Breakout

Whatever chaos was happening, our guards had left. But there was still some limited movement beyond the window’s hazy radius. Still, otters with weapons were elsewhere. So right now was the best chance we could hope for.

“I definitely can’t do this forever.” Daniel said. “I don’t understand what the limit is, but I can just feel it. We don’t have an infinite number of tries.”

I kept my voice low. It would be bad to attract the attention of the otters that did remain. “It should be fine. We don’t need to actually cut a hole. We just need to make enough cracks.”

I was still sitting against the back wall, ready to put my hands up in case someone pointed a gun at me again. I didn’t need to be close to the cracked window. Daniel, or my brain’s image of him, was the one that actually seemed to be making the material. Besides, it might be suspicious if I suddenly started staying near the glass. If even one soldier came back, then this escape wouldn’t go anywhere.

Daniel nodded and put his hand into the glass. I could almost imagine the gears turning in his mind conjuring a new speck into existence.

I could barely see the speck when it appeared, but there it was. A teeny tiny pale dot in an unblemished portion of the transparent wall.

When I’d seen the phenomenon back on the ship, in between panic and paranoia, I’d wondered how the material treated things that were already there.

No two molecules could occupy the same space. His mangled creations on the ship could force air out of the way when they were created. But he’d also created some of those things inside the walls and pipes of the ship. They had grown, tearing right through.

That had led to disastrous effects. Whatever was getting made, got made, no matter what was already in the space. It just shoved everything aside from whatever area it grew into.

His trick had almost killed me on the ship before I’d killed him to stop it. But now the same thing was going to break us out of the cell.

A second speck appeared in the window where Daniel’s finger guided. A moment later there was a sound like a glacier breaking and a long crack appeared in the glass, connecting the two points.

A goofy grin spread across my face. Daniel turned to look at me. He was wearing an identical smile.

The glass had no give to it. It was inflexible like rock. Even a tiny speck’s worth of matter being forced into the middle of the solid still displaced a speck’s worth of atoms. And when the specks appeared, they appeared with the force to crack the glass around it.

One of the otters outside took notice and came inside the window’s visible line. Although… with the cracks growing in the glass, the haze effect was actually weaker now. I could see several feet past the indicator line on the floor outside the cell now.

“Keep going.” I said to Daniel. I kept my eyes on the otter in the white coveralls. It had to be some kind of doctor or scientist, right? At least, that’s what white suits like that would have meant on humans. But this one didn’t have any weapons, and it seemed less composed than the others.

Daniel moved to a new point and made another speck. It was slow work and getting slower. Daniel was having more and more trouble making new pebbles. But he kept going.

Another crack branched off from the first. Then another. More cracks connected end to end.

There were distant sounds of explosions and gunfire. How far away were they? It was hard to tell through the barrier. But wherever the fighting was, the otter outside was panicking badly. It frantically shouted into a handset of some kind. One of the otter scientists disappeared through a blurry doorway in the distance. Another went around the back of the cell toward the door.

“You going to be ready to move?” Daniel asked.

I nodded, doing a few rudimentary stretches.

“We might not get very far.”

We might not get anywhere at all. But this was something that needed doing. I wouldn’t spend another second locked up that I didn’t have to. Even if I just got captured again, I could live with having tried and failed.

“Do it.”

Daniel conjured one last crack in the window that spidered outward connecting to several other existing ones. It made an oblong, almost round, crack with concentric cracks inside. It made for a nice target.

I grabbed the cot, heaving it with both hands. I spun on my feet, dragging it through the air in a few circles to build up the momentum. They should have bolted everything down.

I hurled the metal cot at the window.

It bounced off the heavy glass, but the haze on the other side was forced back further as the cracks grew longer and deeper.

I picked up the makeshift battering ram and slammed it into the window again. And again.

With each bash, the cracks widened a fraction. Pieces of the glass slipped out of place by a few millimeters, then a whole inch. The smooth surface of the window quickly turned into a craggy uneven mosaic of the different pieces grinding against each other.

