by Gruder, Liz
Kaila turned around and said, “I will help you. Have patience while I figure out what’s wrong. I won’t forget you.” Melissa looked shocked.
Philip held his head on his arms on his desk. The teacher, Mr. Foret, exploded.
“My god, what’s wrong with you people?” Mr. Foret shouted. “Wake up! Do I need to get a body bag? I’m going to have to call the morgue and tell them you died.”
I used to care. Kaila heard the teacher’s mind. But now I don’t give a shit.
Then Kaila heard Philip, who blearily lifted his head. Everyone on this evil planet is a hater. Every last one of them a hating bastard. This is nothing but a living, breathing never-ending hell.
Amen, Kaila thought.
At lunch, in her silver jumpsuit, with her real hair exposed, Kaila felt like she had come home to her true identity. The students in the cafeteria gaped. She heard their thoughts.
She is so weird.
I always thought she was an alien just like those other weirdos.
She was trying to hide it, but now it’s out.
I’m kind of scared of her. Hope she doesn’t look at me.
But Kaila didn’t care. She was different and had talents and abilities that the rest of them didn’t. And if they didn’t like it, they could just stay on this cruddy old rotting rock of a planet where they’d end up killing each other anyway.
She cast a new aura, something beyond the physical, and the earthlings knew it. As she passed, they cleared a path. She wore no emotion on her face. But inside, she boiled. She radiated that: one false move, one wrong word, and you are dead. She was done with being trampled on, of not knowing who she was, getting hurt and seeing others hurt.
“Hey,” Pia nudged. “Order up.”
Kaila realized the cafeteria lady had been asking her what kind of smoothie she wanted.
“I want nothing here,” Kaila said. She didn’t want a stupid smoothie. The hive fed on something else. She swiveled her long neck, heard Jordyn telepathically calling.
Coming, she responded with her mind. She broke from the line and burst through the doors to outside.
The hive stood underneath their far tree. Kaila strode across the field, hearing the students’ thoughts.
OMG. Look at her. Always knew she was bizarre. She’s going to them. She’s one of them.
So let me be an alien, Kaila thought. There’s nothing for me here. She twinged with guilt for leaving Melissa and Pia, but she had to heed her true calling.
But one thing first. She approached the prep tree and stood before Wade Stoops. She stared at him with large eyes. Noting his fear, she felt a ripple of pleasure.
She turned to Brandy Powell and Tara Melancon. They dared not say a word, their stupid mouths hanging open. They sensed her power. It was strong as moon’s gravity crashing ocean waves to shore. There was nothing they could say or do. One wrong word and they had a problem. And they knew it.
She inhaled, breathing in their fear. Instantly, she surged as if she’d grown taller. Still, she hungered for something more.
Kaila pivoted and sauntered to the far oak tree. The hive stood in one line wearing their sunglasses. She approached, the harshness of the earth sun’s rays causing her to squint. She put on her sunglasses. Now she looked like the other members of the hive. Jordyn stood in the middle of the line. As she approached, Echidna, Antonia, and Lucius stepped aside to let her stand next to Jordyn.
Welcome, they said telepathically.
Thank you, Kaila said, taking her place. She felt their energies merging.
The hive made a semi-circle about her.
Jordyn said, “We are going to start filling in the gaps. You cannot be one with us till you have all we have.”
They removed their sunglasses. Antonia, Echidna, and Viktor’s eyes started turning.
Kaila wanted to scream, No mind scans. But she lifted her eyelids till her eyes were black as theirs beneath her sunglasses.
This is not a mind scan. She heard them as a group. No fear. Quiet your mind. Listen. This is a download.
Then an array of mathematics streamed through her mind … and vibration, sound. She grew dizzy. All was mathematics and sound. The complexity, beauty, and sheer truth stole her breath. She flowed away from Earth, tunneling through a portal, saw the expanse of the universe, saw that the laws of physics were universal, vast and beautiful, complex yet orderly. She felt as if she’d dropped into a hole in space and glimpsed the eye of God.
