Cole entered the exam room just as Sadie was coming around, her mind racing to separate the two distinct sets of memories that now consumed her. Kate spoke out loud, with no one else in the room there was no reason not too.
“Have you helped any of the others yet?” Kate was hopeful, anxious to get things back under control.
“No,” he paused, looking away from her. She was not going to like what he was about to suggest. “We need to find Krave, try to heal him, and get out of here.”
The girls both looked at him with horrified expressions. Their human sides were starting to emerge, and fear was their first lesson. Not liking the emotions their frightened faces evoked in him, Cole launched quickly into his explanation.
“This mission is compromised. The longer we stay here the more chance we have of being discovered and I’m not talking about this backwards county police department. You know who I’m talking about. We were supposed to come back and assimilate, stay just long enough to confirm that the experiment was successful and then return. So far we’ve been damaged in transit, examined by tests that are bound to come back suspicious and shown ourselves to be different at every possible turn.”
“So what are you suggesting? That we abandon the others? Or is it the whole mission you want to abort? Are you ready to just go home and wait to die Nox, is that it?” Kate moved across the room to where he stood as she yelled at him. That was a mistake. As she neared him the heat from his body melted her resolve. Memories, not her own, but Kate’s real memories, swelled up inside of her. She could clearly see moonlight gleaming off the hood of a vehicle, smell the freshly cut grass wafting through the cracked open windows and feel the heat of desire as Cole’s steady hands unbuttoned the top button on her blouse. Shaking the memory from her mind, Kate fought the urge to turn away. For some reason she didn’t want anyone to know what she was thinking, embarrassment, she noted.
“Use the human names,” Sadie reminded them, standing up. “And don’t worry about what a few test results might show or about a few displays of questionable ability. We’re talking about the human bond between parent and child here, it’s the only reason I agreed to the assimilation with teenaged subjects. These parents will believe anything, and ignore everything, just to have their children back. Trust me on that.” Sadie, used to breaking up arguments between the two teammates, stepped in-between them and pushed them apart.
“There will be four of us,” Cole said quietly, trying to calm himself, “that’s enough to continue the mission if we just get out of here, the others will be fine. They don’t remember anything, in time their new families will accept them and they’ll just stay here.”
“You don’t actually know that, look at what happened to Krave, I mean, Troy. His host body isn’t functioning, what if that happens to the rest of them? It will be Experiment 9 all over again, and there will be no one here to help them,” said Kate.
“This is exactly why you shouldn’t be in charge; you don’t know when to cut losses!”
Their voices were starting to rise again, and Cole started to tap his fingers rhythmically against a stainless steal counter top, faster and harder until his abnormal strength caused slight indentations in the surface.
“They are not losses, they are people. They are our people, and we are not leaving them here!” Kate watched Cole’s fingers fly up and down against the counter; the annoying tapping was his flaw. As cold as he wanted to appear, he was having trouble with this as well. It wasn’t going to be as easy as they had imagined and they had already tried to imagine the worst.
“Quite!” Sadie shouted the word soundlessly into their heads, as heavy footsteps barreled down the hallway outside their door.
The Chief knocked once then threw open the door without waiting for an answer. His face and neck were red, his breath fast and hot like he had been running. He looked taken back at the three of them, expecting to find only Kate. He took a moment to consider his safety before entering and closing the door behind him.
Tanner spoke directly to Kate; she was the one he felt he could read the best. He remembered her most clearly as a little girl, wearing sloppy pigtails, always hanging around the station lobby waiting for her father to get off work.
“When you were eight years old, you stole something from the drug store. You were mad because your dad was working a lot of double shifts and you thought that if you did something really bad that he would have to come and arrest you. What did you steal, Kate?”
“What’s going on,” Kate asked Sadie secretly, being careful not to look at her.
“He’s testing you. He’s trying to figure out if you’re still Kate. Try to answer.”
Kate sifted through the memories in her head, looking down at the ground for the whole two seconds that it took her. “Markers, eight to a package, the scented kind. I took them off the shelf and went outside. I waited there all day to get arrested.”
Tanner let out the breath he had been holding in waiting for her answer. With a small smile he added, “You felt so guilty about taking the markers that you came to me the next day and turned yourself in. It was the shortest crime spree in Springfield’s history.” He stepped towards Kate and pulled her into a hug, relief washing over him. Kate tensed up but allowed the hug, casting a questioning look in Cole’s direction. He shrugged.
