Invaded

by Jennifer M. Eaton

  They stared at her. Clark folded his arms. “Your name?” he said, more insistently.

  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. A slow exhale calmed her enough to form a coherent thought. “Tracy. My name is Tracy Seavers.” Good. She knew her name. Everything would be fine now. Peeking out at them from beneath her bangs, she eased out another breath.

  Clark nodded. “That’s correct.” He turned to the guy in khakis. “We can take it from here. Keep a guard by the door.”

  The lieutenant nodded and placed the gun in his holster.

  Tracy swallowed the ball building in her throat as he disappeared behind the curtain. “So you knew my name already? What is all this?”

  Green tilted his head. “What is the last thing you remember, Miss Seavers?”

  She glared at Clark. “Other than being tortured?”

  “Before that,” the younger, kinder-looking agent said.

  Her pulse throbbed within her ears. “I don’t know.” She lifted her head from the pillow. “Please tell me what’s going on.”

  “First things first. What is the last thing you remember before being brought here?”

  More questions. She shouldn’t have been surprised. The younger one may have looked kinder, but he wasn’t. He was with the maniac calling the shots. For all she knew, Green was one of the people flipping switches while they electrocuted her.

  Tracy closed her eyes and took another steadying breath. She wanted to rip these guys apart and claw her way out of this nightmare, but tied down, her options were limited.

  They weren’t asking much of her. She only needed to tell them where she was last. She could do that.

  Couldn’t she?

  Clenching her jaw, she wracked her brain. She certainly didn’t remember anyone bringing her to this god-forsaken place. What was she doing before this?

  She’d had breakfast with Laini. Then they went to work together like any other day. They got into the car and…

  Biting her lip, she opened her eyes. “We were driving on 295, heading to work. We got a flat tire. Laini never changed a flat, so I got out of the car and…” And then what? The next thing she could remember was stumbling up to her front door and being carted away by men with guns. In-between there was nothing.

  The agents’ blank expressions crept inside, causing the hair on her arms to lift.

  “That was over two weeks ago,” Clark said.

  She jolted, but the restraints kept her close to the mattress. “I couldn’t have been unconscious that long. What happened? Where’s Laini?”

  Green raised a hand. “Your roommate was treated for lacerations and whiplash and then released.”

  Laini had been released, but not Tracy. Tracy came here. To be tortured.

  She settled back onto the pillow, feeling the weight of the unspoken elephant of a secret pressing against her chest.

  Clark fiddled with his sleeve. “Technically, Miss Seavers, you were not unconscious. You were in a state of transition.”

  The pressure shifted to her stomach. “Transition?”

  Green glanced at Clark, then to Tracy. “You’ve only been in this facility for a week. You were missing for eight days, then you showed up at home, unexpectedly. I’m told you gave your roommate quite a fright.”

  Laini’s wide, shocked eyes fizzled up from somewhere deep within. She’d dropped her drink to the floor. A faint sheen hung over the memory, as if watching TV through dirty glasses. “I went home. Where was I before?” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I don’t remember anything.”

  Clark motioned to the younger agent. “I’ve heard enough to clear her. Let’s get those restraints off.”

  Agent Green unclasped the buckles. She rubbed the red indents the straps left on her skin and eyed the handle of Green’s gun peeking out from beneath his jacket. She had a bad feeling she wasn’t walking out of this hospital any time soon.

  But she felt fine, like waking up after a good night’s sleep. What could possibly be wrong with her? Had she been delirious? Imagined being tortured?

  A thread of her dark hair fell into her eyes. She looked through it, not wanting to stop massaging her raw wrists. “Are either of you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  Clark dragged the chair up beside the bed and sat. He twiddled his thumbs before raising his gaze. An odd expression crossed his features, a combination of disgust and caution.

  He straightened. “When you got out of your car, you were hit by an eighteen-wheel tractor trailer traveling at seventy-two miles per hour.”

