by Sean Platt
Laughter, muffled jokes, the echoes of slapping.
It went on too long.
Maybe an hour. It felt like a day.
Meghan sobbed. Teagan crawled over to her side of the container and held her.
Becca lived under one of Brent’s arms, and Ben in the other.
Sammy paced.
The rest of the container pretended they couldn’t hear.
Ben looked up at Brent, “Why didn’t you do anything, Dad?”
He looked down, wiping tears from his eyes. “Because I didn’t want them to hurt either of you.”
Ben simply stared ahead, as if processing. Brent wasn’t sure how his son would file that — Dad as a coward or Dad doing what he had to in order to protect his family.
Finally, the door opened.
Lara was thrown inside, panting, trying to catch her breath, clothes bloody. She ran to her mom, but Meghan didn’t embrace her. Instead, she launched herself at the bandits and pummeled them both with her fists.
“You want some too, you feisty bitch?” Purple Hair asked, punching her in the gut.
Tommy grabbed the woman from behind, in a choke hold, as Purple Hair continued to hit her.
Lara screamed, “Stop! Please stop!”
They ignored her until they were ready to stop, and that wasn’t until Meghan was an almost lifeless bloody heap on the floor.
Then Tommy hooked the girl’s wire back up to the pole and left without another word.
Purple Hair spit on the mother then followed his tattooed friend.
The door closed, plunging them back into darkness.
Mother and daughter cried as one.
Ben and Becca joined them.
Brent was closing his eyes, quietly crying. He jumped, startled when Teagan’s hand grasped his. Their fingers threaded together. With Ben and Becca’s, too, the four a tangled mass.
“What did they do to her?” Becca asked.
Teagan tried to speak, choked, and closed her mouth to breathe or think. Brent said, “They beat her up and took something that didn’t belong to them.”
“What did they take?”
“Something she can never have back, Becca. Because they’re bullies who knew they could take what they wanted, and that no one could stop them.”
Meghan hugged her daughter harder and wailed, “I’m so, so sorry baby. I should never have let that happen.”
“You didn’t let it happen, Mom.” She cried. “There was nothing you could do.”
They sobbed harder and louder.
Wilson walked over, coughing, and hovered above them, waiting. Meghan looked up, her eyes as angry as her voice, but hard to see in the scant light. “What do you want?”
He coughed then said, “To help if I can.”
Her voice untrusting, she said, “What can you possibly do?”
“I’ll show you.” He looked at Lara then back at her mom. “Over here, alone.”
Wilson took Meghan gently by the arm, led her away toward the container’s rear wall, then told Brent to come, too. “I need to speak to your dad alone,” he whispered when Ben tried to follow.
Brent and Meghan reached the rear wall, where the big man was still out, or dead. Wilson looked at them and opened his palm.
A moonbeam glinted off the blade.
Wilson licked his dry lips and glanced at Meghan. “Take it.”
“What is it?” Meghan asked, as if she’d never seen a razor.
“I found a box of disposables when they brought me in to scrub the bathrooms two weeks back. I snagged a few and chipped the plastic from the metal. Figured I’d find a way to use ‘em before they counted them gone.”
He coughed, long and hard, before spitting onto the floor. Brent couldn’t see in the dark, but imagined the man’s spit filled with blood.
“I’ve been here long enough to know what’ll happen to her.” Wilson glanced at Lara and lowered his voice even further. “They’ve already started, and they’re not gonna stop till she’s dead. They’ll come back every night and keep on raping your daughter until she’s raw meat.”
His voice lost another octave.
“And then they’ll kill her.”
Meghan gasped.
“Take it,” Wilson repeated. “End her suffering.”
“No.” Meghan’s whisper was angry and surprised. “That’s awful.”
A cough then, “Which part?”
Meghan paused, thinking. Brent could hear his pounding heart.
“All of it.”
Another cough, then a gentler voice. “Don’t be so quick to make up your mind. I’d never suggest it if I didn’t know how bad things are going to get for her. Or for you having to hear it each night. Tonight was the start. You’ll be the one holding her after they throw her back. In another few days, she won’t even be able to look at you.”
“No,” Meghan repeated. “I could never do that.”
She opened her hand anyway, and Wilson placed the razor inside it. She returned to Lara, falling to a crouch and holding her close.
“What did he say?” Lara asked.
“Nothing.” Meghan kissed her daughter on the forehead.
Wilson turned to Brent. “Open your hand.”
Brent did.
“Whatever you do, don’t tell ‘em where you got it. Hide it under the dirt on the floor.”
Brent took the second razor and stared at the blade, hoping he wouldn’t need to use it.
Twenty-Nine
Paul Roberts
Paul watched through the observation window as the woman who sliced his daughter’s throat writhed on the table below, trying to free herself from the metal cuffs binding her wrists and ankles.
But there’d be no escaping.
She was naked. It had been a long time since he’d seen a nude woman up close, but her body offered no titillation. Paul was too filled with disgust.
