I could already start to feel my fingers begin to burn from the substance that laced the grass, lining the blades like a second skin. Again, I wiped my palms along my stomach, trying to get as much of it off. “Come on, Jonas,” Cassian repeated, and it seemed like his words were on replay in my mind. “Get up.”

I glanced down at where my foot was bent, feeling like my lungs were beginning to shrivel up into dust. It wasn’t bent unnaturally—I hadn't broken it or anything, that I knew for a fact. There wasn’t enough pain for it to be broken. I couldn’t help but stare at my stupid limb, though, or at the stupid baseball bat that lied just beyond me, obscured in the tall grass. Who leaves a baseball bat in the middle of the yard, anyway? Kids with dumb dreams to become dumb baseball players, who’ve already probably been eaten by alien mutant devil dogs, and—

Wait. Wait. I lunged forward, grabbing ahold of the baseball bat. It was a short one, definitely kid-sized, but it would do. Digging the wide end into the ground, I used it to leverage myself into a standing position, leaning my weight onto it. “Okay, I think—”

Cassie didn’t even wait for me to finish my sentence, or even fully grasp my footing. He grabbed ahold of my free wrist and pulled, trying to get me to move faster than I could. But he wasn’t heading for the street. No, he was heading for the house of his friend, for the back porch. I tried to put on the breaks, ask him what he was thinking, when I heard a voice. “Are you sure it’s this way, Eliria?”

“Human magnetic pulls interfere with my devices, so I’m not completely positive. But the span of our barrier isn’t that wide.”

“Yes,” came a man’s voice, “but I’d rather not spend the whole time running in circles. The more time we waste, the more potential subjects are eliminated.”

Cassian ducked behind the white porch, behind the array of flowers, pulling me down with him. The porch was raised off the ground by several feet. I fell to my knees and crawled as far back underneath the deck as I could, hoping to disappear into the purple shadows. There was mostly just tilled dirt underneath the porch, hard from years of being shielded by rainwater, but a few blades of grass poked up. I scanned Cassian’s hands, but no trace of silvery substance coated his skin. Thank God. “That’s why we shouldn’t have released them so early,” sighed a woman.

“Gods of Light, what is this—” the rustling sound grew louder until there was a deafening crack in the air, loud enough to make me jerk. It almost sounded like a bone breaking. “Earth and its foliage. I will never understand it.”

I ducked a little so I could see through the stems of flowers, trying to see where the aliens stood. The bush that Cassian and I were just peering through had been hacked to the ground, leaving a gaping hole in the shrubbery wall that separated the yard from the street. Though it ruined the aesthetic, I saw the hole for what it was. An easy doorway for me and Cassie. Now we just had to be able to get to it.

“And hey, I didn’t mean to press the release button. Who puts the mutt’s release button right next to the auto-pilot landing, anyway?”

There was a low sigh, one that felt like it shuttered through my bones. “Stop talking, all of you,” the man said—I couldn’t refer to him as my father. If I did, I’d shut down, and I couldn’t afford to shut down. Not with Cassie. Not again. “Eliria, I think your device is malfunctioning. This yard has already been sprayed with our pesticides.”

“Hmm…well, see here, it says—”

She stopped talking abruptly, and then there was silence. A long stretch of silence. So long that I wondered if they vanished into thin air. But as I ducked my head a little further, I saw that they had all stopped in the middle of the grass, in a small semi-circle.

And they all faced our direction.

My heart seized at the realization, panic kicking my blood pressure into high gear. They couldn’t see us. Right? No. The flowers blocked their vision. Underneath the deck was dark; we were pressed into the shadowy corners of it. Cassian’s breathing came in little gasps, but it wasn’t loud enough to garner their attention from so far, surely. I didn’t know much about the Luyians, but Beck never showed signs of super-hearing before. But nonetheless, they stood still, staring, staring.

