JoAquin_An Alien Abduction Paranormal Romance

by Charmaine Ross

  “Of course!” Lauren said, and taking her elbow, she guided the woman inside and sat her in the chair.

  “Oh, I can’t come in,” the woman said.

  “Of course you can. What’s your name?” She’d learned that the people were more than a little in awe of her, but she was determined to make them feel at ease. It was only through a haphazard set of circumstances that she could do what she did. She considered it a gift from the planet.

  “I will make some tea,” Mother called, leaving Lauren to treat the child and mother.

  “Tiaza,” the woman said, hesitantly, watching Mother amble around the kitchen.

  “And your child?” Lauren moved the blanket swathed around the child to see a stick-thin arm. Luminous eyes peered up at her, too large for his face.

  She tamped down the anger that was quick to rise and tried not to think of the others that were still enslaved on who knew how many other planets.

  “Neo,” Tiaza said.

  Lauren crouched at her feet and smiled at her. “Let’s see how I can help you both, shall I?”

  Tiaza nodded. Lauren lay her hand on the child’s arm. A vine crept across the floor and wound around her arm and brushed against the child’s cheek. Heat, energy, and warmth soon emanated from her palm and encased the little boy. Before her eyes, the toddler’s limbs grew fatter, his skin became a lively purple, and his eyes brightened. He sat up straight, from lying so still over his mother, pointed a chubby fist at Lauren and smiled. “Ga!”

  “Glad to see you looking better, young man. Now it’s time for your mother.”

  Jo’Aquin took the squirming child from Tiaza’s lap and gave him a slice of fruit which he stuck straight in his mouth. He looked for more, which Jo’Aquin quickly produced.

  Tiaza sucked in a tight breath as Lauren wrapped her palm around Tiaza’s arm. Like the child, and all that had suffered at the hands of the Reptiles, she was rail-thin. Soon, though, the essence of the planet had healed the woman. A garland of fresh flowers had entwined around her head.

  Surprised, Tiaza held a trembling hand to them. “It’s true. Thank you, Highness.” She bowed her head.

  “No! Please don’t do that. Just call me Lauren.”

  Tiaza shook her head when Mother set a tray with a hot cup of tea and a large piece of fruit on her lap. “We’ll take care of your youngster while you eat and drink this.”

  “How can I ever repay you?” Tiaza asked.

  “Tell anyone who is suffering to come to me. I won’t turn anyone away,” Lauren said, accepting the tea Mother handed to her. She settled onto another chair and gratefully sipped the beverage.

  A shadow darkened the door and Jo’Aquin’s second bolted inside. “Reed tracked another pod through the wormhole! It’s heading to Annexor.”

  “That’s the planet next to us. Annexor was enslaved just before we were,” MalCom said, his expression dark.

  Lauren’s stomach lurched with dread thinking about a planet filled with people worse off than everyone here. How many starving people? What state were their children in? Were they beyond saving?

  “Starlight reports say the Reptile pod contains another human.”

  Lauren rocketed to her feet, the tea slipping over the leaves on the floor. “No!” She grabbed Jo’Aquin’s sleeve, twisting it in her fingers. Not another one, not like her. “You have to help them, Joe.”

  He kissed her forehead. “We will. Striker, assemble a team”

  “Time is of the essence. The pod is almost entering Annexor’s atmosphere,” Striker said.

  “Take the shuttle. Leave Florn now. Use cloaking technology, and report when you’ve landed,” Jo’Aquin said.

  “You’re not going?” Striker said.

  “I won’t leave Lauren. I will command from here,” Jo’Aquin said.

  He embraced his arm around Lauren and nudged her close to him. Striker looked from Lauren back to Jo’Aquin, longing tugged his face. “I can’t say I blame you. Congratulations sir…ma’am.”

  Lauren snuggled up to Jo’Aquin. “Thank you, Striker. But, you need to leave. Please, if another human has been abducted, you have to save them.”

  “They’ll be infected,” Mother said. She reached into her cloak and withdrew a vial containing a clear fluid. “You’ll need this.”

