by Lesley Davis
He beckoned them away from all the weaponry. “Two more floors and then your tour is done. Then both of you can decide whether to stay here and fight with Dionysius or take your chances out there with the aliens.” He led them to a series of lockers and pulled out protective clothing for them all.
“Time to learn your place, Agent Mays.”
*
Emory pulled the suit on over her fatigues, then positioned the face mask over her nose and mouth. Lastly, she slipped on a pair of thick gloves. “We going into cold storage, sir?” She flexed her fingers in the gloves.
“No. The dead aliens are kept on ice at numerous other bases. Here they are very much alive and kicking when we work on them.” The malicious grin was plain to see before he covered it with his mask. It gave Emory chills. That wasn’t the smile of the cool and calm general she’d been meeting with before.
Wait a minute. Did he say aliens? Live aliens here on the base?
“They captured aliens?” Dink said. “I thought we were in cahoots with them?”
Emory turned to help Sofia fasten up her much too large suit. She leaned in to whisper in Sofia’s ear. “You know anything about this?”
Sofia shook her head vehemently. Her eyes pleaded with Emory to believe her.
Dink spoke. “I hope we’re ready for what he’s going to show you. I’ve studied this for more years than I can remember, but seeing it? Seeing aliens attack us, invade us, running on our soil and trying to kill us? It’s more terrifying than I even imagined. But captive ones on an airbase, held underground where no one can hear them scream? Something tells me they’re not going to be sharing tea and cookies.” His sigh vibrated in Emory’s ear. “For God’s sake, Em, be careful down there. Sofia won’t choose you over her boss. I hate to say it, but, Emory? You’re on your own.”
That thought scared Emory. She had no clue what she was going to find on the next floor that warranted them to dress for a threat of contamination. She wriggled her fingers in the gloves again. Whatever it was, she wasn’t going to be allowed to touch it, and that sparked her insatiable curiosity, no matter how nervous she was.
“So, these aliens living among you? Given our clothing, I’m guessing they are either carrying something dangerous to us or we have something that could harm them?”
“You’d guess right. The earlier visitors made many of their welcoming hosts sick before we realized that they leaked a rare form of radiation poisoning. Now, both sides take precautions.” Russom took them down a narrow stairwell to the next floor.
“How about the saucers too? Some of the early reports spoke of humans getting sick when they tried to get near the crafts.” Emory caught Sofia’s eye. “I’m guessing that was something solved pretty quickly to get the saucers rebuilt for human flight.”
“You’ve read reports of saucer crashes?” Russom spoke over whatever Sofia was going to say.
Emory shrugged. “It helps if I know what I’m talking about before I employ the means to debunk it.” She watched Russom enter in a very long code on the keypad outside a reinforced door. He swiped his card twice and only then did the door open. Emory had to close her eyes against the bright light that bathed the room. It blinded her. “Jeez. Who pays your electricity bill?” She squinted, waiting for her eyes to get used to the glare and finally allow her to see inside the room.
“Bright light plays havoc with their senses. The doctors here believe that’s because of the black eyes they have. Whatever the reason, the brighter the light the less they can do against our researchers.”
“This was part of the deal that was made with the aliens?” Sofia slipped past Emory to stand at the glass partitions that separated them from the rest of the room. A nearby door would have let them in on the laboratory, but no one moved any farther than the glass. It showed Emory enough.
Amid the hospital equipment, vials, and tubes, were a whole line of operating tables. Computers and multiple screens and other technology took up the whole length of the room. Men and women, dressed in the protective gear, were crowded around the bodies of the small gray aliens that were strapped to numerous tables.
It reminded Emory of an slaughterhouse. A brighter and shinier version, but a place of torture no matter how high the technology surrounding them. The squeals from one of the aliens cut through the air. It rose and rose in volume and in terror.
“What are they doing to it?” Sofia asked.
“Exploratory surgery. The aliens don’t react very well to anesthetic so we have to operate without knocking them out.”
“Is it wrong I think that’s inhumane?” Dink asked.
Emory agreed silently, but gave Russom a look. “Whatever works to expand the boundaries of science, right, sir?”
“Exactly. Did you know that we furthered our night vision technology from studying their eyes alone? That was a fascinating project.” He stared into the room at what was happening. “They say the eyes are the window to the soul. I’ve looked into their eyes, both alive and sliced open in a Petri dish. There’s no soul in these creatures. That’s why what we do here doesn’t really matter. They are less than animals.”
“Really? Yet they possess a technology far more advanced than ours, which means they are fucking intelligent beings,” Dink said.
Emory kept silent, her ears ringing with the sound of the screams coming from the other side of the glass. She couldn’t stand the sound; it reminded her too much of the aliens dying in the field after she’d thrown the grenade. She kept her head still against the glass to make sure Dink didn’t miss a thing. After all, it wasn’t every day you got to watch an alien being dissected in a lab. Emory was torn between being fascinated by the sight and repulsed.
The alien’s oily blood oozed out across the table and drained into the little gutter built into the metal table. It dripped into a bag collecting it. Emory wondered what the hell they could glean from that.
