SquidgeWorld Archive

The Project
by Exfilia

"What's the kid doing here?" Leah asked, shoving her cash drawer into the register.

"If anyone asks," Jenny said, "he's shopping. I'm not about to have my senior project go south on me because my parents couldn't find a babysitter."

"And I thought accounting majors had it tough!"

"You should talk. You've already been accepted by the law school you wanted. I still haven't got a hint of a job."

"Yeah, well, at least your student loan won't be getting any bigger. Sometimes I think being a successful tax lawyer isn't worth the price."

"You're going to help a lot of people."

"I think they'd rather have your help. Did we have a winner yet?"

"Nope. I'm beginning to think I put it in the wrong section. The rush in sales is tapering off, too."

"Just put that in your paper."

"In my paper is one thing. On my resume is another."

The morning dragged. On the radio Leah heard that there was more fighting in eastern Europe. There had to be something more important to do than transferring money from one pocket to another. She accomplished nothing all morning. Well, once Jenny's brother had to be rescued against his will from three strange men who commented on his MUFON hat. Leah wished the kid would be abducted by aliens. She wished she was in an office somewhere doing someone's books. She fervently wished she was in a private place somewhere with the guy in the leather jacket that had just walked in. Tall and dark, with a sweet smile and hair that flopped into intensely green eyes and an injured... no, a missing left arm. He prowled through every section of the men's department, choosing shirts, shoes, underwear, and a ready to wear suit before he presented himself to Leah.

"Will that be all?" she asked, resisting the urge to dive into his eyes.

"Probably not." Oh, God, he could tell what she was thinking! "The airline lost my luggage, and I have some important things to do today. I know I must have forgotten something."

"Well, if you need anything else, just let us know." Leah pulled his purchases across the scanner. From out of town, maybe alone maybe available maybe a quick roll in the hay with those awesome eyes....

She swiped a package of Y-fronts across the scanner, and a siren went off. The man's good arm flew to the small of his back. A police style light was flashing on the top of her register.

Jenny had given away a car with a 6-pack of underwear?

She must have, because she was bustling out of the office with the keys and a camera.

"Oh, don't be shy!" she gurgled. If Jenny's career in marketing depended on personal interaction, she might as well hang it up right now. The poor man was shaking his head and backing away. "Come on up here! Do you know what you've won? Do you?" She took him by his arm, then dropped it with a sharp intake of breath when she realized it wasn't real. She recovered herself, danced around to his other side and took his good hand. "Leah, get the picture, will you?"

"No!" The man jerked his hand away from Jenny. "I mean, it's not necessary."

"Oh, come on! You won it fair and square!"

"Look, I'm from out of town. I don't need a car. I don't want a car! I have no way to get it home!"

"But you won!"

"Yeah, well, thanks a lot, but could I just have my clothes?"

"You don't want the car?" Jenny's chin was trembling. She turned to Leah. "What are we going to do?"

"Fuck you." The young man stormed out into the mall. Jenny dissolved into tears.

"Now look what you've done!" She said to Leah.

Leah hadn't done anything. There was no 'we' to have to figure out what to do, either. This was Jenny's marketing project. Jenny was an unpaid intern, expected to perform brilliantly. Leah was minimum wage help. But she couldn't just stand there and listen to the girl whine. She'd flatten her if she did. She locked the cash drawer and headed out into the mall. Jenny's creep of a brother was attached to the phone by the fountain.

"Go look after your sister," Leah told him.

"But...." The boy's eyes wandered down the mall to where a leather jacket was turning into the hall to the men's room.

"No buts! Go!" The kid slammed the phone into its cradle and slunk off toward the shop. Leah dodged around mallwalkers and customers and ducked down the hallway.

No sign of him. Probably he was in the men's already. All Leah had to do was wait out here for him. She paced in a small circle, and almost ran into a man coming out of the supply closet. He was wearing a business suit.

"Are you lost?" she asked.

"I... uh... I was looking for the bathroom."

Leah pointed to the huge sign across the hall.

"Uh... thanks." He stepped toward the door, and Leah turned away. An arm whipped around her neck, and a hand filled her mouth. Jerk. She stamped her high heel down on his foot. He screamed, but only squeezed tighter. The bathroom door flew open and the one-armed man appeared. Leah's assailant tried to drop her and reach for him, but she spun him around and kicked him where it hurt.

Where it should have hurt. It didn't. The big guy lunged for her, but the other stepped in behind him and hit him in back of the neck. The man crumpled like aluminum foil. One leather-clad arm snaked around Leah.

