When They Saw

by Kody Boye

  When They Saw

  A WHEN THEY CAME NOVEL, Book 2

  by Kody Boye

  When They Saw

  A WHEN THEY CAME NOVEL, #2

  By Kody Boye

  Copyright © 2017. All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Corey Hollins

  Edited by Julie Fletcher

  Interior formatting by Kody Boye

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied within critical articles and reviews or works within the public domain.

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is coincidental.

  Dedicated with much love and affection

  to Dawn, whose love for this series inspired me to make it the best it could be.

  &

  A special thanks to Julie for editing this book, and to Constance for providing feedback on various content within the manuscript.

  Chapter 1

  When They saw I was willing to go without resistance, the story then continued, They should have known something was wrong. They should have known that after everything I had gone through, after all the trials I had endured—losing my mother, sister, Jason, and home—I would have never gone willingly or without a fight.

  But They didn’t care.

  No.

  All They wanted was me.

  Being lifted into that Harvester ship was undoubtedly the most terrifying thing that ever could have happened to me. My body tingled as what felt like thousands of bugs crawled over my skin, and my brain was alight with sensory overload as I struggled to comprehend everything around me. The noise was deafening, the light blinding, and the sensation of being lifted incomparable to anything I had felt before. I was a calculator without a final value, a computer who could not run without the proper software, a camera who could not use its flash to capture the portraiture that was in front of it. I was blind, yet at the same time wasn’t—and realized we were insignificant compared to the beings that had come to claim our world.

  It was then, and only then, that I began to see the interior of the Harvester ship for what it truly was.

  Bright lights lit the dome of the spherical structure, and holographic computer layouts displayed information in a language I could not comprehend. Around Them stood the little gray beings I had seen in my visions. Five-foot at the largest, with long, spindly limbs, bulbous skulls, and giant black eyes, They tapped into processors with three-fingered hands. They turned to acknowledge me only briefly before a voice beckoned—not audibly, but mentally, one which instantly made me cower from the strength of it.

  The girl has been found, this voice said, androgynous in that it did not resemble anything male or female, but both at the same time. Homosapien. Earthling. American.

  How did it know so much information, let alone my nationality? Had it gleaned it from the people They’d taken before—from the people They’d abducted and did only God knew what to Them?

  I trembled as I lay on the floor, trying my hardest not to falter in the face of my greatest nightmare. At first it appeared as though They didn’t care about my presence—that They had simply brought me aboard for examination and nothing else—so when I stood to take in my surroundings, I thought that maybe I was safe.

  Then I saw it—lurking in the darkness, watching, waiting for its commands.

  The Coyote, with its glowing yellow eyes and its snarl of teeth, stepped forward, and laughed as it looked upon me.

  Take her to the holding bay, the same androgynous voice said.

  I was forcibly grabbed and made to walk from the spherical center of the ship, down a winding hall. There were a multitude of glowing lights to mark our way. The Coyote’s grip was sure, its strength immense. I squirmed, trying to free myself, but it only laughed and leaned forward to breathe down the back of my neck, as if to say, you cannot get away, you cannot get away, you cannot get away.

  “I cannot get away,” I said, only to receive a wicked laugh in response.

  I grimaced as the being tightened its hold and tried not to panic when its fur scratched against my smooth skin. It continued to drag me up the hall at a pace I found hindering, considering it was nearly twice as tall as me, twice as strong as me, but somehow I managed to keep up.

  When we finally reached a nondescript chrome doorway, I waited and watched as the Coyote reached out to touch a panel with its gangly hand.

  Red light streamed from beneath its blue surface.

  Access was granted, the door was opened.

  Then I was thrown inside, into a dark, barely-lit room.

  The door closed behind me, and for the first time since I arrived aboard the Harvester ship, I screamed.

  Was this how it happened? Was this how it began? Was this how They prepared Their patients for Their dissections or experimentations or whatever it was They did to the people They took aboard Their ships? I threw myself at the door and pounded my fists against it, feeling only the chrome plating and what felt like millions of lines of braille beneath my fingers. I tried my hardest to stem my panic, but to no avail.

  I’d been captured—Harvested—and only God knew what would happen to me.

  “Please,” I whispered, tears streaming down my face as I fought for the only light I could find in the darkest of situations. “Don’t let anything happen to me.”

  The panic spooling from my chest came forth in waves; crashing upon the shores of my person and making me feel as though I would succumb to it. Drowned, I would be, within the sea of sorrows, and forever lost I would be within the skies of torment, but never would I be found.

  No.

  Up there—in the skies, in the stars, in wherever I was—They would never find me. Not Captain Sin. Not Commander Dubois. Not Asha.

  Asha.

