Alexis awoke the next morning to a storm of quick, insistent raps on the bedroom door. Feeling around for her phone, she looked blearily at the numbers. It was just past 8. Groaning, she closed her eyes and mumbled half-heartedly, "Go away. One more hour and I'll get up, I promise."

"But, Lexi, we're going to see the spaceship today!" came a high-pitched voice, muffled from behind the door.

Alexis propped herself up on one arm and looked at the door, trying to unscramble her brain. "Sara?"

Bursting through the door, her younger cousin ran up to her bed. "Why aren't you up yet? We're going to see the spaceship soon!" she repeated excitedly.

"Sara, you're not going with us." It was bad enough Corey was going; she really didn't want to have her kid cousin tagging along, too.

Sara pouted. "But Aunt Rachel said I could go!"

Alexis sighed and closed her eyes, deciding that changing the subject might be the best way to avoid hitting her head against a 6-year-old wall. "When did you get here?" Alexis and Corey had slept at their aunt and uncle's house to get an early start on the day, Alexis in the spare bedroom and Corey on the couch. He claimed it was just as good as a bed, but Alexis begged to differ. But Sara had gone home with her parents and sister after dinner last night.

"Daddy just drove me. Aunt Rachel says we're going to the mall today, too! I wanna ride on the carousel!"

"What carousel?"

"The one in the mall!"

"There's no carousel in the mall here! And we're not gonna play games or go anywhere fun today. You'd have a lot more fun at the park with the other kids," Alexis said, a little desperately.

"But I wanna hang out with you today!"

Realizing she was not going to win this argument, Alexis sighed and got out of bed to start getting ready for a boring day of babysitting.

Alexis got antsier as the minutes ticked by before they left, and they ended up not getting on the road until almost 10 o'clock – mostly because her brother didn't wake up until well after 9, much to her annoyance. What if the spaceships suddenly shot back off into space, gone as quickly as they had appeared? What if the aliens decided that humanity wasn't interesting or advanced enough to bother with? She would never forgive him if she missed out on all this alien business because he wanted to sleep in.

She was glad when they left their aunt's house, but then the drive seemed to take forever. She thought she remembered it only taking 20 minutes before to get from their aunt's house in West Cambridge to the city, but today it took almost twice as long. The traffic was almost bumper-to-bumper, and Alexis wondered if it was all because of the ship or if some sports game or something was going on today. She thought she remembered there being a baseball team here in Boston.

As they were crossing the Longfellow Bridge into the city, Alexis got her first really good look at the thing up close. The pictures most definitely did not do it justice. The estimates she'd heard were everywhere between a thousand feet long and half a mile long, and she could believe it now. She had trouble wrapping her mind around how something that big could even stay in the air. They passed underneath an edge of it to reach a parking garage and were left in darkness for a moment. The shadow they fell under seemed oppressive to Alexis, and no one in the car spoke as they watched the pedestrians outside, some gawking at the ship above them, some milling about as if nothing were happening.

As soon as they were parked in the garage, Alexis was out and snapping pictures on her phone, not wanting to miss a thing, the ominous feeling from under the shadow of the ship long forgotten.

"Seriously? Already?" Corey said when he saw her taking pictures. But he was grinning, too.

"Gotta memorialize this moment, bro – I wanna remember this forever," she replied as they started walking down a sidewalk cattycorner towards the ship. They had parked about 10 minutes away from the ship, so they had a short walk ahead of them to reach it on foot.

"Can I take pictures, too?" she heard Sara say.

"It's mine and I'm using it; ask Aunt Rachel if you can use hers," Alexis said distractedly, watching for good angles through the buildings. She could see the ship over the tops of the short and medium-sized ones, but there were plenty more really tall ones in the way.

"Alex," her aunt warned.

She turned from her angle-checking to a stern-faced aunt. Sighing, she reluctantly handed her phone over to her younger cousin. "You can only have it for a few minutes, and if you break it you're going to be in really big trouble. I need you to be really careful with it, okay?" Which wasn't what she wanted to say, but what she wanted to say wasn't really appropriate for a six-year-old.

Sara's eyes grew wide and she squeaked out, "Don't worry, Lexi! I'll be careful."

Yeah, right, Alexis thought. She knew what happened to everything the kid touched. She was careless and a kid.