For the final blow, instead of violently slamming it into the window, I pressed it slowly. I lowered my weight into my hips, pushing with my whole body. It was a slow pressure I had to shove into the glass. Each newton building upon the last, widening cracks in the cell.

I felt something give and suddenly there was a steady hiss of air rushing out of the cell. That was the ticket! The moment air connected to the outside a klaxon alarm was audible coming from somewhere outside the room that housed the cell. In the distance, a steady flashing light pulsed just beyond the room’s door.

A final shove and one of the chunks of glass came clear of the window with a heavy thud. The piece was the size of my head, and the sound it made hitting the ground made me appreciate how heavy the barrier really was. Once there was a breach in the wall, the rest tumbled away without much encouragement.

A few neat bashes with the bedframe knocked the looser pieces down and I had a hole big enough to climb through. I couldn’t believe how thick the glass was. The window was at least two inches thick all the edges of the broken hole were blunt and rough.

As the window had been damaged more, the limited radius of clarity had been expanded. Once it was broken through completely, the effect was broken entirely and the whole of the room was visible.

But actually entering the room made me realize how big it actually was. It was the size of a gymnasium, complete with metal rafters even, though the ceiling was lower. Like a middle school gym court crossed with an aircraft hangar. The room itself was plain, filled with things obviously brought from elsewhere. The cell was recognizable from the outside, but I hadn’t realized it was actually raised a few inches off the floor via a platform. The whole cell was maybe forty feet wide and just barely not circular. It occupied almost a third of the room.

The remaining two thirds were similarly divided.

One third was dedicated to an array of large machines with three-inch cables running between each other or with tubes running toward and under the short platform the cell rested on.

While the last third had dozens of sturdy tables in rows with object after object strewn about. It was clothing, shoes, a backpack. There was one table entirely dedicated to cords and wires.

One of the bins caught my eye because there was something familiar near the top of the pile inside. A small grey clamshell wallet. I thumbed the button and fished the driver’s permit out of the very middle slot.

It belonged to Caleb Hane.

These were all earth items.

I was trying to make sense of the organization when a grunt sounded behind me.

I hadn’t been completely paying attention to everything, but from the corner of my eye I’d seen that the room had more or less exploded in activity when I broke the window.

Only two otter scientists remained, and one of them held a pistol pointed at me.

But when I looked closely at it, I was struck with a quiet feeling that it wouldn’t shoot at me. I couldn’t place it exactly. I almost dismissed the feeling, and prepared to duck behind the nearest cover. But I saw that it was only holding the weapon and pointing it at me. It’s claw wasn’t on the trigger.

The second one didn’t give me such a restrained vibe.

I flipped the license, so the picture was facing them, flashing them a dark smile.

“Daniel, can you jam the gun?” I said. If he could create the specks in the cell window, couldn’t he displace the mass in the gun? I kept my eyes on the otters, trying to pretend like I was talking to them.

The one not holding the gun yelled a word at me a few times. It was posturing aggressively. With each yell, it would take those half-steps forward, but still leaning away. Like a dog that hadn’t quite worked up the nerve to bite.

Daniel’s metaphor had dogs on my mind.

Speaking of… “Daniel?” He hadn’t responded. He wasn’t anywhere in my field of vision. He wasn’t anywhere… I had been able to tell where he was, even when I hadn’t been looking at him. I couldn’t explain how. I hadn’t even realized that I could track him until just now. But now he was gone.

Again?

That was super bad. Had generating matter weakened him somehow? I wasn’t the hottest at nuclear physics, but I was pretty sure there was a ton of energy even in small amounts of matter. It made sense that creating just a little bit could tire him quickly. Just a few days ago, I would have been thrilled to be free of his ghost.

But now, he couldn’t have picked a worse time.

I would have to get out of this one myself.

The armed scientist said something, much calmer than its friend. A small brandish to the pistol punctuated the… question. I had to assume it was a question. Something about the tone? If I had to guess, it wanted me to get back in the cell. Fat chance.

Still, I was keeping a careful eye on where it put its finger. They still hadn’t changed their grip to pull the trigger. But that could change any second. Each time any of the chaos happening elsewhere rumbled a bit louder, the otter flinched, and I wondered if I was about to be shot.