She fell to her knees.
Kaila knew she existed in a portal of the universe. She saw sound. How can one see sound, she wondered. And we are all … one. She became aware of every cell in her body, every atom vibrating.
“What’re you doing?” Viktor called.
“We are one,” Kaila said, staring at the sky. She longed to arch her chest, open her heart chakra as her mother called it, feed off the energy of this strange sun beaming to her. Every one, thing, and atom were connected in the universe.
“Too much,” Echidna said. “Stop transmission.”
Jordyn got to his knees. “I heard you,” he said, taking her hands. “But get up. They think it’s too much for you.”
Viktor snorted. “Give her just one piece at a time.”
“No,” Jordyn said. “She got something we didn’t have before.”
Lucius snorted.
The sun blazed strong and fierce.
Priscilla Snowden appeared, kneeling next to Kaila and Jordyn. Tossing back her long platinum hair, she looked up at the hive. “She does have something you don’t have.”
“Get to your tree, pig!” Viktor spat.
“Kaila,” Priscilla said. “Is this true? Are you with them now?”
“Yes,” Kaila said, turning away from Priscilla’s beautiful face. “I am with them now.”
“I am always here,” Priscilla said. “Call on me when you need.”
Jordyn took Kaila’s arm. “I will take you to our home now.”
Chapter 12
Kaila and Jordyn were inside a craft. Dim white light emitted from the walls, ceiling, and floor; its source undetectable. The air was dank and stuffy. A low vibration emanated from deep within the ship.
“I shouldn’t do this,” Jordyn said. “But I can’t help myself.” He looked around. “This is a break in time. We are permitted to be alone as I try and assimilate for you.” He took her hands. “But I am so glad you’re here.” Current from his long fingers transmitted to hers.
She grew aware of the strangeness of the craft, its sterility, its whiteness, its silence, and in contrast, his warm arms enfolding her and the beating of his heart.
“I want to kiss you,” he said.
She kissed him then, tasting his lips. His hard body pressed against hers as her soft body yielded to his.
I want you, I need you, she heard his thoughts.
I want you, I need you, she responded telepathically.
The kiss deepened; his lips moved more insistently.
He pushed her away. “Stop.” He looked pained.
“No hurt,” he said, moving a strand of hair from her eyes. “But we must always hold control. I lost control.” He straightened. “I do not have all the answers. But I am learning much from you too. Come,” he said, pulling her into a long corridor. “Are you hungry?”
Time flipped; she didn’t notice how they traveled to the next room. But Jordyn held substance on his long fingers. It was gray and pink, soft and moist. He rubbed it on the top of her hand and her forearm.
“This is a way we eat,” he explained. “You digest it through your skin.”
The moist substance on her forearm dissolved into her pores. Then her mind grew more alert and clear. Jordyn, too, rubbed some of the substance on his arm.
“Our fathers do not have digestive systems like us.”
“What is this?” Kaila asked, noting the substance dissolve through the pores of his skin. She felt the stuff racing through her blood, her heart beating
it to her brain, making her feel alive, surging with energy.
“Come,” he said, pulling her from the room.
“No wait, what was that?” Kaila asked.
“It is a way we feed.” He pulled her with his three bony fingers. As he looked over his shoulder, he blanched and erected a mind-block, for everything to this point had been telepathic.
“Why are you blocking me?” she called.
“Come here,” he said. “I will show you not death, but life.”
Kaila’s mouth went dry as the blood drained from her head. She ordered herself to dissolve her fear. Of course aliens were going to have different ways.
They came to a huge, circular, white room. This room housed tall glass tubes, like vertical aquariums, filled with an electric-blue liquid. Hundreds of these tall blue tubes lined the wall’s round perimeter. Kaila stepped next to a tube taller than herself. Inside the liquid, something floated. It looked like a fetus.
