by J. J. Green
“I know,” said Jas.
The heli drew close. A beam of blinding light flashed out from it. About thirty meters above the ground, the beam encountered a barrier. The light split and zigzagged outward and down, outlining the shape of the force field that protected the estate.
“What the hell was that?” exclaimed Mr. Lee, leaping up to look out the window. “A heli? Carleen, they’ve sent in the military. They certainly want y’all,” he said to the others.
“It’s the first time this has happened?” asked Jas. The heli had disappeared overhead, but it returned and swept a wide arc before approaching the house once more.
“Yes,” Mr. Lee replied. “The Shadows have only been watching us up until now. They’ve never attempted an all-out attack.” Another flash of intense light blazed from the aircraft and dissipated across the barrier.
“Will your force field withstand the charges?” Carl asked.
Mr. Lee rubbed his chin. “Yes—for a while.”
Sayen’s parents, Jas, and the others stood at the window watching the heli firing at the force field for a while, like it was a bizarre fireworks show. Eventually, the Shadows seemed to accept their efforts were pointless, and the heli flew off.
“Mama, Daddy,” Sayen said as they returned to their seats. “Now it’s your turn. What’s been happening here? And how come you have all these defenses? You two have always been so secretive. I think it’s high time you finally told me what it is you’ve been hiding from me and Phelan all these years.”
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I know we haven’t been open with you,” said Mrs. Lee. “We were only trying to keep you and your brother safe.”
“And I guess that’s your reason for having a tracker put in my butt cheek,” Sayen retorted, folding her arms.
“Well, as a matter of fact, it is,” replied her mother. “We nearly lost you once. I wasn’t going to risk losing you again.”
“Mama,” exclaimed Sayen, “how could you? That was an invasion of my privacy.”
“I never checked up on you, I swear. I never once tried to find out where you were. You’re a grown woman, I know that. I didn’t do it to snoop on you. It was only in case of an emergency. Aren’t you grateful now that I did it?”
Sayen glared at her mother.
“Now, now,” said her father. “What we did, we did, for better or worse. As it turned out, it was for the greater good in this case. But we can’t fix it now. Sayen, sweetheart, you’re right. I guess it is time that you know the truth about us.” He sighed. “When you know, I hope you’ll understand why we could never give you or Phelan the slightest hint about what we do. It was for your own safety as well as ours.”
There was an uncomfortable pause as Sayen looked expectantly at her parents. Neither seemed to know how to begin. “Well? Are you going to tell me or not?”
“Perhaps it’s better that I show you,” said Mr. Lee. “All of you. If you would step this way.”
He led them out of the room and up the wide, winding staircase of his palatial home. At the top of the stairs, sumptuous hallways opened on both sides, lined with deep plush carpet and lit by old-fashioned, ornate lamps. Jas wondered what Sayen’s childhood had been like with this vast house as her play space. It was the kind of place you could get lost in but not really mind for a while.
Halfway down a corridor, they stopped at a closed door. A device of a kind Jas had never seen before protruded at head height from the wall—a security console of some kind. Mr. Lee put a hand to a panel and his face to a hole. He breathed into a tube while a scanner read his eyes. A small click signaled as the door opened. “I’ll add y’all to the security database so that you can have a free run of the house while you’re here,” he said as they went inside.
The room looked like an ordinary office. Chairs and a desk, several interfaces, and knick-knacks were all Jas could see. Mr. Lee ignored all these and walked directly across the room to an area of blank wall. After pressing a raised panel, he stepped back as a section of the wall slid away to reveal an elevator. He spread his arm wide to invite them in.
Sayen gasped. “Daddy? Mama? What is this?”
“Step in here, sweetheart,” said Mr. Lee, “and I’ll show you. Come on, everyone. I think we can all fit.”
“I’m going to check on your friend, honey,” said Mrs. Lee. “Your daddy can explain everything.”