I grabbed ahold of Cassian’s hand, getting my good foot sturdy underneath me. I wasn’t sure if we’d make it, but I was fully prepared to grab him and bolt. Damn my ankle.

And then—“What are you waiting for?” the man demanded, and all of the air fled from my lungs. “Pick it up.”

I realized he was talking to one of the women a beat before one responded, and relief made my vision almost white. “He should be in the barrier,” one said, her voice shaking a little. “But the call is coming from four units west of here. He—he shouldn’t be calling from outside the barrier.”

“Well, pick up the thing and we’ll figure out what’s going on.”

I couldn’t help but shake a little as I glanced Cassie’s way, unable to erase the feeling that we were just sitting ducks under this porch. His eyes were downcast, staring at the ground and a little glazed over, but I knew he was listening to their every word. I still gripped the baseball bat tightly, in a way that made my hand feel numb. It would knock one of them down, maybe, but there’d still be three others. As bad-ass as it’d be, I didn’t think I was capable of a swing that would knock out all four of them at the same time. I mean, I knew that having Cassian to spur me on was—

“—Beckihem?”

My head whipped low, low enough that I was able to see through the flowers and shrubbery edging the deck. The group still stood in their semi-circle, but one of the women held a device between them. Well, held isn’t quite right; it floated a little from the palm of her hand.

But what did she just say?

“He’s here with me,” a new voice returned, filtering like music from the speaker of the device. The voice was familiar, so much so that it tickled my brain, taunting me, but I couldn’t place it. Everything in me was running and thinking too fast to keep up. “I found him just outside the barrier.”

“What was he doing there?” the man in the group demanded, shifting his stance on the grass. “Beckihem, answer.”

And then his voice—gosh, his musical voice—came through, crackling like thready glass. “It was a mistake. I intended to be on the right side of the barrier, I just—stumbled.”

I pressed both of my hands against his chest and shoved—lightly, but enough that he had to take a step away from me. I took a few steps away from him, pressing my hands to my head, trying to shake the fog there.

“I tried to get through,” he went on, voice still holding the same monotone. Beck had both of his palms pressed against the barrier, eyes still wide, mouth moving quickly. Quickly, yet there were no words coming out. The pain was still in his eyes, the panic, but I couldn’t hear a word he said. “But I’d left my key back at the apartment. I couldn’t pass through without it.” Go to the apartment. Run to the apartment.

“It’s a good thing your signal can still be picked up through your suit,” the woman holding the device said, tilting her head a little to the side. “Master Jeilion can bring you through and you can meet us at the headquarters. We’re on Brooke Street right now, heading to Fletching.”

“Fletching?” Beck replied. “No, not Fletching. Fleming. It’s about two blocks east of Brooke. Near the water tower.”

Cassian’s hand spasmed against mine, and I jolted, having forgotten I still held it. I’d been too busy focusing on Beck’s voice, his words… Fleming Street wasn’t by the water tower—that was the road that the diner was on. Outside the barrier.

Whoever spoke next sounded confused. “Fleming? I don’t recall—”

“The human language is complex.” A slight chuckle passed through the speaker. “Tricky to fully grasp. The names are very similar. But no, my vials and test subjects trackers are at my apartment on Fleming.”

A blast of energy coursed through me, starting from my head and working its way down my body. All at once, what he was doing became obvious. Yes, he was lying—that much was obvious—but he was doing it for me. So they’d stay away from his apartment in Fletching. So they’d stay away from me.

I readjusted my grip on Cassian’s hand, drawing his eyes to mine. Get ready to run,” I mouthed to him.

Because the group of aliens was walking towards us—well, not us, but towards the sidewalk, and to get there, they’d have to walk past us. Cassie gathered his feet underneath himself, crouched underneath the deck. Their footfalls came closer. “How many did you manage to mark, Beckihem?”

His response was immediate. “Four.”

“Four? You were here for over a year!”

