I was eight years old - again - when my second life decided to veer even further from the expected course.
It was a clear, warm day, a welcome pleasure for geyser season. A new waterspout had burst from the sands just outside of Sanitas, and now only two days later, even school children were asked to help in the preparation for new, temporary aqueducts.
Hands caked in mud, I cursed at the Reach's new scanners. This was the second time in six months that I'd had to work a geyser, and all of it had accelerated when they introduced technology into the market that could predict where a new waterspout would come. I was sure that small desert towns like Sanitas were overall better off thanks to it, but would it kill a guy to ask for a cheap robot labor force that could work these canals for us?
I was certain that the other kids agreed.
"Cassian!"
I flipped around and pushed the shovel tool further into the gunk. "I don't want to hear it, Adrius."
The brunette boy was nearly a year older but had become as close a friend as I'd allowed. Not a child and not an adult - a truly painful combination. If not for some very powerful hormones, I wouldn't have bothered dealing with anyone, even family. No man is an island.
"Seriously, you have to listen to this. My brother saw something last night. It was like a meteor! He thinks it landed nearby and wants to go and check it out!"
I stared, disbelieving. Because of the unique properties of Osmos V, it was likely for debris to fall toward the planet all the time, especially in the fluctuation period. They say it will end any day now, but I'm not certain. "It probably didn't even land. Far more likely it broke up."
Adrius shook his head and absently ran a hand through his hair. He frowned when he realized it tracked mud through his brown curls. "No, but really, Cassian. He wants to go tonight and try to find it."
"If it landed, there is no chance that it isn't crawling with people by now. We'd be picking over nothing at best, or actively getting in the way of some minor or major clan at worst."
"Don't be annoying!" Adrius cried while trying to rid his hair of the mud, only making things worse. One of the supervisors of the irrigation channel site walked by and shot him an admonishing stare, and he blanched and quickly started digging again. "I'm going whether you come or not, but I could use the backup."
"I'm not being annoying by being reasonable, kid."
"Kid? I'm ten months older than you!"
He'd repeated that mantra so many times it was old hat by now.
"So act like it."
The boy pouted and returned to work, absently. His muscles strained under the labor, and I don't think any school credit or work credit was worth forcing children to do this in the desert heat. Not when our planetary "partners" could have given us damnable robots to do this instead.
I felt guilty the more I considered Adrius and his brother Felixus. Good kids who were just that - kids. I knew them well, better than many in my immediate circle; I'd spent the last Founding Day at their home and had commiserated with them over their uncle's not great cooking.
Adrius never let an idea go. He was stubborn to a fault, and his brother was nearly as bad. Felixus was once convinced that the two of them were Exceptions, and that his apparent ability to jump higher than most was the Gift he'd inherited instead of the usual absorption package. It was barely an inch higher than other kids in their class, so if he was right in that assumption, then he'd gotten a shitty genetic deal.
Fearing what would happen if they held onto this bad idea like the others, I tried again to convince him of the error of his ways the next time we got a break. Other students and peers mingled around the refreshment tables while the sweat from the sun poured from their foreheads, but I pulled the boy aside and away from them all.
"Let's say you found a meteorite. What would you even do with it?"
Adrius perked up from his sandwich. "What would I do with it? Keep it forever as a keepsake for how badass I was as a kid? Sell it and get rich?"
I pressed harder. "So your options are to put it on a shelf as a useless souvenir or to hope you find someone who will sell it to you for a price that actually means something?"
He stopped sipping his water abruptly, eyes unfocused. "You don't know!"
"Sure I do. My mother tried to pawn some jewelry once. She went to two different places, and they both offered her different prices based on what they thought it was worth. The real price? Worth more than either offer."
I didn't tell him that it was my first mom who tried to do that, but he'd have no context for reincarnation. It wasn't a widely held religious belief anywhere on the planet, if my research is clear about that. The instant I knew enough Osmotin to research that, I looked for any reference to it in case there was a local explanation for how I'd ended up here.
There wasn't.
"As long as I get a thousand trines, then I'll have rich!"
A thousand trines was indeed a lot of money for people around here, but a drop in the bucket compared to anyone who mattered. I did not have a great eye for the value of things compared to dollars from my first life, but a single trine was usually something close to three and a half bucks. The trickiest thing about this nation's currency was that its value could fluctuate slightly based on which Triarch's face sat upon the coin you used - this year, Elder Gordia was in vogue, while Seneca was all the rage for the past three. I'd read a lot of folks were happy with the change, because Gordia's old as dirt.
