by Devyn Quinn
The good professor’s name was Terrence Forque, pronounced like the eating utensil. The grand tour of a captive audience was his forte and he took ample advantage to remind them several times that only the best of the best walked these hallowed hallways.
Officially, the building was known under the code of A-51 ASD. What it meant, few knew.
Now Callie knew.
Area 51, Alien Sciences Division. Location, just outside Belmonde, Virginia. The U.S. government didn’t explicitly acknowledge the existence of the A-51 ASD facility, nor did it deny it. The area surrounding the facility was permanently off-limits both to civilians and normal air traffic, and protected by radar stations. Uninvited guests were met by armed guards. Deadly force was authorized if violators attempting to breach the secured area failed to heed warnings of security to halt.
“The project dates back to nineteen forty-seven, with the advent of the crash in Roswell, New Mexico,” Forque explained. “At that time we encountered conclusive proof of aliens and their existence among us. This in turn prompted then-president Truman and J. Edgar Hoover to implement a program geared toward the study of alien species and technologies as they were discovered. Needless to say, we have uncovered evidence of many types of aliens among us. Most, I am glad to say, are benign.”
An unpleasant weight settled in the center of Callie’s chest. She’d learned from her career in the bureau there were times when an agent wasn’t told every detail about an assignment. The know-how and determination were usually all the government felt it necessary to arm agents with. Sometimes having the knowledge was more of a burden than knowing nothing.
Callie almost wished to go back to blissful ignorance. Any feelings she’d foolishly allowed to develop for Iollan Drake needed to be squashed, something easier said than done. She needed her work. And the focus of climbing the ladder in the area of national security was certainly a goal to reach for. She had to keep that goal in sight and stop permitting memories of a hot man and hotter sex from overriding her good sense.
“Is Drake one of these Roswell aliens?” she asked.
Forque shook his head. “Not of the species found that day. They call themselves the Niviane Idesha, which we have determined to mean shifting spirit. From the history we’ve gathered, these are interdimensional travelers. Their universe of origin is not known, nor do we know exactly how long they’ve been among humankind. Our estimates date back to the time of Christ, give or take a BC or an AD, though we’ve only been aware of them through the last few decades. They’ve integrated well into human society—almost to the point of invisibility.”
“Makes sense,” Paul Norton piped up.
Lumbering along at top speed, Forque nodded amiably. “They’re notoriously slippery and require very delicate handling once in captivity. We’ve lost several nice specimens. They don’t seem capable of surviving long in an artificial environment. Overall I find them to be an entirely unique and fascinating species, very intelligent and crafty.”
“And dangerous,” Roger Reinke said, frowning. “Not only can they change their physical form, they can shift energy, as well as erase memory. One talent would be bad enough. Given all three, plus a hunger for blood, and this is nothing we need running around unmonitored.”
Callie glanced at Reinke. “You knew all along what he was and you let me fuck him. Thanks, Roger. I appreciate your putting my ass in the sling and my neck on the line.”
Reinke gave a good-natured grin. “If we didn’t think you could handle it, you wouldn’t have gotten into the game to begin with.” He shrugged. “Besides, you’d already fucked him. Or did you think we didn’t know that when Faber gave you a free pass?”
Scowling, she pushed out a breath. “Christ. You knew?”
The corner of Reinke’s mouth lifted at the irony. “We’re the FBI, honey. We know who, what, where, when, why, and how.”
It occurred to Callie that the country was truly becoming a surveillance society, where CCTV cameras and listening devices were used to track people minute by minute. “Nice to know the government screws its own.” The words leapt out before she checked them.
Politeness flew out the window. “The government reams everyone. You knew the risks when you came onto the job. From what I heard, it seemed to me you enjoyed yourself quite nicely.” A single eyebrow rose in mischief. “As for that bastard comment…”
She stared at him, scandalized. “Stuff it, Roger,” she growled. “You might have warned me he’d be drinking my blood. I didn’t sign up to be a donor.”
