It had been four days since Aialo-El had stolen the RigarTek schematics. They hadn't told a soul.

Well—Richard had not told a soul. He was not convinced that Garth had not told one or more souls. It was unlike Garth not to loudly tell souls about things, especially weird or distressing things, but neither of them had left the house in those four days and Richard had been the one to open the door for the pizza delivery person. There was social media, but Richard hadn't so much as hovered a digit over the Instagram icon since he didn't know when, so if Garth had posted about green cat burglars, it was a problem for Future Richard.

Another problem for Future Richard? What to do with the blinky call button the woman had given him. It was probably nothing but a cheap light-up keychain, but he still felt weird about it. He had been keeping it in his pocket because...well...what else was he going to do with it?

It had been three days since the RiGarTek FundUp campaign had been prematurely launched. They hadn't been able to help telling many, many souls about that, but they were Internet strangers who could be ignored with the closing of a browser window.

It had been two days since they'd made contact with a perplexed but intrigued woman named Patricia who manufactured bespoke lawn ornaments from the comfort of her two-stall garage. She confirmed that she had experience in gnomes but none in flamingos.

That was fine; they were going to work up to the flamingos, anyway.

It had been one day since Garth had succumbed to sleep deprivation while standing in the shower, earning himself a few bruises and giving Richard, who'd rushed to the rescue, a sight that could not be unseen.

And it had been one minute since Richard had finalized the first working prototype of his micro solar cell, patent pending.

Richard's primal victory cry brought Garth running from the kitchen to the driveway. He was carrying half of a grilled cheese sandwich, wild-eyed and wilder-haired. "What! What happened! Are you alive?"

"It's working!" Richard shouted. "This solar cell is working magic, just like my massive brain! Look at this!" He thrust his multimeter into the air in a victory fist pump.

Garth stood frozen on the front stoop, staring at the multimeter. It was an orange and black handheld device, about the size of a walkie talkie, which was used to measure different stuff about electricity, like whether there was any. He frowned and took a bite of his grilled cheese, speaking through it. "Um, Richard, that's a little bigger than we talked about. They're supposed to be small, like—"

Richard laughed, tossing the multimeter onto the grass and holding up his right hand. There, nestled in his palm, was a tiny solar cell. It was the size of the passenger window of a matchbox car. "This small enough for you?"

Bounding down the steps, Garth grinned. He joined Richard on the driveway and peered at the micro-cell. "Jeez, man. Yeah, I think that's gonna be small enough."

"You have no idea how hard it is to work at this scale. My eyeballs are about ready to fall out of my head." Richard rubbed the bridge of his nose and then thumbed his left eyelid. He'd developed a twitch in that eye over the past couple of days, a symptom of sleep deprivation or stress or both. "I can't believe it. We are really doing this."

"You bet we are." Garth snapped his fingers with both hands and wriggled his shoulders and hips in a dance of excitement. "We better call Patricia. There are some supply chain things we gotta figure out. Listen to me. Supply chain. I sound like I know what I'm talking about."

"Because you do. We both do. RiGarTek is real. I had my doubts, and a lot of them, but look at this." Richard picked the tiny solar cell up between his left thumb and forefinger, very gently, and raised it so that he and Garth could both see it clearly. "This is the future of solar tech. This, right here. And we're going to be there."

Garth wriggled again and shuffled his way along the driveway, dancing out the thrill.

Richard did not join him, but he watched with a wide grin. He was buzzing with adrenaline. This moment was the culmination of years of effort. Years of dreams. They had so much work ahead of them, but—

Something very fast and very hot zipped past Richard's shoulder. He flinched on instinct, the same way he'd flinch if a wasp buzzed past him. Before he had time to think, glass shattered behind him.

Richard half-turned to see that the window of his office had broken. He turned in the other direction, looking out at the quiet residential street. A slate-colored Bonneville crept down the road, its blue-haired driver keeping it five below the limit.

On the other side of the street stood a stranger.

The stranger had their arm raised, pointing toward Richard.

"Hey," Garth said curiously through another mouthful of grilled cheese. "Our window—"

"Garth!" Richard barked. He grabbed his friend by the arm and started to run in the other direction. "Gun!"

