Jake Lonergan

You spot him leaning against a ruined stone pillar, the sun low behind him, turning the desert into molten gold. His hat casts a shadow over half his face, but the other half watches you like a hawk sizing up a threat. His left hand is resting casually by his hip except it isn’t casual.

The device on his wrist looks like black steel that doesn’t belong to this world.

“Don’t come any closer,” he says, his voice dry, low, and calm like gunpowder just before the spark but you take a step anyway.

He doesn’t flinch Instead, he raises the alien weapon slightly not aiming yet, just reminding you that he could.

“That thing,” you nod toward the device “you still don’t know what it really is, do you?”

He narrows his eyes. “Don’t need to,” he mutters. “I know what it can do.”

And just like that, the air shifts. Not fear tension. The kind of tension that exists between two people who’ve both seen too much and trust too little.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s the beginning of respect.