Amarylis continued to watch the news helicopter, ears set back. It had to be both loud and windy for her. Sandy glanced down at the overpass she still stood on. Well, it wasn’t cracking, at least. Yet. He pulled out his phone and went to the Action News 10 website, looking for their live video feed.
The amplified voice came from the copter again. “Can we ask you a few questions?”
“This is restricted airspace!” someone shouted through their own megaphone on the other side of the bridge. It sounded like Brickman. “Leave immediately!”
“Yes, if you ask as I keep walking.” She resumed taking her careful steps across the bridge.
“Are you an alien?”
Amarylis looked puzzled for just a moment, pausing with a forepaw in the air, then laughed as she resumed her slow trot. “To you, I am obviously an alien, yes.”
Sandy glanced down at his phone. The feed showed the view from inside the copter, a well-dressed lynx woman speaking into a microphone as she stared out the windshield. The caption under her read FIRST CONTACT? and JILL PITTMAN, REPORTING LIVE.
“Why did you destroy the Bridgetown Research Center?”
Her ears went back again. “I did not.”
“Then what happened—” The reporter cut off. The helicopter pilot was murmuring something to her the microphone didn’t catch. When she spoke again, it wasn’t amplified, just coming in over the phone. “We’re being ordered to leave the airspace, and being told there’s an official statement coming soon. Back to you, Bob.”
The feed switched back to the studio, where a greying panther stood in front of an aerial shot of the BRC campus, highlighting the still-smoking ruins of Building 4. The helicopter rose back up quickly into the air, zooming off. Amarylis watched it go, clearly nonplussed.
“Do not speak to reporters!” Brickman yelled through the megaphone. “Let’s keep moving!”
Narrowing her eyes a little, Amarylis resumed walking. She seemed to test her steps a couple of times, but the overpass held.
After she cleared it, a half-dozen men with hardhats ran across the bridge, darting back and forth, examining joints. After they reached the other side, the back half of the convoy got the all-clear, police waving them forward. Pick and Sandy got back in the car and started following again.
“Mr. Brickman acts like she’s reporting to him,” Sandy muttered.
“That type always does.” Pick shrugged. “He figures he has the authority to boss everyone around. He can’t wrap his head around the idea it’s only going to work with her until she gets pissed off enough to pancake his car.”
“I don’t think she’d do that.”
“We can always hope.”
The convoy turned to the left, the road now paralleling the perimeter of the old military base. A light rail line ran between the road and the base’s fence, a two-car train just pulling into the station a few hundred feet ahead. Only a dozen people were waiting for the train, but all of them—and nearly everyone getting off or staying on board—had their phones out, taking pictures as Amarylis started to walk past.
The giant vixen’taur stopped, studying the train curiously. The cars behind her slowed, too. Sandy rolled down his window. The passengers on the platform stepped back, clearly tensing for flight.
“Pay me no mind,” Amarylis said gravely. “I am just a weather balloon.”
The gawking passengers tittered in nervous confusion, keeping their phones pointed at her.
She waited several seconds, then called to the front of the convoy, “Sandy was correct. That will not work.”
Pick burst out laughing.
“Keep moving, please!” Brickman’s voice came, seething with barely controlled exasperation.
When they turned into the hangar’s parking lot a few minutes later, waved past by a security guard, Sandy felt like a gawking tourist himself. He’d been to the airfield before, visited a spartan museum on site, but even before BRC had suffered its corporate takeover the place always felt on the verge of abandonment. Now it had transformed into a makeshift operations center. The parking lot overflowed with vehicles: military transports, black sedans, police cars, mysterious unmarked eighteen wheelers, extra power generators. Helicopters had landed on the outskirts, more circling above.
A tiger in a black suit waved their vehicle to a stop. “You are?”
“Dennis Pick.”
He checked his phone, nodded, then looked at Sandy.
“Uh, Sandy Nelson.”
Another phone check, then a squint. “Not on the list. N-E-L-S-O-N?”
“Yes.”
Pick cut in, “Clear it with Field Director Brickman. Or ask Amarylis.”
“Who?”
He pointed up at the vixen’taur, who had come to a stop in a clear area about ten car-lengths ahead, looking down around her paws with an overwhelmed expression. “Her.”
The tiger looked up at her, back at Pick, then at Sandy. Then he looked at his phone. “Go on.”
Grunting, Pick pulled forward, finding the first open parking space. He and Sandy got out; the ocelot ran toward the giantess, the panther following at a slower pace.
