"I was in New York," I started.
"No way. I thought for sure you were taken at some illustrious place like Egypt or Sudan." He laughed.
"Yeah, I might have been able to hide better," I agreed. "No, I went to a conference on Ancient Trash Heaps and Their Modern Lessons?—"
I didn't get any further because his chuckles ended with him choking on his nuts, and I had to pound his back until he could breathe again. His face was bright red, and he was still snickering despite his near-death experience.
"Seriously? Trash history lessons?"
I nodded, suppressing a giggle myself. The truth was, I had broken up with my boyfriend and welcomed achance to get away and into civilization for a few days. "You have no idea what valuables you can find in old trash."
He grinned, not buying it. "You guys were there to make each other more important."
“Yeah,” I agreed. “To some degree. But truthfully, some trash heaps, like those by an old Roman encampment, are fascinating. Broken weapons, belt clips, even dice carved out of bone. You can tell more about a soldier’s life from what he threw away than from what he was buried with.”
Ed snorted. “So you’re telling me you’re basically a professional dumpster diver.”
I rolled my eyes and popped anotherchocolate. “Aneducateddumpster diver. With a PhD.”
He barked out a laugh. “Remind me never to let you near my apartment. You’d turn my sock drawer into a case study.”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed too, the sound was rusty but real. It had been a long time since I’d let myself find something funny. The absurdity of it all—aliens, abductions, trash heap conferences—made it easier to laugh than to cry.
Then I turned more serious. "It was the second day, when they came."
I didn't have to say the word.Theywere the Cryons, as we later learned. They swooped in from out of nowhere before any of Earth's armies had a chance to assemble. We tried. I watched news coverage and cheered our soldiers on, still somewhat under the illusion I was cheering a moreserious football game—denial is a very strong weapon. But when, only a day later, the lights turned off and I was trapped in a high-rise, reality kicked in fast.
“It took me probably four hours to get down the stairs,” I admitted, shuddering at the thought of the dark, eerie stairwell. “I counted each landing, every echo of my own footsteps, swearing the shadows were moving with me. I’d watched enough horror movies to know the idiot who doesn’t check the corner is always the first to die.”
Ed’s face sobered. “You were alone?”
“Yeah. Everyone else had already bolted or…” I swallowed. “Didn’t make it. The city was burning by then. Windows shattered, smoke everywhere. Sirens that never stopped. It smelled like—” I cut myself off, shaking my head. “Doesn’t matter. Just know I was stupid enough to keep thinking that if I just got outside, I’d find order. Soldiers. A line to stand in. Something.”
“And instead?”
I gave a humorless laugh and let my memories spill out—I cracked the door and slid out onto the street. New York was a skeleton. Windows were powdered into glitter across the sidewalks, turning every step into a warning. Billboards hung slack over avenues like tired eyelids. Cars sat at angles, doors gaped, airbags long since wilted, a coffee cup still half-full on a dash turned gray with dust. Wind pushed ash into little drifts against the curbs. Somewhere far off, metal clanged once and then stopped suddenly, as if it remembered to be quiet.
I kept to the shadows, hugging doorways andscaffoldings. A Cryon ship sat right out there in the middle of the street. I didn't see them or any people; they were just… gone. I told myself maybe they’d headed for the bridges, maybe they’d made it across. I told myself a lot of things.
Then I saw the column.
They came around the corner of 45th, two Cryons at the front, one trailing, the rest of the space filled with what was left of us... humanity. The Cryons didn’t march; they drifted. Tall and gray, with eyes black as oil. Their gray uniforms bore insignias I didn't understand, and they carried smooth silver weapons that hummed like angry bees. They didn’t shout, didn’t posture, didn’t even look angry. They appeared to have collected us like we were groceries.
I flattened behind the torn belly of a delivery van and watched. The Cryons guided a dozen people at a time toward the shuttle squatting on the street like a tick—small, glossy, a mouth open to swallow. A woman clutched a stroller with nothing in it. A man held his hands up and kept saying, “Please,” in a voice barely there. The weapons never changed pitch. People moved because there was nothing else to do.
I thought about running across the open space to the bodega on the corner—thinking maybe there would be a gun behind the counter, and a back door that would lead into an alley—but the shopfront glass was a carpet of shards sharp as knives, and I was pretty sure the alley behind the store was a dead end because a large skyscraper hovered behind it. Instead, I shadowed them, half a blockback, ducking between dead cabs and overturned newsstands, counting the Cryon steps. One, two. One, two. The trailing guard lagged, scanning with a disk that ticked softly, like rain on foil. Heat? Heartbeat? I slowed my breathing until my ribs hurt. It was stupid. So, so stupid. But there were people, the first I had seen in a couple of days. And I… I wanted to be near them.
Another group approached from the other side, moving straight toward the alien ship. The shuttle’s interior glowed with a sick, wintry light. I could smell the Hudson from here, a sense of normalcy in the middle of a nightmare.
A kid at the end of the line tripped, and it nearly broke my heart when a Cryon aimed his weapon before an older man scrambled to pick the kid up. That was enough to get me moving and realize I needed to get out of there. But then, a shard of glass cracked under my heel. Just one starburst. Enough.
The trailing Cryon’s head snapped toward me. The humming lifted half a note, curious. I lunged anyway, but I didn’t make it three strides.
Something invisible grabbed my calves and yanked. I hit the pavement hard, my breath punched out of my lungs. The Cryon walked to me without hurry. Up close, his eyes weren’t just black; they were fathomless, like looking down a well at night.
He—if it was a he—tilted his head. The weapon’s hum settled back to even. He didn’t speak. None of them ever did. With his weapon, he motioned for me to getup. And then he turned me toward the shuttle. The crowd didn’t look at me. That was the worst part. Everyone stared straight ahead, as if eye contact might be a crime we didn’t know yet.
I tried to memorize the city in my mind—fire escapes, water towers, the taste of steam from the subway grates in winter—like I could anchor myself to it. The shuttle’s mouth widened. Cold air rolled out. The humming climbed.
