where they always had their pool filled, hearing a splash as one of the boys missed his turn. From there, she scrambled up onto one of the nearby roofs, then over through the park, then across into the garden where the big, angry dog lived, taking care to only step in the spaces out of range of its chain. A snarl and a shriek of anger behind Luna told her that the second of the boys had fallen behind.
“I’ll get you for this!” he yelled out.
Luna laughed. “Not unless you want to have to explain to people how I managed to punch you and get away with it.”
She ran back in the direction of Kevin, who was waiting there with the confidence of someone who’d seen this game before.
“You know, I could have taken him,” he said, trying to look tough.
Luna managed not to laugh. “But it’s more fun this way. Come on, you can buy me pizza for rescuing you.”
“But you didn’t rescue me. I could have taken him…”
Luna smiled at the memory, or would have if she’d been able to move her face. She tried to think of the bully’s name, because she was sure that she’d known it once. What bully though? What had she been thinking about? The fact that she couldn’t remember made Luna pause in terror. She’d been thinking about it just a moment ago, and now it was gone, like… like…
Luna tried to grasp the memories, she really did. She knew that she had memories; a whole lifetime’s worth. She had friends, and a life, and parents… she definitely had parents, so why couldn’t she remember their faces? Maybe she didn’t have parents. Maybe all of this was just some sick joke. Maybe she’d always been like this, and she was just defective somehow, feeling that she was different as a distraction from the work that the aliens needed her to…
No, Luna thought fiercely, I’m me. I’m Luna. They transformed me, and I have real memories… somewhere.
She wasn’t sure where, though. Every time she tried to grab for what felt like the beginnings of a memory, it slipped away into a great fog of thoughts that felt as though it was consuming every part of her. Luna tried to drag herself away from that fog, but it was creeping in more and more around the edges of who she was, seeming to fill everything, carrying away small pieces of memories, of words, of personality.
Suddenly, she saw something. It was just different enough to snap her out of it, even if just for a second.
There was a man approaching. Moving forward without fear. A real man. Not controlled.
How could that be?
Where Luna and the others moved with an almost mechanical synchronization, he moved forward in furtive little darts and stutters, with what looked like some kind of gun cradled in his arms.
He didn’t look like a soldier, though. He looked more like a pirate, crossed with a professor. His hair was wild and spiked, while half a dozen earrings dotted one ear, and he had the beginnings of an unkempt beard. He was wearing a tweed jacket and button-down shirt over jeans and hiking boots. He wasn’t wearing a mask, which made no sense at all.
Luna moved to meet him, her hands coming up to grab for him fast enough that he couldn’t even begin to jump back, or maybe he just didn’t want to try. Even though he was a grown-up and she was just a kid, she had enough strength to hold him in place while her mouth opened wide and then wider still, a great cloud of vapor seeming to boil up in her throat as if waiting to be released. Feeling almost guilty, she breathed it out toward the man, enfolding him in a cloud of vapor thick enough to leave him coughing.
Luna stepped back, the aliens who controlled her obviously waiting for him to transform. He stood there, though, lifting the gun he held, and Luna felt a rush of fear. She might not feel pain, but she was pretty sure that if someone did enough damage to her, she would still be able to die. For a moment, she found herself hoping that the vapor she’d breathed out would take hold before he got a chance to fire. She didn’t want to die. Then she felt guilty for even thinking that. She shouldn’t wish this on anyone.
But the gun did not fire.
Instead, a cloud of blue-green vapor came out of the barrel, pouring into Luna’s lungs with every breath. She started to reach out for him to snap his gun in half, and probably to do the same to him, but the strangest thing happened when her arms were less than halfway to him.
She stopped.
In a single moment, she froze in place, her heartbeat coming faster and faster. She felt her whole world spinning.
Luna fell to her knees involuntarily. She felt them scrape on the sidewalk, actually felt it, and the sensation coming back was like when blood rushed back in after an arm or a leg had gone to sleep. It hurt and she cried out.
She couldn’t believe it.
She was back.
Back to her old self. No longer controlled.
She dug down into her memories, making sure they were still there; that they hadn’t been lost completely. She pictured Kevin’s face, and her parents as they had been on the first birthday she could remember. She breathed a sigh of relief, and not just for herself. It meant that the people who had been transformed weren’t lost.
She wanted to shriek with joy. To reach out and hug this man and never let go.
She stared up at him in wonder.
He smiled down in a curious, academic way.
“My,” he said, “you seem to be responding much quicker than the other subjects I’ve tried this on. Oh, forgive me, where are my manners? I’m Ignatius Gable. The vapor you just breathed in is the vaccine I created to counter the effects of the alien control. You should feel complete control returning to you shortly. Now, I’m sure you have a lot of questions about what’s going on, but we’re not exactly in a position to chat here. So unless we both want to get killed for good, I suggest you come with me.”
She blinked back, startled, and followed his gaze to see countless controlled closing in.
“NOW!” he shouted.
The controlled started to descend on them in a swarm. Luna could only watch as they crowded in close, grabbing for them. He sprayed them with his gun, but for the others, it didn’t seem to work.
Luna ran forward, plunging into the crowd and slipping through the spaces with every advantage she could get from being smaller than most of the people there. She ducked under arms and skidded between legs, taking Ignatius’s arm and not letting go.
Luna spotted Cub, and Bear, and the rest of them, and she snatched the gun and whirled around.
“What are you doing?” he cried out in alarm.
She sprayed a cloud of it that started to slow the controlled around her, spraying Cub and Bear and all the rest of them.
“Come on,” she said, as she kept her finger down on the trigger. “Change!”
Luna saw Cub blinking in the sunlight, stretching out his hands and staring at them.
She looked around until she saw Bobby in the shadows of a building and held out a hand to him.
And then she turned with the others and ran.
And
