Sergeant Wallace’s phone buzzed. Again.

Ignoring it, the training sergeant took a deep breath and faced the four women before her. They surrounded an unmoored washing machine resting on a dolly. It rattled and shook from within.

“Tell me again,” said Wallace, “just how you failed to notice the monkey trapped inside?”

Wallace never should have agreed to this. When she found four of her recruits, Simmons, Davis, Sackhoff, and Ramirez planning to rip off the Colonel’s quarters, she should have turned them in.

The truth was, she didn’t trust the system to treat them fairly. Politics aside, the military simply didn’t have the best track record when it came to women.

Then there was the incident. It may have pushed her buttons, affected her judgment. Made her eager to team up with four near strangers to plan a house burglary.

The Colonel, a collector of art and precious gemstones, kept a rare emerald locked in a safe near the laundry machines in his basement. He only brought it out for fancy dinners where he wanted to impress newcomers.

The strategy was simple. With her knack for mimicry and forgery, Simmons would call the Colonel’s home from Wallace’s phone and draft a written notice. She would report an impending upgrade on major appliances. Davis, who had a background in mobile network hacking, would make sure any caller ID on the Colonel’s landline would show Wallace’s phone as the housing office. Sackhoff and Ramirez would pose as maintenance personnel sent to remove the old machine. Sackhoff would disconnect the machine while Ramirez used her safe cracking skills to retrieve the emerald. They would stow the gemstone in the machine and smuggle it out.

Any rattling from within the machine would be chalked up to how badly it needed replacing.

Now, positioned in the women’s barracks, the machine practically jumped…

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Hilda had been trapped in this world for centuries, cast out of her realm by a rival queen.

Before the exile spell was cast, her servants had managed to bring her a single, crucial item. As long as she had it, she only had to wait until the next solar eclipse during a summer solstice. With a wind from the north. Blowing at exactly 12 kilometers per hour. Also, maybe a human sacrifice. Her servants had been hazy on that point.

So Hilda had settled into her new home in the mortal realm. She married a local farmer and inherited his land. And then she waited.

Now, after 300 years, the conditions were perfect.

As the sun approached a total eclipse, she went out to her barn. She had sold off the horses weeks before, so it was deserted except for Tyler, her neighbor’s boy.

Chosen for the sacrifice, the child sat on the straw floor. He stared at his phone while devouring a chocolate bar. Hilda hadn’t even needed to tie him up. A dagger rested on a nearby crate. Just in case.

At the barn’s center, Hilda cleared a patch of straw from the dirt, lifted a sheet of plywood, and retrieved a burlap sack from a small hole. Reaching inside, she withdrew a crystal ball the size of a grapefruit. It sharply reflected the waning sunlight, making a bright pinpoint on the far wall.

Tyler glanced up and saw his neighbor murmuring in a language he didn’t recognize. He shrugged and went back to his game.

Hilda’s chant reached its crescendo as the moon centered in front of the sun. On the far wall, the pinpoint grew into a glowing panel the size and shape of a door.

The door opened…

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