I sighed. The hill was five miles away. “We’ve got to get on the road, Cy! It will be so much faster.”
Cy thought a moment and then nodded. “Agreed. Let’s go! Let’s go!”
The sky began to turn colors. Cy was a good quarter mile in front of me, and Dr. Z was farther behind me than that.
Cy turned back, and I waved him on. “It’s okay! Go! We’ll catch up!”
A low, throbbing sound came from the other side of the hill. Cy seemed to recognize it and took off in a sprint, more than a sprint. He seemed to have switched on the nitro and surged ahead. A few moments later, he disappeared over the hill. I picked up the pace, afraid that he would see Apolonia and leave before I could see him one last time. Dr. Z was falling farther behind.
“Hurry!” I called to him, but my voice was drowned out by the pulsating noise.
Just before I reached the peak of the hill, Benji’s Mustang appeared from the other direction, stopping abruptly the second he saw me. The roaring thrum was so loud I couldn’t hear him coming.
Benji jumped out, ran around the front of his car, and wrapped his arms around me as he crashed into me.
“Christ, Rory!” he yelled over the noise. “You’re freezing!” He yanked off his coat and draped it around me. “Are you okay? I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
I had two fistfuls of his shirt, burying my face in his chest. “I’m so sorry I didn’t call you!”
He held me at arm’s length to look me over. “You’re covered in mud. What the heck have you been doing?”
“I…” I looked in his eyes. He wasn’t waiting for me to give away all my secrets. He was genuinely confused and concerned. I had trusted Cy more than once during this crazy night. It was his turn to trust me. “How did you know to look for me here?” I was yelling close to his face like we were in a dance club. The pulsing noise was so loud that it seemed to drown out everything else, even my thoughts.
Benji glanced at the hill and then back at me. “Because that’s where everyone else is.”
“What?” I said, pushing away from him to run to the top of the hill.
Military vehicles were surrounding a large craft, every curve of its hull smooth but not shiny. Strange symbols spanned a quarter of its length, and the light coming from its underbelly seemed to glow from its casing. It was hovering just a couple of feet off the ground over the remnant foundation of the old gas station on the far side of the bridge.
“It’s the Nayara,” I breathed.
“The what?” Benji asked.
“Her ship,” I said, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. There was no denying it now.
The Nayara had come to take Cy away. He would board her, and I’d never see him again.
“Whose ship?” Benji asked.
Dozens of soldiers had encircled the craft, most pointing their automatic rifles. Others were pointing Geiger counters or video cameras.
“It’s been there for over an hour, just sitting there. I looked for you all night. When I couldn’t find you and you didn’t answer your phone, I figured you were…with Cyrus.”
I turned to him, a little offended. “Seriously? You thought I’d just hop off your floor and get into Cy’s bed?”
Benji looked ashamed. “I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a run to blow off some steam. It passed right over me, and then I saw the Humvees heading this way. I ran back to my car and drove this way, thinking there would be a roadblock or checkpoint or something.”
“Are there any?”
“A few orange-and-white barricades, but no one is manning them. I just drove around them. It looks as though they called everyone to the site once the movement started.”
I glanced down, looking for Cy. I didn’t see him, but I did see the man with crocodile boots standing in the middle of it all. No gun. No camera. Just staring at the ship with his hands on his hips.
“I don’t know. I just had a feeling you’d be here.”
“Benji,” I said, looking up at him, “can I trust you? I mean, really trust you?”
His eyebrows pulled in. “Of course you can.”
I hugged him tightly. “Thank you,” I whispered, just as Dr. Z jogged the rest of the way to where we stood.
Another loud sound filled the air as I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. It sounded like a dubstep foghorn. My hands automatically covered my ears to protect them. The noise was deafening.
The ship was lifting slowly into the air, and an LED-like glow lit up the edges of the ship. The Nayara was powering up. My ears were ringing. Benji and Dr. Z were tugging at their earlobes and moving their jaws around, too.
The sight was breathtaking. The lights and lithe movement of the ship were unlike anything I’d ever seen. It wasn’t hovering clumsily as it lifted away from the ground, like one of our clunky mechanical crafts. No sound of an engine, just the pulsing of an electrical source. No scorch marks on the ground.
“Sweet zombie Jesus, I’m looking right at it and still don’t believe it.”
“Incredible, isn’t it?” Benji said, keeping one arm around my shoulders, rubbing his hand up and down my arm, trying to warm me up.
Another sound, this one familiar, was muffled by the ship. Cy was running toward the huge craft, waving his arms, screaming, “Apolonia! Stop! Apolonia!”
Just as he said her name the second time, the ship pulsed for just a second, like the breath taken before a scream. In the next moment, gun-like barrels fired from the ship at the vehicles and soldiers. The sound and heat penetrated my bones, even a quarter of a mile away. Benji and I were pushed backward. I covered my face. Benji covered me. Bullets weren’t coming from the gun-like barrels protruding from the front and sides of the ship. They looked more like fire in gel capsules. The capsules exploded on contact, but they also spread, igniting everything they touched. The fluid didn’t splatter though. It jumped.
“Incredible,” Dr. Z said, the scientist in him captivated.
The men scattered and then began firing back. The ship gracefully rocked back and forth as the capsules rained down on everything. Cy stood on the edge of the woods, waving his arms, his screams silent.
“C’mon!” I yelled, pushing out of Benji’s arms. “Take me across the bridge, Benji!”
“Rory, that’s crazy! You’ll get yourself killed!”
I opened the passenger door. “Cy is going to die if we don’t, and if he dies, we’ll all die.”