I had hired one new employee to help me execute my plan. He’d brought me back seven targets, and I’d planted the seeds in them. I had already disposed of that employee and cleaned up any connection between him and me.
These seven targets had the perfect biology to incubate the seeds and to pass them on. My hyper-intelligence had told me that planting the seeds in these seven women gave me nearly a one hundred percent chance that, cycles from now, there’d be an abundant harvest.
And I felt pride in one of the targets I’d chosen: Eddie’s daughter. Not only was she a perfect match, but there was a nice symmetry to this choice—
My thoughts suddenly sped up and turned razor sharp.
The Kalera had kicked in.
I immediately started another systems check on the transport, focusing all my attention on the curvature drive. But minutes later, I heard the high-pitched hum that indicated Eddie had pulled up to the gate. I wanted to focus solely on the task before me, but I also knew that the cerium had arrived, which meant it was time to add the mineral to the mixture I’d prepared—and also time to dispose of the human.
It was hard to shift gears. The curvature drive had captured my attention, and my heightened mental state had already given me the ability to make millions of inferences from the numbers the systems check was generating. This was the reason I’d taken the Kalera. It wasn’t for the mundane tasks of absorbing the cerium and disposing of the human.
But I had no choice. So I forced myself to go back to my office, where I checked to make sure it was Eddie at the gate. It was, and I let him in. But I didn’t wait for him in the office, even though I would dispose of him here.
The Kalera made me impatient. So impatient that even though it would be only a couple of minutes before the human made his way through the gate, into the garage, and then to my office, I went back to the transport. I figured the extra minutes I’d get to spend on the drive would be worth it. I’d come back to the office in two minutes to collect the cerium and dispose of the human.
EDDIE
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I parked the car in the garage and got out with the cerium in hand. The mineral was in a small metal box, labeled only with a serial code, exactly as I’d found it in the storage locker.
I opened the door to the interior of the house and entered. As I closed the door behind me, I couldn’t help but glance at the doorknob, the one that had been a boon to my blackmail plan.
As I walked down the hall, I saw that, as on my last visit, both the door to the harvesting room and the door to Abel’s office were closed. So I continued forward into the living room.
There I waited, buoyed by the knowledge that my blackmail plan had teeth, and soured by the knowledge that the San Diego police were closing in on me. But I knew that if Abel took my blackmail threat seriously, he’d make sure I wasn’t implicated in Rose David’s murder.
Abel walked into the room, and again I noticed that he was moving slowly—and this time his gait seemed even slower than during my previous visit. And when he got closer, I saw that his eye was glassy again.
He stopped a few feet from me, but he didn’t say anything. It appeared as if his mind was elsewhere—as if he was looking right through me instead of at me.
So I spoke first. “I have the cerium,” I said, and when he didn’t respond, I added, “The job went well.”
It took him a full second, maybe even two, before he finally spoke. “Okay,” he said, and raised his arm.
I stepped forward and handed him the cerium.
He took it, but he seemed to be moving in slow motion. Either he was sick, which might explain that extra gloss on the surface of his eye, or his mind was completely focused on something else. Was there another crisis brewing? Maybe my blackmail plan could be put on hold.
“Follow me,” he said, and he turned and started to walk toward the hallway. His pace was unhurried, like he was a million miles away, not at all interested in his current surroundings.
I followed, weighing whether to ask him where we were headed. Usually, after our transactions it was time for me to bid a hasty exit. And if he was planning to pay me for the cerium, wouldn’t he have left the money in my car seat as he always did?
Just then I realized that there were two other potential spots from which I could have gathered DNA samples: my car’s door handle, which the alien must’ve touched when he put the money in my car, and the money itself. The fact that I hadn’t thought about this earlier made me doubt my blackmail plan as it now stood. What other obvious things had I overlooked?
And as soon as that question came to mind, I realized what else I’d overlooked. Something far more critical to my plan: I couldn’t show him the lab report. It had the lab’s address on it. And with that address, he didn’t need me alive. He’d kill me, then wipe out evidence that the sample had ever existed at all.
The alien walked by the door to the harvesting room, which meant we were headed to his office. The only other time I’d been in the alien’s office, he’d disposed of Ben. I immediately considered making a run for my car; the door to the garage was right there at the end of the hallway, and I could easily scoot by the slow-moving alien. But I reminded myself that Abel would eventually catch me—which was why I’d come up with the blackmail plan. But how could I make my blackmail plan work without showing him the lab report?
And there was another thing that kept me from running: the alien’s demeanor. He showed a complete lack of interest in his surroundings and in me. It just didn’t feel like he was concerned with getting rid of me right now.
We both entered his office and walked toward his desk. He moved behind it and sat down, while I stood in front of it. He placed the cerium on his desk, then stared at me as if he was trying to get his bearings—almost as if he was trying to remember why he’d asked me to follow him in here in the first place.