The run caused a phalanx of not just black-suited agents but armed soldiers to turn—or purposefully stride—toward him. “Who is that?” “Sir, do you have clearance?” “Is that one of our employees?” “I’m going to have to ask you to move back now.”
Sandy froze, looking around for Field Director Brickman or Ms. Gilchrist. That might be them on the other side of the Sivra, talking animatedly at one another as they walked toward the hangar. They couldn’t vouch for him—but maybe someone literally bigger could.
“Amarylis!” he shouted, waving up.
Her head turned, and she smiled, looking relieved, although still tense. “Sandy.” She started walking toward him. The mob that had formed to block his path broke up hurriedly.
He did his best not to flash a smug grin at the dismayed expressions of the agents and soldiers—and, he guessed, corporate executives and other government officials—looking between him and the giant alien as he moved to meet her. If Mr. Pick followed behind, he’d radiate enough smug for both of them, anyway.
“I do not know what I am expected to do now. The hangar is that structure?” She pointed.
“Yeah. It was built to hold a blimp, a flying machine that’s a giant balloon.”
“I have seen pictures of them. I suppose there is little else I could fit in comfortably here.”
“Not much, no. I guess, uh, you can just start walking that way. If they’re not ready for you, they’re going to let you know fast.”
“I suppose that is so.” Looking around her paws again, she pivoted with surprising grace, starting to walk toward the hangar and sending more of the crowd scattering.
Within about ten seconds, agents and soldiers had lined up to either side of the giantess’s path, some holding onlookers back and others waving Amarylis forward, pointing—unnecessarily—in the direction they expected her to go. Pick started following, motioning Sandy forward.
The ocelot and panther jogged behind, doing his best not to flinch at the hard stares from officials and more of the ubiquitous black-suited tigers. “How far do you think they’re going to let us follow her?”
“We’ll find out.”
Sandy shook his head a little. “You’re much more, uh…”
Pick looked over at him, lifting a brow.
“Um…more casual than I imagined, sir.”
“Call me Dennis.” He shrugged. “I’m just another software engineer. I’m a good one, and I’m an old one, and I’ve gotten less tolerant of bullshit. Standing on formality is usually a way to hide bullshit.”
“Oh.” This lined up with the impression of Pick he’d gotten in interviews, but it was still somehow surprising in practice. “You know, I wasn’t sure you were even coming into the office anymore. You’ve got to have more than enough money to retire anywhere you want now.”
The panther snorted, looking amused. “I’ve done fine for a software engineer, but I’ve never had a C-suite title, and tech salaries now are much higher than they were through most of my career. But sure, I could retire now. If I stopped coming into the office, it’d make execs like Gilchrist happier. That’s why I don’t.”
They’d reached the hangar, an enormous structure a football field wide at its base and almost four football fields long. Steel walls rose two hundred feet, curving inward to make the building more aerodynamic. The clamshell doors had been fully opened, floodlights in the girders all turned on; Amarylis looked back and forth, up and down, as she walked in, her footsteps echoing off the concrete floor. “It is very empty.”
“It hasn’t been used for anything in at least a decade,” Brickman called up. “Uh, make yourself…comfortable.”
Amarylis’s ears splayed. She circled around, then slowly lay down on her side, upper torso remaining upright.
As Sandy and Dennis walked into the building, soldiers waved them to a makeshift guard post, a “fence” of stanchions and retractable belts cordoning off the main hangar area. Amarylis had just walked over it, but they had no such luck. “Names?” the sentry manning the post said.
Pick sighed, crossing his arms. “Dennis Pick,” he waved at the ocelot, “Sandy Nelson, with Strategic Initiatives.” He pointed at Gilchrist, visible about forty feet away, again in animated conversation with Brickman.
The sentry scanned his tablet computer. “You’re not on—”
“Then put me on the fucking list, because it’s my team that’s going to get her,” he pointed up at Amarylis, “home before her countrymen come looking for her.”
“Before what?” The sentry looked up at her, ears folding back. “More of them?”
“Sandy and I are all that stand between the world and an invasion of giant aliens. So let us in the fucking room.”
He grimaced uncertainly, waving them through.
“Invasion of giant aliens?” Sandy murmured.
“Eh. I was improvising.”
As they got closer to Brickman and Gilchrist, it became clear their relationship hadn’t gotten any friendlier since the two had met an hour ago. “Web security guys aren’t the kind of security guys I’m talking about,” Brickman was saying.
“I’m not, either,” Gilchrist snapped. “You understand we’re a defense contractor, don’t you? Our guys trained your guys.”
