Exodus

by Kevin McLaughlin

  “What is it? Did you find something useful?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I’m looking at communications between Proctor, Cady, and the President. Every letter is pretty routine except for how they’re written. You remember how I was telling you about human hierarchy?” The soldier nodded. “Writing a letter to the President in such a familiar matter is akin to playing atlak with one of your elders.”

  The soldier’s eyes widened. “Ah,” he said. “Not very good for the human who is beneath them.”

  I laughed. “No, not very good for the human of lesser ranking. So it stands to reason that even the CEO of a large corporation shouldn’t be addressing the President with such familiarity.”

  My comrade tapped a claw on the tablet he held. “It appears that they went to the same...college?”

  “College is…“ I didn’t exactly know how to explain it. “College is the human equivalent of specialized training. Young adult humans go to college to become specialized in a certain kind of profession. Some humans go to college for as little as two years and some go for ten, depending on what they study. Among humans, going to the same college is much like how you would consider someone who went through training with you. It’s a kind of camaraderie that is expected to last throughout the rest of that human’s lifetime. I could understand it if Mr. Proctor used the fact that they attended the same school as a way to present false familiarity with the President, but even that isn’t typically an excuse to call someone of her standing by her first name.”

  “Do you think they were a mated pair?” the soldier asked.

  I cringed a little at that. It was hard to imagine a man like Proctor in a relationship with anyone at all, never mind a woman that much younger than he was. “I don’t know. Whatever their relationship is, it’s worth looking into. First things first, I want to track down these letters. I want to know what computer or tablet they were sent from and then I want to trace their path to the computers at the White House. I’ll see if Dr. King can do anything for us there.”

  The soldier smiled. “If what I’ve heard of this Doctor is true at all, I have no doubts that she will be able to convince the humans to cooperate.”

  “You’re absolutely right there, my friend. You’re absolutely right.”

  9

  Alexandra

  The interns that I had brought to the meeting were proving to be quite useful. Young and fresh, they were buzzing about the meeting hall with an energy I would kill to be able to muster. We hauled in bags of evidence and spread it across every piece of furniture in the room. Everything lay in various stages of deconstruction. We hung the uniforms on a coat rack that someone found and put the guns, knives, and ammunition on tables.

  I felt some satisfaction from watching the ambassadors while they examined the pieces. The way they were engaging in the situation told me volumes about their personalities, and how seriously they were taking the situation. The older man who had been a pain in my ass since the start of this was squeamishly picking up the bloodied pieces of uniform and turning them over in his hands. Another ambassador, a woman in her forties was handling the weapons with confidence, even going so far as to aim them at the wall while she examined the sight. I decided that I liked her and made a mental note to follow up with her later.

  Knowing which ambassadors could be counted on to work through the problem and those who wanted to avoid it was going to come in handy. We hadn’t yet worked out whether or not this was an outside force pressing an attack and my observations served a double purpose. I fully expected to see reactions of fear, apprehension, or even anger. I was looking for the outlier. Apathy.

  While the ambassador-intern teams worked on the physical evidence, I had assigned another team to scour the intranet and internet for potential suppliers of the equipment. Thus far they had returned a few potential countries, China and Russia both among them, unsurprisingly. Before the event, both had been world powers and rapidly rising tensions were steep. Some had even been predicting a Third World War.

  I was mid-lecture to the diplomats when my phone vibrated. I excused myself and left the room, leaving the interns to the tasks I had assigned them. I checked the caller ID and saw that it was Jackson.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Doc.” A voice crackled over the line. “You busy?”

  “Am I busy? Why would I ever be busy at a time like this, Jackson?” I was fond of the Lt. Colonel, but he was not privy to the inner workings of diplomatic life. Freedom from obligation no longer existed. My waking moments were owned by the U.S. government, and most of my sleeping ones too. I had to admit that I was jealous that he got to go break down doors with guns blazing and I was stuck with mountains of red tape and formalities. The guns sounded way more fun. Then again, so did everything, compared to this.

  “No, of course not, David. Why would I be busy?” I tried to keep the edge of annoyance from my voice but failed. I didn’t mean to be short with him but it had been a very long day and it was far from over. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice.

  “You’ve got to hear this. Proctor and his goons were aware of the leaks. They’ve been sending reports to the President. Do you remember getting any emails about that? I certainly don’t. I’m down here with a team and we’re going to ransack the place to figure out who has been leaking this stuff.”

  “Great. Glad to hear it. Why are you calling me?”

  “I figure that you can get a hold of the President and find out why the hells she has been keeping this from us. Proctor says that she’s received each and every detail, but I have no way to prove it.” His voice faded as he moved the receiver away and said something to one of his soldiers.

  When he came back, he spoke more softly. “You should see this guy, Alex. He’s like a living shark. Creepy eyes and even creepier talk. Even Turuk didn’t freak me out this badly. Anyway, they’re saying that they think China might be the ones who stole the tech, but we don’t have a smoking gun just yet. Trust but verify, right?”