I merely glanced at him incredulously. "A thousand trines is nothing to a collector. And if whatever landed is a rare substance, then you could get a hundred times that easily, if you ask the right person."
His eyes bugged for a second, the width displaying the deep, blackened circles under the eyes that I once mistook for make-up on my parents. Turned out that most Osmosians develop that at puberty, and I'd started to get my own, however faintly visible they were as of late. It frustrated me more than a bit that Adrius had prominent blackened lines encircling the base of his eyes, as childish as it felt to compare sometimes. He was nearly a year older, anyway, so the whole thing was unreasonable to do - he was an actual child.
"But none of that matters, anyway. You'd never get someone local to have that kind of money to give you, nor would someone give that much money to a child. Your best bet would be to cut in your parents, in which case they wouldn't let you have that much of the profit and you'd be in trouble for messing with the thing in the first place."
Adrius got progressively redder the longer I continued, but I was not yet done and held up a hand to cut him off.
"Or you could try a dumber plan to make false identification papers for Felixus, and try to convince everyone your fourteen year old brother is just short and baby-faced for his twenty odd years. That might bypass the age problem, but you'd have to take it to an appraiser from one of the major clans in a bigger city like the capital, and I don't need to tell you that that trip is unlikely."
Adrius crushed the cup in his knuckle-white hand, spilling water across the sands below his feet. "Cassian, you always do this know-it-all routine."
"I don't think I do it enough," I argued. "You have this thing-"
Adrius stomped his foot in a movement that would be adorable if it weren't arguing for something so damn stupid. "We're going to do it, no matter what you try to shoot down. Felixus already had Ducius plot a route this morning, and we're going to head out tonight."
I bit my tongue at the next thought. They were fortunate to own Ducius, their nicknamed weather drone that had been in their family's possession for most of my friend's life. However, programming the robot's flight pattern was begging to leave a digital trail for their parents to find afterward.
"We already told Mother we were staying at your place," Adrius added quickly.
Before I could argue otherwise, the bell rang for us to return to our duties, the sun still baking us alive while we dig channels for water, to 'build character' according to our school's mission during this season. If I had a human body, the summer heat combined with the idiocy of my friend would have surely killed me.
I sighed.
"What time are we leaving?"
I was not about to let the kids do it alone. If I could keep them from making a dumb decision while looking for whatever landed - if anything did - then I could stave off the worst of the consequences that would befall them.
OSMOS V
February 25, 20:45 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
Mother slapped a piece of parchment onto the table, the sound echoing throughout the small kitchen. Her exasperated face stretched with clear exhaustion and discomfort. I pushed away a forgotten bowl of stew to study whatever was clearly bothering her, partly worried that she'd already somehow learned of the plan with Adrius later that evening.
Several blocks of symbolic text stretched across the page, its edges furled and frayed. A burned space on one corner burned away part of the message, and I could not help but frown. The message was in a foreign language, and not one I'd researched previously from any of the cultures of Osmos V.
No - this message came from the Reach.
"I cannot make heads or tails of this," Mother clarified at my look of confusion. "Every time I think I have something, it flows further away from me."
"Does Father have you working on this?"
She shook her head after a long hesitation. "No. It's nothin-"
"If you're about to tell me that it's nothing for me to worry about, save your breath."
Mother glanced away for a long moment, and a pang of guilt arose in my throat. Ever since I exposed my father's work, things have not been the same as they'd always been at home. Opening that particular Pandora's Box had brought with it other issues that, well, years of therapy might not fix. They were not my real parents anyway, so surely there couldn't be any real long term issues.
Surely.
She finally met my gaze. "I found it at work, on one of my supervisor's desks. The only word I think I recognize is gadopen." She pointed to one particular section of the parchment and roughly circled its twisting shapes. "Gadopen is a medicine for treating heart disease, so I thought that maybe the Reach is in contact with the hospital or a doctor there."
I remembered the original message from Xandros - every week, at least one of my nightmares involved a twisted version of that message followed by a complete unraveling of society as the Reach brought their power to bear upon the planet. To say that I had been able to get a single iota of regular sleep in months was an understatement of the issues at hand. All that, and the invasion had not even happened.
