Charged - Book One Read online

  Then I saw something.

  I limped all the way around the center satellite dish and I saw handlebars mounted on the side, leading all the way up to the top of the base of the center dish.

  Aaron picked up the box, walked over to the dish and cautiously touched the bars. He started to climb up the bars and I followed, taking twice as long as him. As we got to the top, there was a large circular opening positioned next to the center of the dish. I pulled myself through the hole, trying not to bang my knee and I could see a large circle in the center of the dish.

  It didn’t look like a satellite dish; it looked more like a giant solar panel. I expected what looked like glass under our feet to start cracking, but it didn’t.

  Aaron was inspecting the center of the dish and started blowing sand out of a small divot in the center of the circle. As he did so, it revealed 13 metallic prongs.

  “You ready?” he said, about to place the small box in the slot.

  “Wait!”

  Aaron paused and waited for me to get closer. The indentation in the center of the dish was the exact same size as the box. For a moment, I contemplated whether it was a good idea to use the key at all. What would the consequences be?

  “What if it does blow up Mars?”

  Aaron shook his head. “I’m pretty sure it would be shaped like a large rocket, not a satellite dish, if that were the case.”

  “Funny. No, I mean what if it sends a message that in turn makes something devastating happen?”

  “Mars isn’t that interesting anyway and I don’t think this is actually a satellite dish. I think it’s just made to look like one.” Then, without any more thought, he placed the key into the 13 prongs.

  We waited, looking at the box, looking around at the walls of the dish and then back at each other, and nothing happened.

  “Maybe it’s broke,” I said, not having a different explanation.

  “It’s not broke, I checked it.”

  “How exactly do you check glowing wires?” I said, in a sarcastic tone.

  Aaron grabbed the box and wiggled it. He then turned it ninety degrees to the right and the box came to life. Tiny violet beams shot out of the sides for about two seconds and then faded to nothing. The circle that surrounded the box started to lift from one side and we had to quickly jump off of it, which sent another jolt of pain through my knee.

  “Yes!” Aaron said, going around to the other side to look into the hole. It was a lid to a hollow cylinder about seven feet wide and eleven feet deep, with steel handle mounts running down one side. Beyond that, it was empty, completely empty. There were no buttons, no additional sockets for the strange box, no keyholes, nothing. We just stood there staring into it.

  Now I was impressed. Not only did the box work, but Aaron found what it unlocked.

  Aaron smiled pleased with himself again. He then shrugged his shoulders, raised his eyes brows and motioned for me to hop in the tube.

  “No way man. You go right ahead. I’ll be waiting for you when the government drags your ass back up here because you just found the presidents bomb shelter,” I said, laughing.

  Aaron then grabbed our bags, threw them inside and climbed down and looked up me with sheer excitement glistening in eyes. Like a kid on Christmas day. And he knew damn well I wasn’t going to let him go down there alone. But it took a few moments for me to reconsider. Hesitantly and with considerable pain in my knee, I lowered myself into the tube.

  When we were both inside, we stood there for a moment, waiting for the hatch to close, but it didn’t. The cylinder didn’t move.

  Aaron then smiled as if he’d just realized something and motioned me with one finger to wait as he climbed back up and out of the tube. This made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want this thing to start moving without him in it. After a short moment, he climbed back into the cylinder, he showed me the box and the lid started to close.

  “Do you think we’ll regret this?”

  “It’s possible,” he said.

  When the lid was shut all the way, it was completely black. I could hear a series of locks closing at the top of the tube we were in. Then it was silent and the ceiling and the floor lit up with a cascading, soft, blue stream of light, which was just enough for us to see.

  “Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” I muttered, looking at him.

  “It’s almost what I imagined.”

  I frowned at him a little and I started to wonder what he had imagined. I was alarmed, but even more so when the tube started to drop at an incredible speed. The force was so great that we started to lift off of the floor slightly and we both grabbed the steel bars on the side of the tube.

  “How fast do you think we’re going?” I said, over the humming noise.

  “I don’t know, pretty fast!”

  I had this overwhelming feeling that when this thing stopped, it was going to open up into a room filled with very angry military people. Then a fear swept across my mind that we would get stuck in the tube. I didn’t see any seams or anything that looked like a door that would suggest it opened at all. I wondered how long it had been since the tube had been used. And as much as I wanted to believe there would be a way back up, I didn’t know if there would be. I wondered if Aaron had considered this possibility.

  After the second longest minute of my life, the cylinder started to slow and came to a halt. Our feet lowered to the ground and I held onto the rails to make sure I landed on my good leg this time. The ceiling lights dimmed a little as we listened to the door unlocking.

  CHAPTER 17

  THERE WERE TWO DOORS, about thirty-six inches wide that slid back making the cylinder turn into a half-circle. I had a few ideas of what we were about to walk into, but I wasn’t expecting this.

  This was beautiful. This was Eden.

