Post by Dean Winchester on Aug 14, 2017 13:26:52 GMT -5
Some notes: This is written in first person because that's how the Animorphs books were written. Obviously in future threads we'll write in third person, because of rules. (Also I forgot about that rule and I can't be arsed to go through this and change it). I was also vague about how many people aside from Dean and Sam were there that night, but according to the cube, Elfangor's hand holding one side, there are five more sides to which to touch. This means three more people were there that night. I've decided it's first come first serve to fill in those slots. Of course, Sam has possession of the cube, so we can make more animorphs further down the road if you'd like.
Consider this post to be the pilot. I hope y'all have fun in this universe as I've had fun revisiting my childhood reading pleasures.
My name is Dean Winchester. I’m not fussed about anyone knowing my name even though I’m fighting in a secret war. I’m here to warn you. Controllers are everywhere. The yeerks aren’t just coming. They’re already here. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The true start to this story is hard to pin down, but I’ll start where it all began for me.
It was a late night on November second. I had picked up my brother Sammy from Stanford two days before, enlisted his help in finding our father. The man went on a hunting trip and hadn’t been home in a few days. We tracked him down to a small town— even found his hotel room— and there the trail went cold. What we found was strange: photos, maps, something about the Pool. This wasn’t news to us; dad was a hunter. Private eye to the people who asked, and sometimes he even pulled legit jobs. He had not always been a hunter. Before my mother’s disappearance and presumed death when my brother Sammy was six months old, dad had been a mechanic, and before that, in the military— marines.
What he was currently hunting was anyone’s guess. He had played his cards close to the vest, even with me. I pulled out my fake ids, and Sammy just rolled his eyes. We asked around, trying to stick with the relevant questions we gleaned from dad’s notes. Most of the people we interviewed remembered him, but beyond that were not helpful. We stayed the whole weekend, but I had promised to bring Sammy back to Stanford, because he had a special interview. Boy’s gonna be a lawyer someday.
Sammy and I packed up dad’s things he had left behind, called it a bust. Maybe dad would turn up soon, he always did. Dad was kind of a bad penny that way.
So there we were, driving back to Palo Alto, full dark overhead, the radio on loud and the brights lighting up the road. Which was when things got weird. We saw something falling from the sky, burning bright like a meteor. Except it wasn’t a space rock. It was a space ship. We watched it circling around in a controlled fall and crash land in a construction site.
My brother and I didn’t even argue, we just went for it. I parked the Impala on the street, a little ways away from the construction site, and we hoofed it. We arrived just in time to meet the pilot stumbling down the ramp that extended from his spaceship hatch.
Weird doesn’t even cover it.
For starters, he was blue. And not in the sense that he was cyanotic or hypothermic. He had blue fur. Also he looked like a centaur. A blue one. With a thick tail that ended with a wicked blade like a scythe. The kind the devil holds in the comics. He also had too many fingers on his very human looking hands. He had no mouth, just three nostril-like slits, but his eyes were large and kind. His facial features, though limited, could do the talking. On the top of his head were two long stalks appended with a single eye each.
Seriously.
Even more weird was that I didn’t feel freaked out. I didn’t even feel like screaming and running. As terrifying as this being appeared, all I felt was a desire to help. A sense of wonder at the confirmation that humans, as a species, were not alone in the universe.
His name was Elfangor. And he was dying.
Turns out his species evolved to be able to speak to us in our heads. Mind to mind. Thought-speak. His voice was a rich tickle in my head, like a hot shower cascading on my scalp. He made a dying request to us, an offer of protection against the invasion that was silently occurring here on Earth. He gave us the power to fight back.
Held out a blue cube, said all we had to do what press our hands against a side and we would gain the ability to transform ourselves into any animal we touch. I didn’t know it was in me to trust, but trust him I did. I pressed my hand against a side, Sammy did too. The others joined in.
My hand tingled with a pleasurable shock where it touched the glowing blue cube. It felt like something momentous happened. History in the making. The shot heard around the world.
Moments after that, there was a shrill buzz, coming from the sky. I saw two pinpricks of red light moving rapidly; descending. The Yeerks were coming, Elfangor told us. The enemy. Elfangor bid us to flee, to leave him. His was a mortal wound and nothing would save him now. We had to save ourselves, save the world from becoming Controllers.
The Yeerks are a parasitic species, and they invaded worlds, seeking better hosts. They had a foothold on Earth, and were fighting the Andalites in a pitched battle across the stars. Andalites. Elfangor’s people. Elfangor didn’t know when reinforcements would come, if they ever would, but he told us to have hope, to stay strong and to fight.
