Sunlight

by Amanda Ashley

  With a start, she leaned across the seat to roll down the window, intending to call him back, but by the time she got the window down, he had disappeared into the brush along the side of the road.

  Micah moved stealthily through the darkness, pausing occasionally to check his bearings against the stars. His ship had crashed in a shallow hollow between two hills behind the mansion. The night seemed unnaturally silent, as if all the nocturnal creatures were holding their breath.

  It took twenty minutes to reach the place where he had buried what was left of his spacecraft, and another ten minutes to uncover it.

  Assuming his own form, he concentrated on the ship’s remains, focusing his thoughts and his energy on obliterating the twisted wreckage that had once been the fastest ship in the Xanthian fleet.

  He felt the heat, the inherent power, rise up within him, his body quivering as he sought to maintain the high level of energy required to reduce the pile of rubble to ashes. He knew a moment of regret as he destroyed all that was left of the craft that had been his home in space for the last six years.

  Projecting the amount of force needed to disintegrate the ship’s debris drained his strength, and for a moment he stood there with his head bowed, his whole body trembling with fatigue. He was walking toward the hill that led to the road where Lainey was waiting when he heard a faint rustling in the darkness off to his left. Pausing, he cocked his head to one side, listening, but all was still once more.

  With a shake of his head, he started walking again. He hadn’t gone far when a brilliant light illuminated the area. For a moment, he thought Pergith had found him, and then he heard a voice shout, “Take him!”

  Micah spun on his heel, a soft oath escaping his lips as a sharp pain exploded in his chest.

  With a grunt, he reeled backward, then sank to his knees as an overpowering numbness swept through him.

  Breathing heavily, he stared up at the three men who surrounded him, and then he pitched headlong into a void as black and silent as the far reaches of space.

  He’d been gone more than an hour. Fidgeting nervously, Lainey stared out the window, wondering, for the tenth time in as many minutes, what was keeping him.

  Too jittery to sit in the car any longer, she got out and started walking up the road toward the mansion.

  She heard the faint sound of voices as she neared the entrance to the Grayson place. Male voices. Excited voices.

  Hiding behind a tall juniper, she peered down the driveway. A black van was parked alongside the house. A sweep of a flashlight made her dart backward. The voices were louder now. Two men dressed in black jumpsuits materialized from behind the house. A third followed.

  He was carrying Micah over his shoulder.

  One of the men opened the back door of the van and the other two dumped Micah’s body inside, then jumped in and closed the doors; the third man climbed into the cab and started the engine.

  Mind racing, Lainey ran back to her car, slid behind the wheel, and ducked down. A short time later, she saw the black van go by.

  Feeling as though she were living one of her own mystery novels, she switched on the ignition and went in pursuit of the van, careful to stay well behind them.

  They had Micah. The thought pounded in her brain, even as she wondered who “they” were, what they wanted him for, what they were going to do to him.

  There had been no emblems or insignia of any kind on the van to signify if the men who had taken Micah belonged to a government organization. Were they from the Air Force? The Central Intelligence Agency? SETI? How had they known Micah survived the crash? That he would show up at the Grayson place tonight?

  She scolded herself for letting him return to the mansion, for not realizing that some fanatical scientist with nothing better to do might still be in the area, waiting around in hopes that the alien, if he had indeed survived, might return to what was left of his ship.

  She scolded Micah, too. Surely he had realized how dangerous it would be to return to his ship?

  Micah. He could read her mind. She could read his. She concentrated on his face, willing him to hear her, needing his assurance that he was unhurt.

  Please, she thought. Please hear me. Please answer me.

  But there was only silence, and an increasing sense of dread, an overwhelming fear that they had killed him and were taking his body to some secret laboratory to dissect and study.

  Her imagination, always vivid and overly active, quickly went into overdrive, and she visualized a team of doctors and scientists standing around Micah’s remains, examining the webbing on his hands, coldly removing his internal organs, measuring the size of his brain, testing his blood.

