“Just be careful, okay? Take a quick look around and come back. Take the walkie and let us know if you need us. Just hit the talk button twice, and don’t say anything if you aren’t able to speak,” I told her. Just like that, she was out the door, quietly stalking across the road, out of view of the warehouse’s windows or the truck. She hugged the neighboring building’s wall, and before we knew it, she was out of our sight.
“Mary, I got a text a couple hours ago. It just said to not trust her.”
“Trust who?” she asked.
“I don’t know. The number was blocked, and they weren’t very open about it.” I handed the cell over for her to look for herself.
“You don’t think they mean…” She left Mae’s name unsaid.
“I’m not sure. I imagine that’s who they mean, whoever they are. I don’t believe it for a second, though. It could just as easily mean Dalhousie.” I held the radio in my hand, anxious to hear from Mae. I hoped she was just going to find them sleeping in the empty warehouse, and we could go in together silently, taking them quietly and safely.
The walkie-talkie alert sounded, then another one in quick succession. Mae needed help.
We were out the door, running with our guns in hand, and I was thankful for the daily runs Mary had forced me to do over the last year. It helped me breathe and focused my nervous energy out of my body.
We’d seen Mae go to the left side of the warehouse, and scanned for her, seeing nothing but some stacked pipes and an old forklift.
“Open window over there,” Mary whispered.
Backs to the wall, we listened and could hear voices. They were getting closer, and I could make out the words after a few seconds.
“They followed you?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Yeah, I think they were right behind. I don’t know how they knew where I was going.” It was Mae’s voice, and I cringed that she had to attempt this ruse.
“And just how did you find us?” a male voice asked with an edge to it: Terrance.
“Like I said, I stole a truck right after you guys. I knew what you guys were up to, so I was watching you. I thought I could catch up, but the damned truck wouldn’t go over sixty-five,” Mae said as Donna.
“We had a guy kill the GPS,” Leslie said.
“Must be a separate circuit within the trucks to each other. I wondered how they didn’t find us. I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting sirens.” Mae was pulling off the role well.
“I’m going to check this out. Where’s the truck?” Terrance asked.
“Just out the main doors, across the street.”
“Why didn’t you just pull up beside us?” he asked.
“Because it’s Sunday, and I didn’t want to draw any attention to a closed warehouse,” Mae said with ease. I was very impressed with her quick repartee, and her ability to slide into someone else’s skin. Her cadence was even different.
“Fine. But if there’s anything at all fishy about it, it’s over,” Terrance said, and we could hear his heavy boot steps crossing the hard concrete floor of the warehouse. He was heading for the door near us. Inside, Mae spoke to Leslie in hushed tones, and I could tell she was leading her further into the warehouse. I looked at Mary, and she nodded, holding her gun firmly against her chest, ready to piston her legs up at the sight of Terrance. I mimicked her, and when the door flung open, she went high and right, and I stayed low and left.
He didn’t have time to draw his own gun, as Mary pointed hers at him and smiled. She motioned for him to set it on the ground and kick it over, which he did. His face didn’t betray his emotions for a second, and I knew I didn’t want to play poker against the guy.
In a matter of seconds, Mae was leading out a pissed-off version of herself.
“You have no idea what you’re doing, Donna. You’re really helping these humans, the same two that stopped us from doing what we were born to do? You’re as bad as her.” Leslie didn’t have to say Mae for us to all know who she meant. The look on Mae’s face must have given something away. “Wait a minute. You’re not Donna, are you? You’re that traitor!” Leslie lunged at Mae, almost connecting a shove, when Mary shot the ground behind Leslie’s feet.
“Get back!” Mary yelled. “And never call her that again. You don’t have any power anymore.”
Leslie’s resolve slipped and her shoulders slumped. Terrance’s firmly gripped fists loosened, and I hoped we were done with any altercations. Grabbing the zip ties from Mary’s pack, I went behind Terrance first and tied his hands behind his back, followed by Leslie’s. Guns were aimed at them the whole time.
