companionwolf

In the early morning he shoots off texts to Hazel’s engineer friends, explaining who he is and what he’s looking for. He hopes he’s not too late, that the FBI is still one step behind him, that he can get so lucky.

He gets answers from one almost immediately; his name is Bigley, he lives in Pittsburgh, and he’s happy to show Pillow Central what he’s found as long as it’s kept on the down low. That alone makes him nervous, makes him almost certain that the materials are unearthly, but he has to see them. He knows what it looks like, he has to see.

The other engineer does not answer until much later in the day, when Pillow Central and the humans are waiting around Alex’s apartment for the latter to finish packing. They’ve swung by Tulip’s and Davey’s, and are now scattered about the small impeccable living room.

Tulip sits on the floor and plays with Espeon, the Pokémon batting a bottle cap back at her gentle throws. Davey browses his phone while seated on the sleek couch, his brow furrowed- all of the humans had woken complaining of headaches, and Alex had begun the morning with another nosebleed, which Alice believes to be part of exposure to the Elder.

The latter, in Pillow Central’s hand, nods as she hears rustling in the other room.

“I like this house,” she says. “Very clean, well kept.”

Pillow Central’s phone buzzes again. The second engineer, who goes by ‘Lizard’, has texted him their address. He saves it to his notes app and texts back a thank you and a ‘I’ll let you know when we’re in town’.

Alex emerges from the bedroom, lugging a duffel bag with one hand, and blotting their nose with a tissue with the other. “Ok,” they say, “I’m ready.”

“Any better?” asks Alice.

“Not really,” Alex says, sniffling. “My head hurts.”

“All our heads hurt, bud,” Tulip says as she gets up. “I’ve got ibuprofen in the car, you can have some.”

They head down to the car and settle in- Davey driving, Tulip in the passenger seat, Alex and Pillow Central in back. Their bags are at their feet, with the rest of the luggage in the trunk. Alice and Espeon sit nestled in Pillow Central’s coat pocket.

Pillow Central gives him Lizard’s address, and the drive begins.

As they leave El Paso, Espeon jumps to the window to gaze outside, and even Alice turns her head to view the rolling hills. The humans play the radio and talk amongst themselves; otherwise they play on handheld game consoles and mess with their phones.

Pillow Central occupies himself with browsing the Internet for any sign of alien activity— he’s seeing things more and more now, reports cast off as drunkenness, children disappearing, and they ache because they make the memories flare.

Fuzzy as they are, he still remembers— the abductions, the attempts to cover up things until it was too much to cover up, the quick fall to alien rule, the protests and the backlash. None of it may be real, and most may not come to pass, but it sure is helpful in picking through the mainstream news.

He absently wonders if the Owner’s parents will notice his line is connected to their phone payments. Probably not, they still think that the Owner has a tablet on the same plan, when that tablet went missing years ago.

They manage to make it out of Texas before something goes wrong.

There’s a loud thunking noise late in the afternoon, rhythmic for a while until Davey moves to the side sharply, which startles him (and seemingly everyone else; Tulip jerks her head, Alex drops their 3DS) to look toward The front as the cat parks on the side of the road. Davey is getting out of the car, bending down to tire level. He gets back up and shakes his head.

“Flat tire,” he says. “Anyone got car insurance?”

“Do we look like we have money?” Tulip says.

“Well, I know stuffed gang has some but I don’t suppose they’ve got AAA, do they?” Davey answers, giving Pillow Central a flower over the seatrest.

“Hey fuck you we don’t have a car anymore!” Espeon says.

“Well that’s your problem,” he says, as Alex asks, “seriously what happen to yall’s car?”

“Well,” says Alice, “being rude to each other isn’t going to fix this. The humans will need to sleep soon; can anyone find a nearby hotel?”

“There’s a Holiday Inn nearby,” says Tulip, leaning towards them from her seat. “We’re about 15 minutes away walking. I’ll find AAA’s number and call them too.”

“I’ll pay for it,” Pillow Central says, and Tulip smiles at him.

Davey gets back in the car, still giving Pillow Central a dark look. Alex is opening a new packet of tissues, blood under their nails.

“Please don’t get blood on my seats,” Davey says. “I mean, it’s ok if you do, it’ll just be hard to get out so try not to.”

Alex rolls their eyes and mouths ‘get a load of this guy’ at the stuffed animals. Espeon snorts, Alice and Pillow Central hush her.

Tulip is wrapping up on the phone, and turns to the rest of the car with a grin. “They’re on the way with a replacement tire,” she says. “Davey, you stay with the car and text us when you’re back on the road; the rest of us will walk to the hotel and then we’ll come out and get our stuff when you get here. Sound good?”

The sun is low in the sky now, casting long shadows across the small town. Pillow Central carries his friends in his hands and tails Alex, who follows Tulip. When they reach the hotel, Tulip and Pillow Central go to counter to get rooms; Alex scurries into the bathroom.

