A hand tapped on my shoulder, and I raised one side of my headphones. The heavy noise of whirring machinery cutting into dense metal assaulted my ears with a grating nerve. “They need you up at Sector Five.” My colleague, who had been working with me and other teams to disassemble the mysterious ship that crash-landed hours ago, patted my shoulder. With a heavy sigh, I checked that I was still strapped in well before climbing down. Immediately, someone else took my place tampering with the sides of the ship I was already on. I dodged men hauling heavy parts of innovative machinery—both destroyed and salvageable—as I walked into the tilted ship carefully, the snow making the metal ground slightly slippery.

As I moved closer to the roaring machinery, I put back my headphones. With little direction, I found my way to the command control station (Sector 5).

“What can I do for you?” I mumbled rubbing my brows in exhaustion. Our supervisor acknowledged my presence before sending me to work at the control panels. I was working on the command controls, testing which wires to disconnect and mend back. What inventions we could learn from when the noises began.

“What is he doing?” a doubtful, hoarse voice asked.

“Relax, he can’t understand it.”

“Have you tried speaking to him again?”

“Yes!” another man bit back, frustrated.

“It’s obviously not working. A lot is at stake here. Try again!”

“Enough. Can I have a little room here?” I sighed raising the right ear, annoyed that their voices could still be heard over my headphones. It amazed me.

I turned back to find my commander with raised eyebrows, and a few of the several people around halted, staring at each other and then at me in turn.

Everyone seemed to be looking at me like I was the weird one. I furrowed my brows.

“Aha! Contact engaged—push forward!” Wait, what? The next thing I knew, a thundering sound and a heavy force pushed me back as the control panel exploded.

Darkness, muffled voices, and the vibration of footsteps rushing over to me. Light flickered behind my eyelids as my ears continued to ring.

“No. 18, are you okay!?” My body didn’t respond in time, but suddenly blinding pain made me wince.

Bright light from a torch filled my vision.

“He seems to have hit his head pretty hard,” I wanted to tell them to stop talking.

“Ha! Pathetic! That was enough to knock him out,” someone sneered in an eerie voice with delight.

“Silence. We seem to have just made contact with the only being who understands us.” My head pounded with force as I squinted up to see the supervisor and an emergency medic kneeling at my side. My eyes widened—not because of the beautiful female medic, but because right next to her was a gray-skinned, bony being with a large eye and a vertical mouth. Its white pupils, surrounded by eerie blackness, glowed.

Its vertical mouth opened to reveal rows of sharp, small teeth.

Its scratchy, gravelly voice reached my ears over my pounding heartbeat.

“Greetings, human. As the only existing contact with mankind, would you like to assist us in Mission CONVENANT?” Without waiting for me to reply or even process anything, its mouth widened, a labium sticking out, and a deep gooeyish green substance rushed into my mouth with great force.

What the actual—