Benji picked up on it, and his smile disappeared. “Everything okay in here?” The cat wriggled out of Benji’s grip and ran into the back of the building.
“Everything is great,” I said, leaving them both for the front area of the radio station.
“What did you say to her?” Benji growled. When Cy didn’t answer, Benji caught up to me. “Rory…Rory!” he said, grabbing my arm gently.
“I’m trusting you, Benji. If you make me look like an ass for it, I’ll never forgive you.”
“I’ll do everything I can to get them home,” he said, nodding in Apolonia and Tsavi’s direction, “and keep you safe. I swear on my life.”
“What about your dad?”
“I respect him. Doesn’t mean I believe in everything he does.”
“And what is that exactly?”
“That Cy and his people pose a threat. That they want the rock Dr. Zorba found because it could protect our planet…from them.”
“Why would they think that? If that were true, Cy would have just taken the damn thing and gone home.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“Yes. Because it’s the truth, not to mention common sense.”
“What else did he tell you about it?”
Having eased into the back and forth rhythm of our conversation, I almost answered. But something stopped me. “You’re asking a lot of questions about the rock for someone who doesn’t care about it.”
“Sorry,” Benji said and then let go of my arm.
Apolonia and Tsavi took turns keeping watch while Dr. Z, Benji, Cy, and I tended to the wiring inside and outside the radio station. I was stripping copper wire with a box knife and needle-nose pliers, and the boys were wrapping the copper around the antennae and linking it to the various wires of the station. Every once in a while, Benji would take a break and try to coax the cat over to him. It looked as if it had already been electrocuted once, so I wasn’t surprised that it wanted nothing to do with Benji while he was wrapping copper wire.
“Your father would have to pass into the atmosphere within fifty miles vertically in order for this frequency to reach him. You could record a message on a loop,” Dr. Z said to Apolonia.
Benji clipped his wire. “There are several radio antennae on the north hills. This radio station must redirect to them. It’s possible we could divert the beam, redirect by linking the ground signal to the antennae. Hamech’s ship could intercept the signal. If we knew the ship’s trajectory, we could even point one of the dishes here in that direction and bypass the antennae all together.”
“I do not know,” Apolonia said.
Dr. Z shook his head. “He would have to be monitoring those antennae in order for him to pick up the signal. If we only had a way to know for sure that they were receiving the signal…”
“Is it possible, Apolonia? That his ship could be monitoring those antennae?” Benji asked.
“It is possible,” Apolonia said, her voice monotone. She was emotional all right with the one emotion she had—anger.
Benji shrugged. “It’s better than nothing.”
The more time that passed, the more nervous Cy seemed. Even Apolonia’s stoicism began to weaken. None of us were sure how much time we had before Hamech found his daughter’s busted ship, and that made every passing moment even more frightening.
My throat felt dry and scratchy, and from the way Dr. Z was clearing his throat, I knew he felt the same way. We hadn’t eaten or drunk anything since the night before. No one had taken a bathroom break since early afternoon. When the boys started working with the wires, we had to turn off the power. We were all dehydrated, cold, and hungry, and that made it hard to focus.
“Rory, you’re looking pale. You should rest,” Dr. Z said.
“I’ll rest when this is over,” I said.
Apolonia spoke in their language to Tsavi. Tsavi nodded and then looked to Cyrus.
He nodded. “They’re right. You should rest. Your wounds are still healing at a cellular level. Humans require REM sleep. Your body likely needs to return to that sleep cycle to complete the restorative process.”
“Don’t you need to rest, too, then?” I asked.
Cy glanced at Apolonia and Tsavi and then offered a half smile. “We’re not human.”
I twisted the last copper wire and tossed the pliers to the ground. “Okay, I’ll rest.” In truth, I was fighting exhaustion but gauging the rest of the tired eyes in the room, not more than anyone else.
The temperature outside had fallen dramatically in the last hour, and the old building was turning into a meat locker. I chose the space under the desk. It was surrounded by other taller equipment, and I hoped the parts of me not covered by the alien jacket wouldn’t feel the draft.
I curled up on my side, bending my arm and using it as a pillow. The cement floor was ice cold. I looked around, seeing a tarp draped over a speaker.
“I’ll get it,” Benji said, grabbing it as he walked toward me.
I moved, waiting, as he folded the tarp and then placed it where I was lying.
“Thank you,” I said, moving into the same position I was in before.
Benji stood up without a word, but within a minute, he was back, draping a woven blanket over me. “My dad insisted I keep a blanket in the car during the winter just in case. Turns out he was right about that, too.”
“But not everything,” I said, shivering under the blanket.
Benji rubbed his hand up and down my arm, trying to help me ward off the cold. “True.”
“You’re not on the same side anymore.”
“Nope.”
“How does that make you feel?”
Benji thought for a minute and then grinned. “Pretty good. He also taught me to think for myself.”
“Do you think he’ll forgive you?”
“I don’t know. Guess we’ll find out when I end up in a federal prison…or not.”
I returned his smile and felt my stomach flutter when I realized he was shifting to lie down behind me. The radio station was f**king freezing, but that wasn’t the only reason I wanted him next to me. Benji had been pursuing me a long time. It wasn’t until Cy came into the picture that I was able to feel anything. Ironically enough, it was for Benji. Now that that door had been opened, I couldn’t seem to get enough of him.
The second Benji’s body was next to mine, the shivering slowed, and I sank back to get even closer.