Fifteen minutes later, the entire process would start over, with slight variations in the order and timing. For about ten seconds at the start of the process, a vertical array of red lights would appear over her mother’s body and change their appearance and location, like a scoreboard, or a scene marker for a movie. Then it would start: the injections, the humming, the vibrations, the light, the agony, the shooting lines of energy leading to her mom being encased in the blue fire before she’d disappear. Silence, a loud crack, a flash of light. The chamber floor flashing transparent. Her mother looking up at her, then the haze before Candi was back on the table.
Emily watched this happen over and over again, so many times that she’d lost count. Hour after unbearable hour passed, all the while her mother screaming and writhing in pain once the injections started. Each time her mother appeared on the table after the fog, she seemed skinnier, a little more fragile, like she was being eaten alive by the pain. Her skin eventually became drawn, her face pinched and frail. She looked like she would crumble into pieces if touched, or blow away in a cloud of dust if someone whispered in her ear.
Emily knew the end was near. Her mother couldn’t take much more of this. Candi hadn’t eaten or drank anything for hours, if not days, and neither had Emily.
Finally, after one trip to the surface, her mother didn’t come back. There was no loud crack, no flash of light, no fog, and no more Mom. Emily’s nightmare had gone from the unimaginable to the incomprehensible. She had held on to the fact that they were together as a family on that ship, until that moment; but now that comfort was gone. She was alone, trapped, and starving. Her lips could barely pry themselves apart from each other. She needed water. She needed help.
Emily could hear the chamber humming and vibrating differently than before. The flat rectangular object that her mother had been lying on floated across the chamber toward her, with the electrically charged pedestal remaining directly beneath it as it moved. The wall panels on either side of her swung open. Four mechanical arms reached out and took hold of her arms and legs just as the stretchy material dissolved, freeing her body from the wall.
Emily was surprised—the arms felt gentle, almost delicate. She knew what was coming, though. She knew what was next, and it wasn’t going to be gentle or delicate. There had to be some form of intelligence behind the actions of the machines. Something or someone must be controlling them. Then she remembered the flashes of the big heads in the crowd that she’d seen on the first day. She tried to call out to them to stop what they were about to do, but she was too weak, and her lips too dry.
She waited, resigning herself to the same fate as her mother. She floated across the room on the rectangle, hoping to die before it began. Mechanical arms removed her clothing, tearing them into strips. The table was cool against her skin. A few silent moments passed.
The chamber hummed, and the array of lights appeared overhead, marking the start of the procedure. The lights turned from red to blue; a new development that she hadn’t seen before.
She felt a slight warming beneath her, and knew it was beginning. Her body felt heavy, as if it were glued to the table. She had expected to see the robotic arm with the needle tentacles working its way toward her face to inject her, like the process had started each time with her mother, but she didn’t. The platform slowly rotated until Emily was facing the floor. She didn’t feel it happen, but she knew a hole was appearing in the table directly over her lower spine. She had expected a terrible pain to follow, and was surprised when she felt only the tiniest of pin pricks. The table flipped back to its original position, and she watched the telescoping robotic arm descend and position itself above her head. The four serpentine needle-tipped tentacles appeared and snaked their way to her eyes and ears. Emily was prepared to scream when the pain hit, but she barely felt a thing when the needles pierced her eyes and ears.
Something was different. Much different than her mother’s time on the table. Maybe the order of the experiment had been changed, or maybe this was a different experiment. The arms receded and she stared at the ceiling of the chamber, waiting for whatever came next.
Emily’s spine tingled, deep down at the base. Slowly, the tingle crept up between her shoulder blades. Her pulse started to quicken. The feeling crept up to her neck and transformed into an intense, throbbing pain. She was overcome by an adrenaline rush, the intensity of which she had never experienced. Her body began to sizzle with electric-blue lines of energy. Tiny lightning bolts crisscrossed her skin. A searing bolt of agony shot from the back of her skull to her forehead. The containment grid of energy let go of her body just as she curled into the fetal position and was consumed by blue fire.
She couldn’t help but focus on the pain. A single, agonizing point between her eyes. She felt like she was floating, disconnected from her body. She had no idea how long she was floating, but it seemed like a lifetime. Two lifetimes. No, more than that. An eternity of pain and darkness, focused on a single point between her eyes. A blackness so intense that she never wanted to see black again: the beautiful night sky, yes. Regular darkness, yes. But empty voids of blackness mixed in with pain, no.
Then she heard a loud crack. A bright light blinded her eyes. Once again, she felt her body. The pain faded and was replaced by numbness, then coolness against her skin. She didn’t have to open her eyes to know that she was back in the chamber and lying on the hovering platform. She flexed her hands and feet, then her legs and torso, realizing that she could move. The containment field hadn’t begun to cover her yet.
It was now or never, she thought.
She gathered all her strength and leapt from the table, running blindly to the wall panel that had opened each time to let the hazy vapor rush out. She’d seen the sequence so many times that the dimensions of the chamber were etched permanently into her mind. She dove head first, praying she’d gotten it right, hoping that her assumption was correct and that the open panel led outside where the fog was being released.
