A Strategic Alliance

The air crackled with a desperate energy, thick with the scent of ozone and the metallic tang of fear. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the unsettling quiet that had fallen after Celine’s frantic pronouncement. Tamera, her face pale and etched with a fear that mirrored my own, clutched Celine’s small hand, her eyes wide and pleading as she looked at me. Azarah, ever the optimist, stood a little apart, her brow furrowed in thought, her usual effervescence dimmed by the weight of the news.

“Grandma?” I choked out, the word catching in my throat. It was one thing to be reeling from my own mother’s sacrifice, the gut-wrenching hollowness that had settled in my chest since the alien’s ship had vanished into the indifferent sky. It was another to have that horror amplified, to know that the same terror had struck again, snatching away another loving grandmother, another pillar of someone’s world. Celine, her lower lip trembling, nodded, fat tears rolling down her cherubic cheeks.

“She… she just disappeared, Ivanka,” Tamera whispered, her voice strained. “One minute she was in the garden, watering her roses, the next… nothing. Like she was never there.”