I stood still, partially to test it, partially because I didn’t know what else to do. It was a gun on me. It was time to get creative.

What did these two want? They weren’t soldiers—they didn’t wear any of the heavy duty garb the others wore. No pads, no equipment harnesses. They weren’t fighters. Maybe I could force my way past one, or even both, of them.

But not as long as the gun aimed at me.

I had some confidence in my athleticism, at least normally. But I hadn’t been able to get very rigorous activity in the cell. I just wasn’t in very good condition. If I remained even slightly intelligent and was honest with myself, it was obvious that I had no chance to fight at gunpoint.

I shut my eyes and tried to imagine what Daniel would say.

“He’d say… don’t lose focus.”

I hadn’t answered my own question. What did these two want?

They… wanted me to stay in the cell. Too bad. I was already out. So what could they hope for? What was a compromise they would accept short of shooting me?

I tried to measure up the otter holding the gun. It was probably willing to shoot me if things went too far out of its control.

So how could I pretend to let it have some control?

My gaze drifted toward the doorway with alarm lights dimly pulsing beneath it. That was an exit of some kind. I had no way of knowing if it was somewhere I wanted to go, but anywhere that wasn’t the inside of a cell was fine by me.

…but probably not for them.

They wanted me in the cell. They wanted me contained. I wasn’t in the cell. But if they couldn’t get me to go back in the cell, maybe they would settle to keep me in the gymnasium-sized room that contained the cell? Staying in one room rather than staying in the cell.

That sounded like the kind of compromise a panicking otter might go for.

I looked the otter dead in the eye, willing myself to not shudder at its disturbing tripart eye. Without breaking eye contact, I pointed toward the door. A moment later, I started walking slowly toward the exit.

The otter’s eyes widened, and it shouted just as aggressively as the other one.

But it still didn’t move its claw to the trigger.

“Nuh-uh…” I said under my breath, “Not unless you—”

The otter moved more quickly than I’d expected. It slipped the gun between its teeth and bound on all fours over to the door. It leapt straight over several of the intervening tables and blocked my way to the door.

“—stop me.” I finished.

I stopped before it fully raised the gun again. When I looked at the other door visible on the adjacent side of the room, the gun-wielder shouted to the other otter and it took up a similar post, intent to bar my exit.

I slowly backed up a few paces and turned my attention to the contents of the rows of tables.

This was perfect.

A gun was still on me, so maybe not exactly perfect, but it was as good a situation as I could hope for.

Because the otter’s didn’t know it, but we were playing baseball.

And they were tipping their pitches.

They had all but announced they wouldn’t shoot me unless I actively tried to force my way past them and leave the room. They might not have even been aware of the decision, but their actions indicated their priorities anyway. They were motivated to keep me alive. Daniel and I had realized as much when there had been food and water on board the ship.

Why go through the trouble only to end up with dead humans?

So many of us had died just leaving Earth. Something had gone wrong and killed so many precious abductees.

In a twisted way though, their deaths made my own life more valuable. I was the lone survivor.

“Don’t be so sure. I’m still alive.”

I gave a small start and tried to cover my surprise to the otters. Daniel was back.

“You… you asshole!” I hissed as discreetly as I could. “Where were you?”

“Yeah, about that…I have no idea.”

“This isn’t the first time.” When the team came in and took samples of me, he had disappeared until the flashbang went off. “Do you just lose the time?”

“Yeah. I can tell time has passed, but not how much.”

“You need a quick recap?”

“No, I think I got the gist.”

“Alright, well these two aren’t letting me leave and one has a gun.” I glanced at the weapon to let Daniel see where, “Can you put a speck into it? Jam it or keep it from firing?”

“Could be a laser gun. No moving parts.”

The aliens had already demonstrated some advanced technology. A laser weapon wasn’t much of a leap. But if smartphones were anything to go by, advanced technology could be intricate enough that a speck had to be enough to sabotage it.

“Try anyway?”

I kept my focus on the bin in front of me. This was a tricky balancing act. I couldn’t make these otters too skittish. If they got too threatened, they might just shoot me to save themselves. But I wouldn’t accomplish anything catering to their comforts.

