Exiles

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  Nick took some moments to digest that. “And these two races of aliens are here because …?”

  Claire glanced at Madelyn for help with that one but Maddie just shrugged. “We don’t really know. Dante never said. He just said there were some things the gods would not allow us to know—that it could mean our death. And we—me and Maddie—think it must be stuff they left here in the past. I mean—right after we discovered there was an ancient city in that cave, the entire thing collapsed. Dante didn’t say it was the gods, but I think it was and I’m pretty sure he knows it was them.

  “And Maddie and her team had begun to excavate another ancient city and we found this room where the ceiling was … well it looked like a map of the universe and there was this device that came on and … at least appeared to map routes with laser light. And then there was this horrendous earthquake followed by a tsunami.”

  Nick knew about the map room. He’d been there. Seen it. He wasn’t actually comfortable bringing it up since he knew Claire’s sister hated him for taking part in that raid. “Those could have been purely natural phenomenon. We have earthquakes all the time, dozens every single day around the globe from what I understand. And earthquakes cause tsunamis if the conditions are right.”

  Frustration flickered through Claire. “Yes, I know all that. And I know it sounds crazy, but you saw Dante shift forms! What do you think? That he’s just some kind of Earth being we haven’t heard of before?”

  “I think he’s a fucking freak of nature alright,” Nick growled. “But, yes, I am inclined to believe he could be alien and it doesn’t seem very likely he’d be here all alone. He would have come with buddies. But it could be him and his buddies controlling the ‘weather slash nature’ for that matter—just saying if it isn’t natural disasters we’re talking about. Have you seen any of these aliens he refers to as the gods?”

  Discomfort and dismay wafted through Claire, but she didn’t believe that Dante had lied to her. “No, I haven’t,” she reluctantly confessed. “But I don’t believe Dante caused that cave in that killed so many people and he wasn’t even there when the earthquake and tsunami happened.”

  “But there was that other angel that woke up when you were polishing his phallus,” Maddie put in helpfully.

  Claire gaped at her sister in disbelief and dawning anger.

  Maddie shrugged and laughed. It sounded forced. “Just kidding. We’d found this statue—we thought—in the temple—or whatever it was. And Claire was cleaning it up. Then he woke up. I mean one minute—like a statue and the next bellowing at us to get out of his temple. And we didn’t have time to recover from the shock of that discovery when the temple began to shake hard enough we thought it was going to collapse on top of us.”

  Nick gave Claire a look she didn’t especially like.

  She felt like choking Madelyn!

  “So …. We know there are at least two angels here.”

  “A lot,” Claire supplied a little stiffly, “if that fortress where Dante took me was even ever filled with his people. It was huge. They blew it up—the Navy guys—after they captured me.”

  It was Nick’s turn to shift uncomfortably beneath a condemning glare from Madelyn. He cleared his throat. “Which brings us to our problem with Uncle Sam and I think it might be more pressing. I don’t think for a minute that they believe either of you are terrorists—or aliens. But they’ve set their sights on bringing both of you in for questioning and they don’t give up easily.”

  “Because you don’t believe anything I just told you about the aliens,” Claire said angrily.

  “No, because Uncle Sam is on our asses and the aliens might be a problem and might not be. After all, if they’ve been around as long as you suggest, they haven’t done anything. Why worry about them now?”

  “Not necessarily true,” Maddie contradicted. “We don’t know that they haven’t done anything before. If they have weapons that can control the weather and create earthquakes, any number of widespread disasters from our past could be things they did deliberately, up to and including the asteroids that hit at crucial times of development—and maybe because humans got too close to the truth before! Granted, there’s no reason to believe there haven’t been extinction events that were completely and totally natural, but that isn’t necessarily the case. Some might have been natural. Some might have been created.

  “I’m not saying I’m totally buying in to what that alien dude, Dante, told Claire—it bothers me that none of us have seen these other supposed aliens—unless they’re the short, naked gray dudes everybody’s always claiming abducted them? Maybe it’s the ‘angels’ playing with us? But they are definitely here and they are definitely a threat if they caused either of the ‘natural’ disasters that just about wiped out me and Claire and my excavation team—and all the people that died in that collapse in Florida!”

  Nick shook his head. “Alright, so let me put it this way—I don’t know how the fuck to deal with aliens if everything or even any part of what you’ve said is true. I do know that the government piled all of their spoils onto a submarine directly after the joint raids of both the alien facility and the dig site and that all of it was taken to a top, top secret location for study and analysis. My thought is that if they go after anybody it’ll be the men that stole their stuff and that leaves us in the clear. And if the government keeps it as secret as they want to, the aliens might never know.

  “On the other hand, the government knows about you two—they captured you—and I’m pretty sure they’ve already figured out that I was the one that helped the two of you escape. So I think the first order of business is to stay ahead of them until we can figure out how to resolve the situation or … stay on the run and try to avoid dealing with it directly.”

