“Do you know what he looks like? Me and the ladies can take him out.”
That was the last thing we needed, a murder investigation.
“No, Mom. Just grab your stuff and sneak out the back, okay?”
She paused.
“Alright, honey. Are you safe?”
I sighed. “For now, yeah. But…” I had to tell her. “The new ships that have come are scouts. They didn’t find anything so… they’re here to stay.”
I must have been on speakerphone because I heard Birdie drop the f-bomb.
“But I’m gonna fix it,” I mumbled, because giving false hope was the only Band-Aid I had.
My mom sounded worried. “Maybe we should come up to where you are?”
I shook my head. “No, Mom. It’s not safe. Please just lay low until I call you again, okay?”
Silence, but for the whirring of the helicopter blades.
“Okay.”
“I love you!” I shouted over the helicopter noise, which got louder the higher we went.
“I love you too, Kitty.”
When I hung up, I focused my attention on Damien’s conversation with the pilot.
“My girlfriend can create an opening into the Dream War and we can fly in and sleep there. Like real sleep, where you dream like the old days.”
The pilot looked at Damien in shock for a moment, but I was stuck on him calling me his girlfriend. The world was ending, and we were basically fugitives with a hostage, but a grin tugged at my lips.
Girlfriend.
I could get used to that.
“Would you be down to be our new pilot? I can pay you double what they were paying you and offer you real sleep.” I’d forgotten Damien was a businessman until I saw him in action.
The pilot nodded. “I’ve got nothing to lose. No family to go home to. And I haven’t slept in three days. Nearly died the last time I went in.”
Damien had holstered his gun and we seemed to be on friendly terms with this guy, which I thought was a good idea. An experienced pilot was a good member of the team to have.
“Alright, sorry about putting a gun to your head before. I wasn’t sure whose side you were on. As long as you’re cool, we won’t have problems.”
The pilot nodded and started to lower the chopper into the parking lot of the motel, where our crew was packed up and waiting.
“I texted them while you were talking to your mom,” Damien told me.
They were safe! Thank God.
Jeremy had his headphones on and was stimming bad. This was the kind of change that drove him nuts and put everyone on edge.
“That’s your group?” The pilot looked down at the eight people waiting for us and I knew what he was thinking. This was an eight-person chopper, including the pilot. We had eleven.
“We’re going to need to make it work. Dump gear if we have to,” Damien told him.
The pilot landed the aircraft and unbuckled. “I’ll need a quick weigh-in of every person, and some will have to sit on laps, but I think we can make do. I’ll offload a bit of non-essential gear.”
“Thank you,” I told him. “I’m Kit, by the way.”
“Jack.” He nodded curtly and went to the back of the aircraft.
Jack was a good dude. We’d gotten lucky.
After the pilot busted out a little step-on scale and weighed our crew, we had everyone boarded. We’d broken into the vending machine and taken all the water bottles and snacks we could carry, which would last us a few days. Damien had left behind three one hundred dollar bills to pay for the damage. Now I was on Damien’s lap up front in the cockpit, and Maxine and Ronnie were on Nox’s and Brisk’s laps. There was a tiny feminist kerfuffle when Ronnie wanted to know why Brisk couldn’t sit on her lap, but we’d determined he was too heavy and moved on.
“Alright, take us up and Kit will open the window into the Dream War,” Damien ordered Jack.
I gave him an incredulous look. He acted like I could just do these things easily, as if it were akin to breathing. He and Master Aki both.
What if I didn’t open it wide enough? Would one of the chopper blades get knocked off? There was shit to think about here!
The pilot raised the helicopter into the air above the motel and I sighed. Looking over my shoulder, I caught Master Aki’s gaze and he nodded at me as if to say, You can do this. I straightened my back and held my hands out. Jack held the chopper steady in the air while I straightened my back.
Open a portal from our world to theirs, no big deal. Done it a couple times.
Concentrating my energy, I started to peel back the layers of our worlds. It was crazy to me to think that they were right here the entire time, just not visible to us. As I opened a small circle in the sky, the pilot gasped. Yeah, it was pretty crazy to think about. I was opening a hole into humanity’s worst nightmare.
As the opening grew wider, my gaze landed on a Galadria coming our way from the other side. His head was turned and he was looking behind him at something on the ground.
“No,” I breathed.
I’d already opened the hole up the size of a car. Once I got going, it was pretty easy to make it wider, but now it was big enough to—
We didn’t even have time to scream, Jack just yanked the chopper backward as the brilliant green Galadria flew right through the opening in the sky and into our world.
Oh shit.
Four
The second the Galadria flew through the opening into our world, we all held our breath. The breeders shriveled and died when they hit our atmosphere, so this would probably be the same, right?
I prayed to God that wasn’t the case. The Galadria seemed to notice the scenery had changed and whipped its head forward just in time to see our chopper in front of him. His
