"Really?" Miranda asked. Her tone was somewhere between confusion, curiosity, and incredulity. Barry smiled broadly as he looked between Miranda, Becky, and Ellie. He even elbowed Miranda, a secret signal of something that Ellie wasn't sure of. "Well, if that was the plan, why haven't you done it already?"
Those words ran down her spine like ice. A heavy-handed message that such a thing was possible. That, somehow, Ellie was quite capable of turning Becky's eyes just as dark as Miranda's were. Why would she want to, though? What would that signify? Just what was it that was going on there?
"Um... what?" both Ellie and Becky said, almost at the same time.
Miranda seemed at a loss for words. She stood there next to Barry, frozen in her spot. Her eyes looked between the two girls. Her expression instantly changed each time she switched between them based on who it was she was looking at, an action that looked that much weirder given her eyes. After a few moments of that, she simply flapped her hands at the two of them.
"Hmm. Humans. Are you coming, Bare?"
"Umm..." Barry looked between Miranda and Becky for a moment. It seemed like he was about to turn down the offer, stepping forwards towards Becky. The subtle movement gave Ellie heart palpitations. "Actually, yea. I'll be there," Barry said, nodding. He offered Becky little more than half a shrug before heading off with the rest of them.
Ellie and Becky stood there for the longest moment, staring after the departing people, both at a complete loss for what that was.
Chapter Fourteen
Panic Attack
Ellie was frozen in her spot, staring after the departing people. The edges of her vision started to fade out, going to white. She barely noticed a faint voice droning on near her, but she couldn't understand the words. She knew people were leaving the room. She knew there was a reason for it. She just couldn't quite comprehend that the reason applied to her. All she could do was stand there as a barrage of questions flew past her, all too quickly for her to ever answer them.
What was going on? How was it that it had come to this? Who were these strange people who had seemed to have taken over her life? How was it that they thought her somehow related to them?
Humans. The girl had said Humans. As if they weren't, as if humans were somehow less than... whatever it was that they were. Were they demons? Why was it that she hadn't thought so before? They were supposed to be limited to Washington and Oregon, but would that have really stopped them? If they wanted to push out towards Illinois, could anyone really get in their way? But they didn't look like demons, did they? Not to her.
What did demons even look like? Sure, there were the weird ones they always showed on the news. The ones that looked the part. The ones that would never be able to blend in to everyday society. But those weren't the only ones out there, were they? What about the ones that had taken over other people's identities? The ones that blended so easily, so completely that they had become the talk of a country. A world. A fear that every child suddenly had, that their parents were suddenly demons, ready to eat them at a moment's notice. Did demons even eat babies?
But she said Ellie could make Becky one of them. Can demons even be made anymore? Certainly, demon babies were possible. She had heard enough stories about half human, half demon babies out there to know they were true. But could demons have babies with other demons? That wouldn't make Becky a demon though.
No, not demons, then. Aliens? Were there really aliens? She had grown up long enough after the old rumors that aliens had abducted the second plane to just laugh it off. But was it true? Could they have visited earth and left behind their spawn? But how would that work? How would a human become an alien?
No. Nothing quite fit for her. Nothing made sense anymore.
"Ellie," Becky shouted, shaking her forcefully.
"What?" Ellie asked, barely noticing the movement.
"Come on. We gotta go." She pointed around at the people staring at them. The chairs had been stacked off to the side, though a few in the back were still in rows. None of the group near the front of the room looked familiar, and it wasn't exactly clear what it was they were planning to do there. It was quite obvious, though, even in her state, that they didn't want them there while they did it.
"Right," Ellie said, nodding. She let Becky lead her out of the room.
As they made it back across campus, Ellie slowly made it back to reality, though the questions still plagued her. By the time they made it back to the dorm, Ellie knew she had to find out more. She had to figure out just what it was that she was dealing with. She just didn't know how it was she was going to do that.
"What, um, what happened with Barry?" she asked, trying to figure out what, if anything, Becky knew.
"You were there. You saw what happened."
"No, I... I mean, yea, I was there, but what was that? Weren't you two supposed to go out or... something?"
"Well, yea, I thought we were. I got all dressed up for it and everything. But... well, you saw. I got uninvited. I hate when that happens. It's like, what did I do? Was it even something I did or just their own problems acting up? Was I the cause or an innocent victim? It's enough to drive a person crazy. Well, if they're not there already. Then again, maybe the person doing the uninviting is the crazy one."
"I think I'm the crazy one," Ellie said. They were passing by the front desk when she said this, and the desk attendant looked at her like she was crazy. On first glance, Ellie saw the familiar black eyes on her. Only after she looked that way three more times was she certain they were normal looking green ones. Still, she didn't dare turn her back on the girl until they were at the elevator.
"How does that even make sense?" Becky asked. She had similarly been eyeing the girl at the front desk, seeming to have picked up on Ellie's paranoia. So she hadn't asked this until after the elevator doors closed on them, separating them from the girl. "It's not like you did something to cause them to chase us off."
