by S. A. Beck
Jaxon stopped. She stood within the shadow of a tree and knew that with them standing next to the light, it would be hard for them to spot her. She watched, unsure, and with a pounding heart tried to figure out exactly what was happening.
The car was obviously the woman’s, a beat-up old Nissan that looked ten years old. Baldy and Paunchy looked too well off to be driving something like that. In fact, Jaxon thought she recognized Baldy. Hadn’t she seen him drive past on that very same street? That was probably his house they were struggling in front of.
“Give me what you owe me!” the woman said.
“Come on baby, one for the road?” Paunchy said as Baldy giggled.
Each of them had grabbed one of her arms, and they were pulling her back and forth as she tried to break free. Even with two against one, the woman was holding her own.
“Let’s take her back to the house,” Baldy said, giggling again.
“You want extra, you got to pay for extra, and you got to pay for what you already had.”
“We’re going to get extra and not pay you at all, you cheap bit of tail,” Paunchy said.
Jaxon tensed. A prostitute and two rough customers.
The two men, both old enough to be the prostitute’s father, started dragging her across the lawn and back to the house.
Rage rose up within Jaxon. She remembered her foster father, Mr. Spencer, the one whose wrist she had to break to keep him from touching her. She remembered the rude calls from the men driving past the previous night. She remembered all the unwelcome looks and jokes and hints from all the pushy guys she’d ever met.
Making sure her hood was up and that it obscured her features, she strode across the lawn.
Baldy saw her first. He stared at her for a moment, half frightened at being discovered and half annoyed to have someone interrupt his fun, and then he called out in a snide voice, “Hey, girl, you want to join the party?”
Paunchy snickered. Jaxon guessed both were drunk.
“Let her go,” Jaxon demanded, still approaching them.
The prostitute took one look at her and shouted, “Kid, get out of here. They’ll hurt you!”
Baldy giggled again—What is it with the giggles? Jaxon wondered—and then said, “Hurt you? Oh no, we won’t hurt you. Come on inside. You’re going to like this.”
With that, he pushed the prostitute into Paunchy’s arms and walked toward Jaxon, leering.
Jaxon took a final two steps and slugged him.
In her rage, she forgot to hold back, perhaps never even wanted to. She was beyond thinking, she was only feeling, and her feelings went from anger to shock as she saw Baldy spin around like a top, blood spurting from his mouth, and collapse at her feet.
He lay there, moaning, his jaw set at an unnatural angle.
Jaxon froze, completely stunned. Had she done that?
“Jesus Christ!” Paunchy cried, letting go of the prostitute. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a clasp knife. The prostitute backed away as the light from the car gleamed on four inches of sharp steel.
The sight snapped Jaxon out of it. Marquis had trained her in a couple of techniques to use on a knife-wielding opponent.
Stopping him proved ridiculously easy. Paunchy came at her in a clumsy fashion, waving the blade back and forth and obviously thinking that a teenage girl would squeal and plead for mercy at the sight of a knife. It hadn’t gotten through his alcoholic haze that she had just flattened his friend and wasn’t retreating an inch.
As he got within reach, Jaxon grabbed his wrist with her right hand and pressed her left forearm against his elbow. The pressure kept him from moving his arm, and she didn’t even need to use her extra strength to bring him down to the ground. He ended up flat on his face, with his arm still pinioned between her knee and her forearm as she knelt beside him.
“Let me go!” he squawked.
“Quiet,” Jaxon growled, looking around to make sure they weren’t being watched. The prostitute had recovered quickly. She had gone over to where Baldy lay groaning and bleeding on the ground, pulled his wallet out of his pocket, and removed the money.
“Payment in full,” she grumbled, tossing the wallet at him.
She strolled over to Jaxon.
“Thanks, girl. What are you going to do with this guy?” she asked.
Jaxon looked from him to her and back again.
“Depends. What were they going to do to you?”
“Come on. You ain’t that young. What do you think? The reason I left was because after the usual stuff, they wanted some things that even I don’t do. Turns out, they didn’t want to take no for an answer.”
“Things? What things?”
“Nothing you need to know about, girl,” the prostitute said, her voice laden with disgust.
Jaxon scowled at the helpless man on the ground. What would disgust a prostitute? She decided she didn’t want to try to figure that out.
With a snarl, she pressed down on his elbow and heard it snap. Paunchy wailed in pain.
Jaxon stood up, feeling lightheaded.
“You better go,” Jaxon told the woman.
A light came on in the house across the street.
“You too,” the woman said. “And thanks.”
They hurried across the lawn together, Jaxon headed for home and the prostitute headed for her car.
“What’s your name?” Jaxon asked.
“Candy.”
“No, I mean your real name.”
“Melissa, not that anyone ever cared. They started calling me Candy at the group home.”
Something in Jaxon’s stomach turned and went cold.
“What’s your name?” the prostitute asked.
Jaxon paused. “Malkia.”
“Cool name. What does it mean?”
“It’s Swahili for ‘queen.’”
The prostitute smiled. “Cool.”
A black girl at one of her old group homes had taught it to her. For some reason, Jaxon felt it fit.
