Bang! The air bristled with electricity as Sophie appeared out of thin air.
"Ow!" she exclaimed, staring down at the teleport watch. There was a strange pattern pulsing across the screen.
"What's wrong with you?" Sophie fondly asked the device. It didn't answer. Sophie examined the pattern further.
"Some sort of signal." She mumbled to herself. Only then did she look up and notice her surroundings. She was in an alleyway between two buildings. Outside of the alley Sophie could see a bustling street of aliens. Checking another part of her watch, she read that the planet she was on was in the 'Cral System'. The pattern was still present on the screen.
Sophie headed out of the alleyway onto the street and noticed some fluctuations in the pattern, or the signal, whatever it was. She knew her teleport watch was set on a different frequency to most devices and could pick up signals that were more selective than others. As Sophie moved along the street, she noticed the signal was getting stronger and so decided to follow it.
Moving along, directed only by the signal's pulsing, Sophie found herself losing complete track of where she was going, and ended up walking right into someone. Stepping back she saw that it was a young alien girl, was wearing a school uniform.
"Sorry." Sophie apologised quickly, before moving on.
"Wait!" the girl called after her, plainly curious. As Sophie didn't wait, the girl chased after her instead.
Catching up the girl asked, "What are you doing?"
"Oh, nothing." Sophie replied, eyes still on the signal on the teleport watch screen.
"Is that a watch?" the girl continued, for some reason actually expecting answers.
"Yes it is." Sophie stated. She didn't want to be hindered by this girl, who was starting to annoy her.
"Are you playing some sort of game?" the girl asked. By then Sophie had had enough.
"Do I look like I'm playing a game?" she snapped at the girl. "Who are you anyway?"
"My name's May." The girl answered, obviously not fazed by the way Sophie had just yelled at her. "And I'm just wondering, that's all. You don't look like you're from around here."
"Well I'm not, and you don't need to follow me." Sophie said. "Shouldn't you be getting home to your parents or something?"
"Na they don't care how long I'm out." May replied. "As long as I'm home eventually."
"Great." Sophie was tired of having this girl follow her around. "If you're not going to go away, can you at least tell me which planet I'm on?"
"Oh, of course I can." May rambled. "This is the planet Galseia, and you're in-"
"What's this way?" Sophie interrupted, pointing over to where a road led past a heap of large buildings. According to her teleport watch, that was approximately where the signal was coming from.
"Just warehouses, I think." May shrugged. "You know, for storing things and stuff."
"Um okay." Sophie stopped and moved right to the side of the street and leant against a wall.
"What are you doing?" May asked curiously.
"Calibrating." Sophie replied, showing May her teleport watch.
"What for?" May seemed bewildered.
"I need to get into one of those warehouses to find something." Sophie explained. Why was she telling the girl this? "So I'll need to make sure I can make my way in there and that's what I can use my watch for." She continued, as she pulled her scanner out of her pocket.
"Er..." May didn't exactly understand, but it wasn't every day she met people like Sophie and she didn't want to miss out on any action. "So who are you exactly?"
Sophie sighed, and looked up from her calibration. "Sophia Lestari." She finally introduced herself, holding out her hand for May to shake. The girl shook it, becoming more confused by the minute. "I'm a space traveller from Earth who teleported here and discovered that there was a signal emanating from somewhere. It's quite strong so I figured I'd check it out. This stuff happens way too often." She mumbled the last sentence to herself.
"Why do you have a teleport, do you use it to explore space?" May's eyes lit up.
"Sort of." Sophie said, looking back to her scanner and watch.
"Do you have adventures all the time?" May pressed her.
"Well, not exact-"
"Do you travel all the time?" Sophie was interrupted by another question.
"I guess you could say that." Sophie admitted.
"All over the galaxy?"
Sophie was pressing buttons on her scanner, comparing the results to her teleport watch. "Yeah, pretty much." She muttered.
