I couldn’t see. Dear God, I couldn’t see.

 

“Take cover!” I shouted ahead of me.

 

My partner, Isaiah, bolted out in front as green laser blasts exploded over our shoulders. I hit the deck and felt my way over to the last solid object I’d seen: a wooden crate.

 

“Kate?” my radio squawked in my ear. “What happened?”

 

“Hang on!” I responded. I tore off my night vision goggles and tried to control my breathing. My face was burning. One of the blasts had hit me straight in the googles. The only reason I was still standing was because the googles had absorbed most of it.

 

But now I had another problem. I was the team leader and I couldn’t see. We had to get to the power station, but I couldn’t see where it was.

 

Through blurry, red vision, I saw in flashes as the laser blasts briefly lit up the night for milliseconds at a time. I saw Isaiah crouched down a few feet from me, trying desperately to keep his 6 foot 3 inch frame concealed behind the bombed out wreck of a car. I barely saw the thick artificial clouds high above that kept the moon from shining on us.

 

How had it gone so wrong?

 

****

 

You know, we knew they were coming. You can’t exactly miss a giant space ship hurtling toward earth. But we didn’t know what would happen once it got here.

 

We’d been optimistic at first. Maybe they would be friendly. Maybe we could learn from them. But, once they started dropping their version of atomic bombs on every major population center in the world, even the most flowery hippy was ready to admit that maybe we should start trying to fight back.

 

But then came the darkness. These aliens were nocturnal, and our planet was way too shiny. They pumped toxic artificial clouds into the sky, blocking out the moon and stars, and eventually, the sun. We didn’t know how to handle it. The war was over before it began.

 

We tried shooting them, of course, but our bullets just bounced off. They made a point of destroying our militaries first. Anyone who stood in their way was destroyed. Violently.

 

Any humans they didn’t kill they enslaved. They made us work in their factories producing their food and their weapons. They made all light sources illegal, so we had to live in darkness. Soon enough, we broke. We learned to do as we were told and not fight back.

 

That was six years ago.

 

We’ve been in this shadowy, inky black hell for six years. The aliens have settled in and reformed our planet in their own image. They’ve grown comfortable.

 

But the humans, we’ve grown angry.

 

We’re ready to take our planet back, and we’ve been planning right under their noses. Our people have stolen their blasters and bombs from the very factories they made them in. We’ve amassed lightbulbs, flashlights, floodlights, Christmas lights, any light source we could get our hands on. We know they hate the light. We know it hurts them.

 

So we’re gearing up to show them what the sun looks like.

 

It’s a worldwide effort. Thousands all over the planet will turn on the lights at the same time and give our fighters the first tactical advantage we’ve had in six miserable years.

 

And my team is the test run. The goal was to break into a power station with a small team and turn on the power. That would be the signal for the cavalry to come in.

 

But we’re failing.

 

****

 

I felt a hand close over my arm, jolting me out of my thoughts. I pulled up my gun in surprise and nearly blew off Isaiah’s head.

 

“Kate, are you okay?” He took my head in his hands, trying to get a better look at my scorched face. He’d been a doctor before the darkness.

 

I batted his hands away and tried to hide my swollen eyes. “I’m fine, I just can’t see anything without my goggles. How are yours?”

 

“Fine,” he said. I could hear the worry in his voice.

 

“Forget it,” I warned him. There would be time for this later. “They know where we are, and they’re entrenched.”

 

Isaiah sat silently beside me, waiting for me to come up with a plan. I was the one with military training, after all. The blaster fire had subsided for now. They must have lost us, I realized.

 

“If we get up, they’ll destroy us.”

 

“We can do this. We’re only forty feet from the entrance,” Isaiah said after a few moments. “We need a distraction,”

 

Suddenly I sat up. I had an idea. A crazy idea. “The missiles,” I said. “We could call in the missiles.”

 

“We’ve discussed this. There’s a reason we’ve never done it before,” Isaiah said. “If we call in a direct strike, they’ll just shoot them out of the sky.”

 

“That’s what I want them to do,” I said. I was quickly becoming convinced that my plan would work. “We send in the missiles high and blow them in the clouds.”

