The day was too beautiful to be the bearer of bad news. The sky was a crisp blue and the wispy white clouds floated and bounced carelessly across the sky like eager children, ready to go to the playground. There was a slight breeze coming in from the south that warmed my body like a hug. The tree that I was sitting under shielded me from the hottest of the sun’s rays and shaded my eyes so I could focus on the book I was reading. It was one of those days when you feel like everything’s all right in the world, that there were no problems to deal with, no emergencies you have to struggle with. Light footsteps broke through my force field of happiness and I immediately knew, just from those steps, that there was going to invariably be bad news coming my way. I looked up from my book to see my coworker, Edmund Reilly, approaching, with a furrow in his brow and an ominous look in his eyes. “Gina,” he said, “you need to come back to work right away. There’s been a blip on the radar.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I scoffed, half believing, but not wanting to believe, what he said. “There hasn’t been anything on the radar since—“ I stopped, remembering the last time something had popped up.
That day, the Lunae, the Moon people, had first approached Earth, when they finally kept their promise that they would strike back against our use of their resources on the moon. That day, everything changed. To placate the Lunae, the UN agreed to allocate some land on each continent for the Lunae to use and exploit, as we had done to them. The murmurs of dissent about the Lunae staying on Earth had risen to loud speech as the public came to know that some Lunae could manipulate the bodies of the Earthens around them, and would be able to use their powers for evil. There had been an uneasy peace between the Lunae and Earthen ever since that date, although the world leaders kept preaching that one day the Lunae would want more land, and would slowly attempt to control the entire world using their powers of physical manipulation. 
Edmund nodded, as if he had read my mind and knew what I had remembered about the Lunaes Perhaps—no. The Lunae wouldn’t attempt to control the Earth at this stage, when the leaders of the Earth and the Moon had met and were working out a new agreement. Would they?
Edmund grabbed my hand to help me up, and we walked together back towards the city streets. He asked me the very question I had been wondering myself, “Do you think the Lunars would attack now?”
“No,” I replied, unsure of myself, “It wouldn’t make sense for them to invade now. It’s probably just an error.”
“You’re right, Gina,” he praised, smiling at me, “I just wanted to check it out. It’s better to be safe than sorry, right?”
I nodded, warm inside because of his praise. We reached the office where we worked and I once again marveled at the fact that I got to work at the world’s top security and systems firm, EarthSafety, Inc. I looked up at the tall building, all made of glass, tinted so no one could see inside, and in the shape of a giant “S.”
Edmund and I breezed through the revolving the door, swiped our card keys at the front desk and headed into the elevator, again, made of glass. We stepped inside, and Edmund pressed the button for the 100th floor, the room where the radar and all of the safety equipment was kept. I looked down at my feet, always a little frightened looking through the floor at the ground dropping further and further away. We ascended quickly, and stepped out at the 100th floor. Usually, the few people that actually worked with the radar and other machines processed like a well-oiled engine, but today, the floor was a mass of people and equipment, both being rushed around like little mice, scurrying about in a great hurry. Obviously, this was a larger blip on the radar than I had thought.
Edmund escorted me to the main conference room, where the rest of the Senior Staff was already seated and had eyes glued to the presentation screen where the radar was being displayed. As I sat down, I looked aghast at the radar. Evidently this wasn’t an error, as I had thought, but rather a genuine alarm. On the screen, there were dozens, possibly hundreds, of dots, and large ones at that. They were ships, coming towards Earth at a frightening speed. Were they Earthen? Were they Luna? I could tell by the muttering of my coworkers that they were wondering the same thing.
At that moment, a young technician rushed in and hesitantly stopped at the door.  “Excuse me, Mr. Reilly?” he stammered.
“Speak up, young man!” Edmund commanded.
“Yes, well,” the technician replied urgently, “we have uplink to one of the ships. I’m putting it on the main screen.” He rushed out, obviously intimidated by Edmund’s overpowering manner.
An image, fuzzy at first faded on to the screen. When it cleared, there was a palpable feeling of relief at seeing the image displayed on the board. For the image showed an Earthen ship with people wearing Earthen uniforms. Everything seemed to be quite normal after all. Today must just be a turnover day, I thought. But me and my coworker’s sense of relief became short lived when one of the people around the table, Joshua Collins, protested, “But the next turnover day is not scheduled until next Thursday!” The collective muttering began again, and we all looked at Edmund for his say. “Collins is right,” Edmund said, “but I think I recall hearing that the turnover date had been moved up because of issues with the current crew.” He then looked pensively back at the screen and we followed his gaze. I squinted my eyes as I noticed something off about each of the Earthens on the ship. They were all oddly stiff, as if nervous or as if they were anticipating something, or—I took a deep breath. They could also be being controlled by a Luna. Improbable, but not impossible.
I was about to share my observations when I felt my body seizing up and couldn’t stop myself as I fell to the floor. My coworkers noticed this in shock, and began to scream for help, but their shouts were lost in the melee of the central room, and my plight remained unnoticed save for the six other people in the room. My body was frozen, and no matter how many times I tried to wiggle my toes and fingers or stretch my legs, I couldn’t. I could only move my eyes. From my grounded state, I watched, dazed, as each of my coworkers went through the same process. Their arms, legs, head, and torso froze and they fell to the floor with a panicked look in their eyes. I assumed by the amount of “thuds” I heard that everyone had fallen, so I was surprised when I heard the light footsteps I had heard earlier before this whole situation had started coming around to my side of the table. The shiny black patent leather loafers stopped right next to my face and I forced my eyes to slowly travel upward, past the legs, chest, neck and finally focus on the face of this person. I looked into the crystal blue eyes I had looked into so many times before and blinked in surprise as the person took out those blue colored contacts, revealing the cold, dark eyes characteristic of the Lunae. It was Edmund.