Of course, right now we’re the pigs, so fuck that.
The Other rears its head toward me, zeroing in on the source of its pain. Its twenty eyes—all of them human and varying shades of brown, blue, green, and hazel—glare at me. Its wide mouth turns up in a sneer, revealing long rows of small white teeth I realize are also human. Then it unleashes a dry, husky roar, like it’s out of practice. The sound is made even more unnerving by the twin rows of appendages that rise and shake on either side of its spine. I’d missed them at first, taking the lines for skin folds. But I can now see them for what they are: arms. The limbs, connected at the shoulder, spasm in a threat display that instills a deep sense of wrongness in my core.
As much as I’d like to turn tail and run, the Other needs to be stopped. Right here. Now and forever.
Young has other ideas. He breaks from our group and bunny hops the fallen Grays as he retreats toward the nearest tunnel.
More Grays burst as the Other stomps toward me, indifferent to the fate of its mindless acolytes.
I draw the gun on my hip, raising it toward the very large target that is the Other’s eye-covered face. As big as it is, two rounds in the brain should put it down.
STOP.
My hands lock in place, the gun’s potential now impotent.
DROP THE WEAPON.
I release the gun, unflinching as it clatters to the floor at my feet.
“What are you doing?” Godin asks, his stunned face turning toward me.
He can’t hear it. The voice. The Other. It’s in my head again.
The crystals might work to broadcast its telepathy, but the effect isn’t generated by software. It’s biological, and up close and personal, it’s even more powerful.
Godin reaches for the weapon, and I try to warn him away, but I can’t speak. The Other clenches a hundred fists and drives them into Godin, who’s sent spiraling fifteen feet away, where he lands on a bed of immobile Grays.
I try to move, to fight the Other’s influence, but not even the nanites can shield me from this assault.
KILL THEM.
No, god damn it.
KILL YOUR FRIENDS.
I turn toward Wini. I try to tell her to run, but I’m locked inside myself. My hand snaps out to clutch her throat. Instead, I grasp hold of a small wrist.
Jacob.
Before I or the Other can comprehend the significance of this, I’m flooded with renewed strength, confidence, and determination. Jacob is once again gifting me with his own strong will.
KILL HIM.
My grip on his wrist tightens enough to make him grimace, but I’m able to resist.
“Fight it!” Jacob says.
Wini must sense what’s happening, that the Other is trying to break me and torture me by making me its slave, rather than killing me outright, because she puts her hand on Jacob’s shoulder, using him as a conduit for her own emotional reinforcements. Wini’s love, commitment, and adoration hits me like nitrous in an engine.
The Other roars, its hot breath coursing over me in waves. I stare up into the human-toothed maw and scream back. Pulses of rage, desperation, and hatred slap into my soul. And still, we resist, pushing back with all of the things that make us a family, that make us human.
Together, we manage to stand up to the Other’s psychological assault, but we’re still at the monster’s mercy.
Its jaws unhinge and open wide enough to engulf me. I flinch as it lunges down, but all the fear and anxiety of being bitten in half is replaced by unflappable bravery. It surges through me, and then out of me, slamming into the Other’s still-connected mind like a thrown spear.
When the Other reels back, unleashing a high-pitched roar, I’m freed of its lingering control and able to look back. Isabella has taken hold of Jacob’s free hand and lent her own emotional prowess to the effort. She’s easily as powerful as Jacob, and perhaps even empathic like him.
But she can’t stop what happens next.
None of us can.
Because there is nothing all the fortitude in the world can do to stop a one-ton tail made of human torsos from smearing a person.
“Down!” I shout, wrapping my arms around and shielding Wini, Jacob, and Isabella. My body will do little to cushion the blow, but there’s nothing else to do.
I shout when my back is slapped hard from behind, but I don’t die.
Don’t even move.
Smelling fresh blood, I look up in time to see the severed tail pinwheeling across the room, propelled by the Other’s swing. The slap I felt was the creature’s blood spraying against my back as the tail was severed and flung.
