He glances at the SUV. “We’ve never encountered them before, but we don’t deal in biology. That’s the kind of shit we’re up against.”
“What do you deal in?”
He taps his head. “Tech, man. Whadayu think?” Lindo goes rigid, eyes on the sky, seeing something that’s not there. “Helo is thirty miles out and closing. Time’s running out, man.”
I open the SUV’s side door. “Help me get them out.”
“Out? We need to leave. Like now.”
“We need to not be tracked.” I unbuckle Godin’s belt, slide my hands under his armpits, and drag him out of the SUV. “So we’re taking the short bus.”
23
“The wheels on the bus go round and round.” Lindo looks at me, grinning. “Round and round, round and round.”
He’s in a chipper mood for having narrowly escaped death more than once. And there’s still a decent chance I’m going to put a bullet in him the moment he breaks the silkworm thread-thin strand of trust between us. Right now the only reason that trust exists is because he didn’t kill any of us when he could have, and the mercs hunting us down have tried to slaughter us on more than one occasion.
“C’mon,” he says, “it’s funny.”
While Lindo isn’t a blunt-force killing machine, he is a master of manipulation and can outperform any actor in Hollywood. As I find myself loosening up, I have to remind myself that his motives are not pure, that he might not have our best interests in mind, and that he’s serving someone, or some corporation, who I’m sure doesn’t see us any differently than I would ants on a sidewalk.
But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t play along. Won’t be the first time I’ve worked undercover. “I prefer the wipers going swish, swish, swish.”
He stares at me for a moment, and then laughs. I crack a smile, loosening up, but not too much. My participation seems to please him. He settles back into driving, eyes on the endless stretch of desert road before us. We’re still in Arizona, and heading west. Other than that, our destination is a mystery.
After a five minute lull, I ask, “How much can you tell me about what’s really going on?”
Lindo glances in my direction, but says nothing. His frozen expression reveals nothing.
“Can they hear us?” I ask. “The people you work for?”
When he doesn’t answer, I lean forward trying to see his eyes. “Can they see us?”
He doesn’t answer, but I think that’s answer enough. If Lindo can receive data from a satellite, or Wi-Fi, or cell networks, then it stands to reason that he’s also transmitting data.
“Just give me a minute, man.” When Lindo gets upset, his accent comes back. Tells me he wasn’t faking the accent before, but unleashing an accent that he’s suppressed. It’s not uncommon for people from heavily accented areas to make an effort to lose their accent—for a job or for a girl.
Lindo turns to me, no longer watching the road. “Do you, Daniel Delgado, agree to keep confidential all conversations, revelations, information, and events experienced during the past two days, and any conversations, revelations, information, and encounters you are privy to, now and into the future involving Steven Cruz, his employers, and related phenomena, technology, and identities?”
“Do you agree to watch the road?” I ask.
“I can see the road,” he says. “And you.”
I’m not sure how his mind could handle seeing me through his actual eyes and the road from a satellite in orbit, but I’m pretty certain that’s what’s happening. Which makes the strange line of questioning quasi-understandable. “Is this a non-disclosure agreement?”
He nods.
“Can they see me? The people you work for?”
Another nod.
“I know you have reasons to not trust me,” he says, “but you also have reason to trust me. If it weren’t for me, you’d have been caught in Isabella’s trailer and locked in a cell.”
“You sent the texts?”
He nods.
Addressing the people watching me through Lindo’s eyes, I say, “You know why I’m involved in this. You know what I want.”
“Be specific,” Lindo advises.
“I’m looking for Isabella Ramos.” I feel stupid stating the obvious. Lindo’s very first warning came through Marta’s phone, meaning he’d already been in contact with her, which raises a lot of questions that won’t get answers until I make a deal with a technological Mephistopheles. “But I am now responsible for the safety of the children we’re transporting…”
“And…” Lindo urges.
“And those still lost,” I say. “If they’re being taken by aliens…by the Others, I’m going to find them. I’m going to set them free, with or without your help or approval.”
Lindo smiles a little. It’s subtle. Genuine.
He’s silent for a good fifteen seconds, and then says, “Your terms are acceptable. Do you agree to our previous terms, knowing that failing to abide by this contract will be considered a breach of the highest order and subject to retribution?”
There’s no mention of the law. This contract sounds legal, but isn’t binding to any court system. How could they prosecute me for telling the world that aliens live beneath the Earth’s surface, that there are people trafficking humans via cults and UFOs, or that there are secretive corporations competing for information and technology garnered from humanity’s advanced sister species? They couldn’t. No one would believe me anyway. With the lives of Wini, Young, and the children at stake, I have no problem accepting these terms. Not agreeing would probably subject us to ‘retribution,’ which could be death, or a lifetime in some corporate jail cell.
“I agree.”
Lindo looks back to the road and closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again, he relaxes.
“They’re done watching us?” I ask.
“They can when they want to,” he says. “But it limits what I can do, and they trust me, so they generally wait for me to request an audience, which I did to protect you.”
“Doesn’t feel that way.”
“Being a partner is better than being a pawn,” he says.
“What about a pawn who thinks he’s a partner?”
