45

Lila Easterlin

June 9, 2045. Sydney, Australia.

Faruk Demir sidled up to Lila as they were leaving Ayami Ogego’s funeral service.

“Any word?”

Lila shook her head. “There won’t be. Either it’ll happen or it won’t.” They speculated in coded whispers; everyone had an opinion, but no one knew anything for sure. Meanwhile, the defenders were busy making plans for their diaspora. At this point the official response to the defenders’ “request” was “We’re considering it.” If they were really considering it, the ambassadors had not successfully conveyed to their respective countries just how unstable the defenders were.

“Has anything been communicated to you about … your own status?” Faruk asked.

“Nothing.”

She was tired of people asking, and she found herself getting irritable when the issue was raised. It seemed inconceivable that she could be compelled to stay in this lunatic asylum, yet even if the defenders’ other demands were resolved through peaceful means, it was conceivable the defenders would simply refuse to allow Lila to leave. What could Washington do, send in Navy SEALs in the middle of the night to steal her back? Actually, that might be their plan. The thought of being trapped here, with the other emissaries gone, was intolerable. She wouldn’t let Kai join her, no matter what. She wasn’t going to risk his and Errol’s lives.

Lila waved goodbye to Faruk as he headed toward whatever event was awaiting him next. His special defender friend was especially needy, and must hold a privileged position, because he rarely seemed to work. Lila had a free hour and decided to walk in Victory Park.

She admired the elaborate flower beds. Defenders seemed to favor sunflowers, likely because of their size. Lila wondered if they drew pleasure from flowers, or if they planted them simply because parks were supposed to have flowers.

Maybe she could negotiate some sort of guest-worker status with the defenders. That was a thought. She could agree to fly to Australia three or four times a year for a few weeks. She could tolerate that. The defenders were, after all, her life’s work. If they wanted more of their kind, she and Dominique could work on creating new defenders who were less volatile. These new defenders might even take on leadership positions, become examples for the existing defenders on how to be more reasoned, and less violent.

Her mood lightened as she walked, and planned. She was also feeling better because there were no Luyten around, she realized. Usually there were a few in the park, planting flowers or picking up the defenders’ trash. They never gave any indication they noticed her, but she knew they knew exactly who she was, and how she felt about them, and that bothered her.

Lila spotted a glint of green plastic buried in fallen leaves. She kicked it loose: a flattened Lido Lemonade bottle. She chuckled. “Bits of us are still here, even fifteen years later.”

A deafening honk made Lila jump. It was followed by another, and another. To her left, where she could see the road nearest her, defenders poured into the street.

“Oh, no.” Had they really done it? No. Surely it was a drill.

A deep roar, like the sound of a raging fire, rose from the east. Lila looked toward the sky.

The sound grew louder.

She jumped at the first thump. It was followed by a dozen more. Missiles rose overhead, angled toward the coast.

The roar from the east grew steadily louder, punctuated by ever more thumps.

Hundreds of Alliance bombers came into view on the horizon.

Many were being blown out of the sky by surface-to-air missiles, but they just kept coming, filling the sky. Cluster bombs shot from the bombers and curled toward the buildings below. She felt the impacts deep in her chest. Clouds of dust and debris rose as if in slow motion.

A terrible sadness enveloped Lila as she watched. The bombs kept dropping, leaping out of the fighters, surging toward the ground like they were eager to meet their targets. She watched, hand over mouth, as Victory Tower—the tallest building in the defenders’ so recently constructed city—seemed to slide sideways before tipping, crushing several other buildings as it crashed to Earth.

From horizon to horizon, the sky was filled with Alliance bombers. There were so many explosions they blended together to create one endless, deafening boom.

She had to find shelter, or she was going to die. Lila kicked off her shoes—heels for the funeral—and ran, her palms covering her ears. They’d planned to rendezvous in the sewer pipe if the invasion came, but it was too far. She had to find something nearby. She raced toward the streets.

Above, defender fighter jets roared into view, flying higher than the invaders. They fired cannon bursts, creating a series of blinding flashes, like a sudden burst of fireworks. Alliance aircraft seemed to disintegrate, raining onto the smoldering city.

As Lila reached the street she realized how stupid she’d been to kick off her shoes. There was broken glass everywhere.

Hearing gruff shouts, she ducked behind a parked vehicle. A platoon of defenders thundered past. On the other side of the street, a convoy of vehicles roared by, defenders squatting elbow to elbow in their beds, no doubt on their way to retrieve the heavy weapons stored out in the country. They must be loving this—more war at last. She thought of Erik, wondered where he was. They were special friends no more.

A new sound lit the air: dozens of huge booms, far away. Artillery fire, maybe naval gunfire? Alan had said the Alliance would pound the city from ships. Lila stumbled, caught herself, and pushed on as the tops of buildings disintegrated.