“How long has this been happening?” Emory noticed the room looked well used. Experimenting on aliens was obviously nothing new here.
“Since Roswell, when the treaty was forged between us. It was a mutual sharing of resources.” Russom waved a hand toward the glass. “Do you want to take a closer look?”
Emory shook her head. It was Sofia who answered him.
“I’ve seen enough, sir.” Sofia brushed past them both to leave the room. Emory nodded at Russom and walked past him too.
“You said mutual, sir. The military and government in the forties traded something for the technology the aliens had to offer. I’m not quite seeing where they’d add spare aliens for us to experiment on to sweeten our side of the deal. So what did they gain from us that was worth the exchange they finally decided on? Unlimited airspace to fly in? The opportunity to mutilate a herd of cattle every so often?”
Russom was noticeably silent as he guided her and Sofia down the last series of stairs.
“Em, there’s forty three levels in this facility, and they all have excellent reception because no matter how deep you’re going, I’m still able to reach you. How intriguing is that?”
Emory had wondered about that too. She wished she could talk back to Dink because this base was proving to be quite the eye-opener.
At the end of the corridor was a huge double door made from no metal Emory had seen before. It looked odd and out of place in their surroundings. “No Entry” was painted on it. Russom tapped out a series of numbers on a keypad on the wall. Then he took his glove off, splayed his palm on the accompanying touchpad where a green light illuminated and scanned it. Then he looked into a small alcove and faced a retinal scan. Emory was impressed by the level of security.
“What’s next? Does he whip his dick out too?” Dink muttered and Emory had to fight to keep from laughing out loud.
“Remember,” Russom finally spoke, “the sword hangs heavy over the one who takes the throne.”
The doors swung open without making the slightest noise. There was something slightly eerie about that.
<
br /> “Emory,” Dink said and she stalled at the fear in his voice. “I have a really bad feeling about this.”
So do I, Emory thought. This was obviously her last test. She had to face whatever was in this room to be accepted into her role as Damocles Six. She was all too aware Russom was watching her closely.
Best CIA foot forward, she ordered herself and straightened her shoulders, ready for anything. “For Dionysius,” she muttered just loud enough for all to hear her and stepped into the room.
Chapter Twenty-five
Bodies.
Row upon row of human bodies were suspended in fluid inside huge glass cylinders. Emory couldn’t see exactly how many there were in each line. There were too many to count, but they ran the entire length of the hangar-sized room and halfway across it. This expanse was darker than the previous level. Soft blue lighting was the only illumination on the whole floor. It threw long shadows across the hard floor and made them dance with the movement of the viscous liquid the people were suspended in. Whatever it was, it sparkled unnaturally, even under the low light. Emory tentatively took another step forward into the room, rendered speechless as she took in the true horror of what making deals with the devil entailed.
Oh my God, it’s like something out of a nightmare.
She was rooted to the spot with her breath suspended in her lungs. All sound ceased, except for the beat of her heart that was clattering against her ribs at an accelerated rate. She barely heard Sofia’s horrified exclamation behind her over the fierce pulsing in her ears. Emory felt like she’d been turned to ice. It was as if everything in front of her was honed and sharpened like an ice pick, and if she didn’t breathe, she’d be shattered to a million tiny pieces all screaming out in terror at what she was seeing.
Somehow she managed to take another step forward and another until she stood before a cylinder. The size of it dwarfed her. She stared up at the inert body of a man. Looking down the line, she noticed all the people were displayed the same. Naked, some totally devoid of hair, and all appeared to be asleep. They were curled up in a cruel mimicry of the fetal position they’d slept safely in in their mothers’ wombs. Their eyes were closed, their mouths slightly open. Emory inched toward the closest cylinder. She could detect no sign of breathing.
Dead. All dead.
“Oh my God,” she whispered in realization.
“Oh no. What have they done?” Dink mourned.
Emory turned to Russom and Sofia. She barely registered that Sofia looked as horrified as she was. “This? This was our half of the bargain? We got their technology and in return they got human test subjects to play with?”
Russom’s silence was damning. Emory stared at him, wondering what kind of man he really was to be privy to something like this. She was totally disgusted with his part in this cover-up. This wasn’t something small to hide; this was a silent genocide that had been kept hidden from the planet for years. Alien abduction for human experimentation. And all sanctioned by the military and the government.
She wandered farther down the row. Not all the bodies were untouched. Skin flaps had been peeled back on some subjects, others had their flesh torn away so that muscle and bone was exposed. Limbs on others had been precisely removed. Needle tracks littered arms, and temples were marked in such a way to point toward something being attached there. Emory wondered how much blood had been spilled that was simply washed away by the liquid they lay in. It was an inhuman spectacle, a silent imagery of brutal torture. She forced herself to see it all until she came upon something that nearly brought her to her knees. Tears ran freely down her face as she rested her gloved hands against the cylinder and gazed up at the tiny body of a young girl trapped behind the glass. Emory’s heart clenched painfully in her chest. She looks like Missy. She felt herself begin to gag until she spotted a birthmark on the skin that she knew Missy didn’t have. She swallowed back the bile and tried to regain her breath. Then she systematically checked every single cylinder in case any of her family were inside one. She didn’t know whether to be glad she didn’t find them or not. This can’t be the only place they get to do this. Only then did she let her anger take the place of fear.
