The jagged afterglow of lightning hung in the horizon as the thunder boomed. There was something in the clouds. It was only a silhouette, but whatever it was, it was enormous.
“Did you guys see that?” Colt asked.
“See what?” Oz asked, leaning over so he could look out the window.
“I don't know,” Colt said. “Maybe I was just hallucinating.” He lay back against the headrest as another burst of lightning filled the sky.
Danielle's eyes went wide. Then she screamed.
There was no way that something like that could exist, yet there it was, not more than a kilometer or two away. The creature looked something like a jellyfish, although it was as big as a three-bedroom house. Its membrane was translucent, revealing a strange network of nerves that looked like a cluster of wires. Bursts of light flashed across the complex trails, firing in rapid succession.
Colt watched dozens of tentacles undulate below its membrane like water snakes skimming the surface of a pond. “What is that thing?”
“I don't know,” Oz said. “Maybe it escaped from one of the CHAOS facilities in New Mexico.”
Colt wondered what kind of facility was big enough to hold something like that. Was it in a warehouse? Some kind of bunker deep underground? And if there was a place that housed giant flying jellyfish, what other kinds of creatures were locked up there?
Oz pulled out his phone and took a few pictures.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to put them on my Facebook page.”
“Are you serious?”
“No,” Oz said as he took another picture. “I'm going to send them to someone at CHAOS so we can find out what it is.”
There was a flash of light followed by a loud clang. It sounded like somebody was pounding on the hull with a sledgehammer. The cabin started to shake, and the jet dropped. A tentacle slapped Colt's window and made a sick noise, like rotting meat thrown against a hard surface. He scrambled to get out of his seat, forgetting that he was buckled in as something like suction cups latched on to the glass, leaving an oily residue.
Danielle screamed, her fingers digging in the armrests as her eyes scanned the ceiling. A sound like metal being ripped apart echoed through the cabin as the monster latched on. It beat the glass, and Colt watched as his window started to splinter. Veins appeared like a spiderweb as they spread across the surface.
“That thing isn't alone,” Oz said. The sky was filled with the strange monsters floating through the storm like a school of jellyfish while winds sent waves across their membranes.
The overhead lights flickered as the ceiling bowed. Colt didn't know if the aircraft was right side up or upside down as the intercom crackled to life.
“If we can break free from this thing, there's a soft spot in the atmosphere,” the captain said. “I've called our coordinates in, and if we time it right we should be able to make a jump.”
“Wait,” Colt said. “As in a gateway?”
Random gateways weren't exactly stable. They were there one second and gone the next, and even if they found one before it closed, there was no way to know where it led. Then again, if the only alternative was sitting there while a giant flying jellyfish ripped the jet apart, they didn't have much of a choice.
There was an explosion followed by a burst of light. White streaks ran across the hull and down the wings, crackling and swirling as they went. The creature let out a piercing cry, and the fiery current engulfed its tentacles. A moment later the jet was free. The pilot banked hard to the right, and as the plane wove through the field of hungry tentacles, Colt hoped the aircraft would hold together long enough to make the jump. He craned his neck and spotted the dark patch of sky. It was black against the deep gray, and clouds swirled like a living frame as lightning rippled across the surface.
The jet shot forward, veering toward the gateway as the cabin shook and engines roared. But just when Colt thought they were free, a tentacle lashed out, hitting one of the wings. The jet dipped hard to the right, and his head smashed against the window. He blinked, trying to gather his thoughts as more tentacles wrapped around the aircraft, crushing the hull until the ceiling started to cave in.
A second jellyfish moved toward them, its tentacles dancing with abandon. Colt closed his eyes, but at the last possible moment the pilot thrust the engines to full power and the jet went into a barrel roll. Somehow the pilot managed to break free from the writhing tentacles and into open airspace before the nose of the jet broke the surface of the portal.
T
he gateway wasn't as random as they had thought. The soft spot in the atmosphere might have become a portal given time, but it needed some coaxing if they wanted to use it to escape from the jellyfish monsters.
After the pilot relayed their coordinates, a team in Nevada programmed the gateway using experimental technology that was similar to a personal teleporting device, but on a much larger scale. The machine was in development to use for military troop transport, allowing instantaneous travel instead of relying on ships and airplanes. Up to that point, no human had been used in any of the trials, only robots and drones. If the calculations were offâeven by a fractionâthe gateway would close, trapping anyone and anything inside. But Lobo had given the order himself, and thankfully the gateway worked.
The mangled jet made it to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, where the pilot landed on a private airstrip far from the commercial terminals. No sooner had the door opened than Colt grabbed Danielle's hand and headed down the narrow stairs and onto the tarmac, where a fleet of emergency vehicles waited.
“I'm never flying again,” Danielle said as the wind blew strands of hair into her face.
Though it was the middle of the afternoon, it was already getting dark. The sky was overcast, and tiny white flakes fell from thick clouds, though they melted as soon as they hit the ground. It was just enough to make everything wet and miserable. Colt zipped his jacket and stuffed his hands in his pockets as a paramedic rushed over with a blanket, offering to wrap it around his shoulders. “I'm okay,” he said, waving her off.
“Where's Oz?” Danielle asked. “I thought he was right behind us.”
As Colt scanned the crowd, he noticed the CHAOS agents. There were at least a dozen, maybe more. Some wore suits with long trench coats and others had dark jackets with CHAOS written across the back in bold yellow letters. All were armed, and Colt felt trapped. If Lobo told them that Colt was a Russian spy or that he'd been recruited into a fringe terrorist cell, there was a good chance they would shoot first and ask questions later.
