Simmons lifted his gaze from the black bugs-eye transmitter. “And what do you expect in return?”
Trey froze, knowing the answer but wondering what line of crap the alien would offer. If Simmons had listened to Trey’s story at all he also knew the parasitic breed of aliens depended on humans to perpetuate their androgynous race.
The alien blinked, clearly to show some semblance to humanity. “You have an abundance of natural resources that are extremely valuable to our people. But I have a more immediate request.”
The agent raised his brow in anticipation.
“You have something of ours that we would like you to return,” the general answered.
“Oh yeah?” said Simmons. “What might that be?”
The alien commander turned his black eyes to Trey. “Our children.”
Trey’s heart leapt to his throat. “Uh-uh. Don’t listen to him. Don’t let them take us.”
“Whoa, hold on there!” Simmons waved toward the lockers. “I thought you meant something we recovered. I can’t just agree to let you have these kids.”
The alien inflated his chest. “Oh, but you must. They are our property.”
“No,” the agent said sternly. “They’re people. Not bargaining chips.”
“Call them what you must, but they are products of our research and they belong to us.”
Simmons reddened as he took a commanding step toward the alien projection. “They are natural born citizens of the United States of America, and we will not surrender them to you under any circumstances.”
The alien’s artificially projected lips drew up at the ends to form an unnatural smile as unsettling as cursed plastic doll. A moment later, the general vanished along with his vibrations.
Trey suffered a loss of words. “Thanks,” was all he could manage.
Simmons continued to stare into the empty air before him, breathing heavily with anger, or fear, or some mix of the two.
Before Trey could breathe his first sigh of relief, the black dome-shaped transmitter came to life with a deep resonating hum.
Simmons spun toward the open drawer.
Livy gripped Trey’s arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
The hum strengthened, rising slightly in pitch.
“Yeah,” said Trey. “I don’t like the sound of this.”
Dylan stepped to the transmitter with bared teeth. “Let’s beat the life out of it.”
Livy let go of Trey’s arm and darted toward the exit. “Come on, guys.”
Trey backpedaled quickly to follow her, unwilling to turn his back on the ever-increasing hum.
Dylan scanned the room as he stood at a wide stance with both hands begging for something to strike with.
“Hurry,” Livy shouted, her voice farther away than Trey expected. He turned toward the exit and exploded into a sprint.
Ahead, Livy raced past the sealed elevator and burst through the emergency exit. A moment later, the spring-loaded door slammed shut, blocking her from sight.
Several paces behind her, Trey hit the bar on the exit door with all his strength and bounded into the stairwell, barely slowing. Livy’s heels disappeared around the corner two flights above. He spun on the handrail and hopped the stairs, skipping three risers at a time.
Flying around the corners, he caught glimpses of Livy as he gradually closed the distance.
The door slammed open below, echoing through the stairwell. The sound of hurried footfalls joined his and Livy’s. At the next landing, he nearly stopped, unsure why they were running, but adrenaline coursed through his veins, keeping him moving upward.
He rounded another corner, just in time to see Livy plow through an exit at the final flight.
He hit the door on the run, before it had closed enough to latch. Seconds later, he was alongside Livy, sprinting down the long dark corridor.
The hallway quickly gave way to the open atrium. Trey and Livy screeched to a halt in the center, both cycling their heads between the east and west glass doors. Behind them, Dylan blew past Simmons with long easy strides as the middle-aged agent panted heavily, slowing with each strained gallop. Simmons feebly raised an arm to wave toward the west door.
Trey grabbed Livy’s hand and sprang toward the exit. Moments later, he hit the glass door with an outstretched arm and slammed face-first into it. The door was sealed.
Livy yanked her hand free and dodged to the side. With unnecessary force, she slapped her palm against a green button mounted on the steel window frame. Dylan pulled up beside them as a box above the door buzzed and let out a loud click.
Trey pushed on the door and it swung open freely. He stepped outside into the night air and held the door for the others, breathing heavily with relief, as if being outside the building somehow changed the situation.
