It felt as though her body was turning into stone, or no, more like her limbs were going to sleep while inside she was still awake. She couldnt feel her fingertips, but she kept on fighting. She could feel herself slipping into the controlled state, though, becoming more and more of a prisoner in her own body with every passing second. It felt as though she was trapped behind glass, her personality and her ability to control herself an exhibit in some museum made from her own flesh and bones.
The world even looked as though she was looking through a kind of strangely filtered glass, colors shifted so that all the ones Luna expected had a milky opacity to them, and new ones crept in around the edges of her vision. Luna didnt need a mirror to know that her pupils would be a vivid white by now, and she hated it.
I will keep fighting, she told herself. I wont give up. Kevin needs me.
In spite of her determination, it was hard to ignore the fact that her arms and legs wouldnt do what she ordered them to. Luna was just standing there, the same as all the others waiting in Sedona, as still as an unused puppet, unable to do more than blink and breathe by herself.
Luna fought to do more. She focused on the smallest finger of her right hand, willing it to straighten. It seemed to move achingly slowly, but it moved. It moved! She tried to move the next finger, focusing on each joint, each muscle
She screamed inwardly when nothing happened.
At least Kevin had gotten away. Luna had seen him make it through the ranks of the controlled and get to one of the ships. Shed seen him and Chloe sucked up into one of them too, and that made Luna worry more than anything that was happening to her.
You have to fight, she told herself again. Kevin is stuck on an alien spaceship without you. You know hell just get into trouble on his own, and not even the fun kind.
Of course, Kevin wasnt on his own, but that thought didnt make things better. It wasnt that Luna hated Chloe or anything, but it was pretty obvious that she liked Kevin, and well so did Luna. It was weird how that was easier to admit when her mind was busy being taken over by aliens, but it was, maybe because she knew no one else would find out.
Shed tried making it obvious to him plenty of times in the past, although he never seemed to get it. Maybe that was a boy thing, or maybe it was just a Kevin thing, able to understand messages from across the galaxy, but not anything right in front of his face. Now he was up on an alien spaceship with Chloe, and if they werent exactly alone together, Luna was pretty sure that aliens didnt count. Even if nothing happened, Luna still wasnt sure that Chloe was a good choice to get Kevin back safely. Yes, shed helped save Luna on the boat, and she could hotwire a car, but that wasnt the same thing as hijacking a spaceship, and Luna didnt trust her not to panic when things went wrong.
Then things did go wrong, and Luna had a perfect view of it.
One moment, the aliens world ship was hanging moon-like in the sky; the next, the sky around it rippled and flickered, as though space was a pond that someone had thrown a stone into. The world ship started to drift away, its shadow passing from the sky. There was a moment when the space it was in seemed to fold around it, and then it was gone, moving far faster than Luna could hope to follow.
For a brief moment, hope flared in her. Was it over? Kevin had gone up into the small ship above Sedona, and that had gone up to the world ship, and now both were gone. Had he found a way to end this? Had he and Chloe saved them all?
Luna tried to move her arm, hoping against hope, but nothing happened. Nothing had changed.
A bark beside her caught Lunas attention. Bobby was there, the Old English sheepdog running up to Luna and nudging against her leg in a way that might almost have knocked her over if he had done it before the controlled breathed their vapor into her. As it was, she stood as solid as stone, unmoved and unmoving, not even reacting as he moved to her hand, licking her with a big, rough tongue.
Good boy, Luna thought, and tried to say it, but she couldnt get the sounds out. She couldnt reach out to pet him either, and that just showed her how much control the aliens still had over her. Bobby nudged against her again and then ran back as if expecting her to follow, and when she didnt, he lay down and whined, looking up at her with sad eyes.
Im sorry, Bobby, Luna thought, but she couldnt say that, either.
It wasnt the only thing she was sorry for. Around her, Luna could see the Dustside bikers standing just as still as everyone else. She could see Bear hulking over the rest of them, all of the sense of strength and command leached out of him by his transformation. She could see Cub just a little way away, the boy staring back at her blankly, where before hed been confident and obviously interested in her.