They walked along the city sidewalks, with Alexis feeling strangely naked without her phone, taking in the ship and just generally seeing the sights. Alexis indulged in a little people-watching, too – the closer they got to the ship, the more people she saw watching it and taking pictures and video. She grinned as she heard one teenage boy say to his friends as they walked by, "Man, I can't believe those kids are down here. If my parents found out I was here, I'd be in deep shit."

When they reached the edge of the ship, Aunt Rachel said, "All right, I think this is close enough."

Alexis opened her mouth to protest, but closed it again when she saw the look on her aunt's face. "Phone, twerp," she said to Sara, holding her hand out expectantly. As soon as she felt her phone in her hand, she aimed it straight up and took as wide a picture as she could. She couldn't get much in the shot; it felt like the ship was bearing down on top of them. For a moment, looking straight up at it, she thought it might suddenly careen out of control and come crashing down on them all. Shivering a little, she zoomed in for a slew of close-ups. She saw the same patterns and design she'd seen on all the other ships online, and she wondered again what it all meant. Which end was the front? Where were the engines? Were there windows anywhere for the aliens to look out? Were they watching them right now?

That thought made her pause. What did these aliens think of them? As far as she'd heard, the government had gotten as far as "We come in peace," but if they had communicated beyond that, they weren't telling people. So why were the aliens here? And what did they look like?

Feeling an insistent tug on one the right side of her shirt, Alexis looked down and saw Sara pointing behind her, a hand over her mouth attempting to hold back a giggle. Turning around, Alexis grinned and brought her phone up, quickly snapping a picture. Looking at the newly captured image, she said smugly, "Oh, yeah. That one's going on Facebook right now!"

"Huh?" Corey said, snapping out of his daze.

Alexis turned her phone around and held it out so he could see the picture. It was of him, slack-jawed, neck craned up towards the ship, a slightly dumbfounded expression on his face.

"Aw, come on," he said, reaching out to grab the phone from her.

But she was expecting it and pulled her arm back just in time, turning slightly away from him as she began typing rapid-fire on her phone. "You know what I love about modern technology?" Without really waiting for an answer, she continued, "It can memorialize anything forever."

Turning her phone back around so he could see, she displayed the same photo, this time set against the familiar blue and white background of Facebook.

Corey just looked annoyed. "Why do you have to be such a pest?"

"It's my duty as your sister," she replied, smiling sweetly.

"All right, you two," her aunt said, giving them both a look. "I think you've gotten all the pictures you're going to get, Alex. Let's head back to the car and then we can go to the mall."

"Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod!"

Corey stared at Alexis like she'd grown a third head. "What is your malfunction?"

Grinning back at him and pointing to a sign up ahead, she turned to their aunt, her eyes sparkling. "We have to go, oh my gosh, can we go? Please?"

They were at the mall in Back Bay, and Alexis had just started to wonder if there was anything here besides food and expensive clothes when they turned the corner around P.F. Chang's and she caught sight of a sign for the Skywalk Observatory. They had been walking in the direction of the ticket kiosk and Alexis hadn't noticed until they were practically on top of it.

"And here I thought I only had one six-year-old with me today," her aunt said mildly.

"What? What is it?" Sara asked insistently, looking up ahead to where her cousin was pointing, Alexis' excitement effortlessly infecting her.

"It's the observatory; I forget it was even here," Alexis said in a rush. "Can we go up? Please, Aunt Rach?"

"Why do you think we came to The Shops?" her aunt answered coolly, nodding towards the kiosk. "That's probably the best view you're going to get of that ship in the whole city."

Alexis grinned. "You are so awesome. Just so you know." She heard Corey snort and figured he was rolling his eyes, but she didn't bother to look.

"Why, thank you. I'll go get the tickets; you guys wait here, all right?"

"Sure," Corey replied for them, pulling out his phone as their aunt went to get in line.

Sara watched Corey silently for a few moments, then turned to Alexis. "Can I play on your phone?"

"Seriously? Again?" Alexis deadpanned.

"Just let her have it," Corey said without looking up. "It'll keep her out of trouble."

Sara pouted. "Pretty please, Lexi? Just for a little bit…"

"Fine," Alexis said, shaking her head and sighing as she fished her phone out of her pocket. She saw a new text from Bethany, but decided to look at it in a few minutes when she could actually reply. "But you better give it back when we get up there, got it?"

