“When can we go home?”

Mitchel stood firmly in front of the guard. He was sure he had said the sentence right. It had been months since they had been separated from their families and weeks since Mitchel had pursued every avenue to try and understand the foreign language. He had stolen manuals, listened in on conversations, wrote down the sounds of alien words… It had culminated to this moment— his first time trying to speak Rwequekian to a guard.

The guard’s eyes were wide with surprise, but they narrowed after a moment of contemplation. His hand dangerously rested on his hip where his weapon was secured.

“Mitchel…” Winston protested, “We shouldn’t push them.”

Mitchel wouldn’t budge.

“When can we go home?” Mitchel pressed, the sharp Rwequekian lodging in his throat like glass.

Gasping harshly, Mitchel whipped into a sitting position. His heart thrummed in his throat as he tried to recall where he was. The sheets on top of him rustled and were pulled away as Lucas tried to regain warmth. Now numb and cold, Mitchel blinked away the memories of his dream and listened to the sound of his family’s breathing. For a bated breath, he listened if he had woken someone.

The blankets only shifted naturally. Everyone was still asleep.

As his eyes slowly adjusted to the dark, Mitchel sought out Winston. He subconsciously rested his hand on Winston’s covered shoulder, and Mitchel’s heart rate mellowed until it matched the rise and fall of Winston’s breathing.

Mitchel quirked a smile. Awake or asleep, Winston was there for him.

In one fluid motion, Mitchel pulled the rest of his covers over Lucas, rose to his feet, and turned to grab his things.

He was careful not to rustle the few other objects in his cupboard— a flat black book, a tattered brown bag, his second pair of clothes, a set of warm clothes, his workbag filled with supplies, and his old cell phone that had died long ago. Even though he knew there was no way to charge or connect it to any reception, he still had it stowed away— dust lining the cracks of its case. Annie had dissected hers after the first few weeks of the invasion when they realized this was their new reality. He had no real reason to keep it, but getting rid of it meant he was abandoning the last real piece of his childhood. It was a reminder of his life at a simpler time.

Mitchel shook himself and slipped into his second pair of clothes. He tied the drawstring of his baggy green pants so it fit tightly against his hip and pulled on an oversized gray hoodie for warmth.

Exchanging his folded nightclothes for his book, Mitchel stowed it away in his bag and adjusted the straps so it rested comfortably. The book was light enough that its weight did not cause Mitchel’s bad shoulder to ache. After a moment of thought, he dug through his workbag for his eyepiece and put that in his bag too.

He was ready. Tiptoeing his way past his family members, Mitchel entered the kitchen.

“Mitch?” came a groggy voice.

Mitchel cringed and turned on his heels. I thought I had been quiet.

“What are you doing up Winnie?” he asked softly, returning to his place on the floor.

Winston was still on the ground but was propped up on one hand and rubbing his eye with the other. He squinted at Mitchel in the dark, his expression illuminated only by the moonlight, and let out a muffled noise.

He’s probably in pain, Mitchel grimaced.

“Why are you up?” Winston countered.

“Couldn’t sleep too well,” Mitchel admitted, “Let’s get you some medicine. You should rest.”

Silently, he headed back into the kitchen and filled up a small glass of water.

“It’ll be hard for me to get up if I fall back asleep again.”

Mitchel turned off the faucet with a sigh and a tad more strength than needed.

“Winnie, you aren’t getting back up again. You’re in no shape to move.”

“I’ve been home for three days now,” Winston protested weakly and yawned, “We’re going to fall behind with our quota...”

Mitchel shot him a look as he turned. From the droopiness of his posture and the sway of his eyes opening and closing, it was evident that Winston was already dozing off.

“Don’t pretend last night didn’t happen,” Mitchel said, returning with the glass in one hand and pills in the other. “I saw everything.”

Winston easily accepted the water but frowned at the pills. Recognizing Winston’s hesitance, Mitchel intertwined their hands and allowed the pills transfer between them. Mitchel squeezed Winston’s hand as his bright hazel eyes met Mitchel’s dark brown ones.

“Take it. It will help you sleep,” Mitchel insisted, then cracked a small smile. “You aren’t allowed to worry, not while I’m around.”

“Mitch… If I don’t work, our family won’t receive full rations.”

Mitchel tried to hide his grimace of agreement. That’s valid. How much are we falling behind?

