LITMIR.BIZ

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come between that, right? And as for anything else… well, that would imply that Luna was interested in being more than just his friend, and Kevin couldn’t really believe that would ever happen.

      “She didn’t really say much,” Kevin said. “Just that she ran away.”

      “Looks like she’s good at that,” Luna said, with another pointed look toward the door.

      “Luna,” Kevin said. “Can you at least try to be nice to her? I mean, I don’t know why you’re even mad at her. I’d have thought you’d get along.”

      “Because we’re both girls?” Luna said.

      “No!” Kevin said hurriedly. “I mean, because you’re both…” He tried to think of the right words. Would tough be right? Chloe certainly looked it, while Luna didn’t, but Kevin knew from experience that she was.

      “We’re nothing alike,” Luna said. “She called me a cheerleader.”

      She made it sound like an insult.

      “Well, you were on the—”

      “That’s not the point,” Luna said, but then stopped. “Okay, though. I’ll be nice. I guess if we’re all stuck in a bunker together, we’ll have to get along. But I’m doing this for you, not for her.”

      “Thanks,” Kevin said.

      “Of course, if there’s some new signal, then we’re not going to be able to stay in the bunker, are we?” Luna said, sounding as though it was all pretty obvious. Maybe it was to her. Luna had always been good at coming up with plans for things. Quite often, they’d been plans for getting into more trouble.

      Kevin hadn’t thought it through yet, but Luna was probably right. If there was a new signal, then they had to find out what it meant, and there was only one place they could do that.

      “I think we have to go back to the research institute,” Kevin said.

      “Even though we barely got out of there the first time?” Luna said. “And we don’t know what’s on the message, and we don’t know if it will do any good when the aliens have already taken our world. It could just be ‘sorry, we tried to warn you.’”

      “What if it’s not, though?” Kevin countered. “I mean, do you really believe they’d send a message all the way across space for that?”

      “No, I guess not,” Luna said, looking more serious now.

      “What if they found a way to beat the aliens, or force them out of controlling people’s bodies?” Kevin said. “What if they give us some way to make this better? We have to go back. Well… I do. I mean, you might be safer if—”

      “Finish that thought and I’ll punch you,” Luna said. “Of course I’m going to come.”

      “But I thought that—”

      “You thought you’d leave me behind while you had an adventure by yourself?” Luna demanded.

      Kevin shook his head. “I thought that we’d finally gotten somewhere safe. I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to give that up. I have to be there to translate the message, but no one else—ow!”

      He rubbed his arm where Luna’s fist had connected with it.

      “I told you I would,” she said with a broad smile that suggested she wasn’t remotely sorry. “I’m coming with you, because someone has to keep you from getting grabbed by controlled people. Besides, if there’s anything there that will let us turn around and kick their asses for what they did, I want to know about it.”

      That was part of what was so incredible about Luna. She didn’t give up, even when everything said that it was the sensible thing to do. She’d fight anything, up to and including an alien invasion.

      “Did I ever tell you how amazing you are?” Kevin asked.

      “You don’t need to tell me,” Luna said with another grin. “I just know. Frankly, you’re lucky you get to be my friend.”

      “True,” Kevin said. He turned serious for a moment. “We need a plan if we’re going to go back.”

      “We’ll need supplies,” Luna said, starting to check items off on her fingers. “We’ll need food, maybe tools to get inside, masks…”

      “Chloe said that the vapor was gone,” Kevin pointed out.

      “And how does she know?” Luna countered. “Okay, maybe, but I’d rather have one with me just in case. You can have the job of telling her that we’re going.”

      “Maybe she’ll want to come with us,” Kevin said.

      Luna made a face. “I guess it’s better than leaving her here and wondering if she’ll let us back in again. I’ll get started getting supplies together. You go and talk to her.”

***

      Kevin made his way through the underground complex, looking for Chloe. It took a while to find her in the tangled corridors and storerooms, but eventually he heard her ahead. She seemed to be talking to herself.

      “I can’t do it… I can’t do it…”

      Kevin cautiously looked through a doorway to find Chloe sitting on the floor of a storeroom. There were things scattered around in a spread that didn’t look accidental. It looked as though she’d swept her arm along one of the shelves, knocking everything to the floor. She had her head in her hands and seemed to be crying.

      “Chloe?”

      She looked up as Kevin approached, wiping away her tears as if afraid they might be used against her.

      “I’m fine,” she said, before Kevin could even ask if she was okay. “I’m fine.”

      “I used to say I was fine when people asked me about my illness,” Kevin said, moving to sit down beside her. “It mostly meant I wasn’t.”

      “I just get… upset… sometimes,” Chloe said, and Kevin guessed she’d picked that word carefully out of all the ones that had come to her. “I do stuff without really thinking. It’s part of why people said I was crazy.”

      “I don’t think you’re crazy,” Kevin said.

      Chloe sighed. “You don’t know me yet. Did you just come here to see how badly I was messing up?”

      “No, of course not,” Kevin said. “We… I… think that we need to go back to the NASA research institute. With what I saw, there might be a message, and it might be important.”

      “You want to go into the middle of the city, to a place that might be full of them?” Chloe replied. “That’s…that doesn’t make any sense. We could go anywhere. There are the Survivors in LA, or my cousin up north…”

      “We need to do this,” Kevin said. “Luna’s collecting supplies, and we’ll work out a plan for getting there safely. You could stay here if you want, though. You don’t have to come with us if you don’t think it would be safe enough.”

      “You don’t want me to come with you?” Chloe said, and now she sounded as upset as she’d looked before.

      “That’s not what I said,” Kevin said.

      “It’s what you meant, though, isn’t it?” Chloe shot back.

      “No,” Kevin replied. “I just thought you might not want to come. You said yourself it might be dangerous.”

      Chloe shrugged. “Whatever.”

      “Chloe,” Kevin said. “I don’t want to—”

      “Whatever,” Chloe repeated, in a dull tone. “Do what you want. I don’t care. Go off and make your stupid preparations.”

      “Chloe—”

      “Go!” she snapped.

      Kevin went, hoping that if he left Chloe alone for a while, they might be able to talk about it again later or something.

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