The Quantum Connection (29 page)

"The Himbroozya? What are you talking about?" 'Becca asked it.

"She was infected with the Himbroozya. I could not allow her to come into contact with The Species."

"I don't care if she had the measles, typhoid, V.D., and Ebola--bring her back now!" I shook him again.

"I cannot. She has been removed . . . converted to energy in a singularity. She is dead."

"No, she isn't, you little bulbous-headed ass. Mike, connect to this thing's link," I said and thought at the same time.

Do you hear me, alien?

Yes! How did you do that?

None of your damned business.
I slapped the thing on the side of the head and told him to shut the hell up because I was the one asking the questions here.
Tatiana, can you hear me, baby?

Stevie?

Are you okay, Tatiana?

There is no change, lover, and I'm getting scared. The warp field is holding for now. I have done some calculations and I believe that the warp field will last for about two thousand years, but I sure as hell don't want to stay in here that long. It's real dark in here, Stevie.

I'm working on it, gorgeous. I will get you out of there! I throttled the little Gray a bit more. You hear that, you alien puke. She is still alive and trapped in that damned bubble of yours.

But how? The alien thought to me. That is impossible!

I smacked him on side of the head again, Did that sound impossible to you? She is there. NOW GET HER OUT!

Even if I could, I would not. You can kill me if you must, but she cannot come into contact with The Species.

And why is that?

I cannot say.

I smacked him again. You better get to saying or you'll be needing two eye patches instead of one!

Please stop punishing me. I cannot say because I do not know other than the fact that she was infected with the Himbroozya. My orders are that no creature thus infected be allowed to come into physical contact with The Species. Only the Regency could tell you why. The little Gray thing squirmed against its bonds in an attempt to loosen the pressure on its stump arm and its popped eye was looking kind of rough as well. It must have been in some real pain.

Then you will take us to this Regency now! That is, unless you want to join your friends over the edge of the building here. I pointed at the alien blood oozing everywhere to make my point.

I will take you.

Good. Then if you will allow me to use my nanomachines on you, I'll fix you.

Please, I am in agony.

Mike, fix him.
I was mad and wanted to kill the entire Gray race, but the levels of cruelty and torture I had inflicted upon the creature I could only stomach for so long. I was mad but not psychotic.

Don't let this go to your bulbous head, alien. If you get out of line I'll squish you in a heartbeat!
His eye resolved back into place, as well as his arm. The alien looked at its arm and blinked its large two-part nictitating membranes on his left eye rapidly.

Tatiana? How are you?

Still in here, Steven. Any luck yet?

I'm still working on it. Try to hold on in there for now.

I'll hold on as long as I have to. Just get me out of here.

I explained to the rest of the gang what was going on and what the little alien had said. I felt no remorse or pity for the creature as they had felt none for me those years that they had tortured me and tormented me without me even knowing it. Their influence had led me to attempt suicide. I had no sympathy for the thing. But I did fix it. I could have let it remain in agony a bit longer. But my guess was that I was torturing an officer that didn't create the policies of the Gray race, but only enforced them. I wanted to find the bastard who was in charge and torture
it
. Anson had listened carefully as I replayed the conversation for them. He was convinced more than ever of the boobytrap theory.

Tabitha was most interested in the fact that the thing referred to itself as The Species. The arrogant little fuckers! I know my accounting here has some colorful language but you just have to realize how much I was growing to hate these things. They were arrogant; they felt it was okay to go around abducting and murdering people, and they had just attempted to kill Tatiana. We had done nothing to provoke them. Had Mike not intervened in time, she would be dead for sure.

Stevie?

Yeah, baby?

I'm scared.

Me too, honey, me too.

CHAPTER 22

The little freckle-faced Gray made a few facial twitches and I could tell he was using the interface to the Infrastructure. These Grays were not good at covering their facial tics. He would have been horrible at poker. Following the Framework communications that he had made, a small ball of light appeared from nowhere and hovered a meter or so in front of us. The ball of light expanded and then blinked out, leaving a hemispherical vehicle with no top on it. Inside the vehicle were two rows of seats, one with its back to the circumference of the hemisphere and the other on a smaller concentric circle around the central hub of the vehicle with its back to the center of the craft. The central hub had a lone chair, obviously the cockpit, and there was a pilot sitting there. The pilot was a standard Gray alien with no freckles.

The little freckle-faced Gray turned to Tabitha. "Please, we must go in this vehicle to meet the Regency."

"How do we know that we can trust you?" Tabitha responded. I maintained my grip on the little creature's choke collar.

"Trust is irrelevant. If you desire to see the Regency then you must come with me in this vehicle."

"Yeah, right! And as soon as we step foot in this thing you will turn on the confinement beam and strand us in a bubble like you did Tatiana!" I was preparing to punch the thing in the spot where a nose should have been.

"I'd say that you little bastards are full of shit if you think we're just gonna hop in your device here and trust you for no reason. Tab, I'm gonna side with Steven on this one," Anson said.

"Well, what would you have us do, Anson? Fly there on our own, perhaps?" Tabitha asked. She seemed the most clearheaded of us at the moment. "We will take the smaller alien ship," she decided. "Alien, can you give us directions to where we can meet this Regency? We will fly in our own vessel."

"I was ordered to take you in this vessel," the little freckle-faced thing said and made a weird facial tic as he did so. I knew he was downloading information, but about what?

"Listen here, thing." I rapped its right ear pretty hard and its head bobbled back and forth from left to right several times. It shook its head kind of the way a dog does to get water off its back. "The lady says we fly our own vessel and that is the way it will be."

"Must you continuously punish me? I will relay your request," it said.

I slapped it again. "Listen to me, you little bug, your race has relentlessly tortured millions of us throughout our history. I'm just getting started on the punishment that I plan to inflict on your species. You have a lot of explaining to do!"

