Crow - The Awakening (76 page)

Steven raised an eyebrow and looked sideways at Jacob. He wondered if he was a target of one of those. A machine killing all those people on its own. He felt nauseous, not sure what was worse - humans doing that or humans setting machines off to do that.

"Oh, don't worry. They're not going to take over the world and enslave mankind. They're part of our solution to prevent that from happening." Jacob sat back, happy with himself. "Once we digest your little discovery, we'll definitely be upgrading." He waved Steven's phone in the air for emphasis. Steven glowered at him, sour at the idea of helping them create better weapons since he spent the last couple of days on the receiving end of those same weapons.

As they drove further in, Steven saw rows of strange looking tanks. They were very streamlined, but obviously very heavily armed. "Those are a work in progress. Rail gun tanks. They have wheels instead of treads for faster speed. And I tell you, they are very fast." Jacob winked at him. "When they get to speed, they can actually lift off the ground a little and use ground effect aerodynamics to eek out even more speed."

"Just who do you think you're going to war against?" Steven was starting to wonder if these guys were preparing for a revolution. They did express a complete disregard for the police and for human life. Here they were deep in a mountain fortress with concrete everywhere and heavy doors just to get in, and now this fleet of armed and armored vehicles. He looked around, dumbstruck at the levels these people had gone to. Steven surmised that the complex might even be able to withstand a nuclear blast.

Jacob didn't answer him as they pulled into another tunnel and then turned into a large room. The driver put the vehicle in park, but no one got out. Jacob looked at Steven, grinning widely. Suddenly the SUV shifted and Steven got a distinct sinking feeling. "This is an elevator?"

"Yep. Takes us over a thousand feet down," Jacob said.

"Are you preparing for the end of the world or something?" Steven asked.

"Or something." Jacob continued grinning at him.

Steven just looked at him. He got the distinct feeling he was being played with, and he didn't like it.

The elevator stopped and they drove out of it into another vast cavern, passing some construction and finally pulling into what looked like a large garage with several different cars and trucks parked. "We're home!" Jacob said as all the agents got out and Jacob stood to the side as Steven climbed out.

Steven stretched his legs as he looked around. He was extremely sore and tired. Jacob waved him on and they walked out of the garage through a door into a long maze of halls. "This is our administrative wing. But it's the quickest way to get to the hospital wing."

"Hospital?" Steven asked, hesitating.

"Like I said, just a basic checkup and we're going to collect a little blood and swab your cheek for DNA sampling. Nothing serious." Jacob grabbed his arm gently and pulled. Steven started walking after him again. "Really, we're not barbarians, Steven."

Steven looked at him. "Yeah, you just shoot innocent people to get to one boy."

Jacob looked sideways at him. "Collateral damage, Steven. You were the one making yourself so difficult to apprehend."

Steven was appalled that he would try to shift the blame back on him but held his tongue. Irritating his captor wasn't going to do any good now anyway, especially one so nuts as to be hunting for aliens.

They walked past a large reception area and Steven looked at a heavy set of doors. "That's my office. Believe it or not, I actually do work." Jacob pointed. The receptionist looked up as they walked by, then returned her attention to her work. Steven wondered what that work could possibly be.

Jacob walked up to a golf cart. "Here we go. This will make it faster." He got in and Steven sat next to him. The agents that had been accompanying them walked on and departed through other doors, leaving Steven and Jacob to their own devices. Steven was a little surprised, given how hard they had tried to capture him, then he remembered that he really didn't have anywhere to run to down there.

The cart whisked them to the hospital wing pretty fast and pedestrians in the hallway stepped aside as they zoomed by. "You know, sometimes we even race these things down here."

"Must be thrilling," Steven said dryly, holding on as Jacob careened around a cart loaded with boxes.

"You find entertainment where you look, Steven. You'll see," Jacob grinned.

They passed some people walking in sweats and carrying exercise pads. Steven turned around to look at them and a few turned and looked back. "Physical training is a requirement here for everyone. Those people make Bruce Lee look like a girl scout," Jacob chuckled.

"Who?" Steven looked at Jacob.

