Ulysses down on the ground anyway. O'Flannery sat down next to him to watch the game play
out. If he had to guess, the agent figured the craft was about a mile off the ground. It kept a fairly
constant altitude, firing bursts of plasma at Nera.
Then the saucer seemed to blink out of existence.
Nera rapidly turned in a circle for about a dozen seconds. O'Flannery figured she was
checking every direction she could. Then she started running south in a zigzag pattern. It
reminded O'Flannery of some of the training he'd received years earlier for advancing on and
retreating from someone with a firearm.
The saucer popped back into existence as quickly as it had vanished. It maneuvered a bit,
then resumed blasting lightning at its target below. The uneven game was back on. O'Flannery's
viewing of the supernatural spectacle was interrupted by Ulysses's groans. He looked over at the
young man, and helped him sit up.
"She's doing her best," he said. "But I don't think she can get close enough to finish this
fight. When she gets tired enough, that's going to be it, I think."
"I've got to do something to help her," Ulysses said, trying to get to his feet. He was still
too discombobulated from the blast in the hallway earlier, and inadvertently flopped over on the
ground.
"I don't think there's much either of us can do to help."
"Does she have her containers with her?" Ulysses asked.
"What? Those plastic containers full of sand or dust or whatever? I didn't see her with
them earlier."
"Did she have them with her when you brought her in?"
"Yes," said O'Flannery. "I didn't see them in the room with the lieutenant earlier, which
means they're either in her cell or thrown away. Why?"
"She said the dust interferes with the parasite's ability to sense her. I think that was how
we were able to move around in her ship without them showing up."
"How did they find her here then? This is a top secret facility." Said the Agent.
"The grunts," said Ulysses. "I'm guessing those things used the military's resources to
monitor whether or not she was brought in. When she was, it didn't matter that they couldn't
detect her on their own anymore because they had military intelligence to do it for them."
O'Flannery swore. Then said, "Looks like the plan worked as intended. Let's hope we can
get those boxes and get back out here."
*
*
*
The roughly ten minutes it took them to retrieve the boxes felt like an eternity. Every
vibration, tremor, and rumble made Ulysses's stomach drop. Running back through the maze of
rooms and hallways was no less fraught than getting out had been. O'Flannery cycled through a
few different people that all sounded roughly the same to Ulysses as they made their way
through to Nera's cell. Ulysses immediately spotted the containers from the doorway. He