"Got it!" Sara replied, already happily pecking away at the phone.

Alexis looked over at the kiosk to see how much longer their aunt would be, but she was already walking back towards them. As soon as she was close enough, Alexis asked impatiently, "So? Can we go up now?"

Rachel looked apologetic. "They're sold out. They don't have any tickets left for the rest of the day. It seems a 50-story building with a panoramic view of the city is in high demand when there's a spaceship in the area," she finished dryly.

"So we're not going up to the observatory." It was more of a statement than a question, and her disappointment was evident in her voice.

"I'm sorry, honey. But you know, we can always come back tomorrow."

"Yeah, but who knows if the ship'll still be here tomorrow?" Alexis asked, frustrated.

"Chill out," Corey said, not bothering to look up from his phone. "You got pictures earlier. It's not the end of the world."

As soon as he said 'world', a bright flash of white light illuminated everything around them. It only lasted a second, and then it was gone as quickly as it had come, leaving Alexis blinking to clear her suddenly spotted vision.

"What the hell was that?" Corey said, looking up from his phone in confusion.

"I dunno, but it felt like someone just took a picture, with the flash on, right in my face," Alexis said unhappily.

Her aunt frowned. "That wasn't a camera flash, it came from outside. But it couldn't have been lightning…" she trailed off, scanning the clear sky through the glass doors behind the ticket kiosk.

"Lexi, your phone's not working," Sara said glumly.

"Aw, crap," Alexis mumbled, mostly to herself. Snatching the phone back from her cousin, she scolded, "What did you do?" The screen was black as if it were turned off, so she tried turning it on, but nothing happened. She sighed theatrically as she started pushing other buttons, trying to get any activity on the thing.

"I didn't do it, I promise! I was playing a game and then the big flash came and it stopped working!"

Alexis' brow furrowed as the screen remained dark despite her efforts and she realized something really was wrong with the phone. "It won't turn on," she said, quickly becoming frustrated.

"Mine's not working either," Corey added, sounding puzzled.

Sara frowned, looking at the ceiling, and tugged on her aunt's arm. "Aunt Rachel, why are all the lights off?"

"I don't know, honey. I'm sure they'll be back on soon," was her aunt's reply, maternal instinct telling her to reassure the child no doubt kicking in.

"It's not just the lights. I don't think anything electronic's working."

Alexis looked up at her brother's words and, sure enough, other people were doing the same thing they were – checking their phones, their tablets, everything, and Alexis saw various degrees of confusion and frustration on their faces. All the mall lights were out, though there was still plenty of daylight to see by, which is why she hadn't noticed that. And now that she was listening for it, she didn't hear the usual high-pitched hum of machinery. Anywhere. She shivered; it was an eerie silence – filled with the voices of the people around them, but without the nearly ever-present background noise provided by modern technology.

"Hmmm. A transformer probably blew somewhere close by – that was the bright flash," Rachel said after looking around a bit herself. "Well, since the power's out and we can't go to the observatory today, what do you guys want to do? Do you wanna stick around for a bit? The restaurants will be closing until the power comes back on, but some of the stores might stay open."

Alexis shared a look with Corey. They were both a little freaked by the sudden failure of all the technology. "Nah, I'm not really in the mood to shop anymore," Alexis said. "Let's just head back to your house, I guess."

"Agreed," Corey said, though he sounded distracted. Alexis gave him an inquiring look, but he just shook his head as they headed back the way they had come.

A/N: So sorry for the large gap between chapters here! Life has been complete insanity with my new job, so I promise I haven't given up on this story, but I definitely won't be getting to update very often. :-( I appreciate anyone who actually keeps reading as I crawl along at a snail's pace.

This chapter's title comes from the well-known phrase "the calm before the storm". Also, the Skywalk Observatory is a real attraction at The Shops at Prudential Center in the Back Bay area.

And last but certainly not least: Many, many thanks to those who reviewed last chapter! You guys' words of encouragement have been great motivation for me to keep writing. Once again, if you can spare a moment, please let me know what you think of this chapter (or the ones before), what you liked/didn't like, and anything else that comes to mind. Thanks for reading!