He cornered his eyes suspiciously as she reached behind him to press the elevator button.
Down the hall, the director slipped his hand inside his black suit-jacket and wrestled out a black handgun.
When the elevator doors rumbled open, Livy swung one foot toward the director and hurled the pen at him.
The well-dressed man flinched, jerking to the side, but not before the pen sped end-over-end through his projection and clattered to the floor a great distance down the hall.
“They’re just projections,” said Livy. “They can’t touch us.”
The director vanished instantly, and the elevator snapped shut with a nightmarish bang.
Agent Simmons teetered, staring at the closed doors with a look of utter dismay.
Trey suspected the sealed elevator was only an illusion meant to keep them from entering. He pushed the agent through the vibrating image and into the open elevator. “Don’t trust anything you see.”
Behind them, Livy bounded through the artificial door like magic. Dylan stumbled through behind her, knocked off balance by the real door closing against him.
The female agent materialized ahead of Simmons, blocking the elevator controls. He swiped uselessly at her image like clearing smoke.
“Just close your eyes,” said Livy. “She’s not real.”
“Got ya!” Simmons squeezed his eyes tight and reached through the woman to feel his way around the panel behind her.
The attractive middle-age woman opened her mouth wide and emitted an ear shattering high-pitched alarm.
Trey managed to cancel most of the artificial sound waves within his mind, but Simmons clutched his ears with both hands, his face pink and distorted.
Livy took on a projection of her own, growing inches to match the height of the bellowing woman. Her mouth flew open and an equally shrill alarm poured out. For a moment, the sounds combined to double the deafening blare, but slowly Livy’s pitch fell in tune, effectively cancelling the sound waves.
Simmons released his ears and fumbled with his badge at the controls until the elevator began to sink.
The woman vanished along with her siren, but Livy continued to wail for several seconds before catching on.
The small elevator went eerily silent as the four eyed one another, the only sounds their heavy breathing and the soft hum of the elevator motor.
Ding. The subdued tone announced their arrival, and the stainless-steel doors crept to one side.
Simmons tentatively pushed his hand through the opening. “It’s clear.”
Trey followed the others into a massive vault that could easily double for the safe deposit boxes of the world’s largest bank. Along each side of the narrow chamber, countless metal doors checkered the walls in sizes ranging from several feet wide to only inches.
“I hope you know what you’re looking for,” said Trey. “Cause they could make this a serious pain in the butt to find.”
Simmons slowed. “Remember this number; Eight six eight, four three seven. Tell me if anyone finds it.”
Trey stepped to the wall of boxes on his left and gazed over seemingly random numbers marking each.
Simmons stepped to the right and waved Dylan to join him. “The numbers start at the bottom and go all the way to the end. They move up a row and come all the way back. Back and forth, all the way to the little boxes on the top.” He turned to Trey and Livy. “If we get to the other end without seeing it, we missed it.”
Trey walked alongside Livy, both scanning the box numbers up and down. Some rows counted up, the others counted down, and before long he questioned his memory of the actual box number.
“This filing system is messed up,” said Trey. “Are you sure they aren’t screwing with us?”
Simmons chuckled. “I know a lot of agents who think the same way.”
Trey felt a vibration shimmer into existence behind him without having to see it. He sighed deeply and turned away from the numbers.
Arken faced him, tall and proud, his silver robes and straight white hair dignified as ever. He smiled warmly, his life-like presence lifting Trey’s troubled heart.
“Arken,” said Trey, stepping closer, drawing the attention of Agent Simmons and his friends.
“Son,” he said, tipping his head graciously.
“What are you doing here?”
Livy spoke softly. “Careful. It’s probably not him.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Trey, hoping they were wrong.
Arken steepled his fingers. “Our brothers have asked me to speak with you.”
The words pierced Trey’s heart like a dagger. Arken had never called the black-eyes his brothers. Either he was speaking under duress or he was an imposter.
