1942664419 (S) (10 page)

Nematali cut the other alien off. “Jessica Natalie, I am sorry for the intrusion. This will only take a moment.” Then she continued their dialogue. So much for not being late.

There must be a universal law that says adults can rush teenagers around for no good reason. Then, at the slightest provocation, they could turn around and do whatever they wanted. Even if it meant being late for what they rushed the kid for in the first place. This was almost as bad as trying to walk across the Air Force base with Dad.

She glanced at me, shifting her weight. I guess I could give her brownie points for realizing I was uncomfortable, unless she’d done that mind-reading thing. I didn’t have a headache, though, so she couldn’t have been fishing around in my head. It was probably a no-brainer since I must have looked just as peeved as Maggie had that day.

It didn’t speed her up at all, though.

Taking advantage of the respite, I snapped a few pictures of the alien. There was a weird block on the floor with etching on it.
Click
. The door the alien had come from was still open.
Click
. The ceiling shimmered like glass.
Click
. I hoped these pictures would come out okay. It was dark in the hallway, and a flash seemed inappropriate while people were talking.

My rear end hit the wall when I backed up to get a clear shot of both of them. The metal buckled slightly, as if I’d backed into a pillow. Why were some parts of the walls soft and others hard? I moved to my right, trying to get the depth of the hallway behind them in the shot. I rested against the partition, and it gave, swallowing me in one gulp.

I couldn’t breathe. My hands, neck, and face froze as if I’d walked into a howling blizzard. I floundered in the nothingness before I tumbled into another hallway. Coughing, I staggered as a flash of heat bombarded me with temperatures that had to be off the Richter scale. My lungs burned, taking in the near-boiling air. I remembered Dad trying to describe the heat in Iraq to my mom and me. “Hotter than Hell,” he’d said. “Your lungs ached just breathing.” I remembered how he said they adapted: deliberate, short breaths. I tried short intakes, but my head spun.

Crap.

Nematali had to see what happened to me, right? I felt along the partition, but it had become solid again. Sweat poured down my temples, but I knew more than the balmy air was to blame.

I moved along the wall, searching for another soft spot. I found one. In the floor.

I fell through a chilly hole and splatted on my rear end. My camera crashed on the ground beside me.

Ouch.
The door in the ceiling closed, leaving me in shadows as I rubbed my sore butt.

Didn’t I just leave this hallway? Wait, maybe not. I blinked, and let my eyes water. The outlines of several doors appeared. Where was I?

Somewhere you shouldn’t be, Jess.

I chanced a deep breath. The air was cooler here, but only slightly. At least my lungs didn’t burn.

Reaching beside me, I snatched my camera and checked it. Looked okay as far as I could see in the darkness. I made sure it was still set for low lighting and snapped a shot. Within the photo, the frames of the doorways seemed shrouded in mist. Creepy.

The ceiling I’d fallen from was about ten feet above me, and no way to climb out. Skunked, I walked along the strange doors. It had to be my imagination, but it seemed as if the hall continued for at least a mile. How big was this ship anyway?

A sense of dread crept into my bones, crawling and poking at me from all angles. The walls pressed in. Watching. Waiting. I glanced over my shoulder, and down either side of the hallway. Clear—as far as my human eyes could see. Was something there, following me?

I continued walking. A shadow flashed to my left. I screamed, but only a clean, bare wall met my frenzied stare.

Just my imagination. Why would something be following me anyway? I picked up the pace, though, in case I was wrong.

I stopped to dab the sweat from my neck. The wall to my left shifted, and a door appeared. Checking each side of the hallway again for my imaginary peeping Tom, I steadied myself and leaned my head in.

A black table sat in the center of the room. Some kind of purplish-pinkish plant seemed to be growing out of a hole in the surface.
Click.
I covered my nose to ward off the metallic taint in the air. Weird.