Yet.
In that message, he promised many things like technology, medicine, and other benefits. If they truly had no ulterior motives, then uplifting the Osmosian way of life in many fields would be useful to everyone. I was not convinced they were not plotting something, and neither was Father. He'd been gone for months on a trip to the capital with the others, and I could not wait to hear whatever his next message might be for us. Perhaps he'd reveal the one key piece of information that unraveled all of it, once and for all.
"Maybe they're just finally owning up to their promises," I offered. "A few medical breakthroughs would change things."
Mother nodded. "I considered that, too, but trusting any of the patients with anything they make? Is it worth it?"
I shrugged. "If I found out tomorrow that I have cancer, and they offered a cure that I knew to work? I'd take it."
She pursed her lips and said nothing.
That was truly how I felt. That was the reasonable answer. It was okay to look a gift horse in the mouth sometimes, if it meant that a lifetime of pain, anguish, and weakness would go away. My aunt in my first life died of leukemia when I was seventeen, and if the Reach offered her a solution? I'd want her to take it, even if there were other side effects, because the alternative was to lose her only two days after her diagnosis.
The clock struck the turn of hour, and I cleared my throat. "I'm gonna go to bed early. I've got a test tomorrow, and I want all my energy for it."
It was a lie, but a reasonable one, and Mother barely acknowledged the point, instead wrapping up the parchment and beginning the process of cleaning the kitchen. I'd offer to help her, but I couldn't get my brain off of the Reach, Father, and whatever it was that I was about to discover.
OSMOS V
February 25, 23:08 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
The night air was cool within the Magnus Desertus, something that made living within its borders largely possible. Without it, keeping homes cool would be exorbitantly expensive for families like mine, and I'd spent much of my second life with the window wide open at night to let cool air circulate. The winter months made even that impossible. As cold as it was right then, I was grateful to have bundled more intentionally.
Adrius and Felixus led the way through the sandy dunes and past craggy rocks, far too excited to care as much about the temperature as I did. The elder brother was the spitting image of the younger - dark hair, tanned skin, green eyes, and an abundance of freckles across every exposed piece of skin. They were both adorably wearing matching scarves around their necks for warmth, and I was convinced that I would heckle them for it at some point during the night.
Ducius, the cylinder-shaped drone with red and white plating, guided us through indistinct desert walkways. It hovered thirty feet above us and bathed us and our immediate surroundings in faint red light, casting everything in an ominous glow that spoke volumes over how stupid this entire thing was. Whatever path they'd programmed into it felt erratic and mostly pointless, and we'd had to deviate once already to avoid a nighttime cliff-drop to injury at best, to death at worst.
"We're farther in than I thought we would be," I finally say, stepping through a small wall of desert brush that were mostly unprickly. "How close is it?"
Felixus huffed and rubbed at his sweaty face, pudgier than his brother. He reminded me of how unhealthy I had been in my early high school years. "It shouldn't be too much farth-"
"Can you check?"
Adrius answered for his brother with a high-pitched whistle, and the drone floated down to eye-level. With a whirring noise and a beep, Ducius opened a plate on its head to reveal a computer screen, glowing in white light. Etched across it in tight, crimson lines was a map of the surrounding area, showing basic terrain with a distinct lack of detail. A dotted blue line showed we were close to the destination, and a small panel near the top revealed the mathematical calculations to predict the probable place of landing.
"Felixus, you're surprisingly good at this."
The brother waved it off. "It's not a big deal. There's very little to do at home except play with Ducius."
"And ignore me," Adrius muttered.
If we pulled this off, then they were bound to get into trouble if they didn't cover their tracks. "Do you have a plan to wipe its memory of the map you made?"
The brothers stopped and stared at each other for a long two seconds. Finally, Felixus wiped at the sweat on his brow. "Oh, uh, yeah. I can do that. Why though?"
"He's trying to avoid getting us into trouble," Adrius finished for me, sheepishly looking in my direction. "That's smart."
It took the elder brother a moment to realize the implications. "Oh."
"Yeah. Just looking out for you. How much longer, then?"
The brothers crowded around the drone's head, their faces alit with red light. "It should be just ahead." The elder brother pointed to an area ahead of us, a wide, three story wall of rock blocking our view. "Behind that ridge."
