Red Handed

“What’s going on?” I asked. “What kind of tour are we taking?”

“The scary kind.” Steps clipped, Mia strode to the door. “Follow me. I’ll explain more when we’re in the car.”

We truly were leaving the building. Wow.

Why, though? Why now?

Mia led us through the hallways, past the classrooms, past the Common, which was empty. Quiet. At the doors that led into the restricted area, she punched in a series of buttons and had her hand scanned.

The doors opened. We stepped into that forbidden hallway, and Kitten whispered, “What did she mean, scary?” Her golden eyes glittered, and her expression lit with excitement.

“Hell if I—know,” I finished lamely as I drank in our new surroundings. Unlike the Common, this area pulsed with life. Heavily armed men and women strode in every direction. One man was dragging an unconscious Ell Rollis from one corner to another.

Up close, I could see the alien’s dry, yellow skin. Without a nose, its face was grotesque. Its teeth were sharp and protruded over its lips. “What’s going on?”

“Business as usual,” Mia said.

Kadar passed us next, and he nodded in greeting. “Girls.”

“Hi, Kadar,” Lindsay said, her voice high and breathless.

Crushing, I guess. When had that happened? Kadar was gorgeous, sure, but I couldn’t see him falling for a student. Besides, the man was probably married with three hundred kids. Poor Linds. But, really. Who was I to judge? Queen of the doomed crushes, that was me.

I wasn’t even going to think his name.

Le’Ace passed us next. She and Mia pretended not to see each other. The two obviously hated each other, but neither had ever said why.

I’d heard rumors, of course.

According to gossip (not that I listened, cough, cough), Le’Ace had stopped aging a long time ago. She’d supposedly been here on and off for over fifty years. Did I believe that? Uh, no. Anyway, Mia had supposedly been a student, one of the more rebellious ones, always making trouble. Did I believe that? Uh, yeah. The story went on to say that Le’Ace had been her instructor and had killed one of Mia’s friends for purposefully giving the camp’s location to an enemy.

That, too, I could believe.

Breathing in the scent of coffee, I forced my attention on the room, memorizing details just as I’d been taught. There were desks and papers, computers and chairs like you’d find in a regular office. Multiple holoscreens and a panel of voice receivers consumed one wall. In my alien biology class, I’d learned that alien voice was similar to human DNA. Their voices contained some sort of frequency ours didn’t, outlining their species and gender. And so, recorders were placed all over New Chicago (and the rest of the world) to monitor in case a crime was committed.

I wasn’t given a chance to study anything else because we reached the doorway that led outside. A few steps, and I stood just beyond the threshold. That’s when I stopped, forgot about the building, and drank in the beauty of the night.

The sky was black velvet with pinpricks of white diamonds. The air was cool and fragrant with man-made lake and pine and dirt. Entranced, I tilted my chin up and splayed my arms. Before coming to this camp, I’d been able to go outside whenever I wanted. I’d lain in the sun for hours, absorbing the warmth; I’d partied in the moonlight, lost in my own little world.

What a difference a few weeks had made. I loved camp, but God, I had missed this. Having my freedom taken away was the absolute worst. I understood the reasoning for it now, might even have accepted it, but that didn’t change my frustration at being kept from it.

Kitten gasped, and I turned to see what had startled her. She was facing the building we’d just exited. I turned, too, and blinked in surprise. Uh, there was no building. Only night and dirt.

“A shield covers the building,” Mia explained. “It’s blocked from the naked eye by modified energy particles.”

Tentatively, I reached out. My fingers encountered something jellylike that caused the air around my fingers to dapple and ripple like water. “Wow,” I said, awed. “How will we find the door then?”

“You learn.” Mia clapped her hands. “Enough chatter. Let’s move out. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of time to do it.”

She loaded us inside a large black van—the same van that had brought me here, was my guess. Sweet memories, I thought dryly. From the outside, the vehicle appeared completely closed up, no side windows, no doorways. But with a single command of “open” from Mia, two doors popped open.

When we were seated inside, I realized that there were indeed windows; they were simply covered by a shade. Mia claimed the driver’s seat and programmed a location into the console computer.

As the car kicked into gear, she turned to us. There was no reason for her to steer or even watch the road. The computer did that for her. What’s more, Mia didn’t need to break or accelerate because the sensors knew when to do that.

“We’re going to drive around the city,” she said. “I want you to tell me when you see an other-worlder.”

I exchanged a glance with Kitten, who sat on my left.

“Are we being graded on this?” Cara asked.

“With your lives,” was the dead-serious answer.

Several girls groaned. My heartbeat sped into hyperdrive.

Mia frowned. “I’m not going to kill you, if that’s what you’re thinking. In the real world, you have to spot the aliens before they spot you. Don’t assume that just because most of them are visually different that you’ll be able to know when one is near. They hide. They sneak. Some of them can even transport right in front of you and kill you before you realize what’s happened.” Her frown deepened. “In my early days as an agent, I was attacked from behind and almost died. Had I been paying attention, I could have killed the alien before he knew I was there.”

Silence.

All of us were busy staring out the windows, searching…searching…for the elusive enemy among us. The enemy who would kill us if we didn’t kill him first. I saw only tall syn-oaks that knifed the skyline and thick bushes, freshly planted since there weren’t enough trees and the government was always looking for ways to replenish.

To my right, Emma shifted. I’d sat by her on purpose. I needed to apologize to her. I never should have mentioned her trauma. She’d been opening up to me, animated for the first time since I’d met her, and I’d reminded her of what she’d gone through.

Like she’d said, I didn’t want people to know about my drug use because they always—okay, usually—treated me differently. Emma probably felt the same. There was shame in knowing that others knew your deep, dark secrets.