Invasion
Chapter 17

Takashi joins the rest at the front, stillstaring at the beam. Olivia turns to Sergey and screams, “So what now, boss??!”“I have no idea!” he says staring at it. “We go down!!” Andrei screams. “We goto the bottom of this!” He then points to a path they can take. “Let’s go!” hesays. Olivia stays for a moment. Takashi looks at her and smiles. A worriedsmile, a happy smile. “Come on!” he shouts. She chuckles, takes a deep breath,and they head off. They hold hands and walk together side-by-side behind therest of the group. The path is quite big, probably for trucks to carry thedeposit. It’s in a spiraling pattern all the way down to the bottom. “This ispretty cool!” Takashi says to her. “I’ve always wanted to see a quarry in person!”“Why?!” she asks. “I don’t know!” he replies, “it just seems cool! Or maybe it’sbecause I played a game once!!” He laughs. “Hahaha… I don’t know!” “That’salright. Just enjoy it!” she tells him. Everything starts to disappear again.Even amidst the loud sound of the strange beam shooting and the fact that theyhave to shout a bit to talk—their words would just fade into oblivion otherwise.That sense of calmness appears again, surrounding them in its aura. They’rehere, and they’ve made it this far. Let’s finish it. Halfway through theirtrek, the beam begins to dissipate slowly. It gets smaller and smaller until itdisappears completely along with the deafening sound. Everything is quiet now. “Whatjust happened?” Sergey asks. “This is not good,” Andrei states, “we shouldhurry.”

The bottom of the quarryis now visible, as the beam has disappeared. They can see lots of creaturesdown there as well as the hole that the beam created. “Wait! Wait!!” Oliviashouts to them. “What are you guys gonna do?! We can’t just run down there to them.That’s suicide.” She stops suddenly after she says so. “That’s exactly whatwe’re gonna do,” Andrei says as he and the men cock their guns. She stareslooking confused, thinking. Takashi comes up from behind, touches her shoulder,and says, “You know what? For once, I agree with you.” Bemused at what he justsaid, “Ah, what the heck? Me too,” she responds with a smile, “that’s exactlywhat we should do.” “So what are we waiting for?” Sergey asks.

Oneof the men throws a high explosive grenade to the middle of a group. Thecreatures look at it in confusion before it goes off in their faces. Anothercreature roars in realization of their presence. “Oh, I miss this,” Andreisays, smiling. “Let’s go!!!!!” he screams. And with that, chaos begins. Thecreatures roar in unison indicating battle. The men start shooting at them withgrenade launchers and RPGs first to crack their outer shell. The rest proceedsto shoot them with non-explosive weaponry. The numerous amount of explosiveslaunched creates a wonderful, if not dangerous, explosion. Smoke and dust anddirt flies through the air from the sheer force. The bullets easily took careof them once their armored skin was breached. But their numbers are plentythough as more keep coming. “You do realize that we’re not at full strengththough,” Olivia reminds Takashi. “I don’t care,” he replies, looking angry. Hejumps towards one of the creatures, screaming as he does so, and gives it agood ol’ punch to the face. He then proceeds to beat it up before throwing itto another one. Olivia stares at him, but then shakes it off. “Hmmph,” she speaks.She then gracefully jumps from the path to the bottom of the quarry. “You know,I probably could just send you hurtling to the atmosphere right now. But myboyfriend’s right, sometimes punching feels better,” she says to the creaturein front of her, smiling auspiciously. As it charges towards her, she leansback to prepare her punch before knocking that creature to next Tuesday. Itdisappears into the distance. “Ouch. Okay, that hurt,” she says. “Aaannndd themoment’s over.” She proceeds to levitate an old mining cart and hurtles ittoward several creatures. Takashi continues to beat the creatures up, tearingtheir armor off of them with his bare hands. Blood spills everywhere, bothyellow and red. They combine to make an orange-ish sorta color. His face filledwith rage and anger. He screams and shouts and it even made him strong enoughto punch straight through a creature’s chest and to its heart, ripping it out;blood splatters all over his face. The creature shifts between its physicalfrom and electrical form as he does so. There is pain from the shocks, but hedoesn’t care and continues—his face showing an expression of holding back thepain through sheer anger. Several creatures proceed to gang up on him and he’scrushed under them. But then, the ground beneath them starts to tremble.Suddenly, they violently fly outwards as an energy burst strong enough to ripthem apart explodes. Again, the bright blue glow can be seen, if only for amoment this time. At the center of that is Takashi, screaming loudly as heexplodes. Everyone stares at him, even the creatures. “Baby?” Olivia says,worried.

