Page 27 of Taken By the Alien Killer
“So am I,” she says, and she takes my hands, squeezes them hard. “Let’s go make one choice that’s ours.”
I drop my forehead to her shoulder and laugh into her jacket until it’s a sound I can use. “Okay.”
“Okay?” she echoes, eyes on fire.
“Okay,” I say, and the word is a door.
We move without hurry and without noise. In the room, I shove a change of clothes into a small pack, two nutrient bars, a battered bishop chess piece I don’t look at, and an old boarding pass I keep for luck. CynJyn raids my vanity for hair ties and a tiny med kit. We leave our shoes by the window so the floors won’t squeal about us, then ghost the corridor.
“Gate Seven,” she whispers, and I nod. We know the timing like we know the map of our childhood mistakes. Down a service stair that smells like soap and brass; across the laundry hall where dryers purr like big, warm beasts; past a guard who keepsexamining a scuff on his boot because he’s kind. My heartbeat syncs with the house’s canned night-breath. My skin hums.
In the east hangar, my skimmer waits under its cover like a secret trying not to vibrate. Sleek, a little vain, painted the exact color of midnight if midnight could flirt. Sneed grounded it after the last time we borrowed our idea of good behavior. Sneed underestimates CynJyn’s pettiness.
“Cloned the lock last week when he grounded it,” she says, flipping a coin-sized device against the access pad. “Blessed be hubris.”
The cover rolls back with a sigh. The cockpit lights blink awake, soft and welcoming, like a bar that knows our order. I slide into the pilot’s chair and the leather exhales against my spine. My fingers find the controls like they’re bones I was born with. The canopy seals; the cabin fills with the smell of ionized air and old, good oil.
“Ready?” CynJyn asks, buckling in, grin wild and bright.
“No,” I say, hands trembling on the yoke. “Yes.” I breathe. “Yes.”
“On my mark,” she says, eyes flicking to the perimeter feed she’s spoofed on her wrist. “Three, two—now.”
I ease the skimmer up, gentle as a secret. The hangar door slides, slow and silent, into the roof. Night pours in, crisp and tasting faintly of stone and salt and maybe forgiveness. The courtyard shrinks beneath us; the house spreads out like a map I don’t have to read tonight. We slip through the Gate Seven blind spot as the cycle flickers. No alarms sing. No Sneed-shaped shadow stands in the doorway.
The stars stretch out before us, cold and clean and full of answers I’m not ready for but going toward anyway.
The old shuttlepad on the outskirts looks like a scrapyard trying to remember its glory days—floodlights half-dead, wind shoving grit in sideways sheets, a corrugated hangar yawninglike a missing tooth. The skimmer sighs as we set down, and CynJyn’s already unclipping, eyes bright with the kind of mischief that gets saints demoted.
“Left bay,” she says, jabbing a finger toward a row of doors painted ceremonial white. “The pretty one with the chrome fins. That’s the royal showboat. They park it out here so no one scuffs it by accident.”
“By accident,” I echo, palming sweat off my lip. “We’re more… intention-forward.”
“We’re philanthropists,” she corrects, kicking the skimmer hatch open. “We’re liberating an underused asset for a very worthy cause: your lungs.”
The wind hits—cold, metallic, laced with old fuel and rain. Gravel crunches under our boots. Somewhere behind the hangars, a night-train moans and the sound folds into the city’s low thunder. I shove my braid inside my collar, squint through flying grit, and follow CynJyn to a personnel door with a keypad that’s seen better fingers.
“Talk to me,” I say, stealing a glance at the sky—star-pricked, indifferent.
“I flirted with this lock last summer,” she says, cracking her knuckles like a stage magician. “We had a moment. She’ll remember me.”
“She?”
“Always personify your crimes.” She pops the cover, coaxes out a ribbon of wires, and sighs like a lover. “Hello, old friend. Did you miss me?”
“Tell her the feeling’s mutual,” I mutter, shivering as a gust sneaks fingers down the back of my jacket.
The keypad coughs, surrenders a tired green. The door unlatches with a sound like a secret giving up. We slip inside and the hangar swallows the wind. It smells like wax and ozone and the starch of unused canvas. Overhead, strip lights flicker awakein a reluctant ripple. The cruiser sits under a ceremonial tarp the color of milk, shape sleek and ridiculous—long flares, gleaming nacelles, a nose like a smug rumor.
CynJyn whistles. “There she is. The crown’s favorite peacock.”
“She’s gorgeous,” I say despite myself, fingers itching to stroke the fabric covers like skin. “You’re sure security’s?—”
“Looped. Smurfette spoofed the cams for six minutes then scheduled a ‘fire test.’ Every lens on the property will be very busy staring at a holographic extinguisher parade.” She flicks her wrist pad and the tarp unspools up into the rafters. Chrome winks. Painted sigils pout. The cruiser preens, even asleep.
“Keys?” I ask, heart galloping.
“Please.” She tosses me a coin-sized chip. “Starter’s in the console. I’ll handle bay doors.”
