The sprawling city shone in the darkness, the streets hummed with life and the traffic was just beginning to flow. Restaurants poured music out into the still air, pedestrians were finishing their late shopping and business men were hurrying for taxis home from work. Mission City was finishing with an unusually calm night after a brilliantly clear day, beginning to still underneath the endless, darkness of the sky…
It should have been their first warning, that of all the places on earth, this city was the one to be attacked.
"Taxi!" shouted a balding agent, waving his briefcase at the yellow car that screeched to a stop on the curb. The customers at the late night café continued to murmur, undisturbed. A tiny light glimmered in the sky.
That out of every battleground on the planet, the one that bore the first scars of alien invasion was the first to be wrecked after seventeen blissful, if not tense and suspicious years of peace…
A car honked its horn loudly. A snarling police cruiser prowled up the street, weaving in and out of traffic as easily as a dark panther stalks its prey through the trees of a forest. The light grew brighter.
Then again, the things that are the most important always seem to be the ones that we most often miss.
At the mouth of an alley, a giant tow truck sat parked, waiting…
It's always the places we never look; the facts we never pay attention to, the hints we leave behind. Even hints…
Mission City. ETA, two minutes…
…as large as a city.
Look mommy!" exclaimed a little girl with braids in her pale blonde hair, pointing a tiny, stubby finger up at the sky. "A shooting star!"
Then again- it could have been a rogue.
The small, round streak in the sky suddenly got ten times bigger. People on the street were staring…
There hadn't been a united forefront of aliens since…since Giza, nearly seventeen years ago. Didn't it make sense that at the time, it just didn't seem possible? Not everyone can be the Oracle of Delphi…
The cries of the people suddenly ceased, even the cars were quiet, every face turned toward the sky, their features illuminated by the frizzling screens of static of televisions in shop windows and by the orange glow that began to light up the night. The only sound was the church bells in the steeple of the square- nine 'o clock, sharp.
The great ball of fire crashed into one of the tallest skyscrapers of the city, the tow truck that was in the alley was suddenly alive and buckling, unfolding, the police car roared up the street, and above all the screaming and roaring of the fire, there was a single, reverberating alien screech that none who heard ever got the chance to tell again…
But still, they should have known.