"Really? You haven't heard of... Oh, never mind. We are big believers in complete control over our bodies and minds." Jacob looked at Steven's lithe form. "You probably already are in better shape than you realize."

"Why?" Steven looked back at them as they turned a corner.

"Preparation and maintaining top form will be key to our survival. And we've been doing this for several hundred years." Jacob pulled the golf cart to the side of the hall and hopped off. Steven followed.

"Preparation for what?" Steven looked around and saw physicians in the hall.

Jacob leaned into him as they walked. "The aliens," he said conspiratorially, then laughed at the look on Steven's face. "No, seriously. We are the future of Earth." Steven looked at him skeptically. All of this was so sophisticated that part of him wondered if Jacob was pulling his leg. "That's okay. I know you think I'm nuts. But you haven't seen anything yet. We even have one of their wrecks." Jacob looked around. "There, look." He pointed to a large picture on the wall of one of the wards.

Steven walked in and saw a craft identical to those he saw in the video he had captured. Jacob anticipated that recognition and held up his tablet showing Steven the video he got from Steven's phone. "Look familiar?"

It was heavily damaged and parts were missing, but it was definitely the same. "No wings, no thrusters, completely autonomous with no pilot, able to carry an army, and heavily armed. Most of it had been dismantled when we found it buried under rock in the Sahara. But we got enough to learn a few things about them."

Steven looked back at Jacob. "We could have made one of these."

"Not remotely. Well, some of what we are using now came from them. But nope. You want to know the kicker? It's been buried for over a thousand years. They've been here for a while, Steven." Jacob admired the picture.

"Where is it?" A picture didn't do much for Steven, however the ancient wreckage and the video did shock him. How could he explain that away? Swamp gas or a weather balloon?

"Oh, it's in one of our other locations." Jacob left the ward and Steven followed, looking back at the picture. "I have some parts from that wreckage you can touch for yourself. Seeing is believing, right? We even have one of their bodies, but it is too heavily damaged to get much out of."

Jacob stood by one of the wards and ushered Steven in. "Go ahead and have a seat there." He pointed to a bed and Steven got up on it and looked around. It looked like a regular physician's office, except the bed had small hoop at the head of it. "That's our scanner. Thanks to our alien tech. Much better than the average hospital."

A physician walked in and greeted Jacob then stood in front of Steven as he pulled a little table over. A nurse came in and put a blood pressure cuff on Steven and watched her tablet as the results were recorded automatically. The doctor examined Steven, looking into his eyes, making him open his mouth, looking in his ear. He felt prodded and poked and tickled five ways to Albuquerque before the doctor finally got out an IV needle as the nurse wrapped a rubber band around his arm. "This will hurt just a little so try not to jerk, okay?" the doctor instructed as he found a vein and poked the needle in. Steven winced. He had never been poked by a needle like that before and decided he really didn't like it. The physician grabbed a small handful of glass tubes and pushed them into the IV tube one at a time and Steven watched as each one filled up with blood.

"Hope you leave some for me," Steven said as the last tube filled up. The doctor grinned and pulled the IV out as the nurse put a gauze on the wound then told him to open his mouth as she scraped the inside with a handful of swabs.

"Now lay back and we'll get a scan of you." He held Steven's arm as he scooted up on the bed and lay back. The hoop hummed and the bed moved into the hoop until it had past Steven's feet, then it retracted.

"Okay, you can sit up now." The doctor walked over to a counter to finish the processing of the information on a terminal.

"That's it?" Steven looked around.

Jacob helped him sit up. "Yep. Told you it wouldn't be much of a big deal."

The doctor showed him a preliminary result from one of the DNA tests and Jacob copied them over on his tablet. "Wow," Jacob said. He brought the results on his tablet over to Steven. "Okay, look at this. This is normal human DNA. I think that's actually mine, in fact." He looked at the doctor who nodded. "Figures." He looked at Steven and pointed to the image beside his. "That is you." The DNA was definitely different and very dense. "You are one special kid."

Steven looked at it, confused. "I don't understand."

"You, sir, are not completely human. And this is the proof." Jacob pointed at the display.