The slow climb into that position took several minutes until we could finally see… something. The excitement upon getting to see whatever it is almost drowned the thoughts of how exhausted I would be in the morning. This was not easy for a lanky little kid without a regular exercise routine.
Even without the ring of red light from Ducius, whatever had struck the ground here was putting off its own subtle glow in a few places, little pinpricks of light that strike into the darkness around it. Felixus excitedly begins to slide down the embankment, and not at all smoothly as gravel-like stone and sand drift ahead of his path and nearly force him to tumble several yards. Adrius makes to follow him in the same path, but I yank his shoulder back, much harder than I meant to.
"Hey! Watch it!"
"Careful, kid," I warn, hoping that he would ease into it. Felixus had the advantage of several inches of height and a more solid build, even if he were pudgier than either of us. "No collecting any money or trophies if you break your neck down there."
Adrius acknowledges the point and more carefully follows after his brother and their drone, the circle of light inching closer to reveal the object that struck the ground and carved a solid forty-yard chunk in sand and stone. I was expecting Felixus to find a meteorite or some other basic space debris, or perhaps to find nothing at all, but nothing could have prepared me for this.
"Whoa! It's a ship!"
Good god. As if living here couldn't be any more difficult.
A metallic object coated in sleek black metal, a clearly damaged propulsion system on one side and jutting from the ground. Cracks ran along its surface in a myriad of paths, power still running somewhere within its structure. A clear line indicated an opening, and Adrius hurriedly rushed to run his palm along the crack.
"Not to be the bearer of bad news," I said with a harsh sigh, staying as far back as possible and angling to scramble up and away from the thing, "but there's a strong chance we're getting enough radiation to give us cancer in a few months."
Felixus hissed. "Ducius would notice it."
What?
"Your weather drone has a rad counter?"
They both ignored me and continued to poke the small alien ship. A few basic escape pod designs from different stuff I'd seen in my first life came to mind, but this was a bit bigger than that. There could be two or three aliens in that thing, waiting to eat us. Or probe us. Or both, in whichever order suited them.
I shivered.
Whichever it was, the ship didn't respond to the brothers' poking, and I couldn't help but try to be the voice of reason again. "Have Ducius take a picture or a video. We gotta get out of here - it's too heavy to lift. This was really cool, but we need to get go-"
Felixus slammed his hand on the rim of the ship, and it - unfortunately - responded. The elder of us shifted back several feet as a panel on the roof opened in a swirl of hazy steam.
"Run!" I shouted, pushing against gravel and sand to climb the incline as fast as possible. I heard Adrius following, but his brother had yet to move from his position, locked in place from terror, from awe, or from stupidity. I sighed and flipped around without sliding down, maintaining my solid ground for a second. "Felixus! Don't stand there! Get a move on!"
The boy only made it a half-step backwards before the steam cleared enough to see what lie within. Green light faintly emerged from the interior of the ship, growing brighter the more of the mist dissipated. Raised upright on its hind legs was a huge four-legged creature, its matted fur a muted orange color. A long tongue swiped from its toothy mouth, an odd color in the midst of the weather drone's and the ship's glow. It twisted its movement in the elder boy's direction, sniffing at the air from its eyeless face. Clawed feet gripped at the metal of the ship with enough force to dent it, and… and….
and…
I moved without thinking.
A rock the size of my palm struck the ground nearest to the creature's left flank, missing widely. Yet, it gathered its attention.
Adrius continued climbing until he was a solid three feet behind me, shouting down at his brother to run. "Felixus! You gotta move!"
Finally, the elder teen shifted into a running position and bolted up the inclining sand and stone, dropping rocks and sand behind his path.
I prepared to throw another rock to divert its attention away from him, but the alien canine-like creature already had its focus trained on me. It bent at the knees and readied a pounce. A half-second later, it launched itself into the air and covered the distance to me in but a moment.
I threw myself to the side and slid roughly across the earth, the immense body of the almost horse-sized alien striking into the incline in a cloud of dust. Pricks of pain ran down my arms and legs, but I didn't have time to dwell on it. The alien recovered from its crash landing quickly and swiped down at me with a front claw, tearing into the flesh of my leg.
A shriek of pain escaped my lips, and it craned its neck to bite into my chest. I rolled away just enough for it to miss its initial attack, the movement jostling a surely bleeding wound in my left calf muscle. I struck at the thing with a weak fist, smacking it in the face with all the might of a stupid ten year old.