“That is something to be proud of,” Sadie interjected, trying to be helpful, “since Springfield has an abnormally low crime rate for this region already, an average of 1.5 murders per year not counting suicides or manslaughter and only 40 counts of robbery in the . . .” She stopped when she realized that the Chief had turned his attention to her, and not in a good way.
He released Kate, and stepped back. His hand instinctively moved to his weapon and rested there. “You’re just reciting information,” he said accusingly.
In an instant Cole was across the room, gripping Tanner’s neck and slamming him back against the door. Tanner couldn’t move the boy was that amazingly strong and there was no doubt that he could crush his windpipe with little effort if wanted to.
“Stop,” yelled Kate. “He wouldn’t have hurt anyone. He’s just frightened, let him go.”
Cole reluctantly released his grip and Tanner gasped for air.
Kate stared at him with vacant eyes. He could see it now, so clearly, the reason the kids seemed so odd. There was no glint in their eyes, no personality in their movements. Their bodies had returned, but just that, their bodies.
“What are you going to do now?” The girl who looked like Kate, but wasn’t, touched his arm softly. He recoiled from her hand.
“I don’t, I don’t know,” he stuttered. “need time to think.”
Kate nodded. The others nodded. And the Chief couldn’t get out of the room fast enough.
*** *** *** *** ***
Ginny spent most of her time comforting Mrs. Harrison while her son lay in a comatose state, peacefully slumbering through the uneasy commotion around him. She knew she had been called in to help with the children, but she was getting nowhere fast with any of them, or at least nowhere good. Most of them gave her a deep down icky feeling, the way they all looked at her with such flat unwavering eyes; it felt like the Village of the Damned around there. After spending hours by his hospital bed, the tired mother had finally been convinced to down to the cafeteria to get something to eat with her husband. Ginny, overly happy to keep on helping them, had offered to continue the bedside vigil.
Troy Harrison looked more like a little boy than a hulking teen-aged linebacker when he was sleeping. His hair was tussled and his features softened by the sedative nature of his condition. He would have looked quite comfortable if not for the machines pumping air into his lungs, beeping, churning; keeping him alive. Before long the repetitive sound of the breathing machine lulled Ginny into her own dreamless sleep, slightly slouched in the blue visitors chair a few feet from the bed.
All was quiet, at least in that particular hospital room, for a short while. The doctors and nurses were busy elsewhere; the police had more lively subjects to question; and for the time being that was enough to build sanctuary.
Eventually, Ginny stirred. Even before opening her eyes, she knew she wasn’t alone in the room anymore. Trying not to move more than she had to, she opened her eyes just enough to get a blurry view of what was directly in front of her. A young girl stood by Troy’s bedside. She was slightly bent over him and her blond hair hung down like a curtain, obscuring her face. She seemed to be examining him, and Ginny was ready to mistake her for a nurse through her barely opened eyes when the girl suddenly stood upright. Her hair fell back into place and she turned her head towards Ginny. Ginny shut her eyes softly and held still, imagining she was made of stone, trying not to increase her breathing. When she felt the girl moving about again she risked opening one eye slightly, double checking what she had thought she had seen before. Sure enough, the girl was Kate Sellers.
Ginny watched silently as Kate systematically removed and detached and switched off all of the machines. The only thing that kept her from leaping from her chair and screaming for her to stop were Troy’s eyes which were fluttering open. He opened his mouth and swallowed a large gulp of air. No longer able to hold still, Ginny was out of her seat and went to Troy’s side, taking his hand in hers as he slowly rose to consciousness. Kate paid her no attention; she locked eyes with Troy in a moment that seemed to Ginny to stretch on forever.
In seconds the room was full of frantic hospital staff, called to arms by the monitors in the nurse’s station suddenly going flat line. Kate slipped out just as she had slipped in, unnoticed.
“Troy is awake, he has the com-pad and knows where the transmitter is,” Kate communicated with her team as she quietly slipped past the commotion.
“The Police Chief is a lost cause,” Cole added, “if we want to stay then he needs to be taken care of. If not, we need to leave now. These are the options Kate, like them or not.”
“I know what made Troy stop functioning,” answered Kate, ignoring Cole’s attempt to take charge. She opened a door marked “stairwell” and walked down three flights of cement steps. The hospital basement was dim, only every third ceiling light was turned on. Kate didn’t need a lot of light, her eyes were sharp.
Passing by row after row of overstuffed filing cabinets, Kate started to count starting with the first on the left, one, two, three, four, five…..fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. She stopped and turned down that row. Sadie sat on the ground, flipping through the pages of a dusty book about prescription medication. Cole leaned casually against the cabinet, hands in his pockets, waiting for her.