  “David, I don’t know what the heck you’ve been drinking with those new friends of yours but it’s not as if I can call up the President on a whim and demand information! Come on man, I've had a completely shit day as it is.”

  He laughed. “No, it’s not. I know that you are simply a government peon.” I stuck my tongue out at him, even though he couldn’t see it. “But I figure that’s exactly what you’ll do. I’ve worked with you long enough to know that you hate only one thing more than being a diplomat. Liars.”

  I mumbled a few choice curses under my breath. He was right. “Don’t you be leaving me holding the bag, Jackson. I expect regular updates, twice a day.”

  “You know I’ve got you, sister. We’ll be along with whatever we can give you as soon as we have it, all right?”

  “Mm. Bye Colonel. Don’t get killed.”

  He signed off. I put my phone back into my pocket and sighed. I absolutely hated to admit it but he was right. As I had volunteered to be the only senior diplomat to a very important nation, I, unfortunately, did have the power to call the President. She had been suitably cooperative so far, never impolite, always showing just the right amount of concern. To discover that she had been receiving reports of a sabotage attempt and hadn’t seen fit to tell us anything about it wasn’t particularly amusing.

  I peeked back into the room where the team I had chosen was working and saw that they had sketched out a chart on the whiteboard. I was happy to see that interns had managed to get the ambassadorial team engaged. Most of the group was out of their seats and participating in the discussion.

  I sat down at a desk and opened the program on my tablet for a video call.

  10

  Jackson

  Proctor sat in his office watching the entire conversation on a security feed. He was sure the pilot knew he would be monitored but was hoping to catch a few bits of information anyway. He tapped a button on his desk to turn up the audio. If the solider was concerned about e
avesdropping, he certainly didn’t show it. He was chatting away with the woman on the phone as if they were speaking in a private room. The security feed was turned up loud enough to hear what the woman on the other end of the call was saying and he cursed under his breath. Whoever the soldier was speaking to was obviously well connected to the situation. From his research, it was most likely the social worker. She was the only person who had been working with the aliens as long as he had.

  The bond between the doctor and the soldier was interesting. He wondered if they had been lovers in the past. Their rapport certainly suggested so. He could use that as a pressure point if needed. It was clear that both of them shared a mutual distrust in the government. From his interactions with the soldier, it was equally obvious that his mistrust extended to everyone outside of his circle of alien friends.

  Cady walked up behind him. “Do you really think she’ll call the President?”

  Without looking up from the feed Proctor replied. “Who cares? It will be trouble regardless. It won’t take them long to stop chasing their tails and start eliminating possibilities. We need to start leading them the other way, and quickly. Things are too far gone to let so-called diplomacy stand in our way now.”

  He sat with his chin resting on a hand, half watching the feed. As he listened to the conversation, his mind wandered. He had risen through the ranks of the company by one thing alone—he understood people. The problem was that these weren’t people. These were monsters, beasts straight from a horror movie. They were barely even worth acknowledging. He should have ordered them out of his facility the moment they arrived but doing so would have drawn too much attention. He hated the idea of them crawling through his facility and any humans who sympathized with them were just as disgusting.

  The ultimate goal was for him to be the only one with a spaceship, thus giving Proctor control over who was going to survive the apocalypse. It was the ultimate power. He could handpick who would be taken into space with him and charge whatever he wanted for the privilege. If the alien ship didn’t survive the process he would consider it a bonus, but it wasn’t essential. Let the lizards fight among themselves. The longer he could keep them out of the equation, the better.

  “I told you that attack was too risky.” Cady slapped his hand on the desk but Proctor didn’t flinch. “We were doing well working under the radar. Now we have a building crawling with lizard men and the full attention of the government. This is the epitome of fucked.”

  Proctor glanced towards his head of security. “It was worth it, if only for the shot at taking a hostage. Even without a high-profile captive, they’re too blind and too desperate to consider that this couldn’t have come from outside. A prisoner isn’t off the table. The soldier is an unlikely candidate but keep an eye on the woman. She is well entrenched with the President and nothing in her history suggests that she will be a problem to capture. If necessary, we can use her to exercise some leverage.”

  The soldier ended his conversation with the woman. He stared at the phone in confusion, not understanding why the social worker had been so abrupt with him. His body language shifted from tense to angry. Proctor shook his head. “Moron,” he muttered. He turned to his security chief.

  “Do we have any assets near the United Nations building? The woman isn’t stupid. Her next move will be to call the President or raise the alarm. Get me eyes on her.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cady said. He took a small tablet from a pocket and powered up a bug drone from a storage area in New York City. With a few taps on the screen, he sent the drone on its path to the United Nations. It settled on a branch outside the office Alex was sitting in and unfolded a small antenna. In Florida, both men stared as they saw that she indeed was calling the President.

  The audio on the small drone wasn’t nearly as sensitive as his in-house cameras but Proctor could make out just enough of the conversation to confirm his suspicions. What he heard wasn’t good.

