One by one, we loaded onto the transport ship, which had barely enough room for us to sit side by side. Jeff sat in the back with us, and Magnus took a seat up front by the pilot. I was hip to hip between Mary and Leslie. Our bags and rifles leaned behind the back seats, in the small storage area just out of sight.
“Explain,” I said once we were in the air, leaving the pyramids behind.
EIGHTEEN
We moved quickly through the night. Part of me wished I could watch the ground fly past us as we traveled, moving over the Middle East toward Siberia, where Jeff claimed the hybrid camp was located.
“I had a talk show for a few years on extraterrestrial beings, and the likelihood of life outside of Earth. Ever since I was a child sending letters to MUFON, I’ve been ridiculed for my beliefs. It didn’t stop there. Even as a successful television host and blogger, I had hate mail, and naysayers putting me down. Could you imagine the thrill I had when one of the hybrids approached me a year before the Event?” Jeff’s smile started to creep back onto his face.
“What?” Mary asked, as incredulous as I felt.
“Kyle came to a filming of one of my interview shows. He sat in the front row, and there was something familiar about him, like I’d seen him before. It turned out that I had, on a conspiracy blog about aliens among us. It showed images of Kyle’s other lookalike hybrids. He was the Caucasian male, dark hair.”
I glanced over at Mary, knowing Jeff was describing the hybrid that had looked like Bob, her husband. She just turned and gave me a forced smile.
Jeff continued. “The site had done a good job of identifying this man all over the world. There were at least ten sightings; each of the men looked very similar, though some wore their hair differently and dressed differently. The site wasn’t a big one, and most people assume these things are fake or Photoshopped anyway, so it didn’t make any mainstream news. When I realized this man in my audience was one of them, I couldn’t wait to speak with him. I remember how nervous I was after the show was done filming. Kyle lingered in his seat, long past everyone else’s departure, and once the crew was gone, I walked over to him, heart pounding, knowing this was the moment I’d been waiting for. I was right.
“He told me his name and asked if there was somewhere we could talk privately. I agreed to it, and we left the studio. We walked to an all-night café nearby where only a couple of night-shift workers were hanging out, giving us ample opportunity to talk without prying ears.
“The story he spilled was insane, even to me, a full alien believer. He claimed that a race of aliens was coming, fleeing their own system and making the trip to Earth, where they would dispose of us all, claiming the planet for themselves. I asked him how he knew this, and he said he was a hybrid alien, part Kraski, part human. He looked sickly and was coughing up a lung by the time our pie came to the table.” Jeff paused briefly to look at Leslie, then Terrance, before starting again. “I asked him what I was supposed to do about it, knowing he had to be crazy. I would have left it alone if I hadn’t seen him on that conspiracy website. That he was already being touted as an alien by some blogger made me listen to him. The idea that he may have been the guy behind the website crossed my mind, but this man was so into his story, I almost believed him.”
The ship jumped a little bit, and my heart hammered in my chest, thinking we were being attacked. “Just turbulence,” the pilot said from the front seat. I craned my neck and there was Magnus, listening to Jeff’s story with interest. After a few more bumps, I clipped my seatbelt on, the rest of us following suit.
“What happened after that?” Mary prompted.
The TV host was looking forward, not meeting the gaze of anyone, just silent for a moment.
“Jeff?” I asked.
He turned to me, his eyes coming into focus. “Yes, sorry. I was lost in my story, I guess. So much has happened since that day, but it’s so clear in my memory. I can tell you what color and style his shirt was, and that his white sneakers were old, with dark scuff marks along the sides of them. I’ll never forget his next words.”
I leaned forward, drawn in like everyone else listening.
“He said we had no chance. He hated being used like a puppet and said that the Kraski could go to hell. That’s when he told me about the Deltras’ plan. It sounded insane and had far too many moving pieces to work,” Jeff said, his eyes shifting to meet mine. “He told me there were a few of them in the mix, but not to trust one in particular.”
