Unrest

by Wendy Higgins

  Dear God, it was true. “Yes,” I whispered, then put my free, trembling hand over my mouth. I remembered the woman whose stress I’d treated at her house—the case that was taken over by FBI—she hadn’t been insane. They’d really landed in her field. Was it possible that so much of what we thought was crazy alien lore was true?

  The people around me stared at me, but I couldn’t speak.

  “More will come this summer,” Top said. “And the rest will arrive every year or two for the next fifty years.”

  “This is fucking crazy,” someone whispered with terror from behind me.

  My sentiments exactly. Because even if we could somehow miraculously overcome the ones who were here, we were being steadily invaded. It would be an ongoing war. Mine and Remy’s interlocked hands shook with tremors, and her breathing was still audibly loud and fast.

  On her other side, Tater muttered, “No. Fuck that.” He pushed his seat back and bent his head forward as he grasped the table, like he might pass out. Remy put her hand on his back. Several people stood and began to pace behind us, grabbing their heads, trying to make sense of the insensible.

  Top never stopped to coddle us. “As far as our intelligence, two spacecraft from Bael have been secured during this one hundred years. The one from 1947 in Roswell was originally kept at Nellis Air Force Base, but seeing as how Area 51 became public knowledge and fascination, the entire enterprise was quietly moved up here to Dugway. Much of it was a mystery that our brightest scientists and engineers could not figure out. It wasn’t until the landing in Nevada two months ago that FBI were able to capture one of their males and we began to finally get answers. Unfortunately, by the time we figured out how to make him talk, it was too late. The bombs were dropped.”

  They captured one? My brain was going to explode. This man who I respected, who was not prone to jokes, was standing before us talking about UFOs and aliens in that matter-of-fact tone. Aliens! Aliens are real! My brain. My brain. Oh, my God, I felt light headed. I so badly wanted to reject all of this information.

  A shuffle of quick footsteps in the back had us all turning to see one of the guys running for the door, followed by his retching sounds in the hall. Remy squeezed my hand and I pulled her chair closer to me. I caught Tater’s gaze over her shoulder and he looked as lost and sick as I felt.

  When the guy shuffled back in, pallid and sweaty, Top continued.

  “Physical attributes of the Baelese. At one time they were much like humans, but over time their bodies evolved to be more efficient. Most of them are born with three or four arms.” Yes! The woman who’d witnessed the landing said this! First Sergeant surged forward, ignoring our gasps and whispers. “That is why we checked each of you when you arrived. Apparently the Baelese who infiltrated human ranks surgically removed their extra arms, though the scarring is so minimal it’s barely noticeable. Moving on. Their hair is thick and wiry. By wiry I mean you can literally shape it in your hands, smooth it down, curl it around your finger. It’s weird as hell.”

  Remy and I shot each other shocked looks. No wonder all of the DRI women’s hair always looked immaculate!

  “Their skin is stronger and thicker than ours. At the cellular level, they have a type of cell wall, similar to plants here on Earth, and it makes them less susceptible to infection or minor injuries.”

  The medical enthusiast in me was fascinated and wished for a microscopic slideshow.

  “On a cultural level, they are a matriarchal society. Their females are highly logical and driven for survival. They’re the masterminds and the males are the muscle, not to mention the sperm donors. And this is where it gets really interesting.”

  When Linette smirked I knew we were in for something weird.

  “Baelese woman are born with only five to fifteen eggs, total. Unlike the rest of their biological makeup, their eggs do not have cell walls. They are extremely fragile in comparison to human eggs. For this reason, the Bael people are not able to perform any sort of ‘test tube’ conceptions, surrogacies, or in-vitro procedures. Also unlike humans, they cannot conceive at any given time of year. Their women are fertile only once every eighteen months. During that time, their society basically shuts down normal operation in a desperate attempt to continue the race. As far as we can tell, it is their one true downfall. And it gets better.”

