The Alien's Tensions

by Ruth Anne Scott

  “This factory was specifically built that way,” Aubrey said. “The floors are specially designed with extensive reinforcement to ensure that it could support the equipment. I learned about that when we were researching Izalux. No one really understands why the original owner of the Orion Corporation wanted it done this way, but he was apparently extremely clear about the design for the building itself as well as the arrangement of everything inside of it. He drew up the plans himself and oversaw every detail of it to make sure that it was created in exactly the right way.”

  “There were so many signs leading here,” Willow pointed out. “He obviously didn’t care if anybody knew that the factory was here. In fact, it almost seems like he wanted people to know.”

  “Why wouldn’t he?” Ilya asked.

  “The only thing that this factory ever produced was Izalux—a chemical that never hit the market and that no one knows what it is used for or why it was designed in the first place. If he was going to make something that secretive, why was he so open about the factory?”

  “Maybe he didn’t intend for the Izalux to be a secret,” Jonah said. “Maybe whoever opened this factory and originally formulated the chemical thought that it was going to have some kind of meaningful purpose and had no reason to be anything but as open and transparent as any other factory. Then something happened and the product didn’t hit the market.”

  “So why did he keep producing the chemical? It was first formulated more than 100 years ago, never sold, and yet there are bottles of it in the laboratory that are stored in contemporary containers. They couldn’t have been made more than a year ago.”

  “That’s another question,” Willow said. “Why label them? If it’s a product that won’t be used in the marketplace and only has any use or value to whoever is continuing to make it, why do they even bother to put a label on it? Wouldn’t they know what it was without going through all of that?”

  Jonah shook his head. Yet again it felt like they were seeking out answers and all they were finding was more questions. He knew that he couldn’t let it dissuade or distract him. They had to keep going. They had to keep pushing. Somewhere they would find the answers that had to exist.

  They continued on and just as Ilya had said, the hallway they were following opened up into what looked like an old office floor. The space was organized into a block of dozens of tiny cubicles like the ones that he had seen in office buildings during his time on Earth. Those were always filled with people sitting at desks, seemingly mindlessly typing or talking on headsets, all of them working on essentially the same thing but looking as though they were invested in their own personal missions. These cubicles, however, had nothing in them but chairs. There were no desks, no phones, no computer equipment of any kind. Instead, there was a wooden rail-back chair positioned in the center of each, all of them oriented in the same direction as if that was the way that they were always used. As they walked through the center of the cubicles Jonah noticed that the walls on either side of the space were lined with doors. He could only assume that they led into small offices, but the dim illumination provided only by the emergency bulbs and the faint glow coming in through the occasional tear in the tinting on the windows didn’t allow him to read the plaques that were on each.

  Jonah walked toward one side of the room and reached for the knob of the nearest door. It wouldn’t move. He went to the next door and found it locked as well. From across the room, he heard Aubrey call for him.

  “These are all locked,” she said, the same thought seeming to run through her head as it was his.

  This was so much like the old medical ward. He looked at the doors again, close enough now to read the plaques, and found that they were empty. Each door had a small, flat brass plaque inset into the center, but none had any engravings. He called across the room to Aubrey, asking her to check the plaques on the doors that she had tried, but she only confirmed that she was seeing the same thing. Jonah didn’t understand what that could mean, but it was disquieting. After they had examined the office area, they climbed a longer, wider flight of stairs that ended with a small lobby area. A time clock that would have been extremely outdated even before Jonah left Earth was positioned on one wall, a time card still sitting in it as if someone had been checking in for work but for some reason didn’t complete the action. On the other side of the room, a blocked-off reception window further reminded Jonah of the medical ward and the waiting room that he had frequented during his time in the laboratory.

  “What was this area used for?” he asked.

  Ilya shook her head.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  He glanced at Aubrey, but she shook her head as well. Jonah didn’t know why, but he walked across the room and withdrew the time card from the clock, tucking it into the satchel at his side without looking at it. The far wall of the room held a pair of massive double doors and they approached them cautiously. Ilya touched her hand to one of the doors and turned to look at the rest of the group.

  “The first factory floor is right past these doors,” she said. “This is one of the rooms where the Izalux was produced.”

  Something about the complex imbalance of the Izalux being both secretive and openly known bothered Jonah. The fact that the chemical was made with the full knowledge of the public almost seemed to make it more mysterious as if it was created in the open so that it wouldn’t be noticed. He remembered when Aubrey told him that she had realized that she was making artificial starlight when she worked with Ryan creating the Izalux. Until she remembered that, neither of them knew what it was used for, and none of the books that she read explained it. That meant that while the public knew that the factory was in operation and creating a material called Izalux, they didn’t know what it was or the intention of it. Somehow no one questioned why it was created and why production continued even after years of it not going to the market. It was likely that the people who knew about the factory believed that it was a material that was used only for a very small, isolated industry and would have no reason to know what it was or why it was used. Jonah had learned that so often people are willing to believe the easiest thing even if they have no reason to believe it, and are unlikely to question things because they don’t want to appear that they are the only ones who don’t know or understand something. It was something that happened far too frequently and left many people going along with things that they never would have if they had simply asked questions and found out the true reality of what was happening.