  Her forehead dampened as she fisted the cool bedrails. “That’s bull.”

  “Your body was thrown over the embankment, landing in a construction site twenty-six-feet below the highway.” His neck tensed. “The doctors surmise that you probably broke most of your ribs. X-rays show that your lungs were punctured in seventeen places.”

  Gaping, she ran her hands over the thin, striped hospital gown covering her chest and held up her arms. “Look at me. If that was two weeks ago, I’d be in traction.”

  Clark smirked. “You’d be dead.”

  The air seemed to suck from the room.

  “But you said I went home.” And maybe she had.

  There were trees.

  Dogs barking.

  She had to get away from them.

  They’d hurt her if they found her.

  But it wasn’t the dogs that she’d been afraid of.

  Tracy glanced at Agent Clark. Somehow, even then, she’d known there was something terribly wrong. She’d stumbled through the woods for days, hiding under bushes and finally making it to the one place she thought she’d be safe. Home.

  Clark stared back at her, his face a mask of incredulity compared to Green’s attentive eyes.

  Her sigh stole the silence from the room. “I remember just bits and pieces. Like flashes.”

  Green reached for her hand, but she recoiled before he touched her. His gaze darted to Clark, then back to her. “Spotty memory lapse is normal.”

  Normal for what? The elephant in the room had inflated to blimp-size. No one wakes in a hospital with no doctors. No one. Maybe this wasn’t even a hospital.

  And maybe these guys weren’t cops. They’d called themselves agents. But agents of what?

  She re-gripped the bedrails. She could run again, but even if she got past these two, she’d never get away. Not with the itchy-trigger-fingered lieutenant outside.

  Clark’s eyes narrowed. “You were pronounced dead by an off-duty EMT who witnessed the crash.”

  She froze, gaping.

  He drew a small tablet out of his jacket and showed Tracy an aerial picture of a bloody body wearing her favorite pants suit. One of Tracy’s pink loafers lay in the sand to the right, almost out of the picture.

  Oh shit.

  “The EMT made his way up the embankment to help your friend.” He showed another photo of Laini with a bandage on her head. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Your body went missing before the coroner arrived.”

  Her gaze darted from the tablet to the stoic agent. “What?”

  Clark tapped his knuckle on his lower lip. “There is a moment before a person dies when the brain gives up and realizes it’s over. At that moment, the human mind becomes susceptible.”

  A pause hung in the air, sucking all other thoughts from her mind. “Susceptible to what?”

  Agent Green shifted in his seat as the older agent stood and walked toward the window.

  Leaning against the glass, his eyes trained on something outside, Clark continued: “Seventeen years ago, the United States government entered into an accord with a race of non-corporeal beings we call Ambients. The accord gives them asylum in our country, and the right to take human hosts whose bodies are beyond repair.”

  He turned, his gaze lancing Tracy. She sat frozen, waiting for the punchline.

  She glanced at Agent Green, hoping to see a smile on his face, but his lips formed a line, his expression unreadable.

 
Clark took a deep breath. “Initial scans proved positive. You are now an Ambient host.”

  Tracy seized her knees through the covers. This couldn’t be happening. “I don’t believe you. That’s ridiculous. Things like that aren’t real.”

  The older agent inclined his head. “Denial is also normal. That’s why we are here, to try to assist with the last phases of transition.”

  Transition into what? Things like this only happened in the movies or in books. None of this made sense.

  “The Ambient Custodial Division of Homeland Security monitors every hospital in the United States, watching for miraculous recoveries. Your case has been on our radar screen since news of your body’s sudden disappearance hit the web. After all, a corpse can’t leave an accident scene on its own.”

  She clutched her legs tighter. “So, they made a mistake. Obviously, I wasn’t dead.”

  “Ms. Seavers, no one can explain why you are alive right now with holes in your lungs, or how half the bones in your body reset without the help of an army of medical practitioners. You got up and walked away from an accident scene.”