“Let’s get them in the back of the truck and get on the road. We’ll call in and let them know we’ve acquired the targets,” Mae said without emotion. I figured she felt like a part of her was betraying her kind again, but I also knew she wholeheartedly disagreed with what they were doing.
“I’ll take the Jeep, if you guys don’t mind,” Mae said as we slid the back shut on the truck and padlocked it. There had been nothing back there, and we checked thoroughly for any hidden compartments where a weapon might have been stashed.
“Everything okay?” I asked her softly.
She just nodded glumly and touched my hand for a second, before heading across the street with the Jeep keys jingling along the way.
Soon we were heading back to the main highway, en route to New Mexico where, we’d been told, a location would be sent when we were within a hundred miles of the secret base. It was all a little too covert for me, but alien security was probably a good idea given the Event, and the stuff the hybrids just tried to pull off. We didn’t really know exactly what it was they were going to pull off, but we had to hope it could be stopped if the wheels were already in motion. I was happy to bring them to Dalhousie and General Heart, and let them deal with that part. I just wanted some sleep.
“Dean, let me know if you need to rest for a bit. I don’t mind driving,” Mary said from the passenger seat. It was stuffy in there, and I rolled the window down, letting in the warm morning air.
“Sounds good. Maybe in an hour or so. I’m too wound up to rest anyway.” It was the truth.
“I love you,” she said as she closed her eyes and turned from me.
“I love you too,” I replied. The words from the text message hung in the front of my mind.
NINE
It was a long drive to the border of New Mexico, and we had to fill up a few times. The truck’s mileage was terrible, and each time we stopped at a near-empty, out-of-the-way gas station in hopes that no one would hear the two prisoners in the back if they decided to shout or cause a scene. Lucky for us, they didn’t make a peep, and when we opened the door on the side of the road halfway through our journey, they were both cross-legged, leaning against the far corners, staring at us. They seemed surprised that we would offer them water and a bathroom break, but they took both with caution. I figured maybe compassion would soften them up, even though I knew they didn’t deserve anything but the worst treatment for what they’d done. My mother’s words rang in my mind as I tipped the water bottle slowly: “You catch more flies with honey.” I’d never understood that as a kid but did now.
Mae seemed more like her old self; the time alone must have helped. We passed the border into New Mexico well past sunset, and because of the stops and the governor on the truck, it was around eight at night when the text came in from General Heart’s people. Mary had a location sent to her tablet, and before we knew it, we were heading off the main highway, and onto a back road in the rocky, hilly landscape.
The dusk sky turned to darkness, and with no lights on the roadsides, I struggled to make sure we stayed on the road.
“How far now?” I asked for the fifth time in the last half-hour.
“Looks like we should be up on it soon. I have no idea how they’ve kept a whole facility hidden out here. There aren’t a lot of homes or anything, but those vessels aren’t small. Testing the ships must get seen by the people in
the area,” Mary said.
“Yeah, we saw a town, what, ten miles back?” I asked, not expecting an answer.
The road we were on ended, with a large cement barricade preceded by some reflective construction signs saying “Road Ends.”
“What do we do now?” Mary asked, zooming in on her tablet.
“Pass that over, please,” I said, reaching for it. “Looks like there’s a dirt track here, and if we follow that, we should be there in a couple of minutes. I know it’s dark, but I don’t see a damn thing out there.” It was pitch black out here by then, but the sky was full of stars out in the middle of nowhere, and the moon hung low in the sky, half-moon but full of reflective light.
“Just be careful,” Mary said, reaching for the radio. “Mae, we have to go left here onto the dirt road, and I use the term ‘road’ loosely. Do you mind going ahead of us in the Jeep so we don’t go bouncing into a big rock and end up stranded with Bonnie and Clyde in the back?”
