Enslaved

by N. W. Harris

  She couldn’t lose hope. Against all odds, blood loss, and the infection that’d been taking hold of her, she’d survived the march to the pyramids. She stood here with her wounds healed, the enemy’s throats a step away, and hundreds, if not thousands, of kids who could help her overthrow them all around her. The Anunnaki must’ve injected nutrients into her body to help her recover; she felt stronger now than she did when she stepped off the plane in Cairo. She took it as a sign. Somehow, she was destined to end up on this vessel.

  The vibration coming through the gray floor of the chamber ceased. Were they in orbit? The bleak alternative—the vessel had headed into space, leaving Earth behind. Darkness enveloped her thoughts. What would she do if she were transported to the other side of the galaxy—to that planet Lily had shown them where the rebels had been defeated? What chance would she have of making it back if that happened? She scolded herself. Such thinking wouldn’t do any good. For now, she had to assume they were in orbit. She’d return, even if she had to take control of the ship and crash-land it on Earth herself.

  A buzzing sounded in her left ear, the same noise she heard when her earbud activated and took her into simulations. Terror surged through her. If it shut off, she’d be taken over by her slave gene. She managed to keep still. The noise grew louder, heat developing deep in her ear and spreading across her head. Sharp tendrils of pain whipped through her body, and she clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. Her knees grew weak. She was going to collapse, and, seeing the movement, a soldier would pull the trigger and kill her before she hit the floor. She thought of Nat, focusing all of her attention on memories of her sister smiling up at her and giving her one of those random hugs that made her heart seem to grow wings and flutter about in her chest. If she were going to die, it was the last thought she wanted to have.

  Just as her legs threatened to fold, the symptoms vanished. The buzzing was gone and all seemed to return to normal, except she had the strange sensation of being disconnected from her body.

  She sensed the soldiers’ nervous scrutiny of her and the other humans, but the Anunnaki didn’t react. Whatever went on with her hadn’t raised any suspicions. She tried to move a finger on her right hand, the side that was toward the other slaves, hidden from view. It didn’t respond, and panic swelled in her. Although she could still feel the cool air swirling past the bare skin of her face and arms, she seemed paralyzed.

  Far ahead, the line moved forward, apparently going into the next chamber where they’d be scanned. Anxiety tightened its grip on her. How would she walk when it was her turn? She tried to move her fingers and wiggle her toes inside her shoes, but nothing happened. She was about to be discovered. The wave of movement swept down the line toward her. Putting every bit of intention she had on her legs, she tried to get them to shift slightly, anything to let her know she was in control. They wouldn’t move. She couldn’t even turn her eyes to see left and right.

  If she had control of her lungs, she would’ve stopped breathing when the boy ahead of her stepped forward. Kelly cringed, waiting to be shot for not complying. She felt her leg lift, and as if something controlled her remotely, she walked after the boy.

  Her momentary relief faded into terror. How did her legs operate without her command? It was nightmarish, like she was trapped inside someone else, able to feel and see everything, but unable to control any part of her body. She tried to relax, to assess this new development. Her lungs didn’t respond, so the deep breath she took was purely a function of thought.

  Managing to maintain a semblance of calm, the benefit of this strange paralysis became apparent. Whatever controlled her body seemed to obey the Anunnaki commands without hesitation. It would keep her from being discovered. But what if she was trapped inside herself like this forever, made to fight and commit murder for the Anunnaki against her will?

  Her line approached a door she expected would lead the slaves into a chamber where they’d endure extensive scanning. The aliens had to be determined to find out if any of their slaves were not fully under their control. She was about to see if whatever was in charge of her body would allow her to pass their tests.

  Shane heard garbled conversation. Tracy barked orders, her voice louder and firmer than the others were. She did it so well, as if she was born to be a drill sergeant. He wasn’t alert enough to understand what she said. Hands pressed under his sides, raising him. Pain erupted from everywhere. He opened his mouth to beg for them to stop, but he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs to speak. The voices grew muffled, and he passed out again.

