Charged - Book One Read online

  “Because this ship is taboo, kid,” he said, lightheartedly. “Too much history on this ship,” he finished with a light smile.

  This intrigued me and I wanted to ask further about it, but not just yet. Slowly, my nervousness subsided. I’d judged them all too quickly and secretly I wanted my suspicions to leave me altogether, but they didn’t.

  “So you can read human emotions?” I said to Ben, because he said, ‘this one is good,’ when he took my hand. I was curious because Kye said they couldn’t.

  “Nope. I read your files,” he said.

  “It gets pretty dull down here. Need to have a little fun sometimes,” Kye said, smiling.

  CHAPTER 26

  OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, Kye and Ben gave us a full tour of the ship. It was much larger than I initially assumed and supplied everything they needed. There were combustion chambers for waste. Uneaten food went back into the red soil like a compost pile, but it didn’t smell like one. The gardens supplied enough food for their ship and two others. The waterfalls were self-replenishing, so they would never run out, although I didn’t understand how. And the spiny gelatinous creature that crossed my path when we first arrived was actually a pet that Kye tried to compare to a lizard. Honestly, I couldn’t see the similarities. There were other pets in the gardens that were less arachnid-looking, but none of which seemed like Zero.

  The first thing they showed us was the exit, just in case we changed our minds, which I found amusing. It was the same elevator shaft we came in, but apparently no key was needed to get out. Then they showed us the gardens, which were beautiful in a mysterious way. The plants still brushed against Aaron and me when we went through them again. Kye explained that they were not greeting us, but they were drawn to the sweat on our bodies. So they were licking us. Kye and the others didn’t have sweat glands. Their bodies released any excess moisture by producing the chemical light under their skin.

  Aaron was most interested in the medical labs and what they offered. He had many questions as to why they didn’t share their technology and the next day separated from me and Kye to meet with Jessica in one of the labs.

  Danel did everything in his power to avoid us. When we started eating our meals in the main hall with everyone else, he started eating in his quarters and he tried to appear busy whenever I passed him in the corridors.

  CHAPTER 27

  ON THE SIXTH DAY of our stay, Ben buzzed in on the screen in the suite while Kye and I were having coffee.

  “Lew, I can’t join you guys today. We’re having problems with one of the climate controls in garden dome six and Collin and I need to take care of it.”

  “You want me to help?”

  “No, that’s okay. Don’t worry we’ll have a job for you in no time.” He laughed and then the screen went blank.

  “Oh, he will, too,” Kye said, laughing, grabbing my hand towards the door.

  “Since Aaron is with Jessica all day, I want to show you something.”

  I followed her down the main corridor all the way to the end. She punched in a code on the last door and it slid back into the wall. When we walked in, the dim blue lights came on automatically.

  “Bright,” Kye said and the blue lights increased by a hundred percent.

  We were surrounded by six large tubes, suspended in the air. They seemed to be floating, attached to nothing. I had to assume it was some kind of magnetic field suspending them. They were approximately three feet in diameter and ten feet long. Aaron would’ve loved this. It only took me a second to realize where we were. Kye studied me for a second, but said nothing.

  “Clones.”

  Kye only nodded.

  I walked deeper into the room toward the back and there was another section beyond a glass wall. It was dark and almost endless; apparently, the ship was much larger than my initial assumptions. I was headed toward what looked like a dim gray cave, but in fact it was a dome twice the size of the garden we had initially entered. The ceiling height was the same, but the bottomless floor ran endlessly into an abyss.

  “What is this?”

  Kye smiled at my curiosity.

  “Full lights on Cryo Unit One,” she ordered the ship’s computer.

  I looked into the dome and it spanned out at least four hundred feet in front of me. I stared out at thousands of tubular containers, all vertically attached to the dome walls. There was a large orange sphere rotating suspended in midair in the center of the dome. There seemed to be hundreds of thousands of tubes and I thought they were all full of clones. It must have showed on my face, because Kye’s voice was suddenly reassuring.

  “This is how they got here. It took some time, even for them. And already being thousands of years old, they couldn’t afford to waste it.”

  I almost pressed my face against the glass, searching for anything in the tubes.

  “They’re empty. They used most of them to transport the vegetation on their planet. Only twenty thousand were saved and there are less than half of that remaining.” The sadness in her voice pulled me out of my suspicious nature and I stepped back from the glass. I could see they were empty. The size of the dome was astounding. I wondered how close it was to the surface and how deep it was in the Earth. I was mystified at what was in front of me, at the thought of possible long-term space travel for humans.

  “It’s amazing, even to me,” she said.

  I’d underestimated their technology.

  “The ones you see in this small room were cryo tubes originally, but have been converted for cloning. I tried to convince them to convert the other cryo units for some humans in case there was another catastrophic event and they are still discussing it.”

  As I stared at the thousands of tubes, I contemplated if that were a possibility. Would they take us with them, if something did happen? Would they at least take the loyal ones, the humans that kept them hidden?

  “How many are there?” I said.

