The caged man listened silently to every word we spoke. Did he understand what he heard? The general held his stance, but I needed time to think before taking him on full force.
“Yes, you’ve made yourself clear,” I answered.
A victorious smile spread across the general’s face. “Good.”
Feeling deflated and less than respectful of General Ash at the moment, I reached for a nearby office chair that sat abandoned next to a tool chest. I dragged it toward me on its lopsided casters and plopped down—a rude move in the presence of a general officer. I leaned back in the chair to make eye contact with him. “If the team will be here this evening, then I’ll need to go home and pack—”
“No.”
“No?”
“We’ll give you a clothing allowance. I want you here in this lab. You need to have the craft ready to go.”
“If I’m going to be gone for a while, I have a home to take care of, bills that need to be covered, mail and papers to stop—”
“You have no family responsibilities to deal with. All the rest we can have taken care of for you.” He leaned over me. “Your priorities are in this room.”
My frustration had ramped up and I stood to hold my ground with the general. “Look—”
“No, you look,” he interrupted again, pointing his finger in my face. “You have no idea what’s involved here. I suggest you follow orders and quit asking questions, so we don’t run into any problems with this project.” Spittle gathered at the edges of his mouth as he spoke. “Believe me, you don’t want that.”
I had to be careful how I handled the situation, not only for my sake, but also for the sake of the man who’d flown his bird into our crazy general’s grasp.
I held my hands up, as if in surrender. Which it was. “Okay, not a problem. I’ll stay here.”
“Good. I’ll be back later. Get the craft ready. We can’t be delayed. Two guards from Security Forces are on the way to watch that thing in the cage. Who knows what it’s capable of. You are not to leave this room until they get here. Understood?”
“Understood. I’ll wait here for them. What about outside the lab? Will you be posting guards at the door?”
“Absolutely not. I don’t want any attention brought to this lab today. I want no one who’s not already a part of the project to be the wiser.” He turned and marched toward the door leading into the hallway.
“Several people have access to this lab,” I said. “Once they start arriving for the day, they may be in here.”
“Change the code!” he shouted back over his shoulder.
“You’re sure you don’t want guards outside the door?” I asked.
He stopped and pivoted around like he was in the middle of a formal ceremony. “Are you questioning my decision?”
“No sir. Change the code. I can do that.”
“Good. Business as usual. Nothing out of the ordinary.” He turned back and proceeded to the door again.
Locking everyone out of the lab is out of the ordinary, General Ass. “Yes, sir,” I said, as the door slammed closed behind him.
CHAPTER 8 -
TORI
A dozen or so cars stretched back from the base gate. While I waited in line to show my ID badge and be ushered through, I watched the video cameras on top of the guard shack scan back and forth. One car passed through the gate, then the next. A nervous anticipation grew each time I moved forward. By the time I reached the gate, an excitement stirred deep inside me. Work had never made me feel that way. So why did it today?
I rolled down the car window and handed my government ID to the camouflage-clad airman, then tapped my thumb against the steering wheel, anxious to get to work.
The guard examined the front and back of the card, raising his eyes from it to me and back again. Satisfied I was the person on the ID, he allowed me to proceed.
On autopilot, I wound through the familiar roads that led to my building. The cars and trees and people walking along the sidewalks bundled in their winter garb zipped by faster than usual. My eyes locked onto the speedometer, which read twenty miles over the speed limit. I jerked my foot off the accelerator and slammed it down on the brake, throwing myself forward. Thankfully no one was behind me. I returned my foot to the accelerator, wondering why I’d been so zoned out. My headache was nearly gone, so I couldn’t blame it on that.
When I pulled into the parking lot, as strangely anxious as I’d been to get there, I could only sit and stare. Weak sunlight struggled to permeate the thick gray clouds that hung low over my building. I stared at the dreary concrete structure and wondered.
Yes. The same something that woke me from my sleep and lingered in the morning light—it lingered here, too.
CHAPTER 9 -
BRIAN
I pushed the office chair back against the wall and stepped into the small lab to get a closer look at the man in the cage. With the general gone, I had to process fast.
What exactly did General Ash have planned? I was almost afraid to imagine. We’d reverse engineer the craft. No harm there—depending on what we found and what we did with it, I supposed. But the man in the cage—what were they planning for him? The question gnawed at me.
He sat with his arms resting on his knees just like any human might sit. I took inventory—two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth. All in the right places. Even knowing he was an alien, he still looked like any other human male to me.
He didn’t move. He only watched me. I wondered if he understood what was going on. I stepped closer to his cage and stopped just out of arm’s reach. Up close I saw one difference I hadn’t noticed before. His irises were an unusual shade of blue-green—a color I’d never seen on Earth and the one and only physical attribute that might give his alien origin away.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” I asked.
He tilted his head, maybe trying to figure it out.
“English? Do you understand English?” I asked again.
“I can speak your language,” he finally answered.