Daniel would be a big help in that regard.

“Can’t.” he said. He was across the room, a few yards short of the armed otter, but I could hear him like he was only a few inches away. “I can’t go any further. It’s too far.”

Huh. Daniel had a physical limit to how far he could go? That was another point against the lingering hopes I had he might just be a product of my traumatized imagination. I didn’t think hallucinations would have a range limit. Still, it was something.

“How much closer do you need me to get?”

“Mmm… As close as possible. The further it was with the window, the harder it was to make anything in an exact spot.”

Okay, that was valuable to know. Distance lowered his accuracy. Learning was taking place.

“Hold off on it though. I know odds are we’re going to back here as soon as we run into anyone more threatening than these two. But still, let’s plan for success. You should grab supplies. Food and water.”

“It’s probably worth taking a backpack.”

“Extra clothes too. I doubt any of it will slow us down.”

I grabbed a plain looking brown backpack from one of the bins and started stuffing it with items the otters had taken off the other abductees. The tag on the inside of the backpack read ‘Titus’. My throat tightened up for a moment.

“Move stuff around on the tables, don’t just take things. If they realize you’re only grabbing stuff to take with you, they might try to stop you.”

The knowledge that the backpack’s original owner was certainly dead lingered. But Daniel’s suggestion was a rather good idea. I did so, stuffing any item I didn’t think would help into any of the clothing that looked too small to fit me. I did my best to do all this slowly and calmly. The otters were being kind enough to share signs with the batter, and I was going to do my best not to strike out.

“Their outfield team is pretty nuts though.”

“What?”

“Your baseball metaphor. If these guys are the pitcher and catcher, and we’re the batter. They’re basically giving us a free shot right? As long as they don’t realize we’re preparing to barrel right through them, they’re going to sit back and give us a chance to hit the ball.”

“So the outfielders are the rest of them. The soldiers. The ones who can really stop us.”

“We either hit a homerun or we’re right back where we started.”

He was right. It wasn’t just shallow, my team’s bench here was nonexistent. There would be no relievers. Forget the halberd-summoning otter. If even one of the fully armed sentries came back, this whole escape was over before it went anywhere.

No, a base hit wouldn’t cut it. We needed to knock it out of the park. Or die trying—

“Focus.” Daniel said, admonishing the thought. “Don’t die. That’s priority one.”

“I’m not going back in their cell.”

“Don’t be proud. Survive. Remember how many people died getting here. I don’t care if you hate being their prisoner, you get to be alive. So you stay that way. Someone has to come out the other side of this mess, and you’re the only candidate right now.”

“You’re in my head. You know how much of a… violation going back in the cell is.”

“I am in your head. I do know what it’s like being a prisoner. Trust me. Being dead is worse.”

“You might not be.”

“Look who’s finally coming around. Maybe I’m not dead. But come on, something royally fucked has me stuck in your head. That’s not a good sign. I’m trying to stay optimistic here, but none of that changes the fact that I don’t have a body right now.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that Daniel might not believe everything he said. I tried to imagine what his experience must have been. How much had he been trying to reassure himself? Waking up without any sensation, no body, tied down to a very uncooperative Caleb. Caleb, who was rather certain he’d killed you. Daniel still hadn’t blamed me. He was trying to keep a positive attitude, even in the face of all this. I couldn’t help but feel a little humbled.

“I think you are a much more forgiving person than me.” I admitted.

“Maybe.” He said, “But even I call in debts. Like the one you owe me.”

“You remember that?”

“I don’t remember you killing me. But I do remember you almost dooming both of us to long slow painful deaths. We agreed you owed me for talking you down.”

It was still questionable if it had even been possible to actually affect the ship’s course. But I’d certainly tried to. I hadn’t realized just how bad an idea that was until Daniel had reminded me just how big space is.

“I’m calling it in. You stay alive; no matter what.”

“That wasn’t what I had in mind when I said I owed you.”

“Well in my current state, it’s more like self-preservation, isn’t it? So, tough.”

Someone has to come out the other side of this.

“Swear it.”