She half-expected to slam her head into the wall and break her neck, but she didn’t. She felt a rush of cool air hit her face as gravity and the laws of physics took control of her body. She began to fall, smelling desert flowers and sage along the way. The moon was nearly full, just like the night they were taken. The moonlight provided enough light that she could see the desert floor twenty feet below her.
She hit the ground hard, landing on the right side of her body, knocking the wind from her lungs with a thud. She gasped for breath, waiting for her lungs to recharge. They did after at least thirty rapid breaths. She rolled over, expecting to find a broken bone or some other damage to her body. She didn’t. She’d made it out in one piece.
She stood up and looked around, trying to get her bearings. She needed to run, but wasn’t sure which way to go. She heard a roar that sounded like a powerful jet engine, and then a massive shadow slid over the top of the area and blotted out the moon and stars, leaving only darkness and cold. A beam of white light shot out of the bottom of the hovering shadow and made contact with the desert floor a dozen yards in front of her. It began to move in a grid-like pattern, swinging from one end of the area to the other. She knew they were searching for her.
She took off running in the opposite direction from the light, but stopped when the light turned off. She couldn’t see more than a foot without the moonlight to direct her. She figured that she was in for a repeat of what had happened when she and her mother had first been taken. Then, hundreds of bright-red beams of light shot out of the shapeless shadow above her, each with their own origination point, striking the Earth in random locations. Columns of dirt, cactus, brush, and rock erupted from the ground wherever the beams pummeled the surface.
The red beams were everywhere, and getting closer. Emily knew she couldn’t escape—there were too many—she was hemmed in on all sides. Then one struck her in the stomach. She had expected to double over in pain, which never happened. The redness bounced off of her and struck the dir
t twenty feet in front of her, sending surface material into the air like a mortar shell hitting a structure. More beams hit her skin, but they didn’t seem to harm her. Instead, they ricocheted off in crazy directions, making geysers of debris all around her.
An idea come out of nowhere and landed in her brain. It was a crazy idea that didn’t make sense. But somehow she knew that it was the right thing to do. She faced the dark shadow looming above her and put her right hand above her head and waited, with her palm turned up, facing the sky. A red beam struck her hand and she adjusted her wrist so that her palm was perpendicular to the dark shadow above.
It worked—but not exactly as she’d planned. Instead of striking the shadow above her and then disappearing, the red stream stuck to the object. Whatever was floating above her was now tethered to her hand by the beam of red energy. The red grew wider and brighter as the impact area began to glow the same color. Emily’s mind lit up with visions that told her things she couldn’t possibly know. They were like snapshots of thought, mini-flashes of knowledge.
The object above her was a ship. She assumed it was an alien ship. She could see their faces looking at each other inside the ship. Much clearer than before. Their big heads were covered with boils and lesions. They were all sick, and looking for answers. Some disease was killing them, consuming their flesh one painful cell at a time.
Two thoughts kept popping into her mind over and over. The creatures wanted to go back to fix something, and humans were at fault. Invaders was the name they called us. It didn’t make sense—these creatures invaded our planet, not the other way around. She could sense the visitors’ panic, trying to stop her and the beam that was now connected to their systems. Somehow their experiment had changed her genetic structure, allowing her to seize the power of their beam and turn it around and use it against them. The visitors didn’t plan for this to happen. It was a lab accident, or a side effect of the experiment that they were running on her. The creatures thought that they had perfected the process when they started it on her, but they were wrong. She could see flashes of their emotions, feeling their hatred toward humanity growing inside them.
The beam continued to get thicker, and crackle with a power that Emily felt connecting to her bones. It seemed to charge her entire body like an energy matrix. The ship began to rattle and hum. Emily grew stronger with each passing second, like the beam’s power was healing her somehow. She was no longer hungry, thirsty, or tired. She felt invigorated, and more alive than ever before.
Her palm began to glow a brighter red. The ship started to shake violently, making the stars and moonlight shine through in short bursts, like seams in the ship were cracking open and letting the starlight through. Whatever was happening was not hurting her, but she could sense that it was hurting them and their ship. She could feel the fear in their minds as they scrambled inside their ship, trying to end what she sensed was some form of energy feedback loop.
Time to get even, she decided, as her mind took control of the communication link and she sent flashes of thought to the occupants of the ship: You kidnapped my family. You ran horrible experiments on me and my mother. You tortured us. You hurt us. You had no right to try to turn us into something else. You killed my mom. You need to pay for what you’ve done. You need to die.
A few seconds later the ship exploded on one side, then shot to the heavens in a flash.
Time slowed down as dust, rock, and shards of black material from the ship began to swirl around her in a vertical column, moving in ultra-slow motion as if her body had been polarized with a force field, keeping the debris away from her. Suddenly all the broken pieces of the ship stopped moving around her, hanging in mid-flight for a few moments, then they winked out of existence in speckles of blue light.
