When They Arrived by Emily Ansell

Author:Emily Ansell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, first contact, character driven, alien invasion, soft sci-fi, far future, hopepunk
Publisher: Earth-Breaker Books
Published: 2024-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Johnathan wasn’t sure what happened after that. Something large hit him and everything went dark. He woke up again under a pile of debris. He tried to move, but there wasn’t much room. Panic seized him, and for a moment the entire world constricted around his ribcage. He could barely get air into his lungs, thrashing as he tried to free himself. Eventually, shaking and gasping, his forehead dropped to rest on whatever cool surface lay beneath him. Tiles? Had there been tiles on the floor? He couldn’t remember now.

As the pounding of his heart began to subside, his lungs were able to pull more air into them. When he could raise his head again, he was calm enough to take in his surroundings.

He was buried by chunks of metal and wood that had been either ceiling or wall, he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t been crushed, at least. What looked like a roof beam had come down on an angle, wedged somewhere above him and leaving the little bit of space where he lay now. Not enough space to do much more than turn over, but now that he was thinking again he knew it was lucky enough that he wasn’t flat right now. So there was that to be thankful for.

What had happened? He tried to remember. Squirrel, sending a warning out about the Datas. Then an explosion, and everything was jumbled and fuzzy after that. What had exploded? Had they been attacked? Had the Datas found them? How? These new chips? But the Datas had never had such destructive capabilities. They were stealthy, quiet, floating through the air. They had lasers, but they didn’t blast holes in houses. Something else then? But what? The last thing they needed was something else, especially something more dangerous.

“Devin? Squirrel?” he shouted. No answer. Either they couldn’t hear him, or... no, it must be the debris. Maybe they’d been knocked out, too, or buried like he was. There was only one way to help them now, and it was to get out from under this pile of rubble.

He tried to crawl forward. He got almost a foot before he had to start clearing the path in front of him. Just small pieces of debris, at least. Anything large would be hard to move and risked bringing the whole thing down on him. He didn’t want that, so he crawled and wormed his way around, just hoping he didn’t come across something impassable. At least he seemed relatively unhurt by the collapse; nothing felt broken and everything moved the way it was supposed to. Even catching the side of his hand across a piece of glass as he crawled was nothing compared to how bad it could have been.

“Devin? Squirrel?” he tried again. The silence that followed brought that painful prickle racing back up his spine. He shoved a broken monitor out of the way and found himself blinking into sudden sunlight. He’d made it. The sudden realization of freedom slowed his body until all he could do was stare for a long moment at the brightness.

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