Followed East

by Andre Gonzalez

  Jack handed over a white business card with nothing printed on it but a phone number.

  Kyle took it and slid it into his pocket, returning his gaze to Jack. “Can I ask you something?”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “What do they say about me?”

  “Who?”

  “People here. I feel like I get special treatment. No one has ever not been friendly to me. I just wonder sometimes what they told everyone before I showed up.”

  Jack leaned back in his seat and clasped his hands behind his head. “We’ve never had a recruit show up with such high expectations. We’ve also never had one show up on a recommendation. Did they tell you how the regular recruitment process works?”

  Kyle shook his head.

  “Our recruiters hack into college scoring systems—although hack is probably the wrong word since we’re the government. We access the colleges’ systems and start our search by finding top performers—and I’m talking the top one percent of students. From there we run background checks, study the person’s social media accounts and emails, just to get a feel for the type of person they are and what their current situation is in life. If they’ve started a family, we’ll leave them alone until maybe their kids are older.”

  “My grandma had kids. . . obviously.”

  “Probably not at the time of her recruitment. She might have been married at the time, but we hire people who have their availability and life paths wide open. If they decide they want to incorporate kids into their busy schedules after joining us, they certainly can.”

  Kyle felt queasy, thinking he had been one bad work trip away from not even existing.

  “Anyway, once we narrow down that list of one percenters to another one percent, we will briefly follow the person from a distance to make sure there’s nothing we missed. If everything checks out, we approach them in private and let them know about this special opportunity here at the Pentagon. When most people hear we’re the government, they listen.”

  “So there have been people watching me?”

  Jack nodded, smirking. “It’s not as bad as you think. You’ve been treated differently from the start because of Susan. She left your name as a recommendation for us to recruit, and she was never known to have a bad hunch. The people following you were more there to protect you.”

  “Protect me from what?”

  “Exalls,” Jack responded, matter-of-factly.

  “Why would the Exalls want me? I never did anything to them.”

  “That’s probably a better question for the colonel. I only know what I hear—which is a lot in this position, but not everything. Your car is here, though.”

  Kyle pivoted around to see headlights waiting for him outside of the lobby doors. “Thanks again, Jack. We’ll have to talk some more another time.”

  “Anytime, young man. You know where to find me.”

  Kyle left The Crew’s offices, questions swirling about his past and future.

  15

  Chapter 15

  Over the next month, Kyle graduated from the classroom sessions to spend more time practicing combat and stealth. While it was more entertaining to run through obstacle courses, shoot high-powered rifles, and learn espionage tactics that made him feel like a ninja, the physical toll wore him out by the end of each day. He was in good shape by this point, but after scarfing down chicken and veggies and showering at the end of each session, his body begged for him to lie down. Time became a constant blur.

  Colonel Griffins had slipped into the room during random training sessions, whispering with whoever was leading that particular training, but never speaking to Kyle directly. That was until the evening of August 27th, when the colonel pulled him aside, letting him know his big test was scheduled for the following day.

  “Tomorrow?” Kyle had asked. “All I get is one day’s notice?”

  “Of course. Do you think the Exalls send us notice before they attack our people?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. You’re ready, everyone says so. Just relax and do what you already know how to do.”

  Do what you already know how to do, Kyle told himself as he looked in the mirror the next morning before his life-changing test.

  His stomach felt like an empty pit. He had forced down a cup of yogurt and two slices of toast, but had no interest in eating. The anticipation of the test gnawed at him both mentally and physically.

  “Don’t be afraid of failure,” Griffins had told him. “There is no failing this test. If you don’t pass, we just work on your weaknesses until they are up to par. Trust your instincts, don’t overthink anything, and perform naturally.”

  Kyle slipped into his training uniform of athletic pants and a skin-tight t-shirt. “Let’s do this,” he said before leaving his room, his future awaiting.

  He headed for the classroom named after his grandmother. The test started there with a written exam that covered his knowledge of the Exalls. He zipped through the pages that asked questions about their history and abilities, confident with every answer chosen, as these facts had been drilled into his brain over the last few months.

  From there Kyle was taken to the Kennedy Room, an area he had yet to see as it housed a mazelike obstacle course of towering white walls, spanning the size of half a football field. The maze was filled with different checkpoints, each consisting of one physical task and one mental task. A bell chimed through hidden speakers once he successfully completed the tasks, prompting him to move on to the next checkpoint.

  The challenges were supposed to start at an easier level and become increasingly more difficult, so his knees trembled as he approached the first checkpoint, a small round table with a tablet on it. He read the tablet to find he owed 30 pushups to begin the test, along with a word problem he had to solve.

  Kyle dropped to the ground, did his pushups, and returned to the table to read the question:

  A bus driver was heading down a street. He went right past a stop sign without stopping, turned left where there was a “no left turn” sign, and went the wrong way on a one-way street. Then he went on the left side of the road past a cop. Yet, he didn’t break any traffic laws. Why not?

