where your friend is?” Sarah asks. I can hear the skepticism in her voice.
“He’s the one who inputted it into the GPS,” I say.
“It just seems so . . . ordinary.”
I can see a few flashes of silver throughout the branches—cameras. Naturally. I point them out to Sarah and tell her that I’d thought the same thing about the ranch house before I went inside. I’m guessing cameras are up all over the place, just like in Alabama. Possibly even some remote-operated weapons too. I wouldn’t put it past GUARD.
Eventually, the trees all give way to big, open lawns around a white farmhouse and a gigantic steel building behind it that looks like it used to be some kind of small mill or factory or something.
“He’s here,” I say, more to myself than to Sarah. He has to be here. Everything is going to work out. We’re going to meet up with GUARD and figure out what we can do to bring down these Mogadorian bastards.
I jump out of the truck when we park in front of the house and am a little wobbly on my feet. My fever’s getting worse. BK stares up at me with wet-looking eyes as if he’s actually worried about me or something, but I man up and keep going. There’s a note on the front door of the house that just says “Out Back,” scrawled in messy handwriting. So we wander around the house to the big metal building. We walk through the front door and must trip some kind of invisible alarm, because suddenly the door locks behind us and there are four guns mounted on robotic arms trained on us.
“Shit!” I yell as I try to pull the door open.
“Mark,” Sarah says quietly, but I can tell that she’s freaking out.
I start to move forward but the guns stay on me, keeping their aim with every step I take. So instead, I take a few steps to the right and plant myself in front of Sarah. At our feet, BK starts to growl. The edges of his body begin to contort, as if he’s just about to transform into a monster.
“I wouldn’t go any farther than that if you don’t want to end up full of holes,” a muffled voice says.
There’s a figure standing in front of us that’s tall—taller than me—and wearing loose-fitting coveralls and a shiny, robotic-looking helmet. Something about it is familiar, but I don’t know why. My head is fuzzy from the fever. A bunch of tools hang from a belt around the person’s waist, but I’m more concerned about what’s in their hands, which, based on what I can remember about the weapons in my dad’s old office, is a semiautomatic combat shotgun.
Dozens of scenarios flash through my mind, none of which end well for us. My loudest thought screams that I’ve been duped again. That I’ve been a huge dumbass and somehow ended up communicating with another fake GUARD. Or maybe GUARD was never on our side to begin with. There’s no mystery grenade to save me this time, though. With all the security stuff everywhere, I’m guessing even if we did make it outside, we’d still be goners.
Behind me, Sarah’s breathing is heavy, and my entire body shudders with regret for bringing her into this.
I’m relieved when the figure lowers the shotgun, but that feeling is quickly replaced by confusion when the weird helmet comes off. The person in front of us is a black woman with strong, slightly masculine features. Her hair’s shaved on the sides but fades into a short, flat Mohawk on the top of her head. A sheen of sweat shines on her face. She looks like a badass warrior, but she’s also totally hot.
She stares at BK and mutters something in a language I’ve never heard. Her voice is commanding. Suddenly, BK heels.
So much for that line of defense.
“A Chimæra. Wonderful,” she says. She turns her attention to me. “Mark James. You look even worse than the last time I saw you.”
That’s when I realize why the helmet looked familiar. I’ve seen this person before. In New Mexico.
She’s the courier who delivered the first package to me.
“Wait . . . ,” I say. “You’re GUARD?”
She nods, raising one eyebrow as if she thinks I should have somehow figured this out already. As if I had any reason to guess that the person I’d been in contact with all this time wasn’t a conspiracy-obsessed hacker shut-in but a woman who looks like she’d be equally comfortable on a magazine cover or a battlefield.
“You can call me Lexa. That was my name on Lorien.”
Lorien?
My head pounds as my brain tries to make sense of the fact that GUARD is not only a chick, but an alien.
What the hell is going on?
“Mark,” Sarah says, breathless. Her eyes are wide and staring at something farther back in the giant metal building, behind the woman.
And then I see what’s got her attention.
“Welcome to the hangar,” Lexa says. “It looks like we need to get you fixed up. I hope you’re good with tools. I’m trying to get this thing to run off the primitive fuel systems available on this planet.”
She turns away from us and walks towards the beat-up silver spaceship parked in the back of the hangar.