  No! The denial screamed inside her head. He could not be dead.

  Please, please, don’t let him be dead. Quiet tears trickled down her cheeks as the unspoken prayer repeated itself in her mind.

  She was so lost in thought, so steeped in despair, that she almost ran into the back of the van as it made a slow turn into a narrow driveway.

  Coming to herself, she leaned on the horn as if she were an angry motorist, flipped the bird to the driver of the van, then sped on by. Careening around the next corner, she went about half a block, parked the car and killed the engine, then sat huddled in the seat, shivering.

  “Please,” she whispered, “I’ll be so good, just don’t let him be dead.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Muffled voices.

  Darkness.

  Pain.

  Micah lay perfectly still, listening to the sounds around him, not wanting his captors to know he had regained consciousness. His whole body felt heavy; he was so groggy he could scarcely think.

  Awareness came to him in fragments. There was a needle in his left arm.

  Cold metal straps encircled his wrists and ankles, shackling him to an equally cold metal table.

  He was naked.

  There was some sort of covering over his face.

  Stark fear congealed in the pit of his stomach and a violent tremor racked his body as he surmised he was in a laboratory of some sort.

  Gradually, the muffled voices grew more distinct, and he deduced that there were three men in the room, quietly discussing him as if he were a creature without understanding or feelings. Bits and pieces of their conversation filtered into his mind.

  “Remarkably well-formed…”

  “Not injured like the other one…”

  “Should be able to keep this one alive…”

  He felt the sharp prick of a needle as someone drew blood from his right arm, and then rough hands began to measure the width of his chest, his neck, the length of his arms and legs. One man called out the measurements, presumably so one of the other men could write them down. Fingers probed the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.

  Someone removed the covering from his face, and Micah blinked against the bright glare of the overhead light.

  A tall man with dark red hair peered down at Micah, his pale blue eyes magnified by the thick glasses he wore.

  “I’m gonna take his vitals,” Red Hair said. “Mac, jot this down. Blood pressure, eighty over forty. Pulse, thirty-five. Respiration, twelve.”

  Micah gagged as Red Hair forced his mouth open and placed a glass tube under his tongue.

  A short time later, Red Hair removed the tube. He studied the numbers a moment, then grunted softly.

  “Temp’s ninety-six.” Red Hair glanced at the other man. “Got all that?”

  “Eighty over forty. Thirty-five. Twelve. Ninety-six. Got it.”

  Next, Red Hair pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and proceeded to examine Micah’s ears, his eyes, his nose, stopping now and then to make copious notes in a thick black book. Micah grimaced as the red-haired man forced his mouth open so he could examine his teeth, his tongue.

  “Easy on the blood, Mac,” Red Hair admonished. “You took too much last time and the creature died.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be careful,” Mac muttered.r />
  Micah grunted softly as the man called Mac carelessly jabbed a needle into his right arm.

  “We’ll need a couple of hair and skin samples, too,” Red Hair said. “Gene, you wanna take care of that?”

  “Right,” the man called Gene replied. “We’ll need urine, too.”

  “Damn!” Mac exclaimed as the syringe filled with fluid. “That brown blood throws me every time.”

  “Always thought Martian blood was supposed to be green,” Gene said, grinning as he poked Micah in the side. “That’s where you’re from, isn’t it, fella? Mars?”

  “Do you suppose brown is its natural color?” Red Hair asked.

  Mac shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not. Might be a chemical reaction to our atmosphere.”

  “The other one had brown blood, too,” Red Hair remarked. “That idiot, Herb, never did find out what caused it, or what made the alien’s skin glow, either.”

  “I’ll find out,” Mac said confidently, and callously jabbed another needle into the vein in Micah’s right arm.

  For a moment, Gene and Red Hair moved away from the table, their heads bent over a large book, and Micah felt a twinge of hope. Maybe they were through with him.

  But they weren’t. Micah’s entire body went rigid when Red Hair began an extensive examination of his genitals.