Pain lanced the underside of her foot. Lila stopped, balanced on one leg to examine it. A nasty shard of glass was sticking out. Eyes watering from the pain, she pulled it out and tossed it aside.

Something slammed into the side of her head, knocking her down. Blackness swept over her as she lay on the sidewalk, her cheek pressed to the concrete. She fought it, struggled to get to her knees. At first her body wouldn’t respond; her hands opened and closed spasmodically, clawing the pavement. Through sheer force of will she made it to her knees, touched the side of her head. There was a deep, straight gash an inch above her ear. It felt as if her scalp, her hair, was hanging lower than it should. Her hand came away bloody.

Struggling to her feet, Lila staggered on.

She wondered if Oliver was still alive, if the others had reached shelter in time. Then she thought of Kai, their little man, Errol, and she nearly sobbed.

Up ahead, one of the enormous exhaust grates built into the sidewalks was leaned against a storefront, exposing a huge open hole. Lila ran bent at the waist, listing to the right, correcting, drifting right again until she reached the hole.

There was an enormous ladder, the rungs too far apart. She hugged one of the ladder’s vertical bars, paused, and took one last look at the city, the bombers overhead like a chain-link steel roof, the air stinking of soot and gasoline. Then she slid into near darkness.

She reached a huge horizontal sewer pipe as the earth above continued to rattle, the booms only slightly muffled. She sensed she wasn’t nearly far enough underground to be safe if a bomb landed nearby, but looking around, she couldn’t see a way to go lower.

Then she spotted an opening, and limped a hundred feet deeper into the tunnel. Shrouded in darkness, there was a ragged hole in the side of the enormous pipe. She stepped through and found herself in a wider tunnel, freshly dug, angling downward. It was pitch-black.

Every fiber in her was repulsed by the thought of climbing into that hole.

A bomb struck fairly close; dirt rained down onto her head. The open wound burned. She had to go farther down. Alan had said the Alliance would pound the city for hours, maybe days.

Lila sat, then eased herself down the steep grade. The thought of being alone in a dark tunnel for hours or days terrified her to the core.

She kept sliding, freshly dug earth tumbling down with her. Once she was down, would she be able to climb back up? The thought sent bright stabs of panic through her as she dropped. It was too late to go back.

The tunnel leveled out; Lila spotted a faint blue glow ahead. Cautiously, she got to her feet, walked the final sixty feet, the light growing brighter. She reached a curve in the wall and, heart drumming, followed the curve a dozen more feet.

The tunnel opened onto a dimly lit room packed with Luyten. Some were curled into balls; others stood along the walls. One was wounded; it lay near the center while two others tried to stanch the bleeding from a half dozen ragged gashes.

Lila turned and fled back through the tunnel, running blindly, hands in front of her, expecting to feel a Luyten’s cilia wrap around her ankle at any second and drag her back into the room where they would tear her apart. She reached the slope, stumbled in the soft earth, landed face-first, sprang up immediately, and clawed at the dirt, panting in fear. Overhead, bombs thumped like the whole city was being reduced to dust. Lila felt blood dripping off her hair onto her shoulder and chest as she scrabbled in the soft dirt with her hands and feet, trying to find purchase.

She’d managed to climb twenty feet or so, the angle growing steadily steeper, when she lost her grip and slid down again.

Lila pressed her forehead into the dirt and shook her head. There was no way. She was trapped.

It occurred to her that if the Luyten were chasing her, they would have caught her before now. She turned and sat, listening to the sounds of Luyten moving around in the bunker. Five had told Oliver they were going to remain neutral. Maybe they meant it.

She leaned against the tunnel wall, drew up her knees. This was insane. The World Alliance was bombing defenders while Lila took refuge in a shelter filled with Luyten.

Lila shrieked and scurried backward as a thick Luyten appendage pressed against her. She backed into the shelter, where the Luyten squeezed past her and continued into the shelter.

The Luyten in the shelter simply ignored her. Rather than risk being in the way of other arriving Luyten, she sat against the wall, in a wedge near the exit where the wall angled.

Looking around the makeshift shelter, she spotted crates of food tucked into the far corner, plastic barrels of water. Blue iridescent lights jutted from the walls at rough intervals. Lila wondered if the Luyten preferred the blue tinge because it approximated the light of their home world, because it made it more difficult for defenders to detect them, or simply because it had been easiest to pilfer from their masters. One thing was certain: They’d prepared for this. Thanks to Oliver, they’d had warning.

Every Luyten in the shelter could hear her thoughts. In the dim light, her mind conjured unbidden images of Luyten cooking cars full of screaming people, crawling up from the sewers in Atlanta, bearing down on her father …

Yet in the end, when they’d lost, they set down their weapons and marched into those camps, leaving themselves at the mercy of humans. And Lila’s people had betrayed them.

Why were they tolerating her presence now, she wondered?