“I promise I’ll try to survive.”

“Always.”

“Always.”

I turned back to the bin that my wallet had been in. I wasn’t the only one who’d ended up here, but I was the only one with a chance to leave. I felt compelled to retrieve the entire contents of the tray. Driver’s licenses, school IDs, library cards. These had names and pictures of the ones who hadn’t survived the abductions. They were important. They deserved to make it however far I did.

“Table behind you, grab all that too.”

Scattered across a mat laid out across half the table there were two or three smartphones in various states of disassembly. Next to the mat there was a bin with more than a dozen similar devices.

Their batteries were surely out of charge, but a flash of anger went through me when I realized what I was looking at.

Research. They were trying to cannibalize dead kids phones for the technology. The waste of it was appalling. These aliens were spacefaring into other star systems, and they were dissecting the effects of the people they’d abducted and murdered. What good could it possibly do them?

“Focus.” Daniel warned.

I gave a cold nod. He was right. Get angry later. I’d take the whole lot of them. Maybe destroy them before I got caught again.

Was there anything I was forgetting?

“Food and water.”

Right. The very first things we’d talked about bringing with us. The rations in question weren’t with the rest of the items looted from the abductees. Instead, around the back of the cell there were several large containers next to a small hatch in the cell wall. It was the other end of the chute they’d delivered my food and water through. The containers themselves were familiar: identical to the ones on the ship.

Not just identical in appearance, they were those same containers. Had they just dragged them off the ship for use here? Inside were flexible bladder tubes of water and foil wrapped nutrient pucks. The containers were even depleted about the same amount that Daniel and I had consumed through our time on the ship. I couldn’t fit too many into the remaining space in the backpack, but it would keep me fed for a few days. Aliens otters had to drink water too, right? They were otters. That should be easier to resupply.

As I came back around the cell, I was surprised by the two otters having begun to follow me. The one jerked the gun up again as I came into view. I raised my hands quickly, still trying to encourage them against shooting.

It’s finger was on the trigger now. This was make-or-break time.

“They’re close enough. Try to stay still, I’ll try shoving a speck to jam the trigger.”

Daniel was not afraid to take the initiative, that was for sure. If only I had been a bit more cognizant, he wouldn’t have needed to. The food and water were a dead giveaway I wasn’t going to stick around.

The otter growled at me, slow; I could make out individual words.

“Sethun Tuen al neffes, Tuen po sottorov.”

“It’s there, can’t promise anything though.” Daniel said. He took a few steps back to not block my vision of the otters.

I recovered and kept walking toward the otter. I kept an easy pace, one that wouldn’t alarm. I got within five feet before it squeezed the trigger.

The moment I saw it’s hand twitch on the trigger, I jumped aside incase Daniel’s sabotage failed. But even as the otter adjusted its aim to follow me, the gun only made a satisfying click and no bullet fired. It’s eyes widened in surprise at their weapon, and again when it saw me still moving.

I kicked its wrist and the gun tumbled out of its hand. It retaliated by throwing a claw at my face, but Daniel and I had gone over some basic strategy against the otters.

The biggest leverageable advantage was my reach. My arms were just longer than its. My fist reached its throat first and its swipe met air. Points in their favor were claws and fangs. I did not want to stay too close to one for too long, even just a scientist.

I grabbed the gun from where it fell and held onto it. It seemed like a simple enough gun. All the recognizable parts seemed present. Handle, trigger, barrel. But who could tell with alien guns? I didn’t dare mess with any of the divets and slots it had. I couldn’t know what a button or toggle for something was and I didn’t dare fiddle around to find out.

Having a weapon in my hands, a real weapon, was reassuring. But actually holding it raised a glaring problem. The grip was at an extremely shallow angle to the barrel. It was clearly made for otter hands, not mine. I had to twist my wrist so much to hold it, it seemed as much like a blowgun as it did a pistol. It would be almost prohibitively hard to aim. But as a last resort, it would do.

The second one watched the first gasp on the ground clutching its throat. It hesitated. It looked between me and the otter I’d just laid out, weighing options, calculating. No need to give it that much leeway. I went on the offensive and broke into a run toward it.

