David was right. The day dragged on. He thought it would never end. His only enjoyment was the look of fear in Brice’s eyes every time they crossed paths. He made sure to glance his way often. School finally let out and he raced to the Fannin house. His heart was racing, too. The house, a two-story white colonial with a two-story garage their parents had built years earlier, was situated on a double lot at 1312 Farney. The Fannins had bought the second lot after an old run-down crack-house had burned down. No questions were ever asked about the fire. The police figured that was one way to get rid of the druggies. At least, that’s how the rumors went.
“Wassup, boys?” David asked as he entered the garage. Chris was spotting Jeremy while he bench pressed, and Mikey was hitting the treadmill. Besides girls, the brothers knew only two things—working out and rebuilding engines. David was counting on their mechanical skills as well as their forgiving natures. The three brothers ignored him. “Look, I know it’s been years, and that was my fault, but I—”
“Don’t want to hear it, Noble,” Mikey said, killing the treadmill. “You abandoned your friends like they were nothing. Heck, you and I were as close as you and John. We understand you were heartbroken, but man, the way you treated us was just plain cold.”
David stared at the floor. “Sorry.”
“Hey, we’re men, we don’t hold grudges,” Jeremy said. “We figured that one day you’d quit being an idiot. We just didn’t think it would take you so long.”
“You’re not mad? You forgive me?”
“Of course we’re mad, and we’ll harass you for years to come,” Chris replied. “That is, if you’re back with the pack.”
“Guess I’m back with the pack,” David said.
“So, why are you back?”
“Sit down, boys, you aren’t going to believe this one.”
The Fannins sat listening, entranced by David’s story. None of them believed it.
“Let me get this straight,” Mikey said after David finished. “You’re telling us that you’re now part alien and you need us to build you a space engine?”
“Yes,” David said. “That’s about the size of it.”
Jeremy frowned at him. “Man, didn’t you pay attention to the ‘Just Say No to Drugs’ rally at school last year?”
“I swear it’s all true,” David said. “And I can prove it.”
David got up and left the garage and walked to the four-wheel-drive Chevy that the Fannins had turned into a mudding truck. The Fannins followed him and waited. David grabbed hold of the back of the vehicle with both hands and then hefted the rear end into the air with one tug.
Jeremy shook his head. “That’s nothing. I once saw an eight-year-old girl squat 400 pounds. You’re not part alien.”
David scanned the open air, typing away at the wind, searching for other talents he might possess. The Fannins stared at him like he was one of the druggies their family had chased off years ago. Finally, David smiled and said, “Follow me.”
He walked back into the garage and found an electrical socket. He placed his left hand inches from the socket, and pulled a stream of electricity into his fingers. He pointed the fingers of his right hand toward a 45-pound barbell on the other side of the garage and sent a beam of gold and silver light, thin as a laser beam, toward it. As he moved his fingers, he burned the initials D.N.A. into the metal plate.
The Fannin brothers stared in awe, until Chris finally spoke. “Um, so what’s it like to be an alien?”
“It’s strange,” David said. “But I kind of like it.”
“D.N.A.? What’s that stand for?” Chris asked.
David smiled. “David Noble—Alien.”
“We’re in,” Mikey said.
“Yeah,” said Jeremy. “But I have two questions. When do we start and where are we building this … what did you call it?”
“Starfire cube,” David said. “We’ll start tomorrow after I figure out what materials we’ll need to build it. We’ll use the old mill at the end of town.”
That night, David dreamed of the starfire cube. It was a perfect dodecahedron made of what looked like Plexiglas. In his dream, he watched himself from above as Jeremy, Chris, and Mikey helped him in the dead of night gather the materials to build the portal. They worked like Energizer bunnies. The dream was so real he felt as if he were living it. In the next instant, they were parked at the old mill, toting the materials down below the dilapidated building. A live electric line still fed the building. Feeding off the electricity, David used the tips of his fingers as lasers to cut the Plexiglas into identical pieces before fusing each piece together. Streams like electricity flowed from him, welding the clear sheets together as the Fannin brothers held them in place.
Gold rings and silver necklaces that the four had somehow collected were piled in front of David. Piece by piece he held the jewelry in his palm. As the solid gold, then silver, melted in his hand, he dipped his finger in the liquid, then painted equations all over the starfire cube. When they were finished, the structure looked like a piece of art. They gazed at the dodecahedron, which was eight feet tall and eight feet wide, and realized there was no entry point. It was solid. As they continued to stare, the lights around them faded. As darkness descended, the buzzing of an alarm clock pierced David’s mind.
“At least I know how to build it now,” he thought as he woke up.
That school day was filled with teenage angst and drama. Chastity Bertrum had broken up with Brice the night before, and then let it be known that she had set her sights on David. The news spread quickly, and the school was abuzz with it before second period.
David wasn’t amused. He had always liked Chastity, but as his overall intelligence evolved, his emotional intelligence evolved with it, and he knew that Chastity only wanted to use him to make Brice jealous. She played her part well. In biology class, she playfully flirted with him as others stared and whispered. He turned away from her and saw Tara looking at him. He smiled at her, and she smiled back. Her smile felt like sunlight streaming through a window and warming a room in early spring.