  “What is that?” Striker held the vial between his thumb and forefinger gingerly.

  “It is fluid from the mastermind.”

  Lauren cringed. “That’s disgusting.” The fluid sloshed inside the clear vial, thick, like colourless blood.

  “Disgusting, maybe, but the human will have been implanted with a mind control device. You’ll need to inject this into the system to halt the implantation process so that it halts mind enslavement. It contains the counter-agent needed to reverse the DNA change,” Mother said.

  “Why would you give it to him…unless you think that human DNA can reverse the mastermind?” Lauren said.

  Mother’s lips firmed. “I’m not sure, you were the trial.”

  ‘Trial!”

  Mother held her hand in a calming manner. “You were already in the process of transformation. I merely held the effects back long enough for you to meld with the mastermind. It seems the mix of half transformed human and Reptilian DNA kills the mastermind and severs the effects on all controlled minds on the planet.”

  “I was an experiment?”

  “A very important experiment,” Mother said.

  Lauren inhaled a deep breath. Around her, leaves rustled, flowers closed up and drooped. She let her breath out in a whoosh, any anger deflated with it. “I guess I was toast without the intervention. Wasn’t I?”

  Mother cackled. Jo’Aquin embraced her enough to nearly stop her from breathing, “I’m glad we intervened.”

  She tapped his back pushing back just a little to ease her lungs. “So am I, Joe. So am I.”

  He kissed her, and she kissed him back just as passionately. It was funny how a little intervention and a complete change of planets was just the thing she needed. Someone cleared their throat. She’d almost forgotten about everyone in the room. Now she remembered they were there, she wanted them gone. Like an hour ago.

  She glanced at Striker, who was looking at them with more envy as the seconds passed. “Well, what are you waiting for, Striker? You’ve got a human to rescue, don’t you?”

  Ghost

  1

  I fainted just after I lost my mind.

  Being a cardiac registrar in The Alfred , I see more blood and guts in one day than most people do in their lives. But since I’d crashed head first into the sharp end of a trolley that morning, things were happening to me that I didn’t particularly want to happen. That included falling into a dead faint on the morgue floor and waking up to a striking pair of serious green eyes peering down at me. The type of eyes that had seen too much of the wrong side of life.

  “Who are you?”

  “You called for help and I came.” His voice was a soothing deep rumble.

  “I did?” I put my fingers on my forehead. The few seconds before I fainted were fuzzy.

  A furrow appeared between his brows. “I heard you. And then I saw you. Do you need assistance?”

  He was crouching over me. That’s why I had focussed on his eyes. They were so close to my face they filled my vision. I rolled to my side and leveraged myself from the floor.

  “I’m okay. I just fainted. I don’t normally faint, but I saw Henry...”

  I turned slowly, heat vaporising my blood as I expected Henry to leap out at me again. But there was no Henry. There couldn’t be any Henry. Henry wasn’t dead . I’d checked on him last night. He’d had an Angina attack but had recovered. I’d expected him to go home today. He couldn’t be here.

  Unless… I shook my head, laughing at myself. I didn’t have the same gift as my mother.

  Not after all this time. If it didn’t appear as a child, I certainly wouldn’t have it as an adult.

  I closed my eyes and lea
ned on the bench, waiting for my heart to stop banging a way out of my chest. The man looked around the room, taking notes in a small notebook. He wore a grey, felt fedora pulled low over his forehead and a calf-length trench coat. Beneath the coat was a light-grey, three-piece suit. The waistcoat was neatly buttoned, the tie precisely knotted between a brilliant white starched collar. He looked like a detective in one of those old-time gangster movies.

  He turned penetrating eyes on me. “Who is Henry?”

  “He’s a...a patient of mine.” I’d hardly expected to see my healthy, living patient in the morgue.

  It couldn’t have been him. I’m just seeing things. I swallowed. Hard. This was just a bad dream. It had to be. I was a doctor. A believer in science and what the eye could see.

  Ghosts weren’t science.