  Remy and I leaned forward.

  “They only, and I mean only, perform reproductive acts during this mating season.” A few of the men scoffed, and First Sergeant nodded, continuing. “Because for the Baelese men, the hormones that are excreted in their bodies during this time, have a drug-like effect on them, and it is addictive.”

  Linette bounced her eyebrows up and down once without smiling or otherwise moving. Outright chuckles of disbelief filled the air now, and I found myself smiling at the outlandish ridiculousness of it. But Top remained dead-serious.

  “I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it for myself,” he said.

  Um . . . what? Remy sent me an Ew! glance. Rylen leaned back, arms crossed. He’d heard all of this already, I realized. His shell-shocked expression this morning and lack of shock now made perfect sense.

  Top gave Linette a nod and she pushed another button. Dear God, what were they about to show? I braced myself.

  A video began of a man with DRI appearance tied to a chair in a nondescript, dimmed room. Remy gasped and grabbed my hand. I looked closer and I could make out a third hand pinned to his side, then a fourth. A shiver raked my spine as I watched four hands wiggle to find comfort in their restraints.

  “This is the Baelese man we apprehended soon after his vessel landed in Nevada. We questioned him for two weeks and he wouldn’t say a word. At first we believed he couldn’t understand us.”

  I sucked in a breath when the video showed a hand striking out against the man’s face, then the other side of his head. They were beating him. He let his head swing from one side to the other, blood dripping from his mouth, but he never spoke. As the video time-lapsed I squinted at the violence, and Remy turned her head to the side, looking away. Even as our enemy, it was hard to watch.

  “So we decided to try another tactic.”

  The sound, which had been off before, came on with a crackle, and Linette entered the video. I went very still as I watched her stalk around him. He looked nearly dead. Honestly, if he weren’t being held upright with ropes he would have been a puddle on the ground. His head hung down.

  “All right now,” Linette’s sultry voice was a soothing purr on the video. “It’s just you and I. I’m not going to hurt you.” She walked behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder, trailing it across his upper back as she slowly paced, and then up into his hair. When she brought her hand up, his hair spiked straight up like it was wet.

  I leaned forward more in my chair, mesmerized in a morbid way. Linette pulled a chair in front of him and ran her hand through his hair again, making a soothing sound. She was careful of his cuts and the places where blood had congealed on his head and face.

  “Maybe you don’t understand my words, but you understand my touch, right?”

  She ran her hands slowly across his shoulders and down the outsides of his top arms, over the ropes that pressed deep into his skin. Heat crept up my neck and into my face. Remy started biting her thumbnail as she stared. It was quiet in the room, and uncomfortably intimate.

  The video showed the man eventually raise his face enough to make eye contact. She gave him a grateful smile and encouraged him to relax. Still he said nothing. Her hands made it down to his wrists and she moved back, resting her palms on the tops of his strong knees. His breathing hitched as he watched her.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” she told him again. And her hands moved up to his thighs. Up. Bingo. He jolted and she murmured, “Tell me your name.”

  In a choked voice, he said, “Marmot.”

  “Oh, my gosh,” Remy whispered.

  The video cut off and everyone stirred. The prisoner coul
d totally understand her.

  Top eyed us. “Turns out, he was fluent in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, and German, though his dialects were a bit rusty and old-fashioned from studying intel received in the late eighteen hundreds. With a little help from First Lieutenant Thompson,” he motioned to Linette, “he spilled his guts.”

  In my peripheral vision I could see Remy gawking with her mouth in a little round “O.” Tater put a knuckle to his lips.

  “Wait,” Short Matt said. “Sir, are you saying . . .” Matt looked at Linette and she raised her eyebrows. He shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Linette said in that husky, I-take-shit-from-nobody voice. “I seduced an alien for intel. Is there something you’d like to say about that?”

  I fully expected him to shut up, but to my surprise he blurted, “What was it like?”