Livy and Dylan walked backward onto the sidewalk, facing the building as Simmons jogged up to the door. He nodded to Trey, red faced and sweaty. He passed through the door, then buckled over, gasping for air.
Trey let the door swing closed and urged the agent to stand, nudging his shoulder. “Come on.”
Simmons refused to budge, speaking toward the sidewalk. “You think it’s gonna blow up?”
Trey tugged at the agent more forcibly. “They may just be trying to scare us, but if it does, I don’t think we’re far enough away.”
Simmons rose with obvious effort and began a slow walk forward. “The place is built like a fortress; it should contain a blast.” he waved the others onward. “There’s a van on the other side of that building. I’ll catch up.”
Any ease Trey had felt at getting out of the building vanished. The thought of being tiny bits of ash spread across a crater the size of Rhode Island flooded his mind.
He shuffled toward Livy and Dylan. “Let’s move.”
At a brisk walk, they scurried off the sidewalk into the damp grassy lawn to shortcut the route to the door in the next building’s midsection. Trey looked back to check on Simmon’s progress. The out of shape agent had caught his second wind and marched along at a lively pace. Behind him, the dark vacated office building looked innocuous, adding to Trey’s fear. If the aliens were bluffing, he expected more drama.
Still looking back, he thudded against Dylan’s back like running into a parked elephant. He turned quickly to see what had stopped the big guy so abruptly.
Rising above the nearby building were two disk-shaped spacecraft, silhouetted against the moonlit clouds, no lights, no vibrations, no cloak, just dark objects partially blurred as they spun like tops.
With physics-defying agility, the disks separated and hovered over opposite ends of the lawn, pitting Trey and his friends between the two buildings.
“Keep going,” said Trey, looking to the locked door. He spun to Simmons, the man with the key. “Come on!”
One of the crafts eased forward and cut a straight path to the building, strategically placing itself above the door. The orange lights along the building’s roofline lit up the underside of the craft. An irised circular hatch in the center held perfectly still as the disk spun around it making only a whisper of a whir.
Trey watched the hatch, expecting it to open at any moment to snatch them up. “We’ve got to split up! Livy, go with Simmons while Dylan and I draw them away.”
“Wait a minute,” she said defiantly. “Dylan has a daughter, if anyone escapes, it should be him.”
Trey stomped his foot. “Sorry, but I don’t care. They kill the women. They may only torture us.” He couldn’t believe he’d spoken such atrocity aloud, but it wasn’t the time to soften his message.
Dylan looked to Trey with determination in his eyes. “They have to catch us first,” he said, dashing away.
Trey didn’t leave time for debate and bolted off in the opposite direction without looking back. The damp spongy grass absorbed the impact of his sneakers and offered little traction, slowing his stride more than he’d anticipated.
Tauntingly, a spacecraft closed in and matched his pac
e, casting a dim shadow as the surrounding grass twisted frantically from the displaced air. The whir of the ship grew louder as it descended, transforming to a deafening whistle. He didn’t look up, but he could envision the hatch spiraling open like the mouth of a beast, ready to swallow him whole.
Like a jackrabbit, Trey juked, changing directions instantly. The move temporarily threw off his predator, but within seconds it was back on him. He planted his foot for another sudden turn, but the wet grass squeaked beneath his rubber soles, and before he could right himself, he slid to the ground, flat on his back.
Closer now than he feared, the spacecraft countered and froze directly above him as he stared up in horror. He rolled to his front and scrambled to get to his feet. The grind of metal only a few feet above his head warned the iris was opening.
His ankle throbbed, twisted during the fall, but he ignored the pain and limped to a run. Turned around completely by his efforts to shake the aircraft, he saw Livy and Simmons ahead, motionless in the center of the yard. The other ship still guarded the building door.
Dylan hoofed it unchecked in the distance. The aliens seemed to concur that he could only go so far.