The warm feeling dissipated when Brice, late as usual, walked into biology class, his face radiating anger. He made his way to a seat, trying not to look at David, but his emotions played him false, and he tackled David and brought him to the floor, where he began pounding his head. Afraid of revealing his super-strength, David curled up and put his arms over his head, as kids yelled, “Fight, fight, fight.” David peered up from the floor to see Chastity smiling contentedly. Seconds later, Mr. Bonzo broke it up.
“To the office, Brice,” he yelled.
“You’ll get what’s coming to you, Noble,” Brice huffed. “I swear!”
“Mr. Bonzo, I think we need to change lab partners,” David said.
“I agree,” the teacher replied.
“Wait a minute,” Chastity said as she stamped her foot. “Don’t I get a say in this?”
“I think you’ve already had your say,” David said as he brushed past her. “Tara, would you mind if I were your new lab partner?”
“Not at all,” Tara said, and she flashed him her sun-warm smile.
Chastity plopped down in her chair and folded her arms in front of her, glaring at David and Tara.
“Wow, if looks could kill,” Tara said.
“Yeah, she’d be a serial killer,” David said, and they both laughed.
The day finally ended. David found the Fannins and hopped into the bed of their truck.
“Time to build that crazy cube-looking thing?” Chris asked, riding in the truck bed with David.
“How did you know what we were building?” David asked. “I never told you what it looked like.”
“I had some weird dream about a see-through shape with gold and silver markings on it.”
“That’s funny, me, too,” Jeremy said, peeking his head through the rear window.
“Me, too,” Mikey shouted from the driver’s seat. Their smiles faded.
“Me, to
o,” David said.
“Freaky,” said Chris.
Getting a hunch that their work was done, Mikey changed directions and sped toward the mill.
Pulling up in front of the mill felt like déjà vu. They went into the basement and saw the dodecahedron hovering a foot off the floor.
“We really built this thing last night, didn’t we?” Jeremy said. “Like, in our dreams.”
“Seems so,” David replied.
“What now?” Chris asked.
David walked to the electrical outlet and drew out an enormous amount of electricity. He directed it through the air, and the portal began to absorb it. The electricity spread through each equation, line by line, until the dodecahedron blazed with light. The light receded until it was a faint glow. The dodecahedron, still hovering, began to pulse, producing a low hum.
“So our work here is done and we didn’t even know it,” Jeremy said.
“Not quite,” David said. “We’ll have to come back over the next few days. I need to keep feeding electricity into it.”
“Why not finish powering it up right now?” Chris asked.
“It’s too much for me to handle all at once. I feel weak right now. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you three came with me every day, in case something happens down here.”
“No problem,” Jeremy said. “What happens once it’s powered?”
David smiled. “That’s when we free the alien.”
Secrets were even harder to keep quiet in a hidden government facility than among a high school full of gossiping teenagers. The Allianz Insurance building, located in the little town of Chiefton, just outside Atlantic Bay, was alive with anticipation. The basement of the insurance company was the last place anyone would expect to be full of FBI agents, top scientists, and alien experimentation. Which is why it was the perfect cover.
“The alien’s brainwaves have been off the charts for days now,” Dr. Conley, the chief scientist, said to his group of assistants. “And we still can’t figure out why. It’s fully cognitive, though we have it sedated. If I were a betting man, I’d say he’s communicating with someone or something.”
“That doesn’t spell sedation to me,” Special Agent Malcolm Jameson said from a corner of the room. Jameson was the lead FBI agent on the case, a man known for capturing otherworldly life forms dead or alive, mostly dead. He had a well-deserved reputation for ruthlessness, a reputation he was proud of.
“As I mentioned, it seems to be trying to communicate,” Dr. Conley said.
“Maybe it’s communicating with the boy we lost in the woods.”
“That’s a possibility. I’m sure we’ll have that answer long before you find the boy. How goes the search, by the way?”
“You focus on that alien and leave the boy to me,” Jameson said. “We’ll find him before he spreads any wild rumors.”
“Agent Jameson, I assure you—”
“I don’t want your assurances. You have five hours. After that, we’re bringing in our best psychics to probe the alien for intel.”
“We can handle this, we just need a little more time.”
“You have five hours. Then the psychics will take over. They’ve been successful with other alien freaks, and I trust they’ll succeed with this one.”
Five hours later the team of scientists was no closer to prying loose the information they sought from the mind of the being. By that afternoon, the alien was under deep subconscious examination by Jameson’s team of government psychics. The process lasted nearly three hours before the four men came from the operating room.
“What did you discover?” Jameson asked.
“The alien did speak to the boy from the woods,” one of them said. “But there’s much more to this than we originally knew. I think we’ve made a serious mistake capturing this alien. It wasn’t here on a reconnaissance mission. It came here to help us undo our mistakes and keep us from destroying the planet.”