"Wow!" May exclaimed. "You're so lucky!"
"Yeah, totally." Sophie said sarcastically. She flipped the screen compartment of her watch shut, tucked her scanner into her pocket, and stood up straight. "Are you coming with me?" she turned to May.
"Of course." May scoffed.
"I figured." Sophie sighed. "Come on, then." She started walking off towards the warehouses.
As Sophie walked between the buildings, she checked each one with her watch, but none of the first ones were the source of the signal. May pestered her for details on her adventures as she went, and Sophie wished she'd never told the small girl anything. It didn't help that having a companion made her think of Abigail, a friend of Sophie's who she'd recently met on the planet Flauraan, while following a ship that looked like the Eridanus, but turned out to be a different expedition. She'd had to leave Abigail behind when she continued her search, after a devastating trip to the planet Halapatov. The event still weighed on Sophie's heart, and made her more reluctant than ever to talk about her travels with May.
Just as Sophie was about to snap, and demand that the girl went away, the teleport watch beeped loudly and looking at it, Sophie realised she'd found the warehouse the signal came from.
"Yes!" Sophie hissed through her teeth. "It's this one." She told May, in case she didn't get the picture, gesturing to the warehouse beside them.
"Oh goody!" May grinned.
"It could be something extremely dangerous in there." Sophie warned. "Maybe you should just stay here."
"No way." May complained loudly. "I'm sticking with you."
Sophie sighed again. "Alright then." She felt slightly sad as she headed over to the warehouse entrance.
"Let's see if I calibrated right." She held her scanner up to the door lock, and pressed a few buttons.
After about a minute, the lock clicked to signify that the door was unlocked.
"We're in." Sophie said dramatically.
"Sweet! Let's go." May surged towards the door, but Sophie grabbed her by the collar before she could push it open.
"May, I still think you should stay here."
May glanced at Sophie in annoyance. "Please, Sophie! I'll be careful, I promise."
"How old are you, May?" Sophie asked her.
"Fourteen." May replied stubbornly, arms crossed over her chest.
She was even the same age as Abigail. Sophie sighed yet again, realising that if she'd let the other girl follow her into danger, she couldn't really deny May the same. She let go of the girl's collar. "Fine, but you've got to be quiet."
May nodded. Then Sophie opened the door to the warehouse, and walked in.
The lights were off when they entered, and Sophie peered around in the gloom, but didn't see or hear anything weird. She put her hand on the wall beside the door, and felt around for a light switch. Finding a lever, she pulled it, and the room immediately flooded with light as fluorescent lights flickered on in the ceiling above. The huge room was piled high with rows of crates and storage containers.
"Well," Sophie mumbled, staring around at the many boxes they would have to search. "Let's find this signal then."
"Alright." May replied, adjusting her collar and looking around in anticipation.
Sophie held her teleport watch up to her eyes, and tried to decipher the signal. She glanced around, waving her arm from side to side and then looking at the signal's pattern again.
"This way!" she called to May behind her, and the girl ran up beside her, and joined her as they crept through the empty warehouse. Sometimes the signal would pulsate faster than normal, and Sophie would stop and check one crate or another. But it turned out to be a dud each time.
Finally, as the two girls walked past a line of large crates, the signal on the teleport watch beeped loudly and pulsed faster than it had before. Sophie grinned in delight and turned to the crate to her right. Holding the teleport watch over the crate, she saw that the signal was stronger than ever, and knew that its source was inside that crate.
"We found it!" she exclaimed and ran over to the wall, pulling a loose beam from it and raced back over to the crate, using the beam like a crowbar as she inserted it into the lid of the crate. May quickly came over to help, and leaned her weight on the beam as well.
The two girls eased the lid off of the crate and then stood back, staring in awe at what was inside.
"Oh my goodness." May stared down, in almost a state of horror, at the thing in the box.