  They stepped through the doors and out into a massive industrial workspace. Without the barriers of the cubicle walls and the offices that made the space they were just in seem smaller, the factory floor felt tremendous. The tinting on the windows was deeper and more intact in this room, making it darker. The glow of the emergency lights around the upper portion of the room cast enough illumination that Jonah could see the hunkering outlines of the machinery scattered across the floor. Some of the pieces were further in the shadows looked like monstrous creatures hunching in the darkness and Jonah felt the urge to arm himself, though he knew in his mind that it was just his anxiety that was crafting the treacherous image out of aging industrial equipment.

  His eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness of the room and Jonah started walking around it, examining the machinery. The knowledge of engineering and technology that had made him a desirable member of the clandestine department of the University that devised the Nyx 23 mission told him that he was looking at the pieces of equipment that had been updated and enhanced many times over the years, as if new technology and advanced features had been pieced on top of the skeletons of the original equipment. Several of the machines were still very much active and looked as though they had been used quite recently.

  “Can you show me the other factory floors?” he asked Ilya.

  The woman nodded and the group made their way onto the next floor. It was almost identical to the first, but there was a different smell hanging in
the air. It was difficult to describe, hovering somewhere between cold air and embers. Jonah approached one of the machines and examined it. He could feel heat radiating from somewhere deep inside of it as if it had been used just hours before. Jonah walked along the machine, running his hand along it until he reached a conveyor. The belt was still but he could see that there was one part of it that stood out from the rest, a small pool of light coloration against the charcoal of the rest of the belt. He approached it and looked at it more closely. Realizing that it was liquid, he reached forward and dipped his fingertips into the small puddle.

  Jonah pulled his fingers back and looked at them, rubbing them together to feel the thick, pearl-like fluid against his skin. Could this be Izalux?

  He was turning to call Aubrey over so that she could look at the fluid when he heard a heavy thud somewhere in the distance. He looked at each member of the group, making sure that none of them were touching anything that could have made the sound. They were all standing in the center of the floor away from any of the equipment, their eyes flashing around the space and to each other as if they were checking for the same thing that Jonah was. He took a step toward Aubrey and heard the sound again.

  “There’s someone else in the factory,” he hissed. “Someone’s here.”

  Chapter Seven

  Nana pulled the light blanket up over Linnea and reached up to brush a lock of her fine blonde hair away from her forehead. The woman’s eyes were closed but Nana could see them twitching slightly beneath her lids, and she ran her hand gently down Linnea’s arm to try to soothe her into a deeper sleep. Of everyone that Aubrey and Jonah had brought to her house, Linnea had seemed to have the most difficult time recovering from what she experienced in the facility. Her pregnancy was not as far progressed as those of Ilya, Sable, or Maeve, which meant that she hadn’t spent as much time in the laboratory as the other women and hadn’t been exposed to as many of the horrors that Ryan enacted against them.

  Nana wondered if it was actually this fact that made it so that it was harder for her to cope with the chaos of everything that was happening. She had had the opportunity to talk some with Ilya and knew that she had gone through a challenging time when she was first brought to the facility, but then was able to assimilate and survive the ordeal by not allowing it to get into her mind. Though this sounded almost outlandish to Nana as if the woman was creating memories of what she had gone through so that she didn’t have to think about what had really happened. Now that she was spending more time caring for Linnea, however, Nana was beginning to think that there might have been more truth to what Ilya had said than she thought. It seemed that Linnea was going through the same heightened awareness and panic that Ilya had described, but that she was beginning to feel less anxious and more willing to accept the freedom that had been given to her. Nana hoped that she would be able to continue to support and nurture Linnea until she was at a point when she felt safe and confident enough to move forward.

  Closing the door of Linnea’s bedroom behind her, she walked back down the stairs and through a door that she hadn’t opened in many years. It was still painful to walk through it, remembering the smile on her mother’s face the last time that she had seen her alive. It was in this room, a drawing room that she had always kept pristine. Her mother had felt such pride in this room and when Nana was younger she had delighted in inviting guests over and entertaining the ladies in this room while Nana’s father had brought the men into his study before they would all go together into the dining room for a lavish dinner and decadent dessert. Nana had watched from around the corner, knowing that children were not supposed to interfere with adult parties but being drawn to the beauty of the home and of her parents. They had loved each other so much, the adoration between them visible no matter what they were doing or where they were. More often than not her father would catch a glimpse of her and crook his finger at her, luring her out from her hiding place until she walked toward him. He had never been angry. Instead, he would scoop her into his arms and carry her into the party, sitting her on his lap and presenting her to the guests as if she was just as welcome as any of them and the frilly pajamas she wore were just as grand and elegant as their evening clothing. She would cuddle with him until the smell of the electronic pipes that the men smoked became too much for her and then she would slide from his lap and make her way into her mother’s drawing room. Nana would slip through the room and sit on the floor at her feet so that she could rest her head on her mother’s lap. Mama would run her fingers through her hair and pat her back until Nana felt her eyes drifting closed. The next thing she knew, she would wake up in her own bed, wondering if it had all been a dream.

