The agents turn to another one of their cars and a door opens. Another man steps out and helps a young girl, no more than 6 years old, out of the car. She is cute, donning a SpongeBob backpack and all.
The Sutcliffs see her and she sees them. The child runs to them. The Sutcliffs bend down to greet her, expecting a hello but instead they are treated to a hug. A massive hug. They are crying but they are ecstatic. This childless couple, who couldn't ever conceive on their own are finally overcome with joy.
The agents’ eyes water. Agent Grace removes his sunglasses and allows himself to draw an overused handkerchief from his pocket to eyes, vulnerable in front of strangers but it's over in an instant. Agent Pierce does the same though her emotion swells. They exit as another agent steps in to explain how the reattachment will work. Climbing into the car, Kate lets out a massive sobbing. Agent Grace offers no consolation. Agent Pierce lets it out, all of it, full on hysterical crying. A new box of unopened tissues lies at her feet. An agent is supposed to be trained to control their emotions but this isn’t necessarily their emotions, it is the side affect of being in the presence of the hybrid children. Pierce was cautioned against it but no one is ever prepared for it, this sudden rush of joy and sadness at the same time, which is not yet an emotion that humans have learned to control. The hybrids are working with human scientists to understand why this happens but so far there are no answers.
"Go ahead." Grace gestures toward the box. Pierce reaches down and rips in.
"I knew to expect emotions but I never thought..." Kate regains her composure, "it's a bit overwhelming but I think it's good for us. I don't mind it at all." As if she had a choice. He knows she didn't, she knows she didn't but she isn't going to act like she didn't.
"Agent Pierce you need to understand that this emotion is not natural. It isn't something we allowed ourselves to do. We aren't mourning over the loss of a loved one or elated at the reunion with old friends. This is forced on us, every time, just like it is for every other reattachment agent. It's not our choice. Until we know why this happens, I won't take pleasure in it for a single moment. In my mind this is the secret that the aliens have brought, this is what we need to uncover.”
"Well, I will allow myself this moment, Agent Grace. I think it may be the only benefit from the colonists that I see of real value yet and I'm not as cynical as you are so I don't believe it to be dangerous."
"That's why I come along Pierce, so one of us is on our toes."
And with that, the SUV that is behind them explodes, darting into the air and landing on top of their own. Pierce and Grace struggle through the smoldering metal and glass, crawling out onto the gravel driveway. Kate's first thought is of the child, the young girl, Sabrina. She knows the bomb was meant for the child, these terrorists will kill children, she knows that. She pulls herself up, running towards the front door of the house as Agent Grace commands her to stop. But before he can finish bullets shatter the front windows of the house and narrowly avoid Kate's feet. She retreats back to the mangled and bleeding metal, next to Grace.
"Get your head about you, Pierce! Are you hit, are you hurt? Do a check now!"
Agent Pierce surveys her body, there are cuts and bruises but no real damage. Agent Grace isn't moving but he sounds aware. Pierce sees the blood below him though just before Mr. Sutcliff screams through the broken glass, "I want you off my property, now, or I'll kill the alien!" He commands.
Mrs. Sutcliff is frozen but holds Sabrina tight, protecting her. Sabrina says nothing, but tears fill her face. Kate takes a moment, however short, to wonder why and what does he want?
"That's not going to happen, Sir, please release your wife and the child and we'll talk."
"She's not a child!" he commands, "She's an alien invader, a plague on our soil come here to destroy us, to take us straight into hell!"
"I can assure you that she is not sir, now let's deal with this reasonably."
The man, the family, they all disappear into the house. There is silence, there is nothing, there is calm until there's not. A single gunshot rings out and before a second one can be heard Agent Pierce takes off for the front door, barreling through it, shoulder first, like a warrior on the charge against a much larger opponent. She is a force and that force takes down the door.
"Sabrina, are you ok? Where are you, I'm coming to you!"