Holy shit. He could understand and even communicate with us. He looked and moved and even talked like anybody else you’d meet on Earth. But the craft—no one from Earth flew that craft. As hard as it was to believe, it had to be true. A real extraterrestrial sat only a few feet away from me. I had the opportunity to communicate with ET himself. On any other day—any day an alien wasn’t sitting right in front of me—I’d have been able to come up with a thousand questions. But now, with ET staring me in the face, my mind went blank, filled with nothing but shock-induced fuzz.
I closed my eyes for a moment and forced the fog from my brain. Their technologies. Yes, I wanted to know about their technologies. I opened my eyes, ready to speak again, but decided I should ease into the conversation with introductions first, to be polite. Then I’d ask about their technologies.
“My name is Brian. Do you have a name?”
“My name is Gaige,” he answered without pause.
“It’s nice to meet you, Gaige.” I moved closer, lifted my hand, and then quickly lowered it. As docile as he seemed, I had no idea what he would do if he got hold of me. A handshake might not be the best of ideas.
Before I could ask him any more questions, the door buzzer rang. Most likely, the first of many people wondering why their codes weren’t working today.
CHAPTER 10 -
TORI
I pulled my phone out of my purse and tossed it into the car’s console—no open signals in a classified building. Thankful for casual Friday, I walked across the parking lot, dodging icy patches and piles of leftover snow as I went. My Nikes managed slick pavement much better than high heels. The air whistled and bit at my neck. I tightened my scarf, pulling it up over my mouth to capture the warmth of my breath.
After scanning through two sets of doors with ID badges and entry codes, I stepped into the warmth of the building, where I tugged away my suffocating scarf and loosened my coat. I had begun to thaw out by the time I re
ached the lab door, ready to make up for daydreaming the afternoon before. But when I pushed on the door, I almost greeted its thick metal with my head. I gave another shove against it with my hands, just to make sure. It was locked. I turned the large combination dial on the door to the right, left, then right again as I entered the code. It didn’t release. I tried again. Still nothing happened.
Anxiety gripped my chest like a vice. Why couldn’t I get in? I needed to get in. Desperately. I didn’t know why, but being outside the door instead of inside the lab upset me enough that the hall, the door, everything, became disjointed. A jumble of puzzle pieces that used to be my surroundings spun wildly in my head. I stopped trying the combination, leaned against the wall, and pushed the buzzer instead. Closing my eyes, I tried to wait out both the dizzy spell and whoever was taking their sweet time coming to open the door. I wasn’t sure I would outlast either.
Finally, the door cracked open and Brian slid through. “Tori. Hey.”
I opened my eyes and managed to stay steady. “What’s going on, Dr, I mean, Brian?”
I wasn’t sure he’d even registered what I’d said. He repeatedly tapped his hand against his thigh, which created a continuous ripple down the leg of his trousers.
“Brian, are you going to let me in?”
“Um . . .” His tapping hand sped up and so did the ripples. “We have a special project in here today. Just came in.”
“Okay. Well, that’s what we do here. Are we going in?”
“Actually, no.”
“No?”
I looked down at Brian’s flapping pant leg, which was almost a blur now. Most of my training took place in the lab. Why wouldn’t he let me in and what was he so nervous about?
“Is there a problem with my internship? I’m sorry about yesterday. I . . . I wasn’t feeling well—”
“No, no, Tori.” He squeezed his hand into a fist, putting a stop to his nervous tapping. “There’s no problem with your work performance here. They’re just not reading everybody in for this one.” Brian’s eyes darted this way and that way, not looking at me anymore but searching. “Tell you what. There’s a proposal on my desk. Why don’t you do a technical evaluation on it for me?”
“Me?”
“Sure.” He turned his back to me and hunkered over the combination, dialing in the new code. “Sorry about this project. We’ll resume your hands-on training with the next one. The tech eval will be a good learning experience for you. We’ll go over it together.” He cracked the door enough to slide back through and closed it in my face.
Not sure what to do, but not ready to leave, I touched the dial with my fingertips. Maybe, if I tried it one more time, it would open. I dropped my hand to my side. Brian had plainly told me I wasn’t read-in, so how would I explain prancing in there, even if by some miracle I could get the door open? I’d have no explanation other than, I just had to know what was in here. I could see it now: “Brian, I’m sorry I broke security protocol. I'll be fired and might even go to jail, but I just had to know.” Yeah, not a good idea. For now, I’d have to keep wondering what was in the lab that had Brian so frazzled and me so desperate to find out.
CHAPTER 11 -
BRIAN
Tori and the young new hires who had recently started to trickle into our black world were the closest things I had to children of my own, the closest things to a family. I hated having to send them away from the lab that morning with no explanation. But it was for their own good. After finding busywork to keep them occupied, I examined the craft—taking measurements, scanning for emissions and reflective properties, and anything else I had instruments for—while I thought of how to approach our ET, Gaige, about his technologies.
