Charged - Book One Page 16

  The memories came faster and faster and I could feel my brain accepting them. It was almost like it was opening up more space for more information as if new neuron pathways were being created. I started to feel parts of my body again and became aware that I was still in the main hall, but only for a moment. I felt an overwhelming wave of information rush through my mind. I saw solar systems passing through space and then fragments of history of Earth. It was every moment of Ben’s lifetime, everything he’d ever seen and experienced.

  I couldn’t tell what was real anymore. I was fading in and out of reality. One second, I could see I was still in the main hall. I could see all the vapors moving around my face and my chest, but the next second, I’m in a great temple, speaking an archaic language to an Egyptian queen. Then, I heard a familiar voice. It was Kye.

  “No, no! Danel, separate them!” Then there were footsteps running toward me in the main hall. I could feel hands on my hand, pulling me free from Ben. And everything went black. I could hear muffled sounds of gunfire in the back of the ship. It seemed so far away. It had to be Station Ten. Then a bright orange light seemed to penetrate my eyelids and I forced them to open.

  “Lewis, can you hear me?” Kye hovered over my face and her hands were on my head, but I couldn’t respond.

  I was fighting to stay conscious, struggling to stay in the present.

  “I didn’t think Ben would do this. He knows it kills them. He knows their bodies can’t take it.” Danel now peered into my eyes. There was almost compassion in Danel’s voice.

  “Maybe he only touched him for a second?” Kye said.

  “He’d be responsive by now.”

  I stared into Kye’s eyes. I wanted to touch her beautiful face, her full lips. And as if she was reading my mind, she stroked the side of my face with her fingers. Danel got up and started checking if anyone else was alive.

  A fierce pain swept through my entire body and I closed my eyes and my mind fell into blackness.

  CHAPTER 39

  A DEEP AGONIZING PAIN WOKE ME. I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t. There was another moan and a stabbing pain in my bones and muscles. I could feel myself again. I could feel my body shudder with each new wave of pain as my body tried to stretch and push itself out to compensate for something that shouldn’t be there. I must be dying.

  I could hear people talking around me. I could hear voices, but the pain was so intense I couldn’t understand their words. The images came again, forcing me to see, forcing me to remember memories that were not mine.

  I saw their arrival as they landed on Earth. I saw the relief in their eyes to find a planet with an atmosphere similar to their own and their curiosity at their foreign surroundings. And then the blinding sun came up over the horizon. I saw Ben later discover us; the frail ones, he would call us. We were barbarians speaking a crude language and we were violent and dirty. Then, pictures of aliens swept through my mind. I knew their names. Alma was his life mate and she was pregnant with Aeyan. And others were beside me, I mean Ben, on our arrival. Darius was the oldest still alive, an ancient one. They watched humans for many years. They watched as we became more and more organized, civilized. Then, the aliens slowly emerged topside in the darkness and introduced themselves in a perfect tongue native to the humans.

  Another wave of pain raced across my body. I could feel myself shudder under it and more images roared through my mind. As time passed, a large group of Tanjennians were captured and restrained and some were dissected. The group included Danel and Ben. They were tortured by the same humans that they trusted. Several humans rebelled and set them free and when they did, Danel and Ben killed every human in that village — even the children. I could feel Ben’s pain for the loss of his brothers, his son Makias, who had made the trip to Earth with him. I could feel his rage and his sorrow as he killed the humans.

  Then, they stayed underground for years upon years. I tried to stop the images, to only think of Kye or Aaron, but they just kept coming, roaring through my mind. There were images of genetic experiments for reproductive purposes. I only saw a human every hundred years or so. There was a dark skinned man in tribal clothes and then there was a pale woman in white Roman robes exchanging information with them. Then I saw sickness plague the female aliens and I watched them die, one after another and then all experiments stopped for a while.

