AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Join the army?”
“Not the army,” she said. She kept her voice low so her family couldn’t hear her. “Something cool, like the FBI or something. I mean, if the aliens aren’t here for war…”
I nodded, whispering back to her. “To be honest, I’m kind of dying to see one in person,” I said. “Those pictures they keep showing us are so blurry. It’s hard to make out any details.”
“Yeah, really hard,” she replied. “Maybe this is how we get to meet some of these aliens face-to-face.”
We sat there, giggling together, making sure her family didn’t hear us at all.
But at that moment, something changed. And, years later, I can’t help but wonder if this was all fate.
CHAPTER ONE
?
PENN
Six weeks ago, my best friend sent me a message.
That wouldn't normally be so weird. Layla and I used to talk damn near every day, or at least text one another over the internet—or extranet, if she or I was offworld. A quick "how are you?" or "just got laid!" or "hey bitch" was part of my normal routine, always putting a smile on my face.
And then my best friend got abducted by aliens.
At first, I thought that, too, was normal. Layla and I do dangerous work. She's had to go dark for a few weeks at a time before, and I wasn't going to blow her cover by blowing up her cell. Even though something felt off, I tried to play it cool in the wake of her mission to the moon.
So I waited, and I kept an ear to the ground. Then, after a month, I started asking around. I called every contact I had in the First Wave, scanned the dark net for leads, and I even went up the chain of command to the Widow herself—the leader of our merry crew of thieves, assassins, and seductresses. But no one knew anything. I started to get really fucking worried.
I called Layla's parents.
They were worried, too.
Two more months passed. Every day got harder. Because Layla Dara was in the wind, and I knew she had gotten herself into something dangerous.
Then the message came.
She told me she'd met someone and ran off with him. This was...already a little weird. Layla wasn't the type to run away with someone she just met, and she'd never fallen hard for a man like that. We were trained to manipulate the weaker sex, not to fall into their beds.
And yes, she said she was fine over and over again. Not that I believed her, especially when she wouldn't mention the dude's name. What really freaked me out, though, was the recurrence of one very strange, very random word.
Serendipity.
It was an inside joke the two of us had shared in college, and one that became a sort of code between us. When we would go out clubbing, if we thought a guy was skeezy, we would describe our meeting him as "serendipitous" so we could tell the other it was time to bail. If we needed to talk about something serious, it was our code word to take the other person at her word. It meant destiny—the thing we were convinced brought us together, because Layla was like a sister to me.
Layla used that word all over her message. Every damn thing was serendipitous, her meeting her new boyfriend was serendipity. She even used it as an exclamation at one point.
And that's how I knew something was wrong.
A week later, I was at the Widow's desk with my suitcase already packed, demanding to see Layla. After we had enlisted with the World Intelligence Agency, a global alliance of secret service organizations intended for intelligence of alien lifeforms and their purpose on Earth, Layla and I had both been tapped to join an even more secretive organization inside it.
The First Wave.
In a truly serendipitous turn of events—and no, I didn't think it was funny—First Wave had just gotten a lead. Layla was supposedly on Aelydon, lightyears away. The Widow had a contact who said he could get me in to help my best friend.
They only needed one tiny little favor.
To kill the head of House Ganivet.
So, to get my best friend back, all I have to do is kill the King of the Aelyds.