 

Isaiah smacked himself in the head, a grin forming on his face. “And blow away the clouds.”

 

“Right,” I said, pulling out my long distance radio. “It’s a full moon tonight. If we can break through the clouds, then the aliens might be distracted enough by the light for us to take them out.”

 

I handed the radio over to Isaiah. It was too dark for me to read the controls. “Angler Fish calling the Foxhole,” he called.

 

“Foxhole,” a voice crackled from the other side. “Go Angler.”

 

Quickly, I explained my plan. When I finished, there was crackling silence from the other side. Finally, the other man called back, “You might be crazy, Angler. But we’ll do it. Hunker down tight. This is going to be a heck of an explosion.”

 

Isaiah took my hand. “We go together,” he said.

 

I nodded seriously. I knew this was the end. If this didn’t work, we’d both be dead. If it did work, we’d be heroes. But either way, it was going to have to be together. I still couldn’t see.

 

As the light from the missiles’ jets peaked through the clouds, a stream of green energy flew up to meet it. I felt Isaiah’s fingernails dig into my skin as a massive fireball rent the sky in two.

 

We sprang up and bolted for the entrance to the power station. My scorched eyes burned at the sudden light, but Isaiah dragged me forward. We ran side by side. Isaiah held onto me with one hand, and with the other he shot blast after blast into the confused aliens. I concentrated on where my feet were on the ground as I could see clearly no more than five feet in front of me, and my vision was getting worse by the second.

 

It must not have been more than a ten second run to the door, but it felt like hours. The only thing that told me we were winning was the fact that we were still running. I could hear the metallic sounding screams of the aliens as Isaiah mowed them down and they ran from the light.

 

My vision faded to grey as we burst through the door of the power station. I felt Isaiah hold me back. “Hang on,” he said.

 

“What?” I asked, clutching his arm.

 

“It’s cluttered in here. I don’t want to risk an ambush.”

 

We walked forward slowly, but purposefully. Isaiah knew where he was going. We had the schematics of the building and we knew exactly where the on switch was. I heard a blast from Isaiah’s gun and a thump in the distance, and then Isaiah’s muscles relaxed under my grip.

 

“I think we’re safe,” he said. “Time to lighten this place up.”

 

At that exact moment, I felt Isaiah collapse with a grunt. I went down with him. “Isaiah!”

 

“He got my leg,” he gasped. “I can’t move. I can hold him off, but you have to pull the switch.”

 

“Where?” I said. I could tell moonlight was pouring in from the windows, but all around me was a grey blur.

 

“Ten feet in front of you on the wall. Just run!”

 

I took off. I heard blaster fire from behind me as Isaiah provided cover to keep the alien from taking me out. I ran full force into the wall. For a few terrifying seconds, my hands probed the wall trying to find the switch. My hand stumbled across a piece of cylindrical metal jutting from the wall and I froze.

 

I grinned maniacally as I yanked down the lever. “Let there be light, freaks!”

 

My blurry vision was suddenly full of light. My heart raced faster than I’d ever felt it go. I hadn’t seen real light in six years. For a moment, I was overcome with awe.

 

“Got him!” I heard Isaiah shout as the alien screamed and then thumped to the floor.

 

I stumbled my way back over to where I heard his voice and then knelt down to wait. Outside, more aliens were screaming and the sound of blaster fire was constant. Our people had moved in and were taking advantage of the panic we’d caused to take the station for good.

 

After a few heart pounding minutes, the blaster fire died down and the door to the station burst open. “Don’t shoot!” a male voice called.

 

“Jeffery!” I shouted back, relaxing.

 

“Kate! Where are you?”

 

“Back here. Follow my voice.”

 

In seconds, a tall African American man bounded up to me with a grin the size of Texas on his face. “You two are crazy,” he said, admiration in his voice.

 

We burst into laughter. Isaiah put his arm around my shoulder and I leaned into him.

 

We certainly were crazy. But our plan had worked. We had taken the station and brought light to thousands of homes in the area. More than that, though, we had showed the world that we could do it.

 

It was only the beginning, but for the first time in six years, the future looked bright.