Page 10 of Rogue Starfighter

ALISHA: Your screen went black. Did the game crash?

GINA: DID THE ALIENS TAKE YOU?

I replied as fast as my fingers could fly over the screen.

ME: I wish. Still here. Rig is dead. I won.

GINA: You accepted the crest.

ME: It was part of the game.

ALISHA: Sure it was.

I sent them both an obscene emoji and promised to call in the morning.

Then I sat in my very expensive dead cockpit and stared at the black center monitor.

Vesh was gone.

I had known that would happen when I finished. I had spent weeks avoiding it. Now that it was done, I felt… lonely. Also annoyed. Mostly annoyed. A replacement gaming system was going to cost a fortune.

I made tea, checked every cable and power cord twice, tried to reboot, and finally gave up. Tomorrow, I would call the manufacturer and explain that the world’s most popular video game had murdered my computer. Hopefully, some of my stuff was still under warranty. Tonight, I went to bed hoping I would dream about a certain sexy alien.

2

Priya, Phoenix Tower, Three Days Later

The security channel lit up at 2:14 PM.

"Somethings wrong." Alvarez tapped me on the shoulder and crossed to the security screens.

"Maybe it's a drill." I talked the next plane in line to their runway and muted my mic. "They're always running drills these days." It was true. Anti-terrorist drills. Emergency drills. Crash landing drills. Fire drills. Biohazard. Toxic spills. Fuel leaks. So many.

“Tower, lock the cab. Lock it now. Male intruder in the lobby." Hollis' voice was full of panic. "Stop! He’s…sir! Sir, you can't…” Our normal security supervisor's voice faded and a sharp, electrical snap came through the channel. Then silence. Every head in the cab turned.

"What the hell was that?" Alvarez was leaning close enough to the security screen he could have licked it.

"I don't know." Ignoring the chaos going on elsewhere, I answered another pilot and kept calm. We did not get real security calls in the tower cab. We got drills. Or malfunctioning badge readers. One memorable coyote that tripped half the perimeter alarms before leading airport security on a twenty-minute chase across the north lot.

What we did not get was Hollis, from the ground-floor desk, shouting over the radio.

“Hollis?” Alvarez grabbed the security handset. “Ground desk, respond.”

Nothing. The radio traffic from the airport continued around us. An Embraer was on final approach. Two private jets waited for clearance. Somewhere above Phoenix, a pilot asked for a new heading as if an armed intruder had not just attacked our security desk. The rest of the world had no idea anything was wrong.

“Alvarez, pull up all the cameras,” my supervisor ordered. “Priya, keep working the Embraer. Weather, call airport police.”

We moved. Alvarez split the secondary screens and brought up the lobby feed. I kept my headset on and cleared the Embraer to land while watching a large man in matte-black armor step over Hollis’s unconscious body. I nearly sent the Embraer around.

“Holy shit,” Alvarez whispered.

I turned. Looked at the man on the screen. Froze in place like a damn deer in headlights.

There he was. Vesh. My Vesh.

Not a computer-generated simulation. Not pixels. Not a voice actor wearing motion-capture dots in a recording studio. Vesh, the alien warrior, in alien armor that looked exactly like the armor he wore in the game, was in my building. My fake alien boyfriend had broken into the tower.

The two guards in the lobby drew their weapons and shouted at him. The camera had no audio, but I could read Vesh’s lips when he answered. Take me to Priya Anand.