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ALICE

The day the Cryons came, the sky over New York City bled orange. I watched from my hotel window, listening to the TV news announcers' voices, caught in utter disbelief. This had to be a dream, right? This couldn't possibly be happening in real life. An elaborate hoax, maybe?

It didn't seem real until I caught sight of a group of F-20s racing through the sky in pursuit of a large spaceship spitting out a seemingly endless stream of smaller alien ships.

"Get them!" I cheered the jets on, but one by one, each was shot down, crashing into the buildings of one of the largest cities on Earth, creating towering infernos of orange flames shooting straight to the horizon. One crashed into a highrise only a few blocks from my hotel. The explosion was so great that it shook the floor under my feet, rattling my teeth.

I had no idea why I was spared. The jet could have just as easily crashed into the hotel. But it didn't. And neither did any of the hundreds of others that followed. Divine intervention? Fate?

At the time, I didn't care. I spent the next few days in the same hotel in a numb, frozen state, watching the fires die out under steady rain. Another heavenly intervention? I didn't think so. Why would any God extinguish the fires but allow them to happen in the first place? Thousands of people must have died within the first few days, probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions. It was a mind-boggling number. The phrase, a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic, ran through my mind on repeat, but I had a hard time viewing millions of deaths as a statistic. Not while I was in the midst of it.

I was better off than many people. I had no loved ones to worry about, a fact I suppose I should’ve been thankful for. Still, the death toll was abstract and mind-numbing enough without even taking into account the alien invasion.

Aliens. I saw images of them on TV—while it was still working, which wasn't long at all, not even a day. They didn't look all that scary; they were tall and lean, hairless, with gray skin and large black eyes. Their bodies were covered by white-silver uniforms, and their blasters could kill or stun, depending on how they used them. That was all the information I was able to glean before the power cut out, taking the Wi-Fi with it. I still had some data reception on my phone and iPad, but it was slow, and both died after a few hours, like the rest of the electronics that couldn’t get charged.

From the last reports, I found out that the aliens were using drones to locate humans. The ones they discovered were either taken prisoner or killed. As far as I could tell with the limited data, though, they slaughtered indiscriminately. The aliens were just as likely to shoot a twenty-year-old woman and capture an eighty-year-old man as they were to do the opposite, which was almost more frightening than if they were just collecting one specific sort or kind. It showed how indifferent they were about us. How interchangeable we were to them—even in a herd of cattle, cowboys would pick a certain type.

After two days of hiding in my hotel room and living off the expensive snacks in the fridge, the water backing up in the bathroom made me realize I needed to leave.

The question was: leave to where? I was in New York City, thousands of miles from my home in Las Vegas—and what a blessing that was, as I had no desire to figure out how to live in the desert without air conditioning—a strange city currently being invaded by aliens!

I couldn’t stay, though, because not only was the sewer coming up through the pipes stinking to high heaven, but I wasn't about to start peeing into a corner of the room either. I was also down to one water bottle, a Snickers bar, and a bag of nuts. My laptop was as useless as my phone, but I had a few tools on me that I had brought to the conference to show off as my latest invention. I packed those things, as well as semi-clean socks, underwear, and a change of clothing, and made my way out of the room and into the dark hallway. The darkness I hadn't anticipated. Honestly, I hadn't anticipated a lot because my mind was still overwhelmed by the fact that aliens—aliens!—were invading Earth.

A neon green exit sign gave off enough illumination to get me to the staircase, and inside the stairwell, a few emergency lights were still working, so I didn’t break my neck as I made my way down.

The moment I opened the exit door to the outside, my senses were assaulted with the smell of burned rubber and flesh, death, decay, and the sound of screams and sirens. I couldn’t get past the sight of torched cars, people, and wrecked buildings. I tasted all of this on my tongue and wanted to gag. I was so overstimulated that, at first, the sight of three aliens stepping in front of me didn't even register. But the pain did—pain from their blaster shot brought me to my knees.