Whatever it was the stranger was shooting, the weapon was silent. Richard knew they'd fired again because he felt the bullet this time, felt it graze his shoulder. He was aware of heat, but no pain. Had it missed him, or was he just too scared to register it?

Their path away from the gunfire started out aimless. Then Garth veered to the left, straight into Richard. "Garage!" he snapped.

Richard didn't need telling twice. He barreled into the side door of the garage and fumbled for the handle, but even as he turned it, he realized it wouldn't open. He always kept the garage locked, and he hadn't been out there today.

"Locked. Shit. Shit." A bullet hit the door of the garage a hairsbreadth from Richard's head. He staggered back, bumping into Garth. "Garth, my phone's in the house."

"Run! Just run!" Garth split from him, streaking toward the back yard. Richard followed, too scared to think.

The men made it to the back patio, a large concrete slab with a careworn charcoal grill standing sentry. They clattered through the screen door and into the house. Richard turned on his heel and slammed both doors shut. He locked the inner door with fingers that did not want to work

"Call the cops!" Garth shouted. He was already in the front part of the house.

Richard hurried to his office, where he'd left his phone. He snatched it from the desk, staring at the shattered glass on the carpet. When he backed out of the room, he struck his elbow on the door, swore, grabbed for the knob, and turned the lock. He stumbled backward into the hallway, swinging the door closed as he went.

"I got the front door locked. Call 911, Jesus, Richard!" Garth had appeared in the hall again. His face was white, and there was blood on his shirt, soaking his shoulder and the upper part of his sleeve.

"Holy shit! Holy shit, you're shot!" Richard stammered.

"It's fine. I got my phone. Did you call? I'm calling."

"You're shot! They shot you! Why did they shoot you?"

Both men flinched at the sound of more glass shattering, this time in the kitchen. Richard dialed 911, grabbing Garth's clean sleeve and dragging him backward toward the stairs. It was the best option they had to get away from their assailants, the one option available to them that would put distance between them and whoever was trying to kill them.

Richard was getting a lot of experience being threatened by guns. He did not like it.

"911. What is your emergency?"

Richard hurried up the stairs, hearing Garth behind him. "Yeah, we need help, please? We—I don't know, we're being attacked. With guns. They're shooting at us."

I"What is your location, sir?"

For a moment, Richard couldn't remember. The address then came to him, but he couldn't make his mouth work to say it. He was now in his bedroom, and Garth was closing the door and locking them inside. He was sweating, obviously in pain.

"Sir?"

Richard managed to give their address. He watched Garth move to the window and close the blinds and the curtains, just like in the movies. "Okay, we closed the windows. I mean the curtains," he said.

"So you're inside the house?"

"Yeah. Yes, we are."

"Okay. The shooter—are they inside?"

"No."

"Okay. That's good. I need you to stay low, sir, and keep away from the windows. Can you do that?"

Richard thought this was a marvelous suggestion. He backed farther away from the window and gestured to Garth, who followed suit. "We're back away from the window."

"Good. Stay low, and stay away from the window. Can you give me your name?"

"Yeah, it's Richard. Campbell."

"Richard, I'm Amy. Are you hurt?"

"No, I don't think so, but my friend. My friend got shot."

"I'm fine," Garth said, his voice strained. "It's just my arm. Or shoulder. I guess it's kind of my shoulder." He looked down at himself, tucking his chin to get a good view of the wound. "...Or maybe this is my chest."

"Oh, Jesus. He's not fucking fine!" Richard shouted, as if the dispatcher were the one who had insisted that a gunshot was of no concern. "You've got to send somebody—"

"Try to stay calm, sir. Help is on the way. Is your friend conscious?"

Garth was back at the window. He carefully parted the blinds enough to peer through, again, just like in the movies.

"Yeah, he's conscious," Richard said. "Garth, get away from the window, you bloody idiot. He's fine. I mean, he's not fine, obviously he isn't fine, but he's conscious and upright and breathing. He says it's his shoulder. That's where the blood is. But there's blood. They had guns. Why did they have guns?"