  Micah stared at the man, focusing his mind, his energy, on destroying the man, but nothing happened. It took him several minutes to realize that whatever drug they were using to keep him sedated had rendered him powerless; it also made coherent thought difficult, but it didn’t interfere with his ability to hear, to see, to feel.

  He felt suddenly nauseous as he realized he was helpless, that these men could do whatever they wished to him and there was nothing, nothing, he could do to stop them.

  Micah glanced at the syringe slowly filling with his blood. Not like the other one…keep this one alive. What other one? he wondered dully.

  He turned his head to the side to avoid the bright light that was making his head ache, felt his stomach churn at what he saw.

  There was a long, wooden shelf on the far wall, and on the shelf were numerous jars containing various Xanthian internal organs. A brain floated in a large bottle of clear liquid, webbed hands could be seen in a second jar. A Xanthian skeleton stood in the corner. Its empty eye sockets seemed to be looking at him with pity.

  Micah knew of three Xanthian pilots who had disappeared while flying through Earth’s atmosphere. Was this skeleton one of those men, men he had worked with, laughed with?

  For the next hour, the three men poked and prodded, measuring every inch of Micah’s body. It was humiliating in the extreme, feeling their hands on him, listening while they made crude jests about the webbing on his hands, the size of his ears, the blue glow that shimmered around him, darker and more obvious now that he was in an agitated state.

  They took pictures of him from every conceivable angle, taking close-ups of his hands, his ears, his eyes, making jokes about his ability to procreate as they snapped photos of his genitals.

  “Too bad he destroyed the spaceship before we got there,” Gene remarked as Red Hair took yet another picture. “That would have been a real coup.”

  “Next time,” Red Hair said. “Next time we’ll be better prepared.”

  “Yeah, next time,” Gene muttered. “Your ass will be grass if SETI finds out about this. You know what Bergen said about going off on your own. And he’ll burn us right along with you.”

  Red Hair shrugged as he picked up a scalpel and forceps. “We’ll worry about that if and when it happens. Swab his chest with alcohol. I want to take a skin sample.”

  “Right.”

  Micah strained against his bonds as Red Hair lifted a section of skin with the forceps, then cut off a small slice of skin, which he dropped into a glass vial. Gene quickly swabbed the area with alcohol, then slapped a bandage in place.

  “We’ll need a tissue sample, too.”

  “Maybe we should anesthetize him,” Mac suggested.

  Red Hair dismissed the idea with a shake of his head. “It’ll only take a minute. Besides, it’ll give us a chance to see how he reacts to pain.”

  Micah stared at the three men in horror. Lainey had accused his people of callously experimenting on humans, but his people had never done anything like this. Xanthians had an innate reverence for life forms of all kinds. They abhorred brutality and bloodshed.

  He couldn’t take his gaze from the knife in Red Hair’s hand, couldn’t control the violent tremors that racked his body as he waited for the Earthling to cut into his flesh.

  Nausea rose in Micah’s throat as Red Hair took a pair of surgical scissors and made a shallow incision in the muscle of his right arm. He drew a harsh breath between his clenched teeth as pain seared through him. Hands clenched, his body rigid, he choked back a scream as Red Hair removed a small piece of tissue.

  He was sweating profusely now, his hands clenched into tight fists, his body throbbing with pain, his muscles taut with the deep-seated primal fear of the unknown.

  There was a sharp stinging sensation as Gene poured disinfectant over the cut, then wrapped it with a bandage. Micah stared at the strip of white cloth, which was quickly turning brown with blood.

  But they weren’t through with him yet. They took a sample of his sweat, cut off a hunk of his hair, pared his fingernails.

  “Well, that does it for me,” Red Hair said. “You two have everything you need?”

  “For now,” Gene said. “I might need some more blood later.”

  Red Hair nodded. “Let’s call it a night, then. Gene, why don’t you and Mac go get us some dinner while I finish up here?”