* * *

I woke with my arms tied behind my back and my face pressed against cold metal. The first thing I became conscious of was the throbbing pain in my head and the way my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

A small cry to my right caught my attention, and I turned my head. I wasn't alone. There were others here with me, all bound, some conscious and hunkered on their knees, others lying on the ground like me.

A hard slap to my head was enough incentive for me to force myself to my knees and take in my surroundings. The strange walls, the aliens . My breath stuck in my throat. I was on my way to becoming a statistic . I was on an alien ship, being kidnapped by aliens . I began to hyperventilate; this couldn't be happening. Not to me. This just couldn't be real. It just couldn't.

I read somewhere that denial is the best defense, and for the following weeks— months?—that’s what I did. I retreated deep into myself. I denied the reality of having a translator inserted into my brain, denied that I was being kept like an animal. Like cattle, we were fed and watered, hosed off, and herded from one spot in the universe to another. I'm not sure how long my fugue lasted or when awareness of my fellow prisoners penetrated my mind—when their misery became as real to me as mine.

But it happened. I was still alive and breathing, and as long as that remained true, I had to believe there was hope. Maybe not hope to ever return to Earth, but hope to one day not have my arms bound behind my back. Hope that one day, I would be back in charge of my own destiny.

I had been strong enough to escape the destiny fate had predetermined for me once, and I would do so again. I hadn't turned into a drug addict like the rest of my family, although statistically, I should have. I beat the odds, and I would do so again.

I just had to bide my time, be careful, keep my eyes open, and wait for the right moment. Most of all, I needed to stay alive.

I watched when the Cryons came and took some of us from the cells we were kept in. Mostly, they picked people at random, just like they had when abducting us, but now and then, they came just for women. Never just for men.

"Here, let me stuff this into your shirt," Ava, my designated relief partner, sidled up next to me. For the past I don't know how many days, Ava and I had been helping each other with the logistics of using the bathroom—a hole in the ground for our waste. It was hard to balance and aim when your arms were bound behind your back, and you had to get your pants down somehow.

She handed me a small bundle. Quizzically, I looked at her, and she pointed at her protruding stomach. Ava was heavily pregnant—she had been seven months along when she was taken, but like the rest of us, she’d lost track of time. It had been her sobs that ripped me from my stupor. They were so heart-wrenching, I’d moved over, closer to her. I'm not the nurturing type, but her pain was so raw that I couldn't help but feel for her. It might have been guilt that I was the only one here not mourning the loss of a loved one; whatever it was, I sidled up to her. Instantly, she scooted closer. We couldn't hug, but pushing our torsos against each other did awaken some humanity inside me and seemed to help her with her grief.

Ava had lost her entire family, and the only thing keeping her alive was the baby growing in her stomach, even though she wasn't sure why she bothered.

"He will be a prisoner just like me," she sniffed.

I had already decided to find a way out, but taking on the responsibility for another person or two was just the motivator I needed. In that moment, I vowed, "I'll get us out of here, Ava, I promise."

She was desperate enough to believe me.

Now, I turned so Ava could stuff the bundle under my shirt. "Why?" I wanted to know.

"Because they haven't taken me or the other pregnant ladies," Ava pointed out. Across from us, in a different cell, three Cryons were herding several women out before they turned to our cell.

Fear spread inside me. I didn't need to be a rocket scientist to have a pretty good idea of what happened to the women when the Cryons came for them alone. I had considered that maybe it would be a good opportunity to escape, but in the end, I had chickened every time and hid in the back.

Ava was right, too. The Cryons didn't pick her or me. Not that day. But not much later, they took all of us from the cell and herded us through seemingly endless corridors.

I froze when we passed a window and probably would have stood there until a Cryon prodded me forward had Ava not nudged me on. But the sight of a deep, red planet—not Mars, I was sure of it—surrounded by two moons and stars was surreal enough to bring the message home: I wasn't in Kansas or on Earth anymore.

