Excerpt:

The tapping was becoming incessant. Amelia held the wool blanket close to her face while she scrunched down further towards the middle of her bed. Her eyes were wide, but she saw nothing; it was darker than night in her bedroom, an effect Mix had installed into the creaky old house to make it easier for Dorian, Amelia's father, to sleep. Amelia didn't like it at all. She wished Mix would have figured out a way to let starlight shine through her bedroom window before she had to spend an entire week in the house. Really, if the guy invented it, surely he could modify it.

Such thoughts couldn't distract her from the noise. She'd compromise; if Mix couldn't get the light in, he could at least sound-proof the walls, couldn't he? She'd settle for that. Without anything visible around her, she had to imagine what the noise was, and the most likely possibility seemed the least possible. It had been a rainy day; it would make sense that the wind was beating her father's tall, strong trees against the side of the house. It would make sense if it were a woodpecker or another small animal looking for shelter on that cold October night. All Amelia thought about, though, was alien intruders. Perhaps the creatures from her storybooks had finally come to take her away; Mother said they didn't exist, Father said even if they did he would keep their small family safe.

[...]

The tapping brought her back to the present. It was becoming ever more insistent. It was hard not to think of her possible little brother, and her mother whose face she had already almost forgotten, but she had to stay strong for her father.

Her eyes were wet, but she was determined to show her strength. It would happen just as she'd said; she'd jump fearlessly onto the airship and bully those damned aliens out of their lives. They were only there because her father was so important, and by proxy Amelia was very special. She slowly lifted the blanket from her and slipped out of bed, her night shoes warm on her feet but not exactly the correct boots to wear into combat. Octavius' father had given her a flight suit, just her size, which belonged to a fourteen year old boy who'd lost his leg to polio. She'd met the boy before; he smiled, pinched her cheek, and said he'd take her up in his balloon some day, when she was older and could see over the side of the basket. The gift of his uniform jumpsuit was infinitely more special to her, though she cringed to think of what had to happen for her to get it and made a mental note to write him a letter soon.

The goggles were homemade from pieces of melted and curved glass; one eye was brown, the other an odd reddish color. She didn't mind; she was proud of this project that Mix took on with her, teaching her how to handle the delicate pieces of equipment required to make a pair of flight goggles in one's own backyard. She still wasn't allowed to use the tools alone, but Dorian was much less hesitant now that she was older. He worried, she knew, but he also knew she was exceedingly careful, and wouldn't do anything that would cause her own disappearance. He'd had enough to worry about.

The U.S. Navy issued a special, hard, tough sort of boot, and Amelia wore hers proudly. Her family was so ingrained in the military that making books especially for a growing girl every few years wasn't any difficulty at all. Stitched into the side and back of the right shoe was a scene that made her heart yearn for the ocean. A hot air balloon with a lone balloonist floating over a vast body of water. Amelia imagined the boot told her future, but of course it was merely stitched on Mix's request, and she knew it. A pretty picture for a pretty little girl, and nothing more.

This wasn't discouraging to the task at hand. Suited up and ready to go, Amelia climbed on top of her bedside table and faced the window. The switch to turn off the night was just above her bed; Mix had installed it in the case that there was an emergency and Dorian couldn't get to the bedroom in time. She'd never touched it, except for the first night when she was learning how to use it. Now was a good time to relearn; the tapping became louder, more of a pounding now, and Amelia almost fell off the table in fright. Sneaking in the back of her mind was the suspicion that she shouldn't have been taking care of this herself, that she should have been in her nightgown at her father's door, waking him up to let him know that a tree was clearly trying to get into the warm house. She always hated that nagging feeling, but she knew she should listen to it; she always had before, and in her experience it had always been the right decision.

Still... To be the hero of the night was tempting. Her father always did wonderful things, and even Octavius, who by then had recruited into the Navy Youth program without her, had saved at least a few lives, or so he said. Her arm extended up as if by its own will... Closer, closer, almost there, though she was just a bit too short. She'd have to stand tippy-toed, maybe even jump to get it, and by then her mind was already set.

