“Will there be casualties?” Theodore asked, intimidated.

“We’ll gladly die for you, for liberty,” Heidi said.

Theodore wanted to argue but he figured, there would be no point, so he kept quiet.

“If we’re all ready I’d like to enact our raid so we can go home,” Dr Van Kraff said, as he stood.

“For freedom, for liberty,” he said, as he pumped his fist in the air. Everyone else did too.

He stood at the door, Heidi by his side, ready. He opened and they all ran in his formation. They encountered an alien on patrol, Heidi sprinted and kicked it – it fell unconscious.

“Go!” Dr Van Kraff shouted, and they continued their assault, each of them taking out an alien in their path. Heidi got the most, followed by Anna. Theodore did nothing but follow.

They made it to the central command unit and crouched at the door. An alien inside was managing a big screen by twisting and turning dials.

“We’re going to need protection, Theodore and I, as we make our way to the CPU. When we get there, you will all protect us with your lives. It’s going to be tough, we will need time to safely wake everyone in this ship and see if we can do so for others from here, then we have to open the door to get the hell out of here,” Dr Van Kraff said, looking at his wife. “Ready?”

She nodded then kissed him. They ran towards the alien. It turned and screeched at them. Anna tackled it and Heidi helped to pin it down. As they were struggling with the alien, and the others were pushing out aliens from outside, the Doctor and Theodore started hacking the programming internally.

“Theodore, try to remember the code to override the program’s command so we can shut it down,” Dr Van Kraff said, as he moved away from the keyboard, “I have reason to believe that your brain is so advanced that it was able to learn about the machine as much as it was learning about us.”

Theodore stared at the program’s coding, and the code he saw in the bathroom popped into his head. He started typing it in and then more units started showing up on the screen.

“By my beard, those are…”

“Other ships,” Theodore finished Dr Van Kraff’s sentence with a grin, but he frowned shortly after.

“What is it?” Dr Van Kraff said.

“I can read the language,” Theodore said.

“And what does it say?” Dr Van Kraff asked, almost bursting with curiosity.

“Commander, the assault on Earth went well. After an Earth year since we invaded it, we have acquired a huge amount of intel from Earth’s advanced individuals. I hope it will serve our plans well. Today we started our departure from the planet as their assaults were too much to bear. We’ve lost countless soldiers from the war they waged on us and we hope when you come to conquer the planet you will get vengeance for our fallen. It should be easy since we’ve reduced their species as well,” Theodore read aloud, a mortified expression on his face.

“How do we get back now?” Anna asked, exhausted. No one responded to her, they were all drained of enthusiasm.

“Escape pods!” Theodore said, with a jolt of energetic hope. “I can activate them but I need you, Doctor, to record a message that we’ll broadcast to the others we’ve just released.”

Theodore activated a mic and pointed at it. The professor was surprised; it looked like a horn. As Theodore was typing, the professor started broadcasting.

“Listen my fellow survivors, sadly we are aboard a ship headed to an alien planet. To save yourselves, you have to try to find the escape pods. Earth’s coordinates have already been inserted into them, just activate the pods and the rest is smooth sailing, for freedom. Good luck!”

They all ran to the ship’s rear and entered into the pods. On the way they found other survivors and took them with them. The ship had thousands of escape pods and fighter ships. A pod could hold two people, so Theodore and Anna got into theirs and they were the first to escape. They cuddled and sat by the window looking at the hundreds of ships sailing into the abyss of space.

“We’re the only ones that made it,” he said, and closed his eyes.

“Honey, look,” Anna shook him. He opened his eyes and saw thousands of pods popping out of the other ships and following their course.

“Yes!” he laughed in celebration.

“You did it, I’m proud of you,” Anna said, hugging him.

“No Ann, we did it,” he said, tightened his hug.

***

Theodore opened the latch and cold air swooped in. They had just landed on Earth and already his body felt heavy and the oxygen felt thick. He was nauseous so he went outside to breathe but vomited instead.

“Are you okay?” Anna asked, as she got out of the pod.

“I’m fine,” he said, trying to recover his stability.

“Oh, my!” Anna said, “It’s all ruined.”

Theodore raised his face and saw the whole city of Johannesburg in ruins. Buildings were demolished, roads were destroyed, cars were blown up and the streets were only filled with alien carcasses.

“What now?” Anna said.

“Now,” Dr Van Kraff said, showing up from a dark alley, “We rebuild: better and stronger and more prepared.”

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