Despite how aggressive it had acted before, it ran now. Once I moved, it was quick to bolt toward the door it had guarded. It also dropped to all fours to really move.

Two things became very obvious. The first, was that I was actually faster. The otters moved quickly when they were scrambling like this, they accelerated faster than any human could. But where the first otter had leapt and bound over obstacles, using all four limbs to move as agile as possible, this one was in an unobstructed sprint.

The second was because of the first: I was going to overtake it.

It was the legs this time, and even if I hadn’t been a track team sprinter, running was something that came naturally to humans. We were built for it.

The otter realized I would catch it and it threw itself aside.

I wasn’t interested in it though. I wanted to get through the door first so it couldn’t lock me in. I got to the door only to discover it wasn’t an actual door. It was a curtain of flexible overlapping strips. They were heavy and thick, but still flexible enough to simply push aside and walk though. On the other side, there was a handle at the top of the low door frame attached to a shutter.

I grabbed it and pulled the metal slatted door down. That would prevent the otter from pursuing too quickly. On this side of the door, the chaos in the distance was a little louder.

Another low rumble peeled through the ground under my feet. How big was this place?

The adjacent room was an equally large room of similar layout, although this room was virtually dark. Only a few lights glowed next to the exits and a few screens on the backside of the cell. Warehouse-like ceiling, large machinery stuffed to one end, and a massive round mechanical hut. It was another cell like mine.

“Holy shit.” Daniel said.

It wasn’t by itself though. The cell stood on a similar set of short platforms, but this one extended well beyond the two or three feet that had surrounded my own. A huge area was elevated, and the same area was walled off by translucent plastic tarps adorned with electric blue alien lettering. I could see rows of long dark objects inside the tarped area. Were there otters inside?

I found that this cell’s window section actually pointed inside the tarped off area. If I wanted a look, I had to find a way inside.

If nothing else, I could probably tear right through one of the tarps if I tried hard enough.

But a proper entrance was on the side opposite the door I came in. A sliding transparent door was mounted into the frame that the tarps were stretched over.

I glanced at Daniel who was keeping up. We were both silent. We both knew what we feared would be inside.

Looking through the door, everything was dark, but once we opened it and entered some automatic lights flickered to life.

My heart sank right through the floor.

Metal boxes, maybe eight feet long and three feet square were stacked to one side of the door. There were frozen droplets of melted metal where the coffins had been melted open. Their contents were spread out across twenty or more examination tables.

A person covered in a sheet was on each table, but some of them were visibly cut open anyway. There was a machine at the far end not unlike a transparent refrigerator. Through the window in the front of the machine, I could see red vials of blood and small containers of organs suspended in fluid.

To top it all off, exactly opposite the entrance to the makeshift morgue, the window into the cell was visible.

I saw the line on the floor, indicating how close you had to get to see through the window’s blurring effect.

I clenched my jaw and walked between the tables of dead teenagers like me. Most of them were younger than me. Too many.

I felt sick stepping close enough to see inside the cell.

A human was lying on a heavy bed lined with machinery. A dozen different tubes were all stabbed into his abdomen. The same spot I remembered seeing impaled through. Blood-soaked patches of fabric clung to the left half of his body and face. The displays were silent.

The body was motionless.

Daniel stepped through the cell window to look his body in the face.

“…Holy shit, you did kill me.” He whispered.

I stood motionless trying to wrestle with the enormity of everything that came crashing down on me. It was my fault he was there. I had been too angry and dumb to look for a better solution. And it had ended with my last friend dead. I wanted to scream and shout. I wanted to just curl up and die.

It was one thing to feel upset at yourself. Even amongst my friends on Earth, ‘hating yourself’ wasn’t that uncommon of a thing to hear. It was about small mistakes like being too lazy to finish your laundry, or watching some trashy television show you were embarrassed to like. It had been fun, in a way, to say you hate yourself.

It made me feel self-aware. Like I knew what mistakes I was prone to, and that I was ready to correct them in the future.

It was a potent form of counter-narcissism. A way to reassure ourselves that we were humble.