“Take care of yourself,” Jaxon told her. With that, Jaxon turned away and disappeared into the darkness.
Chapter 8
JUNE 19, 2016, THE DESERT JUST OUTSIDE YUMA, ARIZONA
8:30 PM
Otto and the others sat around a large campfire at the center of the parked vehicles. Rocks and a couple of coolers served as seats. A few of the Tohono O’odham were on sentry duty up on the hilltops, but otherwise everyone had assembled for a big meeting. After much discussion and debate, Dr. Yamazaki had been allowed to attend too.
A couple of the Tohono O’odham were roasting rabbits on a spit over the fire, while someone else had placed a grill over some of the coals and was cooking up a bunch of steaks that he had pulled from a cooler in the back of one of the pickups. Dozens of potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil roasted in the coals. Cans of beer and soda were making the rounds. If it hadn’t been for all the guns and secrecy, Otto would have felt as though he was on a big camping trip.
Even though they shared the same circle with the Atlantis Allegiance, the Tohono O’odham kept to themselves, speaking their own language. It was a strange, halting tongue, with a lot of Spanish words in it. That part of the country had been colonized by the Spanish five hundred years ago, and the old language had made it into every culture in the land.
Jim Running Horse stood up and addressed the crowd first. Otto noticed that he hadn’t put away his firearm. None of the Tohono O’odham had. Neither had Grunt or Vivian, for that matter.
“Now some of you I’ve known for a long time”—Jim Running Horse nodded at Grunt and then glanced at the rest of the Atlantis Allegiance—“and some of you are new to me. I just want you to know that all my people here today can be trusted. We’ve been through too much for too long ever to sell you out to the Feds. Hell, I wouldn’t sell my worst enemy to the white government, and you sure aren’t my worst enemies. Anything said here tonight will stay within this group. You have my word on that.”
Jim Running
Horse sat down.
Grunt nodded and replied, “I know your people can be trusted, Jim, and I’ve relied on that trust several times. Any friend of yours is a friend of mine. As for the newbies, well, they’ll get to know you in time, and in the meantime, they’re just going to have to trust my judgment. First order of business is to bring our two groups up to speed. I know just enough T.O. to know you guys have been talking about us ever since we got here”—that elicited a grin from Jim Running Horse—“so there’s no need for introductions. As you know, we saved Dr. Yamazaki here from the clutches of General Meade. I already told you all her story, and she herself knows a lot of us have problems believing it, but she needs to be here tonight because she knows more about the Atlantis gene than anyone.”
Grunt turned to the others in the Atlantis Allegiance. The firelight made his tribal tattoo stand out as deep black against his reddened scalp. His face was set with a deadly seriousness, so different from his usual joking, cynical demeanor.
“Now you’re probably wondering about all these grim-faced guys and gals packing weaponry and camping out in the middle of the ugliest desert in America. They’re a group of Tohono O’odham that split off from their tribe because the Tribal Council was doing things they didn’t agree with. These folks are traditionalists and don’t like how the Tribal Council allows casinos on their land and turns a blind eye to mining and liquor dealing. They see the Tribal Council as puppets of the US government, and considering some of the decisions the council makes, it’s hard to blame them for thinking that. This is only one branch of this group. Other tribes have their own traditionalists fighting to preserve their ways, and they’re all in contact with one another.”
Yuhle raised an uncertain hand, as though he was a nervous student asking a question in class. “So what’s the name of this organization?”
Jim Running Horse shrugged. “No name. Just decent people getting together to do what’s right.”
Otto wondered if that was true. A nationwide organization that didn’t have a name?
Looks like they don’t trust us as much as we’re willing to trust them.
Grunt continued. “Edward here has told us that the Atlantis gene was found written on the debris of a crashed UFO. Could you tell us a bit more about that, Edward? You mentioned that this document came up on the Pentagon server only last week, even though it’s more than sixty years old. Could you tell us what you think about that?”
Edward was sitting on a stone, his dinner on a paper plate resting on his lap. Hearing his name, he stood up, dumping the steak and potatoes in the sand. He bent down to pick them up, burned his fingers on the steak, dropped it into the sand again, stood up again, bent down again, saw his meal was ruined, and finally gave up. Otto shook his head. That guy could hack into the Pentagon?
“Right, um,” Edward started, looking mournfully down at his sandy dinner. “Well, you see…”
Edward’s voice trailed off, and his entire body began to shake.
Otto’s heart went out to him. He knew what was the matter. He’d seen it with some of the other residents at the group home. It was called Social Anxiety Disorder, something beyond shyness, a total fear of being in social situations.
People with Social Anxiety Disorder got panicky when they had to order a meal at a restaurant, and Edward was being asked to address a crowd of heavily armed strangers about secret documents he had stolen from the government.
Suddenly, Otto understood. Edward hid in a trailer in front of his computers because he felt safe there. Even with company in the room, his disorder didn’t manifest because he was on safe ground. He was master of his little domain, the best hacker any of them knew. One of the best hackers in the world. A darknet superstar.
But at the moment, he was just an awkward guy trying to get the words out. And failing.
