Chapter 2
The site had once been the place where a company hoped to build a new headquarters. However, the project had long since been deserted due to unfavorable soil, which would cause the construction and maintenance costs to exceed the predicted profits. The place now consisted of a large area, surrounded by caution tape and wooden fencing. Within the roughly square perimeter, half-destroyed concrete walls and rusted steel beams that twisted and bent in the air. Here and there wooden boards littered the ground, evidence of temporary scaffolding for a planned second floor. In isolated areas, abandoned earthmovers sat silent, tilted at odd angles in ditches or halfway buried in dirt, too expensive to extract, left to rust and corrode.
The site was as scary as the stories Yellow, as well as the rest of us, had heard about it. It was the perfect place for a serial killer or a child kidnapper to camp out, waiting for his next unsuspecting victims. I half expected someone, or something, to spring out of every discarded bit of concrete piping we passed. Our whole group shared the same sort of fear. Yellow was practically shaking, and even Silver couldn't muster up some sort of construction site themed joke.
However, that night, serial killers and child kidnappers were the least of our problems. Honestly, an encounter with some crazed axe murderer might have been preferable to what actually happened. As it turned out, the scariest thing that happened that night didn't come from around us from above, because as we reached the middle of the site, a clearing, I heard Green say, "Look!"
The rest of us whirled to stare at him, convinced that he'd seen some sort of threat around us. But instead, his gaze was fixed on the night sky, and his arm was raised to point at something. A goofy grin stretched across his face, somewhere in between disbelief and amazement.
"Uh huh, it's the stars," Silver said, slowly, like he was dealing with a very small child, or someone in an insane asylum. "They're very pretty. Can we keep moving now?"
"No, just look," Green insisted. I followed his eyes and finger, and eventually settled on the area I thought he was looking at. Unfortunately, I couldn't see whatever he was so fascinated about. Had he seen a constellation or something?
"Yeah, those are the stars," Silver repeated, an edge to his voice. "Is there a specific reason we're looking at the stars? Because really, they're just stars."
"Uh," Yellow spoke up. She and Blue were looking in the same area of night sky we were. "Maybe so, but I don't think stars aren't supposed to move like that." She paused. "Or start getting bigger."
Squinting a little, I reexamined the night sky, and realized she was right. There was one pinprick of light that was moving around far more than even a shooting star could, and unlike all the other lights surrounding it, it seemed to be slowly growing in size, almost like it was coming closer.
"Uh..." Blue said, for once at a loss for words. "This... uh... this has to be some sort of astronomical phenomenon. Did anyone bring a camera?"
Nobody answered. I hadn't brought a camera, and I didn't figure anyone else had either. After all, who brought a camera to the mall?
We were all silent for a few moments as the 'star' continued to move around and grow larger. When it had reached the point where it looked about the size of a marble, far bigger than anything else in the sky, save for the moon, Blue voiced my suspicions. "That thing isn't getting bigger, it's coming closer."
"Yeah, right," Silver said, though the awe and fear in his voice didn't match the scoffing words.
"No, no, she's right. It's coming closer," Green chimed in. He was still standing there, frozen and transfixed, his arm still held up in the air, pointing at the moving light. He didn't seem scared like the rest of us. That was just the way he was, I guess. Unfrightened by strange things. "It's gonna land!"
"Uh," I spoke up. "Should we... should we run?"
"Oh come on, do you really think that thing is going to land right on top of us?" Silver asked, trying and failing to sound sarcastic.
Blue cast a look down at the ground in front of us, and then back up at the light, now larger than a basketball in the field of our vision. She repeated this one more time, then said, "Yeah, it is."
"You're delusional," Silver scoffed.
"No, really, it is."
I didn't doubt Blue. If the light wasn't descending straight down to where we stood, it wouldn't be growing at such a steady rate, maybe even not at all. But it was. That light, whatever it was, was going to land right in front of us.
"Do you think it's dangerous?" Yellow wondered. "Do you think it'll hurt us?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "It hasn't done anything yet, so I don't think so."
"I'm not sticking around for an 'I don't think so,' man," Silver said, his voice taking on even more fear. "I'm getting the heck out of here." And yet he didn't move. None of us did. It was as though our feet were rooted to the spot.
When the object reached the size of a small car, I gradually began to discern its features, striking white against the dark backdrop of the night sky. It was a spacecraft of some sort. The main body was shaped like a rough oval, with a bit in front sticking out. I guessed that was the cockpit. On each side, two symmetrical wing-like protrusions ended in somewhat cylindrical tubes, glowing a bright blue at one end. Those had to be engines. But what was really striking about the craft was the tail–or, I should say, the protrusion that resembled a tail. It swept up from what I assumed was the back end of the craft like a metallic scorpion's tail, ending in a deadly blue spike that pointed the same direction as the cockpit. Just by looking at it I knew that it was the ship's main weapon. It wasn't pointing at us currently. I hoped that didn't change.
"Is anybody else peeing their pants right now?" Silver asked, feebly attempting a joke. His eyes remained fixed to the spaceship.
"No," Blue answered. Then, grimacing, "Ew. Please tell me you're not."
"Nah, just asking. See, if someone else was doing it, it'd mean I could."
"Please don't," Yellow advised.
"Yeah, if it's not going to kill us, I don't want aliens' first impression of humans to be you with pee down your leg," I added.
"It's almost here," Green said, completely disconnected from the discussion, his voice filled with wonder. "It's beautiful!"
Silver laughed nervously. "Okay, while Green keeps goggling over this thing, can we leave? That spiky thing on the back is making me reeeeaaally nervous."
