The agony of the next breath erases everything.
My eyes snap open in the dark. The battle is over. We are alone now in the building with the darted humans. Silver moonlight through the broken window outlines her as she moves.
You scared me, Eighth, she says. I thought you would die.
That makes me feel so happy that the pain becomes meaningless.
RAVEN
Our own stars betray us.
First, when they fall, we make wishes, then more wishes, until we realize it’s not a meteor storm. We watch fighter jets shoot across the sky, and missiles streak upward.
Pip and David, the camp directors, gather us into the main building and tell us what they learned before the phone line and Internet went down.
“Is this real?” Emily says, her voice high pitched and childlike. The lights flicker. Flicker and die. David goes out to crank up the generator. We all flinch as it roars to life and the lights burst brightly on the ceiling. David comes back saying something about rationing fuel. Topher wants to know how much there is, how long it will last, as though there is some answer that will make this more bearable.
His twin, Tucker, curls around me, breathing in my ear as we watch the few horrifying news reports cached on Pip’s laptop. Cities on fire all over the world: Bogotá, Denver, Addis Ababa, Mexico City. Armies of death-wielding shadows pouring out of multitudes of monstrous ships. Videos make it real.
We hold each other as Pip and David outline a plan. Those with weapons experience are armed with hunting rifles and put on sentry duty for the night. The rest of us will barricade ourselves in the girls’ cabin until dawn. The remainder of the plan can wait for daylight. We tiptoe in the dark, listening to the low rumbles in the distance.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
As long as I have Tucker, I tell myself, everything will be all right. The world has fallen apart around us before. We were suspended from school. Once we were handcuffed and driven off in separate police cars. We both faced my parents, and his parents. We survived that. We can survive anything. I thread my fingers into his, firm in my belief that we are an immutable force. No army of shadows will change that.
“Who are they?” someone says as we trail across the sports field, the stars still flashing and falling in the sky. “Terrorists?”
No one wants to say “aliens” that first night.
EIGHTH
The next thing I see is white, then gray, then green. And as things take shape, my mind awakens in a field, walking behind her, my hand on her armored shoulder. Slowly, thoughts click into place, memories, like parts of a rifle recently cleaned and oiled. We have been out in the world for some time, away from the battle in the city. It’s as though I’ve only just noticed. I turn and look behind us. Some way back, three humans lie facedown, the long grass crushed under their bodies.
When she hisses at me, my feet move and I turn from the humans in the grass, turn from the brief sense of loss their lifeless shapes stir in me. I take a step with her, hand on her shoulder, and another step until we regain our rhythm, walking steadily away, as any feelings I had about the fallen humans peel away from me like dead skin over a healing scar. She shot them. I haven’t touched my rifle all day. She prefers it that way.
As we walk, I remember more and more. About myself. And about her. Sixth, I call her. She is above me in the ranks, and it shows.
Her aim is flawless, and her disappointment with mine is palpable. Let me shoot; you can manage any close contacts, she signed once, back when she could be bothered to give me instructions. “Close contacts” means fighting. I can fight. I know this. I’m strong; my strength surprises even me. I can tear heavy locks open with one hand, and once pushed a moving vehicle right off the road. I think I would be lethal in a hand-to-hand fight, but no one comes close enough. Even if they did, they seem so weak, these humans, so small and vulnerable; it scarcely seems fair. Even the ones with guns hardly wear any armor. I turn my eyes away now when she shoots them.
I suppose I could break one, if I had to. I did it once. She counts on me for that. I would kill to protect her, but I can’t see that sort of danger ever coming up again. She shoots; I follow or precede her, break down doors and smash fences, hunting out the last dregs of humanity. We are preparing. I don’t know what for, and I’m scared to ask.
I’m not supposed to ask. I’m not supposed to be scared.
Eighth is defective, she signs frequently, using both hands to show me how broken I am. I would tell her that her disdain hurts my feelings if I thought that was permitted. Instead, I swallow the disdain, as much as I can, and let it sink into the pool of oily obedience inside me. There it turns into an urge to break things.
Breaking things is permitted, even encouraged. I will break whatever is in her way. I want her to be happy with me.
PART TWO
AUTUMN
“It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.”
—EDGAR ALLAN POE
RAVEN
Tucker died this morning.
My soul was split in two this morning. The war that we have evaded, hidden from, and occasionally pretended was all a bad dream crashed into us this morning, when Topher, after searching for hours, found his twin dead under a pine tree, a dart in his spine, dark metallic tears in his open eyes.
After ten weeks of hiding and hoping for rescue, we have been touched by the invaders at last.
The aliens. We have no trouble saying it now.
I scream myself hoarse when they bring his body back. Topher lays him on the sunporch off the mess hall and collapses down beside him. The other camp staff leave us, too stunned to process it. They disappear into the cabins and close the doors.
Who knows how long we sit there, ruined by grief, paralyzed and helpless. The sun is high in the sky when I use the corner of my T-shirt to wipe the gray fluid from Tucker’s brown eyes.
“Close them,” Topher says.
But I want to look at him a little longer.
“Close them. The sun is too bright.”
I have never liked Topher, and the feeling is mutual. He and Tucker have . . . had that bond that twins have, and look so alike that even their parents mixed them up until Topher cut his dark hair military short. They look alike. They are not alike.