By the time they’ve gotten keys and messaged Davey the room number (he and Pillow Central are together; Alex and Tulip in the room next to them), Alex has returned, holding a new handful of tissues to their nose.

The rooms are pretty standard; small sitting area, sink and bathroom, bed, a desk, a window looking out into the parking lot. Pillow Central sees Davey’s car pull in, and follows the humans back down and out to meet him.

The parking lot and hotel is next to a vacant lot, covered in underbrush and strewn with trash. Pillow Central stares out at it, watching the tall grasses in the wind.

Something rustles unnaturally; Espeon, in Tulip’s hands, perks up. “Hey, hey,” she says, and her gem glows. “Hey, there’s something in there.”

“I don’t see why you need psychic powers to determine what your ears can interpret just fine,” Alice says.

“Ssh,” says Espeon, “it doesn’t feel... right. It feels... it feels like... I don’t know, but I don’t—“

There’s a sound that Pillow Central knows like his own hands, the warming of a plasma coil, and he’s jumping at Tulip, yelling at the others to hit the asphalt as two plasma bolts sizzle through the air.

“What the fuck was that?” yells Davey, who’s in between cars.

Tulip, from the ground, yells back. “I don’t know, but shortstack sure is freaked about it!”

Espeon has ditched her and run back to Pillow Central, narrowly dodging two more plasma bolts aimed at her. She jumps into his waiting hands. “Did you see that?” she says, breathlessly.

“Yeah, I did,” he says, ducking against the hotel front, peering around back at the grasses.

Alex remains motionless in the parking lot, a deer in headlights look. Tulip hisses at her to move from her position on the ground.

There’s the sound of the plasma coil warming again-

Pillow Central sets Espeon and Alice on the front walk at his feet, and conjures up a balm of Psionic energy. It fizzles the first time, but stays the second, and after a moment he throws it at the long grass.

There’s a screech, and a sectoid comes skittering out of the brush, reeling from the impact. Espeon takes the moment to spring off a Psybeam, and the sectoid collapses, weapon’s internal mechanisms audibly shattering as it hits the ground.

“What is that?” asks Tulip while she stands, as Davey tries to calm a shock stilled Alex into moving again.

Pillow Central gingerly makes his way across the asphalt, pausing every so often, until he’s at the corpse. He unzips his bag, shoves the new body on top of the old, and puts the weapon fragments inside as well. He can compare them with what the engineers have.

He zips is the back and comes back to the group, flinching as Espeon climbs him all the way to his shoulder.

“What did you think? Rookie lucky, or am I just better then a xcom solider?” she asks.

“What was that?” Davey asks, but before he can answer, Alex does: “It’s a alien. I’ve seen one before.”

“What?” says Pillow Central.

“During my summer hiking trip senior year of high school,” they say, and their voice shakes. “We snuck out. It was dark. One of us spotted it, we chased it. It shot my friend. Killed him. We had no idea what happened, and they ruled it a suicide even though they had no idea how he got a burn wound that entered and exited like a gunshot.”

“Oh,” says Alice.

“Shit,” says Pillow Central. “They’ve had forces on the ground for that long?”

Alex looks at him, and he sees them square their shoulders. “I remember the original X-COM was a game about fighting aliens,” she says. “One of the aliens types looked like that. Even those little guys were really strong. I never won a game.”

“Let’s take this inside,” says Davey, and his voice is tremulous.

“Okay,” says Alex. Alice pushes against Pillow Central’s arm, and he gently hands her to them; she begins to whisper, quiet things he recognizes, and by the time they’ve gathered everything from the car and reached the rooms Alex’s face has some color back in it. They’re all gathered in Tulip and Alex’s Room, the humans nursing coffee the former makes in the shitty coffee maker.

“So the aliens are here,” Davey says, sitting down on the small couch.

“Apparently they’ve been here,” Pillow Central says as he sits in a chair at the tiny table in the sitting area, across from Davey . “That’s not good.”

“No,” says Alex, who stands next to Tulip as the latter makes another coffee, “that’s not good at all.”

“What do we do, then?” asks Tulip, before she takes a swig of her drink. She frowns at it. “Bitter.

“Well,” Pillow Central says, “I have weapon fragments I can compare it whatever it is the engineers have, and then take those, the bodies, and the footage you three took to the White House when I present my case.”

“I still don’t see how you’ll even get in,” Tulip says. “They’ll never believe you.”

“I would hope they didn’t,” Pillow Central says. “If enough happens between then and now that they did, I would be— it — that’s not a good thing, them believing me off the bat.”

“Do you really think a non dedicated task force can do this?” Davey asks. “I mean, you said XCOM was made for the job and they still failed.”

“To be fair,” Pillow Central says, and if he had hair and a neck it would standing up, bristling and defensive, “we were set up to fail; lack of resources, lack of funding, the world leaders turning alliances towards the invaders...”

“So it doesn’t bode too well for our forces either, huh?” Tulip finishes.

“No,” he says finally, “it doesn’t.”