by Ken Warner
“I’ll be back in a little while,” she said. “We can grab some food and head out to Alien Alley.”
“See you then!”
Sydney went out to visit the Johnsons. She told them everything she’d learned from her medical exams, and they updated her about theirs.
“The MRI scans showed holes in our thigh bones, too,” said Mr. Johnson. “But they didn’t turn up anything else unusual.”
Sydney told them about the tiny incisions in her abdomen and thigh.
“Our doctor didn’t find anything like that,” said Mrs. Johnson. “But we’ll have to take a look ourselves and see what we can find.”
Sydney shared her experience with the hypnotist, too, and told them about their plans to track a UFO from Route 23.
“We wish you luck, but be careful out there,” said Mr. Johnson. “And please let us know what you find out!”
Sydney drove back to the trailer to pick up Miguel. They stopped to eat at the diner and then headed out to the Driscoll homestead.
“Hello again,” said Sydney when Mrs. Driscoll came to the door. “We’re back!”
“Oh hello, I’m sorry, what was your name again?”
“Sydney,” she said.
“What is it I can do for you, Sydney?”
“Well, as you know, this area has seen quite a lot of UFO activity. We’re hoping to track them, so we need a base of operations, I guess you could say. Now, we don’t want to draw their attention in any way. So, I was wondering if we could park in your driveway?”
“Yes, sure,” she said. “Feel free to camp out on the property if you’d like. We own the land on this side of the road for a thousand feet in either direction from the house—got about two hundred acres all told.”
“That’s wonderful, thank you!” said Sydney.
“Hang on; I’ll let Owen know you’re here,” she said. “I’m sure he’d want to be involved if that’s alright with you?”
“Yes, of course!”
Sydney went back to the car and pulled farther into the driveway. Owen came outside to meet them, his drone in hand.
“Hey there,” said Miguel, getting out of the car.
Sydney told Owen what they were planning on doing.
“How’d your boss get access to the radar network?” he said.
“I’ve learned not to ask,” said Sydney. “His company does computer and internet security, and he’s done a lot of work for the government over the years…”
“Ah, so he probably left himself some back doors to get into their networks,” Owen said knowingly.
“Yeah, it’s something like that, I’m sure,” Sydney agreed.
“My drone is fully charged, too, so we can try to get up close and get some footage with that,” Owen told them.
“Yeah, that would be great,” said Sydney. “My boss tried enhancing the video from the last time I was here, but it was so foggy, it was impossible to see much.”
They set up a few lawn chairs in the far end of the yard, near the cornfields, where they hoped not to stand out. And they waited, all eyes focused on the sky.
Sydney noted a couple of satellites moving by, and they saw a few shooting stars. Every once in a while, a car would drive by on the road. But after a few hours, they had not seen anything that looked like it might be a UFO.
As midnight came and went, Sydney found herself growing drowsy.
“Couple of times per month you see something?” she asked Owen.
“Yeah, about like that. It’s not so regular—I’ve seen them come through three nights in a row, and then not again for a month. But twice a month seems like the average.”
By two o’clock, Sydney was having great difficulty keeping her eyes open.
“Why don’t we call it a night,” suggested Miguel. “We can come back out tomorrow night again. We’ll have to get ourselves onto a third shift kind of schedule, I think.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she said.
They said goodnight to Owen and drove back to Miguel’s trailer. The two of them went straight to bed, and Sydney fell asleep within minutes.
The next night, they returned to the Driscoll’s place, and this time made it until half-past three in the morning, still without seeing anything interesting. The night after that, they stayed up until nearly six o’clock before calling it quits.
“Well, it’s nearly dawn now,” said Miguel, as they drove away. “We shouldn’t have any trouble staying up all night going forward.”
They kept it up for the next two nights, staying up the entire night without seeing more than a few satellites and some shooting stars.
On the sixth night after their arrival, a few minutes after midnight, Sydney pointed out a satellite to the other two.
“I don’t see it,” said Miguel.
“Oh, I do!” said Owen. “It’s there, a little to the right of Rigel!”
“That might help if I knew which one was Rigel…”
“The bright one at the bottom of Orion,” Sydney told him.
“Ah, yeah, there it is,” said Miguel.
Sydney heard a motor and then saw headlights approaching.
“Whoa—what the hell was that?” Miguel yelled suddenly.
“What did I miss?” asked Sydney, looking skyward again and trying to locate the satellite they’d been watching.
“Get ready,” Owen told them. “That’s usually how it starts!”
“What’s how it starts?” Sydney demanded.
“That satellite we were watching turned into something more like a shooting star,” Miguel told her.
“Where is it now?”
“Look—see that bright star there in the west?” said Owen. “Brighter than Venus—that ain’t no star. I’m pretty sure that’s our UFO!”
Sydney searched the western sky and saw the light immediately.
“That’s gotta be it,” she said. “It’s almost as bright as the moon!”
She called Brian.
“We’ve got something out here,” she said when he picked up.
