She looked beautiful. Way too beautiful for an ugly, tall man with gray hair and a hardened face, like President Ash. Way too beautiful for the monster that he is.
An older man with grayed hair, yet a visibly ripped body, even with his suit on, appeared running out of the hallway with a navy-blue bag in his hand. He ripped the bag open and took out an antiseptic wipe to wash off the dried-up blood that stood like a growth on my shoulder. Then he pulled out a rather large, white pad from the bag and draped it over the wound. I instantly felt a cold, numbing sensation douse over the nerves in my shoulder.
“Keep that on for the next couple hours and you should be good to go.” The man smiled, his coffee-stained teeth visible. “My name is George, by the way.” He outstretched his arm that had a vein bulging from the skin.
“I’m Natalie, and thanks.” I shook his hand, luckily pulling away before he cut off the circulation in my fingers from the force of his shake. “How does that even work?”
“Speeds up the immune system’s process of healing with special enzymes.” He stated it so plainly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. I vaguely remembered those words from one of my high school science classes, but I didn’t care enough to know how any of that shit works. As long as it didn’t make my arm fall off, then we were good.
The man hurried away back into the hallway, carrying the bag with him closely at his side, and I noticed the gaping bald spot in the back of his head, that really showed off its paleness.
A rush of people had already lined up to introduce themselves to Ethan and Hunter, some even pushing each other out of the way to meet them first. Each person seemed to look both of them right in the eyes, as if searching for something that they thought was missing. This is some serious business. I found myself creep back toward the helicopter pad, feeling overwhelmed by the entire situation. Whatever this is, it’s the real deal, and they need us. But for what?
Now that my mind was finally coming to terms with the fact that I was not only dead, but alive with a chance to get my life back, I let a whole new plethora of doubt and worries inundate my mind. What if they don’t have answers? What if they have them, but won’t give them to us? Then I realized the most likely the scenario. If they have answers and if they can help us, then what are they gonna make us do for them?
I shivered at the thought. Instantly, a surge of anxiety erupted from inside of me and began to flow through my veins and push the hope and excitement further into the darkness inside of me.
Just as people began to approach me to try and introduce themselves, an angry screaming broke my daze from the wall. It was two men and the woman with gray, frail hair arguing.
“We can’t do that to them!” The woman shouted, an apoplectic scream echoing off the high ceilings. She didn’t even need to point at us for me to know exactly, who she was talking about.
“We have to. We have no other option,” a man with leathery, tan skin bellowed right in her face. There was a bitterness to his tone that made my spine tingle, and the anxiety within me flare up and begin to ooze out of my pores in a cold sweat.
“They are humans!” She roared with a disgusted tone. Her face contorted madly, seemingly unable to express the range of emotions coursing through her. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Danielle whisper to one of her advisers, and the adviser then begin to walk in my direction. “They are living, breathing people! Out of decency for human life, we can’t do that!”
“There’s no other way, you ignorant fool.” The man narrowed his eyebrows at her, his face scrunching up to exemplify the wrinkles already present on his face, and make him look another decade older. I felt a cold hand forcefully grab onto my wrist, and pull my frozen body in its direction.
What the hell are they going to do to us? I wanted to scream as a tall, skinny lady with brown hair and weathered skin pulled me out of the bright room, and into the more dimly lit hallway. She was following quickly behind Danielle’s rapid pace, who had managed to grab both Hunter and Ethan.
“There’s always another way!” the woman yelled.
I turned around to watch her clawing at the man who towered above her. Immediately, the entire room erupted into a cacophony of sound as a couple of men rushed to drive the two apart. It was pure chaos; truly a sight to watch, as grown adults acted like little hormonal children on a playground.
The lady literally grabbed my face, and forced my vision forward. The gold light fixtures that hung on the walls were turned down low, which caused a blanket of darkness to wrap around me. The walls were all made of large screens that could change from one color to another, or have pictures of beautiful landscapes projected onto them. I could see the hallway open out into a larger room up ahead, but I gulped as Danielle turned and the door automatically slid open to a room off the side of the hallway.
What are they going to do to us in there? My muscles tensed up as I envisioned being brutally beaten or tortured, and forced to live the rest of my life in a perpetual state of pain and hell. I pulled back from the woman’s icy grip, suddenly feeling my body begin to hyperventilate. I can’t go in there. I can’t go through this. In an instant, I once again began to regret not dying earlier, and regret not ending the pain for once and all.
“Get back here,” the woman hissed, digging her sharp fingernails into my forearm and tugging my right arm downward to cause a blinding pain to rush through me. The weakness of my will to live and the defeated feeling ubiquitous inside of me pervaded through my veins and caused me to succumb to her power.
We finally approached the door, and she shoved me inside the room, letting go of her deadly grip on my arm. Right as I made it past the opening in the door, it slid shut, leaving Hunter, Ethan, and I alone in the room to fend for ourselves. The room was ominously quiet, the yelling and screaming from outside being drowned out behind the sound proof walls.
