Transmission

Ted looked as though he was trying to work out what to do too, and that was almost as frightening. Kevin was used to him having all the answers. He had a phone out and was making a call.

“We have a level four breach,” he said into it. “I’m working to contain it, but you need to start emergency protocols, now.”

There was a panel on the wall. Ted pulled it open, tapping a series of numbers into a keypad. He pressed a button, and lights started to flash red along all of the corridors, while a computerized voice sounded through speakers.

“Emergency, Emergency. Containment in progress.”

Metal shutters slid down the sides of all the labs on that level, effectively turning them into giant metal boxes from which nothing could escape. Kevin heard a roar of frustration from inside the lab, and he dared to breathe a sigh of relief.

“Have we done it?” he asked. “Have we stopped them?”

“I hope so,” Ted said. Despite that, he went to a storage locker, pulling out the kind of filtration masks that the scientists had been wearing. He passed one each to Luna and Kevin, then took another for himself.

“What is going on here? Why is this whole space shut off?”

Kevin turned to see Professor Brewster approaching, along with Dr. Levin and at least a dozen others. A security guard had a hold of Dr. Levin’s elbow, looking apologetic about it, but not letting go.

“You’ve gone too far,” the facility’s director said, pointing a finger in their direction. “You had no right to do this.”

“You’re lucky we did,” Luna said, before either Kevin or Ted could say anything, “because you’d be surrounded by aliens by now if we hadn’t.”

“Aliens,” Professor Brewster said with a note of contempt. “Haven’t we heard enough of this nonsense?”

“Oh, it’s a long way from being nonsense,” Ted said. “I’ve seen it.”

“It’s true,” Kevin said. “They can take over people’s bodies. A gas came out of the rock we found, and it took over the scientists there.”

Professor Brewster shook his head. “There are many gases that can produce erratic behavior, and that’s if anything happened at all. We only have your word for it.”

“My word,” Ted said, in a tone that dared the other man to contradict it.

That was when the knocking sounded.

“Knocking” wasn’t quite the right word for it. That made it sound almost polite, even delicate, but the sound that reverberated in Kevin’s ears was of something smashing, hard, against the walls of the room.

“There are people locked in there?” Professor Brewster demanded.

“The aliens are controlling them,” Kevin said. “Their pupils turned white when it happened.”

“Probably just a trick of chemical reaction,” Professor Brewster insisted. “Either way, this foolishness has gone on long enough. I’m going to release my people, call security down here, and have all of you removed from this facility.”

He started for the security panel that Ted had used, and Kevin saw the soldier pull out a gun.

“I will shoot anyone who touches those controls,” Ted promised.

That shocked Kevin a little. He didn’t want anyone getting shot because of this. Although, if it had to be someone from there, Professor Brewster was probably top of the list. The scientist turned back toward them, his hands raised.

“You wouldn’t dare!” he said. From inside the steel box of the shutters, the banging resumed.

“Um… I think he might,” Kevin replied. “Professor Brewster, we can’t let them out of that room. We have to stop the aliens while we can.”

“There aren’t any aliens!” Professor Brewster insisted. “You’ve imprisoned my people on a delusion, and…”

The knocking stopped, and the suddenness with which it did so made even the facility’s director pause. Something clicked and whirred, then the lights in the corridor stopped flashing their dull red, and the steel shutters started to rise.

“That doesn’t look good,” Luna said.

That was an understatement. The shutters rose, and Kevin saw the scientists standing there passively, looking calm as they waited for the chance to be free. Kevin guessed it made sense that aliens would be able to hack a computer. After all, they had technology that had sent them halfway across a galaxy. Compared to that, a computer probably wasn’t very complicated.

“You see,” Professor Brewster said. “There are no aliens, just three perfectly normal—”

The scientists opened their mouths, shrieking in unison, a noise that sounded more insect-like than human, more alien than either. Kevin saw the shock on the expressions of the scientists around him as they realized that these weren’t their colleagues anymore.

“Look at their eyes,” one of the researchers said.

Kevin looked over to Ted. “We’re safe out here, right?”

“As long as they can’t get through the glass,” Ted said. “All of you, you need facemasks. If any of that vapor gets out, you’re all in danger.”