  When everyone laughed, he said, “No, I mean, I’m not trying to be perverted, I just mean . . . are they, like, the same as us?”

  “Anatomically,” I clarified for him. Rylen shot me a look and I shrugged, blushing. “Just helping him find the word.” Again, the scientific part of my mind was darkly fascinated.

  “Yes and no,” Linette said. She looked at First Sergeant as if asking permission to continue, and he waved a hand as if she may as well go on. Linette took a soldier’s stance, feet spread, eyes watchful and full of no nonsense.

  “Their testicles are internal.” This simple sentence caused a hushed guffaw to rise up. “Will you all grow the fuck up?” Her shout hushed everyone and she continued. “Their testicles are on the inside. Everything else is . . . similar enough. That’s why we have to check all the males who enter the compound.” She glanced around the room and her eyes landed on Rylen, then back to Top as if she were finished.

  Holy freaking shit of all shits. She had checked him? As in, Linette saw Ry’s junk? I turned to him, my eyes bulging. I know he could feel me looking, but he stared straight ahead, his arms crossed. He reached up and tugged his ear lobe. I scoffed and faced front again, crossing my own arms and grinding my teeth together.

  “Any more questions?” Top stared hard at the room.

  “How about the females?” Tall Mark asked. “Are they similar to human females?”

  Top nodded to Linette to respond. “Biologically very similar, from what the subject told us, except the fact that they have zero urge for sex outside of mating season. We learned that sex outside of mating time is legally forbidden because it makes the men worthless. They’re not permitted to have homosexual relationships or to masturbate.” Sputters of shock filled the room. “And there’s no hiding it. If a man in Bael has somehow activated his sexual hormones, it’s like he’s been hitting lines of coke or shooting up. He’s out of it. Eyes rolling back, incoherent for up to two days afterward. Those who become addicted and can’t get their acts together are not tolerated.”

  I shook my head. They sounded like a miserable race, and for a second I felt bad for them. Until I remembered they were the people who’d taken over our planet and killed my family.

  “Do they kill them?” Tater asked.

  “Worse,” Top said. “They basically deactivate their personalities. For a thousand years they’ve been using an uninvasive procedure to control those who show signs of rebellion. Tiny, mechanical worms that they insert in a person’s nose or ear. It makes its way to the brain and essentially imbeds like a clawed hook into the anterior portion of the frontal lobe. That part of the brain controls planning, problem-solving, organizing, behavior, emotions. Basically personality. Without that function they are robotic, receiving and acting on commands.”

  The hair on my arms went straight up and I had to rub them down. “Sir,” I asked, “Have they been using those on humans?”

  “To be honest,” he responded, “our Baelese prisoner is under the impression that the Bael who took over had run out of the worms, and the two ships that landed this century were out as well. But his own ship had plenty, along with the scientists to make more. So they have them now, and I’m betting they’re trying them on humans as we speak.”

  Nausea rolled through me. All I could do was shake my head. This was how they could make slaves of us.

  “Continue with what you were saying, First Lieutenant,” Top said to Linette. I tried to shake off the creeping sensation and focus.

  “Okay. Ah, their gestation times for pregnancies are shorter, around six months, and during their evolution they phased out breastfeeding. The babies are mostly cared for by the younger generations of women using a type of bottle for the first several months until they can eat solids. So, basically they start going into their mating season from the ages of thirty to forty, and the girls and young men from seventeen to mating age generally care for the children. Child rearing in Bael is a communal process. Their collective civilization centers on the whole, rather than the individual. They don’t have traditional family units as we know them.” She looked back at First Sergeant and stepped back in front of the desk, signaling she was done.

  “We have one last bit of information,” First Sergeant said. “And it’s important. Probably the largest obstacle we’ve faced, and will continue to face, when it comes to this enemy.”

  Worse than their superior knowledge, super bodies, freaky worms, and complete lack of compassion for individuals? I felt myself frowning as he prepared to drop this next bomb on us.