I was staring at his eye—the glassy sheen was bright even in the dim light—but I should have been watching his hands. Too late. His right hand moved swiftly from right to left—that same cutting motion I recognized from my first encounter with him.
Instantly the red cone of light enclosed me, and my heart began to pound. Fear had taken hold of me. I was imprisoned, and there was no way out. I pictured Ben’s body liquefying, conjoining with the thick red light, until it completely disappeared.
But my body wasn’t melting. At least, not yet. Though the alien had tuned in to me long enough to literally lower the boom, he either had tuned out again or was simply moving too slowly to start the liquefying process.
With my heart in my throat, I croaked out my threat. “If you kill me, everyone will learn that you’re here. Now. On Earth.”
When he didn’t respond right away, I didn’t say anything more. I gathered that he had to tune back in first.
After a couple of long beats, he said, “Your threat is hollow—”
I interrupted him for fear that now that he’d tuned back in, he’d kill me before I could explain. “If anything happens to me,” I said, “I have proof that you’re here, and it’s ready to go wide.”
Again, he didn’t respond right away, and I couldn’t be sure, but he appeared to be drifting off again. My threat wasn’t strong enough.
“I took a sample,” I said. “And it’s ready to go.”
“You’re bluffing.” That was the quickest response he’d given me.
I wasn’t bluffing. But if I couldn’t show him the report, what proof could I give him? I knew that whatever I did, I needed to do it right now. It was do-or-die time.
It came to me like sudden manna from heaven. I did have proof. It had been handed to me on a silver platter in that Petco parking lot in the heart of the Valley. The lab technician had told me all I needed to know about the report.
“Extra base pairs,” I said. “You have extra base pairs.”
ABEL
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
That got my attention. The human was now my only focus. I
t was possible that he’d just taken a random guess, but under the influence of Kalera, I was able to rule that out in less than a fraction of a second. My mind ran through the odds that he’d just happened to guess correctly, and the conclusion was clear.
The human wasn’t bluffing.
Besides, in my current state—with all my focus on the human—I could see that he wasn’t bluffing. Just as I could see that the human was terrified, gripped with the fear that he was seconds away from dying, I could also see that he was telling the truth. It was written in his eyes and on his face.
The human had gotten a genetic sample and had gotten it tested.
I would still dispose of him, of course. But before I did, I needed more information. And the human was in no position to deny me that information.
“Who knows about the sample?” I asked.
EDDIE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Everyone knows about the sample, I thought. Because I screwed up royally and let it out into the world. But then, with my heart pounding, I suddenly understood that my screw-up was also my salvation. My screw-up was better than my original plan. Because at this very moment there was a real and immediate threat already out there in the world—and not just a report in a manila envelope.
“Right now, it’s sitting in a databank,” I said. “It hasn’t been flagged or tracked. But it will be. The clock is ticking.”
“Where is this databank?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you once you let me go.” The ticking clock was my get out of jail free card, because with every passing minute, there was the chance that someone would flag the sample.
“I let you walk out of here safe and sound,” he said, “and you tell me where the sample is.”
“Deal.” I tried to sound confident. “And I also keep working for you.”
The red cone of light disappeared, and I knew that I was free to go. But I also knew that this was the end game. After I told him where the sample was, I was no longer going to be working for him. There was no deal. He’d still kill me—unless I killed him first. And I had no doubt that he knew this too.
But right now, I had the upper hand. He didn’t want any hint of his existence getting out there, and time was of the essence.
“There’s also the problem in San Diego,” I said, playing along with the mutual lie that we had some kind of deal.
“I’ll fix it,” he said.
I knew he couldn’t. If he could have, he would have done so already.
So with that exchange, we’d both finished telling our lies. And when he didn’t say any more, I knew to expect to hear from him shortly through the gold card. He’d let me know how to get him the information about the lab and databank.
I headed out. It was every man—and every alien—for himself.
ABEL
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I watched the human leave my office, and resisted the urge to head back to the curvature drive. With my thoughts driven by the Kalera, I’d been able to go through my options in a few seconds. I could have held the human captive until he told me where the sample was, or I could have just disposed of him on the spot. I didn’t need him to help me find the databank or the sample there—with the Kalera’s help, I was confident I could track those things down on my own. But I was sure the human had another sample stashed somewhere else, along with some way to reveal it. So I needed to track down that extra sample too.
And the easiest way to find that other sample was to let the human go—he’d think he had outsmarted me—and then see if he led me straight to it.
Still, as the human had said, the clock was ticking, and I wouldn’t just wait around for him to slip up. I had to immediately set to work eliminating the sample at the databank, as that was my most pressing concern. If the sample was flagged before I got to it, I’d be exposed. Even if it took a while for the scientists who examined it to understand exactly what they were studying, the Traceans would immediately know that one of their own was on Earth. And worse, the sample would tell them exactly which Tracean it was, which would lead to my capture.