Are you still in there? Luna wondered in the prison of her mind. Was everyone who had been transformed trapped like this? Were they sitting there behind the pure white of their pupils, horrified as the aliens controlled every movement they made? Luna didnt know whether to hope that Cub wasnt having to suffer that, or to hope that he was, because at least it would mean that he was still there, and at least there might be a chance to get him back.
What chance? Luna thought. What hope was there for any of them? No one had come back from this so far. The aliens had transformed most of the world, and the people who got transformed stayed transformed. It wasnt like liking the wrong band; it wasnt as if it simply wore off if you left it long enough.
She could hear sounds now, deep in the back of her mind. She recognized the screeches and the clicks, the static sounds and the buzzing, because shed heard them plenty of times before when Kevin had been translating alien signals. Luna could hear this as their language, although she still had no idea what it meant.
She might not know it, but it seemed that her body did. Luna found herself starting to move, forming up with the other people there like some kind of military unit. She didnt know who was giving the orders if the main alien ship was gone. Maybe some of the aliens were down on the surface.
It didnt matter; whoever was giving the orders to her, Luna found herself obeying them. She started to march with the others, spreading out with them among the debris of Sedona, starting to lift rubble and pick through the houses.
Luna felt like she was watching it from a distance, seeing herself lifting rocks and pulling at sections of wood with her bare hands. She saw herself moving in concert with Cub and the others, picking the town clean with the thoroughness of ants cutting leaves or vultures stripping a carcass of meat.
She heard Bobby barking again, and he was beside her once more, yapping and running around her as if he might be able to distract her from what she was doing. He licked her hand again, then clamped his teeth down on her arm. It wasnt hard, more like the way he might have held onto a wayward puppy and pulled it back into line.
Bobby was strong, and probably weighed almost as much as her, but Luna pulled clear of him as if he wasnt there. She kept working, gathering materials and forming them into piles, sorting them as efficiently as a machine.
Luna saw cuts and scrapes appear on her arms from the effort of moving the materials, but she didnt feel them. They were as numb as if she had left them in ice for an hour, the pain insulated from her by the layers of alien control.
Luna saw cuts and scrapes appear on her arms from the effort of moving the materials, but she didnt feel them. They were as numb as if she had left them in ice for an hour, the pain insulated from her by the layers of alien control.
Luna could feel that control now as Bobby continued to bark and run around her. She could feel what it wanted her to do, and she fought it, the small part of her that was still her horrified by the prospect even as the rest of her picked up a rock.
No! she commanded herself. I wont do it. I wont do this!
She fought against the impulses with every fiber of her being, pulling back at her arm with the full strength of a will that had previously stood up to everything from parents instructions to the raging ocean. For a moment or two, it felt as if she was even able to make her body hesitate, frozen on the brink of action. It was too much, though, like trying to hold back the weight of an avalanche with her bare hands. With an inner cry of despair, Luna felt that avalanche pour over her.
She turned and threw the rock at Bobby, crying as she did it.
He yelped, then whined as he hurried away, limping slightly on one paw. Luna saw him retreat to the edges of the buildings they were working on, lying down and watching her with a forlorn look that matched how Luna felt only too well.
But what she felt didnt matter, not in the face of the aliens instructions. No matter how much her mind crashed against the limits of the cage that held it, the prison of her body kept working, lifting and tearing, separating resources and stacking them ready for collection even though the ship above Sedona was gone now.
She tried to count the minutes that passed, tried to keep some track of the time that was ebbing away, but there was no easy way to do it. Her body kept her eyes on the work, not on the progress of the sun, and if she got hungry or tired, she didnt feel it. In the deepest recesses of her mind, Luna understood now how the controlled were so fast and strong: they didnt care about the pain or the tiredness that would have stopped most ordinary people; where most people stopped well short of the limits of what their bodies could do, the controlled were pushed to those limits all the time by the aliens who commanded them.
Who command us, Luna corrected herself.
