The Chosen: A Resurrected Series Novel

by S. M. Schmitz

  “Why?” Johnson asked. “None of you strike me as the compassionate type.”

  Noah spit more blood from his mouth and Aiden grabbed a fistful of his hair and forced him to look up at him. “Do that again, and it won’t be just blood you’re spitting out. Now answer his goddamn question.”

  Donut was definitely a bad idea.

  I wondered what he’d do to me if I threw it up all over this floor.

  Why had I thought I had such a crush on this guy? Being unbelievably hot couldn’t erase being a…

  “Monster,” I whispered.

  Aiden let go of Noah’s head and looked up at me, but I turned around and left the room. I stumbled down the narrow hallway with its cheap fake wood paneling, running my hands along the walls to keep my balance. My fingers trembled over the locks on the backdoor but finally turned them and I pushed the door open, spilling into the bright sunlight and fresh air and for a moment, I even forgot my earlier concerns about this neighborhood.

  I was out of that house. I was out of that kitchen and away from all of them. Away from him.

  Rotten boards formed a back porch and I lowered myself onto one of the steps and rested my head against the frame of the handle. I heard footsteps then the screen door screeching as it opened. I expected Aiden, either to assure me he wasn’t the monster I’d just accused him of being or accuse me of being a stupid woman, a weakling, and to remind me how he’d thought my presence here was a mistake all along.

  But it wasn’t Aiden. Mario sat beside me and looked out on the overgrown yard.

  I still didn’t know his first name. I’d asked him and confessed I kept calling him Mario in my head, but he’d just told me he liked the name Mario and wanted to keep it.

  “Aiden didn’t want you here,” Mario sighed.

  “I know,” I mumbled. My nausea hadn’t lessened and I tightened my arms around my stomach as if I could actually hold the contents in. “You think that makes any of this ok?”

  “I think the guy’s a piece of shit,” Mario confessed. “I don’t feel sorry for people like that.”

  “And who gets to decide what makes a person so worthless they can be tortured?” I asked.

  Mario snickered and nudged me gently with his elbow. “Liberal. I knew it.”

  “God,” I moaned. “This isn’t politics, Mario! These are people!”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “And I’m only technical, but I’ve seen what people are capable of doing.” He held a hand up to stop my argument before I could even voice it. “You’re going to give me that whole two wrongs don’t make a right line, and you think we haven’t heard that before? You try throwing the guy in a jail cell and giving him three meals a day and just waiting for him to talk. See how well that works for you.”

  I shook my head at him even though my temples pounded and it only made my nausea worsen. “If you were doing your goddamn jobs better, you wouldn’t need to throw guys like him in cells or torture them,” I hissed. “That’s why it’s called intelligence.”

  Mario raised an eyebrow at me, but he still didn’t seem particularly aggravated by my assault on him or his profession. “Now you’re an intelligence expert?”

  “Just… stop talking,” I groaned.

  “Ok,” Mario agreed. “But for the record, I’ve known Aiden for several years now. And he’s a good guy. If you hadn’t just witnessed him beating the shit out of Miller, you would have never guessed he’d do something like that.”

  I closed my eyes and inhaled a slow, deep breath but that aching pounding in my temples only worsened. “I know,” I said quietly. “Which is exactly what makes him so terrifying.”

  I heard footsteps approaching again and the screen door’s hinges creaking as it opened. I didn’t turn around to see who had come now.

  “Here,” Aiden said. I heard Mario catch something and opened my eyes to see him holding a cell phone. “Dietrich wants to talk to you.”

  I twisted around to look at Aiden, whose beautiful blue eyes quickly flickered in my direction before returning to Mario. He shook his head then slammed the screen door, but I heard him mumble, “I told you this was a bad idea.”

  Mario lifted the phone to his ear and I watched him, disbelieving because I knew Aiden had called him and I knew my one chance at helping with this insurrection had been ripped away from me simply because I dared to question their methods. Mario’s dark brown eyes were fixed on mine as he took a deep breath.

