The day was a blur as David walked the beach alone, ignoring repeated calls from his mother, stepfather, and John. Finally, he group-texted, “LEAVE ME ALONE!”

David came to a pier and slumped against it, watching a handful of bathers frolicking in the ocean. He thought about running away. Instead, he decided to spend the night outside under the stars. He hitched a ride out of the city and hiked into the surrounding hills north of Atlantic Bay. He was used to sleeping on the ground. In fact, he enjoyed it. He’d spent many a day camping with his father in the same hills. And right now, he needed his father. But the surrounding forest and the memories it stirred was the closest he’d ever get to his father again.

After hiking for nearly an hour, David crawled underneath a grove of pines and made a bed of pine needles. He curled up into a ball, his stomach twisted in knots. He knew the next morning would be pure hell in the Noble-turned-Butler household. The clean scent of pines helped to melt some of his worries away as he slipped into a dream. Memories surfaced of better times with John, and with the Fannin triplets, Mikey, Chris, and Jeremy, days spent surfing and playing beach volleyball. Grayish mist began to fill his dreams, and his visions of breaking waves and hot sand dissolved and were replaced by images of the alien strapped to the operating table.

The vision evaporated and he became the alien once again. He felt the leather restraints on his arms and legs. He also felt displaced, as the perforated ceiling of the operating room faded out of existence, replaced by a metal ceiling, covered with rivets, six feet above the table. He was in motion, in some sort of armored vehicle. It was rolling over bumps and making turns sharp enough to press him against his restraints. He opened his eyes to slits and saw four armed guards surrounding him in the darkness. He followed the line of an intravenous tube that was connected to a needle piercing his arm and watched as the drip ran in reverse, refilling a bag that was most likely full of morphine. How is that possible? David wondered. He was coming out of his drug-induced coma. As he regained his senses, he could hear the alien’s thoughts. It was about to make a move.

As the morphine wore off, new energy coursed through David’s body. He felt as strong as he’d ever felt. He flexed his arms and snapped the restraints. He leaped from the table and knocked out the guards before they could react. He twisted open the latch on the rear doors and flung them open. The dark terrain was whizzing past, ocean to his left and forest to his right. He bent his short, powerful alien legs and sprang from the vehicle. He hit the ground, rolled, and fled into the hills.

He sped along a trail through the woods, somehow able to see despite the thick darkness. He left the trail and hid behind a boulder. A new day dawned pink in the east. David found the trail again, continued along it until night fell. David’s heart pounded, but he wasn’t sure if it was his own fear or the alien’s. The being continued to search—was he searching for a way out or for someone to help him? David heard dogs barking, saw the beams of headlights.

He called out, “Help me,” but it was a dream, and there was no one to help him.

“Help me, David,” he heard himself call out in his dream, and it made no sense—he was David. He heard the hounds coming closer.

“Help me, David.”

It woke David from his dream. He looked around. There was no one, nothing. He heard the dogs. They were real. He needed to get home.

Wind rustled through the trees behind him. A sudden gust startled him. It whisked past, like a ghost in the night, and there was more rustling ahead of him. The wind seemed to beckon him. He didn’t know if he was dreaming or awake.

He heard a voice whisper, “David.”

But he hadn’t heard it, not with his ears. The voice was inside his head, and it called again, louder, “Help me.”

David jumped to his feet and ran, not knowing where he was going but following some instinct, like a migratory bird. Low branches whipped his face as he turned from the trail and ran uphill. He pushed rational thoughts out of his mind and went as fast as he could run, his feet finding a path through the trees, his mind’s eye seeing roots and rocks and other obstructions to be avoided. He crested the hill and stopped. He stared across a clearing to a lone cell-phone tower. A single light at the top of it blinked bright red.

“David,” the voice called again, beckoning him toward the tower. It was surrounded by a fence, but a section of chain link was ripped open on one side. David crouched down and pushed through the opening. He picked himself up and saw the alien from his dreams standing in front of him. The creature’s head barely reached David’s chest. It was gripping part of the tower to steady itself, its elongated fingers curled like hooks. It breathed heavily as if plagued by asthma. David knew he should be scared, but he wasn’t. He felt as if he knew the creature.