"Steven, relax!" General Clemons ordered me. She seemed to forget that I wasn't in her army and that she wasn't the boss of me. In fact, had it not been for me they would never have figured out what was going on with these alien abductors. I was getting irrational and it reminded me of . . .

Mike! Why am I being irrational?

Steven? Please restate the question?

I'm . . . very angry and emotionally unsure of myself.

Steven! You've been implanted . . . all of you have been!

Get them out, Mike! Now!

I removed yours, Steven. You must get closer to the others and turn on the warp armor!

Got it!

"EVERYBODY CIRCLE ON ME NOW!" I yelled. They all looked confused for a second. The emotional instability caused by the implants was delaying their abilities to think rapidly and rationally. A second or so delay passed before they realized I was concerned about our safety. They all rushed to my side and I flipped on my warp bubble with the radius modified to encompass all of us. "We've been implanted!" I explained. At the same time I slung the little alien as hard as I could throw it against the warp bubble wall. It landed with a crack and then slid down to the bottom of the bubble, whimpering in an odd shrill voice.

"We've been what?" Jim asked.

"Hold still . . . you won't feel this at all," I said as I placed my hand on his shoulder. I continued the same with each of the others. "Did you notice that you were feeling unsure of your decisions and that your emotions were getting uncontrollable?" I asked them.

"Yeah, I was almost in tears," Rebecca said.

"The Grays somehow implanted us with tracking devices like they put in the abductees. One of the side effects is that it makes you nuts. I know; I was nuts for four years because of one of those things. Fortunately, I recognized the symptoms of being crazy from experience. Mike was able to remove them for us. The warp fields should protect us. Keep your warp skins on at all times from now on."

"How . . . did you know that? It is impossible for primitives to have this capability!" The alien rose to its feet and rubbed a new bruise on its forehead.

"None of your business!" I shot it a mean look hoping to instill a little fear into it. I wished now that I hadn't fixed his arm and eye. The rest of the team implemented their warp generators and I backed mine off just to enclose me. The Gray stood there confused and amazed by the power we primitives were wielding.

"Son, I think it's time to get rid of our baggage here. My guess is that he is responsible for the implants, right?" Anson shrugged his shoulders.

"Yes, as far as I can tell that's right. But let's not kill him yet, we still need to find this Regency," I replied. Then I heard a gunshot and another right after.

The freckle-faced Gray had attempted to make a run for it, but Tabitha was too quick on the draw for it. She shot both of its legs out from under it and it went flailing across the rooftop onto its face, screaming in pain. At the same time, the pilot of the vessel the Regency had sent was moving frantically over the controls of the vehicle. A throwing knife suddenly appeared right between the thing's eyes where a nose should have been. 'Becca carefully approached the thing and retrieved her dagger. She wiped the blue syrup from the blade and then the blade vanished somewhere into her pants. I had never even known she was carrying a dagger. I wondered what else she had in there. Jim looked at the controls on the vehicle but couldn't decipher them.

"He was fiddling with something here, but I'll be damned if I know what it was he did," Jim said.

"We need to quit dicking around and find this Regency!" Anson said.

"I agree." Tabitha reached down and grabbed the choke collar and pulled it very tight around the Gray's neck. "We see now that we cannot trust you. Tell us how to contact this Regency or I will pop your little head right off!" She pulled it up onto its feet causing it to feel the pain of the gravitational pressure on its now ruined legs. The bullet holes in the thighs of the creature oozed the blue-green syrupy blood down its legs and onto the rooftop.

"
Eeeekkk!
Please stop! I will not tell you without the Regency's permission. I cannot by physiological function disobey the Regency." The Gray tried to rub at its legs but Tabitha kept it upright with the choke collar.

"Then I suggest you get on the horn and call up your boss and tell it to get its ass over here,
now
!" Tabitha yelled at it.

I could see why Anson liked this lady. She has some serious chutzpa, spunk, fortitude, and a whole lot of other stuff. She reminded me of Tatiana.

Baby, you okay?

I haven't gone anywhere yet.

Still working on it, Tatiana. I will get you out.

Steven?

Yes?

I love you.

I love you, too.

The Gray made some facial twitches that were nearly unperceivable and then it fell over . . . dead.

"What the hell?" Tabitha said.

I walked over and checked it for any type of vital signs as Tabitha had just done. Nothing.

"Perhaps one of them knows where this Regency is," Anson said. He pointed out across the rooftop at a group of seven balls of blue-white light. As the balls got closer they vanished and then reappeared a few meters in front of us. The balls flashed inward and seven large Grays with red gill-like markings on their necks and blue stripes on their foreheads and ears appeared before us. These Grays were about thirty centimeters taller than the others and they were wearing blue and black tights. I guessed that the tights were of the same type of condensed matter material as the alien armor Tatiana had designed.

"You will cease your hostilities, Earthlings," the largest of the Grays said.

"We might. But we do not follow your orders, alien," Tabitha said calmly. "Are you the leaders of your, uh, people?"

"We are the Regency and are, as you perceive, the leaders of The Species," another one of the regally marked Grays answered.

"Why are you here, humans?"

"We have discovered that you have been abducting our people, torturing them, and manipulating our history for thousands of years. We want to know why--and we want this to stop!" Tabitha said.

"Ah, you have finally grown up," the Gray in the center said.

"Grown up! Prawmitoos, you are soft. They are still primitive monkeys. Just look at them. If your soldier drones were as adept as you claimed, these monkeys would have been taken care of by now."

"Yes, a nuisance that, but that soldier drone will no longer fail me."

"His demise was too painless."

"Feyibi, you always have a harsh view of all creatures, don't you? If these creatures have not grown up then how are they here and why have we no control over their implants?" Prawmitoos replied.