Entering the sitting room, nothing became immediately obvious; the heavy, dun curtains had been drawn since the crash, warding away the prying eyes over overly-inquisitive neighbours and the occasional, disorganised agent. This was all Mrs Sundae had done in terms of acknowledging her guests in the last few weeks, keeping the outside world away and granting them full access to the lower floor of the house. Beyond this she had been stonily silent, something in it screaming this is your problem now. Having expected a lot less assistance, Phil couldn't say he begrudged her that point.
Taking full advantage of his hosts leniency, Viz was sprawled inelegantly across one of the sofas, legs draped off the arm, crossed at the ankles in arrogant repose. As he had been since Diz broke them, the alien leader was toying with his shades; all he really seemed to be doing was unplugging and splicing wires together but no one had quite gathered the nerve to question him on it. Not even Zach, whose policy with the aliens seemed to be a combination of 'fake the bravado until it's real' and the idea that if he had to die at their hands he'd make sure to have been a thorough nuisance first. While Phil couldn't agree with the stratagem, he wasn't about to try to stop it either, instead standing to one side as Zach harassed and Phred recorded, filing the videos under the folder 'play these at my funeral'. Gallows humour—great in principle, simply demoralising in practice.
Viz glanced up as they entered, decided he was better off ignoring them, and went about it with such efficiency that the gang may well have never existed. There was a dent in the seat of the nearby armchair, a sure sign that someone had vacated it recently, the day's newspaper folded over the arm. Out of courtesy to Quiz, Phil neglected to take the available seat; out of general spite, Viz remained lain on the only other chair, seeming to shift minutely to ensure he was taking up the vast majority of the seat. Not seeming to care that they were to be ostracised from usual comfort, Zach and Phred threw themselves on to the rug, Zach's flaming head coming dangerously close to polyester fibres. Flicking the remote from channel to channel, leaving the television to blare some banal nonsense that drowned out the mess of sound training insistently from the kitchen, the two struck up a nonsense of conversation. Shrugging, seeing no harm in joining the impromptu shrine to uselessness, Phil gallantly offered his girlfriend a prime seat on the carpet with a showman's flourish. Smiley put a playful hand to her mouth, lit up with a faint blush, then gave him a rueful shake of her head.
"Sorry Phil; my lecture starts in half an hour and I don't want to break my record." Smiley was renowned throughout her campus for having never missed a day of school in her educational career; Elementary, Highschool, and, thus far, College. If she managed to continue this trend, she was set to receive a personalised pair of socks. "I need to go now if I want to catch the bus."
"You know I don't pay attention to clocks." Smiley smiled (big surprise) but her eyes remained worried pools, their usual doe-brown filled with something grim and bleak. Unsure of how to offer comfort beyond puns, Phil shifted awkwardly. "Ok. Well...we'll see you later, yeah?" Smiley bit her lower lip, something she'd been doing too often recently—Phil could see the faint indentations her persistent teeth had made in the soft, pink surface. Stepping carefully in to her boyfriends space she looped an arm about his shoulders in a supplicating embrace that the others courteously ignored. She seemed almost breakable in his arms, fragile like spun sugar. With her head rested upon his shoulder, Phil faintly heard the whispered words 'you know where it is if you need it' before Smiley was drawing away again. There was a brightness fixed to her face, as obviously counterfeit as the TV presenter's perfect teeth; it was the kind of hopeful, reassuring look that only required the slightest of alterations to become a frightened one.
"Well don't wait up! We're moving on to advanced, hypothetical numerology today!"
With that, and a few muttered farewells from the floor, she was gone. Over the TV, Phil listened to the clatter of her sandals receding down the road and the cheerful exclamations she issued to the inhabitants of the cul-de-sac; the outside world leaked into the dull living room in a brief flash of colour that swiftly dissipated into the gloomy corners, cowering in a fit of nightmare disillusionment.