To the right, a series of indentations formed on the wall while a staticy screen appeared to my left. Was the room reacting to my presence? How bizarre. I shot off a few more pictures and leaned back out of the room

The melodious sounds of Norwegian people singing echoed up the hallway. I followed. Even if they didn’t speak English, it would be pretty obvious who I was. Hopefully, they could get me back to Nematali.

12

The voices resonating through the corridor deepened, not quite sounding melodious anymore. I grabbed my necklace, drawing on my mother’s courage as I rounded the corner.

A small gathering of purple people crowded the hallway. One alien shoved another. The
shovee
made a fist and slammed it into the other guy’s jaw. I backed around the wall and out of sight. I didn’t want to be near an alien fistfight any more than I wanted to be involved in a parking lot brawl.

A controlled retreat was the sensible thing to do, but the journalist inside me hit the movie button and held Old Reliable around the corner. I counted to five, changed the setting on my camera to sport, and clicked off a few still shots. I didn’t even check the preview screen. I just clicked the shutter button and hoped for the best.

I poked my head out. Three more aliens that had been onlookers joined the fight. I snapped four more pictures, drew back out of sight, and slipped my camera into my backpack. Those were not the right aliens to ask for directions.
Time to make an exit, Jess.

I headed back the way I came, smacking head-on into a chest. A fully dressed, human chest.

Poseidon’s chestnut locks shifted across his shoulders as he tilted his head and looked down at me.
Dang, was he that tall the first time I met him?

“Are you lost,
Jessica
?” His lips twisted as he said my name, as if the word tasted bad.

I adjusted my backpack on my shoulder. “Oh, hi, Ambassador. Yeah, I fell through a wall and kinda landed here.”

The fight around the corner escalated. Poseidon-dude raised his hand to silence me. I stayed put while he rounded the corner and spat a few stern-sounding Erescopian words. The commotion ended instantly.

He returned and pulled me in the opposite direction. “You should not be wandering alone. Allow me to return you to the upper levels.”

Upper levels? I thought we’d started in the lower levels. Then again, all those hallways Nematali lead me through could have been inclining for all I knew.

I followed the ambassador as best I could. Damn, he walked fast. “Thanks. I had no idea how to get back.”

“Of course you wouldn’t.” He gazed remained fixed straight ahead. “Are you enjoying your stay with us?”

“Yeah. I met some cute kids and saw the recycling center. I also met the people working on the Mars project.”

“You are supposed to be with the surgeons now, are you not?”

“Umm, maybe. I’m not sure. We were heading to an appointment when I fell through the wall and got lost.”

He stopped abruptly and spun. His nose flared as his gaze bore down on me. “Our technology is quite different from yours. You need to be more cautious while you are here.”

He had that condescending tone that added
idiot
to the end of his sentence without actually saying the word. He must have been a father.

I hunched my shoulders and kept my mouth shut, hoping we didn’t have to walk too far.

Without warning, he grabbed my arm and pulled me into a wall. The chill stabbed my cheeks until we re-entered the heat of the hallway standing right in front of Nematali.

“I believe you lost something,” Poseidon said. “Take better care of your charge, or I will have someone take care of her for you.”

Nematali looked down and folded her hands.

Shoot.
I didn’t mean for her to get in trouble or anything.

Poseidon backed into the wall and disappeared. The muscles in my shoulders relaxed. That guy was wound way too tight for me.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

Nematali smiled. It didn’t even seem fake. “As long as you are all right. But we are now behind schedule.” She began walking. “They will not wait for us. Timetables must be kept.”

Whoa.
Seriously? No fifteen-minute lecture on being responsible or anything? I was liking this chick more and more. “So, the ambassador said we were going to see a surgeon?”

“That is correct. I thought it would interest you to see an
exteriation
.”

“What’s an
exteriation
?”

She touched her cheek. “Putting on a covering like this.”

A twang riddled through me. I’d almost forgotten she wasn’t human. “You need a doctor to do that?”

“It is ideal to have a medical practitioner available. The process is quite painful.” She picked up her pace.

“It is?” I jogged to keep up with her.