A ball of blue light slides through the air in the other direction, revealing how the miracle save was pulled off. I trace the energy weapon’s path back to its origin and find Young propping up a Gray, struggling to fire off a second shot.
The Other stumbles back, rights itself, and unleashes an eye-bulging roar. At first, I think it’s just angry, and wounded, but the Grays around us begin to rise. They twitch and brew with energy, serving the call of their wounded creator and master.
And then, gunfire.
Men—actual men—dressed in black body armor, stream out of a tunnel, weapons raised and blazing. The Grays are cut down in bursts of purple. Standing among the men, his mind freed and face revealed, is Aaron. He gives me a nod and returns to his assault on the rising Grays.
The explosion.
I thought it was the Other rising from whatever depths had kept it hidden, but it was Aaron breaching the base.
While Aaron and his mercenaries are welcome, their distraction has more of an effect on me than the Other. While I’m still turning around, the giant jaws have opened to envelop me once more. I see the back of its throat and then hear two loud pops. Two red flowers blossom at the back of its mouth, the bullets that created them slipping inside the brain beyond and wreaking havoc. I dive to the side as momentum carries the Other forward and down.
I land atop a Gray as the automatons collapse once more, as motionless as their master. Wini stands on the other side of the creature’s head, its many eyes now closed. She lowers the literal smoking gun, looks down at the Other and says, “No one eats my boy.”
She looks me in the eyes, gives me a relieved smile, and drops the gun. Then she turns to the oncoming mercenaries led by Aaron. “Any of you big hunks have some spare clothes, because its frikken cold in here and my tits are out.”
“Thanks,” a groggy voice says. I turn to find Godin being helped up by Aaron. He’s clutching his arm.
“You okay?”
“It’s a small price to pay for saving the world, right?” He smiles and winces. “But I think I’ll stick to policing angry Mormons from now on.”
While I chuckle in solitude at Godin and Wini’s humor, Jacob crouches down by the Other and places a hand on its head. Its muscles relax. I crouch beside him in time to hear him whisper, “Go in peace. Your struggle is over.”
The Other shudders and then seems to deflate.
“That was…kind,” I tell him. It wasn’t just kind, it was an act of mercy I don’t think many people would have considered, let alone performed. In the Other’s last, and most painful moments, Jacob eased its pain and the knowledge that it had failed its thousands-year-old quest to return its species from the ashes.
“In the end, it was just sad.” He stands up and confirms my own theory. “I think, in the same situation, people would do the same thing.”
I think about everything I’ve done since getting involved in this mess. All the men I’ve shot. All the men I’ve killed. All of the horrors I’ve subjected myself to, at first just to find one girl—not to mention all the horrible things I genuinely considered doing once the stakes were raised. The Other was fighting for its entire species. That doesn’t excuse its crimes, but it means, “You’re probably right.”
Epilogue
“How are you holding up?” Wini asks. She’s sitting beside me, dressed in her usual too tight out
fit and looking good. In the past three months she’s hit the gym and is a lot more mobile than she used to be. Our encounter with the Other and the Grays left her feeling inadequate, despite the fact that she brought the monster down—not the guy with nanites in his head, or even the army of mercenaries. I’m all for Wini extending her life. I’m not sure how I’d get by without her.
Not that I’m without help.
I’ve struck a tentative deal with Aaron, allowing him access to Other technologies to be reverse engineered for the betterment of mankind. The moment I get a whiff of weapons development, I’ll shut him down. With the nanites inside me back to full strength, he knows I’m capable. While motivated by human desires of wealth and status, Lindo’s death seems to have awakened something in Aaron. A kind of responsibility for honoring his brother’s passing.
If that’s really what happened.
The one lie I’ve told to Aaron is in regards to Lindo.
His brother died. I watched it happen.