“Okay, hang on,” he said.
“It’s getting closer,” she said. “Hurry!”
“Okay, logging into the radar network… now,” Brian told her. “Setting your location… Oh, my! There’s something there, alright!”
“It’s moving,” said Miguel. “It’s going for that car!”
Sydney watched the light grow closer; she was sure he was right. It was headed directly toward the vehicle she’d seen moments before.
“I’m putting the drone in the air,” Owen said. He picked up the remote control. Moments later, the drone’s rotors whirred into motion, and it took off from the yard.
Sydney watched as the UFO approached the car. Dark clouds had gathered around it, filling only a small area of the sky. It had moved much closer, and she could now make out a ring of lights on its underside.
“The driver’s realized what’s happening,” said Miguel.
Sure enough, the car had accelerated, but as Sydney watched, it turned onto the same dirt road she’d used right before her abduction.
“This is it,” she said. “It’s gonna get whoever that is!”
They lost sight of the vehicle but could see its headlights moving through the cornfield for a few moments longer. But then the lights went out, and everything went silent.
The UFO came to rest, floating eerily in the sky.
“I can only see the underside of the thing,” said Sydney.
“Me, too,” said Miguel. “The top part is shrouded in them clouds!”
“I’m taking the drone in closer,” Owen told them. “I’ll see if I can get it up above the thing.”
Suddenly a bright spotlight shone down from the center of the UFO. A moment later, they could see a figure rising inside the light and then disappearing inside the ship.
“They got ’em,” Miguel said.
“Get ready,” Sydney told Brain over the phone. “They’ve got their victim, so it’s gonna start
moving again soon.”
“I’m ready,” said Brian.
A moment later, the UFO took off, roughly to the southeast. It had moved faster than anything Sydney had ever seen, streaking across the night sky like a shooting star.
“Whoa!” said Owen.
“What the hell,” Brian said in her ear. “Where did it go?”
“Southeast,” Sydney told him.
“I can’t find it. It just disappeared from the radar. I’m tracking wider now, out to three hundred miles, but I’ve got nothing.”
Owen brought his drone back.
“Let’s go check out the scene of the crime,” said Miguel.
“I’ll call you right back,” said Sydney, closing her phone.
They went across the road and moved down the dirt road. But after going farther down the road than the vehicle had, they found nothing.
“Where the hell did the car go?” asked Owen.
Sydney used her phone to shine some light on the scene.
“No tire tracks here,” said Miguel. “We’ve come too far.”
They backtracked a bit and found where the tire tracks ended, but there was no vehicle in sight.
“This is very strange,” Miguel observed. “I didn’t find a car out here during your abduction, either,” he added to Sydney.
“Check this out,” said Owen. “I’ve got the drone footage on my phone.”
They gathered around him and watched the display.
The video showed the ring of lights on the UFO's bottom and the dark clouds gathering around it. As the drone moved closer, its point of view moved higher until it was looking down on the UFO—or where the UFO should have been.
“I don’t see anything through the clouds,” said Sydney.
“Hang on a second,” said Own. “You’re not gonna believe this.”
Suddenly, there was a break in the clouds. The drone was looking down, and through the opening in the clouds, they could see a human form rising through the air and the vehicle down on the ground.
“Now, hold on,” said Miguel. “Are we looking right through the UFO at this point?”
“Sure would seem so,” said Owen.
“How the hell is that possible?” asked Sydney. “We were able to see the bottom of the thing!”
A few moments later, the UFO’s spotlight went out, and everything went dark in the video. Then, they could make out the dirt road and surrounding cornfield.
“That’s it,” said Owen. “I stopped the video there.”
Chapter Eighteen: Mystery Meeting
They drove back to the trailer. Sydney was exhausted but called Brian to update him before going to bed.
“I think we should try again,” he said. “Not right away, though. Why don’t you two take a few days off and get some R and R.”
“What good would it do to try this again if the thing is moving too fast to track?” she asked.
“Well, based on your experience, and Miguel’s, we have good reason to believe their bunker is somewhere near Monument Valley,” he said. “And we know the UFO you saw tonight did move off in that direction. If I set myself up with some radar installations in that area, then next time, we may be able to pick the thing up again, even if we lose it as we did here.”
“Makes sense,” said Sydney.
“Get some sleep. It’ll take me a while to get that set up.”
Sydney hung up and told Miguel what they’d discussed.
“We’ll want to make damn sure he’s got those other radar stations ready to go before we try it again,” he said. “Who knows how long it’ll take to get another sighting. Don’t want it to be a wasted effort.”
“Agreed,” said Sydney.
They went to bed, and Sydney was asleep the moment her head hit the pillow.
She woke up a little after two o’clock in the afternoon. Miguel was already up. After a quick shower, she got dressed, and they drove to the diner for a late breakfast.
“I’m getting fat eating so much greasy food all the time,” said Sydney.
“I don’t think so,” he replied. “But truth be told, you could use a little meat on your bones.”
