Charged - Book One (10 page)

“GOOD MORNING, MR. KEGAN,” said a soft, young
voice.

In less than half a second, I shifted from a
semi-unconscious state to a fully alert physical state. My body was
in full motion as I aimed the revolver at the woman sitting at the
little table in the tiny kitchen area. I was in one of the queen
beds in the suite, but I didn’t remember climbing into one. The
clarity of my mind rushed slightly behind my own movements. Nothing
was a dream; it was all real, including the thing that we gave the
box to. We’d fallen asleep. I don’t know how, but we did. I blamed
the small glass bottle that the creature had given us; there had to
be something in it.

Before my eyes could focus, I recognized her voice.
It was Kye. Something inside of me told me to put the revolver
down. And even though it was against my untrusting nature, I
listened to it. I lowered my gun and put it back in my shoulder
holster, which I was still wearing. Slowly, I limped toward the
coffee she’d brought in on a tray. I wasn’t expecting Kye to be
here, not down here with these things.

“Not a morning person?”

“So this is who you work for?” I said, ignoring her
previous question. “Why didn’t you meet me at the café?”

“I ran into Marie Stakes and some of her guy friends.
Sorry. I thought if they caught up to me, they had already caught
up to you, but I’m glad to see that wasn’t the case. Thank you for
returning the box and I’m sorry about Danel. He’s not exactly fond
of humans.”

I sat there rubbing my eyes for a moment, then I sat
down next to her at the little table.

“You know, you didn’t have to skydive out here. We
have other means of transportation,” she said, smiling.

I closed my eyes and then opened them again, trying
to clear my vision, but there was nothing wrong with my vision;
something was wrong with Kye.

Without thinking, I grabbed her hand off the small
table, put it in mine and looked at her skin. She wasn’t alarmed by
my actions and just let her thin hand sit in mine. Her skin was
also slightly transparent and grayish and her eyes were glowing
gold like the creature I saw last night. Besides those things, she
appeared human. I let a sigh escape me and the disappointment was
obvious.

“Did they do this to you?”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the answer. I
became angry at the thought of something so beautiful being tested
on, like a guinea pig. I stroked the back of her hand once with my
thumb.

“No, no one did this to me. I was born this way.”

“You’re one of them,” I said, knowing that she had
some kind of makeup on and probably contacts when we first met in
Richie’s place.

“I’m one of their children,” she answered.

“And I thought you were one of us.”

“Genetically, we have a lot of similarities. I just
look a little different. Do I look so different?” she said, trying
to reassure me.

“Honey, I can see right through your skin.”

“Well, there’s not much I can do about that,” she
said, pulling her hand away from mine.

“How’s the knee?”

I realized I’d approached the subject in the wrong
way. I still thought she was beautiful; why didn’t I just tell her
that? This initial thought of mine startled me. I frowned at
myself. She wasn’t even human. Immediately, I threw my wall back
up. I didn’t even know what they intended to do with us. But she
seemed sad and it pulled at me. I wanted to help her. She looked at
me for a while and I could see tenderness in her eyes.

“Starting to hurt again. And you didn’t have to drug
us.” I was slightly angered by the deception.

“That bottle was meant just for you. Aaron wasn’t in
any pain. Well, none that he couldn’t tolerate. Get a shower and
I’ll be back in twenty minutes to take you to Jessica.”

“Jessica…she’s your physician?” I said.

“She’s better than any doctor you’ve ever seen.”

“That means she’s not human, doesn’t it?”

Without answering, which meant “yes,” she got up to
leave.

I hung my head, slightly shaking it. Somehow things
were more real when she was present. Why did it make me feel more
comfortable that she was here? And she didn’t look like she was one
of their children, not at all. I could only imagine what they did
to her. Maybe she couldn’t remember. I tried to reassure myself
that everything would be okay.

Aaron was still sleeping in the bed next to mine.
After a moment, I tried to wake him, but he was really out and I
couldn’t wake him up. This concerned me a little, but he had all
the normal signs of life. I bolted the suite door from the inside
and hobbled to the shower. The pain in my knee was slowly creeping
in again and I was hoping the heat would soothe the pain.