He frowns, but says nothing.
“And what about them?” I motion to the nine people strapped into the seats behind us. Working together we loaded them into the van in under five minutes. While Lindo drove us away from the scene of carnage, I arranged everyone in their seats, propped them up and buckled them in.
“They’ll have to make the same choice when they wake up.”
“Which will be when?”
“Few more hours,” he says. “Give or take. Depends on the person. Size and metabolism can affect the drug’s duration.”
“Why did I wake up before them?”
“Didn’t drug you,” he says.
“Right.” I rub my head behind my right ear. I remember the pain when Lindo helped me up, but there’s not even a scab. “Do I want to know how it works?”
“Nano-tech,” he says. “That’s—”
“I know what it means,” I say. “And to answer my own question, I really don’t want to know how it works. What I want to know is what it’s doing to me.”
“Besides protecting you?” he says, like the fact that he prevented my mind from being possessed by cryptoterrestrial human traffickers is going to earn him brownie points. It does, but I’m not about to tell him that.
“And knocking me unconscious,” I say.
“That’s a side effect. And only I can do it,” he says.
“Can you remove it?”
“It can be disabled,” he says. “But it’s in there for good. And before you get all pissy about that, try to remember that they would have had free access to your mind. Everything you know. Everyone you love. Every pain, fear, desire, and sin. If they couldn’t control your actions directly, they could have found other ways to reign you in.”
“Not sure that’s differe
nt from what’s happening now.”
He rolls his eyes. “We might not be after the same things, but our goals aren’t in opposition to each other.”
“By our goals, you mean the goals of the people controlling you.” I suspect at least some of Lindo’s participation in the events of the past few days, not to mention in the time before we met, have been coerced. Probably not through direct threats, but I have little doubt he once made a similar agreement with his ‘employer’ to what I just did. “Who are they?”
“The company’s public name is Chimera. And no, you haven’t heard of them. They don’t sell to the public. They develop next-gen tech and sell to the highest bidder. Microsoft. Google. Apple. Amazon. Samsung. Uncle Sam.”
“But they don’t really develop anything do they?” I ask. “Not from scratch.”
He shakes his head. “Reverse engineering. It’s fueled the U.S. Military and tech sectors since the late 1940s. Stealth. Nano-tech. Microchips. Other shit you haven’t heard of yet. Once we knew, and I mean really knew, that they existed, we’ve been hunting them down.”
“But not to kill them,” I say. “Not to eradicate them?”
“We don’t have to do that. They’re on the brink, man.” He looks at me. “That’s what I’m told, anyway.”
“But they’re taking people,” I complain. “A lot of people. Why aren’t they treated as an enemy?”
“Because they’re a resource,” he says. “Until we’ve matched their tech level. Then it might be open season on the Others.”
“Any idea when that will be?” If Chimera is engaged in a kind of corporate espionage with a technologically advanced species, they might pull their punches when it comes to recovering taken people.
He shakes his head. “We’ve only had direct contact with them on four occasions. You’ve heard of one of them.”
“Roswell,” I guess.
“The very first,” he says. “The government got that one, but brought outside experts in to analyze what they found. Out of that, both Chimera and Aeron were born. They got to the crash in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania first. Chimera picked up the remains of a UFO in Pinckney, New Hampshire, which wasn’t much. And Aeron snagged the most recent, in Needles, California.”
“So what you can do…all of that tech…was reverse engineered from the remains of one crashed UFO?”
“Or stolen from Aeron,” he says. “Yeah, but—”
Lindo gets a faraway look in his eyes that I now recognize. He’s seeing something I can’t, and it’s not good.
“What is it?”
His foot crushes the gas pedal to the floor and I’m pinned to my seat as the big vehicle accelerates.
“Incoming,” he says.
“Aeron?” I ask. “More mercenaries?”
“A missile.” He blinks and is fully present once more. “Take the wheel!”
“What?”
He takes his foot off the gas pedal, eyes wide with genuine fear. “Hurry!”
I grasp the steering wheel just as the roar of a missile registers on my ears and the world erupts with bright blue light.
24
A wave of nausea-inducing energy pulses through my body and triggers a brief, but agonizing pain in my head. During the moment I spend clenching my eyes shut against the bright light, the van veers toward the side of the road. The world is cast in hues of green as my eyes slowly adjust to a normal level of light. It’s disorienting, but I have no trouble comprehending the situation.
Some kind of unconventional missile detonated not far from the vehicle, apparently designed to impair rather than kill. The mercs might have no trouble killing me, or anyone else fully human, but we’ve got precious cargo on board. They’re not going to simply blow us up.
How they found us isn’t really a question. The large white van would be recognizable from the ranch, and as the vehicle in which their two now-dead operatives had left the battle. With very few roads in this part of the world, tracking us down was just a matter of time.
Lindo is unconscious. Possibly dead. His eyes are open and vacant. Very corpse-like. But his chest is still rising and falling. Either way, he’s not driving.
I am.
As the vehicle slows, I twist the wheel counter-clockwise and get us back into the middle of the road. Cruising down a subtle grade at a dainty twenty miles-per-hour, I put us on a straight course, let go, and hope the alignment is good.