A shuttle took us down, all five hundred and eighty-three people—I counted because even statistics matter. They took us to the most despairing planet in the universe one could imagine. It was a place straight out of a nightmare. Tall, red mountains surrounded a pitiful, dirty camp filled with alien beings that made the movie District 9 look like a Disney production.

We were herded into one of the barracks, past aliens who regarded us with the hungry eyes of predators. Our arms were unbound, and each of us received a metallic collar around our neck that we were told would explode if we wandered away from the camp . The others were crying, including Ava, but my heart filled with hope. Not only was I unbound, I finally had something I could work with—if I could ever move my arms again. The pain in them was more excruciating than anything I had ever experienced. Quite a few of my fellow prisoners fell into hysterics, only to be hit with an electro-prod and thrown to the ground.

It was eerily disquieting to see my arms, hands, and fingers, but to be unable to move them in any way. My brain screamed at my fingers to bend, but they didn't budge. Had it not been for the pain raging through me, I would have thought they weren't even attached to me any longer.

Several Cryons moved some kind of metallic short stick over our arms, instantly relieving the pain. Then, without further mercy, the Cryons moved us toward a looming crater in the center of the camp. Metallic ladders led down so deep that there was no end in sight, only darkness. Creatures, the likes of which I didn’t have the words to describe, moved up and down those ladders, carrying large containers on their backs.

"This is some kind of mine," one of the men, Tom, observed.

We lined up, and the most backbreaking day in my life began. Down the ladder with the empty container strapped to my back. Fill it with rocks that others working down below pried from the mountains. Climb the ladder under the weight of the load. Empty and repeat. For hours. I lost track of Ava for the rest of the day and only saw her again when we broke for dinner, where we were served the same kind of slop the Cryons had filled the troughs in our cells with.

There were no tables or chairs inside the makeshift mess hall—just a line of workers snaking their way up to a humongous square cauldron. Bowls were stacked right on the dirt. Aliens, also wearing collars, filled the bowls and handed them out.

I held Ava back when I noticed some of the alien prisoners fighting with each other over the bowls of food they had received. A snarling one exposed fangs and claws, and the other, a spiked tail. Blue and green blood sprayed the bystanders who got too close and ruined what little appetite I might have had. Not that appetite mattered. We needed to eat. Ava even more than me.

"What do we do?" she asked.

An especially menacing-looking brute with green skin and four eyes walked up to a human man who had rushed forward to get a bowl of slop. The creature was much taller and more massive than the human. The human didn't offer any resistance when the creature ripped the bowl out of his hands. Still, the alien pushed against the man's face, pushing him back hard enough to break his neck.

"Oh my God," Ava turned into me and clung to my neck. "Oh my God," she repeated.

That wasn’t an isolated incident. Out of the five hundred and eighty-three humans who shared the shuttle with us down to this hellhole, only two hundred and twenty were left alive the next morning, and I knew that, for Ava and me, time was running out.

"There is nowhere to go here," Ava cried when I told her she needed to be ready for our departure today.

"Whatever is out there can't be worse than what's in here," I pointed out. "At least out there, we'd have a chance."

Her expression mirrored my own skepticism. I was talking out of my ass, and we both knew it. Just like we both knew that I was right. We hadn't eaten last night or this morning, and unless we were willing to risk death just to get a swallow of the slop, I didn’t see that we would anytime soon.

"But how? What will you do? And what about these things?" Ava pointed at the collars around our necks.

"I'll create a distraction—a big one," I said in the most confident voice I could muster. I spent the day yesterday observing. There were plenty of tools all around us. The Cryons didn't seem worried about us using them as weapons, and why would they be? They had blasters, and they didn't care about us prisoners. Besides, most prisoners already had plenty of weapons—horns, scales, tails, claws, and God knows what else.

I had also noticed a path—a path leading up to one of the mountains—and a small fissure in the rock through which I could see the other side. Not that I could make out much of what lay there, but desperate times and all that.