  She panted as if she’d run up a flight of stairs. “So, I’m a fast healer. That doesn’t mean there’s something inside me. Joke’s up. I want to go home.”

  She grabbed the bedrails and shook, trying to lower them. Clark gently nudged her back down to the mattress. Not like she put up that much of a fight.

  “There is nothing for you to worry about at this point, Miss Seavers.” Agent Green stood. “Most entities are benign. Many hosts barely even recognize there is something inside them.”

  Something inside them—something inside me.

  Wait a minute. The blankets crinkled in her clutched fists. “Most are benign? What does that mean?”

  Clark held up a hand before Green could answer. “That’s enough for today.”

  “Enough for today?” She sat up again. “You can’t tell me there is some kind of parasite inside me and expect me to just accept it.”

  “No, not completely. Right now, we need you to digest what we’ve told you. We’ll explain more tomorrow.” He looked past the curtain. “Doctor Morris?”

  Tomorrow? Was he out of his mind? “Screw tomorrow. I want answers now.”

  A man with wild, gray hair and a lab coat moved into the room. Tracy balked when the light from the window fell on the syringe he held at his side.

  “Now wait a goddamn minute!”

  She pushed away from the bed. Clark and Green were on her before she could protest further, forcing her back onto the mattress. The burn crept through her skin before she felt the needle.

  The room wavered, and they released her.

  The gray-haired man shined a light in her eyes. “You are a lucky girl,” he whispered.

  Clark’s voice muffled through the growing hum in the room. “Your findings so far, Doctor?”

  Her vision clouded as the man scratched his long, messy hair. “We’ve seen no signs of aggression, even after the extensive stimulation you ordered.” He cleared his throat.

  Stimulation? Was that the electrocution? The water pouring over her face? The sirens blaring in her ears? God, had she imagined any of that?

  “The Ambient is very strong, but benign.” The doctor became a blur. “It must have been desperate to conscribe someone with injuries this extensive.”

  “Meaning?” Green asked.

  “I’m not sure the patient will ever fully heal, even with the Ambient’s help. There was too much damage to her internal organs.”

  “We’ll have to explain her options tomorrow.”

  Options?

  Agent Green leaned down, squinting as he looked into her eyes. Darkness crept in from all sides, hiding all but the agent’s concerned expression before fading to nothing.

  7

  John leaned on the steering wheel and stared at the front door of 355 Spruce Street. The conservative split-level rancher seemed quiet, as it was every night. There was no sign of the welcome home banners Tracy Seavers’s mother had purchased on her credit card three days ago. Whatever the government had been feeding Mama Seavers and the roommate, Laini Hanson, must have been enough to give them hope.

  But the bastards already had Tracy for a week. That was four days more than they’d kept John, and more time than they needed for their psychotic shock tests.

  John’s stomach tightened in an otherworldly grip. His hands spasmed as if he could feel the electrical charges surging through Tracy Seavers’s body.

  He shivered. The memory was too new, even five years later. If John hadn’t been tied down, he’d have electrocuted a few doctors’ asses and seen how they liked it. The pricks.

  And to think that they might be doing that again, to an innocent woman—but why would they keep her for so long?

  His gut turned to stone.

  “Don’t even think that,” he whispered.

  There was no reason to dwell on the worst. If Seavers was a host, and the Ambient fought back, proving it was strong enough to do harm to a human being, the creature would have been executed, and the mother and roommate would probably be planning Tracy’s funeral.

  It was all one big, autocratic mess.

  The more John thought about the day he’d woken up, tied to a table, the more he wondered, had those guys hoped for a fight?

  Why torture a creature they were supposed to protect under the accord?

  A disposable coffee cup appeared in front of his window, blocking John’s view of Seavers’s house. John rolled down the window and snatched the cup from his partner’s hand.

  Art walked to the passenger side and got in. “I know I ain’t half the detective you are, but it didn’t take much for me to figure out I’d find you here.”