  I wanted all of this to stop. I needed it to stop before I completely lost my mind. I needed to close my mind’s eye. But nothing halted it, just more images and more voices from the past, from Ben’s past. It felt like it had been days, or even weeks, that had passed and I thought I would die from sheer insanity. I knew I could open my eyes, but I saw nothing beyond the images. I still couldn’t move and I felt each labored breath I drew in. Each one felt draining and each moment in between them seemed more uneven. After what seemed like an eternity, it finally stopped. The images just stopped altogether and finally there was darkness.

  CHAPTER 40

  WHEN I WOKE UP, I thought we were still under attack for a moment. There was a blinding light over me and I strained trying to hear Kye’s voice, Danel’s voice, anything familiar. I knew I was alive because of the pain radiating through my body. I tried to lift my hand over my eyes to shade them from the light, but I was so weak that I could only hold it up for a moment and a panic rose in me. Then I heard the soft murmur of Kye’s voice, then Aaron’s and there was the sound of footsteps drawing closer to me.

  “Lewis, try to stay conscious,” Kye said, “I’ll dim the lights.”

  Kye was here with me. Just this thought calmed me. Her voice was mesmerizing and my head swam with memories of her. Quickly, I realized that these were not my thoughts. I didn’t know Kye fifty years ago. I tried to push them aside and focus on her presence. When the lights dimmed, I could finally see my surroundings. Kye was on my right side, Aaron was on my left and Danel and Collin were at the foot of the bed. I could feel the warm blanket over me and I knew I was completely naked under it and I didn’t know why and I didn’t care. I felt weak and it was hard to focus and my emotions were so intense I thought I would start screaming.

  I looked at Danel and Collin at the foot of the bed and I felt something for both of them. I felt a fatherly love for Collin, almost a relief in seeing him again. And for Danel, I should have felt anger, but I didn’t. I felt concern for my brother. I understood their expressions perfectly, as if I’d looked into their eyes a million times.

  Yet Aaron looked different from the others. Staring at me nervously, he was scared and concerned, not excited.

  “I knew you’d be fine,” Kye whispered, leaning over me, her long hair brushing the side of my face as she stared into my eyes.

  I pushed the emotions down and was now engulfed in the smell of her hair. There were light hints of lavender and lilac. She seemed very pleased, as if she knew something that I didn’t.

  “How do you feel?” Aaron said, his eyes now growing wider, still not smiling.

  “I don’t understand. Was I injured? I’m in a lot of pain.”

  There was a slight pause from everyone.

  “Oh, bro, you’ve been through a lot more than you know,” his face still lacking that sign of relief I was looking for.

  Now I was getting worried.

  “What do you remember?” Kye asked.

  So many things ran through my head that all I could do was answer with questions.

  “Did Station Ten arrive? How many did we lose in the main hall? Are we still on Earth? Is Ben dead? Why did you say they wanted the ship?” I pointed the last question to Danel.

  I was starting to remember Ben’s memories and all the lies I was told by Danel. I noticed their expressions had changed. Not only did I succeed in confusing Kye and Aaron, but Collin too. And Danel only sighed.

  Danel slowly moved toward the side of the bed where Kye was. He was no longer intimidating, even in my weakened state. There was a long pause. All eyes were on Danel now instead of me. He looked complet
ely different to me. Not so alien, not so terrifying. The ever-so-slight slump of his shoulders I wouldn’t have noticed before. The small rise in his forehead as he closed his eyes was non-threatening. He didn’t look sad; he looked humbled. And I felt for him. He was my friend; my dearest, closest friend. I knew these were not my emotions, they were Ben’s, but I couldn’t stop myself from feeling them. Finally, he spoke.

  “Yes, we are still on Earth. Station Ten arrived a little later than we hoped. Ben is dead; we lost ten in the main hall and the rest can be answered by your own memories in time.”