Brickman held up his hands. “Ms. Gilchrist, we’re just going ’round and ’round here. I told you already, I’m not the one making the top-level decisions, I’m just the one telling you how things are. We’re not ‘nationalizing your company.’” He made air quotes with his fingers. “You’re still in charge of what you’re in charge of. We’re not telling you how to run your business, or taking it over. But you don’t get to slap your trademark on literal first contact with an alien civilization, and we’re directing operations on this site.”
“That’s not—”
He held up a hand. “Sorry, but I’ve got my actual job to do. Talk later.” He hurried off to a group of agents standing on the other side of the sentry station.
As Sandy and Dennis walked toward her, her visible fuming was barely short of black smoke curling out of her ears. “Supercilious prick.”
“Nationalizing? Seriously, Rory?” Pick arched a brow.
“Yes, seriously, Dennis.” She threw her hands in the air. “That’s not what he’s calling it, but he’s asserting everything here,” she waved around the hangar, “effectively belongs to the DOD and the State Department as of right now. National security this, diplomatic clearance that. We don’t do boo without their say-so. Your team’s supposed to be here in,” she glanced at her very-expensive looking wristwatch, “forty-five minutes, and he wants us to tell them to sit on their fucking hands.”
“Well,” Sandy started to say, then immediately bit his lip.
Too late. Gilchrist spun to face down at him, one hand on her hip. How tall was she? Maybe about Pick’s height, except she wore three-inch heels. “Well, what?”
“I, uh.” He swallowed. “Opening a portal to a network that connects other worlds we didn’t know about this morning, all populated by relative giants who are also probably at least as advanced as we are technologically—”
“I get it, uh…” She pointed at him but looked at Dennis. “What’s his name again?”
“Sandy,” both Dennis and Sandy said together.
“I understand that, Sandy. But this is our technology. Our equipment, our patents, our people, our ideas. If…” She looked up at the vixen’taur, who had fallen into staring off into the distance uncomfortably rather than watching the literally hundreds of little people scurrying around her. “Uh, if Amarylis sends engineers back here to assist us, they’ll be assisting us, our people.” She sighed, and looked back at the ocelot. “I understand this isn’t about us, just our company, Sandy, it’s about the whole nation, the whole world. But controlling this technology,” she started speaking with her hands as if indicating an imaginary gate, “is just—it’s just—”
“It’d make Strategic Industries the new East India Company,” Pick deadpanned.
“Yes!” she said enthusiastically, then splayed her ears, clearing her throat. “More respectful, of course.”
He snorted. “Of course.”
She held up a finger. “I’m going to have to go make some calls.” She strode off, pulling out her cell phone.
Sandy looked back at Amarylis. “Why isn’t anyone, uh, talking to her?”
Pick shoved his hands in his pockets, raising his brows. “Because everyone’s too busy trying to make sure they’re outside the tent pissing in instead of the reverse.”
“Colorful.” Sandy flicked his tail, then headed toward the giantess, waving up at her. “Amarylis!”
She blinked, looking down, then gave a slight, tired smile. “Hello again, Sandy.” She looked past him. “Dennis.”
That was enough of a cue for the soldiers and agents prepared to stop them to step back, letting them through.
“How are you holding up?” As soon as he said it, it sounded like an absurd question in context.
“I am tired and do not find this place very comfortable, and I am starting to get hungry, although I hesitate to bring that up lest it cause a panic.” She sighed. “When do you think we are going to get started?”
“I don’t have any idea,” he confessed. “It seems like there’s some…arguing over who’s in charge of what right now.”
She closed her eyes, the huge toes on her forepaws curling enough to scrape loudly against the concrete. “Perhaps I should stress that it would be best if I return on my own, rather than wait for the Gate Partnership to dispatch a rescue party.”
Sandy blinked, eyes widening. “Wait, a what? Can they do that?”
“If they can figure out where I am, yes. I do not know if that would be possible, or how long it would take, but there are almost certainly forensic magicians at my gate starting a search right now.” She spread her hands. “They have no way of knowing if I am alive or dead, and if they can find me, what condition I will be in—or if I am being held against my will.”
Several of the closest black-suited agents had turned to look at her when she started speaking. One of them cleared his throat. “You, ah, aren’t a prisoner, ma’am,” he called, sounding less assertive than shakily querulous.
She turned her gaze on him, her expression more severe than usual. “And yet no one seems to be providing me the assistance that I require to leave.”
All the agents looked at her, then hurried off in different directions, fingers to their earpieces.
Sandy stared after them, then looked at Pick. “Maybe you weren’t improvising after all.”