They crowded into the small space. Mr. Lee gave a voice command, and they descended. The elevator stopped, and the doors opened. Spreading out in front of them, covering an area as wide and deep as the entire base of the Lees’ home, was a workroom and laboratory rolled into one.
“Wow,” said Makey.
Chapter Three
Jas put an arm around Sayen, as the woman appeared to be about to faint.
“Daddy?” she asked weakly.
“I’m sorry, Sayen. I realize this must come as a terrible shock. I guess I’d best get this over with as quickly as I can. Please, everyone, come in and sit down.” He led them into the massive room and pulled up a couple of laboratory stools next to a bench that was scattered with metal parts and tiny tools. As he left to find some more stools, Jas helped Sayen onto one of them. The normally chatty woman seemed unable to speak. She only gaped.
Uniform wooden benches occupied most of the vast space, but there were also fume cabinets and a wide range of machining tools, as well as many things Jas couldn’t even recognize. On most of the benches were interfaces, and materials and instruments were spread about, as if work on something or things had been temporarily halted.
Mr. Lee brought over three more tall stools, and he and the others sat down. He laid a hand on Sayen’s arm. “Sayen, this is what I could never let you or your brother know. I am breaking solemn oaths that I swore to uphold by telling you and your friends this. However, it looks like our government has been compromised, and to help save humankind, I must break my promises. My dear, your mother and I work for the Global Government in an absolutely top secret capacity.”
“You...what do you mean? What is it you do?” Sayen asked, her voice almost childlike.
“I should probably have made up something to tell you both to stop you from wondering all this time, but I couldn’t make up a believable alternative. Besides, neither your mother nor I could bring ourselves to lie to you. I know you and Phelan had a little game going on where you were trying to guess.”
Jas wished the man would get to the point. They were under attack by hostile aliens. It was hardly the time for shilly shallying. But she supposed he’d been thinking about this for the last two or three decades.
“I guess you would call us inventors,” he went on. “We design and create the prototypes of devices used for the purpose of espionage.”
“You’re spies?” exclaimed Sayen, her eyes wide.
“No, no, no,” Mr. Lee replied. “We make the things used for spying. All kinds of things. The Government approaches us with a problem it needs to solve, such as how to gain access to some sensitive information, and we invent the appropriate device.” He turned to Carl and Jas. “You remember I told you we were being shut out of governmental meetings? You probably thought we were involved in politics. We aren’t, but we are privy to confidential government business. We have to be. If we don’t know what’s happening, we have no way of suggesting how we can help.
“About six months ago, we found we were not being invited to certain meetings that previously we had attended as a matter of course. We also received many invitations to leave our estate. The reasons we were given for our requested departure were weak. This was highly unusual. Our colleagues and acquaintances are aware of our general reclusiveness, which is partly natural and partly precautionary. It would be a serious blow to the Government if it were to lose our services. Its enemies would love to have the information we hold. Why would it invite us to expose ourselves to danger?”
He turned to his daughter. “Sayen, you and Phelan were also at risk. If anyone had taken you f
rom us, we would have done anything to get you back, and enemies of the Government knew that. We have been excessively protective of you both, I admit. I hope you understand why now.”
Sayen got up and threw her arms around her father. “Daddy, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I got mad at you and Mama.”
Jas glanced at Carl. He had his head down. She guessed he was probably thinking of his missing parents. She leaned over and gave his arm a squeeze. He looked up and smiled at her sadly.
“This place is sneck,” said Makey. “Can I have a look around?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” replied Mr. Lee. “Perhaps one day I’ll show you some things, but not now. Let’s head back up to my office, where we can look at the problem at hand.”
They filed once more into the elevator, and he returned them to the room with the interfaces.
He pressed a hand on a wall screen, and it blinked on, displaying a chart. After several swipes of lines and figures, Mr. Lee nodded. “As I thought. They’ve cut us off entirely now. First, we lost our direct comm to governmental colleagues. A temporary fault, we were told. Then we lost contact with all our-of-state connections. We could send and receive local comms only. Now, everything’s gone.”
