For the Backstreet Boys, the next week was a blur of squeezing in family and friends during their one-week break before the tour resumed. It was during the first week back on the road, in Las Vegas, that the first encounter happened.
Nick groaned. It was 3:00 in the morning, he'd had, like, one hour of sleep, and now he'd woken up with the vague feeling that he had to go somewhere.
He was too tired to question it and grabbed the clothes he'd worn that day off the floor, where they lay in a crumpled pile with the stone in his jeans pocket. He only bothered to splash some cold water on his face before stumbling groggily out into the hall.
He thought he saw someone else stumbling down the hall and eventually recognized him as Brian. Moments later, AJ, Kevin and Howie joined them.
"Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here," yawned AJ.
They clambered into the elevator and Kevin squinted at the buttons before determining which one would take them to the ground floor. All of them were half-awake in rumpled clothes, hair uncombed and faces unshaven, but they just had to go somewhere- although they didn't know where, or why.
The security guard looked at them quizzically as they passed. They grinned and waved, still not quite conscious, and walked out onto the brightly-lit street.
The five of them walked about two miles until they arrived at a main street of the city. At three A.M., Las Vegas was still going. Casinos lined each side of the road with huge neon signs and the sidewalks were filled with less-than-savoury, drunk characters. While the boys weren't drunk, extreme sleepiness wasn't helping their coordination and their rumpled, un-groomed look made them fit in perfectly with the gambling addicts and alcoholics roaming the streets at that hour.
Nick saw it first. An attractive blond woman, too well-dressed and maintained to belong to the late-night Las Vegas crowd, was walking towards them, but she seemed almost transparent, like a ghost. He examined her more closely and was able to see a short grey form within her.
Completely on instinct, without even realizing what he was doing, he pulled the stone out of his pocket, closed his eyes and pressed it to the center of his chest. The warmth enveloped him again, this time awakening him from his former stupor to an unusual alertness. Seconds later, the coolness came, and then nothing. He shot a glance at the others to make sure they had done the same. They had, and were now in the strange plastic-y outfits.
The woman was now very clearly not human, and the details of the alien figure were more apparent; small, grey and humanoid, with no hair, bulging, large black eyes, and four long, bony fingers, a regular X-Files special effect.
It began to run away from them, shoving people on the street out of its way. The boys exchanged looks and started to run after it.
It was scared. It didn't quite understand what these strangely-garbed humans were and it couldn't probe their thoughts. This was very wrong. As its panic grew, it neglected the maintenance of its illusion, and for a few seconds at a time, passerby saw its true alien form.
The run didn't tire Nick; he felt as if he could continue on for miles and miles without even feeling exhausted. They were all closing in on it, too focussed to notice the stunned and curious looks the surrounding drunkards gave them. The fact that they were actually chasing an alien mercifully did not cross their minds at the time.
It was only a matter of feet between them and the creature. Some men tried to hold them back, but they were knocked aside without ever being noticed.
Finally Kevin grabbed its shoulder, his hand plunging through its illusory disguise, and pushed it to the ground. They heard it grunt in a very human way when it fell to the sidewalk. Nick pulled the longsword from its scabbard and was about to plunge the blade into the alien when a sudden, incredibly strong pressure surrounded his neck and constricted, trying to crush the bones there, preventing him from breathing. His vision began to cloud and he couldn't think, not even to have his life flash before his eyes. He started to fall down. The fall seemed very slow.
He was seconds from dying of either suffocation or a broken neck when the pressure suddenly stopped. He gasped for air and it burned his lungs with a pain that meant he was at least still alive. For several moments he didn't think or see, just breathed.
When Nick looked at where the alien had been, there was only the prostate corpse of the blond woman, which showed absolutely no signs of superficial wounds. It was just dead.
"What?" His voice came out as a whisper. Only Brian heard him but he didn't answer, staring at the dagger in his hand that was coated in not red, but black blood- at least, he thought it was blood.
Howie shook off his own shock and grabbed Nick's shoulder roughly. "We have to go," he hissed. The crowd that had gathered around had held back only for a moment after the corpse appeared before becoming an angry, drunken mob that was closing in around them.
