Invincible (23 page)

towards this situation just seems to rub me the wrong way.

Alex was slipping back into her trance before I could even request for her to continue.

“Despite the fact that the city of Troy had fallen, we still saw potential in this planet, even if there were dark forces trying to br
ing it down. After that, we made occasional visits to earth. The Council believed that we could make Earth as much a beautiful planet as ours. From there, we sent in our people to live amongst the humans without them ever really knowing, and tried our best to make the planet safe. Some of us were even considered famous to the humans. Lewis and Clark, Benjamin Franklin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi, and Howard Hughes.

“It was because of them we had our most powerful gift—bringing technology and peace to worlds other than our own.”

Alex’s story of Iarnam began to captivate me. As she spoke, I fell deeper and deeper into the world that I had once forgotten. The world I could’ve been so stupid to forget. The world that was once my home.

I then noticed that Alex had stopped talking. For whatever reason, I didn’t know, but when she started gritting her teeth, and her dream-like look transfers into a nightmarish state, I knew that the worse part o
f the story was about to begin.

“Letum was the closest to our planet,” she says, her voice now an almost angered tone. “It was the one planet that we never investigated, since none of the other planets ever spoke of it, and there didn’t seem to be any trouble coming from it. But we were wrong.

“All of a sudden, planets were decayed and destroyed. The Council refused to look into it, as they were already busy trying to balance the progress of

both our world and Earth. In other words, they let their guard down. Well, except one person.”

“Who was that?” I ask.

Alex hesitates for a moment. “My uncle,
Altor,” she sighs. “Your father.”

My heart pauses at the sound of my father’s name, which al
ready starts to sound familiar.

“He was a member of the Council,” Alex continues. “Even though he knew nothing of Letum, he began to think that something suspicious was going on there. When he decided to bring it up with the others, they ignored him, telling him that he’d lost his senses. I remember hearing him being furious that night, the both of you actually, at how they were so dumb to not pay attention to a word he said, and that they would so
on regret it.”

At that moment, my hands began to shake. I felt a rush of excitement and relief as I disappeared from Brad’s house, and into my own.

I remember it clearly now. I was standing in the great hall, with its dome ceiling, metallic gold walls and floors, and large pillars placed in every corner of the room. In the front of me was a large staircase, and at the top of it laid a throne. The throne every Council member had in their home. My eyes scan to the bottom of the stairs, and standing a few feet in front of me was my father. Tall, thin, with black eyes and brown hair, he was everything I remembered. He was pacing back and forth with his index finger in his mouth, mumbling something barely audible enough for me to comprehend.

“Sweetheart,” a voice said behind me.

I slowly turned and smiled at the person whose voice it came from. My mother. She was beautiful—which was something none of the Iarnamians ever doubted—standing there, with her slender body, long

light brown hair that fell down to her shoulders, and her str
iking brown eyes. Eyes that I’d inherited from her, eyes that every person said I was lucky to have.

“Please, calm down,” she begged.

“I can’t,” he said to her, pausing to face the both of us. “I’m sorry, my love, but I can’t.”

He starts pacing the room again.

“Ilion,” Mother said. “Please tell your father that there is nothing to worry about. That all of this is nonsense.”

I respond to the sound of my nam
e, and turn around to face her.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” I said to her with sympathy. “I can’t do that. If Father believes that there is something wrong, I must trust him.”

Father pauses once again and looks up to me, smiling in approval.

“Thank you, Son,” he said.

A feeling of delight and pride ran through my veins, and with a grin across my face, I slowly bowed my head to him.

I return back to Brad’s living room, sitting on the couch with Alex. I notice her skin slowly turn
ing to white as she grits her teeth again. And I decide not to mention it, as she unwillingly begins to depict the horrific experience of our planet’s demise.

“We were careless. That was the only thing that led to our downfall,” she says.

As Alex continues talking, my mind once again escapes from Brad’s home, and enters the dreadful nightmare I was afraid to face.

I was walking home from school when it all started. It was all too confusing. People running and screaming, while others were fighting back. There was an aggressive shake beneath my feet, along with the

sounds of roaring. I turned my head to see a few of the Cinotars ramming their way through some of the crowd, leaving only a few people on the ground screaming in pain as they smash beneath their feet.

The massacre continued as I began to run home, watching as another mob of Iarnamians attack the Catchers, trying to put up a fight as much as they could, but it was useless. We were obviously outnumbered, and the Catchers had
used that to their advantage.

“The Catchers picked the perfect time to strike,” Alex says. “They knew we would never know of their arrival.”

I continued to run until I was halfway home. By that time, Mother and Father were already outside the house, my mother running towards me with tears running down her cheeks.

