The Riftguard Saga, Chapter 1: A Visitor Drops In

Jeffrey Davidson parked his car. He stepped out of it, and had every intention of walking into his apartment building. He was stopped, however, by the growing sound of a low vibration and the distinct sensation of a large object's approach.

The object swung into view and slowed to a stop, hovering a few dozen feet above a patch of grass and the walkway that ran through it. In the evening light, its shape was formless and void; smooth yet jagged, rounded here and angled there, slipshod yet uniform all at once.

Davidson stood at the edge of the parking lot. Ahead of him, he could see the entrance to his  building. He craned his neck and peered at the ship above. A hatch opened, at its rear.

A figure fell from the opening and crashed to the ground below.

Jeff winced at the clatter. He reached out with a hand and opened his mouth. Then he closed his mouth, and withdrew the hand.

The figure was clad in dark clothing, rather loose and excessive, like he was wearing an oversized garbage bag bodysuit-and-cape combo. Then he began to stand to his feet.

Jeffrey felt his heart begin to race and pound, but could not compel his feet to move. He just kept staring. He could see a face, or at least something like it, as though this stranger wore a pale-green mask with blank spaces where the eyes should be.

The stranger bent over, and picked up a sort of staff with objects tied to the end of it. He tapped on one of them a few times. It began to blink with a dim red light.

Jeff slid his foot forward. He tried to start walking in a wide berth around this visitor from the sky, only to freeze when the visitor turned his head from the staff and the two made eye contact. That's when he spoke.

"Wait!"

His voice was hollow, reedy, like an old man speaking while inhaling. It was almost grating to the ears in its oddity. Davidson had little clue how to react, but kept his attention locked on the visitor as his vehicle hovered over their heads.

The traveler flicked a too-many-fingered hand across a few items hanging from the top of the staff, moving them aside, revealing a metallic box with a number of dials set into its face. He began strumming his fingers across the dials, spinning them, making a sound like someone using a few rotary telephones at once. Next, he pulled a small lever on the box. The box began to buzz. After some buzzing, it began to speak. The tone was smoother than the earlier 'wait!' had been, and easier to listen to. The monologue crackled and popped like an old tape recording.

"Hello. I am give you thing. Do not lose! They will come soon. Do not fight! They are good. They will take you. They will take thing. You must earn a badge from them. This is most important."

The words, the buzzing, all stopped. Jeff stood, as he just tried to process, and hardly noticed the alien approaching closer. The alien was quiet. He extended an arm, with its many fingers; dozens of them, knobby and gnarled and blackened. They held a small artifact that glinted in the parking-lot light.

As the extraterrestrial tucked his staff under his other arm, he used his hand to spin the dials on the odd box again, and pulled its lever a second time. The voice was more feminine now, with the measured cadence of a GPS navigator.

"Take this. I cannot stay. But you must give this to them. You must earn a badge from them. And you must not tell them I told you this. If they ask what I said to you. Say nothing. Tell them I said nothing. The survival of the universe depends on this."

Jeff inhaled, then exhaled. He managed to hold a hand up, but hesitated to actually touch the item in question. That's when the alien shoved it into his grip. Jeff gasped, but clutched it nonetheless. The thing was warm as he held it, small and smooth except for some features along one side.

"I—"

He just wanted to be at home, in his apartment. This was surreal, and he had no idea where to begin. Even as he tried to ask something, the alien figure stepped back, then abruptly leaped straight up into the air. He flipped deftly back into the hovering ship, through its opening, which immediately slid shut.

And then the ship was off, accelerating away toward the horizon.

Jeff watched its silhouette until it disappeared altogether. He looked down at the object in his hands. He kept a gentle grip, and turned it over, squinting at its details.

"Bro!"

Jeff whipped his head around to the source of the voice. Namely, Scott. Scott wore an orange beanie. Scott stood at the apartment-building entrance. Scott ate a lot of Doritos and played his music a little too loud and always had thoughts about what the government is really up to.

"Were you just abducted by aliens?!"

Jeff blinked. He looked at Scott. He looked down at the object in his hands. He looked back up to Scott.

"No?"

Scott scoffed. "I saw that UFO! Tell me you got that on video!"

Jeff shook his head. Scott sighed.

"I gotta go but that was sick, man. Look out for the M.I.B.!"

Scott laughed, and returned inside the building. Jeff only stood there. Then he heard a noise like something out of science fiction, a weird distortion of explosive warbling right behind him.

He turned to it. His eyes widened and his body went stiff at the scene: A group of people (shapes, more like—vague and indistinct) emerging from a shrinking portal of swirling blue-violet. They were fanning off in all directions, two flinging themselves into the sky while the rest sprinted or rolled or scuttled across the ground.

One of them was clad in full body armor, glossy and high-tech lookin', mostly black with neon-green accents, like he was a space marine from Tron. He raised a hefty rifle and pointed it in Jeffrey's direction. Jeff held his hands skyward, clutching the foreign artifact in one of them.

"Pum! Bomi hom?"

Jeff... squinted.

"What?"

The soldier thrusted his weapon forward a couple times as he barked.

"Bab pu i hu im ba!"

Jeff felt his breath quickening as his chest tightened. He noticed a second person facing him ahead. He looked like a tall, bald man in white robes that glowed with a dim white light. His eyes themselves emitted this gentle light, too. He looked somewhat like a monk, or an angel.

