Boseman High School Shenanigans: Episode 1

Just touching the strange thing that’s attached itself to Aaron flares the nerves in Zach’s hands, wracking him with pain.

On Lily comes, lifting that mallet high — but Belinda catches the descending weapon by the shaft with one hand, then tears it from the teen, flinging it across the room.

"I warned you!" the woman says, and then Myers is moving on Lily, trying to clobber her with a back-handed blow!

"This one never even made eyes at me! Not even once!" The man says as he attacks — and barely clips the girl with his fist.

It’s dark at the edges of the room, and Fred ends up stumbling over something as he goes after Unger. Tripping, the boy crashes headlong into the table with the strange implements on it, and they scatter and rattle onto the stained, wet concrete floor as the teenager falls as well, landing more or less in a heap at Kelly’s father’s feet.

Some distance away, Mrs. Carlisle rushes Emily, trying to prevent the girl from firing her pistol again. "No need for that now, dear!" she says as she comes forward, trying to grab the girl’s arm and disarm her.

As Emily and Mrs. Carlisle scramble for the gun near the entrance to the steam plant, Mr. Unger remains behind cover -- heavy iron pipes and ducting -- near the rear of the big, steamy, shadow-filled room. "I'm hurt!" he shouts. "I need a new body! They ruined this body!"

"Will you shut up and help us subdue them!" Belinda shouts as she lunges at Lily, trying to grab the girl around the neck with her abnormally strong hands. "You can have one of them! Take Fred. Then he and his mother can have what they've always wanted..."

Lily swats Belinda's grasping hand away, then darts back out of the frustrated woman's long-fingernailed reach. The student reporter is hearing something then, in her... in her head. Not through her ears. It's a voice, and it's hard to say if it's speaking English, but all four teens can sense and somehow comprehend it in their thoughts.

xvaht djkhay
resiSst tHemmm
musT yoU
fatE oF pLanet yOurs tHis oN dEpeNds

Zach hears this the least clearly, suffering as he is from touching the thing that has Aaron trapped. Nor does he sense that the disembodied voice is coming from above -- but Lily, Fred, and Emily do. The ceiling in the steam plant is high, and full of complex shapes and shadows. Pipes and catwalks tangle the space, but among them hangs a humanoid shape -- bound by ropes or chains. Emily and Lily have the best view, and they both see that this figure is not human!

The being has blue skin, no hair, and highly symmetrical, handsome features that transcend any human conception of gender or attractiveness. They wear the damaged remnants of a silver suit -- one might even say a space suit, and there is pain and exhaustion etched on those distinctive features, reflecting in those pupilless silver eyes. And as the girls look up, astonished, the being "speaks" to them again.

It is quickly mastering their language.

tiMe is shorT
Once theY have a foothold on yOUr world they will neVer leave
They are parasites. Leeches. Body thieves, murderers. You must help me stop them! I was their warden, their jailer, and I have failed in my duties! But my weapons are here, now scattered on the floor! They will be the undoing of these brain slugs!

And at that moment, without meaning to, each of the high school students finds images and thoughts pouring forth from their minds. They are all connected in some psionic soup, the four of them, and as the tension mounts in the room, as they start what might be this final showdown, Palmer and Richardsen are suddenly seeing and hearing everyone's thoughts!