“Does it matter, though?” Jas asked. “We’re surrounded by Shadows. All we have to do is capture one, scan it to check that it is what we think it is, then contact the Transgalactic Council. That’s why we’re here.”
“Contact the Council?” asked Mr. Lee, his eyebrows raised. “You think we didn’t think of that? It was the first thing we tried after you and Carl set off to retrieve Sayen. Just before you arrived, we’d sent a packet to our son’s starship to tell him his sister was missing. Then after you left, we tried to contact the Transgalactic Council to inform them of, well, everything you’d told us—about the Shadows and so on, but our deep space comm link was gone. It’s been gone all this time.”
“What?” exclaimed Jas. “We’re kratted then. If we can’t contact the Council, Earth doesn’t have a hope. We need their help. The Shadows are moving fast. We already don’t have the numbers to stop them on our own.”
“Wait a moment before you give up,” said Mr. Lee. “Listen. I despaired too when I realized what the Shadows had done, but I’ve been working on the problem since then. You saw that building when you came in? That’s where they’re housing the suppressor that’s preventing deep space comms in and out of here. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get inside the building and destroy the machine, but I’m seventy years old and hardly cut out for climbing around in the dark. Then I saw your truck...”
Carl looked up. His face had lost its gloomy look. “Now that’s an idea. You mean we could just drive right in there and smash this suppressor down?”
“Something along those lines.”
“I’ll do it,” said Carl.
“Hold on,” Jas said. “Aren’t you forgetting something? We need a Shadow to show them as proof first before you go smashing anything.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Carl. “Well, that shouldn’t be too hard. It isn’t like they’re difficult to spot around here.”
“It isn’t going to be that easy,” Jas replied. “They know we’re here now, and we don’t exactly have a history of friendliness toward them. They’re going to be expecting us to do something. They’ll be watching. The minute anyone steps out, they’ll be on us.”
“Shame you didn’t get that Shadow girl while you could,” Makey said.
“Hey, it wasn’t easy,” Jas protested.
“You mean a young girl with a skipping rope?” Mr. Lee asked.
“Yeah,” Carl replied. “She looks about ten or eleven.”
“I know her. She’s out there all the time. I think they’re trying to tempt us to go and talk to her. They seem to understand that humans are predisposed to be friendly toward children.”
“Have you ever spoken to her?” Jas asked.
“Goodness no,” replied Mr. Lee.
“Good call, Daddy,” Sayen said. “I saw her too. She gives me the creeps. She’d probably shoot you the minute you got in range.”
“She can’t shoot us through the force field,” replied her father, “but I don’t want to hear whatever it is that thing has to say. Which reminds me, I must check on how the force field’s holding up against that heli attack.” He swiped and pressed the screen, bringing up an image of the estate grounds. Two helis were there now, and the sky was alive with their onslaught. Overlaid on the image were a set of fluctuating graphs.
“We’re good for the moment,” said Mr. Lee, “but I hope they don’t have much more to throw at us. The generators can only provide a finite amount of energy.”
“The sooner we catch a Shadow and take out that suppressor, the better,” said Jas.
“Yes, but what then?” Sayen asked. “I’ve been thinking, if we do get a packet through to the Council, and they take notice, it isn’t like they’ll be able to come here and rescue us right away. We’re going to be at the Shadows’ mercy until help arrives.”
There was a pause. Jas, like almost everyone else it seemed, hadn’t considered what would happen after they achieved their goal. The Shadows knew they were there. They knew that the humans they had trapped were trying to wreck their plans. The aliens weren’t going to give up until they were all dead and had their own Shadow clones as replacements.
Mrs. Lee stuck her head around the door. “Sayen, your friend’s awake, and she’s asking for you.”