  “Sir?”

  I couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation. I hoped that was a sign Dietrich wasn’t yelling, which meant no one was in trouble. Something told me Dietrich wasn’t a yeller and he had a way of scaring the shit out of his employees through quiet reserve far more than thunderous threats.

  “Yes, Sir. Either one. She already knows Johnson though. Maybe somebody should just replace him?”

  More silence as I waited. Replace him?

  They’re getting rid of me. Dietrich’s ordering them to take me somewhere out of Atlanta and get me out of the way. I’ll never find out what they did to Mason or why they’ve spent the past six years trying to kill me.

  I still don’t know what possessed me to grab the phone out of Mario’s hands. He made a noise of protest but I slapped his hand away and pressed the phone to my ear. “You are not getting rid of me!” I yelled.

  “Um… ow. You don’t have to yell in my ear, Bella,” Dietrich responded.

  My head agreed with him. My forehead throbbed along with my temples now.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” I said quieter. “How would Lottie like it if you decided she couldn’t participate in this insurrection?”

  “Well, it was kind of her idea, so I doubt that will happen. Besides, you didn’t want to do this. You only agreed because you wanted to see what’s on those files, too. But they’re not that important.”

  I laughed, or at least I think I laughed, and let my head fall against the railing again. “They’re not that important to you because your wife’s at home. My husband is dead.”

  Dietrich was quiet for so long, I thought he’d changed his mind about sending me to one of their hideaways and was instead planning on my transfer to some place less hospitable. Like some place in Cuba.

  “What if we’re wrong?” he finally asked me. “What if we put you through all this and there’s nothing on those files worth retrieving? What if you don’t get the answers you need about Mason?”

  I opened my eyes again and stared across the yard, the tall, crisp green grass with dots of yellow dandelions scattered throughout. “Do you believe in a heaven, Dietrich?”

  “No,” he answered, although my question seemed to surprise him.

  “Me either, but I’m not from here. Mason did because Liam did. And just in case he was right and some part of him is still alive somewhere, I owe it to him to try. I drove him away. He’d still be alive if I’d just accepted…”

  I took a deep breath and I heard Dietrich take one, too. “Ok, Bella. But… if you don’t like what’s going on, just walk out. Don’t interfere from now on, all right?”

  I thought about making a smartass remark as to how fragile the male ego must be if calling one guy a monster was interfering, but since he’d actually agreed to let me stay, I kept my mouth shut and just promised him I’d do my best.

  I disconnected and handed the phone back to Mario and tried to flash him a triumphant smile, but my head was still killing me and my stomach was still churning and begging me to fertilize the lawn with the remnants of a half-eaten donut. I settled for a quick, “I’m staying,” instead.

  “I noticed,” he responded. “Aiden is not going to like this.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “You called him a monster in front a suspect, stormed out of the room, then got his boss to overrule him. Yeah, he’ll totally get over it.”

  I. Am. So. Screwed.

  Mario sighed and patted my shoulder. “You’re lucky I like you, Belladonna. I’ll go tell the Monst
er you’re staying.”

  “You’re not funny, Mario,” I retorted. I smiled at him and added, “And thank you.”

  Mario made a big gesture out of crossing himself before entering the house and I snorted and faced the yard again. A hot summer breeze ruffled the weeds that covered the lawn and I closed my eyes and whispered, “Oh, Mason. If you can hear me, what should I do now? Please tell me.”

  A door slammed next door and I jumped and opened my eyes, my heart thudding so quickly it caused that throbbing pain in my head to feel like it was about to burst open. A man, thin and sickly and unable to walk straight, stumbled onto his back porch and down his stairs. I heard him kicking aluminum cans then the sound of a garbage can lid falling as he tossed something inside.

  That hot summer breeze picked up again and blew my long blonde hair away from my face. I could almost feel Mason’s fingers as they tucked my hair behind my ear as we sat on our patio after work, enjoying the sunset and a drink and one of those rare moments where we could pretend we were just best friends and that’s all we’d ever been and we were fine with that being our only future.

