Chapter 7
Ellie
Rickon flew over the outskirts of the city, his powerful wings cutting through the night air.
He flew us low, so low I could have reached down and brushed my fingers against building roofs and treetops.
My heart hammered against my ribs with every dip and swerve, the rhythm frantic and unsteady.
I worried about us being picked up by the air defense system that guarded all of D.C.
, the sophisticated network of sensors and automated weapons that could turn us into ash before we even knew what hit us.
But Rickon assured me that since we were flesh and blood, we wouldn't show up on the scans.
I trusted him. Right now, he was the only one I trusted.
The wind whipped through my hair as we descended, the city lights giving way to darker streets lined with shuttered storefronts and the occasional flickering neon sign.
Rickon banked hard to the left, and I tightened my grip around his shoulders, my fingers digging into the warm skin beneath his shirt, feeling the shift of muscle as his wings adjusted our trajectory.
My teeth started chattering immediately, the sound loud to my own ears. The slinky dress I'd worn to dinner offered about as much protection from the elements as tissue paper, and the way we escaped hadn't left time to grab my coat or purse.
Rickon shrugged out of his jacket without a word and draped it over my shoulders.
It was still warm from his body heat, the fabric almost hot against my frozen skin, even with the ragged rents in the back where his wings had burst through.
I pulled it tight around myself gratefully, my fingers trembling as I gripped the lapels.
The fabric smelled like him, something earthy and wild that shouldn't have been comforting given the circumstances but somehow was.
"Here," he said, reaching up to adjust the collar, pulling it high around my neck and face. His fingers brushed my jaw, callused and gentle, and I shivered for an entirely different reason. "Keep your head down. If anyone recognizes you...."
"I know," I said, my voice muffled by the fabric. "We're screwed."
He nodded toward the diner's side entrance, a battered metal door with peeling paint. "Come on, we need to get you warm."
The door chimed as we pushed through, and a wave of warm, grease-scented air washed over us, the smell of bacon and coffee and something frying on the griddle.
The interior was exactly what I'd expected.
Cracked vinyl booths patched with duct tape, a long counter with spinning stools, and fluorescent lights that flickered and buzzed overhead like dying insects.
A handful of patrons were scattered throughout.
A trucker in a plaid shirt and baseball cap hunched over a plate of eggs, his face lined and exhausted.
An elderly couple shared a piece of pie, their hands clasped together atop the table.
Someone passed out in a corner booth, their head pillowed on their arms in such a way I couldn't tell whether they were male or female.
Nobody looked up.
Rickon guided me toward the rear, his hand at the small of my back, warm even through the jacket and my dress.
We slid into a booth tucked in a corner away from the windows, the vinyl cold against the backs of my thighs.
I kept my head down like he'd told me, the jacket collar pulled high enough that I could barely see over it.
I was shaking from the flight, from the gunfire, from everything, my entire body trembling with exhaustion and adrenaline crash.
A waitress materialized beside our table, her expression bored.
She was maybe fifty, with tired eyes rimmed in smudged eyeliner and hair pulled back in a graying ponytail.
She wore a light pink uniform dress that had seen better days, the fabric thin at the elbows, and the frilled apron tied at her waist bore the spoils of years spent as a waitress, coffee stains and grease spots that had become permanent fixtures. Her name tag read Deb.
"Coffee?" she asked, not even bothering to pull out her order pad. Her voice was gravelly, like she'd been smoking since she was twelve.
"Two," Rickon said. His voice was calm, steady, like we were at the end of a pleasant date and hadn't just escaped an assassination attempt and flown across the city via his wings.
Deb grunted something that might have been an acknowledgment and shuffled away, her shoes squeaking against the linoleum.
I watched her go, tracking her movements until she disappeared behind the counter.
Then I turned back to Rickon. He was scanning the diner with those sharp eyes of his, cataloging exits and threats, his gaze moving methodically from face to face, door to window.
The tension in his shoulders hadn't eased even slightly, muscles taut beneath his shirt.
"Nobody is looking at us," I whispered.