Trey turned to Livy and nodded toward the boxes. She resumed the search and Simmons followed her lead.
Trey returned his gaze to Arken. “Speak!”
The broad-shouldered man held a hand to his heart. “You belong with us. You’re one of us. Come home.”
Trey despised whoever puppeted his father to spew such garbage. “No! I’m not one of you. I never will be. I’ll die first.”
Arken’s shoulders sagged. Looking discouraged, he turned to Dylan. “Nigel, please talk sense into him.”
“Hah!” Trey turned his back on the phony, laughing uneasily. Silence followed as he imagined the alien’s theorizing over their miscalculation. He pretended to scan the boxes, but in the chaos he had completely forgotten the number sequence.
“Have it your way,” a voice whispered into his ear.
Light-rays shot from the seams of a storage box in front of Trey’s face. The border of light intensified so brightly it also drew Livy’s attention.
Trey gazed in wonder at the demonstration being presented before his eyes. Slowly, the metal door swung open. Inside the storage box, a tiny diorama depicted a horrifying scene as real as life itself.
Huddled in the corner alongside a stainless-steel examination table, a miniature version of Trey’s earthly father held his weeping mother in protective arms.
Transmitter
TREY’S KNEES TREMBLED, threatening to give way beneath him as he stared through the projected window into the cage of his parents.
Livy pushed up beside him and gasped, peering over his shoulder.
He shut his eyes, unable to face a scene that mirrored his horrific experience with Livy only months before.
He leaned against the lockers for support, rocking his head side-to-side. He knew what the black-eyed monsters wanted, but he couldn’t accept surrendering to save his parents.
Livy’s soft fingers tightened on his shoulder. “Trey, it’s all right.”
Fear turned to rage, forcing his hands into tight fists. He hated the invaders for asking him to put himself and, worse yet, Livy in place of his parents.
Livy grasped his chin, forcing him to face her.
Her huge blue eyes seemed to scold him. “Trey! It wasn’t real. They’re playing you.”
Trey looked back to the lockers, the projection was gone, but the image still burned in his memory. “But you don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head. “They’ve gone missing.”
Simmons raced up to their side. “What’s happened?”
Trey slammed his fist against the locker, refusing to answer, refusing to make a deal.
Livy forced her face into his sight. “Think, Trey. Think about what you saw, their hair, their clothes.”
He gritted his teeth. All he could manage to recall were the tears squeezed from his mother’s eyes and the crazed look on his father’s face.
“Maybe you didn’t see it,” said Livy, “but I did. Trust me. It wasn’t current. It wasn’t really them.”
He wanted to believe. Doing so made his quandary somehow bearable. He took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.”
Simmons looked on with confusion in his eyes.
“Find that transmitter,” said Trey with resolve.
As if on cue, Dylan yelled from the dis
tance. “Over here! It’s right here!”
Trey shuffled toward Dylan with Livy and Agent Simmons at his side. He turned over his shoulder to peer back at the closed locker door. With the chilling image still vivid in his mind, he forced his eyes away, telling himself his parents were somewhere safe in hiding.
Simmons arrived at the locker first and removed his clip-on security badge to wave it over the tiny three-inch square door above Dylan’s head. A high-pitched beep later, a tiny green LED lit up near the small brass knob.
Simmons hinged open the locker and slid out a long shallow tray. He lowered the drawer and its contents for everyone to see. “Is this the transmitter?”
Trey eyed the small plastic bag containing one shiny, smooth, perfectly-black stone. “Yes, that’s it.”
Livy nodded vigorously in agreement.
In a wide circle, the group stared at the stone like it was radioactive. Nobody made a move to deal with it.
Dylan finally spoke up. “Smash the freakin’ thing.”
Trey held his hands over the drawer in a protective manner. “Hold on. Hold on. We need to be sure first.”
Simmons looked up from the stone to meet Trey’s gaze. With an agreeing nod, he pushed the transmitter forward. “Be my guest.”
