Alpha Prime's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Alpha Prime had six hours until sunrise, and every face on the street in Nightjar could be lying. The bus had dropped them here at dusk with a duffel bag and a wrong address. Now the streetlamps buzzed above empty sidewalks, and the town that had looked normal on the map looked wrong in person. A woman waved from a porch and did not blink. A man swept the same patch of concrete he had swept ten minutes ago. Alpha Prime kept walking, because standing still felt worse, and because getting out of this town alive meant learning fast which people were still people. A boy stepped out from behind a parked car and said his name was Alex Morrison. He looked about twelve, brown hair, a blue shirt, hands in his pockets like he was waiting for a school bus at midnight. "You shouldn't talk to anyone who smiles first," he said. "And don't go inside the hall on the square. That's where they take the new ones." Alpha Prime studied his face. The boy blinked. He shivered when a cold gust came off the road. Small things. Human things. But Alpha Prime had already decided not to trust anyone tonight, so they asked him to prove it. Alex Morrison pulled a heavy brass ornament from his jacket, a decorative piece shaped like a tall, jeweled spindle. "My sister hid this before they got her," he said. "They can't touch it. Watch." He held it out. Down the block, the sweeping man stopped sweeping. His head turned, slow, wrong, all the way around before his shoulders caught up. Two more figures stepped out of doorways. None of them smiled now. Alex Morrison shoved the ornament into Alpha Prime's hands. It was warm. "Run," he said. "The plain gray building. Two streets over. Doors on the front. That one's safe." They ran. The ornament burned steady against Alpha Prime's palm, and the figures behind them did not run so much as flow, feet not quite matching the pavement. Alpha Prime saw the building Alex Morrison had described and shoved through the doors. Inside, the hall was empty except for a creature curled beside a cold radiator: fox-shaped, orange and black, with pale blue markings along its ribs and a leather harness across its chest. It lifted its head. Its eyes were gold. It did not growl. It looked at the ornament in Alpha Prime's hand, then at the door, then stood between Alpha Prime and the street. Outside, the figures stopped at the threshold as if the doorway were a wall. Alpha Prime turned. Alex Morrison had not come inside. He stood on the sidewalk between the pursuers, grinning now, and his head tilted a little too far to the left. The doors swung shut. Alpha Prime had picked right about the building. They had picked wrong about the boy.