“Yes, and I was placed in a town with elders. None of them were viable candidates.” His voice came closer, closer, until it sounded like it was right in my ear. Everything in me tensed, and I had to keep from closing my eyes. “Three males and one female. They should be good for the trials. Their vials tested clean.”

Trials and vials? Candidates? What was he talking about? More lies to get them away? Something in his tone, though, made me think otherwise. Something in the aliens’ tones. “I would’ve preferred more females than males,” said the man, and to my relief, his voice sounded further away. As if they walked past.

“Humans don’t last long on Luyah,” one of the women said. “She wouldn’t last for the duration of a human-term pregnancy. It’s easier for the other way around.”

Beck said something in reply, but a fizzing sound filled my ears, like someone had placed cotton inside. Humans don’t last long on Luyah. She wouldn’t last for a pregnancy. So many things about all of that sounded and felt wrong, wrong, wrong. Humans on Luyah. Pregnancy.

Was Beck…was he rounding up subjects for this? Three males, one female. Who were they? Did I know them?

Was one me?

“Jonas,” Cassian whispered, soft voice filtering through the cotton. “They’re gone. Are we running?”

My heart was already, jumping and skipping beats like hopscotch. I didn’t bother wasting any time replying to him; I grabbed his hand and pushed our way out from underneath the deck. The pain in my ankle throbbed, but it was duller now, and I knew it was from the electric adrenaline that left me shaking. I knew we had to get to Fletching, but did I want to anymore?

Dumb question. Of course I still wanted to. Where else would I go?

And as bad as all of that seemed, I knew Beck. I told Cassian I trusted Beck, and I did. With my life.

I still leaned a little of my weight onto the baseball bat as we hurried across the grass. Yes, Cassian was right, the aliens were gone, out of sight, but they’d come back. They’d realize as soon as they bounced off against that barrier that Fleming was out of their reach. They’d come back to Fletching. Would we be sitting ducks?

“When this is over, I never want you to babysit me again,” Cassian muttered, pulling close to my side.

“Why is this my fault?” I demanded, only half offended. “I came and saved you, you little twerp.”

His gaze was narrowed, and he batted a few loose strands of hair from his face. After running and nearly being caught by an alien race, the ponytail I’d pulled back started to loosen. “I’m not an idiot—you said your boyfriend’s name is Beck. Short for Beckihem, right? In the military. Those people definitely looked militaristic.” He said militaristic with a ‘th’ sound, the rush of his words crumpling them together. “It’s his fault.”

“Beck has his reasons,” I said quickly, absolutely. “He’ll explain everything when he comes to us. He’s getting through the barrier.”

“When he finds us,” Cassian said quietly as we reached the opening of the bushes, “and brings the others straight to us.”

I opened my mouth to say something in response when all of the air suddenly whooshed from my lungs, as if someone took the baseball bat in my hands and slammed it into my stomach. Or my head. Because a concussion would’ve been the only explanation for what I was looking at, surely. Surely this wasn’t real. Surely this wasn’t real. Surely this wasn’t…

The creature in front of me almost resembled a coyote, with mangy hair, matted thick with blood. Its jaws were huge, almost Pitbull-like in structure, hinting at a powerful grip. Around its mouth hung something pink and gushy looking, and I tried not to look so close. But its eyes—they were completely and utterly white. No pupils, no nothing. It had no tail, and its paws were about the side of my hands. It stood ten feet away, still, noise pointed in our direction.

“That’s the thing—” Cassian’s voice cut off with fear, the both of us as still as death. The dog’s head cocked at the sound, nostrils flaring. “That’s the thing that attacked Mrs. Rivers.”

It was the thing that killed Mrs. Rivers. And it raised one massive paw from the ground, letting loose a low growl. I couldn’t help but think of all those people, dead, in the middle of the street, blood mixing on the pavement. I now see why everyone was screaming…

There was only a second of time between the time Cassian finished talking and when the massive creature lunged, and there was no time to think.