He paused again, and Mary leaned back, pushing out an irritated sigh. “For the love of God, just say the name already.”
Jeff smiled, making me want to slap the words out of his mouth. “Mae. He told me not to trust Mae.”
“What good did that do?” I asked. “You didn’t tell anyone, and then sending an anonymous text to me telling me not to trust her. It could have meant anyone. Mary, Natalia, Patty… hell, even Leslie here. What did he say about Mae?” I was getting tired of Jeff’s demeanor, and wished he’d just sent the transport and stayed in London. “What did he know about her?”
Jeff shrugged. “I was trying to help you. She was with the Bhlat, wasn’t she? He was right, and I was right to warn you.”
“I think the part we’re having a hard time wrapping our heads around is this: you could have had a conversation with us before we traveled off into space with Mae by our side. Maybe, just maybe, these two could have stayed on Earth, and we could’ve not lost seven years with our loved ones. Maybe the hybrids wouldn’t be on lockdown now, wasting away in Siberia like murderers and terrorists,” Mary said, keeping her voice calm. I gripped her hand, squeezing it for support.
“Yes, but… then the Bhlat wouldn’t have come,” he said, his grin so wide I saw all of his teeth. His comment didn’t even register as I looked at him, thinking how much he looked like a wild animal with his teeth bared like that.
“What did you say?” Magnus asked from the front.
“Then the Bhlat wouldn’t have come.” Jeff repeated the words, and before we could react, he pulled a gun, aiming it at Terrance’s head. “Anyone moves, and I blow this man’s head off his shoulders. And I use the term ‘man’ loosely. He’s more of an alien monstrosity. Part Kraski, a terrible race of cowards, mixed with another race of turncoats and self-abusers: human.”
“Magnus, where are we going?” I asked, not able to see through the front window.
“We’re moving up, heading into the clouds,” my large friend said through a clenched jaw. If I knew Magnus, he was holding down the urge to slam the pilot’s head into the dash.
“Dinkle, what’s the endgame here?” I asked, feeling stupid for instantly trusting the stranger. We’d fallen right into his trap. Patty had been played by the man she thought she knew.
“The endgame is this: we already have Dalhousie and your other friends up there. Now we have the famed Heroes of Earth to bring as a sacrifice. Rumor has it they want your head on a stick, Mr. Parker. I wonder what for?”
My throat had closed, and I swallowed hard. They knew me. Naidoo had probably sold me out.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said, the words burning on their way out. We’d come all this way, and now it was going to end at the hands of this slick television talk show host.
“No, I don’t, but humans have never interested me. Aliens? Now them, I can get behind. They’re going to show me amazing things. Speaking of which, how did you get to Egypt? Inquiring minds want to know your tricks.”
“You really think we’re going to tell you that?” Mary asked vehemently. I set a trembling hand on her thigh.
Terrance was staying far calmer than I would have with the cold steel of a gun against my temple. I had to hand it to the guy; he was cool as a cucumber. Leslie was fidgeting. I hoped she wasn’t about to lunge at Jeff, because her friend would probably end up dead if she did.
Magnus whistled up front, just a light one, but I knew what it meant. It was the same whistle I’d used to teach Carey to roll over.
I scanned the seatbelts, seeing everyone was wearing one but Jeff. I got ready. We bumped into some more turbulence, and Magnus made his move. He must have snuck his hand to the steering column because we suddenly were torn to the side, the ship turning hard to starboard. Jeff went hard into the sidewall, still holding his gun. I unclasped my belt just as we came out of the barrel roll and lunged at the dazed man.
“Don’t even think about it,” Magnus said from the front seat, presumably at the pilot, as I arced through the air, the training Slate engrained into me on our previous journey taking over.
