by Lauryn April
“Hey, so what’d your mom say?”
“Not much that we didn’t already know. One of the Greys’ ships crashed, and the government is taking care of it. She didn’t say anything about anyone seeing us in the woods. Either we weren’t important enough for anyone to care about, or those guys in white we saw earlier were too embarrassed to talk about how a couple of teens disarmed them and got away. Either way they’ve got bigger things to focus on.”
“Why’d it crash?”
“Not sure, hit by lightning maybe?
I nodded. “Well good, that’s good news right? I mean, it doesn’t sound like anyone is looking for us, so good, yeah?”
“Yeah, it’ll be fine.”
I sighed in relief.
CHAPTER
26
Friday came with a whole new set of jitters. I could barely focus in any of my classes. The only thing on my mind was that today I’d be having brain surgery. I’d told my mom I was having a sleepover at Jo’s since I wasn’t sure how long I’d be at the hospital.
Nikki had gotten more info from Frank for us. The whole procedure was only supposed take four hours. Nikki had also said I’d be awake the whole time. Just the thought of that made me shiver. I wondered if they’d shave my head. I suppose they’ll have to, but not the whole thing, right? God, how was I going to explain that one? I so was not prepared to cut off my hair. Maybe I could get a really good wig? Maybe they’ll only have to shave a small part and I could rock a side braid for…forever, until the rest grew back.
Jo, Logan, and I left school early to make it to my 2 p.m. appointment. I was a ball of nerves while I drove to the hospital. I nearly ran a red light on our way there. Once we made it to the waiting room, Jo and Logan did their best to be supportive. Logan held my hand and Jo tried to distract me by talking about some beauty tip she found in one of the magazines. Via the instructions that Frank had passed on to us through Nikki, I’d been told not to check in and just to wait for a Dr. Strieber to approach us.
There was something about being in a hospital that made me feel a little safer. It was clean and bright. This was where people came to get better, so it couldn’t be that bad. I mean, we could be in some dingy basement with rusting surgical tools and an overhead light bulb that swung from its cord like in some scary movie. We were in a hospital – that had to be a good sign.
“Not to be a downer,” Jo said, “but even if you have the chip removed, won’t they still know where you live? I mean, they’ve been to your house twice now.”
My eyes went wide. I turned to Logan.
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t be worried about that. When they remove the chip it should stop producing a signal. The chips only do that if you’ve made it to the Greys’ planet, where I think something in their environment disrupts the signal and destroys the chip, or…well, if you die.”
I took a breath. “Right, so chip comes out, they think I’m dead, and why would they come back to abduct a corpse?” I felt better, but the twist that had formed in my stomach still remained.
A good twenty minutes passed, and I started to wonder if maybe I’d done something wrong. Maybe Nikki had misheard Frank and told us to go to the wrong wing. Maybe I should check in, maybe there wasn’t a doctor at all and this was all some terrible practical joke. Then, a man in a white lab coat approached us. He had a round face and a plump middle, and short greying hair with a matching mustache. As he sat down before us I read his name tag: Dr. Strieber. I took a nervous breath.
“Payton Carlson?”
I nodded.
“I thought so, you must be nervous, do relax. I’ve done this procedure before. There’s nothing to worry about.”
I let out a sigh of relief, but still, in the back of my mind, my thoughts were screaming, It’s brain surgery! How can there not be anything to worry about?
“What exactly is going to happen?” Jo asked.
“I’ve booked an operating room, using a fake name of course. There are a few individuals here at the hospital understanding of my research who will be accompanying me during the surgery. Do not worry about the cost; I will take care of everything.”
A fake name? I wondered if that meant someone else would be footing my bill, maybe some poor old lady who can’t even remember if she’s had brain surgery or not.
“We’ll need to shave part of your head, and you will be awake during the surgery, but I assure you, you won’t feel any pain. Normally the recovery time for this kind of surgery would last weeks, but I’ve found that those who’ve been taken recover remarkably fast.”
“How fast?” I asked. I hadn’t even thought about recovery time. How was I going to explain that to Mom?
“I’ll want to keep you in the hospital over the weekend, and based on the other cases I’ve seen you should be fully recovered in a week. It’s fascinating, really. I’ve found most of my patients recover nearly two thirds faster than the average human. Whatever it is they do…well, let’s just say if there were a way to repeat the process, my malpractice insurance would drastically go down.”
I nodded. Thank God, we had the weekend ahead of us.
“Now, all I need from you is the hard copy of that video you took, and we’ll be on our way.”
I went to pull the flash drive I’d saved the videos on from my pocket, but Logan stopped me.
“Why are you helping us?” he asked. “Aren’t you risking your entire career doing this?”
The doctor sighed. “Yes. But some mysteries would never be explored if I didn’t. I do valuable work, and I help people. The files you’re giving me and the chip itself, once it’s removed, will help me continue my research. To me that is far more important than my career.”
I pulled the flash drive from my pocket and handed it over. The doctor took it from me and stared down at it with this odd fascination, then he stood.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” he said and walked away.
