LUX Opposition by Jennifer L. Armentrout
To every reader who stumbled across Obsidian at some point and thought, Aliens in high school? Why the heck not? I’ve read weirder stuff. And then ended up loving Katy and Daemon and crew as much as I do. This is for you. Thank you.
1
{ Katy }
Back in the day, I had this plan for the off chance that I was around for the whole end-of-the-world thing. It involved climbing up on my roof and blasting R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” as loud as humanly possible, but real life rarely turns out that cool.
It was happening—everything about the world as we knew it was ending, and it sure as hell did not feel fine. Or cool.
Opening my eyes, I inched aside the flimsy white curtain. I peered out, beyond the porch and the cleared yard, into the thick woods surrounding the cabin Luc had stashed in the forests of Coeur d’Alene, a city in Idaho I couldn’t even begin to pronounce or spell.
The yard was empty. There was no flickering, brilliant white light shining through the trees. No one was out there. Correction. Nothing was out there. No birds were chirping or fluttering from leafy branch to branch. Not one sign of any woodland creatures scurrying anywhere. There wasn’t even the low hum of insects. Everything was silent and still, soundless in a totally creeptastic kind of way.
My gaze fixed on the woods, glued to the last place I’d seen Daemon. A deep, throbbing ache lit up my chest. The night we’d fallen asleep on the couch seemed like ages ago, but it had only been forty-eight hours or so since I’d woken up, overheated, and nearly been blinded by Daemon’s true form. He hadn’t been able to control it, although if we’d known what it signaled, it probably wouldn’t have changed anything.
So many others of his kind, hundreds—if not thousands—of Luxen, had come to Earth, and Daemon . . . he was gone, along with his sister and brother, and we were still here in this cabin.
Pressure clamped down on my chest, as if someone were squeezing my heart and lungs with vise grips. Every so often, Sergeant Dasher’s warning came back to haunt me. I’d seriously thought the man—that all of Daedalus—was riding the crazy train into Insanity Land, but they had been right.
God, they had been so right.
The Luxen came like Daedalus had warned, like they had prepared for, and Daemon . . . The ache pulsed, ripping the air right from my lungs, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I had no idea why he left with them or why I hadn’t seen or heard from him or his family. The terror and confusion surrounding his disappearance were a constant shadow that haunted every waking moment and even the few minutes I’d been able to sleep.
What side would Daemon be standing on? Dasher had asked that of me once, while I’d been held at the very real Area 51, and I couldn’t let myself believe that I had that answer now.
In the last two days, more Luxen had fallen from the sky. They’d kept coming and coming like an endless stream of falling stars, and then there was—
“Nothing.”
My eyes popped open, and the curtain slipped from my fingers, softly falling back into place. “Get out of my head.”
“I can’t help it,” Archer replied from where he sat on the couch. “You’re broadcasting your thoughts so damn loudly I feel like I need to go sit in the corner and start rocking, whispering Daemon’s name over and over again.”
Irritation pricked at my skin, and no matter how much I tried to keep my thoughts, my worries and fears, to myself, it was useless when there was not one, but two Origins in the house. Their nifty little ability to read thoughts got real annoying real fast.
I picked at the curtain again, watching the woods. “Still no sign of any Luxen?”
“Nope. Not a single glowing light crashing to Earth in the last five hours.” Archer sounded as tired as I felt. He hadn’t been sleeping much, either. While I’d been fixated on keeping an eye on the outside, he’d been focused on the TV. News all across the globe had been reporting nonstop on the “phenomenon.”
“Some of the news stations are trying to say it was a massive meteorite shower.”
I snorted.
“Trying to cover up anything at this point is useless.” Archer sighed wearily, and he was right.
What happened in Las Vegas—what we had done—had been videotaped and blasted all over the internet within hours. At some point during the day after the absolute obliteration of Las Vegas, all the videos had been pulled down, but the damage had already been done. From what the news copter had captured before Daedalus had shot it down, to those on the scene who recorded everything with their camera phones, there was no stopping the truth. The internet was a funny place, though. While some people were blogging that it was the end of times, others took a more creative approach to everything. Apparently, there was even a meme created already.
The incredibly photogenic glowing-alien meme.
Which had been Daemon phasing into his true form. His human features were blurred to unrecognizability, but I knew it had been him. If he’d been around to see that, he would’ve really gotten a kick out of it, but I didn’t—
“Stop,” Archer said gently. “We don’t know what the hell Daemon, or any of them, are doing or why at this point. They will come back.”
I turned from the window, finally facing Archer. His hair, a sandy brown color, was cut close to the scalp, typical military style. He was tall and broad-shouldered, someone who looked like he could throw down when it counted, and I knew he could.
Archer could be downright deadly.
When I’d first met him at Area 51, I had believed he was just a solider. It wasn’t until Daemon had arrived that we discovered he was Luc’s implant within Daedalus and also, like Luc, an Origin, a child of a Luxen male and mutated, hybrid female.
My fingers curled inward. “You really believe that? They will come back?”