  “These beings possess a mental capability that humans do not possess. They have a second brain the size of a marble in their frontal lobe area that is able to radiate mental energy outward on ultraviolet wavelengths within close range, say ten to fifteen feet.” Cold sweat beaded across my skin. “This is a device for the amplification of brain waves. In this way, they are able to silently communicate with one another . . . not in words, but in moods and intentions. They’re also able to push their own desired moods and intentions into another’s mind.”

  What. The. Hell.

  My hands went clammy, and if I were standing I would have passed out.

  “Holy shit,” Tater said. “I think they used that on me.” He looked at Remy, me, and Rylen. “When Grandpa . . .” His eyes unfocused. “I had this weird urge not to get in the way.”

  “Yes,” I whispered. Strange pieces began to fall into place—all the times I’d wanted to argue with the DRI women, but found myself feeling suddenly compliant. They’d been in my head. It was a violation of the worst kind. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling disgusted, my mind spinning like a funnel around all of the memories.

  First Sergeant looked at our pinched faces. “We have many instances of soldiers here experiencing similar things during their interactions with DRI. But from what we’ve gathered the waves can be muffled by the use of earplugs. We have to process the waves as a sound, like . . .” He shrugged. “Like a dog whistle.”

  We were like dogs to them. It was all making so much sense.

  “Other questions?” First Sergeant asked.

  I raised my hand. I had so many. “Were all of the DRI . . . aliens?” The word felt weird in my mouth—a word that used to be something we laughed about and was now a horrifying actuality.

  “From what we know, yes. And they used humans as Disaster Relief Personnel to do their dirty work, mostly people who were in dire straits and could be bribed to work for food.”

  “What happened to him?” a woman in the back blurted. “The, uh, Baelese guy you captured?”

  “He is still alive, still confined and under guard.”

  “Where?” she asked. “Here?”

  “That I cannot say.”

  He was here. I knew it. An alien was probably somewhere in this compound with us. A creature who could mentally manipulate us. Aliens had been in my house, at my job, and I’d looked them in the eyes, talked to them like people, even though they’d given me the creeps.

  “This is a lot to take in,” First Sergeant said. “And though this is a different kind of enemy, we will fight
it. We are not alone, though I cannot divulge who or where our allies are. When the time comes, we will take our home back. We’ve been tirelessly working on plans to do just that, and I want you all to be involved.” He moved to stand behind the desk and leaned his fists on the top as he looked at us. “In the time between now and this summer when their next vessels arrive, it is pivotal that we take them down. We will have to be precise. Expedient. Soundless. We have very little time to plan, and I need every single one of you. We are the past and present, and we are the future. It’s up to us.”

  The room was absolutely still as his words fell on us. I felt my heart pound with belief. We could do it. We had to.

  “Go,” Top said. “We’ll debrief again soon. Hooah.”

  “Hooah,” we all murmured.

  We were silent as we shuffled out of that room, back down the hall. And as we entered the common area where people sat and chatted, I understood the look on Rylen’s face when I’d seen him come out with Linette after learning the truth. Nothing felt the same. Everything that used to appear normal was now blurred. Looking around at Remy, Tater, Rylen, and all the guys I’d come to count as friends—we were all smudged around the edges. Changed. Lost. Like gravity had lifted and we couldn’t quite get our feet to plant on solid ground again.

  The world and everything we’d taken at face value wasn’t what we thought it was. I understood how the information had made some turn to madness, because I felt very small and fragile at that moment. Like we were all standing on landmines.

  Each day I woke hoping the unsettled, floating feeling would subside, but it never did. Remy had taken to crying out in the night, and her eyes unfocused throughout the day. I had a constant stomach ache, and I hated that I couldn’t keep track of Rylen with our crazy schedules. I worked off and on with medical duties in the day and watch duties at night.