"Hey, they can chase me off all they want. It's the invitations that are starting to creep me out. I mean, why would I want to join their little... whatever it is they are."
"A coven? No... What's the collective term for aliens?" Becky’s words shocked Ellie to no end.
"Wait, what? You can see it too?"
"See what?"
"Uh, nothing. Never-never mind."
"No, I was thinking something like Revenge of the Body Snatchers or Children of the Corn. Something is just seriously off about those people. I just... I mean, poor Barry, getting stuck with all those weirdos."
"Poor Barry? Seriously?" Ellie asked, exasperated. "He's clearly one of them."
"One of who?" someone asked. The unexpected voice drew their attention to the fact that the doors had opened on their floor and that several people were standing there, waiting to get on. Ellie just shook her head as the two of them darted out of the elevator and down the hall to their room.
"Barry is not one of them," Becky whispered, once their door was closed. "He can't be. He's nice and sweet and kind and--"
"Cute?" Ellie added. "You do know that Sam is one of them, right?"
"Yea, obviously. I mean, what kind of person corners you in a room like that? Well, one that's not trying to sleep with you. He is gay, right? We know that. He's gay. Not just someone pretending to be gay."
"That's the rumor. And it's so much worse than that."
"Worse than gay? What are you talking about? I thought you were--"
"No, not... No, it's worse than him cornering me trying to sleep with me. I think... I think they're trying to... to turn me or something. I don't know. I just get this strange, dark, scary feeling whenever I see them."
"Is that how you know who is one of them?" Becky asked. She sat down on the edge of her bed, scooping up her pillow so she could hug it tightly to her chest.
"No, it's..." She looked over at her roommate, unsure just how much to trust her about everything. All she knew about her was that the stuff about her parents and that her eyes weren't p
itch black holes in reality. She almost felt like the second fact was enough to trust her.
Almost.
"I... I can almost see... something about them. It's weird, I just kind of know them. You know?"
"No. Not really. Not even a little. But, still, I can kind of understand something like that. I mean, well, Hero was a little like that when we first met him. It was like he was drawn to my mom. Only, with you, it's like the reverse."
"I guess so." Ellie sat down on the edge of her bed for a second, but she felt like she couldn't sit still. It was like if she was still for too long, they'd come barging in and take her. Instead, she started to pace for a few moments, until that suddenly didn't seem enough anymore. She felt like she wanted to practice her katas, the patterns of movement they taught in ninja class at boarding school, but the room was too small for that sort of thing.
"Why do you think that is?" Becky asked. She scooted back on her bed, placing her back against the wall as she pulled her legs up after her. Her eyes followed Ellie around the room as she continued her pacing, like she was some kind of caged animal about to strike at her.
"I don't know," Ellie said. Her words came out as a hushed whisper, betraying her fear. "I don't know why I know. I don't know what makes me so special and why no one else seems to have noticed anything wrong."
"I noticed something wrong."
"Yea, but you noticed it because of what happened with Sam. If you hadn't seen that, if you just thought that Sam was just some average guy, would you have been so sensitive about what happened with Barry? Would that have even happened? You only saw what you saw because you were near me at the time. No, they're slipping. It's only a matter of time before they reveal themselves, reveal who... what they really are. What I'm afraid of is that a lot of people are going to get hurt when that happens."
"And, since you're the one in the know, you're probably going to be one of those people," Becky added.
"No," Ellie said. "I'm going to be the cause."
"I don't believe that. I can't believe that. Even if they're targeting you when it happens, that doesn't mean it's your fault. These people, they're responsible for their own actions, not you. Besides, you're not alone in this. Not anymore. We'll figure this out together. I just wish we knew where to start."
"Well... Actually... I do know where to start." Ellie looked over at her tablet, still propped up on her desk from her last video date with Mare. She wanted nothing more than to call her, to let her in on everything that had been happening. The only reason why she hadn't so far was because she was afraid. Not of these people with the abyssal eyes. Not of what they would do to Mare given the chance. She was afraid because she knew that if Mare knew she was in trouble, she would have gone AWOL from the academy to go across the country and save her.
Even so, she knew that Mare would know what to do, or at least know where to start. She'd pull out some old trick she learned growing up at the boarding school, probably something she learned in the summer classes where all the fun stuff was taught. Better yet, she'd hack into the school's records, pulling information about the students and their addresses, then link to some obscure database that would give her more information than should ever be readily available to anyone.
"And we're going to do just that," Ellie said, as an idea came to her.
Chapter Fifteen
Research
Ellie curled up onto her bed, pulling her tablet off of its cradle. As she fumbled around with her old bookmarks, Becky made her way across the room to sit next to her. It felt a little awkward to Ellie, having the girl so close to her, practically breathing into her ear, as she tried to look over her shoulder at what she was doing.
"Ah, there it is," Ellie said, when she found the old link.
It was one of the first items she had put on the tablet when she got it, shortly after the incident with her father. The database had helped them immensely during that incident, and several times since. However, she had never used it herself. Mare had always been at the driver's seat when it came to its use. She knew enough to navigate her way around it.