  My gaze crept to the open trundle. Yep. Henry’s body was still there, half covered by a sheet. Cold and still and dead . Just as I’d seen him before I fainted. But how? Why? Had I forgotten chunks of time? I had suffered a head trauma after all. Maybe that could account for any missing memory. It was natural. Expected. I huffed out a sort of laugh. “All in my mind,” I murmured.

  “Do you often speak to people that aren’t there?” Detective Man peered at me, eyes narrowed taking me all in. He wasn’t the type of person you found in a morgue. It struck me as increasingly odd that he would be here at all, let alone speaking to me as though I was the nut-case.

  As though I was my mother. As far back as I could remember, I’d never seen what she saw.

  A vision of Mum talking into an empty space crowded my mind. I wasn’t my mother.

  I never wanted to be.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Answer the question, please Miss.”

  “Not regularly. No.” I didn’t want to answer him at all, but I could see he wasn’t going to let up unless I did. Police could be like that.

  But normally, if the police were involved in an unexpected death they made an appointment, told me they were investigating. This happened time to time. I was a cardiac surgeon. People came to me because they were sick and I couldn’t save them all. Even though I tried all I could to keep them alive. Also, those detectives didn’t wear fedora hats and trench coats and ask question after question after someone had woken up from a dead faint on the morgue floor. They would help. Not interrogate.

  It occurred to me that I was all alone down here, if you didn’t include the dead bodies, and if something were to happen with not-quite-right-in-the-head detective man, I didn’t have any help close at hand. Either way, I had to get myself out of here. The sooner the better.

  I had to make things look as normal as possible so I covered Henry's still dead body — that hadn’t changed even though there was a good possibility that this could still be a nightmare — with shaking hands and slid the trundle back into the locker, taking the opportunity to make my way closer to the door. Just moving slowly. No sudden movements.

  “Are you prone to times of unreasonable frustration?”

  “Not including this moment?” I went on before he could answer, “Look, why are you asking me these questions?”

  “To prove you're sane.”

  He was asking me if I was sane? I mentally shook my head and took another step towards the door. “Are you a psychologist?” Just keep him talking, concentrating on things other than me, getting closer to that door.

  Moments passed and I watched as he considered my question. “I don’t think so. Now—tell me exactly what happened.” He frowned, the line between his brows more of a valley then his green eyes settled on the bandage on my forehead, “You’re hurt!”

  He strode towards me and I saw that his eyes had flecks of brown in them, like golden streaks, shining beneath the emerald green. They were deep. So deep I was sure I glimpsed his soul in their depths. As he studied my bandage, I read...concern. I didn’t expect to see that. His gaze slipped from my forehead to my eyes. I felt it digging past my defences, right through me.

  “Look, who the hell are you?”

  Confusion entered those green depths. He felt through his pockets, eventually tugging out a black leather wallet from an inside pocket of his coat. He flipped it open and stared at it as though it was the first time he’d read his own badge. The sense of not-quite-right speared me, racking my composure.

  “Tell me!”

  He roused, coming back into the moment, “I’m Elliot Stone. Detective Elliot Stone.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “You… you asked for me.”

  “Listen, I don’t know you and I never asked for you.” I pointed to the door, doing my best impression of a woman who wasn’t currently doubting her sanity. I was a doctor, after all. I did have authority. “You need to go.”

  His frown grew deeper. He blinked in his surroundings, as though this was the first time he’d thought to understand his surroundings, “Where...am I?”

  My pointed finger fell to my side. The urge to flee was overwhelming. It was a battle of my will to remain calm. At least on the outside. If he wasn’t going to get out of here, then I had to. I chanced another step closer to the door. “You’re in a morgue.”

  “Morgue?”

  I nodded, “Yes, Detective , and this interview is over.”

  I’d reached the door. I didn’t stay to hear his answer. I ran. Right into the arms of doctor George Campbell. The living , I-could-feel-his-hard-body-crushed-against-mine, reason for my head injury. My attention had been glued to him right before I crashed headlong into that trolley. Even though I couldn’t remember apparent chunks of time when my healthy patient had died, I’d remembered that I’d quite literally had nothing in my mind expect filling it with George Campbell while I’d been standing beside the trolley. Before I’d crashed landed into it. His perfect, long-fingered hands gripped my forearms to balance me while his face widened in shock, “Cassie...you look like you’re in quite the rush.”

