He only opened his eyes once they were inside the Upgrade’s ship—because how could he not? Terrified as he was, this was an alien spacecraft, and therefore it was automatically awesome.
It was a lot different to the ships he had seen on TV and in movies—darker, and full of weird angles, and more functional somehow, and yet at the same time more real and more… well, alien. There was a command deck of sorts, but it contained machinery whose function he couldn’t even begin to hazard a guess at. And there were bewildering displays of jagged, ever-changing alien symbols flickering across seemingly every surface. There were organic-looking pods set into alcoves along one wall too, like giant moth cocoons made from dark crystalline material, similar to the ones in the craft that the smaller Predator had arrived in.
Rory was peering at the pods, trying to work out their function, when the Upgrade tossed him into one of them, as carelessly as he himself might toss a ball of crumpled paper into a wastepaper basket. He cowered in there, not daring to move, as the Upgrade moved across to the command deck and busied itself with various controls. Moments later there was a whooshing hiss, followed by a deep rumble, which could only mean one thing. The Upgrade was firing up the engines.
Rory’s heart started to beat very fast indeed. Was this it? Were these his last minutes on Earth? Would he see his mom and dad ever again? Would he ever see another human being?
Where would he be this time tomorrow? In space? On another planet?
As the rumbling of the engines rose in pitch and power, becoming a screech as savage as the war cry of the Upgrade itself, he clung to the sides of the pod and tried not to cry.
“Dad,” he whispered
25
McKenna, Casey, Nebraska, and Nettles watched, aghast, as the Predator ship, its engines screaming, slowly began to rise. Dust blew up from the quarry and blasted over them, stinging their skin, making them screw up their eyes.
Casey pointed at a rising outcrop of rock a little further along the rim, which jutted out over the quarry like a natural viewing platform.
“I’ll go low, you go high!” she yelled above the din of the engines.
McKenna nodded, then he, Nebraska, and Nettles turned and sprinted up the hill toward the outcrop, attempting to get above the ship, which was now rising from the ground, plasma exhaust spewing beneath it.
McKenna reached the outcrop first, his concern for Rory causing adrenaline to pump through his system, overcoming his tiredness. The ship kept rising; it was fifteen feet below the outcrop now. As McKenna bolted up the hill, it continued to rise, blowing exhaust, preparing for departure.
McKenna reached the top of the outcrop. Without hesitation, he jumped…
…and landed on top of the ship, yelping in pain as his ankle twisted and he went sprawling across the smooth, alien metal surface. He scrambled to his feet, aware of the pain in his ankle but sublimating it. He turned to see that Nebraska and Nettles had waited for the ship to rise until it was exactly level with the outcrop. Now they stepped onto its surface as if they were getting onto an elevator.
McKenna shot them a withering glare.
“Shoot it down!” he called over the wind that began to whip around them as the ship took on speed. “Aim for the engines!”
Nebraska and Nettles traded shrugs, then all three of them opened fire. Bullets spat from their weapons, raking the ship’s roof, then ricocheted off with nary a dent. Even so, McKenna kept pulling his trigger with grim determination, trying to quell the thought of just how fucked they would be, standing on top of a rising spacecraft, if they couldn’t force it to land.
And then, as if things couldn’t get any worse, the ship abruptly turned, tilted, and all three of them fell. McKenna hit the hull, sliding, scrambling to find a handhold, seconds away from having nothing but open sky beneath him.
Casey had managed to find a place with a gentle gradient where she could scramble down into the quarry without mishap. Unslinging the M4 from her shoulder, which she had picked up in the clearing after the firefight with the Upgrade, she ran across the dusty surface of the quarry floor until she was standing directly beneath the rising ship.
From below, she couldn’t see any part of the ship that looked particularly vulnerable. Everything looked shielded, armored, the outer skin of the craft—knowing the Predators as she now did—seemingly as tough and uncompromising as everything else about them. She knew that for several reasons it was probably a very bad idea to stand beneath the ship and fire up at it—but she did it anyway. Gritting her teeth, she fired a full clip at the ship’s underbelly, hearing her bullets whine and clatter as they ricocheted.
When the ship tilted to one side, she was astonished, then elated, then alarmed. She’d done it! Or at least one of them had. But she quickly realized that wasn’t the case, that the ship’s pilot was simply either taking evasive action or adjusting the ship’s trajectory as part of its normal take-off routine. Next moment, as if to confirm this, the roar of the engines abruptly increased, and the jet-wash knocked Casey off her feet.
“…ohshitohshitohshit…” Nettles chanted like it was a prayer to God. Maybe it was, McKenna thought, as in, oh-shit-please-God-don’t-let-me-die.
McKenna knew how he felt. He clung to the roof of the ship, the wind whipping around him. He could see Nettles and Nebraska in his peripheral vision, but he dared not look at them. It required all his focus just to hang on. The ship kept ascending. Their perch was precarious. At any second, he figured the ship would zip further skyward, moving faster, tilting backward, breaking through the atmosphere. All three of them would take a long, long fall to their deaths… and Rory would still be aboard the alien craft, where he’d suffer at the hands of the Upgrade Predator. It would tap his spine for his DNA, tear him apart. He’d scream in pain.
His boy.
McKenna needed to focus. He had to hold on. But if he, Nettles, and Nebraska had any chance to survive—and to save Rory—then he couldn’t wait another second. It was all or nothing, now.
Back in the clearing he’d given Rory one of the earwig comms units he’d brought with him from the RV, so that, if for any reason they got separated, they could still communicate with each other. Now he cupped one hand to his ear, and, hoping the comms unit was still working, shouted over the rushing wind.
“Rory, I’m on top of the ship! Are you okay?”
For a few seconds, he heard no reply. But then there came muffled static, and Rory’s shocked reply.
“Mom was right. You are crazy.”
Rory knew there were two things keeping him alive. The first was that the Predator wanted something from him. The second was that the monstrosity didn’t consider him a physical threat. He peered from the open pod, or hibernation chamber, or whatever this thing was, watching, waiting for an opportunity to do something that would save him, or his father, or by some miracle both of them.
He’d just told his dad he was crazy when he saw the Upgrade press a series of buttons, and next second something started happening on one of the monitors. The screen showed an outline, like a blueprint, of the ship and all its systems… and then a blinking dotted line began to form, surrounding the ship. Rory’s eyes widened as he realized what it meant, and tucking himself back into the pod, he frantically tapped the comms unit his father had given him.
“Dad? There’s a force field going online—automatic!”