“Because you were open to the truth. Alex was closed to it.”
She didn’t want to believe it. She wanted to believe Alex wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t be reached.
“You’ve done all you could. Stop beating yourself up over things you couldn’t change.” After a moment of silence, he continued, “I came to tell you that the Earth has been delivered to An for a season. He will have the right to overcome many saints. A few will be spared, but if the days of An’s season weren’t shortened, no one would be left alive.”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means the world is about to face the greatest trial in human history. The restraints have been removed, and the fallen angels are given full reign until Jesus Christ returns. I’ve protected your journey up to this point, but I can’t do anything else for you. No matter what happens, know you made the right choice.”
When he vanished, she wasn’t surprised. He often spoke in cryptic words that she couldn’t understand, but she shivered as she contemplated what the world would look like with all restraints on evil removed. Maybe some things were better left not imagining. With an uneasy sigh, she returned to the cabin.
***
Keegan tapped her fingers on the chair, wishing she could revert to her natural form but An forbade it so she didn’t dare. She clenched her teeth and growled. If she was running the show, things would be more efficient. An couldn’t win the war in Heaven. What made the others in the room think he could win the war on Earth?
She glanced around the room, noting only those in the highest positions in the fallen angelic ranks had been invited to An’s precious little meeting. Whether people called him An, Satan, or Lucifer, she had one name that kept popping up: Incompetent. First, the botched war in Heaven, then the cross… Anyone could see that God was leading him right into that one. And because An had to crucify man’s Savior, the fallen angels were in real danger of losing possession of the Earth.
She felt her human persona begin to change into her Reptilian form and quickly stopped the transformation. It wouldn’t do any good to show her disgust toward their leader…at least not until they won the Earth. Then all bets were off, and she’d grab the first rank in the order of command. Her lips turned upward as she imagined everyone bowing down to her.
“Are you paying attention?” An asked from the head of the large table. He set his hands on the table and glared at her. “I could’ve knocked you down a rank for letting two believers go.”
She snarled. “There were angels of higher ranking order on the attack. I set the alarm but someone took too long.” She gave a knowing look at the Annunaki who went everywhere with An as a prophet and hissed.
The Annunaki hissed back.
“Enough!” An clasped his hands behind his back. “We need to stay unified. A house divided will fall, and if we’re not careful, our squabbles will cost us this war.” After a moment of silence, he nodded. “Good. We have the same goal, and God is coming back for those who are His, which means if there are none of His alive to come back for, then we win. I don’t care if it’s just one who belongs to Him. One is too many. We need to remove all of them or make them take the chip.”
The Annunaki who hissed at Keegan smirked in her direction. Keegan bared her fangs. She almost had Autumn. Autumn was within a few seconds of getting that implant. How was she to know Devon would pull a fast one on her and say a prayer? She grimaced. How she hated prayer! It was the biggest obstacle in her way.
She mentally went over the plan. First, she was to implant Autumn and then she was to hold Devon at level six until God handed over all rights to An to wage war on the saints and prevail. Then she could have killed him. But no. He had to pray, and those angels came right in to his defense. Every time she thought about it, she wanted to rip out a human’s heart and shove it down their throat, even if that human had an implant.
An tapped his fingers on the table in a slow, almost hypnotic, rhythm. “We’ll have to find ways to kill off more people, especially those who are hiding. We need a disease. One that is airborne and fatal. We need to open the internment camps and start shooting anyone who doesn’t have an implant. All must swear allegiance to me or die.”
Keegan cleared her throat.
An rolled his eyes but motioned for her to speak.
“Don’t forget Petra,” she said. “There are lots of unmarked people hiding out there.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I’ve been working on that.”
And doing a lousy job as usual. She held back the comment. How long would it be until the others woke up and dethroned An’s pompous, incompetent—?
“The super soldiers can find humans who are hiding in sparse locations,” an Annunaki said.
“Yes, but we can only use them to kill humans until it’s time for them to go to Megiddo.”
Keegan swirled in her chair. “If you’re so sure we can kill off all the humans who aren’t implanted with the chip, why worry about the final battle? You know, the big event.”
“Every plan needs a backup,” An growled.
“At least you thought that far ahead this time,” she muttered under her breath.
“What was that?” An yelled.
With wide eyes, she shrugged. “Nothing.”
“One more snarky retort from you, and I’ll knock you down a rank.”
She pretended the threat didn’t bother her. While she knew better than to antagonize him, there were times when she couldn’t help herself.
“We’re agreed then?” An asked the group. “We focus the next years on killing as many humans as possible.”
They nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Now, let’s do it.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Six months later (April)
Vanessa scanned the list of terrorists who’d been identified. It seemed to her that the list got longer and longer each time, no matter how many people had been rounded up and sent to the internment camps for re-education. If more people would just take the chip, it would make life so much easier, but some still refused even though most places refused to sell goods or services to those who didn’t have one. She couldn’t wait until the implant became mandatory. Then no one could buy or sell anything without it, and her workload might finally lighten.