  I trembled as I thought of my friend and tried not to succumb to panic once more. I paced the room—from one small corner to the other—and eventually settled against the wall to try and rest. I couldn’t fight. I’d told Them I wouldn’t—that I would simply talk and try to see what it was They wanted with the people on Earth. But what if, in the end, They wanted something we couldn’t give?

  My life hung precariously in the balance—suspended on taut wires between the realm of Heaven and the lands of Earth—and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

  I tried to abate my panic by taking slow, deep breaths—through my nose and out my mouth—but even such common exercises taught by the psychiatrists of Fort Hope to the surviving children of humanity did little to help. My chest tightened, my lungs throbbed, and my ribcage struggled to expand within the cage that was my flesh. I wanted nothing more than to simply flee—to throw myself out the panel that should have been a window, but wasn’t, and onto the ground below—but couldn’t.

  I was stuck there, for who knew how long, and I’d no idea what They’d do to me.

  I tried to find something, anything, to defend myself with—to ensure that, if They did try to take me, and if They did try to experiment on me, that I wouldn’t go without a fight—but there was nothing in the room that could be removed. There were no bars to be broken, no floorboards to chip away. There was nothing but the smooth, chrome plating that made up the entirety of the ship, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to damage it.

  I stomped my feet.

  I punched with my fists.

  I even, at one point, tried to latch my finger
nails onto something and pull it away.

  Still, nothing worked.

  By the time my panic had begun to dissipate, I heard an electronic click, and then watched as the door opened to reveal one of Them.

  Its eyes were darkness, its gray face the portraiture of horror. It stepped forward, then, and examined me with the huge eyes that sat within its bulbous head.

  Then it reached out to me through thought—the sensation like tendrils swimming over the curvature of my skull.

  Homosapien, it began, as it had before. Earthling. American. Girl from the land of Texas. What are you called?

  “My nuh-name is Ah-Ana Mia,” I said as the creature—the largest of those I had seen—made its way toward me, its obsidian-black eyes watching me with a depth and intelligence I could have never anticipated from a creature of flesh and blood. “What do you want with me?”

  We would like to understand why you have resisted.

  What?

  Why we had resisted?

  Was it not obvious?

  I stared at the creature—unsure what to call it, unaware of how to determine its emotions, and completely ignorant as to how to respond. Resisted? Why had—and have—we resisted? What kind of question was that?

  “I,” I started, and then stopped before I could continue. So petrified was I by fear that I couldn’t think, could barely breathe, could hardly move. My chest seized and I began to hyperventilate as the creature drew forward, as I scrambled, crab-walking, toward the far wall.

  It stared at me, its black eyes taking in every facet of my person, before it leaned forward and asked, Why have the people of Earth resisted?

  “You… started abducting us,” I said.

  Ab… ducting?

  “Taking us into your ships,” I clarified. “Doing whatever it was you were doing to us.”

  We simply wished to establish a protocol upon which to interact with those capable.

  “Is that why you sent the Coyotes to watch us?” I asked. “To kill us?”

  Casualties were not meant to happen unless resistance occurred. We grieve the loss of your people just as we do ours.

  “What are you,” I stated.

  I turned just in time to see a Coyote stalk out from a hallway, its scarred figure and blind eyes unable to determine anything physical. I sensed its presence as it attempted to make contact with my mind. When I shook my head, it snarled, only to be subdued a moment later by a pair of the small gray creatures whom had always been referred to as Overseers.

  The Overseer before me extended a hand, but stopped as I squirmed away. Its flesh was much like mine in that it had pores, wrinkles, and slight grooves from where the digits split into separate bones. Something—something deep down, something I could not control—compelled me to reach out and touch it in turn, but I stopped before I could.

  Between the mystique and awe over being in such close proximity, I felt rage and anger—rage for having been terrorized on our planet and, most importantly, anger for having been stripped of everything I had ever loved.

  “Where is my father?” I asked after a short moment.

  Father? the Overseer asked.

  “The one who fathered me. The… male.”

  Our subjects are not maintained past the initial observation period. They expire peacefully and without fear.

  I screamed—wanting to lunge and grip its neck, to tear its throat, to stab its eyes with my fingers, and rip its placid tongue out with my hands—but knew there would be no use. They would overwhelm me. That, or set a Coyote upon me. So instead I simply slumped to the cool chrome floor and sobbed, unable to look at the creature for fear of seeing its dark eyes and the judgment They held.

  I am sorry for your loss, it said, reaching down to tilt my head up.

  The moment its flesh touched mine, I received a vision.

  Black monoliths—

  Dancing Coyotes—

  A world scarred by the constantly-shining sun—

  I watched as the orb of light which was Their lifeblood weakened and its star began to collapse in a brilliant pool of effervescent light.

  I blinked to clear my vision and looked into the eyes of the creature that touched me, filled with both fear and awe over what I saw.