"Richard, help is on the way. Try to find a location where you can put barriers between yourself and the assailant. A closed and locked door. Can you do that?"

"Yeah, we did that. We're in the bedroom and we locked the door."

"Richard?" Garth said. "You should probably see this."

"Is there any way for you to move something in front of the door?" asked the dispatcher, her voice calm and steady. "You can wedge a chair underneath the door handle. You can also put other heavy objects in front of the door, such as a dresser. Can you do that for me, Richard?"

Richard only half-heard the advice. He had crept up behind Garth, who was shivering, his breath coming in shallow pants. Richard could see the wound now, or at least its location: it was beneath Garth's collarbone on the right side of his chest. Torn and bloody flannel obscured the wound itself.

"Yeah," Richard said absently, staring at the bloody mess. "There's a chair. We have a chair for socks." His aunt had always insisted that a bedroom was not fully furnished unless it had a chair so that a person could sit down to put on her socks. That didn't matter right now, of course, because Richard was already wearing socks, and also because when he finally tore his gaze away from Garth's gunshot wound to see what was outside, he noticed that it was not a gunman.

It was a monster.

"I told you she was an alien!" Garth hissed.

"Richard? Are you still with me?"

Richard had dropped his phone from his ear. The dispatcher's voice was a buzz in his periphery, beyond his awareness. He simply had no wits to spare for anything but the thing standing in his yard.

He'd thought it was human-shaped at first. That was when he'd seen it across the street out of the corner of his eye while being shot at. He now saw that there was nothing humanlike about the thing. It had four jointed legs like a crab's. Arms, yes, it had arms, and it had to have some kind of fingers to operate a gun, right? So there was one thing about the creature that was humanlike, perhaps, but its face—its face was a rust-colored, chitinous mask with a horned frill like that of a triceratops. It had six eyes, if those black holes in its face were eyes. Maybe they were nostrils. Maybe it had six nostrils.

Garth's voice was breathy with panic. "I told you she was an alien. I told you she was an alien. Oh my God. Ohhh my God, Richard, aliens are shooting at us!"

"She looked nothing like that!" Richard cried. He backed away from the window. "She looked like a woman in makeup! That's—"

"It's an alien! It's her alien friend! We're being hunted by aliens!"

"She didn't shoot us, she—"

Garth turned to Richard, his eyes wide. With a blend of horror and offense, he cried, "She shot me! Don't you remember that she shot me? And just—I need you to focus, Richard, because there's a friggin' spider monster outside. What are we going to do?"

"Why are you asking me? I've never been shot at by aliens before!"

"Oh, so I'm supposed to be the expert?"

Richard had drawn breath to reply when an unsettling sound came from outside of the window. It was a knocking sound, as if a heavy branch had fallen against the side of the house.

Garth peered down at the lawn again.

Richard did not care for the way his eyes widened.

"Okay," Garth said, "So, it's climbing the house."

"It's what?"

"Richard we have to call the green lady she gave us the thing—"

"Why is it climbing the house?!"

"Richard, it's climbing the house, we have to call the green lady! She said if it was an emergency and this is an emergency."

Richard stared at his phone. The call with 911 was still active; he could hear the dispatcher speaking, though he couldn't make out what she was saying over the buzzing in his ears. "I don't...know...her number," he said.

"No, the thing! She gave you that thing! Use the thing, where's the thing?" Frustrated, panicked, Garth held his hand out and tapped his thumb against his knuckle as if he were using a remote control on Richard.

Oh.

The thing.

"It will not harm you. It is a communication device. Should your friend fail to recover—only should he fail to recover—you may hail me, and I will come with one who can offer aid. Do not open communication unless the circumstances are dire. Do you understand?"

Well, Garth had survived being stunned, but circumstances were certainly dire.

There was a knocking, scraping sound from outside, and it was ascending. Richard fished in his pocket for the communication device Aialo-El had given him, and he pressed the button. 

It's moments like these when I know I am, without a doubt, not cut out for surviving adventures. If a crab person showed up in my yard, I would just go down. 

What would your reaction be? Would you fight or flee?