Sophie stared at it as well, but more in interest than horror. Inside the crate was a glowing red and orange, almost goo-like, creature. It seemed to have no fixed form, and took up most of the crate. The creature was making a low growling sound and shifting around restlessly in the fairly large space it was in.
May squirmed uncomfortably at the sight of such a strange creature. "What is it?" she asked Sophie.
"Eh?" Sophie said distractedly, glancing at May. "Oh yes. Erm... I think it's another alien, a shape shifter of some type."
"Then why's it here?" May continued.
"Well... at a guess I'd say that it was stunned in the middle of a shift into a new body, a new form. Then it was probably captured and shipped here." Sophie's fists clenched in anger as she said this.
"Okay... what do we do then?" May asked nervously. "If this 'alien' is giving off some sort of signal, then shouldn't we stop it?"
"Stop it?" Sophie sounded incredulous. "Why on Earth would we stop the signal? Instead, we're going to amplify it!"
She then ran over to the far wall of the warehouse and up a flight of stairs.
"Sophie!" May ran after her, and, catching up, found Sophie examining an entry shaft at the top of the staircase. "Sophie, what are you doing?"
"This is the entrance to the roof." Sophie explained. "I'm planning on bringing the shape shifter guy up here so I can magnify his signal in the open air."
"But what for?" May was totally confused. "I mean, if it's been captured then shouldn't we just leave it here?"
"May!" Sophie gaped. "If you were kidnapped and then trapped in a box, would you want to be left there?"
"Well... I don't... it's not...." May stuttered and Sophie stared at her with contempt. "Fine, whatever, but why do we need to amplify the signal? Why is that thing even emitting a signal?"
"Because..." Sophie stopped and climbed onto some boxes stacked against the wall. There was a communications relay set in the wall and she ripped it out at the socket before climbing back down again. "The alien, the shape shifter, is trapped. I thought I explained that. Evidently he communicates by telepathy because the signal is actually him calling out in distress to the rest of his people. My watch is set at an irregular frequency so it picked up the distress signal. Now I'm going to use this device to magnify the strength of the signal somehow, and then hopefully the alien's people will come to get him."
May blinked in confusion. "That.... that's ridiculous." She scoffed. "How can you know all that?"
"I'm very clever." Sophie replied sternly, and then thrust the relay into May's hands. "Now, come on!"
She strode off again, and they quickly arrived back at the crate with the alien entity inside it. Sophie grabbed one side of the box, and May balanced the speaker on top before grabbing the other side. Together, the two girls lifted the box over to the staircase and then up it, before Sophie placed it down and opened the shaft. They then pushed the crate up onto the roof, which was where the shaft led. The alien growled and shouted in a language they didn't recognise as they moved it about. After doing this Sophie helped May up onto the roof as well then climbed after her. They dragged the crate over to an open space.
"Well I guess I'll get started." Sophie grabbed the relay off of the box, pulled the lid of the crate right off, and then started pulling the device apart.
"Do you usually pull machines apart?" May asked curiously.
"Er, kind of." Sophie answered distractedly, with a wire in her mouth.
May watched interestedly as Sophie quickly engineered the relay, hooking it up to her teleport watch so as to magnify the signal.
After a while, she pulled off her backpack and started to dig through it. She finally pulled out a small metal rod, with a lens on the end of it and buttons along the side.
"My friction stabiliser!" she laughed hysterically.
"What's so funny?" May asked.
Sophie glanced at her, as if she'd forgotten the girl was there. "Oh sorry, it's an inside joke with an old friend of mine. Well, a new friend actually. Anyway, never mind."
"Okay." May said confusedly.
Sophie set the speaker up next to the crate, and pressed a button on her friction stabiliser to, well, amplify the signal. As Sophie stepped back, the speaker she had manipulated gave off a shrill pulsating sound which beamed up into the sky and then faded away. The sound kept repeating, and May and Sophie stood, staring at the sky, as the alien made a growling sound of approval.