She felt the red energy leave her body and dissipate into the air around her.
Time resumed.
The dirt and rock stopped spinning around her and fell to the ground.
She stood alone in the moonlight, trying to make sense of what had just happened. A faint breeze blew across her face and brought the pleasant aroma of cactus and sage into her nose. It reminded her of home. All her thoughts turned to her mother. A tear dripped from her eye and ran down her cheek.
Then her spine began to tingle, deep inside its base. She could feel it moving up her back and growing stronger. She didn’t know what it was, but something was coming. She could sense it. But it was coming from inside of her. She wasn’t the same Emily. Her captors had changed her more than she initially thought.
She decided to call out, just in case she wasn’t alone. “Mom? Mom? Are you here? It’s me, Emily. Mom? . . . Mom! Please, Mom, answer me! I need you!”
She waited, then called out over and over again. There was no answer. Just the sounds of the desert night.
She fell to her knees and the tears came. Lots of them. More tears than she thought could ever be in her teenage body, streaming down her face and flooding off of her nose. She just wanted to go home and hug her mom. She wanted to go to Mass with her mother just one more time. To sit next to her and hold her hand when the priest spoke. To sit in the wooden pew and lean her shoulder against her mother’s so she could feel safe and loved.
“Mom!” she screamed as loud and as long as her lungs could manage. But there was no answer. No movement. No hope.
The tingle swelled to her neck and then shot to her forehead.
Blue light covered her body and she felt dizzy.
Something was about to happen.
CHAPTER TEN
September 25, 2014
12:01 a.m.
Emily’s mind snapped back to reality. She was standing next to Jim, with her eyes focused on the barrel of the gangbanger’s gun. Panic churned deep in the pit of her stomach as she locked eyes with the shortest member of the Locos gang. It was clear that he was their leader based on his attitude and motions.
A tingle ignited in her spine, signaling the start of the countdown. She smiled, knowing that these bandidos would never see it coming.
“What are you smiling at, puta?” the leader asked, reaching out to touch her shoulder.
She swatted his hand away. “Just your ugly face.”
Jim Miller pulled her close to him. “Tell us what you want.”
Emily felt his hip, which was about the height of her ribcage, nudging her toward the street. Two cars were parked nearby, about three feet apart from each other. An old cream-colored Toyota Land Cruiser with a smashed windshield and missing bucket seats, and a black Monte Carlo that had been lowered on its suspension to the point that its undercarriage was only inches from the pavement.
Emily decided to play scared and dumb. Stall, she told herself. Stall long enough to let the jump process happen. Then take them all out when time slows down.
“I . . . I . . .” she stammered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think you have me confused with someone else. Money? You want money?”
The leader laughed, flashing his single gold tooth. It looked odd next to the rest of his teeth. Gold and dirty brown didn’t mix, not on any color chart that she liked. Emily noticed an ugly scar running from the corner of his mouth all the way to his ear. It wasn’t there when she’d seen him that night in the basement over a year ago. Or at least she hadn’t noticed it. Maybe it happened when he fell down the stairs. But she didn’t remember seeing any blood on the floor. Then she remembered the pretty boy that she had kicked in the nuts. She remembered every detail of Derek’s beautiful face. She checked the rest of the men in the gang; he wasn’t there.
“Yeah, you stupid little puta,” he spat. “I want the dinero you stole from me.”
“That’s right, puta,” chimed in one of the thugs behind them. “You took money from the Locos. Flaco, show chica what we do to people who steal from the Locos.”
Flaco’s eyes darted to the man who just spoke. “Shut up! No names. How estúpido are you?”
She felt Jim nudge her again, ever so softly, p
ushing her toward the street. She sensed what he wanted: to work her between the gap in the two cars. She glanced at him. He was cool and relaxed. None of this seemed to bother him. His demeanor took her panic away, easing the adrenaline rush, which was not what she wanted. She tried to force her emotions to restart the jump process, but the tingle in her spine continued to fade. She wasn’t going to jump.
She decided to take her act to a higher level. She sniffled and let her lower lip tremble, letting her eyes squint for a cry.
“Please, please don’t hurt us,” she told Flaco. She turned to Jim. “Daddy, do something! Give them what they want. Give them your wallet. Just make them go away.” She threw her arms around Jim and began to sob into his chest, hoping that her acting job appeared genuine.
He wrapped his left arm around her. She felt his other hand slide to the waistband of his shorts. What was he reaching for? He wasn’t carrying a gun. She would have been able to feel it with her arms hanging onto him.
Jim finally spoke. “You guys are complete fucking idiots.”
There was silence from the Locos. She realized that the gang members were stunned. Jim’s attitude wasn’t what any of them had expected. Certainly not with four guns pointed at Jim’s face.
Flaco moved a step closer to Jim, tilting his head back with attitude. “Seems to me like you’re the fucking idiot who just got caught with his pantalones down in our territory. Isn’t it past your bedtime, old man?”
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