Pierce tactfully but effectively makes her way through the house until she finds the bleeding victim, strewn about on the fine Persian rug in the middle of the living room. It's Mr. Sutcliff and he's still holding the gun in a suicide pose. Suicide? She immediately thinks, but how, why? Mrs. Sutcliff is just now starting to cry. Sabrina looks up at them all, she is expressionless but on cue with the tears of Mrs. Sutcliff, she hugs her long lost mother, holding on to her tight, embraced in comfort. Mrs. Sutcliff returns the love and whispers to her daughter, "It’s alright, don't be scared, everything is fine, we're alright, we'll be alright.” But Agent Pierce can tell, none of this is alright, none of this is right at all. Sabrina looks toward Pierce, she is scared but this time there is no emotion from Agent Pierce. But she still needs answers.
"What happened here? Mrs. Sutcliff, I need to know what happened. Was your husband part of PAC? Is anyone else in the house?"
Mrs. Sutcliff can't answer, she thinks she comforting the child.
"Mrs. Sutcliff, I need to know right now, is anyone else here?" Kate's finger is not off the trigger. She's not getting any answers though so she knows what to do. Room by room she clears the house; it's empty, luckily. “But what about the bomb, who put it there, Mr. Sutcliff? Was he alone?”
She makes her way toward the front door, ready to exit and attend to her partner but is stopped momentarily when Mrs. Sutcliff speaks, "He was sad. Suddenly, he started crying and he was sad and he put the gun to his own head. I felt it, I felt his sadness."
Kate knows Mrs. Sutcliff has no idea. Still she runs to her partner and the other agents who were driving. The lead car agents are okay; the rear car one is dead. Agent Grace is lying in a pool of his own blood and he’s fading. Pierce comforts him. His eyes open momentarily; his lips move enough to say one thing. It’s whispered, it's almost silent, Kate hears it, though, "protect reunion." She knows he's dying, there's too much blood on the ground for any other outcome. "Protect the reunion," she knows were just a dying man's emotions taking over. He cares, he's always cared for the children. He's gone.
Agent Pierce allows the emergency responders to tend to her dead partner, allowing her the moment to step away and gather the reality of what just happened. She finds her way around to the side of the weathered, blue-shingled home, running her hand along it as she walks. The bumps and textured siding keeps her there, in the present, and images chase each other through her mind. The house is leading her as much as she is leaning on it, and once around the side and out of sight her knees buckle and she is down, vomiting the pain of the moment out of her shaking body. The violent images in her mind fight each other for position, for clarity. There's the man's body on the floor, the hysterical Mrs. Sutcliff, her bleeding and dying partner and the gunshots. The sound of each bang replay in her mind, each brings with it the image of child. Each deafening pop plays over and over again, allowing the alien to move closer into view behind Pierce’s eyelids, another bang, and then another. The child's eyes grow closer and closer in Pierce's mind. Eyes are upon her, the vomiting has ended but is replaced with stomach pains so severe, these bring images of the child from the terrorist explosion the year before, her missing arm, her striking blue eyes. Pierce is in fetal position within seconds. Kate thinks she must have been hit by a bullet, she searches her body with her shaking hands, eyes closed but looking, digging through the layers of clothes, but finds nothing. The pain intensifies, the child's eyes bring it again but then new images fill her head, a baby being born, crying, floating, purple water and bubbles surround her. She follows the sight of the umbilical cord from the fetus who is floating with an ease which i
s opposite to her own and follows it to her own pelvic region, then another bang and the alien's eyes in her own and she is sinking, deeper into the purple goop, her feet go above her head, it’s impossible to tell, she turning around in the heavy liquid she sees her feet nearly above her, her eyes focus and she sees her stomach, it is large, protruding, she passes out.