The lights began to increase with intensity, illuminating the massive screen on one wall of the room. The screen was turned on and logged in, the directory of the computer currently appearing on it. The room was rather small, but that was only because over half the room was being taken up by one massive computer terminal that lined the other three walls. With each second that would pass by, lights would periodically blink at alternating locations on the massive terminal that was entirely black. The air conditioning in the room was so strong that I actually began to shiver, and the computer itself was so powerful that it made a low, continuous noise, as the fans circulated inside of the guts of the computer.
What the hell does she need a computer this powerful for? I bit my finger nail, trying to release some of the nervous, anxiety-ridden tension inside of me. Nowadays, most computers could fit on someone’s fingertip, maybe fit in even less space, and they were still more powerful than anyone needed for use in their daily lives. But this behemoth of a computer must have had an unimaginable amount of computing power; a truly ridiculous amount that would be completely pointless, unless Danielle was using it for something.
“What the hell is wrong with these people?” Hunter winced, rubbing a hand on his neck that Danielle probably clawed as she dragged him in there.
“I have no clue, but this all seems super sketchy.” Ethan already began making his way toward the screen with a wide, curious look in his eyes. “First off, why did Danielle want to meet us inside of the gates to the village, if she was gonna take us on a helicopter and fly us to the other side of the Grand Canyon?” I could tell Ethan was angry at himself for not detecting something weird in that earlier.
“’Cause she’s fucking crazy,” Hunter’s voice boomed off the computer terminal. “I can see it in that weird, freakish glow in her eyes. It’s like she’s a blood thirsty vampire, except she is missing those vicious fangs.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I jumped in, somehow feeling an obligation to defend her. “We don’t even know her. She could really help us make things better.” I still held out hope in my cracking voice.
“D
ude.” Hunter put an arm around me, and I could feel how tired he was in his muscles that felt like dead weight on my body. “Her adviser friends, or whatever, were arguing about hurting us!” I could feel the fear in his body that trembled slightly. “Natalie, they want to hurt us.”
“We could have just misunderstood the conversation.” I vehemently denied to myself the reality of our situation. As usual, my brain naturally wanted to accept the lies that it told itself, instead of coming to terms with the pain and agony of our reality.
“Well, I’m definitely not misunderstanding this,” Ethan broke in, and I glanced at the screen, which he was staring at in awe.
The title of the file read “Area 51 Attack Plan,” and directly below it, the title of another file read “State of America.” Ethan instantly clicked on the file, and the loading screen for it appeared.
“Why would she leave this computer unlocked?” I asked. I felt like we were trespassing on private property or stealing something from someone, and a rush of adrenaline coursed through me as a result.
“It doesn’t appear as if it can be locked.” Ethan looked around with an inquisitive gleam to his eyes.
“Good to know,” Hunter noted.
“That’s super weird,” I responded, wondering why she would leave such sensitive information out in the open.
The file, seconds later, loaded onto the screen, and my eyes instantly widened at the first sentence. “Mission objective: to sneak into Area 51 and shut down Protocol 00.”
Those familiar words, “Protocol 00,” followed me like an incessant whisper in my mind. I felt chills cascade down my spine just imagining what horrors that word could stand for. Whatever the hell it was, I hated it. That was the one thing that had destroyed my life! That was the one thing, that when enacted, had torn my family and my happiness away from me forever.
And now they wanted to shut it down. Did that mean I would get my life back?! If Protocol 00 was shut down, did that mean I could be happy again?
My tongue held onto the taste of that joyous thought, not letting it float way into the abyss of insignificance.
“Area 51,” Hunter stated, a look of pure excitement and dread mashed together in his eyes. “I thought that place only had aliens.”
No. I could feel the sorrow pull at my mind, as just the thought of him brought back a million memories to the forefront of my mind. I tried to keep him locked away, beneath the mountains of despair and anger inside of me. I tried to keep him frozen in a time capsule in my brain, where he was hidden from the surface of my thoughts. It was better to keep it all buried, instead of dealing with the pain that would come at looking at the mangled mess of bones and emotions that would appear on the surface.
My dad. He worked in Area 51. There was a wave of shock that overcame me as my mind danced with a radical thought. What if he is somehow connected to all of this?
Before I could read any further, or explore the depths of the spider web of thoughts, Danielle burst in with a creepy smile strewn across her face. Ethan hastily exited out of the file before she noticed, and we all turned to stare at her eagerly.
Her smile grew so wide that I thought her lips would shatter from being spread out so much. The white, pearl-like shine to her teeth made me cringe.
“Come on out, kids. Dinner is served.”
Chapter 16
“How do you like the clam chowder?” Danielle asked, a white napkin with intricate floral designs on it neatly placed across her lap. She sat on the opposite end of the carved, wooden table from me, being that we were the only two girls. On either side of us, sat Hunter and Ethan and two of her advisers; one with glasses and a large funny-looking nose, who was named Brad, and another one with bright-blond, dyed hair and a scruffy, gray beard.
“It’s good,” Hunter responded, eying the bright gold chandelier that hung above the dining room table. The fixtures on it were so bright that they literally hurt my eyes to look at. “I think this is my first time ever having it.”