  Claire studied him for a long moment. “The problem, Nick, is that it’s all connected. But I can see where we need to focus on the government as the most immediate threat. Because, like you, I don’t really think we can do anything about the alien issue. Dante said we weren’t allowed to know. And we do know. We’ve—all of us—seen stuff, I’m sure, that we weren’t supposed to know about and we can’t un-know. So if what Dante said was true, there really isn’t any way to escape. They’re going to find us.”

  Chapter Five

  They had been arguing heatedly off and on for days when the summons was broadcast over the com setup throughout the Hy-Brasil facility. The summons jolted through the angels’ heated debate as to what, if anything, the overlords were up to like a sluice of icy water. To a man, they fell silent, listening tensely, as if they were certain they must have been mistaken.

  The announcement came again and this time the speaker listed off specific names of the angels summoned to report to main base to upgrade their communications devices.

  Dante felt a sick, sinking sensation when he heard his own name called. His thoughts immediately flew to Claire, but she was safe where she was.

  As long as the gods did not manage to turn his mind as they had the minds of the others.

  It seemed evident that they could not do it at a distance or they would all have been reprogrammed by now. It also seemed evident that the call was a trap to allow the overlords the opportunity to turn the rest of them in to automatons as they apparently had those who had already reported for an ‘adjustment’.

  For nearly a week, Earth time, they had been trying to communicate with the changelings to discover what had happened to them, but it was as if their brains had been completely removed and mechanics implanted to replace it. There was nothing but darkness and silence. Even Cristian had not been able to reach the mind of his twin, which made them wonder if that part of their brain that allowed them to communicate telepathically had been tampered with despite the fact that they had not been able to find that it had.

  The complete silence within their minds was unnerving!

  As Dante had himself when he had captured Gaius, they performed every test they could think of to try to track down wh
at was causing Gaius and Daelin to behave as if they were no more than puppets. And they had also come up empty. There were no drugs in their systems. No disease or defect could be detected. And they could find nothing to indicate that the implants were responsible for the drastic changes in both angels.

  They knew, however, that there was no logical answer except that the implants had been used, somehow, to manipulate the pair. It had to be that and it had to have been deliberate. The devices were not malfunctioning. They were functioning just as they had been designed to function—but not as communication devices, or at least not merely for communications.

  Apparently it took no more than the summons to abruptly convince those who had been arguing that it was paranoid to think the gods had anything to do with the changelings. They abruptly shifted their convictions to the angel camp.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Well, I am damned well not responding until we are certain they are not responsible for what has happened to Gaius and Daelin!”

  “That will not happen! For there is no other explanation for the change in them!"

  “We must answer the summons. Failing to respond to a direct command is a punishable infraction. They could put all of us in stasis without concern that it would violate the charter and then we would all be at their mercy,” Galen said pointedly.

  “So we just walk into a trap? One by one until they have us all?” Galt demanded.

  “We know what they are doing …,” Galen began.

  “We do not know what they are doing!” Cristian retorted angrily. “I say we send representatives to lodge charges against the overlords and lay this before the assembly! Demand an investigation into their activities at the very least if they will not charge them on our word and the evidence of their eyes when we present Gaius and Daelin!”

  “Charges of what? We have no evidence that they have done anything at all and the council would dismiss anything presented without evidence to back it up!”

  “Gaius and Daelin are not evidence enough?”

  “The overlords could dodge that by saying that it was not their doing. You may be certain that, if they are responsible, whatever it is that they are doing cannot be easily traced back to them if at all. And the council members are afraid of them. Unless it is something that is more frightening to them than the overlords, they will ignore any charges against the gods—certainly coming from us when we are fallen!”

  “Does anyone know how many have already been summoned?” Dante asked.

  Every angel in the gathering room stilled, glancing around the room.

  “Mayhap a third of us,” Cristian answered finally. “We are twenty strong here. There are mayhap that many in each of the other three facilities. Awakened. I have no idea how many are currently in stasis.”

  “Or taken!” Dante ground out and then uttered a furious curse, “Aeon’s balls! And we are just now discovering this?”

  The others looked uncomfortable. “They only just summoned them and to my knowledge only Gaius and Daelin have returned. How were we to know this? We had no clue that anything was amiss at all until Daelin abruptly appeared and tried to hack his twin to death!”

  “And then you came with Gaius or we would not know now that there was more than one afflicted with madness!”

  “What can we deduce from that?” Galen said thoughtfully, beginning to pace the gathering room where they had all assembled when the latest tests had failed to yield an answer. “The gods could not expect to take us by surprise if they are responsible and they released any of the angels they had changed prematurely. That action would, has, alerted us. So can we assume from this that they have screwed up? That they have nothing to do with it? Or should we think that they have screwed up in another way entirely? They sent the automatons they had created to destroy the rest of us, but only two have attacked us ….”

