Page 7 of Love at First Sighting
I’m more used tounreliable,below satisfactory, andwe don’t really know what to do with you, despite keeping this office afloat and preventing everyone from getting a computer virus. But nepotism comes in strong around here. Nepotism might be the only reason I still have a job after failing my weapons and field training twice.
“Let’s try another one,” I instruct. “We’ve got plenty of videos to go through. Then we can move on to spanmitted sighting reports.”
Toby turns back to the computer screen and continues to scroll. I’m called away on important business—showing a senior agent how to move a folder on their desktop—and snagthe remaining half a lemon loaf someone left in the lunchroom with a happyfree :)Post-it on the bag. When I return, I am not surprised to find Toby watching a video of…well, possibly the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen.
The lighting is dark, but her flash illuminates her enough for me to see a pair of big brown eyes, silky dark hair, perfect makeup, and a small peppering of freckles on her nose. She’s the kind of woman I’d expect to be selling seamless pastel underwear on posters at the mall or trying to get me to switch to shampoo with something like jojoba oil in it.
But it’s immediately clear she’s not selling anything right now. Except maybe her own fear, and I’m buying it.
The woman moves the camera to the side, showing off a series of flashing lights. First white, then red, then blue. There’s an odd shimmery shadow behind her, punctuated only by the glaring lights.
I freeze. I’ve seen this before. I’velivedthis before, and I’m about to live it all over again. It can’t be…
Logically, I know it can’t be, but the sight of whatever is behind her takes a sledgehammer to the trauma I’ve spent years working through in therapy.
The flash of a camera. The ghost-white look on my dad’s face. The words “keep this somewhere safe.” A flash of white light. A flash of red light. A flash of blue light. A scraped-up cheek on the asphalt. White, red, blue lights—an ambulance this time.
“Bruh, this might be something,” Toby says. I hardly hear him as I shake out of my trance. My hands are sweaty and the urge to puke into my desk trash can is about as strong as it was the morning after our last PIS Christmas party. I ease back into my chair as Toby passes me the headphones and restarts the video.
“Hi, guys,” the woman begins. “So, I was out shooting some really great Spinx content that should be coming in a few days, and I’m on my way back to the car, but there is somethingfollowingme. I can’t see what it is, but it looks like a ship or something. I don’t know, but look, it’s just behind me.” She pans the camera up and the lights flash. “Holy shit.”
She tumbles to the ground, and while it’s not possible toseeit, there’s a harsh clang of metal on metal, followed by a muffled crash. The woman brings us closer.
“Toby,” I demand, “can you email me a link to this, any information you can find on who this girl is, and a few screenshots?”
As I continue to have an internal meltdown, I reach for my phone on my desk and swipe until I find what I’m looking for. It’s an old photo, but the focal point is clear. There’s a shimmering smear across the night sky, and it’d be nearly imperceptible if it weren’t for the small, piercing white and blue lights coming from both sides of the craft. I snapped it on my first camera when I was ten, eagerly telling my dad I got a couple of bright stars.
No stars would make him respond the way he did. They wouldn’t make his face lose color or cause him to quickly drag me back to the car. Or sit me down once we were home, help me make a few copies of the picture, and tell me to keep it safe.
I don’t know the easiest way to tell Toby this girl saw the same exact thing I did before my dad died.
He slides a few pieces of paper my way with screenshots of the girl, the craft, the sky. “Name’s El Martin. She’s a model or something. Lives here in LA—”
“Thanks, Toby.” I’m already out of my chair. The Los Angeles PIS station consists of a few private offices circling thebullpen of desks, like an old-fashioned police station, right down to the cheap white blinds and wooden half doors. As chief agent, my uncle Marcus has his own office. Acorneroffice. While he isn’t a blood relative, he was my dad’s longtime PIS partner. We lost my mom when I was too young to remember her, so after my dad was killed, Marcus was the one who took me in. He made sure there was a roof over my head and that I had three meals a day at least three days a week.
I peer inside the windowed door to his office, where he’s wrapping up a phone call. Despite knowing him my whole life, I’m not always sure how to read him.
As he sets the phone on the receiver, I slip into his office.
“What’s up, kid?” he asks. His office smells like the sharp cigarette smoke that clings to his skin and breath. Growing up under his roof, I lived in fear of taking the smell with me, constantly popping mint gum and developing spectacular dental hygiene out of concern.
“I’ve got something I need to talk to you about.”
He glances up warily. “Shut the door in case I have to resort to nepotism.”
I kick the door shut behind me and stand across from him over his desk. Marcus and I have been the same height since I was sixteen, but he still towers over me in more ways than one. He was the one I asked for permission to use the car, who I asked to sign my permission slips, who reluctantly agreed to let me join the Sector at eighteen to work part-time through college until graduation. He’s the one who decides what assignments I do (or don’t) get. He’s the one who’s keeping me employed despite my on-paper failures.
“Oh, Brad says the printer’s broken again,” he mumbles, hardly looking up from the papers on his desk.
“It’s not. It needed paper,” I say urgently. I don’t care about Brad’s technological impotence. “Look, this is important.”
Finally, he looks up. His slicked-back brown hair, coiling at the ends, could use a trim, and he’s a few days out from shaving. “Let’s hear it.”
Marcus holds out a hand and takes the papers I’ve brought with me. He spreads them out on his desk for us to look over.
“Something the new guy found,” I explain.
“Troy?”