  We stood in the cylinder just looking at an abundant amount of plant life, trees and flowers. It was what Earth must have looked like before we covered it in concrete and condos. We took a few steps out into what looked like a garden and although beautiful, it was obvious the trees weren’t really trees and the flowers weren’t really flowers. The dim blue lights had deceived us and my stomach soured.

  Aaron picked up the bags and he stepped out further into the dimly-lit garden. I hesitated; I stood there for a moment, closed my eyes, opened them again, but nothing changed. After another moment, I slowly limped out. It was possible that the tube could send me straight back up and Aaron would be alone. When I was completely out of the tube, the doors closed and I could hear it ascending to the top of the canyon. And I couldn’t help but notice that there wasn’t any place to plug the key in from this side.

  We started moving forward on what looked like a cobblestone path. With every step we took, the floor would radiate under our feet. It lit up with the same blue light as in the elevator. At first it was dim, then it grew brighter, then it would die out after a second or two until the next step was taken. The black stones didn’t feel like stones, more like a hard rubber.

  I motioned for Aaron to be silent as I waited for military people to make themselves known, for the bright overhead lights to be turned on and for us to be put in cuffs, but this didn’t happen. I heard no footsteps, no alarms, nothing. Even if this was a military experiment, splicing plant life for weapons or cures, something wasn’t right. Where were the scientists? Where was the security? There were no pipes overhead, no ventilation ducts or heating ducts. I pulled out my .357 Magnum and handed my pistol to Aaron. “Safety’s off,” I said. He grabbed it and we continued.

  Facing us to the left of the path was a flower the size of my head, or what looked like a flower. It was slightly transparent and opening and closing like it was breathing. To our right was what I can best describe as glowing white vines that were also moving a little more actively than what made me comfortable.

  “Do you hear that?” I whispered.

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “That’s my point. No insects, no birds.”

&
nbsp; Aaron pointed up and to my surprise; we were not in a cave but a metal dome. The ceiling radiated the soft, blue light like the black stones in the path.

  Then the red dirt on my right side started to move. No, it wasn’t the dirt moving; something was moving under it. My curiosity was immediately replaced with panic and I pointed my revolver at the moving dirt. Aaron quickly shook his head in a no gesture at me.

  A yellow glowing bug with a red glowing head crawled out of the dirt. It sent a shiver down my spine and I unconsciously took a step back. I was almost positive that it stopped to look at me for a moment as it tilted its head up. It was the size of my shoe, with long spiny legs and a glowing gelatinous body that bounced a little as it crossed my path. If it had inched toward me at all, I would’ve shot it.

  Aaron and I watched as it simply crossed our path over the black stones and crawled back into the red dirt on the other side. We said nothing. Though, I was positive that what was going through my mind was not what was going through his. I was thinking that the government was splicing more than plants. And Aaron….he had a large smile spreading across his face.

  As we continued into the dome, I noticed most of the plants were several feet tall. There were some with flowers, some without. Some of them looked like large cornstalks. Their stems were glowing orange and faded to white at the tops of the plants. There were red grapelike clusters on the tips of them running down about three feet on the sides of each stalk. They looked like fist-sized grapes.

  Slowly, they leaned toward us, but there wasn’t a breeze. It was unsettling even more than the bug because the stalks were massive. Their stems were thicker than my thighs and some of them reached twelve feet into the air. I started thinking about what military scientists could do to plants. Just then, hundreds of the stalks started bending farther and farther in synch, like they were alive. I tightened my sweaty palm on the butt of my gun. If these things started lashing at us, I was going to blow them to pieces.

  They bowed towards us and then pulled back. Then, they started moving just a little quicker. After only a few more steps they were bending over again and again, just barely touching the ground, like they were dancing. One of them bent all the way over, brushing against the side of my leg and then bounced back bending in the opposite direction. If I could’ve jumped away from it without unbearable pain, I would have. Their movements were like a ballet as they swayed back and forth. It was alarming and mesmerizing at the same time. The light they gave off seemed to disperse into the air around them as they moved. More and more of them started brushing against us as we moved deeper into the dome and I was certain that, at any moment, the military were going to show up really pissed off.

  Then, the cornstalk plants started moving faster, touching the tops of our heads, sliding across our faces. Now I was kind of hoping someone would show up and arrest us. It was startling, but they weren’t violent. I swatted at several that touched my face and neck. It was like a cat purring against your leg when you walked in the door — a very tall, annoying cat. After a few more feet, we cleared the small section of plants and entered a different section with much smaller plants.

  As we moved further into the clearing, I saw the most beautiful waterfall I’d ever seen in my life. It ran from the bottom of the dome to the top, an easy thirty feet. It came from a large pool in the floor that seemed to be lined in crystals and it sounded like a waterfall in slow motion. From what I could tell, there were two layers. There was a gold fluorescent waterfall running slowly like lava from the floor to the ceiling. And my basic understanding of physics said this shouldn’t be possible. On top of that layer was an orange sparkling layer moving slightly faster in the opposite direction. They were flowing against each other, simultaneously moving in and out of a large crevice located at the top of the dome.