“I’ve been searching for you,” the alien projected. “I’ve travelled a long way to find you.”

“Why?” David asked aloud.

“I’ve come to your planet to deliver a message that could save your people. The inhabitants of Earth are our universal twins. Our ancestors severed the bond because of the humans’ destructive nature. But that’s not so with you, David Noble. Because of you and your mate to be, our faith is restored.”

The answers only confused David more. He heard the dogs’ howling, and the sound of vehicle engines was coming closer. “Why are you being chased?”

“In my search for you, I was captured by your kind. They would not listen to my thoughts. They only want to study my kind. Now that I’ve found you, I can complete my mission. But I also need your help to get home. It is your duty to build the portal that will return me to my home planet.”

“I don’t understand.” The dogs were close enough now that he could hear not only their barking but also their panting. The sounds of the vehicles were nearly loud enough to drown out his voice. But, dream or no dream, this creature—a being who had searched him out for some reason—was being hunted, and David knew he had to help him.

“In return for helping me, you’ll receive the secrets your people need to survive.”

David looked over his shoulder, saw the first dog approaching. He turned back to the alien. “I’ll help you.”

David felt a sudden weight and was forced to his knees by an alien gravity. He was face to face with the creature. The alien smiled through thin lips, studying David with its large, black eyes before wrapping its hand around David’s neck. An instant later, David felt a sharp prick, like a needle, against the base of his skull. It burned white hot for a moment, but the burning quickly faded. He felt every cell in his body begin to vibrate.

The alien nodded. “Now we are one. It is time for me to go, to give you the time you need to complete the task. I’ll be in their hands until you return for me.”

As the first vehicle entered the clearing, David watched the alien wave his hand in the direction of his pursuers. A tree fell across the clearing in the vehicle’s path. “Leave, now, while I distract them,” the alien said before jumping the fence and racing for the trees. As he ran, his body faded to a translucent shimmer. Headlights played over the area where David was standing, and vehicles screeched to a stop and disgorged dozens of men, all wearing black attire, like ninjas, their faces half covered with enormous goggles. The men chased the alien and surrounded him. Someone tossed a net. It dropped over the alien and pulled him to the ground.

David heard the alien’s voice inside his head. “Run.” David slid through the opening in the fence and bolted into the bushes. Several men yelled at him to stop before giving chase. He ran harder. He stumbled over an exposed tree root and went rolling down the hill. He tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t. Suddenly the ground disappeared beneath him, and he plummeted over the side of the cliff.

“Nnnttt, nnnttt, nnnttt.”

David’s alarm clock blared in his ears as he was freefalling. The bottom of the ravine was rising up to smash him when he slapped the alarm and silenced it. He pulled himself up onto his elbows and looked around the dark basement.

“Wake up, David,” his mother called from the top of the stairs. “Come on, honey, you don’t want to be late for your first day of school in your senior year.”

“Right,” David murmured. “First day of school, first day of school.” First day of school? “What are you talking about?” he asked his mother while he threw on a pair of jeans and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt. “I have another week. Don’t I?”

Karen looked at her watch. “Actually, you have about another hour.”

David stood at the foot of the stairs and shook his head slowly. “I don’t get it,” he said as he looked up at his mother.

“You’re still out of it, huh? Well following your little tiff with John at the arcade, you disappeared for half the night. Since then, you’ve practically slept this last week away holed up in your man cave, so we decided to let you alone. But your week of moping is up. Now, hurry up or you’re going to be late.”

David scratched his head as he made his way up the stairs, not sure what was real and what wasn’t. I really popped John? he thought. Boy, that was some dream. He checked the back of his neck for a war scar, but nothing was there.

As David sprung from the last step, Karen asked, “Wow, have you been secretly working out?”

“No. Why?”

“You’re filling out with muscle.”

“David? Muscles? Yeah, right,” John said as he walked by. When David shot him the look of death, John rubbed his crooked nose and shut his mouth.

Before leaving the house, David combed through his hair in the mirror, hoping to look presentable for his first day of senior year. When he turned to leave, he didn’t see the reflection of the geometrical markings on the back of his neck, glowing beneath his skin. The mark faded as he stepped out into the sunlight.