  11

  Alexandra

  I was surprised to find myself nervous about making the call. Damn it, I had taught classes with hundreds of students and even shot an alien about to destroy the world. I had no reason to feel this jittery about a video call. Though I had spoken to the President on numerous occasions, I had never initiated the contact. Any dialogue we had was at her discretion. I found a vase to lean my tablet up against and dialed the White House.

  The call finished ringing and an aide popped up on the screen. He was a young man in his late twenties, dressed in a standard-issue government suit. There were probably twenty or so just like him in the President’s office at any given moment.

  “Hey, Jared, right?” I smiled. Knowing names was one of the easiest things to remember and frequently made the difference between getting what you want and not. This was especially true of any low-level workers in the White House. They worked in a world where they were largely ignored. Giving them special attention had worked miracles for me throughout this ordeal.

  “Hey, Ms. King,” Jared said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need you to get the lady in charge for me. I’m afraid it can’t wait.”

  “You got it, Doc.” He put me on hold for a moment. The break gave me the chance to second guess myself. I was about to accuse the highest authority in the country of lying. No matter how this conversation went, I was about to blow a serious amount of social capital.

  The President appeared on my screen. “Hello, Dr. King. What’s going on? Jared tells me that there’s something urgent you need to speak with me about.”

  I cut right to it. “Ma’am, were you briefed on the attack two days ago?”

  She blinked at my abrupt tone but composed herself quickly. “Yes, what a horrific tragedy. We’re so thankful that you’re all okay.” I thought of the soldiers who had been shot simply for sitting at their desks in the wrong uniforms and bit my tongue. “I’ve been told that you’re leading the investigation personally. What have you found so far?”

  I hesitated a moment. I was leading the investigation? Since when? I sighed. At least she was taking me seriously. I really should have been used to this government official stuff by now. “We’ve got piles of physical evidence. Uniforms, equipment, weapons, even basic forensics. Unfortunately for us, we don’t have anyone to interrogate. One of the military guys was a little overzealous and threw a grenade into the room. So we’re left with bits of bodies on top of it all. Thus far we haven’t been able to pull a lot from the objects we do have. These uniforms bear no resemblance to any country’s armed forces, that we can find. The weapons too are strange. They don’t appear to be street weapons, or any kind of weapons obtained illegally. They’re almost as if someone manufactured them specifically for this kind of operation—no serial numbers, no information. We’re having trouble even identifying what kind of guns they are.”

  The President nodded. “I truly hate to ask this of you Doctor, but are they…alien?”

  I felt the muscles in my right cheek twitch. The nice-girl act was starting to wear very thin. “What makes you say that, Madam President?”

  “Nothing at all, I was just thinking. Please continue.” Bullshit.

  “So far, they appear to be an array of bleeding-edge specially engineered weapons, though we cannot rule out the involvement or influence of alien tech. Lt. Colonel Jackson has taken a team of soldiers to Florida to meet with the head of AstroTech. Shortly before I contacted you I received details from him that information has been leaking from the site of the human ship for months. The CEO there informs us that he has been filing regular reports with you, so I’m sure you’re apprised of what’s been going on.”

  Her gaze shuttered. Found the lie. “I’m afraid I haven’t, Doctor. I certainly have been trying to keep myself up to date on how the construction of the ship is progressing, but I’m afraid I haven’t had communications from Jesse Proctor or any other of the executives from the site in quite a while.” Talk about obvious. No one could be the President of the Unite
d States and remain this ignorant for this long.

  I turned my expression of disbelief into one of concern. “Ah, no matter. Perhaps one of your staff has been managing the communications on your behalf. I can only imagine the number of things you have to balance at once. The short version is that we think that one of the more restrictive countries might be involved—most likely China. There isn’t a lot of evidence to suggest that the Chinese government was involved in this attack, but the sophistication of the equipment points to potential manufacturing or purchasing in the country. It is also entirely possible the attack was privately funded.”

  The President opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. Gotcha “That’s unfortunate,” she responded, distracted.

  “Regardless of who is responsible for this, we have a major problem. Among the equipment recovered from the attack site were two particle beam weapons. Truthfully, they’re more like cannons. These things did an extensive amount of damage to both yours and Ka’thak’s troops during the battle. I am to understand that they are responsible for the deaths of at least a dozen soldiers, human and alien. Lt. Colonel Jackson brought one of these guns to AstroTech in Florida and I have one here with me. The colonel was informed personally by Mr. Proctor that this weapon is the result of leaking alien technology. I’m sorry, Madam President, but I must ask again. Were you informed of this at all? If you were, in any capacity, it would have been very useful for us to know.”

  The President looked away from the screen for a moment. I was struck by how young she looked. Before the event she was one of the youngest people elected President, coming into office on her thirty-seventh birthday. We were of similar age and I had never experienced a fraction of the responsibility this woman bore on her shoulders every day. I had sympathy for her situation, but we needed her to step up.