  Kyle grinned as a fresh wave of confidence surged through his body. He enjoyed these types of riddles, or word problems, whatever the hell they were. He aced these during training because his grandmother would always ask him one every day after picking him up from school. And he remembered her asking this specific problem once. It was one of the first times she had asked one of these types of questions, and he remembered it vividly. They were waiting at a crosswalk as a school bus drove by, prompting Susan to ask him the question. Kyle was maybe ten years old, wondering why his grandmother was asking such an absurd riddle.

  He searched on the tablet for somewhere to type the answer, but there was no space to type. He looked around, white walls surrounding him, seeing nowhere to make a move.

  “He didn’t break any laws because he was walking,” Kyle said to the tablet. The speakers chimed, and the tablet flashed a message telling him to go to the next checkpoint.

  He grinned and put the tablet back on the table before moving forward, working his way through the twisting maze until he approached a closed door. The walls towered above him, providing only a glimpse of the bright fluorescent lights in the ceiling. The door clearly led into another room, and as Kyle approached it, he noticed a rifle on the ground. It was the same type of rifle he had used in training, the one loaded with The Crew’s special “choker” bullets designed to kill Exalls.

  Kyle snatched the rifle, admiring its cool black metal as he brushed fingers along its surface. A magazine was already loaded, and he checked to see six rounds inside it, cocking the gun as he pushed the door open with the muzzle.

  It opened to pure darkness, a black hole under the bright lights. He looked around to see if there was anything else to suggest what he do next, but since the last checkpoint, he already knew no portion of this test c
ame with instructions.

  He stepped into the darkness to find a dim path illuminated that led forward. Once he was all the way in, the door slammed shut behind him, causing him to spin around and come eye to eye with a hologram of an Exall.

  The Exall grinned black fangs, glowing in the dark like a jellyfish in the night sea. Its gray skin sent chills up Kyle’s back, and he had a brief flood of horrific memories from that day he watched his grandmother’s murder.

  His arms never trembled as he lined up a shot and blasted a round directly through the Exall’s head. Its face exploded into hundreds of pixelated shards.

  “I don’t think so!” a voice shouted from behind, and Kyle spun back around to see another faux Exall charging him like a linebacker trying to sack a quarterback. Kyle pulled the trigger again and grinned as he watched another gray head explode into imaginary dust.

  “Kyle?” a familiar voice called. His grandmother’s voice. Kyle’s head spun as he tried to process what he was hearing. Did they have a recording of her? Was this entire recruitment some elaborate way to reunite them? Was she still alive? “Kyle, I’m so proud of you. You’re making our family proud by carrying on my life’s work. Don’t ever give up on this. The world needs you.”

  Her voice seemed to come from every corner of the dark room. Kyle returned to the dim path and continued forward, clueless as to how far he had to go before leaving this room of death.

  “Kyle, I’ve missed you,” she said.

  It has to be a trap. That’s all it is. It’s not really her. You watched her die – this is part of the test.

  As much as he assured himself of these facts, hearing her voice created a fresh pit in his chest, filled with the pain and sorrow that had been buried over the last four years.

  He walked into a wall, his knee banging into it and shooting a small bolt of pain up his leg, but he hardly noticed. His mind was drawn to the sound of his grandmother’s voice and sensed nothing else. He felt around in the dark, his hands eventually finding another doorknob that he twisted and pushed forward, opening into another dark room where his grandmother stood over a crackling fire pit, as if she were merely on a summer camping trip. She kept her focus on the flames, the orange glow illuminating a face that looked exactly as he remembered.

  “Grandma?” Kyle called out, his legs frozen as his mind debated moving forward. His brain saw her as another hologram figure in this test, but his heart viewed her as real, longed for her to be real. “Grandma, is that you?”

  “Ky,” she said, looking up from the flames and meeting his gaze. “They told me I’d get to see you, but I didn’t think it would be so soon.”

  Kyle took a step closer and saw a tear gliding down her cheek, his heart ignoring the fact that it was a pixelated tear.

  HELLO! ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION, KYLE? THIS IS STILL A TEST! his mind screamed. But no one was home.

  “Come tell me about your stay here in D.C.,” she said. “Have you gone to any of the museums yet?”

  Kyle’s throat swelled with a lump of shock as he took another step closer. He kept a tight grip around his rifle, but the weapon felt thousands of miles away.

  “Have you talked to your dad?” she asked. “I just want him to know that I’m okay.”

  As he took one more step, standing within fifteen feet of his grandmother, the reality started to sprout back up in his mind. She was not real. Yes, she stood in front of him and spoke in the same voice he knew, but this wasn’t real. This was a testing facility hundreds of feet below the Pentagon where no one would ever hear his screams if he were to be slaughtered by an alien species.

  Kyle raised the rifle, fixing his aim on his grandmother’s face. She looked to the gun, to his eyes, no concern on her face. “What are you doing, Ky?”

  “You’re not real.” Saying this aloud made a warm tear streak from the corner of his eye.