“Here,” Jordyn explained. “We are being born.”
“We?”
“Hybrids. This is where we are born.”
Hundreds of babies in the blue liquid vats floated in fetal position, some sucking their thumbs. With large heads and meager bodies, their veins appeared like blue lines in a road map in a canvas of gray skin.
The baby in the tube closest to Kaila rolled and opened its eyes. It stared out of the tank at Kaila.
Kaila jerked away and thrust out her palms.
Don’t be afraid, Jordyn said, telepathically receiving her distress.
“Um, I am a little freaked out. That thing looked at me.”
“Look at me.”
Kaila peered into Jordyn’s owl eyes. He lowered his head, licked his thin lips.
“I hear how you interpret this as cold, clinical, scary. But really it is not. When you get used to it, it will not seem so strange. Now, don’t think me a douche, as the earthlings say,” he said, trying to smile. “But to make you comfortable … I offer music.” Strangely, the air filled with the country singer Patsy Cline’s voice.
“Someday you’ll want me to want you,” Patsy crooned.
“The music we heard on the television at your house,” Jordyn said. He pressed his cheek to hers. “Just hold me, let me feel your warm body and feel this song pass through us.”
Somehow then, the room wasn’t so sterile and ominous. Kaila shut her eyes, not wanting to see the floating babies in blue liquid but preferring to nestle against Jordyn, feeling his warmth, his life force and lulling to Patsy Cline’s voice.
“If we are hybrids,” Jordyn said, “then being half human, we can mingle something of Earth here whenever we want.” He looked at her earnestly. “Not so scary then. okay?”
“Okay,” Kaila replied. “But why do you like those old corny songs that my Paw Paw likes?”
He shrugged. “Like what we like.”
“And when can we heal Paw Paw?”
“You are being indoctrinated now. That is first, but I will keep my promise. Now that you are with us, you will learn all our powers.”
Jordyn led her into another room. It was again a huge circular room. But empty. Just plain white, the light source glowing and undetectable.
“You understand we can shift through the illusion of time,” Jordyn said. “See how it was here nights ago.”
His eyes widened, went black. Kaila felt a vibration and rushing in her mind.
The room filled with beings. It took her a moment to interpret what she saw. Children and toddlers populated the room. They were thin and had huge bald heads and black eyes. Most had large heads, huge eyes, small noses and lips. The children stood in a circle and threw a large, glowing white ball to each other—the same type of ethereal ball she had thrown at that drunken party at her house.
A toddler of about three stood in the circle with sparse hair and huge dark eyes, his skin the color of paste. When the ball was thrown to him, he stared blankly as it bounced off his face. The ball emitted sparks and some of the other children rushed to retrieve the ball.
Then a creature scurried into the room. This was no hybrid. It had a large head, gray skin, and huge black eyes wrapping around its skull. It had three long fingers, a slit of a mouth, holes for a nose, and stood about three-and-a-half feet tall. Kaila froze, not taking her gaze from the creature. It was just like in the movies—the gray aliens. They were real, she realized.
“No fear,” Jordyn instructed. “He is a worker.”
The gray worker led a woman into the room. Strangely, she wore a pink bathrobe. She had pink foam curlers in her hair and looked drugged. The gray worker stared into the woman’s dulled eyes.
Kaila realized the gray transmitted a mind stare command to the woman. Then the woman approached the child who looked sickly and dull, who could not catch the ball. She picked him up. She sat down on a bench near the wall and held him, rocking, staring blankly.
“She is his mother,” Jordyn explained. “She is transmitting energy that he needs to live and thrive. She gives her energy in touch. We’ve found hybrid children fare better when their mothers touch them. We summon them here to help their children.”
The mother, in her pink bathrobe, cradled the child, who quieted as she held him in her arms. He stared expressionless out in space, seeming less agitated as he popped his thumb in his mouth.