Amethyst eyes flicked from the TV to mine. “It’s all I can believe at this point. It’s all any of us can believe right now.”
That wasn’t really reassuring.
“Sorry,” he replied, letting it be known he’d picked up on my thoughts yet again. He nodded at the TV before I could get ticked off. “Something’s going on. Why would that many Luxen come to Earth and then just go silent?”
That was also the question of the year.
“I think it’s kind of obvious,” said a voice from the hall. I turned as Luc entered the living room. Tall and slender, he had his brown-colored hair pulled back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. Luc was younger than us, around fourteen or fifteen, but he was like a little teen mafia leader and, at times, scarier than Archer. “And you know exactly what I’m talking about,” he added, eyeing the older Origin.
As Archer and Luc locked eyes in a battle of the stare-down, something they’d been doing a lot of during the last two days, I sat on the arm of a chair by the window. “Care to explain out loud?”
Luc had a certain boyish quality to his beautiful face, like he hadn’t quite lost the roundness of childhood yet, but there was a wisdom in his purple eyes that went beyond a handful of years.
He leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms. “They’re planning. Strategizing. Waiting.”
That didn’t sound good, but I wasn’t surprised. An ache formed between my temples. Archer said nothing as he went back to staring at the TV.
“Why else would they come here?” Luc continued as he tilted his head, gazing at the curtained window near me. “I’m sure it’s not to shake hands and kiss babies’ cheeks. They’re here for a reason, and it’s not good.”
“Daedalus always believed they would invade.” Archer sat back, clasping his hands over his knees. “The whole Origin initiative was in response to that concern. After all, the Luxen don’t have a history of playing nice with other intelligent life-forms. But why now?”
Wincing, I rubbed my temples. I hadn’t believed Dr. Roth when he’d told me how the Luxen were actually the cause of the war between them and the Arum—a war that had destroyed both of their planets. And I’d thought Sergeant Dasher and Nancy Husher, the head bitch in charge of Daedalus, were crazy freaks.
I’d been wrong.
So had Daemon.
Luc arched a brow as he coughed out a laugh. “Oh, I don’t know, might have to do with the very public spectacle we put on in Vegas. We know there were implants here, Luxen who aren’t that fond of humans. How they communicated with the Luxen not on this planet is beyond me, but is that really important now? This was the perfect moment to make an entrance.”
My eyes narrowed. “You said it was a brilliant idea.”
“I think lots of things are brilliant ideas. Like nuclear weapons, zero-calorie soft drinks, and blue jean vests,” he replied. “That doesn’t mean we should nuke people, or that diet drinks taste good, or that you should run out to the local Walmart and buy a jean vest. You people shouldn’t always listen to me.”
My eyes rolled so hard they almost fell out of the back of my head. “Well, what else were we supposed to do? If Daemon and the others hadn’t exposed themselves, we would’ve been captured.”
Neither of the guys replied, but the unspoken words hung between us. If we’d been captured, it would’ve sucked donkey butt and then some, but Paris, Ash, and Andrew would probably still be alive. So would the innocent humans who had lost their lives when everything went to crap.
But there was nothing we could do about that now. Time could be frozen for short periods, but no one could go back and change things. What was done was done, and Daemon had made that decision to protect all of us. I’d be damned if anyone threw him under the spaceship.
“You look exhausted,” commented Archer, and it took a moment for me to realize he was talking to me.
Luc turned those unnerving eyes on me. “Actually, you look like crap.”
Gee. Thanks.
Archer ignored him. “I think you should try to sleep. Just for a little while. If anything happens, we will get you.”
“No.” I shook my head just in case my verbal cue wasn’t enough. “I’m fine.” The truth was I was far from being fine. I was probably one step away from going to that dark corner in the room and rocking back and forth, but I couldn’t break down, and I couldn’t sleep. Not when Daemon was out there somewhere, and not when the whole world was on the verge of . . . hell, turning into a dystopia, like one of those novels I used to read.
Sigh. Books. I missed them.
Archer frowned, and it turned his handsome face a little scary, but before he could lay into me, Luc pushed off of the doorway and spoke. “I think she needs to go talk to Beth, actually.”
Surprised, I glanced at the stairwell in the hall outside the room. The last I checked, the girl had been sleeping. That was all Beth seemed to do. I was almost envious of her ability to sleep all of this away.
“Why?” I asked. “Is she awake?”
Luc ambled into the living room. “I think you two need some girl-talk time.”
My shoulders slumped as I sighed. “Luc, I really don’t think this is the time for girl bonding.”
“It isn’t?” He dropped onto the couch beside Archer and kicked his feet up on the coffee table. “What else are you doing besides staring out the window and trying to sneak past us so you can go off into the woods, look for Daemon, and probably get eaten by a mountain lion?”
Anger punched through me as I flipped my long ponytail over my shoulder. “First off, I wouldn’t get eaten by a mountain lion. Second, at least I’d be trying to do something other than sitting on my ass.”
Archer sighed.