Jeff’s eyes went wide as he tried to swing his gun around in time to aim at me, but he was too late. Our bodies collided. My fist went into his gut and he bent over, fighting for breath. Terrance was already digging behind him to the storage area, and when I glanced over, he was passing the pulse rifles to the others.
Jeff was still gripping the gun, but I clasped his wrist while he coughed loudly. Mary came over and pried it from his fingers; soon he was slumped back in his seat, his head bleeding from the side.
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” he spat angrily. “They’re expecting us. When we don’t show up, they’ll come looking. Do you think they’ll spare the people in their search?”
“Don’t put this on us. This is all on your hands,” I said, surprised his perspective would allow him to see that vantage point. This type of man always reasoned with himself when he did things. He justified his terrible actions with righteous causes, but at the end of the day, he was in the wrong.
“Take us to Siberia,” Magnus grumbled from the front. He was now pointing a gun at the pilot, whose shoulders took on the inevitable slump of someone caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
I went to the storage compartment and found some zip ties, which we used to tie Jeff’s hands together. He protested, but soon he was sitting in the back on the floor, head on his knees.
“Should we give him something for his head?” Mary asked quietly.
I shook my head. “We’ll figure it out later. For now, I have a hard time showing the man compassion.” I shifted my attention to the front of the transport. “What’s our ETA?” I asked.
When the pilot didn’t answer, Magnus peered over to the console. “Ten minutes. Here, look at this.”
He passed me a tablet and told me to press play. It showed a snow-covered entrance to a large stone-walled prison. Guard towers were visibly manned, and a name was carved in the rock in Russian.
In the video, a stream of people emerged from a Kraski ship. Their hands were chained, and they wore orange jumpsuits. My stomach lurched when I saw who they were. Every few people, the faces were the same. Leslie clenched beside me, a low growl coming from her throat.
“This is where we’re going,” Magnus said. “I found it online. Maybe we should take them and let the Bhlat have this world. I’m sick of the things we put each other through.”
“Just put yourself in their shoes, Magnus,” Mary said. “We chased after who we thought were murderous hybrids, and never came back. They had to do something with them. When the Bhlat contacted Earth, they must have felt like they’d done the right thing. That doesn’t make it right, but it makes it understandable.”
The video kept playing, showing the inside of the building, the lines of cold bleak cells, and a pitiful bunch of hybrids sitting and eating in the mess hall. They were a beaten-down group, and I felt so terribly for them. We had to right it, and even though we were wasting precious time on this mission, it was an important one, no matter the outcome of the impending war.
“Arriving,” the pilot said, all the fight gone out of him. He was a hired hand and most likely didn’t care about causes, only a paycheck and seeing his family at night.
Snow was falling as we lowered from the cloud line, reminding me of Terran Five.
As we neared the building, something was off about it. “Shouldn’t there be lights on somewhere?”
Magnus nodded and mumbled something along the same lines.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Mary said. The feeling was mutual, and almost a constant for us over the past couple of years.
Leslie and Terrance stayed quiet, their gazes never leaving the view of the structure we were approaching. They were so close to their friends, nothing would stop them from getting to them now. I knew we had to watch our own backs. As much as I wanted to say these two were on our side, I knew they were looking out for themselves and the rest of the hybrids first, and I didn’t even blame them.
The transport ship landed softly, near the entrance we’d seen on the video minutes ago.
Leslie was already half out the door, followed quickly by Terrance. Jeff was tied up in the back, and we did the same to the pilot, making sure they had no weapons.
As I followed Mary out, Leslie was standing at the large iron gates. She looked back at us and pulled. The gates swung open. We still couldn’t see any lights on inside, and the towers located around the building looked to be empty.
“It’s like it’s abandoned,” Magnus said, holding his rifle at ready.
We walked past the gates, toward the dark prison.
NINETEEN
The main doors were tall and double wide, large enough to roll through supplies. Magnus was ready to blast them open, but Leslie held up a hand and tested the handle. It depressed, and she pulled the door open.
