by Enid Titan
Since I had lost my front teeth, I had taken up the habit of mumbling to stop them from showing. That made the sound worse. Annie’s brow knit together with distress and she fluttered her invisible lashes quickly, deciding whether I was worth as much trouble as I was giving her. She had tried to correct my speech herself many times but today, she had her hands full and I suspected that I wouldn't have gotten into much trouble if I had simply run over there without asking permission. On the other hand, she could have whooped me, so it was better to play it safe.
"Fine don't get lost," she huffed.
I nodded and brushed my red hair out of my eyes as I walked towards the field. I began skipping a little. I remember the scent of fresh cut grass and the rays of sunlight searing into my freckled skin. I didn't think I would find any frogs, but I loved running through the field alone, feeling the grass tickling my ankles and rubbing on my pale legs as I pretended to be a coyote, hunting for rabbit. I stepped into the tall grass which came up to my waist at that age and I started walking away from Annie and my siblings until I could barely make out their figures on the dock.
I crouched down and started crawling forward on my hands and knees, searching for interesting critters in the soil. Once, I had found a mouse. Another time I had caught a large grasshopper that had inspired the fear of Christ in Annie when I’d unveiled my present by dropping it down the back of her dress. So, no more grasshoppers. No frogs either. I parted the grass and crouched down lower.
A low sound like the whirring of pawpaw's truck but a bit higher pitched came from overhead. I shot straight up onto my feet, my heart racing. My toes sank deeper into the mud. Gasping for breath, I scanned the field and looked over at Annie who appeared unperturbed. She mustn’t have heard the noise, although it was so loud, I wondered how she had missed it. I tried to call her name but my mouth was sandpaper dry.
Annie couldn't see me as her attention was focused on Daisy who lay on her back, arms flailing like an insect's. I kept watching them for a few moments more, digging my bare toes into the rich black clay earth. Soil spilled between my grubby dirt-caked toes and my red hair whipped around my head as a large gust of wind swept over the neighbors lot. A twig cracked behind me and I turned around, gasping in shock as I saw him. The figure towered over me, his dark shadow blocking out the light of the sun. I had always been taught to be polite to grown-ups. And in those days, our town was so small that there wasn't such a thing is stranger danger. There were no strangers. I felt no fear.
“Hello.”
He stared down at me. He didn't speak, yet I heard a voice ringing loud and clear in my head, as if coming from another room in my mind.
<
I gasped. He tilted his head to the side in confusion.
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Free Sample | First Contact Captives: Vidar
The Basement
Minnie Hsu
Working on a top secret military base wasn’t as exciting as you might think. When I hit the bar on Friday and Saturday night, my friends who worked in politics, and the typical Washington, DC lobbyist circle, always thought I was sitting on some big secret because my work was confidential.
“Minnie, does the government really make the mosquitos stronger every year?”
“Minnie, is it true you met the president?”
“Minnie, is it true the flu shot is designed to kill immigrants?”
(Yes, a drunk guy actually asked me that once. Can you believe it?)
I got used to fielding these insane conspiracy theory sorts of questions so I usually could come up with some kind of snappy response. The reality of working on a top secret military base? It’s way more boring than you’d expect.
And I got the job because my dad, the original Dr. Hsu, helped me get the internship right after my PhD program finished up. I never mentioned that part to my friends, even if everyone in this city gets help one way or another.
At work on Monday, after Labor Day weekend, I prepared for another boring day at the lab. My boss, Dr. Trout would be waiting to make some rude, awkward comment about my appearance, and I figured that I’d settle into a typical boring lab day poring over results and coming up with simple conclusions.
Before work, I slipped into a long-sleeved black wool dress with grey patterned tights and black flats. I twisted my black hair into a bun, and stuck pearls in my ears — a gift from my mom after I graduated from Georgetown. As usual, my mom called before work.
“Hi mom,” I answered drably, tiptoeing towards my coffeemaker as I whispered, trying not to wake my roommates.
“Good morning, Minnie. Just checking in since we didn’t see you this weekend.”
“I’m fine. Just getting ready for work. Preparing for another hellish day with Dr. Trout.”
“You can’t let him get to you, sweetheart. Just hold your head high and remember that you’re a scientist. These men shouldn’t be allowed to intimidate you.”
“I know.”
Mom was a six foot tall, blonde-haired, former Olympic skier. Few people could manage to intimidate her, especially not nerdy scientists. In fact, my dad had been intimidated by her when they met in college. They’d been inseparable ever since — the short, nerdy Asian man and the tall, Nordic, girl-jock — the last couple anyone expected to last forty-five years.
“I want you to know that your dad and I have your back. If you want your dad to talk to anyone —“
“No mom, I’m fine,” I interrupted, “I don’t need dad to keep cleaning up messes for me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with getting help, Minerva.”
She was right, of course, but I hated having this argument with my mom every week. She wanted me to stand up for myself more and assert myself at the office. I wanted her to understand that I was meeker and more introverted than she was — more like my father than either of my sisters, who favored both mom’s height, blue eye-color, and her temperament.
