When more of the aliens showed up, we all thought it was planned. That’s not true, we were told it was planned. I didn’t know and honestly didn’t care, but I did find them scary. They’re so big and different. What could I do to stop one of those alien men from doing whatever he wanted?
Mostly, all my friends were following Gershom and it was easier to go along. I didn’t want to be alone. Alone was the worst.
“Should have taken epis,” Aurora grouches. “Least then I’d not feel like death warmed over.”
“Right?” Emma asks. “Why did we listen to him? He lied to us! He was taking epis the entire time and it fucking killed him.”
“He got what he deserved,” Jacob says.
“Karma,” Morgana agrees.
I roll my eyes. Karma. Right, some grand design of the universe making sure bad people get what’s coming to them. As if.
Something tugs at my attention, but I can’t put my finger on it. I stop walking and turn in a slow circle. The group comes to a stop around me.
“What is it?” Eloise asks.
I don’t answer, holding a finger up to my lips. Something, outside the shield of numbness, past the throbbing aches and pains. My feet?
I kneel and place my palm on the hot, rough sand. The individual grains are sharp and pokey. Uncomfortably so. I close my eyes and wait, focusing my awareness.
Vibrations.
“Shit, run!” I yell, springing upright and spinning back the direction we were going.
“What is it?” a chorus of voices ask.
“Run! They’re coming after us!” I yell.
Yelps and soft screams, but everyone is running. We must look like idiots to anyone watching this from a distance. A shambling horde. Zombies. We look like zombies stumbling across an empty desert.
We run until the group begins spreading out, the slower ones falling behind, unable to keep up. We’re halfway up yet another dune when Christine, who is next to me, stumbles and falls on her face. I reach for her, but before I can catch her, she’s sliding down the hill.
“Catch her!” I yell.
Hilarity ensues as dozens of hands try to catch her, and she tries to stop herself. Well, it would be hilarious if we weren’t running for our lives. It’s not funny right now. It’s terrifying, but the terror lives outside my protective shell.
Nope, here inside my bubble, life is totally fine. I don’t feel a thing. Petras, of all people, catches the back of Christine’s shirt and though he slides a few more feet down they come to a stop. She climbs to her feet, shaking.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She dusts herself off before looking up the hill to me and nodding. Her eyes are sunken, shoulders stooped, and tears glitter on her light-brown cheeks.
I let the group trudge past me. No one is running now. They’re too worn out, and without an immediate, obvious threat I don’t know how to encourage them. Staring into the darkness of the night, I debate what to do next.
The vibrations I felt are definitely vehicles, but are they looking for us? Do they care? It’s not like we’re a threat. A handful of humans who are barely able to survive on this shit-hole planet. What threat do we pose?
None, but then what threat did we pose living in our comfortable tunnels and doing a bit of mining? Why did they decide to destroy our home? There’s more going on here than I have the brain to process. Morgana trudges up the hill and comes to a stop at my side. Great. If there is a universal intelligence guiding all of this, it hates me.
“It won’t be long,” she says ominously.
“Until?” I ask.
“They’re looking for us,” she says. “I can feel their intention.”
“You can ‘feel their intention?’” I ask unable to keep my voice from raising.
“Of course,” she says, either deliberately ignoring my disbelieving tone or oblivious to it.
A thousand retorts flash across my thoughts, each snarkier and meaner than the last. Finally I settle on an exhausted sigh. I don’t have the energy to waste on her.
“We need to keep moving,” I say. “The City is this way.”
“Our next target is the Oasis,” Morgana says without moving.
“What are you talking about?” I ask, not bothering to turn around.
“We need to reach the Oasis,” she says. “That is the next point of convergence.”
“The next point of convergence,” I mutter. “Of course, what was I thinking.”
Morgana flashes a brilliant, bright smile then moves past me. I follow in her wake, wishing against all hope that I knew what the right thing to do was. She’s talking about an Oasis, and I have no idea if such a thing even exists.
No, wait. There was one not far from the wreckage of the ship. I never went there, but I remember Gershom had people go there for water and wood when we were first exiled. Back before we all found out he was taking epis without telling anybody. He died of the withdrawals when Rosalind exiled him and those of us stupid enough to follow him.
I was an idiot. I don’t know where the Oasis is though, and Morgana seems to. I speed up coming down the far side of the dune trying to catch up to her. When I’m next to her I match her pace.
“Where?” I ask.
“Hmm?”
“Where is this Oasis?” I ask. “Are we going in the right direction?”
“Of course we are,” she says. “Fate is drawing us there like a leaf on the current of a rushing river.”
I barely stop my eyes from completing the full roll.
“There is no such thing as fate,” I say. “Do you know the actual way to the Oasis or not?” Morgana smiles and laughs but she doesn’t answer.
“Morgana!” Others look over their shoulders at us. I drop my voice. “Do you know a way or not?”
I’m hissing. I don’t want to be, I feel like an idiot. All this mysticism and talk of fate sounds like bullshit to me.
“Sometimes,” Morgana says. “You have to put your faith in something more.”
“Still not an answer,” I bite off each word.
“No, but it’s the best I can give you,” she says. “I know it’s not the answer you seek, but perhaps it’s the answer you need.”
“Do you practice this?” I ask, waving my hand up and down her.
“This?” she asks, furrowing her brow.
“The whole I’m a creepy seer who knows something you don’t know thing?”
“No.”
Exhaustion hits me like a wave in the ocean and I come to a stop. It swells over, pulling me under, and I’m left with nothing. I take a deep breath and hold it, then let it out in a rush.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m being a bitch.”
“It’s fine,” Morgana says. She moves closer and places her hand on my arm. “I understand.”
She does, too. It’s in her eyes, written across the kindness on her face, in the warmth of her touch. My eyes burn, stinging with regret and loss trying to break through my blanket of numb. Outside my shell, a hurricane of unwanted emotions rages, but there isn’t time for it. Not now, maybe not ever.
“We need to move,” I choke out.
“Yes,” Morgana says, but she doesn’t step away. Instead she steps closer and wraps her arms around me, squeezing me tight.