<Remember,> Elfangor spoke in our heads, his voice sounding more distant the further we walked away. I found a hiding spot on the edge of the construction site, with a clear line of sight to the ship and its passenger, and a secure point of egress. His voice was still discernible in our minds, <never remain in animal form for longer than two Earth hours. This is the greatest danger of the morphing technology; longer than two hours and that will be your form for the rest of the morph’s natural life.>
Remind me to never get stuck as a fly. Great movie, but definitely not something I want to replicate.
Elfangor continued talking to us, informing us, even as the ship landed and aliens came out. Real aliens. Serious aliens. Large tyrannosaurus rex-like aliens called the Hork-Bajir. Poor eyesight, excellent hearing. They had razor sharp claws, blades at nearly every joint, and two long, powerful looking whipcord tails that also had blades protruding out the ends. Blade overkill. Elfangor spoke of them with pity, like he respected them and wished they did not suffer at the will of the Yeerks.
Honestly, they looked badass. Terrifying, but awesome.
The next species to pile out of the ship were from out of a nightmare. A gooey, squirmy nightmare. If the Hork-Bajir were Edward Scissorhands nightmare fuel, the Taxxons were monsters of the bug variety. Giant, thick, centipede-like beings, they had three segments to their bodies, two thirds of them being supported by dozens of spindly legs that bent and ended in sharp points. The front segment was upright, and instead of spindly legs, they had arms that ended with lobster-like claws. They had four eyes, big, red, and gelatinous buried in their flesh, surrounding a wide, round mouth with hundreds of tiny, sharp teeth. Gross.
I shuddered. Not a creature one would care to encounter up close and personal. Fortunate, then, that I didn’t have to stick around watching the disgusting aliens for long. Out of the darkness of the spaceship interior trotted another Andalite. The only one of his kind to be enslaved by a Yeerk: he was called Visser Three. A ranking system for the Yeerks, it turns out. The Yeerk didn’t care who heard him as he spoke to Elfangor and anyone in range could hear his thoughts, including us.
My hands ached for being clenched into tight fists as I heard Visser Three taunting Elfangor. If I needed proof of the epic levels of douchbaggery the Yeerks were, Visser Three was the abundance of evidence.
That all took a place on the back burner when more controllers stepped out of the ship. Humans. They were laughing as Visser Three communicated his taunts loudly for everyone to hear. It was suddenly demoralizing and yet galvanizing at the same time. The threat was real, and humans needed to be saved.
Suddenly, we saw our first experience with the morphing technology. Visser Three’s body started shifting, moving in unnatural ways. His eyestalks noisily schlooped into his head, like descending periscopes, but much more creepier. His muscles started rippling, expanding and contracting, even as his skin changed from a peaceful brilliant blue to a boggy green brown, and rigid with pebbled lumps. He grew larger. Much larger. The delicate horse-like legs engorged, then forequarter to hindquarter they merged until the beast was standing on two legs as wide around as the redwoods. The arms were no longer arms, but tentacles, and more besides started to sprout. There was nothing left of the Andalite he had been, only the giant, terrifying monster remained.
To my horror, the tentacled monsters grabbed Elfangor and lifted him up in the air. Elfanger fought back, his long bladed tail striking the monster again and again. But the hide was tough, Elfangor’s blade was like a dull spoon against it.
Then the Visser opened it’s wide monster mouth revealing teeth that were as large and long as my arms, and plentiful for what was to happen yet. Elfangor was suspended above the enormous maw, and a sudden, deep anger flowed into me, dispersing the sheer terror that held me in its grasp. I didn’t know what I was thinking, but I pulled my gun from my pocket. Sammy saw; he stopped me. I am not a small man, but next to Sammy I might as well have been. Oh, I can spar with Sammy, I can even best him. That night, though, Sammy used his words even as he struggled to hold me back.
“Dean, stop!” Sam’s voice was right next to my ear. “He’s dying for us, don’t you see? He’s sacrificing himself for us!”
<No!> Elfangor’s silent cry stilled me to the bones. He had seen us struggling from his vantage point, wanted us to remain unseen. I wanted so much to change his fate, but I couldn’t let him do this alone.
“I’m good, Sammy.” I said gruffly, and Sam let me go, cautiously. I wiped my face and resumed my previous observation post.