“Call after work and let me know how it goes,” she said finally.
“I will,” I promised.
“Love you, sweetheart. Have a great day.”
“Love you, mom. You too.”
I stuffed my phone into my purse and finished my coffee, re-reading my report from the night before. Work at the lab couldn’t have been more tedious these days. I loathed missing summer fun just to be stuck in that basement.
John, my ride to work, met me outside my apartment right on time. He was one of the few guys I knew in the city with a car and a part of me thought he liked flaunting his 2020 Mazda.
With what we made, he could have afforded a more expensive ride, but he refused to spend the money.
“You’re Asian, so you get being cheap, right?”
I rolled my eyes when he told me that one. Most Asians would be the first to remind me that I was only half-Asian anyway. Despite John’s cluelessness, I liked him well enough. He was tall, dark haired with green eyes, and I suspected he had a crush on me even if he was way too old for me. And way too nerdy. He reminded me of my dad, not the kind of guy you fantasize about.
At work, John and I swiped our cards and entered the elevator to the basement lab, sauntering past the armed guards. At first, the guards freaked me out with their bulletproof vests and automatic weapons but soon they disappeared into the background.
In government work, you had to be extra careful. That was the law of the land out here, especially with rising fears of terrorism and all that jazz.
John and I split up when we got to the basement. He walked into the microbiology lab and I went down into the computer room to check on my protein analysis from the night before. I flicked the light on, thinking that I was going to be alone, and put on my headphones.
Most people would be surprised at what I listened to at the office — Young Thug’s trap music. I have no explanation. His songs just put me in the zone for protein analysis and mad science.
A hand grabbed my shoulder and I whippe
d around, letting out a loud scream.
“Jesus!”
“Hello, Minerva,” Dr. Trout, my boss, greeted me with a smirk on his face.
“Oh! Dr. Trout. I’m so sorry.”
I took my earbuds out, embarrassed by the loud music that blared from them. Dr. Trout sniggered as I shuffled to shut them off.
“How does the data look?”
“Good. It would help if we knew what we were studying. Some of the numbers look unusual.”
“What do you mean unusual?”
Dr. Trout stepped closer to me and I tensed up automatically. Most science guys can be weird about social cues and boundaries, and at first, I thought Dr. Trout was one of those hapless professor types. The way he leered at me through his coke-bottle glasses and breathed slow and heavy as he stared at data over my shoulders soon taught me different.
“Um,” I muttered, my mouth suddenly drying, “I mean, if these are human samples and not reptilian or something, I have no idea what any of it means. The blood samples are something like two-hundred years old and the white blood cell count is through the roof. All of this should be impossible.”
“Hm. I see.”
Dr. Trout’s eyes wandered from the paper to my chest. My cheeks went hot. I’d purposefully worn a modest dress to avoid his constantly roving eyes and the licking of his lips that soon followed. There it was. I could feel his breath on my neck.
“Well, Minerva, we’ll discuss your results later. First, I wanted to ask you something of a more, personal nature…”
I dreaded the question that would come out of his mouth next. Before I could say a word, John thrust the door open and Dr. Trout took a long step back.
“Interrupting anything?”
“No, Dr. Billings,” Dr. Trout replied, clearing his throat as his cheeks took their turn flushing, “I was simply discussing Minerva’s results with her.”
“I’m sure Dr. Hsu will be delighted to share them with all of us at the next department meeting.”
John stepped between me and Dr. Trout. He could detect that I was uncomfortable and handled it graciously by placing himself between me and Dr. Trout. I flashed John a grateful smile.
“Right. Well, since the two of you are here, find the other scientists and let’s head to the lower level.”
“Aren’t we already in the basement?” I asked, unsure if Dr. Trout was playing a weird mind game with us.
“No. There’s something you need to see in one of the top secret classified levels. Before that, the whole group of scientists must meet with the attorney. Come with me.”
I looked to John for answers but he only shrugged. None of us had heard anything about a top secret floor. We thought we already knew all the government secrets. Our workplace was already a fortress of scientific data and armed guards.
We followed Dr. Trout out of the room and he gathered up the other two scientists — Dr. Martin Lewis and Dr. Declan Chubb. Dr. Trout led us to his office at the end of the hall.
It was clear something was going on — something serious. None of us had any idea what. The lawyer started going off on a typical “non-disclosure” speech, except this one was far more detailed than any I’d ever heard. We weren’t to breathe a word of what we were working on, even details about our work hours, and coworkers, and our meeting with the lawyer to anyone under the sun. We were to agree to schedule changes that meant our next week, we’d begin work under the cover of night. After the forty-five minute speech, we lined up and quietly signed the document, promising never to breathe a word about our work to anyone.
Once we’d signed, Dr. Trout handed the four of us new metal ID cards and brought us to a closet behind the protein analysis lab that I’d never noticed before. He told us that our ID cards were bulletproof and we were about to see something that no one else in American history had seen before. I figured it was a test tube with some weird virus. Maybe we were about to witness the next plague in the flesh.