Desmond stood beside him, watching, a satisfied expression on his face. While Desmond had hoped to get Luca, he seemed pleasantly surprised to have captured Mary instead. Paul wasn’t sure of their shared past, but it must’ve been intense, judging from his grin.
“What do you need me to find out?” Paul asked.
“Find out what she knows. Dig around in her head. Find out their locations, and we’ll proceed from there.”
Paul had done hundreds of these interrogations over the past few years, with varying degrees of success. If you asked him, he’d say his success rate was 100 percent — when people possessed whatever information he was seeking. Desmond always resorted to Plan B when they didn’t. That involved torture. Sometimes, Desmond conducted the torment himself. Other times, it was Wasterman, who took exceptional glee in such orders. But as Paul remembered how callously the woman had slit his little girl’s throat, he hoped she didn’t have what they needed, and that Desmond would let Paul implement Plan B himself.
Paul was about to head into the interrogation room. Desmond put a hand out to stop him.
“What is it?”
“I just received bad news from someone in the field.”
Paul paused, heart racing, fearing Desmond’s telepathic news.
“It’s Emily.”
Oh, God, no. She’s dead!
“The tracking chip stopped working.”
“What?” Paul yelled. “What do you mean, stopped working?”
“We don’t know if it’s malfunctioning, or if they found and destroyed it.”
“Could it have exploded, and killed her?”
“We’d have received a signal if that happened. My guess is they found and neutralized it.”
“Fuck! I thought you said this wouldn’t happen, that you had this under control! This is now two failed attempts to capture your target, and now we’ve lost our only hope of finding my daughter!”
Still smiling, Desmond said, “Please, Mr. Roberts, have some faith.”
Paul wanted to punch that smile from Desmond’s smug face. Wanted to reach inside and yank the alien fr
om inside him, throw it on the ground, and stomp it to chunks of goo.
Instead, he asked, “Faith in what? Do we have another plan?”
“Yes,” Desmond said. “That would be you, Mr. Roberts.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you’re going to go in there, get inside Mary’s head, and find everything we need to retrieve your daughter. You want her back, well, go and get her.”
Desmond turned and left Paul staring down at the woman who held his daughter’s fate inside her head.
He’d find out what she knew, or kill the bitch himself.
Thirty
Mary Olson
Mary felt like a trapped animal caught in some sterile lab, strapped to a table, awaiting dissection. She was nude, likely to make her feel even less human and more like a lab rat, which was probably how the aliens viewed humans: curious creatures to exploit, tear apart, and toy with.
Her head was pounding, her throat was sore from screaming for what felt like an hour after she woke to find herself confined. She’d gone from threats to cajoling, neither bearing fruit.
Nobody answered her calls.
Nobody entered the sterile ten-by-ten room with its all-white walls and high ceiling. She stared into the large mirror running along the top half of the wall in front of her. It reminded Mary of an operating theater. She wondered who was on the other side watching.
Desmond?
And if so, what horrors did he have in store?
She tried to bar her mind from such grisly images, telling herself that they’d already done the worst they could do. They’d killed Ryan and Paola — the only people she’d loved.
The aliens had occupied Desmond, the man Mary thought she loved.
What else could they do?
Hurt her?
She’d borne great pain before. She’d ride it out again.
Kill her?
Mary was already dead. Hell, if death was the endless sleep she figured it was, she was readier than ever to take an endless nap.
There was nothing left to take. Thinking about it that way, Mary felt almost calm.
In that serenity, she tried to reach out to Luca telepathically.
Mary felt nothing.
Sorry, the number you’re trying to reach is no longer in service.
Mary was on her own, presumably on the mothership, with no Team Boricio coming to rescue her. Hell, Team Boricio didn’t even know she was missing. Boricio thought she was at The Farm.
Dammit. I should’ve told him the truth.
Alone, restrained, her fate was thoroughly out of her hands. While that realization had scared the hell out of Mary when she first woke up tied to the table, it now offered an odd sort of peace.
There’s nothing I can do, so sit back, and wait for the end.
She wondered if this was a coping mechanism that would crumble the minute they hurt her. If they’d make her beg for mercy.
Mary vowed to herself that she would never beg. If anything, she’d push them — she’d make them kill her. She’d find a way to piss them off and lose sight of their plan.
She smiled.
They may have restrained her, but they couldn’t murder her wits. She’d find a way to endure or force their hand. She’d die on her terms, not theirs.
The door opened.
A short, schlumpy-looking man in his forties entered the room. He was wearing white pants and a matching shirt — either a doctor or a member of some stupid cult. His light-brown hair was graying in a thinning mess on his head.
Mary laughed. “He sent you to do his dirty work?”
“Whom are you talking about, ma’am?” the man said in a smooth, confident voice that belied his appearance.
“Desmond, the coward who killed my daughter. Why isn’t he here?” Mary looked up at the mirror and shouted. “You hiding behind the mirror, you cowardly fuck? You like watching, do ya?”
“My name is Paul Roberts,” the man said, approaching Mary with a friendly smile. He stopped at around where her hand was cuffed by her waist, standing to her right.