  I closed my eyes as I remembered his boyishly handsome features laughing, those green eyes dancing as I retold some story from my day. I couldn’t place this specific memory anymore. In it, the wind suddenly picked up and wrapped my hair around my face and Mason pulled it away, tucking it behind my ear and smiling at me. “On any planet, you will always be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, Bella.”

  Something hot and wet trickled down my cheek and I reached up and touched the tear that had escaped, this betrayal of the depth of my pain and sorrow over the death of a man I tried not to think about anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “God, Mason, I’m so sorry.”

  Chapter 8

  Mario sat across my hotel bed from me, the pizza box between us, and he wrinkled his nose and picked another banana pepper off his slice. “You have good taste in donuts,” he said. “Not so much in pizza.”

  I smiled but I hadn’t felt like eating all day, and it had nothing to do with Noah Miller. I hadn’t gone back inside that house, and I’d hardly talked to Aiden, or rather, he’d hardly talked to me. I couldn’t shake this feeling that I was responsible for Mason’s death, and if I’d only tried harder, if I’d only accepted him as he was and accepted that meant a different life for me, too, he’d still be alive. Instead, I’d driven him away; I’d overwhelmed him with guilt until he finally left in order to give me some peace.

  Mario was the closest thing I had to a friend now, so I tossed my slice of pizza in the box and took a deep breath. “I know you’re going to tell me what you think I want to hear, but I need you to tell me what you really think, ok?”

  Mario lowered the pizza in his hand and blinked at me. “Uh… that sounds like one of those trick questions women ask and there’s no right answer to.”

  “No,” I insisted. “I just need to know what someone else thinks. Is Mason dead because of me?”

  Mario made a choking noise so I looked up at him. He cleared his throat and asked, “Did you pull the trigger?”

  “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “And you know it’s pointless to blame yourself for the choices other people make. He could have stayed. He brought you here. Didn’t he feel obligated to take care of you?”

  I lifted a shoulder and picked at the pizza to give my fingers something to do. “I didn’t need anyone to take care of me.”

  “Clearly. But you were still alone.”

  “He didn’t mean to make things worse. I know that. He would have never done that to me.”

  “And you would have never intentionally driven him away or put him in danger. You kept his secret for two years because you loved him.”

  “I miss him,” I said softly.

  I could feel those hot, traitorous tears stinging my eyes and the last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of a guy like Mario. He was a nice guy, but he was one of them. A CIA agent who thought it was ok to abduct suspects and torture them until they got the information they wanted from them – whether that information was legitimate or not.

  I never bothered asking him how often they got bad information from someone just because they were inflicting pain. In the end, it’s not like I had the power to change an entire agency and the way they operated. I could only control what I involved myself in and I was determined to show them I could be better than this. In some small way, I had to break this cycle of violence or nothing would ever change.

  Mario shifted uncomfortably at the foot of my bed and tossed the rest of his pizza slice into the box. “I, um…” He wiped his fingers on his jeans and tried again. “Look, I lost my father a few years ago. Maybe it’s not exactly the same, but sometimes, I’ll be sitting in the blind before the sun’s even up and I swear I hear his voice. I think it’s just our way of holding onto someone, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

  “Guess it doesn’t make this any easier that some people are being such assholes about it,” he added.

  I nodded and put the banana peppers Mario had pulled off his slice of pizza onto mine. “He doesn’t like us, does he? Immigrants, I mean.”

  “Why do you think that? Everyone I’ve met has thought it’s pretty damn cool that we have honest to God aliens living among us.”

  I smiled at my pizza and corrected him. “Half-alien. Physically, we’re identical to humans. We are human.”

  Mario nodded and faked a serious, introspective expression. “Yeah, a dead one.”