Inside the closet was another elevator with only one button.
“Crowd on in, doctors, and get ready to witness American history in the making.”
We piled into the elevator and John leaned over to whisper to me, “Any guesses where he’s taking us?”
“Not a clue,” I replied.
“Maybe it’s the new H-bomb,” he suggested.
“Or a bioweapon,” Dr. Chubb chimed in, with a suspicious glint in his eye.
I hoped that both of them were wrong.
The elevator doors opened and Dr. Trout made us line up.
“Each of you will be given a different assignment, so I will need to take you in to the room one at a time. Any questions?”
All of us shook our heads. How could we ask any questions when we had no idea where Dr. Trout would be taking us or what we were doing in the secret part of the government facility, one mile beneath Fort Meade, Maryland.
The male scientists were taken in first. As each of them exited and returned to the top floor, I studied their faces for clues as to what they’d seen in the room with the metal door at the end of the hall. I couldn’t read the expressions on any of their faces, not even John’s. By the time Dr. Trout got to me, I was still concerned about being alone with him. Of course, he’d left me for last.
“Come, Minerva. It’s time for you to see what our great nation has discovered.”
I kept up with Dr. Trout’s long stride and we both swiped our ID cards on the door before it slid open. I stepped inside of the dark, cold room. He flicked on the lights and I noticed a glass enclosure at the far end of the room, shrouded in darkness.
“Approach the glass enclosure and turn on the light using your PIN.”
“I don’t have a PIN.”
“Patience, Minerva. I’m going to give you one. It’s the first four numbers of the square root of 5.”
I punched 2236 onto the keypad and the lights flicked on. My heart jumped to my throat.
“Dr. Trout…”
“Easy, don’t react. I know what you’re seeing is unlike anything that you’ve seen before.”
Everything began to make sense all at once. The unusual samples I’d been receiving all week, the strange habit Dr. Trout had of overanalyzing my work and rushing my results. The blank expressions on the faces of my coworkers. How could someone react to this?
“Is it alive?” I breathed.
“He. Is he alive,” Dr. Trout replied.
I didn’t notice Dr. Trout cross the room and get close to me until I could feel his breath on my neck. Now, not even his creepy closeness could scare me.
The creature rose to its feet. His feet. His. He was male… But not a person. I gasped as he stood tall in his cage, all seven feet of him, covered head to toe in rippling muscles like a true beast.
“What is that thing?” I whispered, not wanting to believe my own eyes. This had to be some kind of genetic enhancement, right? It couldn’t be that this creature was…
“He’s an extraterrestrial, Minerva. He fell to Earth two weeks ago and our government captured him.”
“He’s purple…” I whispered.
But that wasn’t even the strangest thing about him. Sure, he was purple, but he was also muscular with a body like a Spartan warrior, and the height of a basketball player. He had long white hair that was cropped just above his shoulders and pointed ears like an elf. His eyes were the scariest part of him aside from his tail…
Oh my goodness. He had a tail.
Suddenly, I felt sick to my stomach. I took a step back and my back pressed against Dr. Trout. I was too stunned to move away from my boss.
“Easy, Minerva,” he whispered into my ears.
“I’m fine…”
“I can tell. So far, you’re the only one who hasn’t vomited and cried,” he chuckled.
“I didn’t hear any of the others do that.”
“The walls are soundproof. This one’s loud when he wants to be, don’t mind him.”
“Does he understand us?”
&
nbsp; Dr. Trout chuckled.
“Just like a woman to think of that, eh? We aren’t sure. You have the strongest background in linguistics and communication, so your job is to care for the creature, attempt communication and study the biological aftereffects of our experiments.”
“We’re going to experiment on him?”
I couldn’t disguise the horror in my voice.
“We can’t exactly have him running around the District, Minerva. Yes, we’ll be experimenting. You will be experimenting. Nod if you understand the weight of what’s going on, and then you leave, and get some rest.”
I nodded and then raced out of the lab, my face as blank as my coworkers’ faces had been.
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Free Sample | Wicked Telepaths
1
New Earth
Poppy glowered as she stared out the window of her uncle’s New Manhattan apartment at two naked guys brawling over a bottle of water. The sand in the city below crept in from the growing Dust Bowl, which now encroached on the Rockies.
Uncle Monty told Poppy once that before the Dust Bowl, people lived in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. Now, they were all covered in sand.
“Poppy, are you listening to me?” Uncle Monty said gruffly.
Poppy nodded, but she wasn’t listening. The fight between the homeless men escalated. One of them pulled a silver blade.
“I know when you’re not listening,” Uncle Monty chided, “You have that same look your father used to have when he wasn’t listening.”
Before the fight with the homeless men could escalate further, three robotic policemen came and neutralized them. They dropped to the ground and Poppy figured that she’d better listen to her uncle.
“We need to take you to the embassy.”
“The one on Main Street?”