  Dante felt his heart jerk painfully in his chest at that. Coldness washed over him.

  “We would have heard if they had turned these things loose on the humans,” Cristian pointed out.

  Relief flooded Dante with the realization that Cristian was certainly right.

  “So … should we assume they were not released but perhaps escaped?”

  Dante frowned. “I think that we should assume that they were testing the effectiveness. I was the only opposition when Gaius was beamed down and he is many times stronger and faster than he was when I knew him before the change. I think they may have believed that there were few enough angels in the Hy-Brasil facility that Daelin might be able to overcome—and if he could not then it would appear to be an isolated event affecting only Daelin because I am certain I was not expected to overcome Gaius. They sent him to dispatch me and could then summon him back—mayhap another test. I am certain this is about control. Or at least that that is part of the answer.”

  “But it is more than control! There would be no reason to make them … mad with rage if that was the case!”

  Galen thought that over. “Mayhap it is a side effect of their experimentation? Not anticipated?”

  “Perhaps,” Dante conceded, “but I am not buying it. I do not believe they would consider reprogramming all of us until they had perfected whatever it is that they have done. They have summoned another third. So we must assume that that is part of the plan and figure out how it fits into their plans.”

  “They will expect us to present ourselves,” Galt pointed out. “And what of those in the other fortresses? They will have no idea what has happened and walk blindly into the trap.”

  “Shit! He is right! We need to move fast or there will be more lost—and we have no idea if this can be reversed or not!”

  Cristian sent Galen a stricken look. “I think that we can dismiss the possibility that this is anything other than a plot by the gods. The last communication that I had from Daelin was a single word.” He swallowed a little sickly. “But I thought …. He was always jesting about one thing or another. I thought that it was some sort of joke. Or that I had been mistaken.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Betrayed.”

  * * * *

  Claire didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried when she and Nick settled together on the narrow, lumpy bed that night and Nick merely wished her a good night, presented her with his back, and, from what she could tell, went directly to sleep.

  It took very little self-analysis to produce the fact that she wasn’t actually relieved even though she knew she should have been. She’d spent a good bit of the day worrying over whether or not intimacy was a good idea given her predicament—no birth control and anxiety already due to the fact that she’d slept with both Nick and Dante in quick succession and could be carrying a baby whose father was in doubt because of her irresponsible behavior. A little late, granted, for an attack of conscience, but it came when it came. She could no more control that than she could control her animal urges, apparently.

  It was almost as disconcerting that he didn’t really seem angry.

  Well, maybe a little cool toward her. He hadn’t been happy about the discussion that featured Dante so predominantly. That much had been clear—and expected actually—and his cool demeanor had been so mild considering what she’d more than half expected that she’d just been grateful they didn’t have a huge fight over it.

  She was well aware, though, that it was still an unresolved issue.

  At some point—if they lived long enough—they were going to have to address it.

  Like her pregnancy would be a huge issue that would have to be resolved if it turned out she was pregnant.

  She supposed she could try the temporary insanity plea to excuse herself since she had certainly been under a tremendous amount of emotional and physical distress. But somehow she didn’t see that that would really get her off the hook—with either man—and certainly not Nick. She was very much afraid that, by having sex with Nick directly after they’d escaped, she’d led Nick to believe that she was completel
y prepared to make a commitment if she hadn’t convinced him that there already was a tacit agreement in play.

  Acting standoffish afterwards wasn’t going to cut it and she knew it. Nick probably thought she’d been distant because of the strangers they were with in close quarters on the boat.

  And, to a large extent, that had played a part. She’d never been terribly comfortable with being demonstratively affectionate. Her family just wasn’t the ‘touchy’ sort. They’d expressed their affections verbally and in thoughtful actions toward one another—not with a lot of hugging and kissing—which would’ve been difficult anyway since they spent more time apart than together.

  Nick’s behavior once they got into bed together went way beyond disconcerting. It totally threw her for a loop when she’d spent a good bit of the day trying to figure out how she was going to hold Nick off until she made up her feeble mind about her situation and what to do about it. Not having to hold him off wasn’t an option she’d considered. She didn’t know whether to put it down to plain old exhaustion—which would be understandable—or if the discussion they’d had earlier when they’d first arrived had given him way too much food for thought.

  That thought dismayed her enough it was hard to ignore the emotional attachment she already felt toward Nick.

  She was an idiot for even debating the matter! Dante was an alien. It didn’t matter how she felt about him. It didn’t matter that he made her feel things she had never felt before in her life and knew she never would feel with anyone else. She couldn’t ‘commit’ to an alien! There was no future with a being from another world who might be able to blend in to hers in a superficial way but never would be able to really fit. Even assuming he truly wanted her to be his life partner and hadn’t merely been using her to slake his taste for human women!