Trey delicately lifted the sealed end of the plastic bag and pulled apart the zip-lock closure.
Livy gripped his upper-arm tightly. “Are you sure? This could be a trap.”
Trey took a deep breath and wrung his hands in tense preparation. “No, I’m not sure. And believe me, I’ve thought of that.”
Simmons looked back and forth between the two, studying their expressions. “What kind of trap?”
Trey milled over Arken’s scientific explanation for the massive explosion that took out the alien spacecraft and its crew, including Gunther, Livy’s biological father.
Trey condensed the discussion into a few words he and everyone else might understand. “The transmitters are capable of relaying massive amounts of energy. When they aren’t in use, they’re completely inert.”
Trey swallowed hard. “But, if you smash the receiver while it’s accepting a transmission, the transmitter will overload from the back-feed and fry whoever’s on the other end like they were hit by lightning.”
He paused in respectful silence. Gunther had known this fact all too well when he strategically placed himself alongside the ship’s engine reactor, knowing his violent death by overload would usher the ships destruction.
Trey looked around the vast, open area surrounding him. “Everyone back away. I don’t think they’ll bother destroying it if it’ll only take out one of us.”
Simmons pulled the drawer away. “I can’t let you risk yourself.”
Trey snagged up the bag, stone and all. “Someone’s gotta do it.” He stepped backward, distancing himself from the others. With his eyes on his friends, he slid his fingers into the bag and tapped the stone before he could change his mind.
He flinched involuntarily, expecting the tell-tale sting of a transmitter doing its work, but the cold stone was lifeless. He tried again, pressing a finger firmly to the smooth polished surface. “Well, it’s not in use.”
Livy gazed over the vault room. “They’re gone.”
Trey dumped the small stone onto his flat palm. “There’s only one thing left to do. I need to see who’s on the other side.”
Dylan took a step backward, distancing himself from what could follow.
Trey cocked a brow. “Gee, thanks for the show of confidence.”
Livy eased forward. “Maybe there’s another way.”
Trey shook his head. “Just stay back. I’ll be fine. I’ll drop it if they come close.”
He closed his eyes, both to lessen the visual shock and to block out the sight of Livy’s worried expression. Slowly, he tightened his grip around the transmitter. An instant later, his vision rocketed forward in a flash of white light. As quickly as it had started, his motion ended. The dense, fog-like veil dissipated, giving way to blackness.
Faint gray images slowly took shape within the darkness, swaying slightly side-to side. Below him, a vast rolling landscape stretched out in all directions, the peaks accentuated by the soft moonlight above. Stars breached the darkness and twinkled with a clarity Trey’s physical eyes had never captured.
Slowly, as Trey’s mind oriented the scene, the huge shadowy objects around him revealed their small scale. His vision floated only a few feet above a sandy desert surface. He lifted his sight-line to his standing height, and the dry grass and spiny cacti shrank to their meager proportions.
He turned circles with his bodiless vision. For miles in all directions, nothing but sand, rock, and sparse vegetation surrounded him. There were no aliens, no spacecraft, and no stone transmitters. He looked down at where his feet would be if he had them. There had to be a transmitter there to relay his projection, perhaps inches or feet below the surface.
Suspecting a hidden alien compound lay buried below him, he dove into the sand like a dog into water. Nothing but darkness filled his vision as he plunged deeper and deeper beneath the desert floor, until finally he’d had enough.
He opened his remote hand and instantly rejoined the world of his on-looking friends. “Nothing!” he said. “They aren’t there.”
He rolled the transmitter off his palm and into the plastic bag.
“What do you mean?” said Livy. “They have to be there.”
Trey shook his head. “I don’t think so. There must be another transmitter. This one leads to the middle of the desert. There is nobody, and I mean nobody, around.”
Simmons broke in. “Bozark, Arizona. That was the crash recovery site. We must have overlooked the other transmitter in the wreckage.”
Trey stared at the seemingly endless grid of locker doors. “How many crashes have you recovered?”