Sadie sprung up from the floor and dusted her skirt off. “I’m going to go find us some food,” she said out loud. “Unless I need to stay here and keep you two from killing each other?”
“It’s fine, Ves – Sadie.” Kate said, rolling her eyes and shaking her head at her near mistake, the whole two name thing was getting confusing.
Learning what she did in Troy’s hospital room had filled Kate’s head with suspicions, but standing in front of Cole now the anger immediately started to dissipate. She was physically drawn to him. Looking down at the ground to avoid his eyes, Kate studied the rivets in his boots instead and said nothing. He stepped closer to her, the smell of him filling her nose, causing a pleasant heat to flush through her body. Everything else was forgotten, trembling she lifted her face to meet his.
An instant of insecure panic ripped through her, taunting her, whispering possibilities that he might not be experiencing these same feelings. Was this feeling love? It was both beautiful and heartbreaking, she wanted it to stop. The whispering was quelled when his lips brushed hers. He was hesitant, kissing her softly, not moving the rest of his body. Kate responded by lacing her fingers through his hair and pulling him greedily closer to her. She felt his strong arms wrap around her as their kiss deepened. Coming up for air red faced and panting, the pair backed away from each other taking several small steps each.
“Memory integration,” Kate said to break the silence.
“What,” Cole asked stupidly, still feeling a little dizzy and more than a little confused by his own actions.
“Sudden, spontaneous memory integration, that’s what made Troy’s host body stop functioning. It didn’t happen to Sadie because I was there to heal her as I helped her with the integration.”
“Same reason it didn’t hurt you, because you had me.” The idea of rescuing her made Cole want to step closer once more, but her cold gaze warned him that this was not a good idea.
“Who did you have Cole?”
Cole turned to ice, the moment of passion quickly forgotten. “What do you mean?”
“We were supposed to land with both sets of memories in tact, but that obviously didn’t happen. You regained full use of both sets of memories first.”
“Get to the point Kate.” He spat out her human name as if it disgusted him.
“Point being, either you should have been lying in a coma for the last nine hours or someone helped you.”
She folded her arms and waited to hear his response, feeling more comfortable now that they were back to their original roles.
It would have to wait. Sadie appeared, trembling, clutching a solitary pudding cup. In the dim light Kate could just barely make out something wet and glistening streaming down her face, tears. Her breathing hitched as she struggled with the unfamiliar feeling of crying. Kate could feel the tension building within her friend and was able to slam her hand over Sadie’s mouth just before the screaming began. Having no other outlet the anguished cry erupted from her mind filling Cole’s head with searing pain. He grabbed his head and doubled over, crashing to his knees on the hard concrete floor.
“Stop it! Stop it!” Kate shook her friend vigorously, not knowing what else to do. When that didn’t work she tried something that she had seen often between the parents and children, she wrapped her arms around Sadie and squeezed. Sadie’s body started to relax almost instantly. The mental screaming subsided and gave way to gentle sobbing as Kate stroked the girl’s hair and made “shushing” noises under her breath.
“It’s too late,” Sadie sobbed. “It’s too late, too late. They’re here already.”
Kate stopped the hair stroking motion. Terror pitted itself into her stomach. She disliked this emotion almost as much as romantic love. She pulled Sadie back by her shoulders and looked at her. “Are you sure?”
Sadie nodded violently.
“Who’s here?” Cole, still recovering from the screaming, staggered over.
Kate had never been to Earth before, there had only been two other missions that involved direct contact and she hadn’t been on either one, but Sadie had. These strange men in black suits arrived hours after every scouting mission, sample gathering or landing they had endeavored. They spent long hours questioning anyone claiming to have seen anything out of the ordinary. Although they appeared to work with local law enforcement, they were clearly set apart. Their own people seemed to fear them. After years of study and observation little was ever learned about them or their purpose. It wasn’t until their second to last mission, in Summerfield Kansas, that the true nature of these men was revealed.
“The Men in Black”, answered Kate solemnly. Kate shut her eyes to think. They should have left hours ago when Cole first suggested it. Now it really might be too late.
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
Authors notes:
I’m not a huge fan of author’s notes but I’m going on a little vacation thought I’d keep you updated! I will be out of town July 8-12 so no updates until the 13th or later. Sorry, have to visit some family!
For anyone new to sci-fi (welcome!) please do not confuse the comedy film made a few years back with the true “men in black” phenomenon, which dates back over 50 years. The real “men in black” are not funny or cute, they are creepy, cruel and they are really out to get you!