  I staggered back, breaking the contact, keeping Campbell at arm’s length. It was the only way I could think. I peeked over my shoulder. The door to the morgue flapped open and as it did, Detective Elliot-Insane-Stone slipped through, still looking as confused as when he was in the morgue. His state of mind seemed to be real. He looked completely lost I almost felt sorry for him, but my frayed nerves got in the way of any residual sympathy.

  I grabbed George’s elbow, steering him along the corridor, maneuvering him to use as a human shield. “Don’t worry about him,” I flicked a glance over my shoulder.

  “Who...?”

  I clicked my tongue. He’d have to be blind not to see someone dressed like Elliot, “That detective man. If you ignore him, he should go away like all good insane people.”

  Then another thought struck me. Perhaps detective-man was a figment of my imagination and that’s why George looked so confused. I was hallucinating with something I could see and even talk to, but wasn’t real. I stifled an internal shudder, hoping that wasn’t the case.

  I blustered on, purposely talking to George and not looking at ‘The Figment’, “Look, I came to see a patient of mine. Henry Davis.” I stopped mid-step as a thought struck, “Actually, weren’t you on duty last night?”

  George’s smooth gaze connected with mine, “I was, but I was on a break when your patient went into cardiac arrest. If you need to speak to the nurse on duty, that would be Jane Murphy.”

  “He… he went into cardiac arrest?” Surely I would have been told…

  I was actually pretty good at knowing who was responsible for my patient’s care when I wasn’t here, but maybe hitting my head had done more damage than I thought. Maybe I really had lost time. Maybe I had really forgotten that Henry had died. Maybe that was why I’d come here in the first place. If that was the case, then I’d lost more memory since I’d fainted. Panic surged like an acid bile-tsunami, burning my throat. I swallowed it back down through sheer will.

  “Yes. Normally doctors are notified about the death of their patients,”
George said.

  We’d reached the service elevator before I knew I’d even walked over to it. I stepped back so that I couldn’t fall head-over-heels in those liquid brown eyes of his that were looking at me like I’d lost my mind. Which, I was coming to suspect, wasn’t far from the truth. I’d collected more than just one nightly dream that included me, George, a deserted island, no clothing and a hammock that was the perfect fit for the both of us.

  “Yes. Yes, they would have,” I mumbled. Surely someone would have informed me. The hospital needed the doctors signature to note time of death. I would have been called. I just couldn’t remember it. That was all. My memory would come back when my brain stopped swelling from the fall. I just had to get through it, that’s all. And forget about insane detectives.

  I couldn’t stop glancing at my object of insanity. Detective-Man still frowned, but now he studied George, his brain powering behind soulful green eyes. Thankfully the elevator door slid open and I slipped onto the rail at the back of the car. I was fast losing the ability to stand on my two shaking legs. “Thank you, George. I’m… just going to check my notes.”. The cool metal as the doors slid shut.

  Then I forgot to breathe when Elliot walked right through the doors after me. He didn’t just dash through at the last second before they shut. He walked through the metal. My body flushed with a fiery heat while my insides went ice-cold. He really was my imagination…or possibly something much worse. Something I never wanted to see or hear or know anything about.

  I couldn’t—wouldn’t —entertain that notion at all. I cringed in a corner of the lift, hoping he wouldn’t attack me, but if he was what I thought he was, then he couldn’t actually do a damn thing to me.

  Even knowing that, I perspired from pores I never knew I had. I caved against the corner, fighting to stay upright, fighting quickly disappearing consciousness. My vision had already narrowed to a pin-prick. Oxygen! I needed oxygen! I gasped in a big lungful of air. When the doors opened, I dashed past him. I stumbled through a crowd of people, not waiting to see if I’d pushed anyone over, and scampered down the people-filled corridor and into the safety of my office.