The glowing man placed a hand on the soldier's shoulder and spoke. "Pum, ub. Po bo hom Bomi, o English."

After a moment's hesitation, the soldier lowered the barrel of his rifle. The glowing man removed his hand from his partner's shoulder, and turned toward Jeff. He held both his hands out, palms-up and empty.

"We mean you no harm," he addressed Jeffrey. "But the item you have is important to us."

"Wu ap op im po, ma bab," the soldier muttered.

The glowing one turned his head just a bit toward the soldier, and spoke to him in a quieter voice.

"Bab-ma' mam i bom, po." At 'po' he pointed a finger at Jeff before continuing. "Wu mam ip-wob. Wu bap po, u om ip-wob." The soldier shook his head and mumbled under his breath.

Jeff shifted his body weight from one foot to the other. "Uh, look guys, I don't know wha--"

The soldier snapped the rifle back up to bore toward Jeff, who stilled. The angelic one kept a stoic expression as he reached over and pushed the barrel back down gently.

"I don't want to scare you," the 'monk' said. "But we need to leave soon. And we need you to come with us."

Jeff raised an eyebrow. "And if I don't want to go?"

The glowing one drew his hand back. The barrel of the gun rose to its prior aim.

"Right," Jeff said, pursing his lips as he nodded and began lowering his hands. "Guess I'm comin' with you guys! Awesome."

The pair seemed to calm at this. "Wu bap mo hab, bopim," the glowing monk-angel said to the one at his side.

Jeff held the prize in his arms. The other two advanced. Once all three were in close proximity, the space-marine wannabe reached up and began fiddling with something on his body armor, just below his left shoulder.

Then the trio were sucked into a wormhole.

Jeff fell to his knees and vomited. He was able to steady himself on one hand, while the other kept the important artifact held against his body. The mostly liquid mess he puked managed to only splash a few droplets onto his light-blue dress shirt and khakis.

He heard the soldier laugh as he and the angel-monk walked away. He heard the glowing one say, "He's all yours."

Jeffrey was hunched over, focused on trying to breathe and not panic. His head was swimming and spinning. He felt like his guts and his brains had switched places for a split-second.

As he tried to calm himself, he only noticed that he was in a bright white room, sterile and plain. The entire floor seemed to be one smooth surface, and every square inch seemed to emit its own glow, similar to his robed captor. He looked about, his chest heaving and his mouth thick with spittle as he looked upward. The whole space was set like the inside of an enormous cube of soft light.

There were other mini-explosions, quick openings and closings of portals, all with that distinctive distorted warbling sound. Jeff looked back downward, and even closed his eyes, as he heard others around him move to the same exit that the first two had taken.

In the commotion, he felt a grazing touch at his backside. He looked back, and was startled to spot a girl, brown-haired in a red sweater and blue jeans, sitting cross-legged behind him.

He turned his body enough to awkwardly one-handed crab-walk away from his puddle of smelly barf and keep his eyes on the girl, the girl whom he now noticed was holding his wallet.

"Hey!" he cried out, pointing at her. "That's my wallet!"

The child rolled her eyes. "I know," she said, and continued searching its contents. "Getting information this way is easier and faster than having to ask you for it."

She rifled through his driver's license, his credit card. She counted his cash. She looked over the order on his Burger King receipt. She ran a set of fingertips over the black leather.

Then she looked right at him. They stared each other down; the girl, leaning forward slightly, while Jeffrey leaned back on one planted hand, his legs bent in front of him. The air around them held a sudden quiet.

"What did he say to you?" she asked.

Jeff shifted to lean on his elbow on the floor, running his bottom teeth against his top lip as he looked away for the moment. He looked back to the girl.

"Nothing. He didn't say anything," he said.

"You're lying," she replied.

Jeff looked down. He tried to run through all the recent events and words in his mind, but he still felt nauseous and generally out-of-place. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

"Yeah, uh. Okay. He did say one thing."

He looked back up to the girl before he continued.

"He showed up, right in front of me. Fell out of a spaceship that hung in the air. I tried to walk around him, but he yelled at me. Just one word: 'Wait!' That was it," Jeff nodded. "Then he gave me this."

He held up the artifact. It looked even stranger in the light. It had a sandy sort of color to it, with tiny ridges running along its length. It was concave, with one side bulging out, but another lobe extending on its own. The lobe had a hole in its center. Around the middle of the whole thing was a thin silvery band.

The girl cocked her head to one side, and held up Jeff's wallet. "I'll trade you?" She smiled.

Jeffrey narrowed his gaze. "This is crazy. You know that, right? Like, am I dreaming? I don't understand what's going on."

She nodded. "You want answers. If you're up for it, I'll explain everything. Right now. But first, you need to give me that," she said, and held out an open hand.

Jeff sat there. He tried to think about this. Thinking was very hard right now. He grumbled and leaned forward, depositing the artifact into the girl's hand.

"Great!" she said, and stood up. She dropped his wallet to the floor beside him. "Thank you, Jeffrey. My name is Jo. You'll get used to the motion sickness from the jumps. In the meantime, follow me."

With that, she walked past him, until she was standing in the doorway that the others had exited through.

"Welcome to Haven," she said. "We have a lot to talk about."

> Read Chapter 2