  As she got older, this room took on a different meaning. They entertained less, but her parents still clung to one another, often going into the drawing room in the evening and closing the door, not to emerge for hours. She would sometimes hear them whispering, but other times it was quiet, almost as though they were simply sitting silently together. Though Nana always wondered why they went into the room and spent this time together, she never felt left out or as though her parents were neglecting her. Even then she understood that her parents needed time alone, and when they would eventually emerge, they would always have something for the family to do all together.

  After her father died, sitting in this room became a refuge for Mama. She would carry the book about Nyx 23 into the room with her and sit in her favorite chair, running her fingers across the picture. She had always shown a tremendous fascination with Nyx 23 and Nana had seen her looking through it and even touching the picture many times before throughout her life, but it became increasingly more frequently after her father’s death. Nana would sit beside her, trying to soothe and comfort her even though she didn’t understand what she was thinking or going through. Mama had never explained to her why she spent progressively more time alone in the drawing room with the book, but Nana had never tried to stop her. This was where she was relaxed, where she seemed the calmest and peaceful. The last time that she saw her mother alive, she was sitting in the drawing room. Unlike nearly every other time that she had seen her in the months leading up to that day, the book was sitting on her lap, closed, and her hands were folded on top of it. When Nana had walked into the room, Mama had looked up at her with a look of calm on her face that was as if she knew something that had taken away any nervousness, anxiety, or sadness from her. She had taken Nana’s hand and kissed it, pressing it over her heart.

  I love you

  She said those words countless times throughout Nana’s life, several times every time that she saw her, but this time it was different. There was something different about the way that it sounded that time and Nana hadn’t known what to think of it. She offered her mother a cup of tea, the same ritual that she completed every time that she visited her, and her mother smiled at her. It was a wide, genuine smile, more pure and beautiful than any that Nana had seen since the day that her father died. That was the last time that she would see her mother alive. When she returned from getting the tea, her head was rested back against the chair, her eyes closed and the smile still on her lips.

  Going back into the room had been difficult after that. Though she was an adult, losing both of her parents had left her feeling like an orphan, and she didn’t cope with it well. Closing the door and pretending that the room wasn’t there had been the only thing that she could do to help herself move on. Over the years others had entered the room and put boxes of storage and other items inside, but it had been decades since she had actually entered it herself.

  As Nana approached one of the boxes that she had wanted to go through, she felt the difficult emotion tightening in her throat again. She opened the first box and immediately felt the sadness ease. She reached inside and withdrew a stack of pristinely pressed baby gowns. Each had a delicate “A” embroidered in pale pink or pale lavender on the front. Nana smiled and traced her finger along the letter, remembering when she had purchas
ed the gowns. Aubrey coming to live with her daughter and son-in-law had been so unexpected and so wonderful. They had given up on the idea of ever being parents, and truly of ever being completely happy. Aubrey had come at exactly the right time. And yet, she had also come at the wrong time. As much as they loved her and wanted her, Aubrey’s adoptive parents had never really gotten into the proper rhythm of caring for her. It wasn’t that they didn’t want her or that they didn’t want to be involved with her. It seemed more that they had become so accustomed to filling the emptiness of not having a child with other things that when they did have the baby they had so desired, they didn’t know how to change what they had worked so hard to create in their minds.

  This had been hard for them, but it had given Nana the chance to raise and love Aubrey, and in her heart, she knew that that was the most important and meaningful thing that she had ever done. Nana put the baby gowns back into the box, closed it, and carried the entire box out of the drawing room with her. She returned a few minutes later and took a box that contained memorabilia from her parents’ wedding, including her dried and preserved bouquet. Nana brought the box into her bedroom and placed it on the bench at the end of her bed. Lowering herself to her knees, she opened the top and pulled out the scrapbook. Her hands trembled slightly as she opened the thick ivory-colored cover and looked at the wedding invitation that had been placed in the front. It was an incredibly unusual invitation, written in a language that she didn’t understand. The names and date were depicted in what looked like symbols rather than words, and the rest was written in complex-looking words comprised of letters that she didn’t recognize.

  Her parents had never explained to her why their invitation was so strange and Nana had never asked, feeling like the mystery somehow made their union even more romantic, as though it had occurred in a storybook. Now, though, she wished that she had found out more about it. She wished that she could understand what the invitation said so she knew when and where they got married, or the words that they had chosen to share the news with the guests who they invited. She would have loved to be able to visit the spot where they had exchanged vows and see what they had, possibly figure out the reason why they would have chosen that specific place for something so precious as their wedding day.