All five of the guys ran, pushing through the crowd that hit and grabbed at them. After they were clear, they pulled the stones from their chests and their weapons and strange near-uniforms vanished to be replaced by their own wrinkled clothes.
Brian wondered if, the next time they used the stones, the dagger would still have blood on it.
No one slept any more that night.
Brian sat awake on his bed in the darkness of the hotel room. He was tired but nervous, and that made him hyper; his right foot continually tapped the floor in a frantic rhythm.
What had he killed? Was it an innocent woman, an alien? Not a woman; not a human- the blood had been black. But had it ever intended to hurt someone? All he knew was from the composition book. What if it had been an alien, but not a hostile one? It had almost killed Nick, but Nick had intended to kill it. It had only been self-defense.
How had he killed it? He knew the physical portion of the how- he had plunged the dagger into the middle of its torso, blood spurted from the wound, it twitched and then was still and no longer alive. But mentally, how could he have killed something? "Thou shalt not kill". There was probably a Bible in the nightstand drawer saying the same thing. What did he think that had made him do it? He didn't remember any thought at the time, just seeing Nick not breathing- dying- and then automatically stabbing the thing on the ground. A physical thought... no, that didn't make sense. His mind had been silent and separate, observing and committing the event to memory, but not thinking.
He had killed something. It wasn't human, but it had breathed and moved and thought- and obviously done a lot more than that- and he had stopped it from ever doing any of those things again.
Maybe it had had a soul, and maybe it hadn't wanted to hurt anyone. Maybe it was one of God's creatures, too. And he had killed it. His own hands had done it.
Brian stared unseeing into the dark.
I almost died, Nick kept thinking. I almost died. Just like that, on the street.
He shuddered. He'd been shaking involuntarily, but had stopped half an hour ago, emerging from a state without thought or feeling. Nick stared at his hands and moved each finger separately to reassure himself that he was still alive. The air still tasted very sweet to him.
It had been very strange. He'd always expected death to be painful and panicked. But it had not been. Chaos had surrounded him but he was separate from it, an onlooker without much interest in the proceedings. He hadn't prayed, or felt sad. He hadn't even thought. He'd just accepted the fact that he was going to die and there had followed a peaceful oblivion to everything around him. That had been all.
That was the unbelieveable part, how unceremonious and fast it was when it had come. Boom, you're dying, buddy, so sorry, you're all out of quarters, buh-bye. Next!... No drawn-out movie-style suffering, the pain quickly vanishing into the oblivion instead, all of it in seconds without a warning. It could have been over.
There were so many things that he would never have done. Sure, he had it better than those dying kids they visited. He was depressed for days after they saw them, at the ages when they should have been full of life- but instead, they were all dying of terminal illnesses, and had the look in their eyes of someone old and wise who, though they'd lived their lives to the fullest, had been forced too early to accept the burden of everything they'd never have. He could recall the faces of each and every one of them, if he tried.
He wanted to get married, he wanted to father a child, he wanted to be artistically respected, he wanted... there was an aching want he couldn't place for everything he didn't yet know the value and joy of.
Right then he really wanted to get laid, and he wanted his mother. Of course, it would be hard to explain that he'd almost died. But he wanted his mommy, one of the most ancient and time-honoured desires in the history of near-death experiences. That and boys wanting to get some. That could wait. Of more immediate concern was how likely it was that this whole alien thing would get him killed.
He shuddered again.
Howie, AJ, and Kevin were all awake too; AJ looking out the window of his hotel room at the bright lights below, Kevin still lying stubbornly in bed, and Howie staring blankly at a muted television. Their thoughts and feelings of disbelief, fear and shock were similar. The contents of the composition book had been at least partly right. These things existed and they could kill- Nick had almost died. Kevin felt guilty for all the times he'd snapped at him. He was still just a kid.
Everything any and all of them knew had been shaken. They had taken their general safety and the safety of everyone else on Earth for granted; not anymore. They knew for certain that they couldn't ignore the extraterrestrial threat and would have to fight.
They also knew that they could die in the process.
Cause power's just another one of those things baby
It's pointless if you ain't gonna use it
Goddamn, it's deafening
Wish you'd shut up about everything
The future is X-rated
(-Matthew Good Band, "The Future Is X-Rated")
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