“Seems to me that you didn’t discourage him,” Reinke said. “Anyway, you earned your badge to the ASD.”
That career triumph seemed bitter and empty now. Instead of feeling proud of herself, regret and remorse filled her. And she didn’t even know why. She just felt hollow inside. When she wasn’t feeling bloated and queasy.
Stress.
Professor Forque ignored them all, bestowing a patient smile on what he considered a slower and lesser species than himself. “This is your new headquarters now,” he reminded with a slight hint of impatience. “One of the United States’ most sensitive areas of research.”
Norton just looked miserable. If his chin dropped any lower to the floor, he’d trip over it. Clearly he wasn’t happy with his new adventure in the land of science fiction turned science fact.
Leading them into an elevator, Forque pushed the DOWN button. Callie caught her breath when the car plunged straight down, passing several floors by the look of the digital readout on the wall. “We actually go a quarter of a mile underground.”
Callie pressed a hand against her queasy stomach. The urge to vomit had never been stronger. “I feel every inch of it, too.”
She clamped her teeth together, wondering if her breakfast of eggs, sausage, and hotcakes was going to come back on her. At the time, she’d been starved, shoving food into her mouth like a refugee who hadn’t seen a decent meal in months. No amount of food seemed hearty enough to fill the hole in her middle.
Two uniformed guards manned the desk. They flipped open a log, once again checked IDs, and entered the names into record.
Callie scanned the floor. Her stomach did another backflip. This place had a curiously familiar feel.
Forque outpaced them. He navigated them down the hall, pointing and saying. “I’ve prepared a short visual lecture on the Niviane Idesha—their biology and how we are faring in the area of weaponry to combat their spread among the general population. I believe you will find this very interesting.”
“No doubt,” Callie muttered under her breath. At this moment all she was feeling was surreal, as if she’d stepped into a funhouse that had no way out. Less than a month ago, she was manning a desk in the Siberia of cold cases, unhappy in her exile from the coveted inner circle of fieldwork. Now she was smack in the middle of a nice fat government conspiracy.
Never believe anything until it has been officially denied. For the good of the public, the government would marginalize, intimidate, and silence the truth.
In this case, maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea.
Time would tell.
Professor Forque briskly led them into a morgue.
This one was no different than so many others she’d seen before. Even the body stretched out on the gurney looked familiar. Too familiar.
Fuck.
Callie wasn’t in any mood or frame of mind to be viewing yet another corpse.
A tiny Asian woman with beautiful almond-shaped eyes and a sleek fall of blue-black hair greeted them. Wearing a pair of green scrubs, she was in the process of sliding on a pair of rubber gloves.
“Agents, meet Doctor Akemi Yuan, head of our pathology department,” Forque said. “She’s been leading and developing our knowledge of the Niviane Idesha.”
Doctor Yuan didn’t offer a hand, holding up her gloved ones. “Just getting this one ready for you,” she said by way of an apology.
“Please proceed,” Forque urged, eager to show off t
he specimen.
Akemi Yuan countered with an easy grin. “It’s not like he’s going anywhere, Terrence.” She nodded to her assistant, who tugged the white sheet off.
The body was a naked male, early twenties. Lank hair, staring eyes, jaw locked in a painful scream. Hands and arms were contorted, back slightly arched.
Norton winced. “Jesus, he didn’t die easily, did he?”
Doctor Yuan shook her head. “Unfortunately most of them don’t survive the extraction.”
Eyebrows shot up.
“Extraction?” Callie asked, swallowing to keep the rise of vomit at bay.
Yuan nodded toward a nearby glass jar. “Agents, meet one of the Niviane Idesha.”
All eyes turned. A sickening sight greeted them. A snake-shaped squiggly mass having the transparency of a jellyfish floated in formaldehyde. Wide eyes, big jaws, a set of fangs to die for. Bristly ridges along its spine gave it the appearance of a porcupine mated with a reptile.