Her phone chimed. She picked it up and saw that she’d received an e-mail. It was from a service called “Asfalis,” that offered “end-to-end e-mail encryption” and indicated that she’d received a secure message from one of their users. But to receive the message, she had to register for an account.
Sydney thought this was probably spam, but she texted Brian a screenshot just to confirm.
“That’s a legit e-mail service,” he replied. “I’d suggest you register for an account and see what the message might be.”
Sydney followed the link and set up an account. Next, she had to download their app on her phone and enter the login credentials she’d just created. Once she’d done that, she was finally able to access the encrypted message.
The user who had sent it was listed only as “C.B.” It contained a set of coordinates, a time, and the message, “Come alone.”
Sydney plugged the coordinates into her maps app. It was a point in Colorado, just west of Colorado Springs. She called Brian and told him about the message.
“Who is C.B.?” he asked.
“No idea.”
“Those coordinates are in Colorado…”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.”
“What’s with this mail service?” Sydney asked. “I thought this phone was totally secure?”
“Oh, it is,” Brian confirmed. “But that just means your connection to the cell tower or Wi-Fi hotspot is fully encrypted and that you cannot be tracked. But, if you’re using a normal e-mail service, it would still be possible for someone to intercept a message between your e-mail account and the other party’s. That service guarantees that the message is secure and encrypted from your device all the way to the other party’s, and cannot be deciphered at any point in between.”
“Okay…”
“This tells us that whoever sent you this message wanted to be extremely cautious to make sure that nobody but you could read the message.”
“Whoever it is wants me at those coordinates at two in the morning, two days from now. Should I go?”
He paused for a moment.
“Yes, I think so. But you should not go alone. See if Miguel is willing to accompany you. Perhaps he won’t go all the way, but I would have him standing by somewhere close, just in case.”
Sydney hung up.
“What was that all about?” Miguel asked.
Sydney explained.
“I don’t like it,” he said, shaking his head. “We have no way of knowing who this is. What if it’s that man in black, or someone working with him?”
“That doesn’t seem likely, does it? I mean, it’s not his style. He just shows up and climbs buildings and shit. I don’t see him setting up a clandestine meeting like this.”
“That’s a fair point,” he conceded. “But I still don’t like it. This could be dangerous.”
“As opposed to chasing UFOs, which is completely risk-free?”
“Yeah, yeah. Well, those coordinates are about four hours away. And they’re a bit of a hike from the nearest road. So, we’re gonna have to set out plenty early.”
“Does that mean you’re going with me?” she asked with a grin.
“Obviously, I’m going with you!”
Two days later, they hit the road in Miguel’s truck after dinner. They took Interstate 70 most of the way and then a state road through Colorado Springs. Once through the city, their route took them up into the mountains. Finally, Miguel pulled into the parking lot for a scenic overlook. They got out and took in the vista before them, awash in the light of a nearly full moon.
“This is as close as we can get by road,” he said. “Them coordinates are out yonder,” he added, pointing out toward the mountains.
“There’s a path at the end of the lot,” said Sydney, looking at the maps app on her phone. “It looks like that�
��s going to be the best way over there.”
“Alright, I’ll stay here and keep an eye out for ya,” he said, pulling her into a hug.
“This says it’s a twenty-minute hike,” she told him. “Maybe if you don’t see me coming back in forty minutes, come and see if you can find me?”
“Of course.”
Sydney set out down the trail. Now that they were here, she felt anxious about this and wondered if it was such a good idea after all. But she forged ahead.
The path led her down into the valley at first, before climbing again. It wasn’t too steep, and she made good time. But before long, she realized she no longer had cell service. The maps app had cached her route, and the GPS was still working, but she would be unable to call for help. This only increased her anxiety.
As the path went around a curve, it seemed to end at the entrance to a cave. This hadn’t been visible from their vantage point in the parking lot.
Sydney looked around for a way to keep going forward without moving underground—a trail that led up and over the entrance, perhaps. But the rock walls on each side of the path were nearly sheer, and there was no way to climb over. She would have to backtrack and then leave the trail to find a way up there.
In the end, she decided to try going inside the cave first. She figured that meeting underground matched this mystery person’s M.O. perfectly.
Sydney moved into the cave.
The moonlight penetrated only a few feet inside. She needed the flashlight on her phone to see beyond that. After about a hundred feet, the cave opened into a vast subterranean cavern, at least a few hundred feet across, and more than three times her height. She found the coordinates from the message were located roughly in the center of this area. Once she’d arrived there, she turned slowly, taking in her surroundings. Stalactites and stalagmites filled much of the space, and many were more than wide enough to conceal a person.
“Hello?” she called out and shivered when she heard her voice echoing off the rock.
There was nobody here.
She was about fifteen minutes early, so she decided to wait. But the time went by, and still, nobody showed up. After another fifteen minutes, her anxiety had transformed into outright fear, and she decided to head back.