The shower took me a few minutes to figure out. When
I walked into the small bathroom, there was just a toilet and
nothing else. To the right side of the room was an empty square
section. I assumed it was the shower stall but there wasn’t a
faucet just multiple holes in the ceiling. There was a basket of
toiletries and three black buttons on the wall. I pushed the first
one and some kind of fan turned on but I couldn’t see it, I only
heard it. Then I pushed the next button. The floor next to the
toilet lowered about four inches and the lined seams pulled back
making the floor look grated. The last button activated the holes
in the ceiling and water streamed out of them. I put my hand in the
water because there was no way to adjust the temperature, but it
felt perfectly warm. It didn’t occur to me that there weren’t any
towels until I was done showering. When I hit the button to turn
off the water, the water stopped and huge gusts of warm air blew in
from the holes in the ceiling and the grate below me. It blow dried
my entire body in one minute flat.

IN TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES, I was showered and Kye was
waiting. The shower was barely tolerable, what with trying to
balance on one leg and not let the pain swim completely over me.
Whatever was in that bottle that we used last night made me feel
like I’d downed a fifth of tequila on an empty stomach and the
anesthetic qualities were wearing off.

I tried to wake Aaron again after my shower, but he
still wouldn’t wake up, which was starting to really concern me
now. He was breathing and had all the appearances of having a deep
REM sleep, but wouldn’t wake up.

“Wake him up,” I said.

“I can’t. It will wear off when it wears off.”

“I used a lot more of that anesthetic than he did.
Why isn’t he awake yet?”

“The more pain you’re in, the faster it wears off.
Just you were supposed to use it. He was supposed be the guarding
buddy all night, but apparently he’s willing to try anything.”

“You have no idea.”

She was right about Aaron but, I didn’t like this at
all and she knew it. I didn’t want to leave Aaron alone, but then I
remembered this was exciting for him. Yes, he would’ve left me
alone, given the opportunity to look around the place and I needed
to have this knee looked at. The pain was affecting my thinking
now, so I decided to leave my extra gun right where Aaron had left
it and go with Kye.

“He’ll be fine, Mr. Kagen.” Everything in her posture
and expression reassured me.

“Just call me Lewis.”

“Lewis. Come on, Jessica is waiting. You can lean on
me if you have to. Why didn’t you bring your cane?”

I frowned a little. Of course she knew of my cane. I
swallowed my pride and leaned on her. She smelled wonderful, like
flowers and pears or something and I found myself probably leaning
a little too close to her. I looked into her eyes and she looked
back at me. For a brief second, she smiled and looked down quickly.
I didn’t respond to her question. I was going to, but the pain in
my knee was now escalating. She opened the door and with my arm
wrapped around her neck, we left the room as I let out a low
agony-filled moan.

“We don’t have to go far, just to the end of this
corridor. Remember, Jessica is harmless. Matter of fact, this is a
research facility. We have no weapons here at all,” she said,
trying to make me feel better that I was about to let an alien mess
with my knee.

This did actually make me feel a little better. They
really had no weapons? I thought about the revolver in my shoulder
holster, fully loaded, under my left arm. I knew Kye could feel it,
but she seem unaffected by its presence.

I wanted to ask her so many things. Was this research
facility once a military experiment gone wrong? Did the military
know about them at all? It seemed unlikely they were anything but
alien, except for Kye’s appearance. But the pain in my knee seemed
to wrap itself around me like a veil, keeping me from focusing.

After only a few steps, my knee felt dislocated and I
ended up leaning on Kye more than I intended. I figured the knee
couldn’t get much worse, so why not let them just look at it. Half
of this thought was just me trying to reassure myself that
everything would be fine and the other half was just sheer
uncontrollable pain. I closed my eyes several times because of the
pain. It started to make the muscles in my back contract with every
heartbeat.

Kye paused once or twice to let me manage the pain in
my knee. She could only take on so much of my weight and this made
her seem harmless to me.