“There he is,” Danielle said, pointing to where Oz stood in front of a black Mercedes R350 Crossover. It seemed like an extravagant vehicle, considering organizations like the FBI typically drove Chevy Suburbans. Maybe, Colt thought, lavish spending was part of the reason that Senator Bishop and other members of the oversight committee wanted to oust Lobo as the director.
Oz was locked in a conversation with a tall alien who was extraordinarily thin. She had pointed ears and something that looked like a cross between a dorsal fin and a Mohawk running down the center of her head. Her skin was a shade that reminded Colt of sea foam, her eyes were enormous, and instead of lips and a nose she had some kind of beak that made her look like a bald parrot.
As Colt and Danielle made their way across the tarmac, Oz's eyes kept darting about. He was standing close enough to the alien that he didn't need to talk in much more than a whisper, so Colt wasn't able to overhear any of their conversation. When Oz saw them approaching, he nodded and the alien turned around.
“What's that all about?” Danielle asked.
“I'm not sure,” Colt said. Watching the exchange left him with a pit in his stomach, and that wasn't a good sign.
There was a flurry of motion, and Colt turned to see Ms. Skoglund bustling through the crowd in a thick coat, with fluffy white earmuffs and a matching scarf, mittens, and boots. “Oh my, are you two okay?” she asked, her face flush with concern.
“Yeah, we're fine,” Colt said, confused.
“When they told us what happened up there, I was sick with worry.”
“Don't take this the wrong way or anything, but what are you doing here?” Colt asked as Ms. Skoglund enveloped him in an enormous embrace.
“You're looking at the newly appointed head of online security for the entire CHAOS Military Academy,” she said, her face beaming with pride.
“That's amazing,” Danielle said.
“I know, right? It's like we're all one big flock migrating out here together. And I even get to teach a couple of classes. Can you believe it? Me, a teacher?” She turned and coughed, covering her mouth with her fluffy mitten. “Anyway, I'm also here as your official greeter and chauffeur, so what do you say we pile into the van and head over to the academy?”
“What about Oz?” Danielle asked.
Ms. Skoglund shrugged. “He wasn't on my list.”
T
he CHAOS Academy was less than twenty miles away from the airport, but thanks to the D.C. traffic it was going to take an hour or more to get there. Ms. Skoglund used the time to catch them up on what she knew about Operation Nemesis, which admittedly wasn't much. She had just flown in that morning, and she'd spent most of the day on the telephone trying to find the luggage that the airline had lost. Spying on Lobo would have to wait until the morning.
She didn't seem concerned that Oz had been assigned to another driver. After all, there were something like two hundred students flying in throughout the day, and she had spent most of it shuttling back and forth between the airport and the academy.
“Who was Oz talking with?” Danielle asked.
“I think her name is Giru Ba, but don't quote me on that,” Ms. Skoglund said. “I haven't been officially introduced, but I was told she's one of the instructors at the flight school.”
Colt shut his eyes, pretending to sleep as Danielle told Ms. Skoglund all about the flying jellyfish and how she was convinced they were all going to die. “But I just realized something,” she said as she sat up straight, her eyes wide. “When that thing latched on to the plane, it was trying to break through Colt's windowâlike it knew who he was.”
Ms. Skoglund looked at Colt through the rearview mirror. “Is that true?”
“I doubt it,” he said, shrugging.
“Think about it,” Danielle said. “It's like that viper wasp back in Arizona. It pretty much ignored us and went after you.”
“That's crazy.”
“It makes perfect sense. Trident created a biochip that allowed them to turn average people into remote control assassins, right? So why wouldn't it work on animals?”
Ms. Skoglund bit the inside of her cheek. “I think Danielle might be onto something.”
“Why would Lobo send those things after me if Oz was in the jet?” Colt asked. “Do you think he'd be willing to kill his own son just to get to me?”
“What are the odds of getting attacked by an alien?” Danielle asked.
“CHAOS has confirmed about four hundred attacks since January,” Ms. Skoglund said. “And there are something like seven billion people on the planet.”
“Give me a second,” Danielle said as she entered the numbers into an app on her phone. “There. That puts your odds at 1 in 17,500,000. But somehow you managed to get attacked twice in the same week. And that doesn't strike you as peculiar?”
“Maybe,” Colt said as he leaned back against the headrest.
“But it doesn't explain why Lobo would send those things after me if he knew that Oz was there.”
“Okay,” Ms. Skoglund said. “I want you to be casual about this, but tell me if you recognize the guy driving the Mercedes. He's about three cars behind us, and he's wearing a black turtleneck and round glasses.”
Colt turned around, pretending he was checking on the luggage. He could see the car that Ms. Skoglund was talking about. It was a black CL550 Coupe, but he didn't recognize the driver. “Never seen him before.”
“Me either,” Danielle said.
“Nuts,” Ms. Skoglund said. “He looks so familiar.”
“You don't think he's tailing us, do you?” Danielle asked.
“Can you see his front license plate?”
Danielle nodded. “I think so. It looks like it's from Virginia.”
“See if you can find out whose name the car is registered under. Can you do that?”
“I'll have it for you in less than a minute,” Danielle said as she plugged the number into her phone.
“That's my girl,” Ms. Skoglund said as she put her blinker on and eased into the right lane. “Now let's see if he takes the bait.” Sure enough, he followed her. “All right, once is a coincidence, but twice is a fact.” This time she put the left blinker on before she crossed the median back to the center lane.