But the funeral we held for him in Dulce was something of a sham, because the casket was empty. After confirming that Reg and Randy were both safe—having been left unconscious with no memory of the Grays abducting Wini, Godin, and Young—we returned to the gun warehouse. The place was still in ruins. There was blood—everywhere.
But Lindo’s body was gone.
Godin, returned to his job, led a raid on the New Zion Ranch, uncovering a slew of illegal activities including human trafficking. After digging through documents and interrogating the surviving family members with Jacob’s aid, we learned that while they had removed the attackers’ bodies at the gun shop, they had not removed Lindo.
I like to think that some remaining nanites patched Lindo up. That he’s somewhere in the world, taking a much needed and deserved vacation. Wherever he is, if he’s alive, he doesn’t want to be found. So I’ve resisted the temptation to track him down. If he’s alive, he’ll come back to the fold when he’s ready. In the meantime, there are plenty of other people to help.
Aaron’s army of mercenaries now work for me, under Kuruk’s supervision, scouring the globe for children being raised for the sole purpose of being sold to the Other. In some cases, the children are left with their remorseful, loving parents. In other cases, we take the children and place them with families composed of adults who had previously been freed by Lindo.
A few of the mercs hold a grudge…because I shot them, but Jacob tells me that they are grateful for the new focus. They feel pride in their work, and even if they don’t like me, they would protect me if need be.
“Feels good to be out in the field again,” I say.
“Really, you’re going to give me a bullshit answer?”
“How are you feeling?” I ask, hoping to divert the conversation away from my emotions. Jacob, who is sitting on the bench across from me, already knows exactly how I feel, including that I’d rather not talk about our newest rescue mission. He’s dressed like an average kid wearing shorts and a T-shirt that reads: ‘I have issues.’ The irony of his shirt is that Jacob is more resilient than anyone I’ve met before. When it comes to adapting to our new reality, he has been eager, positive, and a light in the darkness left by the Other.
“I’m good,” Wini says. “Have a date tonight. And if he’s lucky I might let him give me that d—”
“Wini!” I point to Jacob, who’s already chuckling.
“Dinner,” Wini says. “What’s wrong with dinner? What did you think I was going to say?” She hitches a thumb at me and says to Jacob, “Your dad’s kind of a perv. Just FYI.”
“I know,” Jacob says, and they have a good laugh.
I’m still getting used to being called, ‘Dad,’ but it’s better than ‘Father,’ which Jacob used during the first week after I created adoption records, school records, medical records, and everything else he needed to legally be my child. We are joined by Isabella and her mother, whose defiance of The Other has grown deeper since learning the full truth of her child’s near fate. We all live in Dulce and ‘work’ in the mesa. As far as the state knows, the kids are homeschooled and always have been, but their education is like none other on Earth.
Between experimenting with the tech left behind by the Other—including fully intact UFOs and still-functioning Grays, not to mention all of the reverse-engineered tech developed by Aeron—they’re going to understand the future before the world knows it has arrived.
“Almost there,” Young says, stepping into the cargo hold and taking a seat beside Jacob. The pastor’s decision to leave his church and join our cause full-time was a surprise to me—and to his family. They’ve since moved to Dulce, and while Young has started a new church, he mostly works as a counselor for the people we now call the Liberated.
This is the hardest part of our new job. Once a day, we wake a group of people from the Other’s collection. Every person freed is a different case. Most are confused. Some are categorically broken. Those most recently taken are returned to society, joining our families around the world. Those with missing limbs are being assisted by Aaron, whose company is developing cybernetic limbs. Those taken before the advent of computers, or cars, or electricity, remain in the mesa, being reeducated. Some of them are already working alongside us, but I suspect most will spend the rest of their lives trying to understand how they’ve been unconscious since childhood and have awakened in an adult body, hundreds or thousands of years in a future that makes no sense. There are joys every day, and deep despairs.