What she did not expect, however, was that the tree would crash through her window the moment before she reached the switch. The night was still on, but bright light shone through a hole in the wall; Amelia was blinded. She fell backwards, startled, and hit her head hard on the wooden ground. She wasn't out for long, but when she came to, the tear in her wall was much larger, and the pounding and tapping had become ticking like clockwork. There was nothing there, though. She struggled to move, lifting her body up onto her elbow while she supported her throbbing head with the other hand. Still in flight gear, she winced at the pain and felt mildly claustrophobic. The room was smaller, tighter, and she was wearing many layers; she shed off her gloves and started with her boots when the ticking stopped.

The room was dead silent. There was no wind outside, and it was still nighttime though she could see enough with the stars and moon to see it'd stopped raining. Everything was wet and peaceful, nothing even dripped. Autumn leaves didn't shuffle, crickets didn't chirp, and the silence engulfed her. "I'm only ten," she said out loud, though she didn't know why she'd said it; she only knew that it had never been so quiet. The silence endured. She risked a peek at her door; it was still intact. Everything was still intact, except, of course, the wall where here windows once were. There was no glass on the ground, no evidence that anything had actually broken. Everything was still and exactly how she'd left it, except exposed to the outside world now.

She felt like she was waiting, though she didn't know why, or what for. She was hesitant to move, even to breathe past a whisper, so she closed her eyes tightly and only reopened them when they started to hurt.

That's when the ticking came back. It was faint at first, quiet, unsure of itself maybe, but it was certainly present. She revised her earlier thought, though she didn't know why it mattered; it wasn't like clockwork, it was too fast for a single clock. It was as though she was in a room full of clocks, all a millisecond off from one another. Another click started before the one before it ended, though they were all distinct sounds. She closed her mouth tightly, and wanted desperately to close her eyes again, but she couldn't. Amelia Baskerville was crying, and her eyes stung, and she was too afraid to wipe away the tears. Her body stayed rigid, lying on the floor still, propped up on one elbow still, her other hand thrown across her stomac with her gloves still close.

I'll never move from this position again, she thought. She didn't even have the courage to think of what might have been happening; all thoughts of aliens had left, and she couldn't put a name to the feeling that was growing deep inside her chest. If she'd named it, she might have burst out in tears, disrupting the flow of the ticking, which she was beginning to find almost comforting. Strange, she thought, I was so frightened just a moment ago, but now I want to welcome it.

A bright light shone then in her face very suddenly. She was nearly blinded but could make out the edge of a triangle, a beak maybe, and in the corner of her eyes she swore she might have been seeing wings, but there were no feathers. Amelia was confused, but beaten. The thing looked at her, its neck turned at such an angle so as not to be human, and then it screamed.

Amelia screamed with it, as well as she could; her voice had left her, or maybe she was screaming but the creature was so deafeningly loud that she couldn't even hear herself. She felt like she would never hear again, so numb was her head, though she heard the sound long after the creature stopped making it. Through clouds she saw the thing walk on two spindly legs towards her door and regard it frankly. Something came from it that Amelia had never seen before; two blasts of light, and the door was gone. The creature seemed startled that it was so easy, but continued through the house without hesitation. Amelia wanted to call out to her father in warning, but she hadn't the strength or ability; nothing was working for her, she couldn't move her arms or legs and a headache was becoming increasingly more painful.

At a chance of a glance, she saw another creature, much like the first, but smaller, fly in through her bedroom's hole. It ignored her completely, so the moon's light allowed her to catch glimpses of it as it appeared to be rummaging through her belongings. She couldn't explain why at the time, but she decided the best thing to do was to observe, not interrupt. The creature was intelligent; it didn't pick apart everything, only the things it deemed worthy. It was a large birdlike thing, though the wingspan was so huge she wondered how it could have possibly even fit inside the small room. It walked like a cranky old man, hunched and wobbly without much regard to anything around it. Like the other, it had lights attached to its head, which told Amelia it wasn't a night creature; it relied on light as much as any human would, except perhaps Mix.

Amelia smiled at the thought of Mix, as she was refusing to think of what might have been happening to her father. With any luck, the other bird thing was just rummaging through the house. Yes, that must be it, these things were sent by a spy agency from another country; they weren't here to hurt Amelia or Dorian. She let out a chuckle at the realization, but regretted it immediately. Though she was numb from head to foot, and still shocked into stillness, it wasn't a good idea to make oneself known. It was even a worse idea to make light assumptions about a dire situation, but she needed her small comforts. The creature stared blankly at her, though she couldn't determine if it had eyes. The lights came closer, closer, until they were immediately in front of her eyes, and that was the last she remembered of it.