  “A lot more than were ever originally occupied.”

  Relief spread across my face. Just six clones, not enough to start an army. I started looking into each one of the tubes around us, but I couldn’t match any of the bodies to anyone I met. Most of the bodies were significantly underdeveloped and grotesque. They were encased in a thick, clear liquid that was not from the waterfalls in the garden rooms. There were several tubes running in and out of their bodies and hooked up to a large cylindrical machine that was attached to the ceiling. I hadn’t seen one without clothes on and even though most of them appeared humanoid, the deep grooves that looked like gills in their chests and abdomens negated any of these thoughts. I was thankful not to see any extra arms or large tentacles protruding from their bodies.

  “How long does it take for them to develop?”

  “Almost a century.”

  “And if they are developed before they are needed?”

  “They are left in suspension.”

  Then I recognized Danel’s clone. This irritated me and it showed on my face. I looked for a clone of Kye, but I knew I wouldn’t find one.

  “This is the first generation of clones for them. Even Aerus was cloned, who is older than Ben. He died almost eighty years ago, but they were able to start a clone for him before he died of old age. When his clone is ready, he will not retain all of his memories, only the ones established throughout his first five thousand years. So when he wakes up, he won’t remember me.”

  It didn’t seem fair to me that they had no intentions of cloning her. Then I remembered Danel broke the law when he made her. She kept Danel’s emotions in check; she was necessary, even if unwanted. This thought saddened me, but at the main hall when everyone was introduced, they treated her with kindness, with compassion. To me, she seemed loved by them, so why not clone her just once?

  “Did you ask to be cloned?”

  “The companion cloning was not a success, something about the mixtures of DNA and I don’t want to be cloned.” She seemed exhausted. Her shoulders slumped forward a little and I wa
lked towards her.

  “How old are you?”

  “Ninety-seven.” This was not the number I had in my head and I was astonished she looked so young.

  “How much time do you have left?” For a second, I thought the question was almost rude, but she answered without the slightest hint of irritation.

  “A little more than you, I think.”

  “Do you age?”

  “No, this is how I looked when I was twenty-five and I haven’t looked different since then.”

  “Why don’t you want to be cloned?” I was asking a lot of questions, but she seemed happy to have the company. Then the look faded in her eyes. She said nothing as she stared out into the middle of the room, lost for a second.

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  “Lewis,” she hesitated, “what I do or do not tell you won’t change anything.”

  “So you’re Danel’s companion?” I could hear the bitterness in my voice.

  “More like a defiant daughter,” she said.

  This made me smile. I couldn’t help it.

  She took a deep breath and looked at me like she was going to tell me something, but instead she looked away.

  I took a couple steps closer and put my hands on her arms. I wanted to do this since we arrived, in a way that didn’t resemble the first couple times I touched her. She didn’t object. Her skin was as soft as a twenty-year-old and I wondered what she thought about my own weathered hands against it. I slid my hands down to hers and squeezed gently.

  She closed her eyes and squeezed my hands back. She sighed lightly and tilted her head down laying it on my shoulder. It was so nice being this close to her. Her hair smelled like jasmine and lilies. I put my head on her shoulder also, trying to make the moment last as long as I could. It seemed we stood there for a while, uninterrupted by anyone or anything.

  In this moment, everything seemed to fade. For a second, I no longer cared about Seattle or the FBI. It wasn’t clear to me what I could do for her. All I knew was that she was bound to Danel and it weighed on her. Yet she was with me.

  Her body seemed to relax as it pressed up against mine. I wrapped my arms around her waist and kissed her neck softly, just once. This appeared to wake her up and maybe startle her a little. I was being too forward. She pulled away from me, but not completely, still holding my hand and smiling. Her face actually flushed for a moment. I don’t think anyone had kissed her neck in a while — a long while, if I had to guess.

  It had crossed my mind more than once that she may not be attracted to me, just lonely. And I was just fine with being friends like I was with Lolita. If I could have her in no other way, it was enough.

  This was a lie. I knew this the second I thought it. For the life of me, I couldn’t ever remember being so drawn to a woman. It was like she was radiating pheromones. I found myself smiling at the thought, because it could be a possibility.

  I wanted to pull her close to me and just kiss her again and again, but I refrained. Then she squeezed my hand softly and this made me think she wasn’t just lonely. I didn’t approach this subject; it was too soon. And was I really here for just her? Just to be with her? This was possible. I found her very attractive, but I knew I didn’t know her. I felt like I knew her, but I didn’t.

  “I need a drink, Lewis,” she said, smiling.

  “Is it after noon?” I said, grinning.

  “I’m ninety-seven, Lew, I’m a big girl,” she said pulling me out of the room.

  “No, you’re an old girl,” I said, playfully.

  “Oh, you’re funny.”

  She punched the code into the panel on the wall and the door slid shut. I could hear it locking as we walked back down the corridor.

  “I have something for you,” she said, as we passed my quarters and walked ten more feet to another door, which I assumed, were her quarters. She was this close the whole time.