After about twenty minutes of waiting, Sophie noticed a shape appear in the clouds above, a huge circular ship with flashing lights. It came down and hovered next to them on the roof. May gaped as a platform extended out from the edge of the ship and a door opened at the end of it.
A silver figure slowly made its way out of the door, a bizzare creature with sharp talons, silver skin, and small eyes. The alien approached her, and as it went it changed shape, taking the form of Sophie instead. Sophie's eyes widened as she looked at an exact replica of her, perfect from the windswept brown hair to the teleport watch on the left wrist. May trembled beside her, and Sophie grabbed the girl's hand and squeezed it reassuringly.
The alien stared at Sophie with a cold look in the electrifying blue eyes that were the same as hers. Finally, the alien spoke.
"You summoned me here." It said in Sophie's voice, but a devilish tone. "Why?"
"I found one of your people trapped in this building." Sophie said defiantly, gesturing to the crate.
The alien moved forward, peering into the crate, and scowled, Sophie's mouth curving downwards in quite an unnatural way.
"What have you done to him?" the alien changed back into the silver human form as it spoke.
"We haven't done anything." Sophie snapped at the alien. "We just discovered him like this." Her voice softened. "I'm sorry that he was treated this way."
A few more shape shifting aliens had come out of the ship behind the first and now the one who seemed to be the leader gestured for them to pick up the crate.
"Take him to a revitalization chamber." It ordered, then turned back to Sophie and May again.
"Thank you for your help." The alien spat at them. "But know this, if one of my people is treated this way again, we will not let you off so kindly."
"We understand." Sophie nodded, and the alien retreated back into its ship.
After a couple of seconds, the spaceship took off, and launched back into space.
Sophie rubbed her hands together gleefully. "Now that's done, we can leave." She climbed back down the hatch and May followed, feeling completely bewildered.
"Sophie!" she exclaimed. "We just met... shape shifting aliens, and you're not fazed at all?"
"Not really." Sophie said as she climbed down the stairs and strode across the warehouse floor.
"Is this really the kind of thing that happens to you a lot?"
"Yup." Sophie replied, walking over to the exit.
"Who are you anyway?" May asked, and Sophie stopped as she was about to open the door.
"I'm just some guy." She said, then pushed the door open and walked out. "And you're lucky I was here, because if those aliens had come here of their own accord they probably would have levelled this entire city."
"You really think so?" May looked scared.
"Maybe, but it doesn't matter because they didn't." Sophie answered, and stopped again as they reached the end of the street. "Anyway, you should probably run along now, it's getting late."
May looked sad, but nodded. "Am I ever going to see you again?" she asked.
"Probably not." Sophie said, shrugging nonchalantly.
"Are you going to be alright, traveling on your own?"
"Probably not." Sophie repeated jokingly.
"Goodbye Sophie." May didn't smile. Instead she turned and walked away.
"Goodbye May." Sophie answered softly before the girl turned the corner out of sight. "Thank you for your help."
Then Sophie turned away and went off to explore.
A few hours later, Sophie was sitting in the records room in the Science institution on Earth, examining her files on the Eridanus problem that she'd collected so far, when Louise entered.
"Oh, hello Sophie." She greeted the younger girl as she wheeled herself in. "Back already?"
"Hi Louise." Sophie looked up from the star map she was studying at that moment, and smiled. "Yes, am I early?"
"I wasn't expecting you back at least until tomorrow."
"Yes well," Sophie sighed softly as she placed her files away in her bag. "I'm running out of traces to follow. I've been searching around for any information on the expedition." Sophie replied. "But I might run out of sources soon. By the way, have you found anything on my siblings yet?"
Louise shook her head. "No, there are thousands of foster homes, and they could have been taken anywhere."
"Alright then." Sophie said, smiling sadly. "Just tell me when you find out anything."
"Of course." Louise answered. "What were their names again, Kris and..... Riley?"
Sophie shook her head before correcting her mentor. "Rachel."