Snake Keeper by Alexandra Norton

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN THE SKYglowed golden, we thought the world was ending. For some of us, it was. It ended for me. I am in another world now.

Every person on Earth remembers where they were the moment the Federation ships broke through the clouds like chrome goliaths descending upon us.

I was in class. A shuffle and murmur spread through the otherwise quiet lecture hall. We moved to the large double-paned windows, phones leaving pockets as we captured footage of the event.

“I think you need to call your father.” Professor Henriksson put a hand on my shoulder as the others bustled for a spot at the sills.

I nodded and adjusted the surgical mask on my face. The professor knew who my father was.

I grabbed my bag and went home, dialing on the way.

What had appeared in our skies hadn’t just been one alien species making contact, stumbling into our little blue dot as we had all been half-expecting would happen one day. No; this was an intergalactic Federation: several alien races joined in a cooperative alliance. Their arrival was by no means accidental.

They quickly established communications with world leaders, assuring everyone that they come in peace and dissuading us from rousing our military. With our Earthly skies being blanketed by their mammoth ships, we knew better than to attack.

The Federation said that they came to welcome us into their pack; to present us with keys to the galaxies.

I stayed home from that first day. As the aliens took over the news, so did the pandemic. The pandemic was there first. News had already been spreading of a strange virus to have ripped through Eastern Europe like wildfire for several months. Nobody knew its origin, exactly. Most said bats; some said a secret Russian laboratory experiment.

The US had only just begun seeing an influx of cases, mere days before the aliens’ arrival. Attending class was deemed unsafe due to both the pandemic and our mysterious visitors: a double whammy of things that could kill us. My father, one of the top generals in the US Army at the time and a trusted advisor to the President himself, had me move back home from campus.

“It’ll be safer this way, Emily. We’ve got to stick together for now,” he said.

I knew he was right. Plus, he needed me. He went into work mode, spending days locked away in his office, patched into the Pentagon or the White House. When he got like this, he forgot everything else: I needed to help feed him and take care of the house until the crisis was over.

I looked out of our kitchen window at one of the reflective monsters overhead. Would the world ever go back to normal?

***

THINGS GOT LESStense with the newcomers over time. Their constant presence overhead became almost routine when I looked at the sky or at the news. I would sometimes see shuttles, oddly shapeless black specks, leaving the large ships to come down to Earth. My father would be present in many of those meetings.

“I’m skeptical, Ems, but they seem to not be hostile.” He rubbed his temples one evening as I put a plate of hash browns and fried eggs on the dining room table in front of him.

“Maybe we’ll get to see the galaxy in our lifetime,” I mused. “Or survive a global pandemic.”

“They do claim to have access to advanced medical research, so you’re on the right track. It is one of the driving forces for the urgency of this collaboration on our end. All confidential, of course,” Dad gave me a pointed look.

“Of course, Dad.”

But as the days and weeks passed, my father grew more and more agitated and restless. He wouldn’t tell me what was going on. Aside from the usual baseless speculation in the media, I heard not a peep about what was really happening.

I had asked Dad what the aliens looked like, since there was nothing except for speculative sketches on the news. We heard their voices, always speaking in the language of the region they were establishing contact with, but they never transmitted video footage. I’d never seen world leaders keep a secret so well: no leaks, no credible speculations, no vetted witness sketches, no nothing. Luckily, living with a man in the thick of it had its advantages.

“They look mostly like us, Ems. Like us, but different.” He wouldn’t elaborate.

I had been counting the shuttles coming down from my bedroom window each night: bright streaks falling from the blackness and rising back up. There used to be just one every few days; now lights streaked the Washington sky on a nightly basis. I counted five just the other night.

The next morning, I heard Dad on his phone through the slightly open office door he had forgotten to shut all the way.

“This is unthinkable…”; “all out war…”; “prepare…” were the snippets I made out before Dad spotted me lurking in the hallway and slammed the door shut.

He would not be thwart me that easily. If we were now preparing for a full-blown attack, I needed to know. I had to get ready, somehow. I knew how to shoot (Dad taught me as a kid), and I knew where he kept his guns (locked away in a safe at the bottom of his bedroom closet).

That night, they called my father on-site at the last minute. I dug up my dusty lock-picking kit (an old teenage hobby) and picked my way into his office. Once there, in the quiet darkness permeated only by the faint orange desk lamp I had switched on, I sank into his worn leather chair and rifled through documents strewn about his desk.

There, I learned what exactly the aliens had requested as their price for cooperation: human sacrifice.

They wanted all corners of Earth to send men and women as delegates to alien “Keepers”. A contact specialist, in a printed out email, likened the concept to arranged cohabitation in her frank evaluation of the proposed scenario.

I could hardly believe what I was reading as I continued to scan the printed communications. The “delegates” would live with their “Keepers”, each of a different species, at their home stations or planets. They would act as representatives of the human species. After five years of cohabitation and observation (during which the humans were not to be harmed, of course), the Federation would decide whether humanity was ready for the next step in joining the alliance.

“Allegedly platonic,” read one of the contact specialist’s notes. Allegedly?

I had my doubts. If it was so platonic, why did the aliens insist on having delegates be of the opposite sex to the Keepers?

“Greater cohabitation compatibility potential,” the notes claimed. Sure.

Even more ludicrous than the aliens’ proposal was the fact that American leadership seemed to actually be considering it. No wonder my father was furious. The alternative, the documents claimed, was for the Federation to leave Earth forever. But, they warned, now that they have discovered humanity and paved the road to the planet, other conglomerates not associated with the Federation would surely soon follow. And they may not all be so friendly…