“I can work a little bit more today,” Mitchel promised.

Winston shook his head.

“That won’t be enough. I know this isn’t a cheap buy.” Winston rattled the two pills in his hand.

Mitchel frowned at Winston’s logic.

“I’ll figure it out.”

Winston breathed tightly, taking the pills in one quick motion, before settling back into the covers. He was silent for a moment, and Mitchel thought he had fallen asleep again. Mitchel squeezed Winston’s shoulder lightly— a wordless thank you.

“Winnie, how did you really get hurt?” Mitchel asked.

Exhausted, Winston let out a prolonged sigh.

“There was this girl… I think she had asthma or something. She couldn’t work, but the guard that was berating her couldn’t understand me,” Winston said, “So he did what he thought was right.”

Mitchel’s breath hitched. He was surprised Winston had even answered.

You’re exploiting his tiredness, Mitchel thought, But he’s not going to tell you in any other circumstance.

“A guard did this to you?” he whispered, “Where did this happen?”

Winston sighed, his eyes fluttering shut.

“Where I usually work,” Winston answered on an exhale. He settled back into the covers, and after a few moments of deep breathing, he eased into sleep. The medicine appeared that it was helping. Mitchel sighed in relief; it would kill him to find out he had bought sugar pills.

Mitchel did not know whether to be relieved or infuriated. If someone had hurt Winston, then he could not stand by. That was unacceptable. He tried to remember the individual faces of guards, but their white hair and bright eyes began to blend into each other.

Maybe the guard last night?

Mitchel immediately shook his head at his own thought.

For whatever reason, the guard last night had shown leniency. It wasn’t him.

Knowing that he was wasting time vexing, Mitchel readjusted his bag and got to his feet. Still, anger made his fingers tingle.

But I’ll find out who did.

He pushed on the front door until it un-jammed and slipped into the silent morning. Although the sky was still black with the remanence of night, Mitchel wanted to be the first to see the sun. He needed light and was not about to wake the whole family up with a fire.

Rounding the corner, Mitchel passed through a narrow strip of open ground that separated their house from their neighbor’s and emptied to their “backyard”. A barren clothesline ran from a pole to their roof and over Annie’s garden. Mitchel was careful not to step on any of her little seedlings, which were growing quite well despite the season, and dumped his bag down next to their homemade shower. Mitchel sighed louder than necessary.

The shower.

Four buckets sat next to the shower. Mitchel looked longingly to his backpack, which contained his reading material, before forcing himself to pick up a red bucket. Wrinkling his nose, he dipped it into a tub of brownish water and carried it over to Annie’s little garden. She would know if he overwatered them, so he carefully distributed it amongst each plant.

Mitchel turned back to the shower and turned on the faucet. The shower was a pipe that connected to their water supply that emptied out over a large metal container they had scavenged four years ago. Around it, there were three walls for privacy that Winston and Annie had made together made of scrap wood. As the water poured out, the muck encrusted walls became clean and the tub underneath grew murky once more. Mitchel shoveled this water out onto weed infested ground. Looking over the shower once more, he decided he had done enough and plopped down on the ground beside his bag. Mitchel smiled to himself as the first rays of light were beginning to escape the horizon. There was just enough light for him to read.

Inside his bag were Mitchel’s dearest personal possessions— his language journal, an introductory guide, three graphite pencils that were worn down to their middles, and a small Rwequekian book he had picked up. Combined, all three gave Mitchel enough resources to decipher the foreign language.

As per his morning ritual, Mitchel took out the introductory guide first. The introductory guide was a small tablet each family had been given a month after the initial invasion. With no way to communicate with either side, the Rwequeks had decided that the language barrier was too rigid and deployed an updatable guide that would supply humans with access to their alphabet, its pronunciations, and a few key words Rwequeks deemed necessary to learn. Mitchel skipped past the alphabet, already knowing it forwards and backwards, and checked to see if they had updated any words. There was an update, to Mitchel’s excitement.

Desist.

Mitchel frowned. He already knew that word.

Maybe some people have been rebelling, Mitchel mused to himself as he put the tablet away. And caused the Rwequeks to yell this ten times over.

He flipped through his journal instead, pausing at a few German words he had forgotten, tasting them on his tongue, growing displeased with his lack of consistency, and moving on angrily.