Chapter Four
Sayen had always liked the red guest room the best, and if her mother hadn’t suggested putting Erielle in there, she would have asked for it. The room was named for its deep red velvet curtains and rug, which contrasted beautifully with deep cream walls and furniture. There was also an amazing view over the gardens at the rear of the house and the distant hills, where the sun rose in the mornings. As a little girl, Sayen had taken her dolls in there to play and had spent many happy hours pretending that it was a royal court, and that the king and queen were receiving visitors.
It was a surprise to her to see the sour look on Erielle’s face. The older woman was sitting up in the sumptuous double bed, looking much better than she had when they’d arrived. She was clean and wearing the sleepwear that Sayen’s parents kept for guests. Her hair, which she normally kept close-cropped or even shaved, had begun to grow out in salt-and-pepper shades, and her gaunt face and frame showed the evidence of her many ordeals. But her inner strength and passion hadn’t faded. Without her needing to say a word, Sayen could tell the woman’s feelings were on fire.
Sayen sat on the edge of the bed and took Erielle’s hand. “Is something wrong?” she asked, almost timidly.
“So this is your parents’ place?” her lover replied. “From the modding and enhancement you’ve received, I knew they had money. That was obvious. Maybe I was naive, but I never imagined quite how much.”
Erielle’s tone was harsh. Sayen felt like the woman expected her to apologize for her parents’ wealth, as if it were wrong or somehow her fault. She looked down into her lap. “I thought you’d like it here. I thought it would be somewhere that you could rest and get better. And maybe with time, you might change your mind about your legs. My parents would—”
“Don’t you dare,” spat Erielle, raising a finger in warning. “Don’t you dare say it. I am certainly not taking your parents’ money to get my legs fixed. If I ever get them fixed.”
Sayen let go of her hand. She wondered what had happened to that dynamic, ardent, loving woman she’d gotten to know only a couple of weeks before. Now, Erielle seemed full of nothing more than pain, anger, and hate. After all the arguments they’d had about getting her the treatment she needed to take away her pain and allow her to walk again, which the woman stubbornly refused to consider, Sayen could hardly bear being around her anymore.
She got up and went to the window. She looked out over the green lawns. The helis had disappeared for the moment. On the other side of the ho
use, the sun was going down, and a deep shadow spread across the grass.
Sayen turned to face her lover. “Is it really so bad, Erielle? My parents have worked hard for everything they have. It isn’t like they inherited their money. Every penny they have, they earned. I just found out that due to what they do, they were—are—also in a lot of danger. My brother and I too. I get that other people aren’t so well off, but it isn’t like that’s my parents’ fault. My mama and daddy aren’t undeserving. They help keep the world safe, and they donate a lot of money to charity. They fund plenty of projects in poorer countries.”
“You think it’s generous of them to give away a portion of their billions?” asked Erielle. “Tell me, Sayen, what did you or anyone in your family go without so that they could donate that money? Did you suffer at all? Did you miss out? I’m guessing that, no, you did not. So what makes your parents’ generosity so noble? Do you have any idea how many people your parents could help if they gave everything they have? Do you know how much good they could do? But they don’t, do they? When you give what you can easily afford, it means nothing. Those charity projects are just an afterthought to your folks. No, instead of helping someone who desperately needs it, they’d rather have kratting flamingoes in their lake.”
Sayen’s face burned. No one had ever spoken to her like that about her parents and their money. Whenever she’d let it slip that her family was very wealthy, most people were mildly jealous, or they would ask her about what it was like growing up in luxury. No one had ever made her feel ashamed of something she had no control over, or embarrassed about the two people she loved the most in the world, and who had never shown her anything but their utter devotion.
She balled her fists. “And what if Mama and Daddy gave everything away, as if they should? What a joke that would be. You and your underworlder friends would only spend it on kratom, or booze, or myth. My parents worked hard. They used their brains. They made a difference. What the krat have you ever done except run away from your job and your responsibilities? You were a trained surgeon, and you gave it all up to lead a bunch of losers and misfits in their stupid, pointless, posturing, pathetic waste of time they have the arrogance to call their lives.