Dance of Time

Sigma

The hollow beeping was starting to grate on my nerves. I had half a mind to skewer the speaker with my throwing knife, but I knew that this particular drill sequence was one of the most important.

This was the alarm that sounded when there was a hostile extra-terrestrial threat right on our doorstep. AKA alien invasion.

I called in the operator on my radio.

"How much longer will this go for?"

"About another half hour."

"Roger that."

I groan and continue my relentless scanning of the Antarctic horizon from the south-north-eastern watchtower.

The weather this high would be fatal to an Earthian human being, but with my mixed genetics, my body is able to comfortably withstand the frigid conditions.

I hear my ear-chip beep twice with an incoming call.

"Hello?" I answer.

"Jane you need to come home soon or your mothers going to be upset, do you have any idea for how long you've been gone?!"

I go rigid.

"How did you get this number."

"What? Jane is that you? Who is this?"

"That is confidential information." I say and hang up.

The problem with being this high in the air, is that it's easy to pick up and intercept stray radio frequencies. I don't really know why, but as far as I can tell, me and my brothers and sisters are particularly susceptible to getting these radio frequencies picked up on our devices.

I hear a knock, and the door behind me starts to slide open. I spin around and hold my laser gun up to the person coming through.

"Woah, woah, calm down, I'm just here to relieve you of your shift!"

I get a look at his face (or his head-knob, if you like) and sigh with relief. It's Frank, the European humanoid. Finally, I can get something warm to eat. "You freaked me out there for a second, I'll just get my stuff and leave you to do your thing." I walk around the watch tower and collect the cameras that I had placed around to save me the bother of changing positions every few minutes, and so I could see if anything was creeping into the city using the old abandoned teleporting hub at the back of the watch tower.

I put all the gear in my bag, thank Frank for relieving me, and dive down the side of the watchtower, spreading my wings just before I hit the street.

When I get down there it's mayhem. Everyone is rushing around getting last-minute gifts for Uniting day, where we celebrate the union of all the intelligent life forms in the greater Galactic nebula.

"Sigma!" I hear my name called and spin around to see who it is, accidentally hitting someone with my wing as I do so.

"I need you to come back to the embassy for a moment, something's happened." It was Omicron, one of my sisters. The person I bumped into grumbles a very bad word in their language and moves away. I ignore them.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

"You'll have to come and see for yourself."

I follow her back to the embassy and she leads me to the 21st time-warp room. I stand outside of it and turn to look at her.

"He tried it again, didn't he?

"Well, this time he succeeded."

I stare at her in horror, not believing my ears. "What?!"