I watched as Elfangor toppled into the monster’s maw, his tail still furiously whipping around even as he fell to his death. I watched as the monster’s mouth closed, teeth grinding against flesh and bone. I watched as the Andalite Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul died. His final cry of despair will echo in my mind forever.
I watched as bits of Elfangor fell messily from the monster’s maw to be gobbled up by the Taxxons who were a species so driven by hunger they had no shame in what they ate. I watched as Visser Three slowly resumed his Andalite form, cracking distasteful jokes as he did. I watched as the alien and human controllers laughed. I watched, and I seethed.
The horror and turbulent emotions of the night ended with a chase. I don’t know what gave our position away, but the Hork-Bajir were the first to sense us. We were forced to scatter, the others vanishing into the night, while Sammy and I ran back to the Impala. We couldn’t fight that night; we needed to live to fight another day.
I didn’t stop breaking the speed limit until we were miles away, and twenty minutes from Stanford. I finally slowed the Impala to the speed limit, which felt like a slow snails pace, but I could see nothing chasing us, no space ships in the sky above us. We were alone.
“Dean.” Sammy was exhausted, same as I was. The terror eddying inside of us had drained us of energy. There was nothing we could say, Sam was only saying my name to comfort himself. We had experienced in one night more than anyone could ever feel in a lifetime and stay sane.
I finally pulled up to Sam’s place he shared with his girlfriend, Jess. Silencing the engine, I just sat there, gripping the wheel. After what we had just witnessed, the aliens, and the technology humming under our skin… Where did we go from here?
“Yeah,” Sam gave out a shaky laugh. “Spend the night. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
The shower was running when we entered the apartment, so I filched a cookie from the plate Jess left behind for Sammy with a cute note that cute couples tended to write. Sam gave me the couch and a sad smile before he retired to the bedroom.
I was on the edge of sleep when a shout startled me from my rest. I sat bolt up, nerves keyed up and looked toward the bedroom door.
“Dean!” I heard Sammy shout, and I was off. I kicked the door in and stopped dead at the scene. Sammy was lying prone on the bed, struggling with Jess, and Jess was holding a slimy disgusting slug thing, trying to force it into Sam’s ear.
“Sam!” I yelled and took two broad steps toward the fighting couple and slapped the slug away. “What the hell, Jess?!”
“Dean!” Sam struggled with Jess who renewed her attentions on subduing Sam. “She’s a controller! That’s a yeerk!” It was too dark to see where the yeerk had gone, so I wrapped my arms around Jess’ torso and hauled her off Sam. She fought me tooth and nail and I cursed. She was more than a handful for me and it was all I could do to keep her from attacking Sam again. Sam for his part was searching the room for the yeerk, his workman boot in hand.
“Sam!” I grunted, “I need some help here!”
Sam was wide-eyed and full of desperation as he turned and looked as us, Jess a thrashing banshee in my arms.
It was Jess who answered. “You are gonna need the help,” she laughed as she stopped fighting. “My comrades are coming. You will become one of us. There’s no hope left for you!”
The sheer agony on Sam’s face was heartbreaking. “Jess,” his face twisted with grief. “How long? How long have you been controlling her?!”
Jess didn’t answer, instead looking toward the door, as though she was expecting someone. Shit.
“Sam, we gotta go!”
He hesitated, and I cursed as I suddenly dropped Jess. She was startled by the move and I took advantage, directing a blow to her head that would stun her, and hopefully not cause any permanent damage. She collapsed and I grabbed Sam and hauled him out. I grabbed my boots and Sam’s and shoved them in his hands as we turned toward the door. It opened and a guy stood in the doorway, aiming a strange alien looking gun at us.
“Brady.” Sam got with the program though and threw our boots at him. I was annoyed at losing our footwear, but I had lost more valuable things and rushed Brady while he was distracted by the boots. I punched him, the hit landing somewhat awkwardly as he was looking down. At the gun. It fired, but the shot went wild, hitting the wall instead. Where the shot landed, smoke billowed and flames started to flicker up. I cursed again, struggling with Brady for control of the gun. Sam grabbed his baseball bat and swung, barely missing my own head and crashing into Brady’s. The guy dropped like a stone, and I coughed. The flames were higher now, engulfing the apartment.
“Jess!” Sammy yelled, and I lunged for him, stopping him from going into the flames. “Jess! No!”
“Sammy! It’s too late!” I pulled Sam out the door, and we both coughed and struggled down the stairs. I pulled out my burner phone and called nine one one. Sam coughed and stared up at the flames. I watched Sam as I spoke to the dispatcher on the line, explaining there was a fire.