Simmons rubbed his salt and pepper whiskers. “Just this one. Most of the evidence down here is . . . well, all I can tell you is, it’s unrelated.”
Trey shook the bag. “But there has to be another one of these.”
A light flickered in the agent’s eyes as he stared at the shiny stone. “Or something like it.”
All eyes turned to the agent. He waved a finger in the air. “I’ve seen that shiny black material elsewhere.” His head snapped left and right, scanning the lockers.
Simmons spun on his heels and trotted toward the lockers. Vibrations lit up the air like invisible fireworks. The black-eyes knew the agent was onto something.
Trey followed toward a particularly large door on the bottom row. He wasn’t surprised when the agent pulled up in front of it and scanned his access badge.
Trey, Livy, and Dylan circled up beside Simmons as he tugged on the heavy door. When a small gap opened around the drawer, Dylan shoved his fingers into the opening and heaved in assistance.
The drawer pulled out into the room, bringing with it a massive dome-shaped object the size of a car engine. Flat on the bottom, the circular object was segmented with dozens of black nodules, giving the impression of the eye of a giant fly.
Trey’s jaw dropped. “Uh . . . yeah . . . you could have told us about that thing.”
Simmons put his hands on his waist and studied the piece of wreckage. “We recovered some unbelievable stuff, and we couldn’t make sense out of any of it.”
As vibrations continued to swarm the room, energy radiated from the black, domed object, bringing a metallic taste to the tip of Trey’s tongue and lifting the tiny hairs on his arms. “You need . . . you need to . . . destroy that thing.”
Bad Vibes
TREY BACKED FROM the massive alien transmitter, overwhelmed by the feeling of being watched by hundreds of cold, probing, black eyes.
Agent Simmons seemed oblivious to the invisible buzz surrounding him. The silver-haired agent spoke calmly, “And how do you propose we destroy it?”
Trey took another step back, pulling Livy with him. “That’s your problem, dude. I
agreed to help you find your spy. That thing is your freakin’ culprit.”
The flurry of vibrations thinned, replaced by a much stronger presence that even made brawny and confident Dylan step back.
In their midst stood the lifelike projection of a tall, gangly alien being, dressed uncharacteristically in the uniform of a commanding officer. The dark-green wool overcoat with padded shoulders, decorated heavily with colorful patches and gold bars, was purely for show, but its effect hit its target square in the eyes. Agent Simmons stiffened in an undue sign of respect.
“Agent Simmons,” the alien said in a masculine, authoritative voice as articulate and human as any professional radio host. “I’m General Harvey, and I would like to speak with you on behalf of my nation.”
Trey couldn’t hold back. “Don’t listen to his bullshit. He’s playing you. They don’t wear clothes. They’ve got no balls to cover.”
Simmons glared at Trey, admonishing the distasteful outburst. “I’d like to hear what he has to say.”
The pasty-skinned alien faced Trey with black glossy eyes, then turned up one corner of the lipless slit that served as its mouth. Trey’s gut lurched in contempt, watching the soulless beast mock him with artificial human mannerisms.
The alien official returned his gaze to the agent. “May I proceed?”
“Yes,” Simmons said. “Do continue.”
The alien unrolled his long boney fingers toward the transmitter. “Now that we can openly communicate, there are unprecedented opportunities for our worlds to benefit from a cooperative relationship. It would be a shame for you to destroy that communication channel.”
“With all due respect,” the agent said smoothly, “the communication has been rather one-sided.”
The alien conceded with a slight nod. “Until now.”
“And how might we benefit?”
“You said it yourself, Agent Simmons, you have made no sense of our technology. There are advancements well within your grasps if you will allow us to correct a few of your flawed scientific assumptions.”
Trey couldn’t believe the agent’s willingness to listen to anything spewed from the alien’s mouth. He signaled for Dylan to follow as he backed away slowly, coaxing Livy by the arm.
Misplaced Trilogy Page 24