Life as it had been for the Sundae household continued uninterrupted; sullen strangers and creeping suspicions overseen by normalcy's grinning facade.
Life is strange in that, no matter what has occurred in the past or present, or what will continue in the future, it will always march on, caring nothing for those that fall before it. Under it's relentless stride, the aberrance of alien invasion was crushed by daily routine and the mundane normalcy of the world. The people were stupid and the universe didn't care.
Phil stretched, arching his arms above his head until the bones gave a relinquishing crack.
"Which is worse, d'y'think; ignorance or apathy?"
Phred shrugged, staring blankly at the screen of a phone that had timed-out several minutes ago. "Don't know. Don't care." He flipped his head back to grin mockingly at Phil. "Why? Thinking of leaving us uneducated scum and joining Smiley in advanced philosophy? Was that your starting piece?" He received a well meant jab in the ribs for his efforts, a reward he took with cackling good grace.
That was where they stayed for an undetermined amount of time—Phred and Zach splayed out on the floor in the halo of light offered by the television, Phil contemplating the intricacies of the world, and Viz studiously ignoring them all. Quiz joined the silent gathering minutes later, the swish of turning paper interrupting the quiet as he resumed reading.
A snappish order from the kitchen shattered whatever peace had managed to gather:
"Viz. Quiz. Come here, I have news."
With heavy sighs and a variety of muttered complaints in a language that was certainly not English, Viz dragged himself to his feet and vanished towards the kitchen. Considerably less bothered, Quiz rose and followed suit, a faint crease making a gentle appearance between his eyes.
In the living room, nobody moved. The silence seemed expectant.
Without looking at Phil, Zach pressed at the volume control-—the soap actress' dithering grew fainter until it was just her over dramatic, silenced flapping. Phred stared determinedly into the dead screen of his phone. Neither of them looked up as their friend left.
A shadow, Phil slipped after the departing aliens. His ear pressed against the softwood of the kitchen door, Phil could make just out the birds-wing flutter of the hushed conversation occurring beyond.
•~*{0}*~•
Glaring at the device in his hands, Diz snarled and tried to shake the pain of electrocution from his fingers. The jerky motions sent shards through the still healing wounds in his arms and threatened to break the tenuous fix of fractured bones, cutting the reflex action painfully short. As though aware of his plight, the bare, copper wires glinted cruelly, sending out a frill of sparks that caused the radio feed to distort into momentary static. Churning itself into s meaningless hiss, a noise like crumpling paper, the radio scratched away at the last vestiges of the lieutenants patience. It was with a slightly malicious smirk that Diz stabbed at the badly mutilated OFF switch—when that failed, he swiftly resorted to simply tearing a few strands of those treacherous wires from their sockets. Satisfied, he watched the machine struggle, with indifference; he had what he needed.
"Viz. Quiz. Come here, I have news." Raising his voice drew an ache from his throat, as though needles were worming their insidious way into the tender bed of flesh. Wincing, he was still rubbing at his neck when the aforementioned party entered, Viz with a ubiquitous scowl. Quiz scuttled behind him, quartet of arms braided about his chest. Viz's voice had recovered enough that his scratchy bark was only a shade softer than usual.
"This had better be good Diz." The leader tossed his head, glaring about the room, eying the ruins of the radio with disdain. "What's this?"
Diz rose to his feet, too proud of their protocol to remain seated—though his aching body would have much preferred to remain seated.
"I have been monitoring the radio waves emitted from the Vizion ship." Diz tapped the silent device. "From what I can tell, there is nothing amiss; some of the signals cut out before the transmission ended, but nothing new there." For the last hour or so, the garbled signals from the floating ship above had streamed through the impromptu machinery, detailing the vitals of the equipment aboard and the condition of the surrounding space. Old, much of it repossessed from derelict ships, it was never a surprise when their long distance transmitters failed. But, from what he could gather through the choppy signal, everything was operating as usual, the ship isolated.
Quiz frowned slightly, a faint smile tugging hesitantly at the edge of his mouth.
