It was a crisp autumn morning in San Francisco. Well, what remained of it at least. The sky flashed vibrantly as the bombs rained down. The boy ran in between the buildings on the crumbling asphalt. He dodged piles of debris and swerved under any remaining roofs to stay out of sight. A rotten wooden fence had partially collapsed and opened up to an overgrown lawn. He turned and ran through the hole into the yard. What was once a sizable family home was now a depressed and nearly colorless construction with debris lining the property instead of neatly cut hedges. The grass ran over his green sweater as he bolted for the beautifully carved wooden door which had been blasted off its hinges and now lay on the floor of the house. While he adjusted his glasses, a shining gray metal caught his eye. He brought his hand back down and his eyes went wide at the sight of a spherical object stuck to his arm. It had pulsating orange lights and a powerful adhesive. He pulled and tugged at it, wincing from the pain in his skin before it finally came off.

“Interesting…” Nahte said. He made sure to hold it on the opposite end of the sticky substance. He walked into the house and looked around. The hallway seemed to stretch forever to the left towards the kitchen and to the right ending in a bathroom. He chose to go to the left and slowly progressed while gazing at the walls. Beautiful family photos brought Nahte back to the world years ago before the aliens had invaded Earth. At first, he became sad at this thought. But then, he realized he could avenge all these innocent people. He would fight the aliens, alone if no one else would help him. He lifted his head and continued marching.

In the kitchen, he had found the pantry loaded with non-perishable foods. He had everything from SPAM to pineapple that looked like it would last him for years. This family must have been prepared for this disaster, but where did they go? Outside, the sun was lowering in the sky and Nahte was exhausted. His home had been safe for about a month before today, when it had been found and invaded by the aliens and he had to escape. Now, he had found an even better hideout. He made his way to the master bedroom and jumped in bed. He placed the sphere that used to be stuck to his arm on the nightstand, before falling asleep just seconds after closing his eyes.

The sun was down, and there was an eerie silence. With the power grid off, AC units weren’t humming and streetlights stayed dark. CREEK! CREEK! Nahte awoke suddenly and quickly jumped up and out of bed. A blinding light was bursting through the window curtains like a miniature sun. The aliens were here. He didn’t have any time to spare. He kept his eyes covered as he began sprinting to the bedroom door. The heat rapidly increased as lasers reaching tens of thousands of degrees penetrated the wooden walls and left black marks. Before leaving the room, Nahte frowned at himself for not realizing that the glowing sphere was a tracker. He ripped open the door and ran down the hallway. Through the windows, he noticed hundreds of pulsating orange lights outside. The figures didn’t have any set form. They seemed to morph as they moved, like a black ocean wave rolling to shore. Armor covered their chest and was lined with pulsating orange lights. He frantically looked everywhere, anything he could do to escape. Was this the way that Nahte would be captured?

CREEK! CREEK! BOOM! The windows shattered from the sheer heat of the weapons. Nahte ran down the hallway before pausing at a door he had not noticed before. He opened it and saw stairs leading to a hard concrete floor. This was his only way out. He leaped down the stairs and landed hard. On the other side of the basement, another, smaller set of stairs led up to wooden doors. Nahte was flanked on both sides by towering shelves of countless wine bottles. He had found himself inside the cellar. If he hid here, the aliens would probably find him soon. He shivered at the thought of being enslaved by the soulless blobs. Nahte thought for a minute about the alien’s hearing and grabbed a wine bottle from the shelf. He ran across the room and up the other stairs. Nahte resorted to kicking the cellar door until it finally opened. Luckily for Nahte, the aliens were blind. Unfortunately, though, they had amazing hearing and other senses. CREEK! CREEK! CREEK! The alien calls came from every direction as Nahte peered over the edge of the cellar and saw dozens of the aliens suddenly turn towards him. They had heard him.  

The grass next to Nahte burst into flames. He had never run this fast before.  He looked dreadfully ahead and saw a wall of aliens closing in on him. Nahte stopped and dropped into the grass. He gripped the wine bottle in his hands and swung his arm back. The aliens were closing in from just a few dozen feet away. Nahte’s arm flew forward and sent the wine bottle flying. It went high and landed ten feet away with a crack and splash. At once, the aliens turned away from Nahte and went to the wine bottle’s impact location. They coalesced over it before realizing there was no human there. Nahte closed his eyes and held his breath.

Minutes turned into hours. Nahte struggled to stay awake as the blobs slowly disappeared behind buildings. Finally, at daybreak, the coast was clear. He tried to get up quickly but staggered from his exhausted state. Everything was a blur for Nahte as he struggled to stay standing. Then, a tiny, yellow blob appeared in Nahte’s vision. An alien, perhaps?

“Please, don’t hurt me-” Nahte barely got the words out before collapsing on the ground.

The man gently lay the boy down on the bed. Another boy stood beside the man.

“Is he going to be okay?” The boy asked.

“I don’t know, Peter. He’s breathing but I have no idea what those bastards did to him,” the man replied. Then, the eyes of the boy on the bed fluttered. His eyelids opened. His face turned scared as his pupils adjusted.

“This is it, isn’t it? The aliens got me! Help me!” Nahte screamed. Then, he saw the man’s concerned face and a boy on the brink of laughter. His fear turned to confusion.

“Where am I? Who are you?” Nahte asked.