Chapter 5
Agent Kate Pierce handles her badge. She eyeballs it, feels it, runs her finger over the gold lines and tucks it into her pocket. She takes her secures her gun in its holster and pulls her ICE windbreaker on. She exits the confines of a doctor's examination room, leaving a hospital gown behind, and enters the active hallway, avoiding eye contact with everyone. She finds her way to the end of the hall and to the office she's meant to be in. Kate never thought this would be how she'd feel walking around her OBGYN's office. She imagined being one of the glowing class, the women who compare baby bumps and exchange gleeful horror stories of cracking hip joint and strange food cravings. The rest of the women here look like that, happy, but not her, she knows nothing good is going to come from the talk she's about to have.
Kate enters her doctor's office, takes her seat in the formal but comfortable place across from the grim reaper.
"How bad is it?" she demands with the subtly of a scared child.
"Kate, I have to ask you something and I'm quite uncomfortable doing this because of our friendship..."
Kate knows what's about to come next. She knows what she's always suspected, that she can't have children, that she's damaged goods and that she's been cursed with the same genetic deficiencies that plagued many of the women in her father's family. She's expecting the verdict and prepared to cry.
"Did you have an abortion recently?"
Kate has no words, there are no words and if there were her paralysis wouldn't allow them to be heard.
"I'm sorry that I have to put you in this position but it certainly explains the pains you experienced. I know I haven't examined you before but none of your previous records indicated one but there is significant trauma to your uterus and..."
"When?" is the only word that Kate can muster. It's a question she doesn't want but needs answered.
"Excuse me?"
"When did it happen, when was the abortion?"
"I was hoping that you could tell me because it doesn't appear to be recent."
"If you had to guess. When?!"
"Maybe six or seven years ago? I don't, I mean it's not something I can really tell just by looking but from what I've seen in other similar patients and the scarring..."
"Oh my god." Kate cries, she allows herself the emotion that she planned for, but didn't expect to arrive in this way. "Oh my god."
"Kate, can you tell me where you had it done? I may be able to track down some records and..."
"It didn't happen, I never had one." Kate is hysterical and composure is gone. She wants to think that this makes no sense but it does. She knows right away, she is painfully aware of what happened the moment the doctor spoke. The aliens, the colonists, they did this to her, somehow she is the mother a hybrid child, somewhere. Just like all the other women who are being reunited with their children, she is one of them. She had a baby. But the timing doesn’t make sense, it’s confusing to her, as it is to everyone, how could they be on a ship for twenty years but have hybrid children who are under ten?
"Kate, maybe we should talk about this, figure out what to do next."
"What to do next!" Kate, furious, is on her feet, she is on fire, "they took my baby and I'm going to get it back, that's what to do next, that's the only thing to do next!" She storms out, her purpose replacing pain, her focus replacing hysteria, her speed replacing emotion.
Chapter 6
The Reattachment department, within the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, is a fortress. Even though they are aliens, the United States government takes the privacy of children very seriously. Kate knows this and agrees with the rules, the protocol the clearance and the secrecy. But tonight she's breaking the rules and the law to get answers. If Washington only knew how easy it really was to get access to confidential files, they would shut the whole department down but they don't know and Kate does. All that time spent behind the desk gave her access to information that she needed in an instant when dealing with someone who’s standing in the immigration line. Her login credentials we revoked when she was promoted but she and her co-workers often swapped credentials for quick trips to the john or necessary access from another terminal. Kate had no less than twenty sets of credentials held in her mind. But these records wouldn't be on the computer, another way to ensure that they can't be accessed from outside, only file numbers could be found. But Kate doesn't know where to start and it's dark, she's alone in a room of cubicles, accessing someone else's terminal. If only she could figure out the name of the program, she could find the files location in the records room. Getting into the record room is another problem, but first things first, they wouldn't use reattachment, that's too obvious. She tries "colony" but nothing comes up. She tries "alien children," "hybrids," "arrival," but nothing. She suddenly thinks back to the moment that Mrs. Sutcliff first met her daughter. She said, "It'll be like a reunion!" She tries it, "reunion" and it works. She's got access to the file log for, "project reunion." She scours the files, the logs and looks for her name but is overwhelmed and surprised and just how many names there are. So many children and so many mothers! There are thousands, Jesus that's a lot, she fears. There are names on top of names but none of them is hers. The search stops at two thousand. There is a message at the bottom that reads, "Eastern District records 1 - 2,000 of 20,019 total." That's ten percent of the entire colony population, she thinks, what is going on here? The answers are in the records room, now it's time to get in.