  “He’s coming around now,” Dr. Blain observed. “Give him some space.”

  Shane opened his eyes, blinking them into focus on a cracked, plaster ceiling.

  “Kelly!” He sat bolt upright, and spots flashed across his vision.

  “Easy there, big guy,” Steve said, putting his hand on Shane’s arm. “You were jacked up like nobody’s business a couple of minutes ago.”

  “Steve,” Shane said. “You’re alive.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, a sad smile on his face. “I’m fine.”

  “But Kelly”

  “She’s not dead, Shane,” Lily ominously said. She sat at a table nearby, one of the advanced holographic computers the doctor used in front of her.

  “So we’re going to rescue her.” He tried to shrug Steve off so he could stand.

  “Not so fast,” Dr. Blain warned.

  “In due time.” Lily looked away from the computer. “But there’s something we must do now to save her life.”

  “They have to shut off their earbuds,” Steve said, his voice cracking.

  “You can’t,” Shane objected, terrified. “She’ll be enslaved.”

  “A part of her will remain conscious,” Lily replied.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Dr. Blain added, hardness in her tone he’d never heard before. “You have to trust us.”

  After his interaction with the soldier in the escape pod, Shane wasn’t certain who he could believe. Rescuing Kelly was everything to him—he’d sign with the devil to save her. In hindsight, much of the alien’s story didn’t make sense. For now, he had to side with the rebels. Even if they were the enemy, he’d use them until he guaranteed Kelly’s safety.

  “Will we be able to get her back?” he asked.

  “There’s a good chance, yes.”

  “A good chance?” Anger flashed in him.

  “They’ll suspect a tainted harvest,” Jones growled, using an impatient tone. His brow furrowed, and though he sounded gruff, his voice expressed concern. He stood on the other side of the shadowy room, which had no windows and only one old, wooden door. It smelled dank and earthy, like a basement. The captain’s worried gaze changed to angry frustration. “The Anunnaki will find them if we don’t do this now.”

  Shane looked at each of the people in the room. Everyone's faces said they’d already debated over this while he was out. They’d decided it was the right thing to do. It surprised him they even asked, though it did give him more faith that the rebels could be trusted.

  “I’ve made the connection,” Lily excitedly said. “Everyone’s earbud except Kelly’s has been deactivated.”

  “Shane,” Dr. Blain urged. “We don’t have time.”

  “Do it,” he said, afraid of losing her forever.

  Lily nodded and returned her attention to the computer. Steve crossed his arms and dropped his head. The burden of losing their friends seemed to crush the big linebacker. Glancing at Tracy, Shane found some relief knowing his friends had survived. She returned his gaze, her eyes expressing the heartache he endured. He wondered if Lily had made her decide to shut off Jules’ earbud.

  “We will get them back, Shane,” she said, sounding so determined that it fanned the little flame of hope still burning in his heart.

  “You’re right,” he replied, his voice growing steady. “We will.”

  Pushing off the table, he stood with
one hand on it and checked his balance. Dr. Blain had worked her magic once again. No sign of his injuries remained, though it felt like he’d been blasted through the chest by a plasma rifle. That pain wouldn’t go away until he rescued Kelly.

  A dull boom accompanied bits of plaster raining down from the ceiling. Looking up, Shane feared the building would collapse and end his chances of saving her before he even got started. Lily leaned away from the computer and looked up as well, her sad expression telling him she’d finished her work. The entire team on the escaped ship had been given over to the enemy—enslaved.

  “Pull up the cameras,” Jones ordered, crossing the room to stand behind Lily. The concern for the lost team written across his brow faded, and the determined look of a soldier took over.

  She did as he requested. Her computer monitor expanded to cover the entire wall, breaking into ten individual views of the world above.

  “What the hell?” Steve gasped.

