D. MacHale - SYLO

“What the hell is going on?” was all I could say.

My answer came quickly. The fighter jets opened fire on the shadows.

“It’s a dogfight!” Tori screamed.

The fighter jets started launching missiles that blasted from beneath their wings and tore into the formation of shadows. Several were hit and exploded in the air, erupting into spectacular fireballs similar to the one we had seen near Tori’s house. Some splashed into the ocean; others crashed and erupted on land.

Another four fighter jets arrived and bore into the fight. They swooped in and out in an aerial ballet that would have been fascinating to watch if it had been some CGI movie.

When the fighter jets arrived, we got more of a perspective on the shadows. They weren’t dinner-sized plates at all. They were nearly as large as the fighter planes—plenty big enough to be carrying a pilot or two. Or a load of the Ruby.

I grabbed the walkie and yelled to Quinn, “We gotta go. Crank the engine again.”

We waited, glued to the aerial battle that was playing out over Portland, Maine.

“No good,” Quinn called back. “It’s starting to smoke and—no! I’ve got a fire!”

Tori grabbed the walkie and shouted, “There’s an extinguisher aft of the wheelhouse.”

I was torn between worrying about Quinn and the impossible air war. As we floated halfway between Pemberwick Island and the mainland, we had no idea who was attacking and who was defending or who was who, for that matter. The fighters were all about taking out the shadow craft, but there was no way to know what the strange shadows were or what they were doing. After what we’d seen from the military on Pemberwick, I wasn’t so sure who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.

Up until that moment, the shadow craft were being shot out of the sky without putting up a fight.

That didn’t last.

A laser-like white light streaked from three of the shadow craft at the exact same moment. All were focused on a fighter. The three lights hit the jet—and the plane vanished.

There was no explosion. No flash of light. No fire. No sound. The plane glowed for an instant and disappeared.

I fell to my knees on the deck, realizing that I had just once again witnessed death…along with a deadly technology unlike anything I had ever heard of.

“Did you see that?” Quinn screamed over the walkie.

I think I was in shock. I couldn’t move, or think. I kept staring at the mainland and saw the same scene play over and over. Three shadow craft would target a fighter, hit it with multiple streaks of light, and the fighter would disappear. One by one the fighters were being picked off. They continued to do damage, splashing several of the shadow craft with their missiles, but it was clear that it would only be a matter of time before every last fighter was evaporated.

Tori’s head was clearer than mine. She went for the boat’s ship-to-shore radio—the same radio we didn’t dare use in case we would give away our position. That fear had been replaced by a much greater one. She flipped on the power and the radio hummed to life.

“Who are you trying to call?” I asked.

“Nobody. Somebody might be on the air to say what’s going on.”

She spun through the frequencies, searching for a call. A voice. Anything. What we got back was a garble of static and confusion. Multiple voices seemed to be screaming over one another. It was such a mess that nothing understandable came through.

It was the same with every other frequency. All we could hear, loud and clear, was something horrifyingly unmistakable—the frantic sounds of panic.

Tori gave me a grave look. “Are we at war?” she asked.

“Who is ‘we’? And who would we be at war with?”

“I can’t find the extinguisher,” Quinn yelled over the walkie. “The fire’s spreading.”

I forced myself to focus. “We gotta get him. Jeez, we’ve already waited too long.”

“We’re coming,” Tori shouted at the walkie. “What’s your position?”

“I don’t know!” Quinn called back. “Somewhere south of you.”

“There!” I yelled. I saw a faint flicker of light on the water that had to be the fire. “Let’s go!”

Tori hit the throttles, the engines roared, and we were on our way. All thoughts of stealth were gone. What we were witnessing over the mainland made the quarantine of Pemberwick Island seem trivial.

As we roared closer to the burning boat that held Quinn, I kept staring at the sky over the far shore. There were only two fighters left. Each launched missiles that took out a shadow craft, but there were too many of the mysterious planes. Unless the fighters flew off, they wouldn’t be in the air much longer. They wouldn’t be anywhere for much longer.

Tori screamed.

I spun to look ahead of us to see a massive black creature rising up out of the water between us and Quinn’s boat. The light from the boat fire was soon blocked as the enormous black shape rose up like some monster from the deep—and kept coming.

“Turn!” I bellowed and grabbed the wheel.

Together we spun it hard and fishtailed into a turn to starboard without easing back on the throttles. I didn’t know what it was in front of us. I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was avoid hitting it.

“Guys! Get me outta here!” Quinn shouted over the walkie.

I heard the desperation in his voice, and it terrified me—even more so than the rising monster. Tori got her wits back and kept control of the boat. We spun clear of the leviathan until we could once again see Quinn’s boat.

The wheelhouse was ablaze. Quinn stood on the stern, waving his arms.

That’s when I heard the music return.

Tori and I looked up to see several of the flying black craft headed our way.

“We’re coming!” I shouted into the walkie.

“I’m bailing out before this thing explodes,” Quinn shouted back.

“Go,” I yelled. “We’ll pick you up and—”

Three white laser streaks flashed out of the sky. All were focused on the Patricia .

“Jump!” I screamed into the walkie. “Get off the boat!”

The last image I saw of Quinn Carr was him stepping up onto the deck rail to jump into the water…too late.

The beams hit the boat, there was a quick burst of light, and then it was gone. The fire. The boat. Quinn.

Tori pulled back on the throttles. There was no longer a need to hurry.

“My God,” was all she managed to say.

We stood there watching the dark sea where the Patricia had once been. I kept expecting to see it reappear. Or to hear Quinn’s voice over the walkie. Neither of those things happened.

“No,” I said numbly. “No, no, no!”

I grabbed the walkie and screamed, “Quinn! Come in! Quinn!”

I was so out of my mind I don’t think I was even pressing the talk button. It didn’t matter anyway. We were close enough to the spot where the boat had been that Quinn would have heard my screams even without the walkie-talkie. I threw the walkie to the deck and leaned out over the rail.

“Quinn!” I cried. To nothing.

Tori came up behind me and held my arms.

“He can’t hear you,” she said, crying.

“Yes, he can,” I shouted. “He could be in the water. He could be out there.”

There was a rumbling, and then a sharp whoosh sound that came from our left. I barely had the will to look and see what it could be. I was aware of two eruptions coming from underwater, followed by a roar and the sight of two streaking cylinders. Missiles. They flashed into the sky toward the flying shadows that had targeted Quinn.

They found their mark. Two of the flying shadows exploded above us and crashed into the sea not fifty yards from where we were floating. The third escaped.