But the regret I felt right now turned all that to ash. Every small admonishment I’d ever given myself was so hilariously, pitiably insignificant next to now. I truly hated myself for this. A smoldering, hot anger for my failure. It didn’t tell me I could do better next time. It didn’t matter if I never made another mistake in my life. I had already done this. And there was no taking it back.

It was insurmountable.

Daniel, himself, kept me going. The one in my head. Whatever was left of him.

He turned back to me and snapped his fingers in front of my face, getting my attention.

“Let’s go. I’ve seen enough.”

I didn’t move.

“Caleb! Clock’s ticking, we gotta move!”

I couldn’t.

Daniel’s face darkened and he pointed between my eyes.

I suddenly felt an itch inside my nose. He conjured a speck in my nose, and I felt a sneeze suddenly well up in me. It was sudden enough, so much of an interruption, I wasn’t prepared to stop it. The noise felt disrespectful in the presence of dead humans.

“Come on,” Daniel said, “This isn’t anything new.”

It wasn’t. It hurt anyways. More than anything in my life.

I hadn’t known Daniel more than a few weeks. Every minute of our relationship had been in some bizarre circumstances. We hadn’t really learned that much about each other. Other things had taken priority. But his words caught me off guard, like they were exactly what I needed to here.

“Caleb, I already forgave you. And you made me a promise. So keep it.”

I didn’t magically feel any better. Nothing was resolved. But between my body getting jarred by a reflex it couldn’t control and Daniel reminding me to live, I brought myself to turn around and leave. I would keep going. I’d survive.

I had no plan beyond that.

This whole escape attempt was entirely improvised. I could only hope to exploit whatever chaos was happening nearby.

But the distant sounds of gunfire were growing closer, and if I got caught up in that chaos I was through. I was so numb from seeing Daniel’s body that I couldn’t stop my brain from fearfully imagining what the otters were shooting at.

Space bugs maybe.

But my thoughts were interrupted when the dark hangar room became awash with blue light.

A violent crackling sound accompanied a teal plume of plasma spearing right through one of the doors several dozen feet away from me. It carved downward through the door before the whole apparatus of shutters was blown away.

Through the wreckage strode a new type of alien.

Just taller than me, it was a dusty blue humanoid with long angular features. Long wiry hair hung down to its shoulders where a tattered ring of black cloth hung loose around its neck. It had goat-like ears sticking out from the side of its head, but aside from that it was the most human looking thing I’d encountered in weeks.

It locked eyes on me and my blood went cold.

One look at this thing and I knew, bone deep, it was not friendly. The same way Daniel had sensed the flashbang, the way we had both sensed the warrior-otter creating its weapon; this alien gave off the same radiation. The alien just emitted ephemeral danger.

It was like them, the otters that had created things from nothing.

It still held that wisp of teal-plasma in its bare hand and a gun in the other. Just like Daniel had made the specks, it had made that flickering blue-green fire. It was like someone had painted and tamed lighting before carefully sculpting it into a crackling fireball clutched in the alien’s grasp.

In a panic, I raised the pistol I’d taken from the otters. But fear coursed through me, paralyzing my body. I even saw Daniel flicker for a moment before vanishing. His absence cleared away some corner of my brain, leaving me just a bit more sensitive to the indescribable sensation radiating from the alien.

I had no chance.

The difference in intensity was overwhelming. The feeling the warrior-otter’s presence had generated had been intense the first time I was hit with it. But they were incomparable, like a match and a bonfire.

The teal-fire alien barked something at me, and I flinched, squeezing the trigger at the same time. The gun clicked uselessly, just like it had for the otter who’d threatened me with it, and the alien didn’t hesitate to shoot back.

Only its gun didn’t fire either. Instead, the thing exploded into a mess of shrapnel and black blood. Had Daniel somehow managed to interfere with it before he flickered away?

The alien gaped at its suddenly mangled hand for a whole second before lobbing the ball of teal plasma at me. I turned and broke into a full sprint. A surge of heat roared up behind me where I’d been standing. I didn’t look back.

I had one chance. One opportunity to not die against this alien.

Fight or flight? There was no question.