Blaze

34. The Third Option

The door opens. Unsheathed light stabs my eyes. I stand up and face the square whiteness of the door. (I face it and it burns me.)

Eventually, slowly, my sight adjusts. Like I've stepped deep enough inside a dark tunnel to see the other end of it. 

The villagers have flat grey eyes. The eyes don't shine and they don't flicker or flinch. The villagers are wearing rock-coloured clothes. They stand very close together, as if they're afraid a breeze might slip between them without someone noticing it.

"We've thought about what you said," someone says.

I can't tell who. All I see is a wall of grey-eyed faces.

I feel more than see Jackie stiffen, rod-like, beside me.

"And my brother?" I don't know how I get the words out. "How is he?" I don't know how the words fit past my heart.

My words bounce against their faces. Hurtle back at me. 

Nothing phases their expressions. 

"Healing. Fast," one of them says. "We've given him all he needs."

"Can we see him?"

Their unflinching faces say no.

"He's not awake," one of them says.

"Why? Even if he's asleep, I still want to see him."

"You thought about what he said," Jackie says, slowly. "What have you decided?"

"We believe you," one of them says. "However, we disagree with his suggestion that we fight them."

"I want to see Auz,' I say. 

Do I? Do I really? Bandages round his chest. Blood and stitches on his skin. Dead-faced and pale-cheeked.

Do I? Do I really?

"You can't join them," Jackie tells someone, as if I'm not there. "They won't take you."

"What have you decided? What will you do? Either way," she says, "they're coming."

"I want to see Auz," I mumble, under my breath. But they hear. Their heads swivel toward me. "Please." A voice, straining against the barrier. Pushing. Tearing. A knife through gelatine.

"We have decided to make a trade. We believe that should be enough to guarantee there will be no invasion."

Jackie doesn't say anything. She can feel him about to continue, I think.

"You. We will give them you. You are what they want, after all."

A sudden explosion. 

YOU ARE MINE YOU ARE MINE YOU ARE MINE!

"Just him and his brother," Jackie says. The pain in my head makes her voice reel and bounce. "Not me. You don't want me."

And her face looks like sand-encrusted rock, gritty and pale. Her eyes are fixed upward by thick metal rods that also chain her mouth in a firm line. 

She means it. I think.

I teeter. Totter. My balance wavers. It takes all the strength I don't have to bring back up my shield.

Something—a huge, alien hand—holds my head within its grasp. (It's shaking it.)

"Where is Austin? Where is Auz?" I ask.