We retreated to the Impala as people piled out of the dorms and a firetruck arrived to combat the flames. I tossed the burner into a trash can, and watched the fires slowly become smothered. I turned toward Sam who dropped the alien space gun into the trunk and looked at me, grim determination on his face.
“We got work to do.” He closed the trunk with finality.
Consider this post to be the pilot. I hope y'all have fun in this universe as I've had fun revisiting my childhood reading pleasures.
My name is Dean Winchester. I’m not fussed about anyone knowing my name even though I’m fighting in a secret war. I’m here to warn you. Controllers are everywhere. The yeerks aren’t just coming. They’re already here. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The true start to this story is hard to pin down, but I’ll start where it all began for me.
It was a late night on November second. I had picked up my brother Sammy from Stanford two days before, enlisted his help in finding our father. The man went on a hunting trip and hadn’t been home in a few days. We tracked him down to a small town— even found his hotel room— and there the trail went cold. What we found was strange: photos, maps, something about the Pool. This wasn’t news to us; dad was a hunter. Private eye to the people who asked, and sometimes he even pulled legit jobs. He had not always been a hunter. Before my mother’s disappearance and presumed death when my brother Sammy was six months old, dad had been a mechanic, and before that, in the military— marines.
What he was currently hunting was anyone’s guess. He had played his cards close to the vest, even with me. I pulled out my fake ids, and Sammy just rolled his eyes. We asked around, trying to stick with the relevant questions we gleaned from dad’s notes. Most of the people we interviewed remembered him, but beyond that were not helpful. We stayed the whole weekend, but I had promised to bring Sammy back to Stanford, because he had a special interview. Boy’s gonna be a lawyer someday.
Sammy and I packed up dad’s things he had left behind, called it a bust. Maybe dad would turn up soon, he always did. Dad was kind of a bad penny that way.
So there we were, driving back to Palo Alto, full dark overhead, the radio on loud and the brights lighting up the road. Which was when things got weird. We saw something falling from the sky, burning bright like a meteor. Except it wasn’t a space rock. It was a space ship. We watched it circling around in a controlled fall and crash land in a construction site.
My brother and I didn’t even argue, we just went for it. I parked the Impala on the street, a little ways away from the construction site, and we hoofed it. We arrived just in time to meet the pilot stumbling down the ramp that extended from his spaceship hatch.
Weird doesn’t even cover it.
For starters, he was blue. And not in the sense that he was cyanotic or hypothermic. He had blue fur. Also he looked like a centaur. A blue one. With a thick tail that ended with a wicked blade like a scythe. The kind the devil holds in the comics. He also had too many fingers on his very human looking hands. He had no mouth, just three nostril-like slits, but his eyes were large and kind. His facial features, though limited, could do the talking. On the top of his head were two long stalks appended with a single eye each.
Seriously.
Even more weird was that I didn’t feel freaked out. I didn’t even feel like screaming and running. As terrifying as this being appeared, all I felt was a desire to help. A sense of wonder at the confirmation that humans, as a species, were not alone in the universe.
His name was Elfangor. And he was dying.
Turns out his species evolved to be able to speak to us in our heads. Mind to mind. Thought-speak. His voice was a rich tickle in my head, like a hot shower cascading on my scalp. He made a dying request to us, an offer of protection against the invasion that was silently occurring here on Earth. He gave us the power to fight back.
Held out a blue cube, said all we had to do what press our hands against a side and we would gain the ability to transform ourselves into any animal we touch. I didn’t know it was in me to trust, but trust him I did. I pressed my hand against a side, Sammy did too. The others joined in.
My hand tingled with a pleasurable shock where it touched the glowing blue cube. It felt like something momentous happened. History in the making. The shot heard around the world.
Moments after that, there was a shrill buzz, coming from the sky. I saw two pinpricks of red light moving rapidly; descending. The Yeerks were coming, Elfangor told us. The enemy. Elfangor bid us to flee, to leave him. His was a mortal wound and nothing would save him now. We had to save ourselves, save the world from becoming Controllers.
The Yeerks are a parasitic species, and they invaded worlds, seeking better hosts. They had a foothold on Earth, and were fighting the Andalites in a pitched battle across the stars. Andalites. Elfangor’s people. Elfangor didn’t know when reinforcements would come, if they ever would, but he told us to have hope, to stay strong and to fight.