“What kind of research do you do here?” I
muttered.

“Oh, a little of everything… most of the facility is
used for the children.”

For a moment I wondered if they taught human
children.

“Human children?”

“No, they are strictly forbidden here and in all
stations we have.”

“So, this is a school?” I said, wondering why human
children would be forbidden.

“Part of it is, yes.”

I had many other questions, but was in too much pain
to continue speaking. I found myself breathing heavy as the knee
shot knife-like pains into my hip and pelvis.

“And Lewis, we’re vegetarians,” she said,
smiling.

Of course they had listened to our entire
conversation. I could hear her laughing a little under her breath
and suddenly I felt embarrassed.

When we reached the medical center, it was
surprisingly sterile. There was a creature similar to Danel waiting
in the back of the room. She was smaller than Danel, about eight,
eight-and–a-half feet tall and her eyes were red — glowing red
slits. They looked like alien eyes, like all the pictures that were
drawn by people we thought to be crazy, except for the thinning
line that pulled from the center of her face to the top of her
head. From a distance, this small glowing line could barely be
seen. I found myself staring at them too long. I checked her hands
and she had the same extra fingers as Danel and extra joints in
each one. Her fingers at the knuckles bent the wrong way before the
remaining joints curved forward.

The thought of them touching me made me shiver and I
thought about what else would be different under the robe she wore.
Both Kye and Jessica noticed my expression. With the surmounting
pain, I couldn’t seem to hide anything I was thinking or
feeling.

The medical room had the same dim blue lights as the
garden and it was difficult to see. It was like walking around
outside right at dusk. I could see, just not perfectly. The walls
and floor looked like they were metal, but something told me they
weren’t. They looked like the same material as the box, which Aaron
said was not metal at all.

“Mr. Kagen, I’m so happy you’ve agreed to let us
help,” the creature said to me.

“This is Jessica; she does medical research here,”
Kye said.

Normally, I would’ve held out my hand to shake hers,
but I couldn’t. The extra fingers she had, the purple and pink
swirling things under her skin and her pulsing red eyes prevented
me from doing so. She seemed unaffected by my staring, as if she’d
experienced it many times before. I didn’t think I was the first
human she’d ever seen.

Yet Jessica was more approachable than Danel. I
couldn’t really say why she was more approachable. It’s possible
that she was less frightening because she wasn’t over nine feet
tall. Was he really that tall? Or was I just that scared? At this
point, my body was reeling in agony. I couldn’t tell if I was
nauseous due to pain or because I was actually going to do
this.

“Would you like an anesthetic?”

“No and you will tell me everything you’re going to
do before you do it. Nothing is cutting into me! You want to put a
brace on it, fine. Take an x-ray, fine.” Jessica was unaffected by
my loud voice and this made me worry.

Kye motioned for me to get up onto a very thick glass
table that produced a soft pink light around the edges. With her
help, I got on the table with a couple pain-filled grunts and she
gently pushed my shoulders back to lie down as Jessica pressed a
few symbols on a screen next to her. Then a robotic arm seemed to
scan my knee. It emitted a red beam every few seconds. I could now
feel the anesthetic had worn off completely and the agony began. It
was definitely dislocated. My muscles started to contract even more
in my back and neck and I found myself crossing my arms over my
chest. I was breathing through gritted teeth.

I tried to focus on where I was and pull myself out
of my pain. “So what exactly is this thing going to do?” I said,
now wondering if I’d completely lost my mind. I closed my eyes,
trying to calm myself. I wasn’t a guinea pig. I wasn’t going to
wake up with five heads. They were just trying to help me.

“This is very similar to the microcurrents you
already use on injured athletes. This is just more advanced. First,
I’m going to single out the frequencies of the healthy cells in
your body — specifically, the ones in your bone, then muscle, then
skin — which will only take a second. Then, I’m going to tell your
damaged tissue to mimic those frequencies, thus halting your
natural healing process and then speeding it up. So we are not
synthesizing the cells; we are merely telling your body, by
manipulating your own electrical pulses, to reproduce undamaged
cells at a faster rate.”