Chapter 1

Earth during the invasion. 16 years ago:

Rohn:

“Hurry up.” Cirra sat on her bags, huffing dramatically. Classically beautiful, the Sangrin female had an even plum complexion and delicate, curling horns. She wore a traditional robe of fine white silk, wrapped tight with a thick sash against the chill in the air.

She was also the most entitled, irritating female Rohn had ever encountered. Whatever physical beauty she had; she dispelled that illusion the moment she opened her mouth. Mud splattered the hem of the white fabric and Rohn couldn’t help but think it couldn’t happen to a better person.

“If you’re bored, you can load those bags. Save us time,” Rohn said.

The female tossed her head back, the ornamental metal tips on her horns glistening under the Earth sun. “Isn’t that your job?”

“My job is to operate this ship safely.” Rohn slapped the matte gray side of the transport vessel. “Personal valet is not part of my job description.”

She huffed again. “Fine. Never mind. Just get me off this uncultured planet and back to civilization.”

Rohn refrained from reminding the female that Earth was in the midst of a war against the Suhlik. Piloting one female about in a ship was a tremendous waste of resources. He’d much rather be in a firefight than acting as a personal chauffeur to the spoiled female.

“Not my mate, not my problem,” he muttered.

“Excuse me? What was that?”

Rohn scratched the base of his horns. “Let me finish the pre-flight checklist and we’ll be ready to go.”

“That’s better.” Cirra gathered up the muddy hem of her robe and stomped up the ramp, disappearing into the ship. No doubt she would soon complain of the lack of in-flight entertainment or refreshments.

The sooner he took off, the sooner he got rid of the irritating Cirra, and the happier everyone would be.

Famous last words, as the Terrans say.

Nakia:

School was dumb. Going to school during an alien invasion? Super dumb.

No matter how much she protested, Nakia’s mom wouldn’t budge on school attendance. It didn’t matter if everyone else stayed home—where it was safe. No one was going to school these days, not even the teachers.

She understood her mom’s reasoning. Attending school kept up the appearance of normalcy, and when the world was in the midst of chaos, anything normal became precious. Sacred.

Her mom still made her a packed lunch. Today was a dented can of peaches and a sandwich made with weird homemade bread. Pickings were slim but it was something. Her mom wasn’t the greatest cook in the world but back when the supermarkets were opened, meals came out of a box or frozen. Easy. You didn’t have to be a great cook to put a frozen lasagna in the oven. Those days were gone but her mom did what she could with the food aid boxes and even followed the suggested recipes in the pamphlets that came with the box. Everything her mom made was burnt on the outside and undercooked on the inside, but she put a meal on the table and Nakia ate it, grateful for that piece of normality.

Aliens weren’t normal. Nakia didn’t care what the news bulletins said. The golden-skinned lizard-looking aliens arrived and they turned out to be the bad guys. She watched the same disastrous footage again and again when the Suhlik gutted the president during a press conference.

What happens when aliens murder the president on live television? Chaos.

Cell phones had stopped working immediately. Television had been reduced to what could be received with an antenna, which was mostly news bulletins. But that didn’t bother Nakia. She gobbled up any information she could get and watched the president die again and again, along with footage of bombed out rubble of New York. As major cities joined the list of destroyed cities, Nakia couldn’t tear herself away from the screen. It wasn’t healthy. Her obsession with watching the world fall apart slowly consumed her.

Then the power went out. Suddenly the trouble that was happening far away was happening to her. It became frightening and, worse still, real. Her only link to the outside world, to information to anchor her in the chaos, came over the radio.

The government said they had an alliance with another alien faction, the Mahdfel. They brought an army and the weapons humanity needed to fight off an invasion, but they also had much-needed supplies, including medicine.

It sounded too good to be true, of course, but Nakia hadn’t seen an alien in person, Suhlik or Mahdfel, so she couldn’t say for sure. She wished she knew what the good guys looked like. The radio said they were red, green, and even purple. They had horns and tails, or just tails, shaggy fur like a yeti, they could camouflage their skin like a chameleon, or turn pitch black and disappear, and none of it made sense.

The Mahdfel couldn’t possibly be all those things. Right? At least the bad guys all agreed to look the same, with their golden skin and murder-lizard reputation. If she ever saw one, she’d recognize it a moment before it tried to kill her.

The worst of the invasion stayed far away from her little town in the middle of nowhere. Her biggest problems were the lack of power, staying warm during the winter, and being one of the few nerds to bother going to school.

The world was falling apart, and her mom insisted that as long as the school was standing, Nakia ’s butt would go.

Well, joke’s on her. That morning the air raid sirens went off and something big struck the school. The walls shook, the floor wobbled and Nakia dove under a table as the building collapsed into a huge pile of rubble. So there. No more school.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, only it wasn’t thunder. It was bombs and the sound of buildings collapsing. The rubble surrounding her muffled the sound but she felt the vibrations in the earth. Or maybe that was the floor about to give way.

Nakia counted to ten and then backward, letting out a deep breath. Panic wouldn’t help her. She needed to be calm and alert. Rescue would come. Stay calm.

Nakia shifted, trying to find a comfortable position and ignore the rubble digging into her butt. She could feel her butt, so that had to be good. In the dark, she couldn’t see the large slab of concrete pinning down her leg, but she felt the weight of it. At least it didn’t hurt, which had to be a bad sign. Being crushed under a wall was supposed to hurt, not be a distant numbness. Or maybe her brain partitioned off the pain, like how she read about that sometimes happening in survival situations.

Voices cried for help, suffocated by the rubble.

Partially under a library table, the collapsed debris formed a cocoon around her. Dusty, warm and stuffy, she briefly worried about air. Panicked thoughts of suffocation closed in on her.

No, if she could hear other people, then enough air got through. No warning sirens went off about incoming alien bombers, so it was lucky she’d dived under the table when she heard the aircraft engines. Bobby Jasper—another unfortunate nerd who wouldn’t miss school—laughed and teased her about being chicken just before the ceiling caved in.

Shit. Should she be calling out for help?

“Bobby? Bobby, are you there?” No response. She really hoped Bobby was okay. “Hello? Anyone?”

She was tired and thirsty. She wanted to tell her mom that going to school while the world was ending was so, so dumb but mostly she just wanted her mom.

Did she pass out? Nakia didn’t know. Pain seemed to be a distant thing as she floated above her body, which probably meant she was losing too much blood.

Fuck this. She wasn’t going to sit quiet while she bled out.

“Hey! I’m here! Help!” she shouted until her throat went raw.