"Ok...well, that's good, isn't it?"
Deciding to be candidly polite—he had neither forgiven nor forgotten Quiz's disaffection—Diz only bothered with a short answer.
"It means we're probably not being followed, Quiz." Viz gave a derisive snort.
"Yet."
The lieutenant and his leader had barely spoken a word to each other since their initial spat. Now, Diz could feel the crimson switchblade of his temper, already whetted by the irredeemable irritant of having to both wire and observe a long range transmitter—worse, one whose reliability was dubious at best—flash. Deliberately, he kept his response curt; the migraine beginning to pulse from behind his eyes viciously rebuked any idea of conflict. Whatever head injury he had sustained had healed greatly—he was no longer trapped in perpetual disorientation—but chose, now to manifest itself in a series of headaches that refused to shift regardless of what he did.
Still, he would mend. He always did.
"We have time Viz."
Unfortunately—more accurately, predictably—Viz was determined to antagonise. To further the aggravation, he wasn't really wrong.
"Really? For five years, we've stolen weaponry from ships we attacked, destroyed whatever we could find to test our equipments effect, killed off whoever got in our way. Do you really think they'll treat us as a minor threat, leave us alone? No. Whatever leniency we have from them now won't last."
Diz ground his teeth; technically nothing he had could refute that. The evidence stacked against all their hopes towered endlessly, threatening to collapse and crush them beneath the insurmountable force of the punishment they had struggled to avoid. To Diz's mind, judgment was theirs to mete out to the rest of the universe, and the thought of receiving it was repellent, more for the indignity than any pain it would cause. Mockingly, he waved a placating hand.
"I know we don't have indefinite time—" Viz cut him off, rapping his knuckles sharply against the tabletop.
"So get on with the report!" Diz felt his jaw crack.
"Sir." Just get through the report. Everything can wait until we return. "Unfortunately, the automatic systems have been activated due to our protracted absence, so I can't activate any of our remote based systems." Viz took hardly a second to respond.
"Hack through the security."
As if I hadn't already tried.
"I can't." Diz offered a sardonic shrug. "Apparently I made our firewall a little too well."
Viz sneered, falling quiet for a long, contemplative moment.
"So contacting the mothership is not an option."
"No." The statement fell flat and dead. "However, I have managed to establish the whereabouts of the crashed ship."
"Well where is it?"
"You're not going to like it..."
"Just tell us, damn you."
"Signals are coming from Zone 5.1."
Viz swore. Quiz determinedly avoided Diz's baleful eye.
"None of the operatives will accept a conference, and I'm not sure the connection would hold even if we could get through to them."
"So we should sneak in. Steal the ship."
Finally, Quiz broke; throughout the conversation, he'd been stood waveringly at the sideline, fingers a twisted lattice of anxiety, but mercifully silent. Now, emboldened with a useless opinion that none really cared to hear, his voice was pitched high and drawn thin with stress. It was a chisel scraping at the base of Diz's skull.
"We don't have enough time! They'll be on to us before long, we can't stay here much longer! If we have to waste an age retrieving the ship, we'll end up stuck here!" Quiz almost verged on righteous outrage, fists curling at his side, mouth twisting to something sharp not warranted by the words he was trying to form. As far as Diz was concerned, the underling could take his petty complaints elsewhere; the other alien was entirely at fault for the situation as it stood.
If you had just stayed where I told you to...
Once in a blue moon, instead of each alien fighting solely for themselves, brief alliances would form, meaningless and to be forgotten soon after. But it was an exceedingly rare occasion indeed that Viz agreed with an idea put forth by Quiz. Whatever delusion that ruled the red alien appeared to be worsening.
"He's right, we need something faster; we won't be able to leave the planet if they catch up to us."
Finally despairing of the ingrates unhelpful nature, Diz threw himself back into his seat, arms thrown out in a sarcastically grandiose gesture, eyes falling shut.