Everyone moved in for a closer look. It looked nothing like anyone would ever imagine an alien would: dwarflike, erect, vaguely human-shaped, gray-skinned aliens with large craniums, large egg-shaped eyes, small mouths and noses, and long, nimble fingers. No. This thing was entirely different.
Norton wrinkled his nose and said, “It’s all fucking fangs.”
The spectacle of the creature in the jar made Callie’s skin crawl. A wave of dizziness left her swaying. She moved away from it. Oddly enough she wasn’t disgusted by the idea of what the opaque lifeless thing represented. She was repulsed that scientists wanted to cut it out and put it on display.
“Holy shit.” Norton looked horrified. “Is this for real?”
“Very real,” Yuan said crisply, eyes taking on an emerald gleam, that of the scientist in her element. “The symbionts are alien life-forms inhabiting the base of the neck of the human host. When a host and a symbiont are joined, the resulting individual is an entirely new being. When the symbiont dies, the host also dies. This is our first successful extraction of a symbiont. Unfortunately, their cellular structure begins to deteriorate almost immediately upon death. To date we’ve not extracted one usable strand of DNA.”
The feeling that something wasn’t right was strangely, weirdly strong. “How does the symbiont merge with its human host?”
Doctor Yuan shook her head. “We don’t quite understand the complete process yet. What we do know is that the guest is fully capable of rewriting the cellular DNA of the host, altering the human biochemistry into an entirely new structure. Once the merging is complete, symbiont and host are essentially a single being. A being, I might add, with some dangerous abilities.”
That word again. Dangerous.
The uneasiness in the pit of her gut was impossible to ignore. “How come we consider these things antagonistic toward humans when they are still an entity unknown to most of the public?”
That got everyone’s attention. Roger Reinke’s lips pressed into a thin line. Norton’s gaze remained riveted on the jar and its gross content. Forque crossed his arms and looked pissed. Yuan looked insulted.
“We’re food to them,” Yuan said, speaking as if she were addressing a small and rather dim child. “Their diet consists of a single element: blood.”
Electricity rippled through the room.
An uncomfortable silence followed, the agents holding their collective breath at the sideshow freak in the jar.
Bile rushed up again, burning the back of Callie’s throat. The room around her felt unbearably hot even though the temperature hovered around a cool sixty. She swallowed it down. The thought that something like this lived inside Iollan Drake made her throat, and heart, ache. And her body. The steely planes and solid muscle sending her into the throes of rapture didn’t belong to a human being. Thinking of the way he’d touched her, claimed her, made her throb all over.
Knowing what she knew now, would she sleep with him again?
In a heartbeat.
The feeling of doubt kept nagging.
Callie glanced at the tiny Asian woman. “Having been in the position of donating a few pints, I have to admit I don’t remember the experience as unpleasant or threatening.”
Yuan swooped in with her hammer, determined to nail down the facts. “Most likely because they have the ability to alter memory. Think about it, agent. Would you like the idea of one of these things invading our political leaders? These things spread as easily as a virus, invisible and almost undetectable.”
“Everything has an agenda, and we feel this species is no different,” Forque added in the authoritative manner of the expert. His expression turned grave as he went on. “For them it’s at a primal level: survival. And at what cost to human lives? We suspect the clans we’ve detected are only the tip of the iceberg. These things are spreading worldwide even as we speak.”
As if looking at the victim of an accident, Norton couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away. “This is getting spooky,” he mumbled, visibly shaken. “I mean, if these fuckers look like us and act like us, how the hell do we tell them from us?”
Doctor Yuan beamed at the brighter pupil. “We’ve identified a couple of telling traits of symbiotic possession inside the human body. One is a prominent ridge of scarring at the base of the neck—the entry of the symbiote into the body.”
“So we just go around asking to see people’s necks?” Norton asked sarcastically. “That ought to simplify things.”
Callie suppressed a snicker. Norton had a habit of shifting into asshole mode when displeased with the answers he received. In Norton’s mind, things had to make sense. Things like this most definitely didn’t make sense to a Jew from Brooklyn.