  “It’s started,” Dr. Blain replied with despair.

  The monitor showed kids in soiled and torn clothing crowding past the base of the building to which the cameras were mounted. They pushed each other, screaming and running from explosions of light approaching from the desert. In one of the squares, Shane saw a boy with dark hair trip. The mob passed over him. He disappeared below the panicking teens and never got back up.

  “What are they running from?” His voice sounded too calm and displaced.

  The horrific images didn’t shake him. He’d seen bees kill his aunt, dogs shred Ms. Morris, and his dad’s roach-eaten corpse. He’d fought and killed to protect the kids under his charge, first the escaped convicts in the Leeville High gym, and then the gangs in Atlanta. He’d lost some of his closest friends in those battles, Billy, then Matt and Aaron. Beyond that, he’d trained for countless hours and endured a painful neural upload that filled his brain with a hundred years of martial knowledge. Not much could rattle Shane any more, and at the moment, heartache from losing Kelly consumed him. He had no emotional energy left to feel anything for the poor kids dying outside, and he hated himself for it.

  “The humans taken aboard the ship and enslaved are shifting to a default mode,” Jones explained, more emotion in his stoic voice than Shane’s. “After the reactors were destroyed, they temporarily had free will. But once harvested slaves stop being influenced by a ships’ command nodes, it takes a few hours before they lose control again and start killing anyone who is not wearing red armor.”

  “It’s the Anunnaki way of ensuring the slaves continue the fight, even if their commanders are eliminated,” Lily added, her voice thick with anger. She watched the mob trample each other to get away from the deranged teens. “Once they kill everyone else, they’ll kill each other.”

  “Without a ship’s reactor nearby, they’ll run out of power in their plasma rifles soon,” Jones said.

  “That will only slow them down,” Lily added.

  The flashes came closer, and Shane could see the front line. A mass of relatively organized Anunnaki slave soldiers, all wearing red armor, pressed into the mob. Some fired plasma rifles into the fleeing teens, killing several with each blast. Other red-clad human slaves had apparently depleted their charge. Using their spent rifles as axes, they hacked into the crowd.

  “Why don’t they fight back?” Tracy sounded like she wanted to rush to their aid. “There!” She pointed at a square on the lower right.

  A tall, muscular boy in a tattered shirt charged the red butchers, knocking aside kids he passed to get to the line. He raised a machete in the air and brought it down on the first slave soldier he came to, a much smaller girl who’d lost her helmet. Her brunette hair hung in a sweaty, disheveled mess around a face painted with a murderous expression. Shane could read the hate on her face—her desire to exterminate the kids in her path. Without appearing alarmed, the girl raised her armor-covered forearm and caught the blade with it, sweeping the attack aside. With lightning speed and deadly precision, she dropped and pivoted, using her leg to take the feet out from under her massive attacker. As the boy fell, she rose up. Catching his elbow and wrist, she twisted his arm so the blade of his weapon sank into his belly, his fingers still wrapped around the handle. The girl jumped over his body and landed a lethal kick in the next kid’s skull.

  “The ones who made it to the final chamber retain all the training their neural uploads provided,” Dr. Blain explained, her voice wavering.

  “We’d better get ready.” Jones stepped toward the door and looked back at Shane. “We’ll have a serious battle on our hands if they break in here.”

  Jones lifted the door and pulled it inward, its only intact hinge screeching in complaint. Shane worried the sound would draw attention before realizing it was impossible for anyone from the screaming mob above to hear. His senses heightened in preparation for the fight, he looked into the eerie hallway beyond. The captain led the way. Dim light came from an open door fifteen feet down, just enough to see.

  Glancing at other sagging, wooden doors, he wondered what the basement had been used for in the past. It seemed like the kind of place where clandestine organizations tortured people, and it was hard not to imagine muffled screams coming from the mildew-infested rooms. Perhaps some of the stains on the fractured concrete floor of the room where they’d just been were from the blood of interrogations time had forgotten.