She didnt want to think of herself as one of them, but Luna wasnt sure how to distract herself from any of it. She couldnt shut her eyes to block it out. She couldnt stop herself from doing any of this. The most that she could do was try to grasp for memories of her life before this: sitting with Kevin on the shore of the lake when hed told her about his illness, going to school and and
She latched onto a memory, thinking about one day when shed been due to meet up with Kevin after school. Theyd planned to go down to a pizza place on the corner not far from their houses. She could remember the feeling, what it had been like walking through their town, heading for a spot that had been just theirs, that no one else had known about, behind one of the wooden fences that surrounded an old house a little way along that no one had lived in for years.
Getting there meant clambering through the fork in the old tree that kept a gap clear among a stack of old junk, then running along the boards of a low roof in just the right pattern that her feet wouldnt fall through, all the while making sure that no one who might shout at her for being somewhere she shouldnt be saw her.
In other words, it was exactly the kind of route that Luna loved to run along. She made her way along it with the kind of speed and willingness to get muddy that would probably have made her parents sigh if they saw it. While she ran, she found herself thinking about Kevin, wondering if today would be the day when he got around to asking if he could kiss her.
Maybe he wouldnt; he could be pretty oblivious about things sometimes.
She made her way through the gardens, over toward the spot where she and Kevin were due to meet. She heard a noise from beyond the fence, and saw Kevin and a couple of other boys she hadnt seen before.
What are you doing back here? one asked. Hiding away so no one can find you?
Im not hiding, Kevin insisted, which Luna guessed was just about the worst thing he could have done.
Are you saying that Im a liar? the boy demanded. He pushed Kevin, so that Kevin scraped back against the wall. Are you calling me a liar?
Luna slipped through the gap in the fence. I am, she declared. Im saying that youre a liar, and a bully, and if you give me a couple of seconds, Ill probably think of plenty of other nasty things to call you too.
He spun toward her. Youd better run. This is between me and him.
And your friend, lets not forget that, Luna said.
Youre being smart because you think I wont hit a girl! Well
Luna punched him in the nose, as much because she was getting bored waiting for him to actually do something as anything else. He roared and set off running after her as Luna sprinted away.
She didnt lead him back the way shed come, because that was her route, but she knew plenty of others. Just for fun, she cut across the garden where they always had their pool filled, hearing a splash as one of the boys missed his turn. From there, she scrambled up onto one of the nearby roofs, then over through the park, then across into the garden where the big, angry dog lived, taking care to only step in the spaces out of range of its chain. A snarl and a shriek of anger behind Luna told her that the second of the boys had fallen behind.
Ill get you for this! he yelled out.
Luna laughed. Not unless you want to have to explain to people how I managed to punch you and get away with it.
She ran back in the direction of Kevin, who was waiting there with the confidence of someone whod seen this game before.
You know, I could have taken him, he said, trying to look tough.
Luna managed not to laugh. But its more fun this way. Come on, you can buy me pizza for rescuing you.
But you didnt rescue me. I could have taken him
***Luna smiled at the memory, or would have if shed been able to move her face. She tried to think of the bullys name, because she was sure that shed known it once. What bully though? What had she been thinking about? The fact that she couldnt remember made Luna pause in terror. Shed been thinking about it just a moment ago, and now it was gone, like like
Luna tried to grasp the memories, she really did. She knew that she had memories; a whole lifetimes worth. She had friends, and a life, and parents she definitely had parents, so why couldnt she remember their faces? Maybe she didnt have parents. Maybe all of this was just some sick joke. Maybe shed always been like this, and she was just defective somehow, feeling that she was different as a distraction from the work that the aliens needed her to
No, Luna thought fiercely, Im me. Im Luna. They transformed me, and I have real memories somewhere.
She wasnt sure where, though. Every time she tried to grab for what felt like the beginnings of a memory, it slipped away into a great fog of thoughts that felt as though it was consuming every part of her. Luna tried to drag herself away from that fog, but it was creeping in more and more around the edges of who she was, seeming to fill everything, carrying away small pieces of memories, of words, of personality.