For one gut wrenching moment, she thought that she hadn't saved the password. It took her tablet a few seconds to auto populate it. Mare had set the password on the account that she had managed to hack her way into having, so the password was easy for her to remember but not for anyone else, even her girlfriend, to ever guess.
Once she was in the database, she clicked the familiar pattern of commands that brought up the more user-friendly interface that Mare's father had shown them. The cursor automatically entered the search field, popping up the on-screen keyboard. Ellie stared at the screen for a moment, trying to figure out where to start.
"Any chance you know Barry's last name?" she asked.
"Wait, we can just search this thing for these people?"
"Yea, I think so. They might not be in here, though. Oh, god. What if they're not in here?"
"Well, I know his last name begins with an A," Becky said, as she struggled to remember it.
"Allen?" Ellie asked, jokingly.
"Alderman, I think."
Ellie typed in Barry Alderman and hit search. A list of about 200 people scrolled across the screen, with all names of either Barry or Bartholomew Alderman. After glancing at the first few hits, none of which seemed right, she hit the advanced search function and entered an age range for him of 17 to 20. That dropped the potential hits from 200 to 22.
"Well, that's a little more manageable," she muttered to herself.
"He's from Rhode Island," Becky said, pointing at the Hometown field in the advanced search options that were still lingering on the top of the screen.
Once that was in place, it brought the search results from 22 down to... "None? That can't be right. Are you sure about that hometown?"
"That's what he told me."
"Well, maybe he was lying then." On a whim, she tried taking his last name out of the search, but that still came back with no results.
"No Barry's in all of Rhode Island?"
"No Barry's in all of Rhode Island that are 17 to 20," Ellie corrected.
She quickly pulled back the old search results of 22. Slowly, she scrolled down the list trying to spot anything in the short description available that would suggest one of them was their guy. However, the dates of birth, hometown, and occupation didn't help them. All of them could be old enough to be in college, and they were all marked as students.
With a sigh, Ellie started clicking into each result, one at a time. Some of them had pictures connected to them, none of whom looked even close to the guy they were looking for. Five had no photo at all. They used Becky's phone to search those five out on the internet, not wanting to interrupt their progress in the database. The search results clearly showed that none of them were right either.
"I don't get it," Becky said. "Maybe his name isn't really Barry?"
"Or, he's just not in this database," Ellie said. She flipped through some of the other entries, trying to find some clue as to why those Barry's were in there, while theirs wasn't. She found it in the familiar patterns for the ID numbers that had been assigned to each of them. "Of course. How could I be so stupid. It makes perfect sense why this Barry wouldn't be in here."
"Care to enlighten me?"
"Well, I'm in here," she said. She put in her ID number, which she knew by heart. It quickly brought up her entry
Name: Elenora (Ellie) Neilson
Designation: 001-341-3427
Gender: Female
Date of Birth: 11 May 2007
Father: David (Dave) Neilson (020-543-2374)
Mother: Edith Neilson (002-423-5234) Deceased
Occupation: Student; University of Chicago, Class of 2028, Undeclared
Attachments (1):
|-Crowbarland Preparatory School Diploma (24 JUN 2024)
"That's it?" Becky asked, surprised at how little was available.
"It's more than we know about Barry," Ellie said. "But, still,
notice anything?"
"Uh, you're only 17?"
"No. I mean, yes, I'm only 17, but, no. Look at my designation, my parents'. The first three numbers."
"Yea? So?"
"Now look at one of these." She pulled up one of the Barry's from before.
Name: Bartholomew (Barry) Alderman
Designation: 999-156-22-5444
Gender: Male
Date of Birth: 04 FEB 2005
Place of Birth: Redbank, NJ
Hometown: Middletown, NJ
Father: James Alderman (010-885-1952)
Mother: Jenna Alderman (999-254-55-1548)
Occupation: Student; New Jersey Institute of Technology, Class of 2027, Information Systems
"Yea, still don't see it," Becky said.
"The 999 part of the designation. I think that indicates that the person isn't flagged as being important to... well, to whomever it is that decides who goes in the database and who doesn't. This Barry, and I imagine his mom, Jenna, are only in the database, only tracked at all, because of the father, James, who has an 010 designation. I got my 001 designation when I started school at Crowbarland, but I imagine, before that, I had a 999 as well. It's only because my dad, an 020, meaning intelligence target, and my mom, an 002, meaning a spy, were in the database already that I would have had an entry in here before that at all."
"Wait, your mom was a spy?"
"Apparently so, though I don't know much about it besides that."
"Still, that is so cool. My mom was just a barista."
"Anyway, the point is, we'd need to find someone that would actually be in here, someone that is connected to the database people, who is also one of these... people."
"Except, how exactly are we going to do that? It's not like we have a roster to just run down or anything like that."
"Yea, you're right. In fact, I don't think we have any of their names, well last names. Even first names, it's like Sam, Miranda, that Rebecca Anne girl. Did you even catch any other names from tonight?"
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