In my entire life, I had never looked around a place and seen it adorned with so much material wealth. The walls were plastered in gold, every door knob and every handle for every cabinet in the grand kitchen were gold, and even the plates and forks were coated in a layer of elaborate designs. The floor of the entire compound was pure granite, and every single wall was covered in large screens that allowed her to customize what she wanted to look at. The kitchen was teeming with an army of robot butlers, who served each course of the meal with a grandeur of style and wore tuxedos to match their human-like facial features.
All the shining items around me, and the sheer amount of wealth just thrown away on pointless stuff in the room, made my head hurt. Even the ceiling was covered in a gorgeous painting of the Grand Canyon at sunset, which seemed a little bit extra if you ask me, because it wasn’t like the compound was Grand Central Station or anything.
“Well, I bet this will also be the first time you have had this.” Danielle arose from her seat, not only to my surprise, but to the surprise of some her robot butlers who asked her if she needed anything.
“I’m good,” she stated, motioning for them to continued working on the entrée or third course of our meal.
I looked down at the cloudy, soupy mixture and fiddled my spoon around through it. It didn’t taste bad, but just looking at it somehow made me feel unsettled that I had to swallow that liquid down my throat. Even though it had almost been a day since I’d last eaten, I didn’t even find myself to be that hungry. After years of going days, and sometimes weeks, with little to no food, just simply one day is a cake walk.
I watched Danielle nervously, half expecting her to pull out a knife from one of the kitchen drawers and begin to go on a rampage with it. Instead of getting less awkward as the night went on, she’d only gotten creepier.
Hunter laughed the second he saw what she was carrying over.
“Yep, definitely have never had that before.” His tone was dripping with sarcasm.
“Shut up,” I said under my breath, eyeing the advisers and Danielle, who surrounded us. In her hands, there was what looked to be three cocktails. Each glass was dashed with a coat of salt around the rim and each had a slice of lime. The drink seemed to consist of a red, translucent liquid that appeared to have the same consistency of blood.
I shivered, instantly getting an awful feeling about having that drink. My eyes spotted the red, particulate matter that seemed to float around aimlessly through the liquid like tiny pieces of dust. I could just picture it getting caught in my throat and causing me to choke. The bright red substance caused my eyes to widen. It was an alarming color, a shade of red that in nature signals that an object is poisonous. And for some reason, there was an instinctive yet paranoid feeling in my gut that the red signified that this drink is lethal.
“Ta da!” Danielle almost clapped with joy, as her shrill voice rung in my ears. She had finished placing the drinks, like they were some sort of sacred liquid, down onto the table, and she stared at all of us with an expectant gleam to her eyes. “This is my masterpiece. My signature drink, back from my college days when I used to be a bartender.”
The two advisers at the table nodded their heads automatically. They seemed almost trained to agree with her every word.
Hunter was the first to raise his glass, and I could see his eyes wander over the drink with a curious glow. I, on the other hand, kept my hands at my side, suddenly feeling an icy chill cascade throughout my veins. Don’t do it. My inner conscious somehow picked up on the dark energy emanating from the drink. I could see the cloud of matter spinning around inside of the liquid, and I knew that once inside of me it would release madness upon the insides of my body.
“Try it.” Danielle smiled, narrowing her eyes, which had an evil, deadly glare to them, straight at me. I gulped, feeling the anxiety and terror inside of me bubbling up into a scream, but was stifled by me awkwardly biting on my tongue.
“It’s actually pretty good.” Hunter eyed the
drink, and I could see his head tilt a bit as he noticed the red dust hovering through the liquid.
Ethan shot Hunter an apprehensive glance, but after watching him take another sip, Ethan lifted his glass and quickly gulped down a mouthful. I could see his face contort a bit at first and then finally relax. Ethan had never been a fan of the bitter taste of alcohol. Ethan looked back at Danielle, seemingly having made up his mind that the drink wasn’t that bad.
“What about you, Natalie?” Danielle eyed my glass with such intensity that I thought she was going to cause the glass to levitate from the force of her stare. I could see the mad glow to her brown eyes, and it sent chills down my spine.
“I’m not in the mood tonight.” I smiled nervously, leaning back further in my chair to put even more space between me and the vile liquid contained within that glass. The uneasy feeling in my stomach only grew worse as I continued to stare at the bright-red liquid. My entire body was petrified with fear for Hunter and Ethan.
What’s going to happen to them? I felt a nervous sweat begin to seep out of my pores. Will they just drop dead? Will they have a seizure? Will their nervous systems shut down? I clenched my leg that was shaking rapidly underneath the table, overcome with anxiety.
I’m not drinking that. Moisture began to collect on the outside of the glass and run down its curved top, almost like it was blood ominously dripping from the drink. I don’t care if she tries to force it down my throat.
“Well then.” I could hear the passive aggressive tone to her voice. I shifted my eyes around the room nervously. I began to glance at the fur-covered sofas all surrounding a massive stone fire place, just in front of the massive glass wall that led out to the balcony.
We all ate in awkward silence for a few seconds. I kept my face buried in the clam chowder, the hypnotic clanking of the spoons channeling the emotions in my mind into a cloudy blackness. Then I finally looked up from the soup, which was no longer appetizing, and felt a pulsing energy drill straight into me.
Control Freakz Page 23