It had the decency to wheel back in what must be surprise and definitely was not pity.
Against the sight of its oncoming onslaught, I threw up my arms in sheer panic, barely conscious of my surroundings from the sound of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. Eyes closed for what must be the end, the canine alien struck at my crossed arms and torso with a mighty swipe of a clawed limb.
My body tumbled end over end in the air until I slammed hard into the earth several yards away. Bile rushed to my throat, and I couldn't keep it down, the substance coating the front of my shirt. Eyes unfocused from the pain in nearly every muscle group, I watched hazily as the alien raced toward me, teeth bared.
A crunch.
Shattered canine fangs fell to the sand in pieces.
I blinked, confused.
A distant Felixus whistled, and Ducius began to beep with alarm, hovering closer and closer to the canine creature. The alien with wounded teeth whirled around to study the drone long enough for me to force myself to my feet. The weather drone shone with bright crimson light for all to see for potentially miles, an emergency pattern of light I'd only seen once before, and the volume of its alarm klaxons was significant. The canine tried to angle a strike of its claw toward the drone, but it sped out of the way and merely angered the damn thing even more.
Adrius clambered down to me and began to pull on my arm. "You're okay, you're okay. Let's, uh, get you-" I winced in pain as his pulling forced me to put my weight on the wounded leg, and he stared with wide eyes.
"Other side," I hissed and gestured.
He maneuvered around to take weight off of the wounded leg as he helped me to more solid ground as swiftly as his legs would take him. Felixus was at the top to join us, eyes torn between watching the alien chase after the robot and watching his brother escort me closer to safety.
"We need to move," I muttered, pushing forward with all of my thoughts on getting out of this alive. "That won't last forever."
Felixus took over for Adrius in holding up my weaker side, and we began the trek through the desert, leaving Ducius behind to keep the thing busy.
"It's blind," the elder brother muttered after a long moment. "It doesn't have eyes."
I realized what he was getting at a moment later. "Smart. How long, uh, can Ducius do that routine without you there to guide it?"
Felixus and Adrius did not have an answer.
OSMOS V
February 26, 02:42 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
I was not sure how I was going to explain any of this to my parents. Truth be told, I was probably still on thin ice from the stunt I pulled with Father's office, even years later. I threw myself into danger intentionally with a reckless decision that could have ended with me dead or worse - Felixus and Adrius dead.
I had a truly awful three-pronged gash on the back of my leg, and putting any weight on it was excruciating. Blood had soaked completely through the simplistic binding we'd made with one of the brothers' scarves. Each step closer to Sanitas was a step closer to having to tell the truth, and I knew in the long run that this was a lesson that the brothers had to learn.
Had I not been there…?
"Cassian, you…," Adrius repeated for the umpteenth time, perhaps more in shock than any of us were. "You're okay. You're okay."
We cut through the city's perimeter. The familiar sights of domed buildings amid sandy winds added a layer of security to our trek. Whatever that creature was, if it was going to follow us here, surely some adult would notice before it got us.
"I will be okay," I said, fighting through the weakness from losing so much blood. Honestly surprised that I was still conscious. "Stay long enough for my mother to look you over."
The brothers did not object, but as we passed further into familiar territory, their movements became slower and more deliberate. I couldn't help but smile through the pain - kids will be kids.
The exterior door to my home on the outskirts opened with barely a sound. Mother strode across the sands, fury pouring from every pore. "Where have you been?"
"Mistress Lucrecia," Feliuxus pointed to my leg, "Cassian is hurt. We're sorry! We tried to find this meteor we saw but found an alien instead, and it attack-"
"Cassian!" The anger fell away from her in an instant. She dropped to her knees in a whirl and looked over my leg. "Are either of you hurt?" The brothers shook their heads. "Felixus, get you and your brother home. Thank you for getting Cassian here. We'll talk more later."
They scurried off in a hurry once it was clear that things were going to be fine for them. I didn't blame them for not trying harder to stay.
"Mother, they were so stupid, they were going-"
She glared at me. "They?"
I deserved that.
"We need to get you to the hospital," she muttered as calmly as she could, clearly breaking under the stress. "The cuts are bad enough, but you said an alien did this?"
I glanced at her. "You're taking this remarkably well."