I felt his eyes on me, watching as I worked. I had a million questions about the craft. The pilot must have some answers. I turned and looked into the room that held his cage. He sat, pensive and calm, not at all like a caged animal. I stared at him. He stared back. I stepped into the room and stopped several feet from his cage. I didn’t want to speak to him in the presence of the Security Forces’ guards who now stood watch, but it didn’t look like I’d have a choice. They probably had no idea they were guarding an alien. In his white, very non-U.S. Government flight suit, he simply looked like a captured pilot from somewhere outside the U.S. Somewhere covered a big area and was probably enough to explain his odd aircraft, too. I couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer, but I would be careful not to ask Gaige any alien-oriented questions in front of the guards.
“You flew that here?” I pointed over my shoulder to the craft visible through the doorway, not painting a very glowing picture of our species by asking an obvious question.
Gaige glanced at the craft with his blue-green eyes then looked back at me. “I am the pilot.”
“It’s very impressive,” I said.
“Yes, in comparison.”
“To ours, you mean?”
“Yes, impressive compared to yours,” he said.
“Yep, um. Can you tell me about it?” I waited, holding my breath for the holy grail of space vehicle technology.
“Its operations are based purely on physics, though they’re concepts you haven’t figured out yet.”
“Can you help us figure them out?” I asked, hopeful.
Still seated, he tilted his head, furrowed his brow, and studied me. He looked at the guards who’d been standing silently by—the tall beefy man faced the cage and a slightly smaller version faced the doorway—then back at me. “You maybe. But your people—they’re not ready. It’s best you not know.”
He was probably right, but that wouldn’t stop us from trying to figure the technology out. My stomach rumbled. I figured Gaige had to be hungry, too. I lowered my voice so the guards wouldn’t hear what I was about to say. “Do you eat, like, food?”
He glanced at the guards again and responded just as quietly. “I can eat your foods.”
“You’re probably hungry,” I said, at a normal volume. I wondered if General Ash had any plans to ever feed our ET.
“I am.”
“I’ll be back. With food.”
As I walked toward the guards, I could see the intensity in everything about them. They stood tensely, their heads fixed straight forward. But the eyes—their eyes followed me, waiting for me to make the wrong move. I stopped next to them.
“What are your orders if he should try to escape?”
Both men, standing back to back, moved their heads only slightly in my direction so as not to lose sight of the prisoner or the door. “Shoot to kill,” the larger one said.
That’s what I was afraid of.
CHAPTER 12 -
GAIGE
With the scientist gone, I stood up from the hard chair. I stretched my cuffed hands over my head and then bent down, placing my palms flat against the floor. The guard facing my direction fixed his eyes on me and held his weapon close, finger on the trigger. He and his comrade both held M-16s in their hands—modified, small caliber, high velocity. My flight suit could handle an impact from that kind of gun. The M-9s holstered at their sides, too.
I walked around the cage a few times, discreetly glancing at the guards. The one watching me soon lost interest in my stretching and relaxed his anxious trigger finger.
Conner and his team should have already arrived on Earth. We needed to plan, but I couldn’t take the chance of agitating the guards or letting them overhear. Even if I spoke in my own language, they’d know something was going on. I’d known Conner my whole life. We were as close as brothers. If I projected strongly enough, he’d hear my thoughts. I concentrated while I continued to walk around the cage. “Conner? Conner, can you hear me?”
Through the communication device in my suit, Conner’s voice vibrated against my eardrums, silent to anyone but me. “I can hear you, Gaige. The rescue team is on the ground and cloaked several miles from where you are. We’re trying to maintain some distance and keep ourselves blocked for Victoria’s sake.”
“Good. Stay there, for now, and continue to block your energies. Completely. She picked up on me when I barely had any energy left to function, let alone emit much out into the universe.”
“Understood. Do you have a plan yet?”
Even though his trigger finger had eased, the soldier facing me still watched me closely. Not as intently as when I’d first started moving, but I didn’t expect he’d completely let his guard down. It wouldn’t matter, though. Neither would be any match for me.
“Yes, I have a plan. They’re moving me and the shuttle tonight. I have my strength back, and should be able to break free and self-destruct the shuttle on my own. I don’t want to bring any attention to myself here, though, so I won’t make an attempt to escape until we’re away from this area. Once I know where we’re going, I’ll give you the escape coordinates, so you and your team can move closer to that location in case I need backup.”
“We’ll be on standby.”
I continued to pace around the cage, trying to acclimate the guards to my movements so I wouldn’t catch their attention so readily with them. I gave the guard facing me an Earthly nod as I passed by the front of the cage. He scowled and tightened his grip on the M-16 in his hands. The guard facing the door gave another of his occasional quick glances over his shoulder, then turned his attention immediately back to the door. These two might be difficult to throw off balance, but not impossible.
“Is the solar activity still high?” I asked Conner.
“Very. We still wouldn’t be able to maintain cloak on the ship, so the shuttles are it. Once we rendezvous, we can take you back to the ship to regroup. Or, if you decide to continue on with the mission, any or all of us can stay and support. The mission commander has left all that up to you as mission lead.”
The Anuan Legacy: Book 1 of The Anuan Legacy Series Page 3