Doctor Yuan lost her spark. “Another thing we’ve identified in hosts is an unusual amount of scarring on the neck and shoulder area. These things have a distinctive bite and leave an equally distinctive scar. Agent Whitten, I am sure, can show you hers if you have any doubts.”
Callie blushed, feeling every bit the sore thumb. She’d offered her neck more than once. Willingly.
“A host—or bloodmate—is usually chosen from the pool of former victims,” Doctor Yuan continued.
“Like anyone would volunteer to be fucked over by that thing.”
Callie frowned daggers.
Norton caught her displeasure and shrugged, giving a weak smile. “Sorry. Present company excluded.”
Callie decided to gather her own information. Norton could taste his own shoe leather later. “I’ve seen three of these things up close. In all three instances I noticed the eyes to be a brilliant coppery shade with an almost oval, nearly animalistic, iris.”
“That’s the most telling trait we’ve identified so far,” Doctor Yuan confirmed. “Another is their extreme sensitivity to sunlight. They can’t take it, at any level.”
Professor Forque broke in, speaking with a certain grim amusement. “Put them in the sun and they fry like eggs.”
Callie grimaced. Empty hands opened and closed. She had no doubt that Forque hadn’t tested the theory on more than one specimen. Gruesome thought. “Sounds horrible.”
Forque shrugged as if she’d commented on nothing more than the day’s weather. “Another way we can identify their clusters is through electromagnetic spectrum. In their shifting of energy, the Niviane Idesha produce nonfatal levels of electromagnetic radiation due to accelerated electrons.”
Callie went still as a thought occurred to her. “So shouldn’t these things be of more interest to the military?”
Doctor Yuan reassumed control. “If it flies, they get it. If it’s ground bound, we get it,” she explained dryly. “Our main area of interest lies in their longevity and ability to shift. If we can rework their DNA to suppress the blood hunger, imagine what a boon that would be to humankind.”
Sounded more like a curse to Callie. More along the lines of the splitting of the atom than the fountain of youth. Abilities like that in the hands of humankind didn’t bode well. People were stupid, destructive
, and irresponsible. Scientists with a God complex in particular.
Norton’s frown returned. Damned if he wasn’t going to start up again. Callie didn’t blame him.
Roger Reinke’s gray eyes narrowed. A scowl hardened his features into something sadistic. “We’ve developed weapons that take care of these things just fine.” He pressed his agents with a look conveying a great deal more than mere words. “We’re going to do whatever it takes to stop these things. We have to stop their invasion into the population if at all possible. If we have to use deadly force, then so be it.”
Oh, no.
Hearing his words, Callie felt the sick clenching nausea seeping into her guts turned into sharp shards of ice. The hair on her arms stood up. She turned away from the thing in the jar. Straight into the body on the gurney. A face filled with fear met her gaze. The fear looked familiar. Too familiar.
She froze. A frisson of something cold and acidic spread through her. Her gaze immediately whipped toward the corpse’s neck. Recognizing the dotted line of shallow punctures circling his neck, her heart leapt inside her rib cage. The only difference between this body and that of the woman she’d viewed less than a week ago were the eyes. Where the female’s had been a natural color, the pupils of the male’s eyes looked as stony and white as pure marble.
The girl had been seen with Drake. Agents were tracking both. Two and two came together as to why the mutilated body would be dumped back on the streets.
The girl was human. Wholly human.
Petrified by her discovery, breath deserted her.
This isn’t right. It can’t be.
Needing to confirm her suspicion, Callie looked at the wrist of the corpse. Sure enough, there it was. That small dotted line of punctures. Ditto, the opposite wrist. Identical in every way. Except the eyes. That gave them away. The eye color. The girl’s were brown.
Her pulse shot into hyperspace. The whole scene was strangely surreal. This corpse bore identical damages to other corpses she’d viewed, the most recent purported to be a victim of Drake’s.