"What am I?" Steven was stunned as he looked at his hands. He felt perfectly human. But then, what did a human feel like? But he looked human.

"Here, look at this." Jacob zoomed in on an image the doctor had taken of his skin. "See? I told you."

Steven looked closely. It was very short and very fine, but it was distinctly fur. "But it feels just like skin." Steven looked at his arm.

"That would be the human side of you," Jacob said.

"Who am I?" Steven asked himself as much as anyone.

"We're not sure just yet. But we'll help you figure it out. You are at least part human," Jacob said. "You saw your mother. She's definitely not human." He pulled her picture up again. Steven looked at it, very familiar with it, but seeing it with new eyes. Who was she?

"And then there's this creature that was chasing you." Jacob pulled up a video that Laurence had recorded back at the meadow.

Steven's heart jumped. "That's not possible. That was a dream." He watched as Penipe chased after him, obviously injured. It came back to him vividly all at once. The little girl in the tree house, the chase through the trees. Oblivious of Steven's distress, Jacob paused the video and zoomed in. It wasn't as clear as the other one they had looked at, but she was obviously covered in short fur. Like Asherah. Steven started sweating and looked around. This was not something Steven imagined, but a video taken by someone else. "This isn't real. This isn't happening. This can't be happening." He suddenly got dizzy and the doctor came over and held him up.

"Hey, calm down, son," Jacob said.

"You don't understand. That was a nightmare. They were all nightmares. It was all in my head." He looked around, wondering if even this was a nightmare. His head started to throb and he held it, leaning against the doctor as his heart rate skyrocketed.

"No, that really happened," Jacob insisted. "But you're safe here, Steven." He looked at the doctor, who shrugged. Sedating Steven was out of the question since his physiology didn't respond to it. He stood in front of Steven and grabbed his head and looked at him. "Steven, look at me. Look. I don't know what you're having a fit about, but everything is okay. Look around you." Steven looked with his eyes as Jacob kept his grip on Steven's head. The nurse gave him a nervous wave and the doctor smiled. "See? We're friends. Well, maybe not best buddies. But you're safe here." Jacob released him and put his hands on his hips. "Just what happened?"

Steven shook his head. He saw them and knew they were there, but was still getting lost in his nightmares. Were they nightmares? Or were they real? He looked at the video. It was like Steven could feel them, like they were close. He looked around fearfully. He struggled to compose himself but the buzzing in his head wouldn't go away. Jacob was saying something but he couldn't hear him. His captor gave him a glass of water and Steven automatically drank it and handed it back. He struggled to regain control but the world around him was going crazy.

An alarm started going off and Jacob looked around, barking orders at people and talking into his phone. A couple of agents walked in and stood next to Steven as Jacob ran off after saying something to him. He wondered what was going wrong now. Something always went wrong.

Lohet walked up to the cliff and looked at it closely. He pulled back and punched it hard. A resounding clang filled the air and chunks of rock fell off, exposing a heavy metal door. From the sound of its ringing, Lohet surmised that it was a very thick and heavily armored door. Probably too much for him to batter in. He looked for a weakness as he walked in front of the door. A heavy panel suddenly opened up overhead and a turret emerged. Before Lohet could react, he was struck with a stream of high speed projectiles. The armor piercing bullets were painful, but Lohet endured them as he jumped up to the weapon and grabbed it. With a twist, he yanked it from its mount and looked inside. Weapons have to be maintained, so true to form, there was a place for people in there. He crawled in and started ripping out the machinery and panels that were in the way and after several feet he entered an access way.

Migalo came bounding in after him and waited as Lohet busted the door off the panel and together they both jumped out into a large cavern. Lohet saw more heavy doors starting to close and he grabbed Migalo around the waist and ran. Migalo scrambled to grab onto Lohet to prevent whiplash as the wind suddenly howled around his visor. The force of acceleration was tremendous and he blinked as his vision tunneled, but it only lasted for an instant because as fast as it started, the trip was over. The last door was almost completely down when Lohet laid flat on his back and allowed momentum to slide them under the door.