“This coating is amalgamated to my skin. It takes several minutes.” The muscles in her neck flinched. “Several very long minutes.”

I remembered finding David rolling on the grass back on Earth, holding his head and screaming. I thought he was reacting to the same ear-shattering noise I had heard, but there hadn’t been any sound at all. What I’d heard was David poking around in my head, stealing my language and the appearance of the men of my dreams.

He hadn’t heard the noise; he’d caused it. So the thrashing and screaming must have been his body changing. No wonder he’d looked terrified. He’d just bonded a human form onto his own—and without the care of a doctor.

“Your people don’t need to hide anymore. If putting on a human suit hurts so much, why do it?”

“Our research shows that humans are uncomfortable with what they see as different. The Caretakers decided that we should continue our endeavor to blend with your culture, in the name of peace.”

“Does that mean all of you are going to put on human suits?”

“No, only those who are required to interact with humans.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the wall on our right. “Come.”

We sank through the partition. The cold shot straight through my clothes until we stepped into a room not much bigger than my closet. Four chairs took up most of the floor in front of a huge window. I shook off the ghostly fingers of the wall still tickling my skin, and looked through the glass.

A deep, sterile-white room loomed several feet below us. Three aliens centered their attention on a view screen tilting out of a shiny, plastic-like table. To their right, a man, human at least on the outside, staggered through an array of shiny, swirling silver tables. Two tall, naked Erescopians assisted him while another tapped on one of a few dozen video panels sunken into the walls. Swirling symbols scrolled across the screens.

The man cried out, and his alien helpers guided him to sit on one of glistening tables.

“Is he sick?” I asked.

“No. We are too late. He has already gone through the process.”

“Bummer,” I whispered.

I raised my camera and shot off a few pictures. Hearing Steven Callup’s voice poking around in my brain, I took extra photos, chronicling everything in the room.

I zeroed in on the twisted features contorting the man’s face. “He looks like he just got a root canal.”

“As I explained earlier, the
exteriation
process is quite painful and exhausting. Some handle it better than others.”

The doorway to the medical facility below opened, and a tall Erescopian bounded into the room and faced the alien doctors. His angry voice echoed through the walls, barraging us like ten-point surround sound with attitude.

I raised my camera and clicked off several rounds. His pearly-violet skin strained over deeply etched muscles that caught the stark lighting in the room. A deep purple patch snaked along his left side, forming an intricate pattern that reminded me of a dragon.
Click.

One of the doctors backed away from him, muttering in Erescopian. The intruder turned toward another doctor, stepping backward toward our window. His upper back seemed a deeper, darker violet than the rest of his body. Scarred maybe?

Scarred.

My mind flashed to the final night David and I had been together on Earth, when he threw his body over me, protecting me from the punishing lights of the alien scourge. His flesh had melted away, leaving him weak, burned, and bleeding.

My finger shook on the shutter release. David had nearly died saving me that night. And he would have been scarred. Scarred exactly like this man.

I closed my eyes and let my senses take over. The sound of the voice seemed familiar, but the fear and confusion coursing through my veins came only from within me. I couldn’t feel David, but the tone of the voice, the scars … It had to be him.

“What are they saying?” I asked Nematali.

Her lips formed an O. “I think we should come back another time.”

“No. I know that’s David. What’s going on?”

The doctors raised their voices, gesturing toward the door. I opened my mouth to question Nematali again, but clamped my hands over my ears as the walls trembled. A bellow echoed through the room, shattering me to the core. David dropped to his knees.

“David! What’s going on?”

“Come. We must go.” Nematali tugged my shoulder, pulling me toward the exit, but David screamed in another deep bawl of agony.

“Let me go!” I pulled away from her and slammed my hands against the glass. My mouth dried as David bent over, clutching his stomach. “I have to get down there.”

“You cannot.”

David twisted, fell, and writhed on the floor. Two of the doctors lifted him onto a table.

My hands shook. “Please. He needs me.”