"Well, if you have any ideas how to leave the planet without a craft, I'd be glad to hear them."
It was unclear whether Viz was attempting to intimidate his recalcitrant subordinate, or if it was a more severe attempt to instigate a fight; stepping closer to the green alien, he leaned forward, stitched lips a sneering rictus.
"I expected you to come with an actual plan, Diz, not this nonsense. I think you're trying to get us caught now."
A venomous calm had settled over the lieutenant, the silent eye of the hurricane that preceded disaster. His voice barely rose above a whisper.
"Not all of us are traitors, Viz. And when you have something useful to bring to the table, I'll give you full permission to criticise my ideas. Until then, keep your mouth shut."
"I don't require your permission, Diz." The two were nose to nose; Diz could see his own snarling face reflected dully in Viz's angular lenses. "Don't forget your place."
The lieutenant fought a laugh, unwilling to damage his voice further—forget his place. It was far more likely that Viz was forgetting who he was talking to.
"Don't forget that I'm the only one who can get us out of here." Diz's mouth stretched in a mirthless smirk, "you need me."
For several long heartbeats, tension overtook the kitchen, tension of the dripping, creeping sort that could crush spirits through its mere suggestion. The implicit knowledge that they—the three of them—were snared together through necessity struck Viz like a visible blow. Even Quiz, arguably the most useless member of Vizion, was now integral to any escape they might attempt to make. For the proud leader, it make for a bitter pill to swallow and Diz relished it.
A strained voice croaked its protests from the corner.
"Um...I-I think you've both forgotten the-the point of this."
"Shut it Quiz."
Too late a reprimand, the moment had slipped silently from the air. Viz straightened with a heavy sigh, drawing away from Diz—who found the shift in tone faintly concerning; violence was as natural, familiar. It was what they survived on. Void of anger, their leader simply looked grim and weary, lost almost: Quiz was tremulous and uncertain, looking desperately between them in search of answers neither could give: Diz himself was irritated and in pain, sick of their prolonged stay on earth and in no mood to be criticised by his crew mates.
Defeated by a lack of options, it was a forlorn wait for the inevitable declaration.
Viz pinched the bridge of his nose, folding his lower arms across his abdomen.
"There is no other option?" He ground out.
Stay here and die.
"Not that I can find." Unwilling to offer comfort, Diz begrudgingly continued "As it currently stands, we are alone in the solar system. For how much longer..." He shrugged and sorely regretted it. "I can't say. Whatever we do...we need to get it done quickly."
Silence. Knowing silence.
"Well..." As usual, Quiz's stammerings were overcut by a stronger, harsher voice.
"We'll do it."
That would have been the end of the matter. They would have left in the night, vanished from that quaint suburban house. Spirited away to some laboratory when their plan inevitably failed, the children they had hounded would never know, understand, or care what had occurred. Faded into obscurity, the last of Project Vizion would have burnt out and vanished without ceremony. Perhaps that would have been better...
Sadly for the universe, Phil Eggtree was not one to remain uninvolved.
From behind the group, the yellowed kitchen door, smattered lightly with grease and closed up until that moment, gave an officious click. Every eye in the room snapped to the disturbance; Quiz tilted his head in a nonverbal query. Both of the others had guessed the identity of their intruder several seconds prior. In truth, Diz was far from surprised, almost impressed, in fact. Really, of all the things they should have anticipated, the boy should have been the first...
Swinging open with the drama of a dead showman, the door revealed Phil with an oddly smug air for an inanimate object. Still shorter than the majority of the aliens—equal only to Quiz—he nevertheless cut an almost imposing figure; his eyes were deadpan dark and impossible to discern, his brows drawn low. The boys mouth had cut a sharp quirk of something that was both distaste and amusement at a joke Diz could only guess at, and everything about the figure he drew had been driven harsher by the unstable light that flickered from whatever grey-lit program played in the living room. With the bored superiority only achievable by jaded adults, Phil met the eyes of each of them, raising his eyebrows as he went. Diz was surprised to feel a molecule of respect for the boy—the child they kidnapped—run a course down his spine. It kept the derisive laugh at bay when Phil finally spoke.