The most difficult cases are those who emerge from their Other-induced coma to find that vital organs have been removed. Some survive hours. Others just minutes or seconds. But Jacob, and his siblings returned to me by Sheba, are there to provide comfort and peace as they pass away, lost in confusion.
Only three months have passed, but it feels like years. The mesa is now familiar to me. I can navigate its vast and winding insides by memory. I also have full access to its computer system, allowing me to control both the UFOs and the Grays. It took some work to understand everything, but the nanites make the interface smooth, and allow me access to the system from anywhere on Earth.
It’s cool. And useful. But I’ve lost many hours of sleep debating the morality of becoming, in a sense, the next Other. I now wield the same power. Should I be corrupted by it, the world would be mine to control, overtly or covertly. And if the world’s governments decided to end our planet in a torrent of nuclear fire, I could retreat to the mesa, transfer my consciousness into a computer system designed to contain it, and over the next several thousand years, do my best to return humanity to power.
Or I could get in a UFO and explore the universe.
Aaron says they’re not designed for that, but I’m pretty sure he’s full of shit, mostly because Jacob and I already took one into orbit.
Two Grays enter and I can’t help but feel uneasy. Even though they’re following the orders given by me and transferred to their AIs by the nanites, I have an inherent distrust of them. Also, they’re freakin ugly.
“Hans and Frans!” Wini greets the Grays with a smile and a wave. In an effort to make everyone a little more comfortable around our slender helpers—whose tireless efforts really are indispensable at this point—she named them all and dressed them in Star Trek uniforms.
We don’t use them outside the mesa very often, but today is a special case. On occasion, when removing a child from trafficking parents, we utilize the Grays, letting the people involved believe the Other is still alive, well, and not to be disturbed. Despite mankind’s oldest enemy now being truly extinct, our job will be easier if people are still looking for aliens in the stars, and the U.S. government maintains its policy of not rocking the boat.
When our transportation comes to a stop, I ask. “Are we ready to do this?”
My human companions look at me with raised eyebrows that ask if I’m ready. The two Grays raise their thumbs, a gesture taught to them by Isabella. She’s a strong kid, and while Jacob can calm me
with a touch, she keeps me grounded in the real world, as concerned about the latest exploits of One Direction as she is the liberation of cryptoterrestrial slaves. She’s a good kid, and I’m glad she’s part of my life.
But she’s not my only child now.
The Grays stare at me with their big, malicious black eyes, waiting for the green light.
“Go ahead,” I tell them.
The UFO’s floor lights up, and they slip through it, dropping out of sight.
“It’s going to be okay.” Wini pats my knee, but I can tell that she’s nervous now, too. “You’ll do fine.”
“You’re both upset,” Jacob says. He holds his hand out. “Do you want me to—”
I shake my head.
“What we’re feeling isn’t comfortable,” Young says, “but it’s good.”
“They feel sad,” Jacob says, but then furrows his brow, “but you’re not, are you?”
I see what’s happening below, in the home. The terrified husband and wife, paralyzed by the Grays, cast in bright light streaming through the windows. Their terror is tangible, and the Other’s power is without question. Hans and Frans move from the parents’ bedroom, into a child’s room. The only decorations on the walls are cobwebs and stains of who-knows-what. Cardboard boxes strewn about the room are being used as furniture...I think. Upon closer inspection, I see that it’s worse than that. They’re old, damp, and moldy, covered in trash. An empty air mattress lies on the floor, full of holes. Beside it is a yellow bucket, nearly full to the top with human waste. The Grays find the boy, who has been treated like a caged animal, lying behind a wall of boxes curled up like a mouse in its nest. Making sure the boy remains asleep, they lift him and head for the wall.
Looking at the boy’s face through the Grays’ eyes, I know, without a doubt, that the work that has consumed most of my personal time for the past months has finally borne fruit. I put my hand on my pants pocket, feeling the photo kept there.
The floor lights up again and the Grays slide up through the floor. Frans holds a nearly six-year-old boy in its arms.
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