A jolt of electricity coursed through Trey’s body, stiffening every muscle like concrete. Unable to move his arms to brace for the fall, he watched the wet grass race toward him as he toppled headlong. Fortunately, the lightning strike that incapacitated him also numbed his nerves, and he flopped painlessly onto the ground as if he were rolled up inside a giant rug.
He lay on his side, unable to move, his heavy breaths rattling the wet grass around his face, the only sign he hadn’t died. The aliens wanted him alive. He knew that now, otherwise, he’d be a piece of burnt toast.
Every nerve throughout his body suddenly awoke. He screamed in agony as millions of hot needles pricked him from the inside out. He writhed in pain as each motion betrayed him with sparks of fire.
He pushed against the ground and rolled to his back. Once again, he faced the eye of his nemesis. A large black hole stared back from the underside of the beast.
Unwilling to accept his fate, Trey lifted onto his elbows and drug himself in the grass. The black hole followed his small motions until, by surprise, it didn’t.
The hatch began to swirl closed as the spaceship unexpectedly lifted away.
In a remarkable burst of speed, the alien craft shot straight up without the aid of jet boosters or rocket thrusts. Stars blackened momentarily, marking the ships trail as it angled away at high speed.
Trey whipped his head to the side and gazed toward his friends. Livy and Simmons stared up into the empty sky. The other disk was gone as well.
The walls of Trey’s chest suddenly shook with thunder. His clothes and hair blew back in a burst of wind. The roar of one fighter jet after another ripped through the night sky, buzzing dangerously close to the rooftops as they screamed by at extremely low altitude.
The rippling contrails traced routes into the sky as four U.S. planes fanned out in defense of the complex.
As the roar of the engines still echoed between the buildings, Agent Simmons bellowed over the fading rumble. “Give ‘em hell, boys.”
Livy spotted Trey and broke into a run toward him.
He drew his aching legs up and crawled onto his hands and knees. He sunk back onto his haunches and watched her rush toward him.
Loud pops turned their heads toward the building they had left so hastily. Livy stopped in her tracks and stared as the orange lights on the roofline exploded with sparks, one and two at a time.
An uncomfortable sensation tugged at Trey’s gut, a weight drawing him toward an invisible force.
Behind him came a screech of metal. He turned to see the flag pole in the center garden lean toward the building. As quickly as his brain could interpret the events, every window of the building shattered inwardly. Before the broken shards could hit the floor, the ground heaved and the entire building exploded, throwing metal, glass, and concrete twice as high as the building itself like a puzzle being pulled apart.
The fragmented building tumbled back to earth, crumbling in a horrendous cloud of dust that shook the ground. The wall of dust rolled across the grassy lawn and consumed Trey in an instant.
In complete blackness, he coughed and choked on the powdery air.
“Trey,” called Livy’s muffled voice in the blackness.
He cautiously took tiny steps in her direction, feeling the air with one hand, clutching his shirt above his nose with the other.
“I’m coming,” he said.
Like a beacon, Livy’s vibrations erupted, her light cutting through the cloud of dust.
He matched her signal and limped toward her until their light melded together into one bright glow.
He wrapped his arms around her and held on, never intending to let go.
Protection
FROM THE BACK seat of an unmarked sedan, Trey gazed out the window at the flurry of FBI agents, firemen, and utility workers gathered at the command center in heated exchanges about the supposed gas explosion that leveled the government building.
The tip of the morning sun breached the mountaintops, and a low-lying haze of lingering dust hung amid the nearby trees like a morning fog.
Trey squeezed Livy’s hand as the vehicle slipped through the exit gates without incident.
Agent Simmons turned to Dylan in the passenger seat. “You can be yourselves now.”
Dylan waved his fifty-year-old hand in artificial disappointment. “Ah, I kinda’ like being a fed.”
“Yeah, well, I’m afraid Frank might have something to say about you taking his place permanently.”
Trey turned to Livy and was happy to see he no longer held hands with Agent McDonnel.
Livy smiled reassuringly through her humanized projection. Her slightly altered eyes showed the worry of her huge blue originals behind them.