"No, if we leave, it might shoot at us," Blue objected. She looked determined. Not exactly calm–that wasn't the right word for it. More... stoic. Defiant, almost. Her jaw was locked in a position that made it look like she was ready for a fight, and she stood in a pose that sat somewhere in between nonchalant and aggressive, managing an uneasy balance between the two. Her eyes shone with fright, but not cowardice. She was afraid, but she wasn't going to run. I had a brief flash of her grabbing a plank of wood and smacking whatever came out of the ship upside the head... if it had a head to smack. I only hoped she had the sense not to do something like that unless absolutely necessary.
The craft cleared the final few meters that stood between it and the ground in front of us, and it touched down gently on elegant rudders I hadn't noticed before, landing so smoothly that it didn't shift a single speck of dirt out of place. I noticed a jagged black blast mark across the side of the cockpit I hadn't seen before, like ugly scar across someone's face. It dawned on me that the spacecraft was damaged.
"Should we say something?" Silver hissed, his voice barely above a whisper.
"I don't know," Yellow murmured. "Do they even speak English?"
Green decided for them, speaking in a loud, placating voice. "Hello. We won't hurt you. Can you come out?"
The craft remained silent.
"Did they hear that?" I wondered in a whisper.
"Maybe they speak French or something," Blue hypothesized. "I know a little. Maybe I could give it a shot."
"We mean you no harm," Green tried again. "Please come out. We won't hurt you."
«I know.»
The voice–or, I shouldn't say voice, since it wasn't actually audible–simply appeared in my head. It was like listening to myself think, but in a voice I didn't know, and having thoughts I wasn't thinking.
"Uh... did you guys hear that too?" Silver asked, his fear replaced almost wholly by confusion. "Or am I going freaking crazy?"
"No, I heard it too," Yellow confirmed. She didn't seem as weirded out by the voice-in-head thing as Silver was, but she still looked appropriately concerned that she was hearing thoughts that weren't her own.
"This is too weird," Blue put in. "I could swear I just heard something talk in my head, but that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen, right?"
Nobody answered, too preoccupied by the developing situation.
"Can you come out?" Green said, his voice still ridiculously calm. I would have been completely freaking out had I not wanted to freak out everyone else.
«Yes. Please do not be frightened.»
"We won't," Green reassured the strange mind voice.
"You won't," Silver muttered. "Call me skeptical until further notice."
A door began to open in the side of the spacecraft, sliding downwards from an arched top. As it opened, I realized that the ship's exterior, though it had appeared bright to our eyes when they were to the dark, was not as bright as the interior. The light spilling from the opening door easily outshone the white exterior.
The opening grew larger, finally ending at the bottom in a flat angle.
And then he appeared.
The first thing I thought of, looking at him, was the ancient myths of centaurs–those creatures like Rapidash without flames, and with a human body, torso up, instead of the Pokemon's neck. The alien, because that's the only thing it could be, had a normal human head, shoulders, arms, torso, etcetera, all where they should be, except from the waist down it was equine, with a body like a Sawsbuck's, hooves and all, but the whole thing was pale blue–skin, fur, everything.
When he ducked out of the doorway, I registered more details about his face. Instead of a mouth and nose like a human, he had three vertical slits that I guessed he was able to use for breathing. His eyes were normal enough, though they were striking green–his normal eyes, that is. What was more shocking was his other two eyes. They stuck up from the top of his head on two stalks that twisted and moved about, allowing him to point the eyes wherever he wanted.
I was already reaching peak weird when I saw his tail. That just about pushed me over the edge. The appendage was long and muscular, and ended in a curved blade like a scythe. It glinted as though it was made of steel. I got the feeling that if that thing stabbed or slashed at something, whatever it was wouldn't be in one piece any longer. The alien was almost cute, in a strange sense, all except for the deadly tail. With that thing, he could kill me if he wanted to. I really hoped he didn't.
«Hello,» he said in our heads.
We all said something along the lines of "Hi."
The alien took a step forward, as though to descend from the open door to the ground, but then he unexpectedly staggered. His equine knees buckled and he collapsed to the dirt. Green took a step forward and tried to prop him back up into a standing position, but he proved too heavy.
"Oh!" Blue gasped, her expression concerned. "Look, he's injured!"
She was right. I spotted a burn mark on the side of the creature's body, similar to the one on his spaceship.
«Yes. I am dying,» the alien confirmed, his thought voice as calm as before, despite his physical pain.
"Can we help?" Green asked, inspecting the wound.
"Yeah, we can run and get help, or..." Yellow looked at a loss for a good course of action. She's good with medical stuff, but she usually has a first aid kit on hand. "We don't exactly have bandages, but we can find something to patch it up."
«No. I am going to die. The wound is fatal.»
"But you can't die," I protested. I knew I sounded like a little kid, not able to come to terms with reality, but I couldn't bear to let myself think the alien would actually die. It hurt me, for some reason, to imagine it. "You're the first alien to come to Earth!"
«No, not the first,» he corrected. «There have been many others. Very many.»
"Other aliens?" Silver asked suspiciously. "Like you?"
The alien shook his head, a surprisingly human gesture for an extraterrestrial. «No, not like me.»
Then he let out a groan in his thought voice, a chilling sound that rattled me to the core of my bones. Listening to it was like experiencing a miniature death.
«Not like me,» he repeated, once he had recovered his 'voice.' «They are different.»
"How?" I asked. "What makes them different?"
Then he spoke those fateful words, the words that have stuck in my mind since that night and never let go with a grip as strong as death itself.
«They have come to destroy you.»