A knock on her open office door made her look up from her desk. Her supervisor smiled. “Good news. We found you a partner.”
She didn’t share his enthusiasm. Ever since Devon supposedly “disappeared” at Dulce, she’d gone through two partners. One needed to be re-educated at the internment camp, and the other fled only to be tracked down and killed. Who knew how long her new partner would last? To humor her supervisor, she set the list down and stood up. “Great. Where is he?”
“Down the hall.” He motioned to her. “Come on.”
She followed him. Each time a new partner had been placed in Devon’s old office, a momentary sorrow welled up in her. Devon was no longer here. He probably made it to Alaska. It’d been his plan all along, and she hoped he made it. He was miserable at this job, so he shouldn’t be here.
And aren’t you miserable as well? She shoved the thought aside before she got a headache. Peering into the office, she watched as her new partner set a couple of books on the shelf lining one of the walls.
Her supervisor cleared his throat, and her partner turned around. “Alex, I’d like you to meet your partner, Vanessa Hayden. Vanessa, this is Alex Cameron.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Alex said, extending his hand.
Despite her unease, she shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“I’ll let you get settled in,” her supervisor began, “and if you have any questions, Vanessa knows the ropes.”
As he left, Vanessa experienced a slight wave of panic. What if Alex recognized her from Area 51?
Alex smiled and waved her over. “I don’t bite. Come on in.”
Vanessa stepped into the office and cleared her throat.
Devon said Alex wouldn’t remember her. She studied Alex, searching for any signs that he recognized her, but he turned back to his books and put up another one which was titled New World Order Guide. Other titles included Internment Camp Protocol, The Implant Manual, and Preparing for the Greys. “Wow. You really take this stuff seriously.”
“Of course, I do,” he replied. “I want to make sure the greys are defeated.”
“Oh?”
“I had a personal experience with one.”
Her stomach tensed. He had to remember that night at Area 51!
“Yeah. Right after the first vanishing, the grey appeared by my bed every night. It was horrible. I could feel its evil intent, you know? Then one night it told me to go to Area 51. Like a fool, I went. I wouldn’t have, but I thought I was going to find Marianne there. Marianne was my fiancée and one of the people who vanished.” He shrugged. “She wasn’t there. The grey alien was. Actually, there were a lot of grey aliens there.”
She gulped and crossed her arms, her fingernails digging into her skin.
“They took me to this room where a man injected me with a needle, and the next thing I know, all the aliens are hovering around me, probing me and running all kinds of experiments on me. After that, they let me go. I found a…a friend lying in the corridor and woke her up so we could go. Little did I know my friend set the trap.”
Vanessa’s eyebrows furrowed. Where was the part where she collected samples of his blood or helped Devon inject him with a tracking device?
Alex shrugged. “Had I realized my friend was in league with the greys, I would have left her in that tunnel to enjoy their form of entertainment.”
Vanessa blinked at his bitter tone.
“So anyway, I got out of there, and the Annunaki came and healed me. I’ve been a new man ever since.”
She waited for a long moment, judging whether he was leading her along or telling her the truth as he remembered it.
He went to his desk and pulled out another book to place on the shelf. This one read History of the Annunaki. Then he took out a picture from the box and set it on the desk.
Curious, she stepped forward and saw that it was a picture of An sitting in the Jewish Temple.
“He’s great, isn’t he?” Alex asked. “I’ve read all of his essays on the betterment of mankind, and he’s right on everything.”
She bit her lower lip but nodded. “So, that’s all that happened to you at Area 51?”
“Yep.” He motioned to his empty box. “I guess I’m officially moved in.”
Taking a deep breath, she said, “I should get back to my office. I have a list of terrorists to look into.” She paused. “Well, I guess we both do.”
“Great! I’ve trained long and hard to make people safe from the greys.”
Uncertain, she shifted from one foot to another. “Yeah, well, we do a little more than make people safe. We lead the super soldiers to those who are to go to internment camps. It’s not always pretty when it comes time to re-educate them,” she whispered, not wishing to voice more of her concerns in case she got a headache.
“They deserve it, Vanessa,” Alex said. “They’re the reason the greys have been allowed to do so much harm. People like that can’t be allowed to remain alive. They’ll turn us over to the greys if given the chance. My friend was more than willing to sacrifice me to them. She knew how much pain the grey caused me and pretended to care, but the whole time, she was working with the man who was in charge of the greys at Area 51. That’s how those people really are. You can’t trust them. If they refuse to swear allegiance to An by getting the implant, then there’s nothing we can do to help them.”
She broke eye contact with him in case he detected her guilt. Why he didn’t remember the fact that she was there at Area 51, she didn’t know, but there was no way she was going to tell him. With another deep breath, she said, “I’ll bring the list and we can start going through it.”
“Great!” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together.