Down a small hallway and past the persistent vacuum noise coming from a few of the offices is a locked door and keypad. What the hell? She used her general access code and it works. She's in, too easy she thinks, but too little time to overthink, and it was already time to move. Pierce moves quickly to the area designated in the computer for where the files are, she scours looking through them alphabetically, pulling box down after box. Each file the same, a child, bright eyes, boys and girls. Next flap, the mother, always in their thirties, forties, or fifties. Then there's the man in the mother's life and other family, all designated as THR for "threat" and NTHR for "Non-threat." Kate is digging deep, moving toward something as if she's getting closer. But she knows that she's not when the lights go up, the door swings open and her superiors are standing on top of her.
Chapter 7
The two FBI men who were in her bosses office now have her alone, but now they are much more human, not as stiff. and definitely not as silent.
"Agent Pierce what were you looking for in that room? You know agents are restricted to one case at a time," The first agent said. She wants to call him, "Blue" because of the handkerchief in his pocket, the only splash on color on his black suit. It speaks more now than she expected. There is also the second agent, "Joe," she thinks he should be called because of his crew cut jarhead marine head. He's "General Issue Joe" for sure. He is also unexpectedly soft.
"Agent we can't have agents going through those files you know, we are protecting these children." What a joke. These children don't need protecting, their parents do.
"Who are you guys exactly? What is the FBI doing here this time of night anyway?"
"Agent Pierce, what were you looking for in there?
"Who says I was looking for something specific? Maybe I wanted to get a better handle on why one minute a man is ready to kill me, and everyone around him, because there's an alien in his home, and the next minute he's blowing his own brains out while his wife of twenty years looks on with no emotion toward him at all. If you can tell me that then I'll stop looking, I swear."
The agents know more than they'll tell her, a first case rookie. Their looks toward each other are classic. If you look cl
ose enough you can see them exchanging micro-expressions in order to communicate next steps, how much will they divulge, how much they even know.
"Agent Pierce, there is no record of there being an alien hybrid child related to you."
Kate can't take these shocks to her system, her constant underestimating of those around her and what they know and are going to say is going to get her killed.
"What? I don't..."
"I'm sorry. We don't know more than we're told by them."
"By Ringbak Arr? You mean you only know what he wants you to know."
"Perhaps," the agents ping pong back and forth, "but we really have no indication that there is more to know. They sent us a file, the location of the child and when we arrive to the custodian's house. The child is always there, already waiting for us. There's nothing more too it than that, I swear.”
"Pierce is unrelenting and she wants them to know it so she stands, she makes her way to the door, prepared to exit, and she knows that they won't stop her. "That may be so,” she says, “and this situation may work for you and whatever your arrangement is but it doesn't work for me. If I have a son or a daughter out there or up there, I will find them." She leaves and they don't stop her.
Chapter 8
Agent Pierce shows no signs of being a government agent as she moves through the dark alleys and seedy underbelly of the most lifeless of the city streets. She is cautious but determined. She's not moving slowly but not running. She knows where she's going. Shortly after the blast one year ago, Kate checked in on one of the families affected by the blast, the ones who lost their daughter, the one with the missing arm that Kate watched die. Jinto Ramirez and his wife Helena were appreciative of Kate’s time, but was adamant that he was going to stop the terrorists who killed his daughter, PAC 36. Kate knows that Jose and his vigilante group are working with colonists who also want to stop the terrorists and protect themselves. However they, too, are seen as terrorists. Kate knows that any contact with this group, known as, "Freedom League,” would put her in a position to not only lose her job but also to be put in jail. But she knows, they will know, how she can find her daughter.
The Colony: Part 2: Reunion Page 2