"Oh, you can bet you've got explaining to do."
•~*{0}*~•
"So...who's after you, exactly?"
They were seated about the island, one at each edge with Viz and Diz doubled up on the left side. Interrogating the aliens was a disconcerting experience, Phil found; none of them were forthcoming in any fashion. It was like shifting puzzle pieces in the dark and trying to guess what picture they would grow to be—utterly pointless.
Didn't mean he'd stop, though.
"You don't need to know that, Eggtree. Just accept that we have been here for far too long already." Viz was acting a as the group's reticent spokesman, grinding out each sentence as though it were being torn forcibly from his chest.
"You think they'll catch up..."
"They might. It's something we risked by lingering about earth like we did. Suffice to say, we expected to get away with it. Some people," Quiz flinched as both aliens turned to glare at him. "Have compromised that, but if we act swiftly there remains a chance of escape."
Phil contemplated the people before him. While the notion of them leaving earth was appealing, something in him, a vestigial part of something that may have been honour, may have been compassion, refused the idea of leaving the aliens to their own mismatched devices. It was unfortunately obvious that none of them were up to much and, while that might not have mattered much if they were to simply summon a ship remotely, breaking into a guarded facility was a different matter entirely. Phil didn't fancy their chances if they went at that alone—together, they could hardly endure a ten minute conversation, let alone a lengthy espionage.
Then there was the issue of the unidentified 'other party'. Whatever nameless group had the ability to put the Vizion agents on the run were not people Phil wanted near the earth. Dealing with a war between aliens...well, he was in no hurry to jump to that scenario.
For the greater good; wasn't that the phrase? Help the alien terrorists to avoid conflict with the things that were hunting them down. Ignore the majority of your conscience in favour of a lucrative protection strategy.
Since when was it my decision? When did this become my cause? It's not my choice...
But it was his call to make. As far as deciding factors went, Phil Eggtree was the unwilling, determinative element. He had been since the tender age of eleven and a small part of his brain acknowledged that with a mixture of bitterness and stern pride. As usual, his own, unavoidable choice caught him off guard, as did the near-illicit thrill that shot through his sternum.
"You're not going without me."
Viz's head snapped up, shock making a warped passage across his features.
"What." Phil lent back, folding his arms in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner. The whip-crack voice shot over his head.
"To Zone 5.1. I'm coming too. To make sure you lot leave, and nothing else makes its way over. Plus, I know the facility, probably better than you; Diz didn't know the way 'round at all."
Viz pursed his scarred lips consideringly. Those either side of him were stiff and silent. Phil could feel Quiz's strange, soft eyes monitor his every move.
"Very well. I suppose you're cannon fodder, if nothing else." Somehow, Viz's callous response felt like a scratch, not the blow it should have been. Venturing into a hostile place he had fought to leave with companions whose protection he couldn't count on should not have drawn a victorious smile to Phil's lips.
Viz spat a curse in garbled Not-English before sweeping—limping—from the room. Like spades of flung gravel, his voice carried back to them, returned to its full glory of snapping orders.
"Diz, Quiz; we need to pinpoint the ships location. Bring that damned radio system."
Both left, almost immediately after, a direction restoring their sense of urgency and purpose—there was an energy in actions that had been exceedingly listless for the weeks of their recovery. The 'almost' was Quiz, who took a second to brush past Phil before departing. The small act of secrecy was performed awkwardly, clumsily, and would have been noted immediately had the other two aliens not already departed.
Phil felt a rectangular weight drop into the pocket of his hoodie. A careful finger found clean, metallic lines and a series of regular indents.
The remote to the ship.
Whatever game he was playing had suddenly grown disturbingly intricate; he was playing chess in the dark with the reassurance of an ace up his sleeve.