<Remember,> Elfangor spoke in our heads, his voice sounding more distant the further we walked away. I found a hiding spot on the edge of the construction site, with a clear line of sight to the ship and its passenger, and a secure point of egress. His voice was still discernible in our minds, <never remain in animal form for longer than two Earth hours. This is the greatest danger of the morphing technology; longer than two hours and that will be your form for the rest of the morph’s natural life.>
Remind me to never get stuck as a fly. Great movie, but definitely not something I want to replicate.
Elfangor continued talking to us, informing us, even as the ship landed and aliens came out. Real aliens. Serious aliens. Large tyrannosaurus rex-like aliens called the Hork-Bajir. Poor eyesight, excellent hearing. They had razor sharp claws, blades at nearly every joint, and two long, powerful looking whipcord tails that also had blades protruding out the ends. Blade overkill. Elfangor spoke of them with pity, like he respected them and wished they did not suffer at the will of the Yeerks.
Honestly, they looked badass. Terrifying, but awesome.
The next species to pile out of the ship were from out of a nightmare. A gooey, squirmy nightmare. If the Hork-Bajir were Edward Scissorhands nightmare fuel, the Taxxons were monsters of the bug variety. Giant, thick, centipede-like beings, they had three segments to their bodies, two thirds of them being supported by dozens of spindly legs that bent and ended in sharp points. The front segment was upright, and instead of spindly legs, they had arms that ended with lobster-like claws. They had four eyes, big, red, and gelatinous buried in their flesh, surrounding a wide, round mouth with hundreds of tiny, sharp teeth. Gross.
I shuddered. Not a creature one would care to encounter up close and personal. Fortunate, then, that I didn’t have to stick around watching the disgusting aliens for long. Out of the darkness of the spaceship interior trotted another Andalite. The only one of his kind to be enslaved by a Yeerk: he was called Visser Three. A ranking system for the Yeerks, it turns out. The Yeerk didn’t care who heard him as he spoke to Elfangor and anyone in range could hear his thoughts, including us.
My hands ached for being clenched into tight fists as I heard Visser Three taunting Elfangor. If I needed proof of the epic levels of douchbaggery the Yeerks were, Visser Three was the abundance of evidence.
That all took a place on the back burner when more controllers stepped out of the ship. Humans. They were laughing as Visser Three communicated his taunts loudly for everyone to hear. It was suddenly demoralizing and yet galvanizing at the same time. The threat was real, and humans needed to be saved.
Suddenly, we saw our first experience with the morphing technology. Visser Three’s body started shifting, moving in unnatural ways. His eyestalks noisily schlooped into his head, like descending periscopes, but much more creepier. His muscles started rippling, expanding and contracting, even as his skin changed from a peaceful brilliant blue to a boggy green brown, and rigid with pebbled lumps. He grew larger. Much larger. The delicate horse-like legs engorged, then forequarter to hindquarter they merged until the beast was standing on two legs as wide around as the redwoods. The arms were no longer arms, but tentacles, and more besides started to sprout. There was nothing left of the Andalite he had been, only the giant, terrifying monster remained.
To my horror, the tentacled monsters grabbed Elfangor and lifted him up in the air. Elfanger fought back, his long bladed tail striking the monster again and again. But the hide was tough, Elfangor’s blade was like a dull spoon against it.
Then the Visser opened it’s wide monster mouth revealing teeth that were as large and long as my arms, and plentiful for what was to happen yet. Elfangor was suspended above the enormous maw, and a sudden, deep anger flowed into me, dispersing the sheer terror that held me in its grasp. I didn’t know what I was thinking, but I pulled my gun from my pocket. Sammy saw; he stopped me. I am not a small man, but next to Sammy I might as well have been. Oh, I can spar with Sammy, I can even best him. That night, though, Sammy used his words even as he struggled to hold me back.
“Dean, stop!” Sam’s voice was right next to my ear. “He’s dying for us, don’t you see? He’s sacrificing himself for us!”
<No!> Elfangor’s silent cry stilled me to the bones. He had seen us struggling from his vantage point, wanted us to remain unseen. I wanted so much to change his fate, but I couldn’t let him do this alone.
“I’m good, Sammy.” I said gruffly, and Sam let me go, cautiously. I wiped my face and resumed my previous observation post.
I watched as Elfangor toppled into the monster’s maw, his tail still furiously whipping around even as he fell to his death. I watched as the monster’s mouth closed, teeth grinding against flesh and bone. I watched as the Andalite Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul died. His final cry of despair will echo in my mind forever.