“It takes the right combination of DNA to create us,” Jordyn said. “Some of the mixtures are not correct. When that happens, they do not live on Earth as we do. We do not want any of the hybrids on Earth recognized. And so, they stay and work on the ships. This one will likely stay on the ships.”
“And what about him?” Kaila asked, pointing to the little gray creature. “Who was his mother?”
“He is bio-engineered.”
“By who?” Kaila asked.
Jordyn stepped back, his eyes going solid black. His arms were outstretched, palms up as he gazed into some far place, as if possessed.
“We will feed you information as you are ready,” he said in a strange voice. Jordyn’s body shook with tremors.
Kaila quivered with a foreign vibration. She was aware that time was moving, that days were flipping past.
She’d had a day at school, been on the bus, eaten dinner with her family. She was locked in Jordyn’s owl-like eyes, but this was not a mind scan. Information was being downloaded into her mind. Weeks were passing, life was passing, but she could not think that way now. Here, time had no relevance.
“Come,” Jordyn said, his eyes solid black. “I will show you your lineage.”
To a human it would seem a second. But in that second the secrets of humanity and herself, down through her very cells and the spiral helix of her DNA, were revealed.
She saw the great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt and then the Sphinx, the monument with the body of a lion, the head of a human.
“This is an incredibly important monument,” Jordyn explained. “It signifies us. A genetic creation.”
He leaned two inches from her, staring with his black eyes. She allowed herself to go into those eyes, permitting him to infuse her with forgotten knowledge.
She went back to where there was nothing but the emptiness of black space. Then, behind that, exploded a loud bang. Something hid in the background.
“Don’t look at that,” Jordyn instructed.
A buzzing filled Kaila’s ears, and she saw animals on this planet, men stooped over, little better than apes.
Again, she sensed the Controller. He was the omnipotent Master as he peered down on them all. And she realized, with a start, he was hungry.
She glimpsed reptilian creatures with huge brains on their foreheads, saw abominations of mankind as the genetics were mixed. She realized that humans were created at first for slaves, and then to satisfy their hunger and sustenance.
Kaila shook, feeling the mind block. She jolted in pain as if an electric probe internally seared her. She was being punished. She must not realize the existence of the
Controller, nor his motives.
Then, apelike creatures walked erect, had less hair. And she saw giant creatures, the Nephilim, mating with women. Her mind was besieged with an array of images: soaring birds, lions, serpents, reptiles, triangles encasing eyes, human slaves, stone tablets, blood, fires, so many images she couldn’t decipher all she saw.
Other beings of grace and beauty arrived on Earth—thousands of ships in the sky, a galactic war with explosions, killings, human sacrifices; words pouring down from the skies that mankind would interpret as gods for thousands of years.
“But then there was peace,” Jordyn said. “That is the secret of the Sphinx. It represents a truce.”
Ever after, human blood was mixed with bird and serpent—light and dark.
“But we are now approaching another time,” Jordyn said, “where there will again be huge movement and shifting.”
“What will happen?” Kaila asked.
“Pay attention,” Jordyn commanded.
She saw herself as a hologram before her, an Egyptian queen. Her hair was dark, her eyes enhanced with liner, clad in a long white gown. Her mind infused with a knowing she’d been royalty in Egypt.
“Because of your lineage, your mother was selected to breed you,” Jordyn explained. “Now you know why Egyptians used eyeliner on their eyes. It was to emulate the eyes of our fathers. Also know that when I took you to Egypt on your birthday, it is a place of high energy; and when we went inside the pyramid, you received an activation—”
Jordyn froze. His eyes transformed from hazel to solid black. He said mechanically, “We are giving too much information. We need to instruct you on the mission.”
Kaila grew frightened. When Jordyn was like this, he lost all sense of himself. He was being externally controlled.
Again, Jordyn stood erect, arms outstretched, palms up. “We are now to instruct you on abductions.”
