Farmhouse

Marin County, California

February 22

The sound of breaking glass vibrated down Jack's spine as he watched the boy fly through the window and disappear into the dark. A half-second later, a bullet whizzed past his ear and lodged in the window frame. Furious, he whirled on the offender. Not much more than a boy himself, the guardsman looked at him in horror. Jack grabbed his rifle and tossed it out the shattered window to a chorus of protests from the other guardsmen, not that he cared.

Still, maybe not my best idea.

Crossing to the window, he detoured long enough to kick the plug to the smoldering computer from the wall socket, all the while cursing himself for what he'd done. No, for what he'd failed to do. Ten years of training, three-quarters of a lifetime preparing for this moment, and he'd just stood there staring at the kid like a dumb shit.

Mindless of the broken glass, he leaned out the window and spotted the boy slip-sliding on a large patch of ice as he struggled to get to his feet. Harry was right. He wasn't much more than a kid. Sixteen at the most and definitely blue.

Jack aimed his gun at him. The boy looked down at the laser mark on his chest, then back up at Jack, and for one brief moment, their eyes met.

His eyes. So old for such a young face. Why do I feel like I've seen those eyes before?

The kid finally caught his footing and up on his feet, darted for the woods at the back of the property, moving faster than was humanly possible.

Jack shoved the gun inside his pocket and jumped through the window. Despite his best efforts to miss it, he hit the patch of ice and would've gone down on his backside if Fitzgerald hadn't appeared out of nowhere and grabbed his arm to steady him. "Are you alright, sir?"

"Jack." Marla's voice called to him from the window.

Shit.

If he acknowledged her, she'd have him. If he ignored her, the Governor would have him and probably Walter as well. Either way, he felt the alien boy slipping through his fingers.

"Sir," Fitzgerald said in a low voice. "May I recommend we run away?"

Jack almost laughed, so unlike the ensign to suggest such a breach in protocol. He gave her a quick nod, and they took off at a run, heading for the woods at the back of the property while Marla threatened the things she'd do to him if he didn't come back. Fifty or so yards in, Jack motioned for the ensign to stop, and the two of them stood in silence, tucked between the trees as a dozen Black Guard ran by, ignoring them, a bigger fish to fry.

"If you were the boy, which way would you go," he murmured, scanning the area.

Fitzgerald fetched her SAT phone from her pocket and pulled up a map. "North, into the hills?" she suggested.

"Cold night, no shoes, difficult climb. Based on the ship's early trajectory, let's assume the kid knows his way around the Bay Area. That he picked this part of our world for a reason. East, the 101, and civilization. South, and you double back on a whole shit load of guardsmen. So, that leaves—" He pointed at the west edge of the map, a gradual climb up a sloping bluff and a drop into a reasonably deep estuary not far below.

Fitzgerald pulled a pair of cell phone-sized walkie-talkies from her other pocket and handed him one. "Alright, sir," she said, her words escaping in an icy smoke. Jack also felt the cold, and he wondered what effect it had on the boy, dressed in a thin t-shirt and no shoes. "It's virtually undetectable. But don't break silence unless you have to."

Jack nodded and watched as Fitzgerald took off at a run, angling to the right. Taking out his gun, he did the same, heading toward the left, the two of them spreading out like fronds on a fan.

The woods were quiet except for the steady strike of his shoes on ice-crisped leaves, the thump of his heart inside his ears. He couldn't remember another time when everything seemed so still. On the plains of Northeast Texas, there was always noise. Insects scurrying through the brush, the wind skipping over sandy dunes. Even the sky possessed its own soft, electric sounds.

But this? This was silence.

The hunter in him felt at home in the cold and dark. The instinct to track a prey was in his nature: lessons learned early by a small boy intimate with hunger. But these grounds were pristine. No snapped foliage. No disturbed earth.

Ducking under a group of low-hanging branches, he entered a small clearing, the ground a dried alkaline bed encircled by dozens of rotting tree trunks. The sound of water rushing over rock told him he wasn't far from the cliff's edge, and his sixth sense tingled.

Something wasn't right. Nothing he could put a finger on, just an odd feeling that someone or something was watching from beyond the tree line. He hadn't heard from Fitzgerald since they'd parted, and he fished the walkie-talkie from his coat pocket, about to hail her when it bleated.

"Jack," Marla said on the other end, and he blew out a frustrated breath. Leave it to Marla Victor to track him down on something supposedly untrackable. "What's your position?"

He thought about hanging up. She could only kill him once. "Headed toward the 101."

Such a lie.

"No good. The boy's headed south."

"How do you know?"

"Because he left a trail of bodies in his wake."

That brought Jack up short. The boy would do what was necessary to survive. He'd seen it in his eyes. Still, there was something about him, something weirdly familiar, and he couldn't picture him as a cold-blooded killer.

"Don't take any chances," Marla told him. "Shoot him on sight."

Not bothering to reply, Jack hung up, slipped the walkie-talkie back inside his pocket, and scanned the tree line again, gripped by the overwhelming feeling he was not alone.

"Ensign Fitzgerald?" he called. No reply. "Hey, you out there?"

The sudden crunch of icy leaves under military boots. Walking awkwardly on the balls of her feet, Ensign Fitzgerald emerged from the darkness beyond the tree line, the boy right behind her. One blue hand wrapped around her throat, the other pushing her arm up high on her back, he moved her along as if she were no more than an inconvenience.

"Take it easy," Jack's finger itched at the gun's trigger. "No one wants to hurt you."

The boy laughed, a dark, unamused sound.

"Shoot him, sir," Fitzgerald gasped when the boy wedged her arm up even higher.

"Let her go."

"You are in no position to give orders." The boy's speech was slightly accented, an accent Jack felt he'd heard somewhere before. "Give me the gun."

Jack didn't respond. But when Fitzgerald choked off another gasp of pain, he flipped on the safety and tossed the gun at the boy's feet. The boy gave Fitzgerald a hard shove, and she went flying, would've gone over the cliff if Jack hadn't caught her.

Furious, Jack whirled back on the kid only to find himself staring down the barrel of his own gun. "Alright." he shifted Fitzgerald behind him despite her protests. "You've got me. Let the woman go."

"You are in no position to ask for favors," the boy said, cold fire in his eyes.

Jack heard the voices off in the distance, shouting his name, and he held out his hand. "Give me the gun. It's the only way. They will catch you. It's already too late."

The boy grinned. "Only for you, my friend." His face was almost too beautiful, and Jack got the impression he was looking at a god. "Only for you."

And with that, he pulled the trigger.