Chapter the Fourth
"Hey Lee, our shift's over!" The night crew was going to come on soon; this corporation never seemed to sleep. We walked to one of the hallways that would lead to the exit, but found our way blocked. We were standing next to one of the training rooms, and two of the beasts had crashed through the wall. Lee froze as she saw the two enormous monsters grappling with each other. "Come on!" I grabbed Lee's hand and ran before we could get crushed.
"There's an exit this way." We slowed down after a bit, and burst out laughing at the absurdity. "If someone had told 3 months ago that I'd be dodging giant monsters, I'd've said they were stark raving bonkers." We laughed.
"Hey Casey?"
"Yeah?"
"Where are we?" Come to think of it, I didn't know.
"Ummm…" Just then, I thought I saw a familiar person walk by.
"Cyth?!"
"Casey!"
"Hah! Fancy seeing you here."
Lee: "Umm, Casey, who is this?"
"Lee, this is Cynthia, my best friend from elementary school. Do you know the way out?" I asked my old friend.
She flipped her hair and said, "Sure, it's this way." She had grown since I'd last seen her, though from her incessant chatting and asking questions it was apparent she still loved to be a social butterfly. She'd always been better at that than I was.
"Where were you when the bombs fell?" She asked, "The dog and I were in the park when they hit. My family's ok, and we're still living in our old house."
"Mine too," said Lee, "What are you doing here?"
"Working for Nightmare, like everybody else, as a messenger." We chatted amiably as we walked down the hallway, reliving old adventures and laughing at silly inside jokes. We walked quickly down the hall ways, looking for an exit. We eventually got out and headed to the shuttles that transported us from the base to our homes.
"Hey, do you guys wanna hang out at one of the old abandoned buildings? I don't really want to talk out in the open, you never know where they'll put cameras." said Cynthia. We agreed, looking up nervously at the camera above our heads. We ended up in an abandoned theatre, one that had closed down just before they came. It was one of those old ones, with the red velvet seats and the stage. We came in through the back and wandered about backstage before Lee and Cynthia walked out on stage. I leaned up against the wall of one of the wings and gazed out into the empty audience.
"I wonder if kids did this when the Europeans went on a colonizing rampage in the 1800's." mused Lee. "We certainly put up less of a fight."
"Yeah, and we don't have anyone to pit them against." Referring to an old story Lee and used to read. A light went off in my head. "But what if we did…"
"What?" asked Lee.
"Think about it, these guys were too good for this to be their first time capturing a planet. They've done this before. There are probably people fighting back."
"Casey, what are you talking about? Why would people be fighting back when the entirety of the human race isn't?" exclaimed Cynthia.
"We're all still in shock. And we don't know that other people aren't fighting back, we haven't heard anything outside of the city since the invasion. Who knows what's going on the other side of the world?"
"Yeah, but how would we fight back?" said Lena.
"We can't. Unless we have help." I replied, semi-despondently.
"You're right though. There are probably are others fighting back, but they'll need all the help they can get." Cynthia was smiling as she said this. She had thought of something I'd missed as my mind jumped hurriedly from one thought to another. "We're on the inside…"
"I get your idea. We could spy on their movements from where we are. Even if we can't fight back ourselves, we can use what we hear to help whatever resistance is out there." I smiled; Lee always was the brains of our group.
"Hold it guys. We've missed something. How are we going to collect information if we don't even understand their language?" Cynthia was right. Most of the commanding officers only spoke in the Interplanetary Dialect, and hardly spoke enough English to order us around. They weren't going to say anything of importance in our language.
"Doesn't Isabella's older brother speak it?" said Lee
"You all are crazy!" We had gotten to Iz's house and were trying to explain to her our idea, but with little luck.
"You don't have to help us." said Cynthia. "We just need to see Jason."
"Well of course I'm going to help, but you're still crazy. He's upstairs."
We all (Iz included) ran up the stairs to see her brother. Lee quickly explained the situation and asked him if he could teach us the language of the invaders. He said he could, and asked if he could help us spy on them. It didn't take us long to pick up the language, considering our experience with Greek and the like. Not to mention it was very easy. Only a few weeks passed before we started to get good enough to speak, if brokenly, in the language. Cyth asked Jason how he managed to learn it.
"Well," he said, "You know my degree is in language analysis, so I was chosen to be a translator until more of the commanders learned English. All of them are still having serious trouble with it, but you guys are doing great."
"Do you think we should try our plan?" asked Iz nervously.
I nodded and smirked as I said "Let's do this."