Chapter Four

"Eh. Unfair game," Phoenix complained as he watched the screen display the words: PLAYER 1 WINS! 

Alex copped a smile and sniggered. "Don't make excuses!" she said. "You just suck at dancing!"

"How come you got more points for doing the same thing but noticeably worse?"

She gave Phoenix a light punch on the shoulder. "Because I have talent – clearly. You gotta dance more instead of doing that hover-board thing, you know?" She beamed. 

"Ay," Phoenix began. "I did well, aight?" He stepped off the stage, the collar of his silver jacket turned upright, his eyes meeting with Alex's. "What trash we doin' now? Any other game, guarantee. Any other game."

Alex glanced around the arcade and saw the arcade machines on the opposite side of the gaming area: Pac-Man, Star Wars, and at the end, Space Invaders. "Oh, we finna be here all night. Space Invaders, woot-woot!"

Phoenix scoffed at the idea. "That game's so old. And boring. You on your own with that one."

"Yeah, yeah," Alex said. "I beat you, yeah yeah."

Phoenix rolled his eyes and stuffed his hands in his pockets. 

Meanwhile Alex made her way back through the groups of teenagers, which were beginning to thin out by the hour.

You have fun with that, Phoenix thought, zipped his silver jacket open, reached into his tracksuit bottoms and retrieved his phone. He checked the time nervously (8:31 P.M.), then glanced up at Andy, who had been resting comfortably on an armchair. His ginger hair had been plastered with a dimming, red light. "Aight, ADD Andy, what you tryna do?"

Andy recoiled at the sound of Phoenix's teenaged voice (you know, that not-too-deep but not-too-high tone that people sometimes confused for a thirteen-year-old, except he was fifteen). He squizzed up, barely acknowledging the words that came out of Phoenix's mouth. It was just far too loud. But he had been able to make out 'ADD Andy'. Even without being sure of it. 

Andy looked back down at his phone, and then up at Phoenix again, whose lips curved into the early signs of a wry smile. "Uh, follow me," Andy said, a little too quietly, and stood up. 

Phoenix leaned in closer, pulled down his scarf from the lower part of his face, and said: "What?" loudly. 

"Follow me!" Andy repeated, louder this time. He turned and began shoving his way towards the exit. 

"Okay!" Phoenix barked humorously. He brought a fist up to his mouth and coughed. Had he gotten the flu, too? He wasn't sure. Sure hoped not. He'd have to stay home for the majority of the week if that were the case, but at least he'd be missing school. That place made him intensely uncomfortable. 

Focusing over on the interior exit of the Retrove Centre, he saw Alex with her dark-blue lips stapled into a straight line, concentrating on Space Invaders. For a moment, he remembered the time he and Alex played chess for the first time, how she had the same face then, and how easily she crushed him. She had been a strategist, Phoenix knew so, and that was perhaps the reason she saw patterns where others could not. Maybe that's why she could beat him so easily at dancing. 

"Hey!" Andy's voice called twice over the litany of people. "Casanova! You can stare later all you want! Right now I need you to come with me!"

Andy resumed pushing through the crowd. Phoenix copied him. 

It took all of forty seconds for them to leave the Retrove Centre, and by that time the sign outside had changed from a blue and red to neon green. The lasers had also changed to the same colour. 

The sky had fully darkened now, accompanied by a clear and open sprawl of stars. Saggitarius, Phoenix learned, was supposed to come out around this time. But his eyes weren't so sharp that they could draw lines between the celestial bodies of the infinite cosmos. Not without a telescope, anyway. 

It was almost quiet outside, Phoenix thought, if it weren't for the retro music booming into the night. 

"What is it?" Phoenix sighed and looked away from the sky. "And just to be clear: I wasn't staring."

"Don't mind that!" Andy told Phoenix. He snatched his phone from his pocket. "God, it's cold!" he muttered to himself. He shoved his phone-screen up near Phoenix's face. "Look at this!"

Phoenix squinted at the low-contrast image. They widened. The ginger boy held in his hand a screen-shot of the UFO, this time orbiting planet Earth. The triangular prism, the jagged-pancake body, and the brown base at the bottom; it was all the same. It looked as though the image had been taken – not by a telescope-camera – but by something significantly cheaper. A bit blurry, a bit hazy, for sure. But that didn't matter. 

"Oh," Phoenix said. "Wait! WHAT!"

"It's real! It's fucking real!" Andy yelled. 

A streak of cold shot through Phoenix's body. 

He grimaced.

"Ah, nah-nah-nah." He crouched down and put his hands on his knees, then stood up again. "WHAT?! Nah, that can't be real. When was this posted?"

"Posted?" Andy said. "Ugh, I think it was posted earlier today. Let me check."

"Bruh." Phoenix recoiled. "That shit's literally like thirty minutes ago. Look at the sky. Dark blue and spotless. What does it say on the post?"

"Gecko sent it to me, and I'll check now."

Andy retraced his steps on SUP-X, went to the PM, and swiped up to the post. 

He tapped the link with his shaky forefinger. 

Phoenix noticed the profile picture of Maui. "Gecko's got to be fuckin with us. He sent me the same shit, but said the post was real. The one before this one."

The social media post was taking a while to load. "C'mon, you sack of balls!" Andy said.

A message popped up on his phone in big, grey writing – POST UNAVAILABLE.

"What?" Andy slapped his palm against his forehead. "It was just here!"

"What in the fuck is going on?!" Phoenix pulled out his phone, tapped on the app and looked up N-A-S-A in the search-bar. Nothing. Nada. No new post. And then he realised that the first upload of the UFO had been removed, too. "They removed the old one, as well!"

"Man, this is fucking sketchy. Kinda scary, not gonna lie," Andy admitted. 

"At least you screen-shotted it," Phoenix assured. "And it's probably gonna be all over the news. If this is a joke it ain't funny. How NASA gonna do us like—"

He was interrupted by a bellowing sound passing through the sky. Both he and Andy looked up and saw three red dots flashing amongst the sky. 

A continuous chuh-chuh-chuh in the air. Echoing . . . off-putting . . .

The dots furthered their journey over towards the Blue Sun in a triangular formation. These weren't aliens, but they sure meant business. 

"What is happening?!" Phoenix's voice flew through the air.

The choppers approached the blue glow, and the upper level of The Spire separated, leaving room for them to enter, and questions for the community to ask.