  So, the creature said, its voice flowing over my mind like smooth waters over the lushest of fjords. You have seen our demise.

  “Demise?” I asked, frowning. “What are you—”

  Our star was dying, our planet fading. We could not remain for long. So we searched the galaxy for years upon years…

  “Until you found Earth,” I whispered.

  The creature nodded, the slight tilt of its head ominous in that it had confirmed the suspicions I’d had all along.

  They didn’t want us.

  They wanted the planet.

  Your home world was the closest habitable planet we found, the creature continued, withdrawing its three-fingered hand and allowing it to fall slack at its side. We merely wished to learn, observe, and make peace. You—humanity—are the ones who began to fight back.

  “How could you not expect us to?” I drew away from the creature whose naked flesh was devoid of clothing. It bore upon its body no sex or differentiation from its fellow Overseers. “You invaded our planet, kidnapped our people, and killed our friends and family.”

  We would not have resorted to such measures had you not attacked.

  Who, I wondered, had attacked first? Had it been the military, sending missiles against what they had perceived was a threat, or had it been a civilian, terrified out of his or her mind over having seen one of Their scouting agents within the fields? The Coyotes were horrifying—monstrous with Their dagger-like claws and twin rows of teeth—and haunting in that They only wanted one thing: humanity. That alone would have given people reason to fight back, but for Them to present us with violence when They had not even attempted communication?

  Or had They?

  There was so much I didn’t know—so much I wanted to know—but I knew I could not stay there forever. I had been given a primary objective, and for that reason had to ask the one question I knew Commander Dubois would have wanted me to.

  With that in mind, I asked, with as pure a mind and heart as possible, “What is your reason for making contact with our planet?”

  To make subservient the dominant lifeforms and integrate onto the planet’s surface.

  To make subservient Earth’s dominant lifeforms? What did that mean?

  “Will you let me go?” I asked. “So I can relay the message back to the people of Earth?”

  You will be released, Ana Mia Sofia Berrios, but be forewarned: this was but the first stage of our infiltration. We seek to assimilate now that we have gathered the intelligence we need. Do not resist. Comply, or be destroyed.

  The creature turned and headed out the door.

  “Wait,” I said. “What about—”

  The floor beneath me opened.

  White light spilled out.

  Once again, I was blinded.

  Then everything went dark.

  Chapter 2

  I opened my eyes to darkness.

  At first I thought I was simply dreaming—that none of the events of the previous twenty-four hours had occurred and that they had been some great nightmare: that Asha and I had fallen asleep on the porch outside of Austin and we had never reached Burgundy hospital, that we had never found Jason’s body, that I had never been forced to comply with an insane commander’s ridiculous demands. When I felt not a mattress or wood beneath my person, however, and instead scraped my hands along cold asphalt, I began to realize it had not been a dream—and that I had, in fact, been witness to the Overseers and Their advanced alien technology.

  “Hello?” a voice called.

  “Is she even still alive?” another asked.

  “She just… fell.”

  “No one could’ve survived a fall like that.”

  “I’m okay!” I called, struggling to push myself off the g
round. It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me, though what had happened after my initial blackout I couldn’t be sure. For that reason, I simply pushed myself to my feet and turned just in time to see my companions’ guns trained upon me.

  “You are… you?” Cindy Ramirez asked. “Right?”

  “I’m me,” I replied. “Why?”

  “You fell from the sky,” Easton Wells said, reaching up to brush a hand through his thick mustache. “We thought you’d be dead when you hit the ground.”

  “Are you hurt?” Cindy frowned.

  “No,” I said, surprised that I wasn’t after hearing what they had to say. “I feel fine.”

  Of course, what I neglected to mention was that I was absolutely terrified. The memories were slowly coming back, inching into my mind like worms intent on scouring the deepest aspects of the earth. I thought first of the Coyote, blind and decrepit, then of the creature whom I once thought I would never comprehend in my wildest dreams.

  Captain Sin—whom I hadn’t seen until that moment—drew forward, lowered his hand, and said, “At ease,” which prompted the men and women in his troop to stop aiming their weapons at me.

  “But sir,” Easton said. “How do we know it’s… well… her?”

  “Do I look any different?” I asked with a frown.

  “Well, no, but—”

  “I think Ana Mia is still the same person she was when she went up into that ship,” Captain Sin interrupted. “Albeit one with more information than she had before.”

  Once the rifles were lowered, I pushed myself to my feet and stood without so much as a second thought as to what they might do. Rather, I approached Captain Sin with steadfast confidence and said, “I need to speak to Dubois as soon as possible.”

  “Understood,” the man said. He then turned and barked, “Return to base! Our mission is over!”

  I had no sooner passed through the front doors when I was greeted by Commander Dubois. “Ana Mia,” she said, her normally-clipped voice filled with a sense of wonder. “You’re… back.”