  She let me in and closed the door behind us. And for a second, I let my mind drift into the possibilities of being with her… emotionally… physically.

  “Full lights,” she said and the room lit up like it would have in my old apartment. It took a minute for my eyes to focus, but it was refreshing to see everything clearly. I immediately noticed that she was not affected by the light like the others.

  Her suite was larger than mine and a lot neater, too. The back wall in the living room was lined with books from ceiling to floor. It was nice to know that we both loved books. There were biographies, novels, sci-fi and even some comics neatly organized on the shelving unit. There was also a wood-burning fireplace, which made me wonder how they vented it from down here and a large hologram of a waterfall above it. It looked very similar to the Snoqualmie Falls back in Washington. The hologram hummed with the sound of the falls hitting the water below.

  “Here you go,” she said, handing me a beer.

  A cold beer in my hand… I wasn’t sure if I was going to see that again.

  “You have just made my day,” I said, opening it and taking a large gulp, smiling possibly a little too much.

  “There’s more in the fridge.”

  “And what will you be drinking?”

  “We have our own version of beer,” she said, grabbing a chilled glass out of the freezer and pouring a bubbly blue substance in it. After two drinks, she slipped into something comfortable. Very comfy, actually: a pair of grey sweatpants that were a little too big, just barely hanging on her hips and a white ribbed tank top that was a little too small just to torture me. So, she was very relaxed and I was just slightly wrenched a little tighter by the bra she was no longer wearing.

  She slowly slid into a Queen Anne chair that was identical to the one in my suite.

  “Lewis, are you done being suspicious?” She was smiling, but I couldn’t tell if she was buzzed or not; her movements were too graceful.

  “I’m not suspicious of you.”

  I was now sitting on her sofa in front of the small fire I started in the fireplace. Next to it, there was a pile of wood and kindling, so I just couldn’t help myself. The sound of the wood popping and crackling behind the metal screen was soothing.

  “I wasn’t talking about me.”

  Yep, she was bold and honest.

  “How exactly am I supposed to feel at home after five days?” I tried to smile a little when I said this. She wanted something; I could tell by the look on her face.

  “What is it I can do for you?” I said.

  “You can take the gun off. I have shown you almost every inch of this ship. Can you please take it off?” she said, smiling her playful little smile.

  I didn’t know what to think. She said what she meant and meant what she said and I was almost beside myself. I forgot she wasn’t really twenty-five and I probably shouldn’t assume she acts like a twenty-five-year-old or thinks like one. Yes, I probably spent too much time with Lolita.

  I didn’t want to part with my .357 Magnum, but I’d seen pretty much the whole ship and besides the cutlery in the main hall, I hadn’t seen one weapon. Well, not one that I could identify. And I didn’t need to wear it at her place, I knew that. She probably thought it was rude. Reluctantly, I stood up, pulled off the grey blazer and took the holster off. I placed both on her small kitchen table that adjoined the living area. It was off, but not too far.

  “Better?”

  “Yes. Anything I can do for you?”

  “Yes, actually. Can you put on a real shirt?”

  I felt manly in my request as she immediately got up and pulled over a grey sweatshirt covering the see-through nipple-baring tank top. And then I wanted to immediately kick myself for not requesting something else. She let out a slight laugh as if she knew what I was thinking. Oh boy, I was the only young and dumb thing in the room. I laughed at myself for a moment.

  “That didn’t work out to my advantage,” I said, laughing a little.

  “No, it didn’t.”

  She was laughing at me, at how young I was and it was reass
uring and actually made me feel young.

  “Thank you, for the fire.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, still laughing at myself.

  We spent the rest of the evening getting drunk and pretty much laughing our butts off. We discussed books, childhood and movies, though our stories were quite different. She had the same dry wit I did. After about three of her beers, she was relaxed and almost giddy. Around three in the morning, I stumbled back to my room and slipped into bed without waking Aaron.

  CHAPTER 28

  ON THE SEVENTH DAY, she entered my suite with coffee and bagels and a file in her arms. Aaron was already with Jessica discovering new things.

  “Before I knew you, it was important that I read this,” she said, handing me a very thick file with my name on it. She placed everything on the counter and turned to face me.

  “Does it really matter?” I said. I knew they had a file on me, just like the thick file that Danel had slid across the table to Aaron a week ago and secretly I was dreading it.

  “Not to me, but you might want to know what’s in it. You know where to find me when you’re done. I’m curious if it’s correct.”

  “And if it is?”

  “It doesn’t change anything for me.”

  “Since you read mine, can I read yours?”

  She smiled and her eyes grew bright. I don’t know if she was happy that I was interested or that she would be interesting.

  “Yes, I do have a file, but I must say it doesn’t read like yours.”

  I was certain it didn’t, but I was really hoping that certain things were not in my file.

  She turned and left me with the file, possibly holding all the ghosts of my past. I didn’t read it immediately. I had some coffee and a bagel first, knowing this was inevitable.