I sunk into my chair, second thoughts racing through my mind. I was worried, but at the same time I knew this was my only hope of escaping them. This was the only way they wouldn’t be able to find me again. Sensing my uneasiness, Logan pulled me to him. He kissed my forehead and whispered in my ear that everything would be alright. Beside me Jo bit her lip to keep from smiling. She had this knowing look in her eyes. It felt like she was just waiting to say, “I told you so.”
The minutes that ticked by felt endlessly long. Eventually I saw Dr. Strieber emerge from a room at the end of the hall. He walked toward us. I took a deep breath. This is it. Then I saw something else. Three men appeared behind him and picked up their pace to reach him. They wore black suits and white shirts with black ties, like FBI agents. It was strange seeing them in the hospital, but even stranger when I recognized one of them. He was the man from my dream, the man from my mother’s party. It was obvious now that he wasn’t an insurance adjuster. The three men confronted Dr. Strieber, and I knew something bad was about to happen.
“We have to go,” I said in a low voice.
Both Jo and Logan looked at me with narrowed eyes and knitted brows.
“What?” Logan asked.
“Look,” I said, pointing down the hall.
Jo and Logan looked across the room. The three men were arresting Dr. Strieber. His confused words of protest were distant echoes by the time they reached us. As they led him away in handcuffs, Logan, Jo, and I hurried in the other direction. We sneaked out of the waiting room before any of them could see us. I glanced over my shoulder, watching the mystery man with blue eyes and his partners lead the doc away. As I watched the backs of their black suit coats shrink into the distance, I realized my last chance of evading the Greys left with them.
We walked out the glass doors of the New Liberty Medical Center.
“Think those were the same three guys from the woods yesterday?” Logan asked.
“I didn’t even think about that, but now that you say it, it makes sense.”
“What about the wood
s?” Jo asked.
On the car ride back Logan and I explained about the ship’s crashing in the woods and the men we’d run into while being chased by Greys. As usual Jo listened with wide eyes. According to Logan’s mom the Greys that crashed here were all “taken care of,” which would explain the men we ran into in the woods. What it didn’t explain was why they wanted Dr. Strieber, other than that he’d been researching the Greys and performing surgeries on abductees. Okay, so maybe it was less of a mystery what they wanted with him. What they would do with him, however, was still a question at the front of my mind.
“I recognized one of the guys that took Dr. Strieber,” I said once we walked into Logan’s room. He shut the door behind us. “He was at my mom’s Halloween party. His name’s John Doggett, at least that’s what my mom called him. I thought he was an insurance adjuster, but obviously he’s not.” I sat down on Logan’s bed beside Jo.
“Wait, his name’s John Doggett?” Logan asked. He sat in the rolling chair before his desk.
“Why does that name sound familiar?” Jo asked.
“Because it’s the name of one of the agents on the X-files. He used a fake name.”
I shook my head. “I thought that was Mulder and Sully?”
Logan smiled, letting out a little laugh. “Scully. Sully was from Monster’s Inc., and Doggett comes in at the end of the series. Look, the point is, this guy’s not whoever your mom thought he was.”
Memories of the dream I’d had where I’d been stabbed with a syringe flashed in my mind, and so did Doggett’s icy blue eyes.
“You okay, Payton? You look kind of sick?” Jo asked.
I shook my head. “No, I’m not okay. My mom’s party isn’t the only place I saw Doggett, or whoever he is.” I took a slow, deep breath. “After that party Jo and I went to…I woke up in the middle of the night, and Doggett was in my room.”
Logan’s eyes went wide, and he looked like he was about to leap out of his chair.
“He injected me with some…drug or something. I don’t know. When I woke up I thought it was a dream. I’d been half drunk when I’d fallen asleep and, well I’ve had a lot of weird dreams lately so…I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t want to think anything of it.”
“Payton, that’s like some really screwed up shit; tell me you’re kidding?” Jo said.
I shook my head: No.
“You have no idea what he did?” Logan asked.
“Not a clue. I didn’t even think it’d really happened until we saw him today at the hospital.”
“Okay, guys, let’s forget about the men in black for a moment,” Jo said. “I mean, that’s a whole new issue obviously chock full of scariness, but we have a bigger problem. The doctor who was supposed to remove Payton’s evil alien tracking device was just arrested. What do we do now?”
My eyes shot to Logan. He sighed and looked away, which wasn’t very comforting. After a moment he turned back to us.
“I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out.”
A humorless laugh passed my lips.
Logan stood, walked across the room, and kneeled before me. His finger ran beneath my chin, lifting my face until my eyes met his. “It’s going to be okay,” he promised. “For all we know the ship that was tracking you was the one that crashed the other night. It’s possible they’re not even tracking you anymore.”
My whole body filled with hope. “Really?”
“It’s possible,” Logan said in a careful voice. I knew that meant it was also possible that another ship was still after me, but it was something.
CHAPTER
27
News reports of the “meteor crash” in Moody’s woods were playing on the TV Saturday morning. From the clips they showed it looked like the woods were swarmed with men in hazmat suits. I watched while I ate a bowl of cereal at the breakfast counter. For whatever reason my Cinnamon Toast Crunch just wasn’t doing it for me, the swirly squares turning soggy in my bowl. Maybe it was because no one had heard from Dr. Strieber since he’d been hauled away. According to Nikki, Frank had been trying to get ahold of him all night.