“You got it. Just let me sneak around you. Where do you think it is? Shouldn’t we see it by now? Guards? Lights? A fence?” Mae asked over the walkie.
“That’s what we thought, but the map says we’re almost there. All I see are rocks, dirt, and stars.” Mary set the walkie down, and Mae pulled ahead of us, driving slowly over the bumpy terrain.
We bounced along behind her, the truck’s old suspension not made for this kind of travel. Five minutes of that, and we were coming to another barricade. Mae slowed before us. It was the strangest thing. Our lights blasted the back of Mae’s Jeep, and I turned them down. For a moment, I thought Mae had turned her lights off, but then saw they hit the construction signs but didn’t travel beyond them, like some sick science experiment my brain couldn’t comprehend.
“What is this?” I asked, getting out of the truck, almost stumbling as I looked forward. Mary was right behind me, and we walked over to Mae, who was also looking ahead, jaw dropped down in wonder.
Twenty feet in front of us, the air shimmered, and the light from the Jeep dissipated into nothing, like it was sucked into a black hole. I could see rocks and dirt beyond it, but it didn’t look right, like we were being tricked with an optical illusion. Looking up, we could see the stars in the distance.
“Look,” Mary said, pointing upward. I didn’t know what she meant, but then I saw it. A blurry line straight across the sky, like something bent at that point.
Before we could try to figure out what it was we were seeing, a noise like a garage door squeaking open hit us, and forty yards to the right, a door was opening; a door out of thin air. Three people came out of the doorway, which was large enough for vehicles to pass through. I saw Mae bring her hand to her gun, which was tucked into the back of her pants. I wondered if I should do the same but recognized the man at the forefront of the three. The other two were holding assault rifles, and stood half a foot taller than Trent Breton, one of the engineers from our meeting with the president in Washington.
“Glad you could make it,” Trent said, smiling wide. “Do you have the package?”
Mary nodded and pointed to the truck.
“Slate, do you mind pulling the truck to the compound? Henrik, take the Jeep, please.” Trent was still smiling as he motioned for us to follow him. “Don’t worry, your belongings will be brought to your rooms in a few minutes. Patrice asked me to meet you out here and show you the wall.” He led us to the slightly shimmering façade and ran his hand along it, where I noticed a small, almost indiscernible ripple, like a crease in a bedsheet. “Pretty cool, wouldn’t you say? We found some truly remarkable technology lodged in the ships’ computers. Things we could never have imagined working so easily. Being an engineer, I always dreamed of inventing or working on something like this, a cloaking device of sorts.”
I was finally picking up what he was saying. “Are you telling us there’s a whole facility hidden behind this wall that looks just like the distant desert?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. I won’t bore you with all the details, but it involves refraction, thousands of reflective cameras imaging other points, and a net of sorts. We actually have a solid wall with the device draped over it.”
Mary lifted an eyebrow. “How do you keep people from seeing inside from above? Planes? Drones?”
“It covers the base in a dome. Think of a football stadium with a retractable ceiling,” Trent said, seemingly very pleased with himself. I didn’t blame him, because I was thoroughly impressed with it.
“And just how big is this dome of yours?” Mary asked.
He paused, as if thinking, and continued walking until they neared the open bay door. The truck passed through, and we waited to the side as the Jeep followed it. Once they had safely passed us, he stepped forward and smiled widely once again. We followed, and I was blown away at what I saw.
From the outside, we just saw a representation of the night, complete with hills, rocks, landscape, and stars; but when we looked inside, there was a huge structure, lights high in the roof, which had to be three hundred feet in the air. It went on for as far as I could see in all directions, and off what must have been a few miles was one of the transport vessels. Though I’d seen them countless times over the past year, my pulse still quickened at the sight of the gargantuan ship.
“It’s about twenty square miles. We had to make it big enough to house the vessel for testing, and everything else we’re doing here, including weapons testing. We couldn’t have anyone seeing what we’re doing. And for all we know, we’re always being watched, maybe from space right now. Even by the Bhlat. We don’t know enough, so we erred on the side of caution,” Trent said. He wasn’t kidding.