She looked him up and down. He wasn’t carrying anything. No pad to write. No tools for torture. So why was he here?
“Good for you,” she said, staring into his eyes.
The man was locked onto Mary’s eyes, as if afraid to look at her body. That boosted her confidence — something else she could use against him, even if she didn’t yet know how.
“I’m here to talk.”
“So, talk.”
“Where are your friends hiding?”
“Really?” Mary laughed. “That’s what you want to know? Like I’m going to tell you!”
“Desmond is offering you all safe passage. If your friends surrender, they can live on The Island. Wouldn’t you like to stop running? To stop hiding? To stop fighting? To stop dying?”
Mary smiled at the mirror. “You really think I believe you for a moment? We’re all dead the second we surrender. And we’d rather die than hand our bodies to you fuckers!”
“I understand. You don’t believe us. But there is no need to fight any longer. There are no vials left. There is no reason for your people to keep fighting. The war is over. We have many free humans living on The Island, I among them. We won’t take your bodies. Besides, your bodies are far from ideal.”
Mary laughed. “None of this means anything, Paul. I do not, and will not ever trust your leader.”
“Very well.” Paul’s smile faded.
Mary felt a sharp pain, like a vice clamping down on her head.
A psychic invasion. He’d said he was human, but unless he was a telepath — how many of these fuckers are there? — then the man was a liar.
She closed him out, hard, pushing back with everything she had.
Paul stumbled back as if physically pushed.
He stared at her, nervously.
Mary smiled. “Didn’t ever meet someone who could keep you out, eh?”
She could feel him trying again but held her focus, refusing his entry. Because Mary had been at least partially telepathic even before part of The Light found a home in her, Luca devoted more time training her than any of the others. She knew how to hold her defenses, and to mount minor counterattacks. Mary had never been able to go into someone’s head like Luca, but she could keep Paul out of hers, for a while at least.
Paul’s face flushed with anger, though he held his artificial smile.
Mary laughed, knowing it would piss him off more.
“What’s wrong, Paul? You look beat.”
His eyes narrowed, his anger emerging.
Yeah, that’s it. Embrace the rage.
Paul went from zero to sixty in a blink. He reached into his pocket. Before Mary could register his action, he placed a blade to her neck.
“How’s it feel?” he whispered in her ear.
Mary flinched, surprised to have death so close, the cold blade pressed to her throat. A bit of pressure would end it all. She might be able to force him to stab her if she thrust her neck forward, but she couldn’t quite muster that much suicidal enthusiasm.
Instead, she prodded him.
“Good,” she said, channeling her best Boricio. “Now finish the job, you pussy. Or don’t you have it in ya?”
“Where’s my daughter?” he asked, eyes red, hand trembling.
“Daughter?” Mary said, confused.
“The girl whose throat you slit. Where is she?”
Mary felt as if someone had taken all the bluster out of her sails.
Oh my God, this is Emily’s father.
Instead of feeling a hate for the man, she felt a kinship. He was as consumed with rage at her as she was for Desmond. The man was about to crack under the pressure.
All of the emotions she’d pushed away since slicing the girl’s neck flooded through her like a tidal wave, threatening to drag Mary to the depths of despair if she couldn’t cling to her sanity.
“I don’t know,” Mary said, desperate for him to believe her. “But she�
��s alive. I swear. I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t know what happened.”
Mary hated herself for sounding as if she were pleading for her life. But she wasn’t begging for salvation so much as for him to not hate her for what she did. To not think her a monster.
“Where is she?” Paul yelled. He took the knife from her throat and then plunged it into her leg.
Mary screamed, buckled in her restraints.
Paul pulled the knife out and was about to stab Mary again when the door flew open and two Guardsmen stormed into the room, guns drawn. “Drop the knife, Mr. Roberts!”
Paul turned to them, eyes wide as if he were as surprised to find himself stabbing Mary as they were. His hand opened, and the blade fell to the ground.
The Guardsmen grabbed him, roughly by the arms, cuffed his hands behind his back, and dragged him away.
As he was yanked through the door, he screamed, “Where is Emily?”
The door slid shut, leaving Mary alone, bleeding and crying.
Thirty-One
Brent Foster
The duffel bag’s strap dug into Brent’s shoulder blade.
“Fuck me,” said Luis, three yards ahead.
Brent looked up to see another wall of cars spanning the street.
He hoisted himself behind Luis, climbing atop an old Cadillac, denting the metal under his weight and hoping he wouldn’t fall through the roof. Luis was climbing the hood of a Hummer ahead.
A high-pitched siren screamed through the air.
Brent raised his gun and fired into the fog.
Creatures poured from inside it: running, clicking, shrieking.
Brent ran. A creature cried out behind him, so loud it seemed like it was over his shoulder, about to take him down.
CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK.
The monster landed on Brent and opened its large mouth, wailing an unearthly bellow as it straddled his chest, swiping at his face with its claws. Brent pushed against the creature’s wet, fleshy chest with his left hand, trying desperately to hold it back.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He struggled to raise his pistol then emptied his ammo into the creature.