  Over his shoulder, he saw Tracy behind him, followed by Steve, Lily and Dr. Blain—not enough people to put up much of a fight against all the crazies sweeping by on the streets above.

  A door creaked open on his left, and dim yellow light cut a wedge through the shadows. Under a solitary bulb hanging from the ceiling of the small room, a woman with short, blonde hair slumped against ropes that tied her chest, arms, and legs to an old metal chair. Her features were perfect, too perfect like Lily’s, though her skin was not as tan. She wore grimy and loose clothing, an old T-shirt, and some baggy sweatpants, but Shane knew in an instant that she was Anunnaki. He paused, fixated on her. She returned his gaze, her honey-brown eyes piercing, seeming to glow brighter than the light hanging overhead.

  “Shane?” Her eyes widened. In them, he saw fear. Her voice sounded familiar.

  One of Jones’ clones stepped into the doorway, blocking his view.

  “Gag her,” Lily ordered. “And keep it quiet down here.”

  The clone nodded and backed into the room, closing the door before Shane had a chance to see the alien again. There was too much noise coming from above—terrified screams and the sounds of gunshots—to ask questions, but he suspected she was the alien who was in the escape pod with him. It seemed like it was from a dream he’d had years ago, but he recalled she’d said her name was Hanne. Dr. Blain must’ve patched her up. Now he reckoned they’d extract all the information they could from her, leaving one more oxidized bloodstain on the floors of this forsaken basement. It shouldn’t bother him—she was the enemy—but it did.

  “This building was prepared as a safe house before the Anunnaki arrived,” Jones said, mounting the stairs. “The windows and doors of the first two floors are barricaded.”

  “Keep quiet.” Anfisa’s rigid voice carried down the staircase, just audible above the sounds of mayhem outside. “Ready your weapons.”

  “We’re coming up,” Jones called. He sounded worried they’d startle the teens on the first floor and get shot on accident.

  Shane stepped through the door at the top of the flight behind Jones. He scanned the room. The lights were off, and glow sticks littered the floor. The riotous noises coming from outside made it hard for him to think. Screams and frantic shouting dominated, and he could hear the thwack of plasma rifles going off along with the occasional gunshot. His vision adjusted to the soft green light. Over thirty teens dressed in black occupied the lobby of the rundown hotel. They held rifles and shotguns aimed at the boarded-up windows and doors, their fingers twitching on the triggers.

  Fear an
d anticipation charged the air, the hotel’s occupants ready to engage the crazies slamming into the building’s exterior. He saw shadows moving by through narrow slits between the planks covering the closest window, fleeing the red-armor-clad Anunnaki slave soldiers. He pitied them with caution, knowing the bloodthirsty teenagers and children would turn into predators as soon as they were no longer prey. A gunshot exploded just outside. Ducking instinctively, Shane saw the nervous silhouettes in the dark room do the same.

  “Arm yourselves,” Jones ordered, pointing at crates near the dilapidated reception desk.

  Feeling naked and vulnerable standing there with his hands empty, Shane quickly obeyed. He reached into the crate and found the cold barrel of a gun. Hoisting it out, he recognized its shape. It was an AK-47 like the one he’d carried on the trip through Cairo to the pyramids. He’d gotten lucky and hadn’t had to fire it, but he knew he’d have to empty the oversized clip if the lobby doors were breached.

  Not so long ago, he disliked guns—hated the idea of holding one and couldn’t stomach the notion of killing an animal, much less a human. Melancholy accompanied the realization that it comforted him to have the firearm in his hands now. How much of that old Shane, the boy who was empathetic and compassionate almost to a fault, remained? He’d inherited those traits from his mother and losing them made it feel like she was dying all over again. Gritting his teeth, he brought the butt of the weapon to his shoulder and stood upright. His battle-hardened reflexes swung the barrel toward the door when someone thumped against it.