“Mother,” I whispered.

“Ilion,” she said, clutching her hands onto my shoulders, shaking me. “We have to go.”

“I don’t get it, Mother,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“We’ll explain later, Son,” Father said, walking up to us. “Right now, we have to get to the ships.”

“The ships?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “Now please, Son. We must hurry.”

He then turned away from us and shot into the sky.

“Come, Ilion,” Mother said. And with that, we followed him.

I didn’t dare look down at the chaos below me, afraid to see the dead bodies, and the Catchers and Cinotars
that finished them off. The only thing I noticed below are the explosions setting off, elevating heat and smoke into the sky, with the smell of ash and

blood filling the air, making my watery eyes even wetter.

We landed in front of the airfield, where dozens of people rushed into its entrance. A bomb went off behind us and the ground began to shake beneath us.

“Come,” Father said, grabbing my moth
er’s arm and pulling her along.

I ran after them and head inside the building. There were only a few ships left, and the ones that were already taken were flying away, going to a place I was never sure of at the moment. We ran for a while and suddenly we noticed Alex standing in front of a couple of available ships, tears spilling down her cheeks, gasping between uncontrollable sobs.

“What is going on?” my father asked. “Where is my brother?”

She doesn’t answer right away, whimpering before she could form words. “They didn’t make it,” she says.

She then starts to scream as I look to see my father’s devastated face. My mother rushes over to her and takes her in her arms, catching her before she falls to the ground.

I couldn’t put into words how I was feeling. I was so confused and scared at that moment that I wasn’t really sure of how to react. So much was going on that I didn’t understand, and judging from what Alex had said, I started to worry if I even had time to.

A bomb explodes inside the building and we immediately fall to the ground, avoiding the flames.

“We have to go!” my father said as we rise from the trembling floor. “
Aleka
, go!”

Alex wipes away her tears, nods
her head, and boards the ship.

My father leads us to the other one close to hers and points towards it.

“Ilion,” he said, “go in! Hurry!”

As my mother slipped an object into my hands, I nodded my head and stepped into the ship. It takes me a moment to adjust inside the vehicle, and I began to wonder if Alex was having the same trouble with hers. Confusion swept across me as I thought of our ships. They certainly were smaller than the ones the other groups used. How come ours was so compact?

Before I even realized it, the glass seals itself shut, and I am locked in.

“Father!” I yelled. “What are you doing?!”

“I’m sorry, Ilion,” Father said. “But we cannot go with you.”

“Mother!” I said. “Stop him! Tell him this isn’t right!”

Mother, who was crying as much as Alex was, shook her head.

“You must go, Ilion,” she said.

In frustration, I start banging at the glass, but it was hopeless. The glass was stronger than I was, and no matter how hard I hit it, it wouldn’t even leave a scratch.

“No!” I said to them. “Don’t do this! Please!”

“You must go, my son,” Father said. “You and the others are the only hope we have.”

“No,” I repeat, shaking my head. “There must be another way.”

“There isn’t,” he said. “This is all out of our hands. It is up to you now.”

I did
n’t understand what he meant, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t leave without them. I wasn’t going to.

“I can’t,” I told them, my throat tight with tears. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can,” Father said. “We raised you to be a brave, strong, and powerful young man. Now it is

time for you to go and show the world what we see in you.”

I shake my head, trying my best to ignore what my father was saying, but I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. I’ve always listened to my father, and respected the fact that if he ever did something, he did it to protect us. And if this was the same thing, and he believed this was the best thing for us, then I would just have to take his word for it.

Mother walked up to the ship and gently placed her hand upon the glass.

“We love you, Ilion,” she said.

I shallow hard, fighting back my tears. This wasn’t how I wanted this to be. Us crying together as if we’d lost hope, that we were doing something regrettable. If this was going to happen, I was going to keep it together. I was going to be strong and brave. Just like my father.

I placed my palm to the glass, matching my mother’s hand. I slowly nodded my head as she backs away and returns to stand beside my father. I took last look at them, and before I knew it, the ship starts to rumble and I fly away…

“We were heading towards Earth together,” Alex says as I snap back into reality. “But my ship started to lose fuel
, and we were split apart.”

I ignore Alex once more as I disappear again. Not back to Iarnam, but to a
nother place I had seen before.

I was in an empty field outside of town, just landing to Earth. I jumped out of the ship. My head was starting to ache from the impact the ship
had made when I landed, and I was beginning to feel light-headed. I tried to continue moving, but then suddenly I passed out, falling victim to my dizziness.

As I opened my eyes, I realize I was surrounded by flames. My guess was that it was the fuel from the