  I snorted even though it was totally morbid and disrespectful to joke about what we did in order to live on other planets. But he was kind of right, too. If anyone were to examine my DNA, it would appear exactly like Chloe’s, regardless of what I’d done to bring this body back to life.

  To be honest, we didn’t even really know how we did it. I didn’t remember reviving this body. Mason couldn’t remember reviving Liam’s. The last thing either of us remembered before claiming them was the closing of the van doors after the bodies were stolen from the morgue. There are no more memories until I woke up in that room in Waco, Texas as the woman who would take the name Bella.

  “Hey,” Mario said gently, although his voice had gotten that nervous, uncomfortable edge to it again. He was good at wisecracks and talking about games and science fiction, not trying to comfort a woman who had experienced something this traumatic. “I was just joking.”

  “I know,” I assured him. “Sometimes, I wonder how our lives would have played out if we’d stayed home. Assuming no one ever found out about us, he would have been pressured into a marriage he didn’t want and I would have watched, forever alone and heartbroken. I guess on either planet, not much is different. Maybe fate just caught up to us and insisted I couldn’t escape it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mario said. “Well, ok, up until recently, I would have insisted there were no aliens either, but I’m still pretty sure there’s no such thing as actual fate and destinies and shit like that.”

  “Do you think the men who took Mason’s money just wanted to punish us?” I asked. Of course it wasn’t a question Mario could answer, but for the past eight years, I’d been trying to figure out how everything could have gone so wrong, how the impossible could have occurred. “Mason brought a woman here he shouldn’t have. The classism is much stronger than the sexism on my planet, and he fell in love with the wrong girl. So they took his money and did this to us. And then they took Lottie’s money and messed with her head to punish her for trying to escape, too.”

  “I… don’t have a clue. But that sounds like a conversation you should have with Dietrich. He knows a lot more about all of this than I do, and he’s the smartest guy I know. If anyone can help you piece it together, it’s him.”

  I nodded to agree with him, but a knock on my door kept me from brainstorming ideas we had no way of proving. After all these years, it almost seemed surreal that I was abl
e to talk about Mason at all. Mario offered to open the door for me and I watched his lanky figure as he bounced to the door then opened it.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Aiden demanded.

  “Eating pizza. What the hell are you doing here?” Mario answered.

  Aiden sighed and pushed him aside. Apparently, he’d decided he might as well embrace the whole monster persona. “Out,” he ordered without even looking in Mario’s direction.

  “Hey,” I protested. “This is my room. You can’t barge in here and order anyone to do anything.”

  Aiden turned those uniquely blue and hazel-green eyes on me and a nervous chill ran down my spine. “I can actually. He’s under my supervision.”

  Mario didn’t bother telling me goodbye. He just left my room and closed my door quietly behind him. I scowled at Aiden and waited. Whatever he’d come for, I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  “You went behind my back and talked Dietrich into letting you stay on this assignment. What the hell for? You don’t want to be here and you’re only getting in the way,” he hissed.

  That nervous chill morphed into indignant anger. I stood up and glared back at him. “You went behind my back and called him in the first place! He’s the one who sent you to get me and wanted me to help find these damn files! I agreed. Just because I don’t like the way you treat people doesn’t mean I’m incapable of doing what I agreed to do.”

  Aiden crossed his arms and scoffed, “Yeah, it kinda does. What are you going to do when we try to get into this place and run into guards?”

  “I don’t know!” I exclaimed. “That’s your job!”

  “Exactly,” Aiden sneered. “And you’ve got a problem with the way I do my job. You’re going to get yourself killed, Bella. Nothing you do now is going to bring him back.”

  I bit my tongue – literally, I mean – to prevent myself from calling him more names I wouldn’t be able to take back. My hands trembled with rage, but I couldn’t help second-guessing myself now. Maybe Aiden had been right all along. And maybe I was going to screw everything up for everyone, or worse, get them all killed. What did I know about breaking into a highly secure building? Or stealing sensitive files on a tiny device that could fit in my pocket?