  Everything he said was honest and I believed the memories would answer the rest, but they weren’t mine. My head started swimming again and I physically trembled. They were so real, for a brief second I wasn’t in the room anymore. I was escaping the humans with Danel, running as fast as I could, knowing he was running right beside me as I carried my dead son in my arms. I shook my head again and I was back in the room. Kye was there. Everyone was still there.

  “Just rest for now. Collin will give you something for the pain.”

  But I couldn’t relax. Aaron’s expression hid nothing and something was clearly wrong with me. Suddenly the pain overwhelmed me and shot through my bones as if they were broken. It was as if all of them were broken and all my muscles torn and I yelled through my gritted teeth and focused on Aaron.

  “Do I want to know?” I grunted through the pain. I was too afraid to look at my body and find something crushed or missing.

  “You’ll be okay” was what he said, but nothing in his face backed the statement. There was no underlying belief in his words. This only made not knowing even worse.

  “You need to rest. You have… absorbed Ben.” Kye’s voice faded out as my body violently shuddered with more pain.

  “I thought he was dead?” I managed to mutter.

  “We have the ability to leave behind our knowledge and feelings. It will pass.”

  “Collin is going to give you something now. We just needed to know that your neural pathways were still intact.”

  Her voice faded out again as a new wave of memories and feelings flashed through my mind. I closed my eyes and tried to shake them out, making my mind a blank slate. After a few seconds, I could see again, but Collin was already injecting my IV with something. I knew it was a painkiller. I started to feel sleepy as the pain subsided. So I lifted my hand and stared at it, because somehow I knew it would answer my questions. My veins were glowing purple and my skin was translucent and then all went black.

  CHAPTER 41

  WHEN I WOKE AGAIN, I hoped and prayed it was all a dream. But you can’t convince yourself of that when an alien is looking you in the face.

  Collin was there, smiling at me and the severe pain was gone. I noticed my feet were hanging off the bed by at least twenty inches. I pulled down the sheet over my abdomen and noticed all of my body was a translucent grey color. My veins had spun themselves into light-purple distorted circles, moving and glowing under my skin. I pressed on them and they faded for a second then slowly reappeared at the surface of my skin continuing to rotate. I wasn’t human anymore.

  “Try to move slowly. It will take some getting used to.”

  I said nothing as I slowly swung my legs over the bed and sat up. Every part of my body was sore and ached intensely with every movement. There were no memories from Ben. I tried to stand, but found it a little difficult, as my balance seemed off. When I got some control over my very sore muscles, I stood up and I was certain I would vomit. I felt sick and disoriented.

  “We’ve never seen this before,” Collin said.

  It was just him and me in the room. I felt a great desire to hug him, to tell him how proud I was of him. I quickly shoved this feeling down, knowing it was not my own. Ben was still with me.

  Something was different besides the obvious. I was looking Collin in the eyes, instead of up at him. I looked down at my body and it seemed to still be human-like, just larger. I wondered if my eyes were alien now. I no longer had any IVs attached to me and was dressed only in a pair of large surgical scrubs. I noticed a mirror in the back of the room above a sink and walked towards it, feeling every throbbing muscle with every step. Collin watched my clumsy movements. I had to duck under two overhead lights and my head was very near the ceiling. When I got to the mirror, I realized I was larger and taller than Collin was and had to bend down a little to look at my face.

  When I saw myself, I now understood the last expression I saw from Aaron. My eyes, thank god, hadn’t changed into glowing slits and it was like twenty years had been removed. There were no lines, no age spots and my eyes glowed blue, with no pupils to be found. I looked at my hands, but I hadn’t grown any extra digits like the others. My hair was now thicker and softer, glowing blue like my eyes — almost like very thin fiber optics —but it still felt like my hair. I looked at the rest of my body. My muscles seemed larger and my belly button was gone, but what about the rest of me? A new panic rushed through me as I stripped off my pants to make sure I still had all of my parts. With every moment came another twinge of pain in my muscles. With a huge rush of relief, I was still male and everything was accounted for, just larger. I would’ve smiled, but I became acutely aware that Collin was staring at me. I quickly put the scrub pants back on, almost falling over in the process and turned and faced Collin.