I made sure Ava stayed with me during the day. All I needed was a distraction. Long enough for us to make it unnoticed up that pass and into that fissure. All the while praying our damn collars wouldn't go off and kill us. But by my estimation, we climbed over three miles down the ladder into the crater, so it stood to reason that we had three miles out of this valley of death before our heads exploded.

A distraction and time were needed. I already had a tool. One I snatched up yesterday. It looked like a screwdriver, but its head changed circumference and shape. If anything could get the collars open, this was it. Are you willing to bet your and Ava's lives on it, little girl ? I threw an uncertain glance at Ava's swollen belly and thought of the baby inside. Did I know if I could pick the lock without blowing us to smithereens? No! Did I know if we would find food and water on the other side? No! Did I have any idea what lay on the other side—possibly predators with acid for blood or terrain that wanted to eat us alive? Absolutely not! What I knew with absolute certainty, though, was that if we stayed here, we would die—all three of us. Maybe not tonight, perhaps not tomorrow, but we would. I didn't have the right to make that decision for Ava. I knew I was pushing the boundaries of the trust she had developed for me, but she knew as well as I did what our choices were. And she was following me.

A scuffle broke out by the edge of the crater. One of the prisoners—an alien with glistening black skin and six twisted limbs—lashed out, tearing into another with a guttural shriek. The second one collapsed, spraying a thick, oily fluid across the crater floor. It hissed where it hit the dirt, steaming like engine grease on a hotplate.

My breath caught.

That stuff—could it be flammable? Was it greasy enough to conduct heat? My brain fired through possibilities as the guards shouted, distracted. I scanned the crater. There! Half-buried in the dust was a jagged piece of metal stuck up like a broken rib. With the screwdriver I liberated yesterday, this just might work. I didn’t have time to plan or second-guess. Sometimes, you have to grab the opportunity when you see it and act. I moved.

"Alice, what are you doing?" Ava shouted after me, but I didn't pay her any attention.

I rushed to the lip of the crater, heart pounding so hard I thought the collar might go off from the vibration alone. I jammed the screwdriver between the stone and the metal edge, just like I’d lit campfires with flint in the Catskills.

Nobody was paying any attention to me as more scuffling broke out around me. Probably friends of the dead alien.

I dipped the screwdriver's tip into the dark pool of alien blood, praying it was conductive. If this had been Earth, I’d expect grease to catch fire. To conduct heat. Maybe spark just enough to blow a fuel line if you were stupid or desperate. I was both.

"Please," I whispered. "Please let alien grease act like Earth grease. Please let alien physics work like Earth physics."

I struck the screwdriver against the metal. Once. Twice. And then: Spark.

The blood sizzled. The collar on the injured alien’s neck started blinking red. Faster. Shriller. My stomach dropped. It was working! With no time to waste, I turned and ran, grabbing Ava. I had no idea how big of an explosion there would be, or if there would even be one, but I wasn't about to be caught in the middle.

Behind me, the collar detonated. The blast rocked the crater, tossing debris and body parts into the air. It was a lot less than I had anticipated, but smoke followed. Screams. Cryons, shouting orders, came running from all sides. A security siren shrieked through the compound. The chaos was perfect.

"That's it, let's go!" I shouted at Ava, but she was rooted to the ground, staring wide-eyed straight ahead.

While I was busy creating the little detonation, another spaceship had landed. The chaos was so complete that the Cryons hadn't even noticed it or the silver-skinned alien disembarking from it.

Part of my brain screamed at me to run, to go, go, go! But something stopped me. I had no idea who this new alien was, friend or foe. No idea at all, and yet, just like Ava, I stood rooted to the spot, unable to move as the fine hairs on the back of my neck stood up. As impossible as it sounded, the stranger seemed familiar to me. Not only that, but without any reason to think so, I knew, with absolute certainty and without a shadow of a doubt, that he was here to rescue me. Us.