I watched as bits of Elfangor fell messily from the monster’s maw to be gobbled up by the Taxxons who were a species so driven by hunger they had no shame in what they ate. I watched as Visser Three slowly resumed his Andalite form, cracking distasteful jokes as he did. I watched as the alien and human controllers laughed. I watched, and I seethed.
The horror and turbulent emotions of the night ended with a chase. I don’t know what gave our position away, but the Hork-Bajir were the first to sense us. We were forced to scatter, the others vanishing into the night, while Sammy and I ran back to the Impala. We couldn’t fight that night; we needed to live to fight another day.
I didn’t stop breaking the speed limit until we were miles away, and twenty minutes from Stanford. I finally slowed the Impala to the speed limit, which felt like a slow snails pace, but I could see nothing chasing us, no space ships in the sky above us. We were alone.
“Dean.” Sammy was exhausted, same as I was. The terror eddying inside of us had drained us of energy. There was nothing we could say, Sam was only saying my name to comfort himself. We had experienced in one night more than anyone could ever feel in a lifetime and stay sane.
I finally pulled up to Sam’s place he shared with his girlfriend, Jess. Silencing the engine, I just sat there, gripping the wheel. After what we had just witnessed, the aliens, and the technology humming under our skin… Where did we go from here?
“Yeah,” Sam gave out a shaky laugh. “Spend the night. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
The shower was running when we entered the apartment, so I filched a cookie from the plate Jess left behind for Sammy with a cute note that cute couples tended to write. Sam gave me the couch and a sad smile before he retired to the bedroom.
I was on the edge of sleep when a shout startled me from my rest. I sat bolt up, nerves keyed up and looked toward the bedroom door.
“Dean!” I heard Sammy shout, and I was off. I kicked the door in and stopped dead at the scene. Sammy was lying prone on the bed, struggling with Jess, and Jess was holding a slimy disgusting slug thing, trying to force it into Sam’s ear.
“Sam!” I yelled and took two broad steps toward the fighting couple and slapped the slug away. “What the hell, Jess?!”
“Dean!” Sam struggled with Jess who renewed her attentions on subduing Sam. “She’s a controller! That’s a yeerk!” It was too dark to see where the yeerk had gone, so I wrapped my arms around Jess’ torso and hauled her off Sam. She fought me tooth and nail and I cursed. She was more than a handful for me and it was all I could do to keep her from attacking Sam again. Sam for his part was searching the room for the yeerk, his workman boot in hand.
“Sam!” I grunted, “I need some help here!”
Sam was wide-eyed and full of desperation as he turned and looked as us, Jess a thrashing banshee in my arms.
It was Jess who answered. “You are gonna need the help,” she laughed as she stopped fighting. “My comrades are coming. You will become one of us. There’s no hope left for you!”
The sheer agony on Sam’s face was heartbreaking. “Jess,” his face twisted with grief. “How long? How long have you been controlling her?!”
Jess didn’t answer, instead looking toward the door, as though she was expecting someone. Shit.
“Sam, we gotta go!”
He hesitated, and I cursed as I suddenly dropped Jess. She was startled by the move and I took advantage, directing a blow to her head that would stun her, and hopefully not cause any permanent damage. She collapsed and I grabbed Sam and hauled him out. I grabbed my boots and Sam’s and shoved them in his hands as we turned toward the door. It opened and a guy stood in the doorway, aiming a strange alien looking gun at us.
“Brady.” Sam got with the program though and threw our boots at him. I was annoyed at losing our footwear, but I had lost more valuable things and rushed Brady while he was distracted by the boots. I punched him, the hit landing somewhat awkwardly as he was looking down. At the gun. It fired, but the shot went wild, hitting the wall instead. Where the shot landed, smoke billowed and flames started to flicker up. I cursed again, struggling with Brady for control of the gun. Sam grabbed his baseball bat and swung, barely missing my own head and crashing into Brady’s. The guy dropped like a stone, and I coughed. The flames were higher now, engulfing the apartment.
“Jess!” Sammy yelled, and I lunged for him, stopping him from going into the flames. “Jess! No!”
“Sammy! It’s too late!” I pulled Sam out the door, and we both coughed and struggled down the stairs. I pulled out my burner phone and called nine one one. Sam coughed and stared up at the flames. I watched Sam as I spoke to the dispatcher on the line, explaining there was a fire.
We retreated to the Impala as people piled out of the dorms and a firetruck arrived to combat the flames. I tossed the burner into a trash can, and watched the fires slowly become smothered. I turned toward Sam who dropped the alien space gun into the trunk and looked at me, grim determination on his face.
“We got work to do.” He closed the trunk with finality.
