Alex Miles's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Alex Miles crouched behind a split fencepost and watched the checkpoint a quarter mile down the road. He was twenty-two, a Marine Staff Sergeant, and his name was on a list he wasn't supposed to know about. He had left his team behind at the field outside Noelle Springs without telling the one Marine who would have followed him without asking. He needed to reach Captain Michael Rivera, or the Navy lieutenant named Lani Morales, before anyone else did. He had a concern about Rivera he could not put on a report, and a witness he had asked to stay quiet. The checkpoint had grown since morning. A canvas command tent stood pitched on the shoulder, ropes staked tight, a folding table inside with a laptop and a stack of printed sheets. Two soldiers worked the table. A third stood at the barrier with a rifle across his chest. Above the tent, hung in the air like a held breath, was a flying saucer the size of a delivery truck. Its underbelly glowed pale blue. Through the clear dome on top, Alex could see the pilot — a reptilian figure with yellow eyes and gray scaled skin, head turning in slow sweeps over the road. Alex had driven this far in a battered orange Polaris, taken from the motor pool without a signature. It now sat dead in the ditch behind him, battery drained the moment the saucer drifted overhead. Every dashboard light had gone out at once. He had coasted into the weeds and run for the fencepost on foot. He understood now that the saucer was the eye. The tent was the mouth. His name on the printed sheet was the trap. If he walked the road, the soldier at the barrier would key his radio, and the figure in the dome would watch him be put in a truck. He counted what he had. One sidearm. A canteen. A folded map with Rivera's last known posting circled in pencil. No vehicle. No radio that would reach past the next ridge. He thought about the witness he had left behind, and the Marine he had not called. He thought about Rivera's voice on the comms during that first convoy, steady the whole way through. Then he made the decision he had been avoiding since he crossed the county line. He would not get past the checkpoint. He would go around it on foot, through the cut fields and the creek bed, and he would lose three days he did not have. He pulled the map from his pocket and tore the circled corner free. He pushed the rest into the dirt under the fencepost and covered it with a flat stone. Then he moved low along the ditch, away from the road, away from the dead Polaris, away from the blue light. Behind him, the saucer began another slow sweep. Alex did not look back.