“How was it possible to cover that much space with this net?” I asked, blown away by it all.
“Once we had it figured out, it came down to 3D printers… a lot of them. It’s amazing what you can accomplish with some of the world’s foremost engineers and a lot of resources. We had printers sent from all around the globe, and it only took two months to make it. After multiple glitches and setbacks, we were up and running six months ago,” he said, walking into the base. We followed behind. The doors slid shut as we cleared the opening, clinking shut with finality, and we were closed in.
“What about people in the area? How could you keep this secret?” Mae asked. We were all full of questions.
“We picked an isolated spot, but one that was quickly accessible from most of the United States. It had a low ratio of people per square mile because of the hard ground and lack of farmable land, so Dalhousie took a tenth of the state and relocated everyone within a hundred-mile radius, or wherever they wanted to go. With half the houses vacant in the States, it wasn’t that hard. Now, if you’ll come with me, I’ll show you to your rooms to freshen up. I heard you had a long day.” Trent didn’t pry any further on our adventures, and I was thankful for it as we made our way through the rocky terrain, on foot at first, until one of the carts we’d seen on the video in Washington swung by and picked us up. It sat the four of us with no problem, and we were whisked away to a group of shipping containers a mile or so away.
We’d headed in the direction of the vessel, and now I could see the large building beside it: the warehouse we’d seen the ships in on the video. I got a tingle thinking of those gray ships, red lasers blasting out of them, cutting the ground in front of us on our way south to get to Florida.
There weren’t many people lingering around, and those that I saw were uniformed like the guards had been. Not quite military, and not quite police, but something in the middle. The accountant in me wanted to see the books for this place, if they even bothered keeping track of it anymore.
The shipping containers were stacked on top of each other, so they were around ten high, and twenty left to right. There was an intricate step and balcony system, making them all accessible from the ground, and each had its own door. I remembered seeing an article on the web a couple years before about people using containers like this for homes,
and I could now see they’d done the same thing. If I wasn’t in a dome hiding alien spaceships, I would have been more impressed.
“This is an interesting setup. Who stays here?” Mary asked Trent from the backseat.
The cart stopped, letting us out. I said thank you to the driver before he took off, leaving us standing at the base of the Lego-like structure.
“We have a more permanent structure for the staff, guards, engineers, and physicists. Dalhousie and the General have another complex where they stay if they’re around these parts for a visit. You guys are the first to stay here, with the exception of your friends.” As if on cue, a dog barked, and in the artificial daylight, I saw Carey bounding toward me, tongue flopping out the side of his mouth, his ears flapping up and down with each hop.
“Carey!” I called to him and lowered to my knees, enveloping him in a hug as he jumped on me, getting a wet face for my efforts. “Who’s a good boy? I missed you, bud.” He seemed to like that as he wiggled around me, rolling on the ground before saying hi to Mary, with a hesitant greeting for Mae.
Magnus and Natalia walked toward us, coming from behind the container complex, holding cups of coffee. Magnus had a tennis ball in his hand, and I assumed he’d been playing fetch with Carey in the grassed area behind the buildings.
I had a vision of a bad sitcom taking place here, about the crazy characters living in a complex of shipping containers in an alien ship research facility. I’d call it the Earth Defense Farce.
Nat picked up her pace when she got closer, and Magnus raised an eyebrow at seeing her obvious concern. Her having friends had thrown him for a bit of a loop, seeing a new woman blossom in her. She gave us each big hugs, and Magnus came in and did the same.
“You guys do know we only parted ways two days ago, right?” Mary asked, and it surprised me it had only been that long. It felt like at least a week.
“But you got to do all the exciting stuff, while we were cramped up in…” Magnus waved his arm in the air. “Whatever this is. Everything go okay?”
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