"Come on!" he said. Leah couldn't move. Her eyes were fixed on the man on the ground. He was MELTING!

"Come on," the man said again. "Come away. Just forget you saw that, okay?"

"What... is that?"

"You don't want to know." He bent and extracted a thing like an ice pick from his victim's neck.

"It tried to choke me! I think I have a right to know!"

"Would you believe me if I said he was an alien here to prepare for an invasion of earth?"

Leah looked down at the remains. The face was slimy and green. It was making the same noise as a frying egg, and it was bubbling.

"Yes," she said.

He sat her down in the food court and fed her a burger. His name was Alex. He worked for the government, but not for any particular branch. He was involved with a plan to stop the invasion. All we had to do was hold out long enough to get off-planet help, and it was a cinch. The invasion was already decades behind. It was easier, though, if the general public didn't know. And he really had lost his luggage on a plane. And he really wished he had time to get to know Leah better.

"Did you enjoy yourself?" Jenny asked when she got back to work.

"Not particularly."

"That's not what I heard."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I heard you followed that creep and had a really friendly lunch with him."

"I was trying to find out what his problem was!"

"Yeah, right. I'm more worried about what your problem is. My project is down the tubes, I'm going to be working on a cash register for the rest of my life and someone I thought was my friend is out hitting on the cause of it all!"

"I was not hitting on him!"

"Then he's the first thing in pants to walk in here that you haven't hit on!"

"My love life is none of your business!"

"It is if you do it when you're supposed to be working!"

"Well at least I don't try to babysit at work!"

They were saved from further hostilities by the arrival of a family of five, three of whom were in need of socks. When they left, there was a cute guy looking at the ties. Leah had no idea when he'd arrived. Oops. He was accompanied by a petite redhead who disapproved of his taste. He chose a Tweety Bird tie in spite of her frown and brought it to the register.

"Was a friend of ours in earlier? Tall, dark, one arm?"

"I don't remember anybody like that."

"Are you sure?" Leah reached for what she thought was a credit card the woman was holding, and found an FBI badge instead. "We heard you spent quite a while with him."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Leah rang up the tie and excused herself. The man looked across the store at Jenny's brother, who shrugged.

"Miss?"

"Yes, sir?"

"This man. He's dangerous, you know. Not someone you want to hang around."

"I'm sorry. I really don't know anybody like that." She pushed her way past Jenny and into the back. Jenny went out on the sales floor. Leah watched on the security camera as the other girl spoke to the couple, and took one of the man's cards. So much for Jenny as a confidante.

* * * * *

Leah's apartment was probably too large for her. At one time she'd had a series of roomates, but one after another they'd found someone of the opposite sex to cohabit with. Even her cat had disappeared. She was alone with half a gallon of butter pecan and a collection of Buffy tapes when there was a tap at the window facing the fire escape.

Nothing ever tapped at her window. But maybe the cat had come back.

Alex had come back. She opened the window and he slid in.

"How did you find me?" she asked.

"You'd be surprised what a man can turn up about a pretty girl when he needs to." He looked down at her, distracted for a moment by the body under her pajamas.

"Would you like me to put on something else?"

"Leah, I'm being followed. People who'll stop me from doing what I need to if they have their way."

"FBI?"

"You've met them."

"They're almost as strange as that guy in the hall."

"Well, he is, anyway. Leah, they're after me, and there's something I really need to get done. Will you help me?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"I can't believe you just take my word for all this."

"I saw a guy melt, Alex. We're not in Kansas anymore."

"Okay, there's a war going on. There are three factions that we know of duking it out up there, and occasionally they lose a ship."

"Which faction?"

"All of them, from time to time. This time it's the bad guys. Not the indifferent ones, not the ones we mildly inconvenience, the ones who want to destroy almost all life on this planet and enslave the rest. The bad guys."

"Are they trying to get it back? What happened to the pilot?"

"Pilot's dead. Now comes the hard part."

"It gets harder than a guy melting?"

"Terraforming--maybe I mean deterraforming-- anyway, what they want to do to the planet takes time, and humans could royally mess it up. When the Shal Droth decided to colonize here--this was forty years ago, or so--they new they had to get rid of the human race, like they did other people on other worlds. How they do that is they cut a deal with a government dirtside and develope a species-specific disease that wipes them out. They promise the ones they work with an immunity, but I hear it doesn't really work."

"So what? The Russians are working with the Shall Doth?"

"Shal Droth. No. At the time they moved on Earth there was only one functional high-tech society."