“Don’t worry, man, just say it in your own time,” Otto encouraged him. “Pretend you’re in your trailer and you’re making some wisecrack about how no one knows what’s really going on except you.”
Edward flashed him a nervous grin. It took him another few seconds to finally get started.
“The Pentagon has been…” Edward took a deep breath to steady himself and went on. “The Pentagon had been scanning and uploading old documents onto its server. It’s a slow project. They have dozens of archivists working on it, but there are so many documents that have to be sifted through dating back decades, or even centuries, that it’s taking ages.”
Edward wiped his brow, took a breath, and continued. “So a document from 1947 being posted last week isn’t unusual. What’s unusual is its sensitive nature. Usually, highly classified documents like this are given first priority. I thought all the ones they planned on putting on the server were up there already.”
Grunt looked about to ask a question, but seeing how much Edward was still trembling, he shut his mouth without saying a word. Edward didn’t notice because his eyes were closed. He faced those in his audience without seeing them.
“This document was on the most secure server the Pentagon has. Some documents never make it onto a server because they don’t want to risk even the smallest chance of their being hacked. Even on this server, there are five, maybe six hackers in the whole world who could get to it, and at least three of those are sellouts.
“But that’s not the point. What’s weird is that they put up something related to the Atlantis gene on the server at all. Anyone at that level has heard rumors that UFOs are real. Those who look at this document will either think it was some trick by an enemy power or will see evidence for what they believed was a real UFO crash all along. So it doesn’t really change anything at the high levels of government, except for those who can see what Yuhle and I saw. I’m willing to bet whoever put that document up there was raising a signal to other people in the government who might be in the know. I’m thinking that, as usual with our government, there are a lot of little offices working in isolation from one another and wasting energy replicating each other’s work. Organizations like the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and all the rest compete for funding, and there’s a serious rivalry between them. They don’t like to share information. Someone is trying to cut through all that and is calling for all the scattered groups to come together…”
Edward’s final words were rushed. He still had his eyes closed, and his face was drenched with sweat that glowed in the reflected light of the campfire. He took a great gulp of air and said, “They’re trying to get all their forces together, like us.”
With that he sat, or practically fell, on the stone that he had been using for a chair.
“Thanks, Edward,” Grunt said. “Now let’s hear from Dr. Yamazaki. She’s the leading expert on the Atlantis gene. In fact, she was the one who discovered it, and she’s been discussing this all afternoon with Dr. Yuhle.”
Dr. Yamazaki stood up, looking almost as nervous as Edward. She was still wearing the cheap dress and shoes she’d gotten from Goodwill and looked out of place among so many tough men and women who were well equipped for the desert.
She had good reason to look nervous. The Tohono O’odham were giving her stony looks, and there was none of the usual free joking as they had done with the other members of the Atlantis Allegiance. Grunt and Vivian looked at her with open distrust. Otto tried to keep his own features neutral. He still didn’t know whether he could fully trust her or not, even after all they’d been through together.
Dr. Yamazaki brushed her long black hair out of her face and spoke.
“What Edward and Yuhle suspected is correct. The symbols in the report’s picture match up with a portion of the sequence of the Atlantis gene. While I’m not saying I believe in UFOs, the fact that this is in a top secret government document is highly significant. When Yuhle and I were working on the Poseidon Project”—she turned to her old friend, who nodded and gave a supportive smile—“we sequenced the entire Atlantis gene. We still don’t know what these particular genes do, because that takes years
of study with a far bigger sample of people than we ever had. Perhaps whoever put up that sequence knows what it means, but that would mean there was a second Poseidon Project working without the knowledge of our own team. From what Edward says, it’s possible. What do you think?”
She turned to where Edward had been sitting. He was gone.
Otto felt sorry for him. Once the meeting was over, he’d take some dinner to Edward’s trailer.
After a pause, Dr. Yamazaki went on. “Well, anyway, it’s impossible to know if they’ve figured out what the genes mean or not. Our team certainly didn’t have the time to do it. When we were working for General Meade, I got the impression that he was always under pressure from his superior officers. He kept coming into the lab, asking for updates and wanting to know when certain goals would be met. And while he always got us any equipment we asked for, he seemed to fret about the expense.”
One of the Tohono O’odham women called out, “Did he ever talk about UFOs or aliens?”
Dr. Yamazaki shook her head. “He never talked about anything that wasn’t directly connected to our work. And I think I can anticipate your next question. The Atlanteans aren’t aliens. They’re human. Personally, I don’t think there are aliens. I won’t bore you with all the scientific details, but there are certain barriers in the laws of physics that keep a spaceship from going at the speed of light, and if you can’t go faster than light speed, you’ll never make it between the planets. The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is four and a half light years away. So even if you were able to do the impossible, it would still take four and a half years to make it here from there, and Proxima Centauri doesn’t even have any planets. The nearest exoplanet orbits around is Gliese 674 b, and that’s fifteen light years away.”
“But couldn’t they have found a way we haven’t figured out yet?” the woman asked.
Dr. Yamazaki shook her head. “Highly unlikely. I think UFO sightings are just a modernized form of religious experience, like people seeing angels or other spirits. UFOs are just a legend.”