She shot him a startled look, surprised he should be as eager to track down people as he was. But then, maybe he didn’t understand how horrifying it was to watch people denied food or given electric shocks or… She winced and rubbed her forehead. Pushing the memories aside of the awful things she’d done and seen and undoubtedly would again, she went to her office to retrieve the list.
***
One year later (April)
Hampton glanced at his wife as she cowered in the corner of the vacated house they’d been hiding out in for the past two months. As soon as the chip became mandatory, they’d fled to the mountains in Montana, thinking it might be safe enough. But they’d been wrong. The world government had its teeth into every part of the planet.
“Jay,” his wife whispered, reaching for his hand.
They turned their attention back to the window. There was no doubt about it. The super soldiers were creeping up the hill, maneuvering around the trees in an ungodly graceful formation. It was like watching shadows dance. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. No. They weren’t shadows. They were enhanced humans, even more powerful than those who took the implant. And they weren’t coming with good intentions.
He looked at his wife. “We won’t go alive.”
It was something they’d decided when they left Bismarck. Better to die fighting for their lives than to waste away under duress at an internment camp. He went to the kitchen counter and retrieved the machine guns and handed one to her.
“We take as many of those bastards out as we can, okay?” he asked.
Even as she cried, she went to the window and opened it. He hurried over to the other one and did the same. They got their guns ready. The super soldiers were still a ways off, but he saw no reason to delay the showdown.
“On the count of three,” he whispered, ignoring her sniffles. “One, two...three.” Then he pressed the trigger.
The couple aimed at all the super soldiers they could find through the trees. The soldiers fell down. Some even fell back down the hill. His heart raced the entire time as adrenaline pumped through his body. It was fight or die, and he was determined to live, but he understood there was a good chance he and his wife might not make it. But they had to try. A man who didn’t die trying to defend his family was no good.
The last super soldier fell, and they stopped shooting. Breathing hard, he glanced at his wife who turned her terrified eyes in his direction. Was that it? Did they make it?
He had only enough time to take a deep breath when something crashed in through the roof. His wife screamed, and he turned his machine gun on the super soldier that had landed on his feet. Hampton shot him and watched as the force of the bullets pushed the soldier back against the wall.
But another soldier came down from the ceiling, and though he had bullet wounds on his face and chest, he didn’t bleed. Gasping, Hampton glanced out the window and saw the soldiers getting to their feet. What’s wrong with those things? Why don’t they just die?
The soldier held its gun out to Hampton who did the only thing he could think of. He shot at the soldier again, this time hitting every major organ in his body. His wife joined him and fired her gun, but the soldier laughed while the other soldiers slipped in through the roof.
Hampton knew it was over before the soldier fired his own bullets. One hit Hampton’s wife and the other hit Hampton, and those two bullets accomplished what Hampton’s bullets couldn’t. Hampton and his wife fell lifelessly to the floor.
The super soldier lowered his gun before he took out his cell and dialed a number. “Yes, sir. We got two more enemies of the state. That’s number 45 on the list this morning. The man and woman refused to cooperate so we had to eliminate them.” He nodded and slipped the phone into his pocket. Turning to the others who were removing their bullets from their bodies, he said, “Next on our list is Dr. Michael Reyes.”
Nodding, the others followed him out the door.
***
Six months later (Octo
ber)
Alex approached the internment camp at Minot Air Force Base and showed the guard his hand. The guard scanned it and nodded. “Mr. Cameron, you’ve been approved to enter.”
Alex didn’t bother responding. Usually, he’d never visit a prisoner, but as soon as he heard this particular person’s terrorist activities were discovered, he had to come up to the base. He walked through the entrance at the electric fence and made his way to the front of the building where the second guard opened the door.
Without a glance in the guard’s direction, Alex strode through the doorway and down the hall.
“Sir,” a woman called out. “Sir?”
He ignored her. He didn’t have time for this!
She ran up to him and stood in front of him.
Gritting his teeth, he let out a low growl, not caring if she heard him or not.
“I need you to sign the register,” she said, motioning to the open book that rested on the front desk.
“Is your computer system so inept that when they scanned my chip, you weren’t able to bring up exactly who I was?” he snapped. “Is that how poorly things are run here? If it is, let me know so I can lodge a complaint with the main office in Bismarck.”
She paled and pressed a hand to her neck. “Oh, no. I didn’t mean to imply that we didn’t have your information brought up on the system when the guard scanned you. We did.”
“So why would you need my signature in a register?”
“It’s protocol.”
“It’s not my protocol. Do you know who I am? Do you understand the amount of influence I have? A single word from me, and I could have you on the terrorist list just like that.” He snapped his fingers and dared her to argue the point.
Gulping, she murmured an apology and scampered back to her desk with her head lowered.
Good. It was nice when others beneath him understood their place. Adjusting his tie, he proceeded down the hall, passing closed doors. He didn’t concern himself with the moaning and crying in the place. If the insubordinate fools would just take the implant, they could be freed to live their lives in peace and prosperity. But no. Most would rather face death. It wasn’t his fault so many people opted to side with the greys.
Return of the Aliens Page 28