"Our government?"

"They cut a deal with some people at the highest levels. There was dissent. I work with some people who're trying to fight back."

"And those two FBI types? They want to kill us all and give the planet away?"

"They couldn't see the truth if it crawled out their noses. It's like they just don't want to know. Leah, that ship can't go home."

"Why? You said there were a lot of them."

"Yeah, but there was a genetic therapy experiment a while back. They turned a woman born normal into some sort of hybrid."

"Alex, I took biology. Hybrids are the result of crossing two species, like mules. You can't turn someone into one."

"Maybe that's not the word, but that's what happened. She died, but they saved some of her tissue, and it's on that ship. We have to destroy it, or the Shal Droth invasion will begin."

"I don't get it."

"I don't either. One of our doctors thinks it has something to do with the infection process. Leah, I have a bomb."

"A which?"

"An explosive device." He pulled a pack of Morleys from his pocket and peeled away the red wrapper. There was something inside in a metal case. "We got this from the resistance--escapees and their descendants from worlds that have been taken over. It'll go through their shields like butter. They're going to set it off at eleven tonight."

"They are going to set it off?"

"They don't trust us with this technology. We aren't meant to have time to study it."

"But we have to plant it."

"You have to plant it. And then you have to get away. It's going to flatten the building. Maybe more than one building."

"Before eleven tonight."

"Uh, yeah."

"Where?"

"Ambulares Field."

"A Navy base?"

"Uh, yeah. And Leah? It might not be a good idea for you to come home after for a while."

* * * * * *

There was a car on the street outside Leah's building. Normally any car left there for more than five minutes was nothing but an immobile steel frame. This one was intact. Someone was around. Leah drove one block and turned around a corner. Behind her the car's lights came on.

Alex had said he would distract them. Where was he? He'd had plenty of time to lead them away. She went around the block. No Alex. Leah frowned and headed toward the interstate. The other car followed.

It wouldn't take long, she reasoned. She had a decal, applied in the garage of her building. Alex said she'd be waved through the gate. The car behind her would have to stop and get a pass. She could lose it then.

She was stopped and told to pull over. The dark sedan pulled in behind her and the redhead got out, tucking a cellphone back into her coat. Bitch. Where was her partner? After Alex, most like. Leah pulled the fake dependent ID out of her purse, making sure at the same time that the fake cigarettes were secure. 10:30. This wasn't going to work.

"Excuse me," she said. "That car has been following me for miles. I want that person detained."

"Ma'am, that person is an FBI agent."

"Are you sure? At our last duty station there was some trouble with fake IDs. Have you checked?"

"Well, uh...."

"Maybe you'd better do that before you do something you'll regret. Go on. I'm not going anywhere."

A large man with stripes and chevrons all up and down his arm leaned out of the office.

"Problem, Seaman?"

"Unauthenticated credentials, chief." The redhead's mouth flew open, then clicked shut again.

"Bring them both in here, then, until we get this straight."

"Ladies, would you have a seat in the office, please."

10:37. It wasn't going to work. The chief took Leah's ID and the other woman's badge into a back office and punched numbers into his phone.

Before his conversation was over, the front door flew open and Alex was shoved in, followed by the male agent. The chief boiled out of his office.

"What in the hell is going on here?"

The redhead stood up and joined the fray. Leah ducked into the bathroom. Thank you, God! The window wasn't locked! She wriggled out, checked the cigarettes again, thought about the map Alex had draw for her and headed for the hanger she wanted. 10:48. There wasn't enough time.

"Good evening," she told the guard. "I'm looking for Petty Officer O'Malley." Alex swore there was a Petty Officer O'Malley on the books. He was on the duty roster for tonight. He didn't exist. But Leah was on paper as his wife. The guard pointed her toward an office in the back of the building. 10:56.

The phone rang. Leah strolled to the first cross corridor. There was a siren outside, fast approaching. 10:57. She used the key Alex had given her. It didn't matter now. She couldn't get far enough away from the bomb to survive no matter what.

Alex hadn't lied. There was a... a craft in the hanger, shrouded in white. Leah walked up to it and stuck the business end of the bomb where she'd been told. There was a commotion in the corridor. People were going to be hurt when this thing went off.

10:59. She'd bought what she was told. She hadn't wondered how Alex had gotten her ID that quickly. She hadn't wondered anything.

A guy had melted. There was a spacecraft in a hanger at a Naval Air Station. She had seen these things. She wanted to be a part of this battle.

12:00.

The End