“Help me with the door,” Bower said, starting to lift.
“Not just yet. I’ve got to get a truck first, remember.”
“You’re going to leave me?”
Bower was horrified.
“Here, you keep the gun,” Elvis said, pushing the revolver into her hand.
“What?” Bower replied, taken back by the notion.
“If anyone springs you, pull back on the hammer and fire. Aim for the center of the chest. Squeeze with certainty. Don’t jerk at the trigger.”
“You can’t leave me,” Bower protested. She was leaning against the wall inside the hallway, her head poking through the gap while the rest of her body remained within the darkness.
“Listen. I need you to think straight. You, me and Stella creeping through the streets at night wouldn’t end well. We’d attract too much attention. One man alone can move unseen. You’ve got to trust me on this. I will be back for you.”
“But the gun?”
“If I get to the point where I need to open fire on someone, one bullet won’t be enough.”
Elvis pointed down the street. “If everything goes to plan, you should see a truck pull up down there. No headlights. I need you to stay tight until then, OK?”
“OK.”
“Remember, if you hear gunfire nearby, you run, OK?”
“OK.”
“If I’m not back within two hours, you move out on foot, OK?”
“OK.”
“If you see the horizon lightening and sunrise approaching, you get the hell out of here, OK?”
“OK.”
“And move away from the rising sun.”
“OK.”
“Everything’s going to be fine.”
“OK,” Bower replied yet again, although she was anything but convinced. Her face must have given away her doubts.
Elvis smiled, saying, “Hang in there, sweet lips.” And that brought a smile to her face, disarming her entirely. Sweet lips, she’d never been called that before, and she doubted she would ever be called that again. The novelty was refreshing in a way only Elvis could manage.
Elvis kept to the shadows, working his way down the road before disappearing around the corner. He never looked back. Bower would have felt better if he’d looked back. She slumped against the wall. Sitting there, she looked at the gun in her hands. The revolver felt so heavy, as though it knew it didn’t belong in her fingers and was trying to escape.
In the half-light, she could see the alien at the end of the hallway behind her. With all that transpired in the past few minutes, she’d forgotten about their interstellar friend. Tentacles waved in the darkness. That was when it struck her; the door was open. This is what the creature had been waiting for. What would it do now when freedom seemed so close at hand?
“Red light,” Bower said. “We need to wait here. We have to wait for Elvis.”
“Green light.”
Bower felt the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
“No. Red light, red light. It’s not safe, not yet.”
The alien advanced on her, pulling in its whip-like tentacles as it moved down the narrow hallway. Bower stood, facing the creature in the darkness.
“No, please, don’t.”
“Green light.”
“You don’t understand. If you go out there, they’ll find you. They’ll kill you.”
“Green light,” the creature repeated. Bower felt as though she was talking to herself. As her voice firmed, so did the alien’s mimicry.
Tentacles began striking the walls in anger, threatening violence. In the close confines, the writhing mass of fronds closed on her. She could hear the central mass of the creature humming, pulsating like a hive.
Bower held out one hand, signaling for the creature to halt.
“You’ve got to trust me. I want to get out of here as much as you do, but I can’t. It’s a red light for me too. You must wait. I am here with you. I won’t leave you. Red light, please understand. Red light.”
“Green light,” the creature replied, raising her own voice against her, almost on the verge of yelling. The thrashing tentacles began breaking through the particle-board lining the hallway. Before her, a seething mesh of razor-sharp whips cut through the air barely a foot from her face.
Bower felt the grip of the revolver in her hands. Her fingers tightened on the handle. With her thumb, she pulled back on the hammer, cocking the gun.
“Green light,” screamed the alien and she expected rebel soldiers to come bursting through the door behind her.
Bower trembled. She thought about raising the gun and threatening to shoot. That had worked in their initial interaction when Adan had cast them into his colosseum. The alien had responded by retreating and protecting its core. Would the alien respond the same way now? Or would the threat of violence destroy the trust they’d established? Did any such trust exist? Had it ever existed, or was it simply a construct of her own imagination?
Bower suspected a threat would work, but she couldn’t bring herself to offer what would only ever be a hollow bluff. There had to be another way. Violence was cowardice, the petty refuge of a dull mind. She had to let the creature go. If the alien wanted to chance itself alone on the run, she had to respect that.
Her thumb gripped the hammer, slowly lowering it back in place against the firing pin of the bullet already set in the chamber of the revolver. As she did so the creature froze. Not one of the hundreds of tentacles threatening to strike moved. The various blades seized in midair, regardless of the contorted shape in which they were held. For a moment, it was as though Bower was looking at a modern art sculpture.
With her heart pounding in her chest, perspiration breaking out on her forehead and her fingers shaking, Bower tried to stand still. She was aware that the creature had only just realized she was holding the loaded gun.
Bower bent down slowly, placing the gun on the ground, keeping her eyes on the pulsating mass at the heart of the convoluted creature. The tentacles remained stationary, locked in place, and she wondered what the hell this intelligent being from another world was thinking.
“Green light,” she said softly, stepping to one side, hoping the alien could squeeze past her. She had no doubt the alien’s tentacles could manipulate the door and move it out of the way. She only hoped the door didn’t crash to the concrete floor.
There was silence for the best part of a minute. Sweat ran from her forehead, stinging her eyes, but she fought the urge to react and wipe them. Sudden movements didn’t seem wise. Bower pressed her back against the wall, trying to give the alien as much room as possible, but she refused to step outside the door. She was stubborn and she knew it, but she believed in Elvis. She believed he knew what he was doing, and this was the only way she could conceivably communicate that to this strange alien intelligence.
Still the alien remained motionless, barely half a foot away from the gun lying on the concrete, and Bower found herself wondering what it was thinking. Was the alien looking at the gun? Was it looking at her? Perhaps seeing her in far more than the visible spectrum, which was so woefully inadequate in the dark. Could it sense her heartbeat? Could it measure her body heat, or the rush of adrenalin signaling a flight or fight response? Did it understand how unbearable it was for her to do neither? Outwardly, the creature may have seemed inert, but she doubted that was true of its inner reasoning. Bower felt as though Stella was reading her mind.
Finally, the creature replied, saying, “Red light.”
Bower breathed a sigh of relief. The muscles of her body, so tense just moments before, relaxed. At the same time, the fronds and blades of the creature flexed and sagged. Bower was surprised by the parallels between them.
What point of logic had convinced the alien to wait?