"How else am I supposed to take it, son? Acting hysterical is not going to get you to feel any better any time s-soon." She took a deep breath. "An alien?"
"It climbed out of a ship or a pod or something. I'd never seen anything like it before that was native to Osmos V. It's possible, I guess, that it could just be an animal I didn't recognize, but it sure looked like a spaceship's crash landing."
Mother nodded as she pulled the scarf down long enough to get a look at it and then tightened it again and supported my weight with her shoulder. "If that was really something from another planet, then there is a dangerous chance of infection."
Maybe it was the weakness from loss of blood, but something felt … off. What, exactly, I was not sure how to describe. The broken teeth… The lack of further injuries…
"I think I have the Gift."
She paused and locked eyes with me.
"It tried to bite me and walked away with broken teeth. I didn't - I didn't see how or when, but I think I protected myself. Became like stone?"
Mother clearly did not know what to think, hesitating for several moments before meeting my eyes again. "The Gift's not unheard of for someone your age, after exposure to trauma, but I hoped you had more time." She paused again and then placed her left hand against the ground beneath her feet. A moment later, sandstone rock encased her from finger to elbow. "This may sting, but it'll better keep any infections away until we can get you to a hospital."
She gripped with gentle fingers the back of my left knee. Sandstone rock swirled from her arm and down my leg until it coated the wound. It brought with it an itching, stinging pain that slowly subsided to a dull ache.
"I didn't know you could do that."
Mother shook her head, sighing. "There's a lot you don't know about the Gift, Cassian. While I am glad that it may have saved your life tonight, rest assured that with it comes a myriad of unique challenges. In some ways, I hoped you'd take after your father."
I didn't. I didn't want to be powerless in this new life.
LOS ANGELES
February 25, 19:51 PST
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE SEVEN
Kyle paced across his hallway carpet. He was letting his nerves get the better of him, and he needed to be strong. In a moment like this, he had to be strong. A piece of paper crumbled in his tightened fist, and he could barely bring up the strength to look at it again. There was too much going on for him to be worried about this.
Distantly, his mother struggled with remaining strong. She frantically spoke on the cordless house phone in an animated voice, though what she said made no sense to him. The volume on the television was far too loud, showing the same thing on every channel.
"… roup including my hometown, Coast City's own Green Lantern, have banded together to face off against the invaders!" An explosion in the video feed sounded so loud that it seemed to interrupt those in the studio.
"That's right, Rucker," another news person interjected. "Seems the latest trends in law enforcement around the country have struck a partnership to duke it out with our enemies together. How nice that we have aliens of our own to combat these aliens? If we live to breathe another day thanks to these folks, let's hope they don't take advantage of our weakness and use their newfound alliance against us."
"These guys fight for justice, Godfrey. If they've formed a league, then surely they can-"
Kyle tuned it out and considered whether he should be focused on the alien invasion happening a few states away or on the note he found on his pillow this morning. His mother - well, she hadn't mentioned it to him. Did she know? Or was she pre-occupied with the news?
He read the words one more time, slowly to himself and almost under his breath.
"Kyle,
I know you were hoping I'd stick around longer to hang out, but I'm afraid I can't refuse. My bosses have finally called me up to headquarters.
If you don't see me by Christmas this year, then I'll be sure to send a card by your mom and let you both know how I'm doing.
…
Kid, these days hanging with you have been some of my brightest.
Love,
Gabriel"
Kyle couldn't feel good about it. Gabriel had spent a lot of the last three or four weeks with Kyle and his mother. He hated to see the man go, just like that, but he'd just have to wait on Gabriel to come back so he can give the man a piece of his mind. Kyle knew his mother's heart would be broken. He and she had been flirty, after all!
The boy took a deep breath and then walked into the living room, his mom's frantic voice clearly upset. Some woman on television was talking about that weird bat-guy from Gotham blowing up one of the aliens, but he was only half-listening to the details. "Mom, I found this-"
"What honey?" She looked away from him as the conversation on the phone continued. "So we should head to shelters? What if there is not a shelter? Is base- okay, okay, anything underground."
With a single hand, she pushed Kyle toward the basement door and pointed fervently. Pulling the phone away from her ear, she practically hissed, "Get in there for now, I'll be with you in a second."
He listened to his mother, but he couldn't help but feel sad that she hadn't answered him or noticed him. They said the attack was in Nevada - that's states away from LA! They were going to be fine!