I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know if I should be glad I avoided brain surgery. If I should hold on to the idea that maybe the Greys weren’t looking for me anymore since one of their ships had crashed, or totally freaked out that the opposite was true. On top of the questions that raced through my mind involving the aliens, I wondered what John Doggett might want with me. Who he was, and what did he inject me with? All of it had me feeling kind of numb.
Eventually I snapped myself out of my downward spiral and got ready for the day. I didn’t know what, if anything, I’d be doing that day, but I needed to get my mind on something other than aliens. By noon, I was sitting on the couch attempting to be interested in the latest celebrity gossip via People magazine and finding myself completely disinterested. There was definitely something wrong with me.
The doorbell rang and I went to answer it, welcoming the distraction. Swinging it open, I saw Logan standing on the front step, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey, I was going to call, but…I don’t know, this seemed easier.”
My brow creased. “What seemed easier?”
“Picking you up and taking you out to lunch.”
I smiled.
Logan and I took our seats at the back of the Old West themed diner. JR’s wasn’t as popular as The Madhouse Grill, where all the high school kids went, but they had a good burger. I smiled at Logan as I picked up the menu.
“So, your mom knows you’re hanging out with me?” I asked, peeking over the edge of my menu.
Logan laughed. “I convinced her it was silly to worry about your being abducted again in broad daylight. Especially now, after one of their ships crashed. So…I’m just not allowed to see you at night.”
I laughed, but that little reminder of my possible fate stirred the uneasiness in the pit of my stomach.
“Well, eventually they’ll take me again and she won’t have to worry.” It was meant to be a joke, but it came out exactly like it felt: scared.
Logan set his menu down. He reached out and laid his hand over my mine.
“They’re not coming for you.”
I sighed. “Logan, as much as I would love to believe that. As much as I want to hope that the ship that crashed was the one looking for me. That this is all over. The truth is, our last hope of this being over for good was hauled off by three possible government agents, and I don’t think we’ll be seeing him again soon.” I took a breath; oddly saying that aloud was comforting. “It’s okay, I just have to accept that. And hey, maybe one day I’ll be able to escape like your mom did.”
Logan frowned. I knew he wanted to fight for me, but I could see in his eyes that he knew we didn’t really have any other options.
“You’re right,” he said. “Maybe we don’t have a lot of choices left, but we have some. Most people, when they’re taken, don’t know they have telekinesis, if they even do. If you don’t know you can do something then you can’t do it, you know? But you do, and you’ve already got it pretty much figured out. I can show you how to be better at it. Then if they come for you, you can fight back. And I’m still not giving up hope that maybe they’ve given up on looking for you all together.”
I smiled. “Thank you.”
It felt good knowing that he wasn’t giving up on me, especially because I was starting to feel like giving up on myself.
Over the next week our time together was spent a little differently than in the past. Logan started to train me to use my telekinesis instead of just shutting it off. It was tough at first. I’d spent so much time focusing on how to calm down and keep things from floating that it felt odd to try to make things move.
We started small. Logan asked me to concentrate on a few paperclips. At first they did nothing. It’d taken my fear and anxiety in the past to make things move. I needed to learn how to channel that, an
d a big part of that was, as Logan described it, feeling things float. It was hard for him to describe what that meant.
“The best way I know to explain it is to say that you have to believe this is something you can do,” he’d said.
Even though I knew I had this ability, it was still hard to believe. I needed to overcome that doubt before I could control it. In the past it wasn’t until something had happened by accident, it wasn’t until I saw myself doing it, that I really believed it. That was why once I noticed I was doing it, it got worse.
“Try this,” Logan said. “Look at the paperclips and hold out your hand. Pretend there’s a clear thin thread attached to each of your fingers, and that those threads are attached to the paperclips.”
I looked at him skeptically.
“Just try it.”
I closed my eyes, imagining the invisible thread as if my fingers and the paperclips were some lame marionette. As I moved my fingers I felt this pull. It was light, but noticeable. Then I realized the paperclips were moving too.
I was starting to understand what it meant to feel it. Soon the paperclips were doing more than just following my fingers. Soon they were hovering in the air before me. When I got over the excitement of seeing the paperclips fly by, we moved on to other things. Spoons were next, then came the metal dog figurine Logan’s mom kept on the mantle. I spent three days trying to get Fido to float without plummeting to the ground (one time denting the wood floor). The larger the object, the harder it was for me to move it on purpose. My lips puckered when the metal dog dropped back onto Logan’s bed.
I sighed. “I don’t get it; I’ve moved way bigger stuff than this before. I mean, I made my whole bed float. Why is this so hard?”
“You’re thinking about it too much. You have to let go.”
I huffed and rolled my eyes. “How can I make it float and not think about it floating?”
Logan sat up straighter. I mirrored him. We were sitting cross-legged on his bed, and I was starting to think that there were other things I’d rather be doing with him alone in his room.