When he had reached the Rwequekian vocabulary list, he stopped and poised his pencil, then grabbed for the other book that sat in his pouch. After spotting his dog-ear, Mitchel stopped turning the plastic like pages and looked down at unread paragraph. The little book was a guide to the layout of his Faction, 117 of District D. It could be found on every guard patrolling the area— an essential leaflet that they all carried in black pouches by their waists. And directly next to their crackling weapons. When Mitchel had found it forgotten in the dirt, he was ecstatic.

Unlike the tablet, the waterproof pamphlets were made for Rwequek guards. For the rest of his family members, this meant nothing special. But for Mitchel, it meant full sentences that were filled with complicated vocabulary. There were tenses and sentence structures that he could not learn by ear on his own. And only after careful research of the literary contraband, could he interpret Rwequek’s conversations with considerable accuracy.

He paused at a word he had never discovered before. Biting his lip in concentration, he hunched over his language journal and copied the characters. Glancing back at the sentence for context, he guessed the meaning and wrote it down with a question mark by its side. He pulled out his final piece of equipment, his eye piece, and slipped it over his ear. He was only supposed to use the technology for his job, but it had the insanely useful ability to translate individual, written words.

Control panel, it read.

Mitchel flipped the eyepiece away from his eye and wrote the meaning down. He grinned. His guess had been somewhat correct.

Now the last step to do was figure out the pronunciation. Luckily for him, in most cases the alphabet retained its pronunciation regardless of placement. It would not be until he spoke the word out loud would he know if there were some odd grammar rule or not.

It was a long process to only read a few pages. But it worked, and he had been doing this every day for four years with the intention of understanding Rwequekian inside and out.

Because even though Rwequeks had taken away everything from his past life— belongings, resources, security— they could not take away his speech. And if he had one weapon against them, he would exploit the hell out of it.

Aliens be damned.

Mitchel tensed when the wall behind him shuddered. Emerging from the front side of the house was Annie, whose mess of long brown hair was tied in a loose bun. Mitchel relaxed when she began to approach with two bowls and two bags in her hands.

“Figured you were out reading,” Annie said as she stood next to him. The sky above her was growing light orange with daybreak.

“You know me,” Mitchel replied sheepishly, closing his language journal with a snap.

“And you even cleaned the shower,” she commented.

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

“You did,” she mused and joined him on the ground. She dropped the two bags in between them.

“Breakfast?” she offered, shoving a bowl in his direction.

“Thanks.”

Mitchel pushed at the brown mush with his spoon for a moment, trying to will the appetite to eat it. Annie was already well into her fourth spoonful.

“What? Not in the mood for nutrient powder?”

Mitchel snorted and finally shoved a bite into his mouth. Annie had even warmed it up with water, so it went down easier. It was grainy, filled with an adequate amount of starch, protein, and sugars to get through the day.

“Four years of the same stuff gets pretty old,” Mitchel admitted.

She shrugged, quirking a smile.

“Food is food.”

They settled into comfortable silence as they ate, watching the sky grow lighter from its hazy orange. Stars were quickly replaced with small clouds. It would be a fairly nice workday, Mitchel thought.

“Was Winston ok? Last night?” Annie asked.

Mitchel hesitated on his reply, remembering the searing red that cruelly lined his friend’s knee.

“It wasn’t good,” he finally said.

Annie tensed, an angry look flashing over her face.

“You taped him up right?” she finally said.

“Yeah.”

“He wouldn’t even let me see his wounds,” Annie muttered through the last bite of her breakfast.

That sounds like Winston, Mitchel thought.

Annie stole his bowl when he had finished and placed it under her own. After scooping up the rest of his belongings into his bag, he slowly got up from his place in the dirt. She thrust one of the two bags she had brought out, his work bag, into his arms. He replaced his eyepiece into the correct bag and slung it over his shoulder.

“Winnie is infuriatingly secretive,” Mitchel sighed, then quirked an eyebrow. “Actually, you both are secretive. What was the whispering match you were having at the table? The whole family was on edge.”

Annie took his personal bag away from him, not without a squawk of protest, and began to round the outside of the house.

“We’re gonna be late,” she said and paused outside the front door.

“You’re avoiding the question,” Mitchel grumbled.

“Just gimme a second,” Annie sighed and slipped inside.