“My name is Jake, and this is my son, Peter,” the man replied. “We found you unconscious in a yard nearby. We originally passed by because we saw a huge group of aliens there earlier,” Jake said. 

“Yes, yes! I was being attacked! I was- I was,” Nahte interrupted himself with a massive yawn. He continued, “My name is Nahte.”

“Well, Nahte, I think you just need some sleep,” Jake said. He pulled a blanket over Nahte. Before he could protest, he was sound asleep.

Peter and Jake gave a warm welcome to Nahte. They gave him lunch when he woke up past noon. As they ate together, they had a lot to discuss. Nahte told them about the tracker and the immense food supply at the house he was at, while Peter and Jake informed him of their current plan.

“Yes! Count me in!” Nahte exclaimed.

For the rest of the day, Nahte was shown around the house. They had an above-ground area, where he stayed most of the day. Towards the evening, though, Nahte had gained enough of their trust to be shown their laboratory. A 3D printer, a giant TV, a powerful computer; It was everything they needed to retake Earth. Nahte used to be in love with programming before the apocalypse. He didn’t even know if he remembered a single concept. Nevertheless, he began typing.

Over weeks, they gave Nahte plenty of time to continue practicing while Peter and Jake studied some alien material they found on the ground. Once they found its weakness, they could create an unstoppable weapon. Peter and Jake began modeling small robots which they nicknamed nanobots. They came in tiny hollow metal spheres with a chip ready to receive instructions from Nahte’s code. 

Nahte was quickly getting the hang of things again, so he started coding the bots. Peter and Jake had found a chemical that would dissolve the alien material. A sort of supply chain was created. Nahte downloaded the code to the chip, Jake secured the chip inside the sphere and attached a battery, while Peter sealed off the spheres and placed them in multiple boxes. They managed to fill up three boxes, one for each of them to carry. The final step was to create three controllers for each of them, which they finished quickly. The day of the fight was approaching.

Snowflakes glided to the cold Earth as Peter, Jake, and Nahte emerged from the underground bunker, each carrying a small controller and a box filled with nanobots. Each box has a few bright green nanobots which were shield generators, and a majority of bright red ones which were the alien killers. They were ready. They could barely see the speck floating above the few highrises left in the city. Its orange lights were visible even from this distance. The mothership. They began their journey towards it.

The speck gradually grew to a monstrous size. The orange lights that lined the sides brightly shined through the few snowflakes.

Jake suddenly stopped and his eyes went wide. Once Peter and Nahte caught up, they saw why. The whole valley in between the hills looked like one giant, stormy ocean with the mothership hovering above and the skyscrapers lining the horizon. A giant ramp led from the rear of the mothership down into the center of the valley. Aliens were constantly being created and sent down the ramp. They had to stop this before they could start taking out aliens. They knew that the mothership connected to the aliens in such a way that its destruction would kill all remaining aliens. The group began walking straight into the crowd of aliens.

Soon, they made it to the top of the ramp after what seemed like hours of dodging the aliens one by one.

“Over here, I think this is the ramp toggle!” Nahte exclaimed. 

“Okay, let's try it,” Jake replied. Nahte pressed the button and an alarm began ringing but the ramp also began to rise. Now their only problem was the mothership security. A dozen aliens appeared in a doorway and began quickly moving towards the group. Each of the humans picked up a handful of nanobots and threw them at the aliens. CREEK! CREEK! The aliens screamed as they began to dissolve from the acid in the nanobots.

The group had successfully infiltrated the mothership and taken out the alien security, but what now? They frantically glanced from control panel to control panel. Which button to press? None had any marking whatsoever. Then, in the corner of Nahte’s eye, he saw a peculiar door. He ran towards it and, with Jake and Peter now on his side, opened it. Inside, there was a tiny vessel with four huge seats. An escape pod.

“All we have to do is somehow self-destruct the ship and then get in this escape pod,” Nahte said. Peter and Jake agreed. They all split up among the various panels. After a few more minutes of trying to make something happen, they resorted to plan B. Throw all their nanobots on the control panels to smash as many buttons as possible. The metal was just heavy enough to press the buttons. As they began throwing handfuls of nanobots on the control panels, the mothership began to blast another alarm indicating an imminent failure. The aliens, not oblivious to what was happening, began blasting their lasers through the floor of the control room. 

“Shields up!” Jake yelled. They retrieved their green nanobots and threw them on the ground before commanding them to burst into multiple hexagon-tiled spheres. The lasers could no longer harm them.

Soon, there were too many alarms to count blaring throughout the control room. 

“Let’s go, NOW!” Jake exclaimed. They all staggered as the mothership wobbled violently. They ran to the escape pod and jumped into the seats. Jake drove the escape pod down to a hill by the valley. They all got out and watched the mothership and the giant crowd of aliens. BOOM! A shockwave emitted from the mothership, and every single alien in the valley melted into a puddle. Nahte, Peter, and Jake were not expecting the shockwave, and all three were slammed into the ground. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! What looked like thousands of little explosions erupted all over the body of the mothership. The sky turned red. Flames erupted from the mothership’s engines on its wing. The wings snapped from the sheer explosion force and came hurtling towards the ground along with the rest of the ship. All three got up and smiled into the valley of evaporating black goo.  They had liberated Earth.