“Is this the fate my nieces face?” She asked the question aloud but again got no reply from the man in the room. “I asked you a goddamn question, General. Is this what’s going to happen to my family? Are they going to end up in the underground lair, on a no-name military base, suspended behind glass like a prized exhibit?” Emory couldn’t take her eyes off the child. She looked so peaceful in death, preserved in the fluid for whatever reason someone had to keep her there once she’d been examined. Emory forced her imagination not to even consider the atrocities they could have subjected a child to. “And just whose lab is this? Is it the aliens? Or could it be humans? Because, let’s face it, it wouldn’t be the first time the human race has rounded up innocents to use as test subjects to experiment on. Medical advances or the hopes for a mightier army don’t make themselves now, do they?”
Russom stared at her. “Everything we do is for the greater good.”
Emory wanted to smash his head through one of the cylinders so badly. She balled her hands into fists to stop herself from grabbing hold of him. “Why do the aliens take us? Surely by now they’ve abducted enough humans to know us inside and out.”
“They’re trying to use human genetics to enhance their own gene pool.”
Emory stiffened. “You’re making us breed with them.”
“It’s harder than it sounds. Our genetic codes are completely incompatible and years of research has failed to produce the perfect human/alien hybrid.”
“So you just let them take more of us for something that is obviously doomed to succeed?”
“If they want to waste time splicing cells and gestating embryos that are grotesquely mutated and dead before the day is out, then yes. We have our own agendas in working with them. If we can reverse engineer them like we did their ships, we could be invincible. Humanity would be unstoppable.”
“You’re talking about experimenting on innocents, General. Surely that goes against everything we fight for.” Sofia finally found her voice. She waved a hand around the room. “This isn’t what we’re here for.”
Russom laughed at her. “Actually, yes it is, and I have the signatures from presidents past and present to authorize any and all research. We’re a warring race, Captain. We’re to use everything in our power to be the victors. If that means letting them take people now and again to test on then it’s a justified cost. There’s collateral damage in every fight, but the ends justify the means.”
Emory was shaking. It was either the burning anger rising in her gut or the sheer terror at what she was seeing. She couldn’t differentiate between the feelings warring inside her. There was a part of her that wanted to smash each cylinder and release the people inside. She wanted to set fire to every piece of medical equipment she could see and all the objects she had never seen before that were worn from use. She didn’t want to linger over where those tools lay, but she made sure Dink could see it all. She wanted someone else to know what she was seeing.
As theories went, this was the hardest one to reveal as true. This wasn’t just flying saucers in the sky. This was about an alien race that had come to Earth and who were kidnapping humans and experimenting on them. All with certain humans in positions of power allowing them to do so.
She moved her hand off the cylinder and dropped her line of sight. She still had her gun in her pocket. It was already loaded. All she had to do was get it out and point and…
“Emory, don’t even think about it. For you to get out alive you need to leave as Ellen Mays. They’ll kill Emory Hawkes on sight, but Mays can get out. You can’t save your family if you kill Russom. He might be the only one who can tell you where they are.”
Dink’s voice of reason stilled Emory’s hand but not her mind. The roaring in her ears got louder, and she leaned to rest her head against the glass, fright
ened she was going to pass out. She felt a hand on her shoulder and found Sofia beside her, giving her a worried look. The one Emory gave her back made Sofia remove her hand cautiously.
“How’s the truth looking now, Captain?” Emory said for her alone. She pushed back from the glass and faced Russom again. “I’ll need the names and locations of all the other alien labs that we have here on Earth.”
“Searching for top secret laboratories isn’t part of your job description now that you work for me.”
“I’ll do anything you need me to do, but first I need to find my family and make sure they’re alive.” She gestured around the room. “You obviously needed me to see this. Now that I have? You’re going to need me on your team to keep this fucking mess quiet. Truno was going to blow this level wide open, wasn’t he? He was going to reveal the alien agenda and let everyone know that the saucers weren’t all ours. And he’d probably have mentioned that abductions happen and aren’t figments of people’s imaginations. Then he was going to name all the guards and drop that sword on your head and effectively fall on it himself in the process.” Emory shook her head, her voice deathly calm. “I’m not stupid. I know where my loyalties lie. I will die for what I believe in, General, and I believe in the ‘ends justifying the means’. I don’t think the people outside of this room can really handle this kind of secret becoming public, do you?” She took another look at the room and hoped that her acting was selling her as CIA Agent Ellen Mays because Emory Hawkes wanted to rip the whole lab apart and then blow Tesla Falls off the face of the planet with any means possible. “That is my area of expertise, sir. Give me names and places I can start on because I will find my family, with or without your help. But the sooner I do it the better, since you’re going to want me on your side to keep this shit hushed up. Because when all this is over? You’re going to need me to cover your ass.” With that, Emory walked out of the room at as leisurely a pace as she could muster. The people she walked out on didn’t need to know she was resisting the urge to run screaming from it.