Page 49 of Stardusted

There it was.

The strange light that had run me off the road.

The terrifying creature in the lab.

The white-hot light. The glowing tablet.

After all of it…

Kellywasright. There were freakingalienshere.

I sniff-laughed, a pitiful, half-hysterical sound teetering right on the verge of a sob, before leaning my head back again.

There was nowayI was telling her. In fact, I wasn’t tellinganyone.

Not Mom. Not Dustin. Not Amelia. Not until I knew what the hell I was dealing with.

Squaring my shoulders, I tried to think, reallythink, like the version of myself who still believed in logic and evidence. I cataloged the things I did know.

Like, for one, the robot had clearly been after the weird tablet I’d pulled out of that box.

It had reached for it. Like it recognized and wanted it. Too many coincidences for the truth not to be right there. Thathadto be what Professor Stern had been working on, too. That was what the military escort had delivered. That was why security had been crawling all over the anthro wing.

Maybe even why the suits were there. Not for the robot, but for the tablet. Could it be they didn’t even know the robot had been there? Maybe that’s why no one was freaking out about it.

So if that was the case, what the hellwasthat artifact? It’d looked just like a rock slab at first, covered in glyphs. Like a weird Rosetta Stone, except with only that single language on it.

Until it’d cracked open to reveal…something else.

Was it some crazy alien object? A power source? …a weapon?

It couldn’t bethatdangerous. I’d found it in a foam box, packed like someone’s leftovers. It wasn’t exactly sealed in a vault.

Then again, I’d seen what it did. I’d felt it.

Had the robot taken it when I passed out, or had whatever caused that brilliant flash of light vaporized it? Maybe that light had been the explosion.

Maybe therehadbeen one, something real. Something destructive. But if so, it’d come after the rest. After the lab had already become a battleground.

I blew out a long breath.

Okay, butthat still didn’t explain how I’d ended up back in the hallway without a scratch on me, short of the bruises where the thing had grabbed me.

No, where thealienhad grabbed me.

I tried the word out in my head again and shivered.

Now that I was calmer, the memories were clearer. I frowned.

Isworesomething else had been in that room, too. Besides me, Mr. Robot-from-Hell, and whoever’s skeleton had been artfully splayed across the table. I’d seen a dark figure when I’d first entered the lab. And again, right at the end, before the white light crashed in and wiped my brain clean like an ice scraper across a frosty windshield.

I stared out the window without really seeing anything, too absorbed in replaying the events.

A dark blur. Then a flash of silver. A streak that might’ve been abody. At the very least…a form.

It had all happened so fast. There’d been so much flashing light. Electricity.

Fear.