  “Never seen what before?”

  “No human has ever survived a merge with a dying elder before… no one,” Collin replied.

  I contemplated his statement carefully, checking to see if all of Ben’s memories were still there. They were and it felt like an enormous amount of information, like my brain had become a database. I could access them, but they no longer raced over me. They were all muddled together, hundreds of scattered images and I couldn’t make sense of them. I would need to take time to review them again now that I wasn’t in great pain. It was a little easier than I thought it would be to just not think of Ben and all his stuff in my head.

  “You’re not the first human to touch a dying elder. I’ve never observed it in my lifetime, but it has been documented diligently.”

  “So why am I alive?”

  “We have no idea… but if I had to guess, there’s a mutation in your DNA that allows it. Somehow it’s adaptable, most likely in the chromosomes we consider junk. The ones we haven’t studied. What’s really amazing is that we’ve been combining our elements with humans for thousands of years, but you are, or were, completely human, so the fact that you could survive is astonishing.”

  I didn’t share his excitement. I would rather have Ben still be alive.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Three weeks. We have already drawn blood and begun testing on your DNA.”

  Three weeks seemed like an eternity to me and I felt it in every muscle.

  “Where is Kye?”

  “Sleeping. It’s one-eighteen in the morning; she left here an hour ago. Are you in any pain?”

  “Just really sore.” I was actually more than sore, the muscles in my legs felt torn, but I didn’t want to be in the medical lab for another night.

  His eyes widened, amazed at me. I was a fluke. I stumbled twice trying to get back to the bed and Collin grabbed my arm to help me. And I felt Ben inside of me again, wanting to hug his son. It was a very intense urge and I wasn’t able to shove it down.

  I stopped Collin by grabbing his shoulders and he turned toward me as if I was in pain.

  “I’m so proud of you and I love you, all of you,” just fell out my mouth as I wrapped my arms around him. And Collin, to my shock, embraced me as if I was his father for a moment.

  “Thank you,” he said, as he pulled away from me. “You will feel my father for a long time, possibly forever. If you can control his thoughts and feelings and decipher between which are yours and which are his, you will be fine. I was really hoping that all he was hadn’t been lost.”

  I let go of him completely and let my arms fall to my
side as I sat back on the bed, confused by my own actions.

  “Is he alive inside of me?”

  “It’s hard to explain. We feel differently than you, very intensely. Our emotions literally drive our actions, which is why it’s so important for us to base our thinking on logic, not delusions or denial. It’s collective; you may soon feel what we all are feeling. So be careful to keep your emotions rational. Humans have a tendency to live outside of reality. Ben’s emotions are inside of you, his memories. Could you feel me a second ago? What I was feeling?”

  “A little, but I’m no father, Collin. I can’t be your father; I’m lacking in that department.”

  “You spent your whole life protecting people; you’re a better choice as a recipient than you think.”

  He was being so logical about all this and then he paused and looked down.

  “Lewis, Ben’s clone cannot be completed without the essence you absorbed.”

  This hadn’t occurred to me.

  “Is there a way you can take him out of me?” I said, my face full of remorse, like I’d stolen something.

  “At this time, I would say no. It’s mutated your own DNA; even if you died, I wouldn’t know how to retrieve it. But it doesn’t matter now. All the clones were destroyed when we were attacked.”

  This was horrible news. Ben and Alma and so many more couldn’t be cloned. Yet I couldn’t help but notice that he was treating me like I was Ben. I didn’t think I’d be living up to his expectations any time soon. It was clear he wanted me to take Ben’s place, I could feel that much. I wondered how Danel would feel about it and I smiled at the irony of it. Now, I could free Kye from Danel, or maybe this would make things more complicated.