The First Moment
Copyright© 2026 by TMax
Chapter 16: Magic
“What the hell?” Nate asked while Shivam, Sasha, and Lanka moved to the tunnel mouth to watch it disappear.
“That thing moves fast,” Sasha said with a touch of awe in his voice. Lanka stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders, and looked over his right shoulder. Her whole body trembled.
“I have so many questions,” Nate said as he stared down the tunnel. “Like, what are the chances that it could breathe the same atmosphere as us, and did those other things come from the same place, and if not, how can two alien species breathe the same atmosphere?”
Nate stood with his hands clenched in fists, while Shivam massaged Nate’s shoulders.
“What do you mean? How...” Lanka asked in a quiet voice.
Morgan interrupted Lanka before she could finish, “He means that even on Earth, different species need different conditions to survive. How is it possible that three different alien species could have the same survival conditions?”
A scream echoed out of the tunnel on the other side of the dome. Long, high-pitched, and definitely human. It sounded like a torture victim. The four in the center of the dome turned to that tunnel. The two people who examined the wall, five or so feet from the entrance, ran to the center. The person who dug in the sand stopped and stared, while the stargazer moved closer to him.
Our group half-turned, but we didn’t dare take our eyes off our tunnel and the monster who had disappeared.
Other screams joined the first, different pitches, different people. Visions of death from a thousand horror movies erupted in my mind. Dismemberment, blood, severed body parts. The screams echoed around the dome, amplified by the tunnel structure. Until, with a jarring suddenness, they stopped. No other noise. Silence.
The air in the dome felt colder, crisper. The stars appeared brighter, more random, too random, while two fast-moving lights caught my attention. They moved together, in a swirl pattern that started in the center and moved outward until they disappeared on the horizon.
“Only two, and they could be from the same place,” Sasha said, a little too loud, like he wanted to distract us from the scream, which, while it had stopped, still lingered in my ears.
Low, quiet, little sounds again emerged from the other tunnels, like how a forest grows silent and then slowly comes alive, and somehow all the scary sounds from before added a calmness.
Alice’s arms shook as she wrapped them around me.
“Three, we’re aliens also,” Morgan said and joined Sasha at the mouth of the tunnel. Even Nate and Shivam had moved closer to Sasha, while Alice pressed up against me. She trembled and held her breath before exhaling and inhaling in quick succession.
I could feel her heat, her short, fast breaths on my neck, but I couldn’t smell her.
“Magic,” I said as I moved closer to Sasha. Alice’s body never lost contact with mine. The scrapes and snorts had dulled to almost nothing. And I didn’t smell anything. Not the sweat from my body, nor the body odor from the others. No scent at all. I had an idea of how this worked.
“Dude, technology of sufficient advancement is magic,” Nate said, which made Lanka giggle. His surfer accent sounded completely out of place with the horror of this place.
Shivam mumbled an imitation of Nate, “Dude, like, radical waves, dude.” Nate glared at him until he smiled and kissed Shivam, hard on the lips, like he needed Shivam’s oxygen to survive. Alice laughed. Even Sasha smiled.
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