  “Of course I’m real. Come touch me, see for yourself. They saved me on that horrible day, and I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am for not letting the family know that I’ve been fine this whole time.”

  “I watched you die!”

  “I didn’t die, Ky. I had so much protection on that day, there was never a chance. It was all an act to make them think they got me, to protect you and your friends. I’ve been hiding here ever since because they’re looking for me, Ky. And that’s why you’re here, to save us all. Use your special gift, Ky. Don’t be afraid of it.”

  “I don’t have a gift! I’ll never be you.”

  “You’re not expected to be me, you’re expected to be you.” Susan grinned as gently as ever, a tint of pride swimming in her eyes. “Now come give me a hug and let’s talk this over.” She opened her arms and Kyle took one more step closer, now within ten feet of his grandmother.

  More tears streamed down his face as he realized what he needed to do, tightening his grip on the rifle, his index finger subconsciously sliding over the trigger. “I love you, grandma.”

  His voice wavered as these words came out, the rifle booming milliseconds after, Susan’s holographic face exploding into more of the pixelated shards of light. Every ounce of tension that had risen from his toes to his brain vanished with that squeeze of the trigger, and he knew that regardless of what came next on this fucked-up test, he had the mental stability for life as a Crew member.

  More lights illuminated the pathway, revealing a new door beyond where Susan had stood. Kyle wasted no time moving for it, needing salvation after what he had just endured. Freedom. How long have I even been in here?

  The entire sequence of events from the start of the exam had felt like a solid hour, but only twenty minutes had passed in reality.

  He pushed the door open and returned to the maze filled with bright lights, providing a fabricated outdoor sensation. His mind may have been playing tricks, but he thought he heard birds chirping much like they did in the Outside Room.

  Colonel Griffins stood ahead of him, arms crossed behind his back with a stern expression smacked on his face. “That was impressive,” he said flatly. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m okay. Why?”

  “We’ve never put a recruit through that intense of a sequence before, at least not something so personal. This was a unique opportunity, as we had a lot of sound bites from Susan’s work here and were able to form an authentic re-creation.”

  “I knew she was fake,” Kyle replied, not acknowledging the initial confusion he had felt. “I knew it was all part of this test.”

  Colonel Griffins snickered, nodding his head. “If you insist. You have nine more checkpoints to complete, but we wanted to make sure you’re mentally okay after that.”

  “I’m good. Let’s finish this.”

  “That’s what I like to hear.” The colonel stepped aside and raised an arm to allow Kyle to pass. As Kyle strode by him, Griffins winked and nodded, clearly fighting the urge to grin. Kyle nodded and moved forward without another thought, his heart heavy with the memories of the fearless woman who had been preparing him his whole life for this very moment.

  16

  Chapter 16

  “So why exactly did we get sent into the middle of nowhere for this mission?” Dante Rivers asked his partner, Ron Miley.

  The two had trudged through the woods of northern Michigan while Kyle Wells rested in D.C. for the weekend after taking his initiation test. Night had fallen and the temperature dropped quickly, making it especially cool for a summer night. Dante knew very well why they were essentially off the grid for this mission, but had to say something as the terrain grew more uneven with each step, the cabin they were searching for seeming to become further with every minute that passed.

  Dante and Ron had been part of the same training class at The Crew—class of 2010—and instantly became best friends when they were both fresh out of college, taking on this absurd organization who fought aliens in the night. They were both in their early thirties, now married with two kids each, essentially following in each other’s life
paths. Their wives and children had all become friends over the years and often kept each other company when the pair was sent out on a mission like this one.

  Tonight they were dressed in complete combat attire, their camouflage uniforms covering the full bodysuit of protective gear underneath.

  “Colonel has lost his mind,” Ron said, gasping for air as they climbed a small hill, his black bangs plastered to his forehead with sweat. Ron had splotches of dirt scattered across his face, thanks to tripping over a tree branch that was stuck in the ground shortly after they started their hike.

  Dante had fallen onto his ass in laughter, grabbing his gut and rolling in the dirt, getting himself covered in grime as well. Both men looked like they might have just come out of a coal mine, speckles of dark matter covering their clothes and faces.

  “Did anyone even question this decision?” Ron continued. “This could go horribly wrong.”

  “We’ll be alright,” Dante reassured. “It’s two-on-one.”

  They moved through the trees, both men taller than six feet and built to crush bones with their bare hands. Someone might mistake them for a couple of Sasquatches if they didn’t know any better.

  “I’m not worried about us,” Ron replied. “I’m worried about the rest of the world; this could spark something out of our control.”

  “Or it could not. You worry too much.”

  The two had grown to accept that they had polar opposite personalities, embracing it as a strength when they worked together, able to see perspectives from all angles.

  “I only worry because it’s a possibility. I’ve done my reading on this: never in the history of the Exalls or The Crew have we taken one of the peaceful Exalls. I don’t know why, but I trust there’s a good reason for it.”

  “We’re making history. You should be proud.”