So now I had to venture back out into the digital world, which I didn’t want to do since I had already cleaned up my trail, but I had no choice. I’d find the databank, find the sample, and then wipe out all evidence that it had ever existed. Then I’d move on to finding Eddie’s other sample. Maybe he would lead me to it, which would save me some time. But if not, I had other ways to track it down.
Unfortunately, I now had to use my time under the influence of the Kalera to do these things, instead of using it on the curvature drive. Which meant I might have to take Kalera a third time to focus on the curvature drive.
But with this, too, I had no choice.
And then, once I checked these items off my list, I’d have one final job: to dispose of Eddie. I knew I’d never get Eddie to come back to the house, so I’d have to hire a human to handle that for me.
I now wished that I hadn’t disposed of the employee who’d planted the seven seeds. I could’ve used him to do the job.
EDDIE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
As I wound up toward Mulholland, farther away from the shadow of death, I kept expecting the gold card in my pocket to hum to life, but it didn’t. It remained dead in my pocket. And by the time I was on Coldwater, I began to believe that Abel had gone back to whatever he’d been so involved in when I’d arrived. He’d ask me about the databank when he finished with that.
For a few seconds, I even considered the fanciful possibility that he hadn’t contacted me yet because this wasn’t the end game. I actually considered a storybook ending to this crisis: that after I told the alien where the sample was, we’d continue with business as usual. The Rose David murder would somehow fade in the rearview mirror, and I’d continue to deliver targets in return for bricks of cash.
But this was wishful thinking, and I knew it. Abel would have murdered me on the spot if it hadn’t been for my blackmail threat. And now that I was no longer under the threat of immediate execution, I also understood he might have murdered me anyway if not for the fact that he was worried he might miss something. Something that I hadn’t confessed to—and with me dead, there was the chance he wouldn’t be able to find it. I had evened the playing field. For now.
But how was I going to kill Abel before he killed me?
Just as the clock was ticking on when some professor, or researcher, or grad student, discovered that abnormal test result in the databank, so was the clock ticking on how much time I had to kill the alien. I supposed I could buy myself more time by lying to him about the sample’s location. But would that really buy me more time? When he found out that I’d lied, he might not ask me again. He could easily conclude that once a liar, always a liar, and get rid of me.
I was now on Ventura, closing in on Valley Village and my house. If Jake and Hannah were going to be saved from suffering through the tragedy of losing their dad, I had to act. I had to implement my next move before the clock stopped ticking and Abel was back in the driver’s seat.
By the time I pulled into my driveway, I had made a fateful decision. I’d tell Abel the truth about the location of the sample.
Then I’d head to his house to kill him.
I realized that if I told him the truth, rather than lying, he wouldn’t contact me again. He’d immediately start the job of covering up all traces that the sample had ever existed, and he’d put into motion his plan to murder me. During this, I’d be on my way to his house. But if I lied, I couldn’t be sure what he’d do next, so that option was off the table.
I walked into my house and found it eerily silent. The silence felt ominous, but I told myself this was only because it was late and everyone was already in bed. On the kitchen counter, I found a note from Jenny. Don’t forget to call Dr. Eisner and make an appointment. Let’s make sure Hannah is fine.
That hit me like a punch to the gut—Abel had messed with my daughter, and I regretted not confronting him
about it. But what good would that have done? If the alien was responsible for Hannah’s fainting spell, it was my fault. I was the one who had forced myself into the alien’s life. The guilt welled up inside me again; I was culpable in turning my daughter into a crop.
I went into the den and pulled the gold card from my pocket. Why hadn’t Abel contacted me yet? Was it really because he was busy with something else? Wasn’t there another possibly? A horrible one? What if Abel hadn’t contacted me because he’d already found the sample and no longer needed me?
I’m just standing here waiting to be executed, I thought. And if that was true, then I needed to drive back up to the alien’s house and kill him before he killed me. Which led to a conundrum. If I drove up to his house, I had to leave the gold card behind. Otherwise he’d know I was on my way up there, unannounced, and under the circumstances, he’d know exactly why I was headed up there.
But if I left the gold card behind, and he tried to contact me with instructions on how to get him the databank’s location, I wouldn’t be here to get the message and act on it. He’d know I was up to something.
There was no time to carefully weigh my options.
I decided to leave the gold card here and head to Abel’s.
I knew I could get onto his property from the back, through the woods, and that I could get into the house through that open patio door. I also knew that the house didn’t appear to have an alarm. Of course, it was quite possible that it had some kind of “alien” alarm, but that was a risk I was going to have to take.
I needed a weapon, and the most logical weapon was a gun. But I didn’t own one, and there was no time to get one. But another option quickly came to me. While working for Abel, I had become good at coming up with ad hoc solutions to unexpected problems. Say what you will about the San Diego assignment, but the truth was that every step of the way I’d come up with a solution to an unexpected problem.
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