“I want facts, not opinions. In my twenty-three years of tracking these freaks down, we’ve never captured one that was here to offer a helping hand. So don’t let that thing trick you into thinking otherwise. I want straight facts. Tell me what you know.”
“What we know is that your tests have weakened it. Its body seems to be reacting to the morphine. It’s weakening its organs, and our atmosphere makes it impossible for it to fully regenerate, which it seems to be able to do where it comes from.”
“What else?”
“We’ve made it angry.”
“So what?”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t be treating this one like a specimen.”
“It is a specimen,” Jameson said.
“It isn’t like the others. We might be able to connect with it, learn from it. But we’d have to act quickly. It’s planning an escape.”
“Not on my watch,” Jameson said. “What about the boy? Does it know where the boy is hiding?”
“We had to press deep to learn about the boy. But when we did, something happened. It discovered what we were doing. That’s when we ran into some sort of mental block.”
“Mental block?”
“Something that sounded like white noise filled our minds and began blocking its subconscious streams of communication. It’s hiding the boy, protecting him. But before we were shut out of its mind, we discovered that it passed some sort of organic chip made of its own DNA to the boy after meeting him in the woods. It happened right before you recaptured it.”
“DNA chip?”
“Yes. It’s inserted into the boy’s neck.”
“Any idea where this boy is from?”
“He feels close. Maybe Atlantic Bay.”
Jameson paced the floor before whispering to another agent. The man nodded and exited the room. “Do you think it’s some sort of virus?” he asked the lead psychic. “Maybe it intends to spread a disease through the boy.”
“I don’t believe it wants to do us harm. We could try to probe its mind again, but I don’t think we’ll break its barriers, now that it knows we can get inside its head.”
“No matter,” Jameson said. “We’ll look for the boy, starting with the high school in Atlantic Bay. I’ve already set the wheels in motion. We’ll leak a story to the press, spread a little fear over the town concerning our so-called convict.”
“It might be hard to make it stick,” the psychic replied.
“I don’t think so,” Jameson said. “We’re pulling in some military units from Fort Tucker. That should impress the local yokels.”
Atlantic Bay High School looked like a war zone. News had been reported about an escaped terrorist who had infected himself with a virus that sent victims into a hallucinogenic frenzy before it killed them. The FBI had been tipped off that the terrorist was last seen with a teenage boy. The government was afraid that the virus would spread and was searching for the teen.
David walked to the front of the school, watching a group of lab-coated men and women pour in and out of small white tents that had been set up on the front lawn. Armed men in camouflage uniforms, local police, and men dressed in black suits littered the parking lot. Students were standing in pairs in a long line and entering the tent two at a time to be examined. Armed soldiers walked back and forth on both sides of the line. Students leaving the tent after their examination didn’t look happy. Many whispered to friends still standing in line that it was more like an interrogation than an examination.
David felt his heart drop. With dozens of eyes scoping out every kid in school, there was no way to escape. Reluctantly, he got in line. He thought about making a mad dash for the school and hiding out in the boiler room, but when he saw the armed military men surrounding the perimeter he thought better of it. If anyone had been inside the building, the soldiers would have flushed them out by now. David stared at the ground and listened to the gossip. So far, no one knew anything. At least not anything close to the truth. He wondered how long it would be before he was found out.
“Hey, lab partner, gu
ess who?” Tara said, wrapping her hands around David’s face from behind.
He turned around and smiled at her.
“Looks like we’ll be tent buddies,” she said as she drew next to him.
“Looks that way,” he replied.
“It’s good to see you smile, David. You haven’t smiled like that for me since middle school.”
David made a helpless shrug.
“It’s all right,” Tara said. “You’ve always been my best friend, even if we haven’t spoken in, what, four years?”
“Do you think what they’re saying is true?” David asked, wanting to change the subject.
“What, that some high-profile terrorist has hooked up with some local teen and is trying to spread some disease that drives you insane before it kills you?”
“Yeah, that.”
“Ordinarily, I’d say it was a crock,” Tara said. “But considering that there are marines, cops, FBI agents, and mad scientists running around the school, something weird is going on. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
David focused on Tara’s face as they talked. Once again, he was surprised—in fact, stunned—at how pretty she was. There was no doubt about it, she was drop-dead gorgeous. Had he known the former tomboy would turn out like this he would have treated her more like a girl. David marveled anew at his inability to notice it before. Perhaps she had recently grown into her beauty. Or perhaps he’d been an unobservant and unperceptive nitwit.
The line moved quickly, drawing them closer to the tent until their numbers came up. A soldier armed with a rifle tapped David on the shoulder. “Your turn,” he said.
David entered the tent and was hooked up to what looked like a lie detector, while Tara stood nervously ten feet behind him.
“What is your name?” a man in a white lab coat abruptly asked, as he studied the readout. Two identically dressed men stood beside him writing notes on tablets.
“David Noble.”
The scientist studied the lines scrolling across the machine. So did David.
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen,” he lied to test his theory. The lines went wild. “I mean eighteen.” The lines calmed. “Don’t know what I was thinking,” David said with a smile. Now he knew how to beat the machine.
D.N.A. Page 4