The creatures thentransform to their electrical form before attacking again. In this form, theyare invulnerable to physical attack while still being able to damage anddeliver “punches” themselves. They charge towards him and start attacking him.“Aaaaarrrrggghhhhh!!!” he screams in pain. He tries to retaliate, but hispunches don’t affect them. Blood and scratches and burn cover parts of hisbody, his jacket and clothes starts to rip a little. The strain from the combinationof electric shocks and punches proves too much. Olivia quickly surrounds himinside a force field to protect him. “Do something!!!” she yells. They startshooting at them, everywhere. In their electrical form, their speed is greatlyincreased making it very difficult to keep up. They continue to hit nothing asbullet casings fly off from their guns. Even if they hit their mark, the bulletwould just pass through. It’s pointless. “We cannot hit them!” Sergey shouts toher. “They’re too fast!” Inside the force field, Takashi lies in the fetalposition, shivering…trembling. Everything quiets down. Here I am again, he thinks, Ican’t sleep again. After all this time, I still can’t sleep. Tears rolldown his cheek. Even with the powers Inow have, I’m still powerless. Against these creatures, against my emotions, mythoughts... I can’t do this. I failed again. I’m a failure, always have been.Look at me, lying here, trembling. Everyone was right. I make myself like this.He opens his eyes, looking at Liv, Sergey, and all of them. They’re working so hard to help me. Was itjust me? He starts to get up. Was Ithinking too much? Was I too emotional? Am I still too emotional? He rollsup his sleeves and calms his mind. Thebody is slow, but the mind is not. He focuses and everything starts to slowdown around him. He can now see the path of the creatures. Why do we meet people we meet? Who or what decides who leaves our livesand who stays? He forms energy fields around them, trying to contain them…andthen another, and another, and another… He then forces them to one location andputs them all together, compressing the field until it becomes so small. “Whatis he doing?” Andrei asks. Olivia smiles and says, “Being strong.” Theircombined energy at such a close range causes a sort of overload—it’s too much—andthe field explodes releasing them. They reverted back to their physical form asit happened. Burned and smoking, they lie there, dead. Olivia stops projectingher force field around him. He kneels down and closes his eyes, tears stillrolling down his cheek. She quickly runs to him. “Are you okay?” she asks him.He opens his eyes and looks up to her. “I’m…fine,” he answers. “You know me,Liv. I’m crazy.” She smiles before kneeling down with him, “I’m proud of you.You did that on your own.” “Don’t be. I’m still me. Still the insane andtroubled kid that everyone hates because he can’t control himself,” heexplains. “I know.” “The kid who doesn't know how to take care of himself andis too emotional. How does he expect to help others? Haha.” “Haha, this is whoyou are. And you know what? He’s a good person. And I know that. What do youalways say? ‘Fuck the world.’ It doesn’t matter. I believe in you.” He touchesthe side of her face, “I know you do. Haha, you’re the only one who does. Ishould listen to you more. I’m sorry.” He then gives her a kiss. “You don’tneed to be sorry,” she says, putting her hand on his. “Remember, all theseexperiences shapes who you are. Forget about being better or stronger. It willmake you you.” Their foreheads touch and they close their eyes—being in themoment just for once. “Baby, we’ve gotta stop meeting like this,” she jokes andthey both share a laugh. “I know, I know. I’m trying,” he replies. “I haveproblems, you know” They continue to share a laugh. “I think everyone does,”she said. “Yes, yes they do.”

Sergeyand the rest come running down to join them. “My friend, that was quiteimpressive,” Sergey remarks. “Thanks,” he replies. They kneel there to rest asthey have a moment to catch their breaths. But it isn’t long as the groundstarts trembling again. “What now?” she asks. It gets louder and louder, seemsto be getting closer, like something is moving towards them. Suddenly, the skygets dark as a shadow passes over the quarry. They look up to see a huge ship,circular and vertical, dark brown in color with a hole at the bottom, like acannon. It glows bright white. The ship hovers just above the quarry, makingthat hovering sound that these ships do. It had a few giant plates levitatingand rotating just a little bit above the surface and some rods or antennassticking out of it. Suddenly the sound gets louder and louder and the hole startsglowing. Olivia looks at it and is struck with memories of her vision frombefore, about the flying machines shooting beams towards the earth and a giantship in space. “We have to stop it,” she suddenly says. “What?” Takashi asks. “Getaway from the beam! We have to stop it! Shoot it down!!” They retreat backbefore Andrei tells them that their weapons are nowhere near enough to take ahuge ship like that out. Olivia looks at it, thinking that maybe they can.“Sweetie, help me,” she says to him. They both raise their hands towards it,but before they could do anything, a few creatures show up from behind to stopthem. “Look out!” Sergey shouts. The soldiers shoot at them as Takashi andOlivia turn around to repel them back. Obviously it was just a distraction toprevent them from harming the ship, and it worked as they’re too late and analmost translucent beam fires down from the ship. Though not in the generalsense, it’s moving quite slow, but fast enough. It enters the hole that wascreated. Andrei and his men were still killing the creatures to see it, while Olivia,Takashi, and Sergey are staring at it, like in a trance. “Olivia, what is goingon?” Sergey asked. “I’m not really sure,” she replies. Then, yellowishsubstances begin to rise up from the hole, through the beam and into the ship. Thebeam appears to have some sort of hypnotic effect as they can’t do anything butstand there and stare at it. “I can’t move,” Olivia says calmly. “Me neither,” Takashiadds. After killing the creatures, they move back only to be enthralled by themystifying light too.