“This is odd.” Mary looked around, pointing at a camera in the corner. There was no light on it, and it didn’t move with us. Was anyone watching? Wind blew around the building, pushing light snow over us. Visibility of the area was poor, but that might help us get out of there.
“I’d planned on Jeff getting us a ship. How do we move this many?” I asked, hoping someone had a better idea than I did.
“First we see how many we’re talking about,” Magnus whispered, getting a dirty look from Leslie. He ignored it. “A place of this importance might very well have a ship parked out back.”
The entry was dim; even the backup emergency lights had expended their battery charges. There was an old bulletin board on the wall, half empty, and a depressing dirt-covered entry mat.
“Where the hell are the guards?” Magnus asked.
“If they’re still here, they aren’t doing a very good job of keeping anyone out. Hopefully, they did a better one of keeping them in.” I got a glare from Leslie. “I didn’t mean it like that. We’re going to find anyone left and get them out of here.”
The door closed behind us, clicking ominously. There was finality to the sound in the otherwise silent entryway. Mary jumped, smiling nervously in my direction.
The mud room, as I thought of it, had two more doors leading into a hallway we could see through the metal-lined glass. Leslie moved ahead, impatient to find her people. I expected the push lever to stop firm, keeping us from entering, but it moved, the door opening easily.
Leslie started forward, but Terrance reached an arm out to slow her. “It’s not going to do us any good to run in with guns blazing and get ourselves killed. We need to scope it out first.” She pulled away from him but heeded his advice, falling back and letting Magnus take the lead.
Magnus looked like he’d done this a thousand times, so we followed him, moving as a unit down the hall, keeping close to the wall as we did so. We passed a vacant reception desk; an old boxy computer monitor sat there, a reminder of the past. If I didn’t know better, I would have said Jeff had been pulling our chain the whole time. He’d sent us to the wrong prison.
Our LEDs illuminated the way, beams jostling up and down on the walls as we moved, shadow figures dancing in our wake.
“I hear something,” Mary said, and Magnus stopped, then held a finger in the air. We all stopped, and my heart thumped in my eardrums.
There was a faint noise coming from down the hall. It wasn’t much, and I couldn’t place what the sound was, but someone was inside the prison. We moved along, the tension thickening with each step. The clinking noise
grew louder every ten seconds, and in a minute, we were past all of the offices at the front of the building. Doctor’s office, warden’s office, staff change room, lunchroom – all showing signs of recent use.
“They’ve abandoned it,” I said.
“Someone’s still here,” Mary replied. The next set of doors led us to a guard station, and a large metal door stood between us and the wing of prison cells.
“Give it a try, Leslie. You have the magic touch.” Magnus moved out of the way, making room for the smaller hybrid woman. She tugged at it, but it didn’t budge.
“Locked,” she said.
“The keys have to be around here somewhere.” Magnus started to rifle through drawers.
We all set to different parts of the room, sifting through paperwork and desks. I found an assortment of poker chips, half-full flasks that sloshed as I slid them out of the way, and a couple of erotic Russian magazines that looked like they were from the eighties. No keys anywhere to be found.
Jingling metal rang from the other side of the room, and Terrance looked pleased with himself, like he’d just won a prize on a game show.
“What’s behind door number one?” I whispered in a low voice.
“What?” Mary asked.
I just shook my head, waiting while Terrance inserted the metal key and turned it. With a click, it unlocked, and he pulled on the bars. They slid open, and Terrance walked through the opening.
“Stop where you are!” a panicked voice called from behind us.
I spun, pulse rifle ready to fire. Slate’s training took over again, and my finger settled on the trigger ever-so-lightly as I gauged my target.
A haggard man approached us, his face red with exertion. He was holding a revolver, and an old one by the looks of it. A white beard covered most of his face and neck. I almost fired, but there was something in his eyes that made me lift my finger off the trigger.
The Survivors: Books 1-6 Page 57