"Good," he said, his eyes still moving, never resting. "That's exactly what we need right now."
I leaned forward, keeping my voice low enough that it wouldn't carry beyond our booth. "So, what now? How soon before we contact the Prime and let her know what happened?"
Rickon's jaw tightened, the muscle jumping beneath his skin. He reached into his front pants pocket and pulled out a sleek device about the size of a phone but thinner, with a surface that seemed to shimmer between silver and black depending on how the light hit it.
"This is how I communicate with—" He stopped mid-sentence, turning the device over in his hands, his expression shifting from focused to something darker.
"What?" I asked, though I already knew it wasn't good.
He held it up so I could see. There was a hole punched clean through the device, the edges scorched and twisted like melted plastic. Tiny fragments of what looked like circuitry glinted in the light, exposed and clearly destroyed.
"Fuck," he muttered. "One of the bullets must have hit it."
The words tumbled from my lips before I could stop them.
"Are you hurt?" My eyes raked over him, searching for wounds, for torn fabric, for any sign of damage.
He didn't appear injured, but dark splashes stained his shirt—viscous and black, too dark to be human blood.
Alien blood, I realized with a shudder. "Did you get shot? "
His grin was infuriatingly casual, as if we were discussing the weather rather than our near-death experience. "A couple of times," he said, a cocky edge creeping into his voice. "I'm pretty much bulletproof."
"My Superman," I quipped back, trying to match his lightness even as my heart hammered against my ribs.
But the joke felt hollow because somewhere beneath the banter, I knew the truth.
I'd never encountered anything or anyone remotely like him.
He was like Superman. My gaze drifted downward, drawn to the small device cradled in his palm. "Can you fix it?"
Rickon turned it over again, examining the damage with a critical eye, his fingers probing the ruined edges.
"Maybe. The core relay might still be intact, but the transmission array is completely destroyed.
I'd need tools, time, and components I can't easily access.
" He set it on the table between us, careful to keep it partially hidden beneath his hand, like someone might recognize the alien tech for what it was.
"Even if I can repair it, we're talking days. Maybe longer."
My stomach dropped, the feeling of free falling sudden and sickening. "Time we don't have."
"No," he agreed, his voice flat. "We don't."
I stared at the ruined device, my mind racing through possibilities and discarding them just as quickly.
Every option felt like a dead end. "So, what do we do?
" I laughed, but it came out bitter, edged with something close to hysteria.
"We can't trust anyone. For all we know, Hewes has the whole White House infested with those hairless cat-looking aliens. " Asshole.
Rickon's expression turned grim, his eyes darkening.
"The Trogvyk—that's what they're called—they're the species behind the slave trade.
They've been pillaging multiple worlds for decades.
Earth is just their latest target." He glanced around the diner, his voice dropping lower, barely audible over the clatter of dishes and the hiss of the griddle.
"The one pretending to be Chase had a cuddwisg device.
We have to assume that others do as well. They can pretend to be anyone."
"That's supposed to make me feel better?"
Rickon shrugged, picking up the communicator again, turning it over in his hands like he could will it back to life through sheer determination. "Our priority is to stay hidden until I can repair this or find another way to contact the Prime."
"What's our next move?" I asked.
His jaw clenched again, the muscle jumping. "We need to find somewhere safe to lie low for a while. Somewhere they won't think to look."
The diner's television, which had been playing some mindless eighties rerun—canned laughter and big hair—suddenly cut to a brEAKING NEWS banner in aggressive red letters. The chyron at the bottom of the screen read: PRESIDENT SURVIVES ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT.
My blood turned to ice. The warmth from the coffee and the booth seemed to leach away all at once, leaving me frozen to my core.
"Rickon," I breathed, unable to tear my eyes off the screen.
He glanced up sharply, following my gaze. His entire body went rigid, every muscle locked into place.
There I was. On national television. Standing behind a podium bristling with microphones, the White House press room logo unmistakable in the background. I wore the navy pantsuit I'd put on this morning—a lifetime ago—my hair perfectly styled, my expression somber but composed. Presidential.