As it finishes sucking upthe yellow stuff, whatever it is, the beam slowly shuts down and disappears,though they’re still staring up at it. Afterwards, the ship quickly flies upoutta there, most likely back into orbit. Olivia snaps out of the trance andtries to shake it off. “Oh, my head,” she says. “Come on, guys. Snap out of it!”The rest are pretty banged up too, trying to snap out of it, shaking theirheads. It’s like waking up from a dream, a vivid one. “Urgh, what happened?”they ask. “We were too late,” she tells them. “We will get them next time,”Andrei states. “Next time? There’s no next time! We can't stop them!” She sitsdown, propping herself against her elbows. “We have done good so far, we can dothis,” Sergey tries to reassure his friend. “You think stopping these…thesecreatures makes a difference?? They’re just foot soldiers, there’s more wherethey came from.” “So what do we do then?” he asks. “Liv, it’ll be okay,” Takashitells her. “No, it won’t be. I…had a, I don’t know, a vision, I guess, back inthe city. When I was electrocuted by one of the creatures, it…I don’t know,showed me these images,” she explains. “What kinda images?” he asks. “I don’tknow, images of these flying machines and a…” she stops in realization, lookingat her hand slightly glowing white, “that’s it.” She suddenly stands up,laughing, “I understand now. I think I know what to do,” she tells them, “but Idon’t think you guys are gonna like it.” “I think after what we’ve all beenthrough, nothing can really make it worse,” Takashi says, hoping. “This will,”she asserts, “the visions… What we’ve been doing so far is kinda pointless.Killing these creatures, no matter how many we do it they can just make more. Goingafter the ships and these holes is pointless too, they’re everywhere around theworld” she explains. “So what do you suggest we do?? Just stop and accept theinevitable end?!” Andrei asks her sternly. “No, we have to go out.” His eyeswidened and his head tilted back a bit. “Excuse me?” he asks. Takashi is alsoconfused standing behind her, and possibly a little jealous. “Haha, no. Notlike that. We have to go out into space, into orbit. They have a ship currentlyorbiting the Earth. I think that’s like the mothership. The only way to stopall this is to destroy that ship. Once it’s gone, all these other smaller shipsand all these creatures, they’ll just die,” she explains further. Andrei looksat Sergey, contemplating this plan, looking auspicious. “Okay, even if you’reright, how do you propose we get to orbit?” Takashi asks her. “I don’t know.Can we even survive in space? With our powers, I mean.” “Even if we can, it’ll justbe the two of us since they won’t beable to.” Sergey looks frustrated, not knowing what to do next. “Well, we couldalways use the space elevator,” his friend says. Takashi and Olivia turn aroundin unison to face him. “Did you just say ‘space elevator’?” he asks him, notbelieving it. Sergey smiles auspiciously to his friend, “Yes, that could work,”he says. “Wait, wait, wait. You guys have a space elevator??” Olivia asks themin wonder, “like an actual elevator…to space??” The two friends looked at eachother before facing them, “Yes,” they both answered. “Okay, wow,” she says.They’re both still bemused by this revelation: an actual existing spaceelevator. Takashi is trying to contemplate the physics required to achieve thisfeat. “We don’t have time to explain all the details, just trust us,” Sergeysays. “Alright, okay. But tell me this at least, how long have you guys hadthis thing?” he asks them. “Since, what you Americans call, the ‘space race’age, I believe? “ he answers. “As you said, we do not have much time. We willexplain on the way, come on,” Andrei tells them. “On the way where, where isthis thing??” Olivia asks. “On the way!” She sighs before they follow them outof the quarry.

Theybegin their walk back up to the top. “You see, admittedly, we were losing therace against the United States. We did not possess the technology as theAmericans did to build good rockets, yes? So we tried to built the elevatorinstead,” Sergey explains as they’re walking, “It was tested a few times, butof course, even that had many flaws. And eventually it was also abandoned. Atleast, that’s what they told the public. It is still there and it is stilloperational, just in secret.” “Wow. I really can’t believe this is happening,but I won’t ask too much detail about it. I feel like I shouldn’t,” Takashisays, “but where is it?” “It is back near Moscow.” “We have to go all the wayback??” Olivia asks in surprise. “No, not exactly. The elevator is in Korolyov.Ehh, Korolev,” he explains, “it was part of the space program after all.” Notreally able to comprehend the magnitude of this, they keep their mouthshut, at least for now.