  “Right. Come on,” Gene said. “We’ll take my car.”

  Red Hair walked around the table, stopping occasionally to take another picture, or write something in his big black notebook.

  “Damn,” Red Hair murmured, “you’re gonna make us famous. And richer than hell.” He poked Micah in the chest with a stubby fingertip. “Who are you? Where are you from?”

  Micah stared up at him. He could feel the drug coursing through him, rendering him powerless, making it difficult to think.

  “You can talk. I know you can,” Red Hair said. “Of course, there’s always the possibility that you don’t speak English, but somehow I think you do.” He changed the bloody bandage on Micah’s arm, then pulled off his gloves and tossed them in a wastebasket. “Well, we’ve got lots of time.” He laughed as he jerked a spatulate thumb at the skeleton in the corner. “He was stubborn, too.”

  Red Hair checked the IV bag at the head of the table, then nodded. The solution dripped steadily into Micah’s arm.

  Red Hair patted the plastic bag. “You won’t be giving us any trouble,” he said conversationally. “Mac invented this concoction. Keeps guys like you as helpless as newborn babes, but still allows us to see how you react to different stimuli.” He chuckled softly. “Yeah, we know all about those death-ray eyes of yours. We’ve been studying your kind for years. Kind of funny, when you think about it. People on Earth running around worrying about being abducted and studied by aliens when we’ve been studying you guys for years.”

  Red Hair walked slowly around the table, his gaze narrowed. Micah clenched his jaw, hating the way the man looked at him, studying him as though he were no more than a bug under a microscope.

  “The similarities between your people and ours is amazing, but it’s the differences that intrigue me,” Red Hair murmured softly, and then he looked at Micah and grinned. “Better get some rest, space man. You’re gonna need it.”

  And with that cryptic warning, Red Hair switched off the overhead light, went into the adjoining room and shut the door.

  Left alone at last, Micah closed his eyes, wishing he could banish the pain that throbbed in his chest, his arm. If only he could think clearly! If only he weren’t so weak, so dizzy.

  Rousing himself, he tugged at the bindings on his hands and feet
, but he was too weak to do more than pull at them a few times, too dazed to think clearly, too heavily drugged to be able to concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds.

  He shivered as the room grew colder. Closing his eyes, he surrendered to the darkness that hovered around him. His last conscious thought was that he’d never see Lainey again…

  * * * * *

  Lainey’s apprehension grew with the passing of each hour. Three times, she’d walked past the old building where they’d taken Micah. Once, she had crept up to a window, hoping to get a glimpse of Micah, but the windows had been blacked out from the inside.

  Now, sitting in the car, her gaze riveted on the building, she wondered what to do next.

  She thought of calling the police, but somehow that didn’t seem like a smart move. What could she say? Three men have kidnapped my boyfriend, who just happens to be from another planet? They’d either laugh, or lock her up in a rubber room. And even if they believed her, Micah probably wouldn’t be any better off in the hands of the police who would, no doubt, turn him over to the Air Force or the CIA, or whoever it was who handled alien invaders.

  Damn, she thought, this was like something out of that TV show, the X-Files. She just wished Agents Mulder and Scully were there with her. They’d know what to do. She wished she did.

  Closing her eyes, she tried to contact Micah, but she encountered only a vague sense of emptiness. Did that mean he was dead? There was no way to tell what they were doing to him in there.

  She remembered the headlines she’d read in some of the more sensational tabloids in the last year:

  GOVERNMENT COVERUPS DISCLOSED.

  SPACESHIP KEPT UNDER WRAPS IN SECRET DESERT LABORATORY.

  AUTOPSY REVEALS STRANGE ALIEN PHYSIOLOGY.

  She shivered as she imagined Micah being examined by a battery of doctors, subjected to a variety of inhumane tests. But surely if these men were connected to the government, or SETI, they would have taken Micah somewhere besides what looked to be an abandoned building. If these men were on the up and up, there would be men in uniform, some kind of security.