Page 35 of Strange Lights

Look, see, we’re waiting for you.

Gravity disappears; the cactus finally falls from my hands as I rise into the air on a beam of light, teeth floating around me like dandelion fluff in the wind.

Winnie. She’s floating, no, flying to meet me, drawing me up into the sky on the beam of her headlight.

“Reggie! Wake up!”

Calvin. We’re in the meadow still. Grass crunches as I move.

My mouth is dry, my head is pounding, and I’m fully unprepared for the blazing sunlight that blinds me as my eyes fly open. Hours have passed.

Eldi. They took Eldi, and I’ve been lying here for who knows how long, giving them a head start.

Calvin is crouching over me, ashen faced, and I can’t tell if he’s weaving slightly or if that’s my vision.

I lurch to my feet, cough, and fall back to my knees to dry heave, for one wild moment expecting to wind up with a handful of teeth.

Doug and Dave have found their way to us too late. It seems they know it too. Dave is utterly still. I’d say his battery died if I didn’t know better. Doug is slowly circling the same small radius of grass, the robotic equivalent of pacing. I pick up Eldi’s watch from where it lies forlornly at my feet and strap it on my own wrist, where I swear it squeezes my arm gently, like a hug.

Why didn’t she take me too? Why just Eldi? For a moment, I entertain the thought that she cares about my life, about me. But that can’t be true. If it was, she wouldn’t have taken Eldi. Everything is always a sick, twisted game to her, and I always play right into her hands. I wish I were stronger, but some ties run too deep, some connections can’t be broken.

You’ll come back, Regina, she once told me, rubbing in my face the fact that I could not free myself of her.

Finally, I stand up without a word and walk across the meadow, Calvin at my heels. I search even though I know it’s fruitless. Eldi is long gone. I know exactly who took her and where she is.

“What was that thing? Who was that?” Calvin says, and I know what he’s talking about.

“A weapon. Agency 51 calls it the Gauntlet. It’s built to cause pain without inflicting injury. Its sole purpose is torture. You won’t find any marks, any injuries, any lasting physical effects on its victims. Magic made it. It’s unlimited and unchecked power. The Gauntlet’s wielder can access magic through it like a gate, always open.” I leave off the rest of what I know. How seductive it is, how it feels to give in and lose yourself in its power. It’s like bathing in starlight and darkness.

“No lasting effects?” Calvin says in disbelief.

“This”⁠—I gesture between us⁠—“feeling like we drank a gallon of tequila, is from whatever they injected us with to knock us out all night.”

“The Gauntlet thing,” Calvin says, looking even sicker now. “It’s . . . evil. Who creates something like that? What kind of person⁠—who was that?”

“Only someone high up in Agency 51 would have access to that weapon,” I say coldly. “Zara must have tipped them off. As for who would create the Gauntlet? Sometimes desperate people make bad choices.”

“What are we going to do?”

There’s a flash of something fuzzy and gray against the green grass. I stoop and pick up Goat from where he lies. Eldi hasn’t slept a night without Goat since she got him. Fury, a superheated plume of it, rises in my chest.

There’s little point in running right away. She already knows where I am, after all, and she knows because Zara sold me out. They left us here last night to make a point. See what I can do to you? she’s saying. You can run, but you can’t hide. I’ll find you. I need to contact allies and make a plan. I can’t afford to rush this.

“We’re going to the agency. We’re going to get Eldi back. But first we’re stopping for waffles.”

The night is quiet and grim as we map our route and formulate a plan. We watch UFOs before bed, a complicated, somewhat uncoordinated sky ballet. There’s an increase in military aircraft, civilian drones, private flights for those rich enough to afford them. A lot of normal air traffic is grounded, but plenty of people break the rules. It’s a logistical and political mess. But it makes for good skygazing. I reflexively search for Orion in the sky, even though I know the constellation is somewhere over the horizon hiding from my view. My heart aches for Eldi. I barely sleep.

I haven’t seen widespread chaos like this before. The president confirms in a morning press conference the discovery of extraterrestrial life. An alien mothership is en route. Attempts are being made to communicate with it, and defense preparations have begun. Some say it’s the start of the end, others that it’s the dawn of a new age.

People clog the highways when they can’t find flights to book, fleeing to be with family or follow UFO sightings or head for bunkers. There are a few strong personalities gathering cult-like followings, and I’m sure it will all make for great Netflix documentaries in a few years: UFO hunters racing across the country, chasing the lights, flocking to crop circles, collecting anything that might be debris from the “meteors.” A bunch of stuff ends up in online auctions, and I’m betting at least half of it is a scam. For instance, someone selling rocks from their backyard for thousands. A few things I’m sure are real. The remote-controlled toy car someone claims fell from the sky and draws elaborate designs in chalk on the driveway every night, for one.

“We can make it to southern Nevada in two days, easy, with two drivers. Faster if we let Manny take the night shift while Winnie runs on autopilot,” I say.

“Where are we going, exactly?”

“The Waffle House outside Vegas.”

“The Whistlemen?” Calvin says. He sounds resigned rather than skeptical, like he might have a few weeks ago.