  “You always told me I was predictable.”

  “Yeah, but it’s usually in a good way.”

  “Meaning?” John took a sip of his coffee. There wasn’t enough creamer.

  “Meaning the Worth investigation isn’t going well. You admitted it yourself.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “What you don’t know, or are just plain ignoring, is that you’re not a hundred percent with me on this one.”

  And what Art didn’t know was that John lay staring at the ceiling at night, kept awake by visions of a beautiful brunette screaming. How could he focus, knowing what that poor girl was going through? But his partner was right. He really wasn’t as sharp as he should be.

  Art turned, placing his elbow on the dash. “They found the Seavers girl. She’s not our problem anymore.”

  John set his cup into the coffee holder between the seats. “I know that. It’s just…” The boulder in his stomach twitched, poking his ribs. “It’s complicated.”

  Art pursed his lips, enhancing the deep lines in his face. “I ain’t gonna get all fatherly on you, but you know I’m here if you need to talk, right?”

  John sighed. He wished he could talk to Art. He wished he could talk to anyone. But who would believe what he’d been through?

  The mass in his gut splintered and bubbled up into his chest. John rubbed his sternum and fought back a smile.

  “Any chance you gonna tell me what’s so funny?” Art asked.

  John let his smile burst free. “Just that when you’re right, you’re right.” He turned on the engine. “Seavers will turn up eventually, and we’ll get our answers then.”

  Art folded his arms. “And?”

  “And until then, Diana Worth is the only woman in my life. I swear.”

  8

  Tracy tapped her plastic fork on the edge of her melamine plate. The ten cubes of yellow gelatin they’d given her for breakfast rolled through her stomach like frozen dice.

  What was going on at home? What did they tell her mother? Laini? Work?

  She straightened. The promotion interview was today.

  She had to get out of here!

  Wait. Not today.

  Her appointment was two weeks ago. She�
��d missed it.

  All that hard work practicing interview questions with Laini, shot to shit.

  Tracy rubbed her face. She’d missed her birthday, too. She’d been unconscious. Missing. And to top it all off, Jason broke up with her on the phone. Asshole.

  Tracy groaned, pushed aside the remainder of her gelatin, and rested on her folded arms. This had to go down in the record books as the worst birthday week—or weeks—of her life.

  She rubbed the back of her neck and shivered. What did any of that matter? There was something inside her. The whole idea was almost impossible to get her head around, but as more of her memories came flooding to the surface, something seemed off.

  She ran her hands over her lap. A little over a week ago she’d stumbled up to her front door, dizzy and hurt. She’d been hit by a truck a week before that, but now there was barely a bruise on her.

  She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. No one at the hospital would speak to her past a grunt or two. The guy in the lab coat ignored her questions while he took his readings this morning. So far, no one even hinted at being the person who would “explain more tomorrow,” as she’d been promised.

  Was it worse than they thought? Was she going to die anyway? Or did they find out it was all a mistake?

  Or maybe they had no intention of letting her go. Maybe they were going to study her to find out more about this thing inside her. Maybe…

  Her heartbeat pulsed in her ears. Tracy took in a slow, deep breath. She needed to keep calm. They said they’d come. For now, she had to believe that.

  She covered her mouth and yawned. Whatever they’d given her had knocked her out for the entire night. When she woke, she slipped into the jeans and T-shirt she found on the table beside her bed: not her own, but a perfect fit, oddly enough.

  After Dr. Morris checked her blood pressure and flashed the light in her eyes, he okayed her to walk around, which equated to exploring two hallways of locked doors that formed a circle opening to the unadorned common room where she sat now.

  A single white-clad guard stood sentry at the nearest exit, with another stationed at the exit leading to the other hallway. Both doors, she’d learned, led back to her room. Pushing her tray to the edge of the table, she paced the shiny, gray tiles before sinking into a plush orange couch opposite a television the size of Montana mounted on the wall.