Trey tried to think positively, telling himself he would find his parents alive and well before assuming his new life, his new name, his new identity promised by agent Simmons.
If his parents weren’t already nabbed by the black-eyes, searching for him at home would nearly guarantee they would be captured soon. As much as it pained him, his best hope lay in his parents moving on without him, but that, he knew, simply would never happen.
He cursed his abilities under his breath. He could travel anywhere in the blink of any eye, but what good was it if he had no idea where to go?
Agent Simmons gazed back through the rearview mirror. “We’ll find them.”
Trey shook his head. “You don’t know my dad. He’s read everything there is about disappearing. Once he goes off the grid, he’ll be gone.”
Simmons turned up a smile. “That’s what they all think. Everyone leaves a trail eventually.”
Trey frowned toward Livy. “Well, that’s reassuring, don’t you think?”
“Hey, that’s different,” said Simmons. “You’ve got the agency backing you. If you slip up, we’ve got you covered.” He turned to Dylan. “But that doesn’t give you free reign.”
“Who me?” said Dylan, defensively.
“Yes, you.” He looked into the mirror. “That goes for all of you. You’ll be lying low.” He focused on Livy. “And not hopping around the country looking for others either. Leave that to us. And I promise you, I’ll be in contact if there are any developments.”
Livy tipped her head onto Trey’s shoulder without a word. Trey considered whispering that none of this was her fault, but saying it might somehow imply otherwise. He lifted his arm around her and sunk into the back seat.
Simmons looked over his shoulder with a perplexed expression, perhaps wondering what he’d said wrong. He adjusted in his own seat, settling in for the long drive ahead. “Get some rest. I’ll wake you when we’re close.”
Trey’s eyelids grew twice their weight in a matter of seconds. He forced a glance up into the orange morning clouds, unsure if they were being tracked or followed. Putti
ng his trust in his new allies, he gave Livy a quick squeeze and let his eyes give in to much needed sleep, a sleep free of dreams.
* * *
Dylan anxiously paced the floor of the small waiting room while Trey sat opposite Livy on matching green vinyl lounge chairs straight out of the seventies. The sterile environment and the rigorous security checks had given off an air of visiting prison inmates rather than reuniting with friends.
The door clicked open, turning everyone’s heads and springing Trey to the edge of his seat.
Agent Simmons stepped inside alone and lowered his head apologetically. “It’s just me again.”
Simmons eased the door closed until it latched. “They’ll be along any minute.” He approached Dylan and jutted out a wide friendly hand. “I’m headed home, but I wanted to stop and say goodbye before I leave.”
As the two shook hands, Trey rose to his feet and Livy mirrored his move. They circled opposite ends of the green sofa, and Simmons turned to greet Livy first.
“Thank you, Agent Simmons,” said Livy offering her hand stiffly, like a character in a play.
The agent accepted it with a similar showiness, adding a tiny grin. “It was my pleasure Ms. Livingston.”
Trey stuck out his hand, and Simmons took it loosely and placed his other hand on Trey’s shoulder. Casually, he guided Trey a few steps away from the others.
Barely out of earshot, Simmons lowered his voice. “I heard back on your blood tests.”
Trey stiffened, still clutched by the agent. “And what did it say?”
Simmons shook Trey’s hand through a long and dramatic pause. “Normal. They found no anomalies.”
“Seriously?” Trey said, his enthusiasm elevating his voice higher than intended.
Simmons smiled. “Oh, and your blood type is A positive.”
Bubbling inside, Trey looked over his shoulder to Livy and Dylan’s quizzical expressions. He smiled and let go of the agent’s hand to shoot them a reassuring thumbs-up. His signal failed to ease their wonder, but he shrugged it off, knowing he would fill them in later.
The doorknob rattled, and Zach’s tall, lean frame pushed through the doorway with his back turned. He held the door wide as Amy stepped inside the room toting baby Pearl on her hip like a big sister.
Misplaced Trilogy Page 25