Unbuckling Lindo is the easy part. Moving his dead weight is the problem. Leaning over his body, I listen for the sound of roaring engines or helicopter blades. I hear nothing, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t coming. Lindo falls back when I pull the lever to adjust the driver’s seat back. My lack of leverage makes moving him difficult, but I’m able to yank him by his belt and slide him into the back seat, across the laps of Godin, Young, and Wini.
By the time I drop into the driver’s seat and put the chair back up we’ve slowed to a crawl. From all outward appearances, we would appear disabled.
Until I step on the gas.
The speedometer needle climbs higher as the RPMs rise and fall through the gears. We won’t be drag racing anytime soon, but once we hit 70mph, I start to feel better.
Briefly.
A glance in the tall rectangular side mirror confirms that my worst fears lacked imagination. There aren’t any black SUVs or unmarked helicopters. There’s a cloud that isn’t a cloud. It’s almost gelatinous in appearance. The naïve part of me says it’s a storm cloud. That my vision is still being affected by the explosion’s bright light. But the rest of the sky is devoid of precipitation, and clouds don’t hover twenty feet above the ground and chase vans.
I push the gas pedal harder, but it’s already on the floor, and the speedometer is holding steady at 80mph.
Gas pedal has a limiter on it, I realize. The small device is impossible to remove while driving and prevents the van from reaching higher speeds. Fuck you, Harry. Even when he’s not present, the man is still trying to get me killed.
Unable to change my situation, I maintain my course and speed, and I wait for the cloud’s arrival.
A groan turns me around. Despite his deceptions, I hope it’s Lindo. If anyone has some insight into what we’re about to face, it’s him. Two seats back, I see Jacob’s head rise up. He’s a lot smaller than Young and Godin, but his non-human biology must have metabolized whatever drug Lindo used to knock everyone out. With his brown hair in a tussle and his eyes closed, he looks like any other kid waking up from a nap. Then he opens his eyes and I can actually feel him connecting with my emotions, like there’re invisible tendrils extending between us.
He sobers as all the ice bucket of my anxiety, fear, and confusion pours over him. That’s when he notices the collection of unconscious bodies around him. “What’s happening?”
“Short version is that Lindo kidnapped us, got caught by the goon squad from the ranch, we fought our way free, took their van, got hit by some kind of explosion that knocked him unconscious—”
“He’s not unconscious,” Jacob says. “Unconscious people don’t project emotions so intensely. He’s too scared.”
I look from Jacob to Lindo and then the rearview. If Lindo’s awake, stuck in some kind of aware rigor mortis, then maybe he’s still a source of information. “Can you tell me how he feels when I talk?”
Jacob gives a nod. The kid has been through hell and it’s pursuing him from the ranch, but he’s either numb to it or a stronger person than I am. The perspective his resolve provides strips away layers of denial and reveals my weakness. Before Jacob can comment on what he’s no doubt sensing from me, I say, “There’s a shimmering cloud closing in on us.”
“He feels worse,” Jacob says.
“What do we do?” I ask. “Just keep driving?”
Jacob cringes, showing Lindo’s emotions.
“Stop and fight?”
Jacob’s face sours further.
“Go off road?” Even I know this is a horrible idea. The van is f
ar from an all-terrain vehicle, and the desert, while fairly hard packed in this part of the state, might treat us worse than the cloud.
“He likes that,” Jacob says.
Shit.
“Sort of.” Jacob unbuckles and moves to the front seat, making no effort to gently step over Lindo. He buckles again and looks in the passenger’s side mirror. “That can’t be good.”
“Pretty sure that’s been established?”
He smiles at me. Is he enjoying this? I suppose anything is better than being locked up in a cult’s stable. “They’re getting closer. They look like flying balls.”
He’s right. The cloud resolves as it closes in. It’s composed of hundreds, maybe thousands, of softball-sized spheres, each of them transparent, the interior masked by bright light.
How many UFO sightings are actually something like this? It’s not hard to imagine these things flying around at night, bunched together in a sphere, moving in formations that imply a large craft. From what I’ve heard, Aeron and the Others aren’t allies. If they were, the aerospace company wouldn’t be racing to collect UFO crashes and human hybrids. But they’re not really enemies, either. If the cryptoterrestrials were destroyed, Aeron would lose the opportunity to reverse engineer even more future-tech. In a twisted sort of way, the two species have entered into a kind of symbiotic relationship, with corporations mining cryptos for technology, and cryptos mining humanity for…well, humanity.
A single sphere glides up beside my window. It matches our pace, and within the bright light of its interior, I see something shift in my direction. They’re watching me, I think. Identifying me. By now they’re probably thinking, ‘You!’, as the man they’d never seen before once again disrupts their operation.
I roll the window down, give whoever’s watching a grin, and then reach out and pluck the device from the sky. There’s a tug on my arm as it attempts to fly away, but the singular device isn’t powerful enough to escape my grasp.
“What are you doing?” Jacob shouts.
“You know something I don’t?”
“It’s not me who’s upset!” he shouts, looking back at Lindo. “Get rid of it!”
The Others Page 15