The Call of the Others

Chapter 33

“So, how did this all start?” Mr. Woodward asked in the makeshift interrogation room.

“It all started with this one girl, Cassandra. One day, she just strutted over to her table—she was feigning love interest in Preston—well, actually, she might not have been pretending, but… She sat down and asked us if we had ever thought about the alien that came in the summer. We said as little as we had to. We were done with it; we didn’t want to get involved again. She continued pressing the whole alien thing, asking us if we thought there were others.”

“Which there were.”

“Yep.”

“Do you know how she knew this?”

“No,” Joe admitted. “But I think she could have figured it out herself. We very clearly said we didn’t want to be involved. We said it over, and over… It wasn’t just the persistence that was annoying; it was the moral conflict she brought with us. She made it seem as if we were leaving our family and friends in the cages, wherever they were. Cassandra’s plan worked. I really, truly, wanted to help. I never knew it would amount to this.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Mr. Woodward reassured, as if he thought Joe was going to cry. He wasn’t. He was past that now.

“It got personal, and it started affecting my relationship with my…girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend now. Cassandra put down every single one of us, and somehow we all…went along with it. Maybe because we knew she was right. She called us out on our flaws and told us to shape up and help her. I got on her team. Oh, boy, were there politics. At first it was just me and Preston, because he was still smitten with her. Then there was a bunch of fighting. In the middle of it, Cary decided to light a firework display in his backyard with Martin. Something went wrong, and Cary ended up in the hospital with a broken leg. He said that he felt helpless and wouldn’t stand by and let some other creature suffer through that. Martin wanted to go with him because he wanted to protect Cary or something like that…Charles joined because everyone else did. Then Alice. She probably did it to make sure I wasn’t cheating on her with Cassandra or something.”

“And then what?”

“We went to Cincinnati, but we couldn’t find a hospital, so Martina—”

At this point, Mr. Woodward dropped his notepad and pen to the floor.

“Martina?” he asked in shock.

“Short, pretty, evil? Yeah, her. She pretended to have an asthma attack. She just kind of invited herself into the scheme—”

“Yeah, yeah, and then you found the aliens, and then she died, and there were look-alikes and all that jazz,” Mr. Woodward spat out hurriedly. “I’m curious about Martina. She just let you walk right up to the aliens? And release them?”

“Yup.”

Mr. Woodward shook his head, evidently very distraught.

“And, well, you heard the rest of the story,” Joe mumbled. Mainly, though, because that was the end of what he knew, or at least experienced.

“But you have no idea, no possible theories about where Cassandra learned about these extra-terrestrial creatures?”

Joe shook his head, pressing his lips together.

“The thing about Cassandra is that—” Joe struggled for an analogy, exhaling loudly. “Are you familiar with Roman mythology?”

“Excuse me?” Mr. Woodward was expecting a Star Wars reference, not a classical one.

“Are you familiar with Roman mythology? Or Greek? Mythology…”

The look he received from his interrogator assured him that he wasn’t.

“Well, there’s this myth about a prophetess named Cassandra, who was cursed so that she would preach the truth, but no one would believe her. That was like Cassandra, our Cassandra. She… She heard the call of the others. It’s just that no one believed her. And when they did, well…It was too late to do anything about it.”

“Not all aliens are evil, and not all agents are out to kill you and your friends. I suggest you and your friends forget that this ever happened. We’ll take care of the other witnesses,” Mr. Woodward said.

“How?” Joe asked.

“That is for the agency to know, and you never to find out. We have ways.”

Normally, Joe would have asked and pressed on further.

But now, now that everything was over, he decided to just screw it.

He and Mr. Woodward stepped out of the room into the hallway, where Scott and the rest of them were waiting. We’re leaving tomorrow, Joe thought.

He was going to leave Cincinnati and everything else behind.