  Every drop that hit the glowing pond at the bottom changed into a crystalline snowflake that floated out into the air and dissipated as it touched the strange plants.

  We kept moving, but Aaron slowed so I could keep up with him, now that my limp was severe.

  Everything was spectacular. One flower that we were approaching caught my attention. It was about three feet tall and had bright neon pink and white petals with a thick, black stem. Every few seconds, a petal would fall to the red dirt, sprout tiny white legs and then crawl back to the base of the plant. Then it would dig itself into the ground where the flower was planted and then a new petal would reappear.

  CHAPTER 18

  “GENTLMEN, WELCOME TO STATION THIRTEEN,” a man said, startling us as he walked slowly toward us from what appeared to be the end of the brick-like path. Every step he took made the path come to life with the dim blue light beneath his feet.

  “We always design our gates to open directly into two sections of gardens. We find it to be an appealing entrance,” he said.

  Aaron and I immediately noticed that all the plant life became still, even the cornstalks in the previous dome.

  The man’s deep voice echoed against the walls of the large dome. But something was wrong with this dome and everything in it. I knew it and felt it in my bones. The revolver was still hanging in my hand on my right side.

  As the man got closer, it was evident that he was not a man at all. We stood there speechless and frozen.

  I suddenly thought that this must be what Zero felt like. My heart started pounding against my ribs as this thing was got closer to us. The creature looked like a bad mutation of a human on steroids. It stopped about ten feet in front of us and we looked up at him. It was an easy nine feet tall, with no hair and you could see right through its skin into all the veins and glowing arteries — circular, moving arteries. Its enormous glowing eyes looked like gold slits, running four inches diagonally. Its head was misshapen and too large for its body. It had two legs and two arms with hands that could’ve probably crushed my skull with little effort. Yes, it was in a suit, the male version of a suit, but at over nine feet tall, it was like putting a suit on a dinosaur.

  After I picked my jaw up off the floor, it spoke again in perfect English.

  “I don’t mean to be startling. All of our coverts are topside and we don’t have your species to greet you at the moment,” it said.

  Oh, God… did it just say “species?” Without thinking, I pointed the gun at it. I was really hoping it was just an experiment gone wrong. I could feel the sweat between my hand and the metal as I squeezed the handle.

  “My name is Danel,” it continued. “I’m the facilitator at this station. I had the next two sections cleared, so you didn’t have to see twenty of us at once. I understand you find us quite shocking.”

  It seemed unaffected by my movements or the gun. I could see Aaron shaking his head at me in my peripheral vision, but I wasn’t lowering the gun or taking my eyes off of the thing standing in front of me.

  Twenty more. My heart raced and my mouth became unbearably dry and I couldn’t swallow. I could feel myself trying to move outside of consciousness. My mind started swimming and my vision blurred. I shook my head, blinking my eyes, forcing them to focus.

  “Jesus,” was all that came out of my mouth.

  “You’re a little earlier than expected,” it said, as it stared at Aaron.

  This was too much, way too much. This was a bad dream of the worst kind.

  Aaron started breathing again and gained a little composure.

  “You were expecting us?” Aaron said, clearing his throat.

  “Yes, of course. We are always notified any time there’s a flight in this direction. We’re all relieved that no one else got to you first,” it said, now smiling a smile that looked completely frightening and absolutely unnatural.

  I felt my heart sink to my feet and my stomach fly up to my throat and I was trembling. What followed this polite exchange of words was a very bad moment of awkward silence. We just stood there, staring at its glowing yellow eyes. It had no ears, no nose that I could recognize. His hands looked like large spiders; there were six
or seven fingers on each one and what I thought was an extra thumb. The pause was long, like a last stand right before both parties started to open fire.

  I took a slow, deep breathe. We were here, this thing was talking to us and I was not going to lose it. I tried not to think of the horrible things that could happen and just focus on the present. Aaron almost seemed to relax as my anxiety soared. Was this what he was expecting? I continued to stare up at it; we both did. Its skin was a semi-translucent gray. Its teeth looked almost metallic. It had a thumb on both sides of its hand. Then it spoke again.

  “First, let’s talk business… only because I have to. The box you have is a device that sets off a series of locks and basically starts a countdown for departure.”

  The key word here was departure. I then realized that the whole room was humming softly. I could hear what sounded like large metal doors shifting and locking into place beyond the room we were in.

  “How many light years away do you want to be before you hand me the box?”

  The humming sound increased and I could now feel a small vibration coming up through my shoes. I believed it, but I was frozen, petrified.

  “Light years…” Aaron mumbled in amazement. There was fascination in his face as he stared at the creature.

  “Aaron, you won’t find this amusing when twelve other ships, much larger than this one, embedded in your glaciers and mountains, blow twenty percent of the Earth’s crust off when we leave. The device makes sure we all leave together,” it said.

  The pleasantries were now over. It was walking towards us with long swift strides. It was going to take the box and possibly my arm with it. I didn’t want to shoot it; it was unarmed. But if it touched me, I was going too.

  Aaron quickly grabbed the box out of my hand and tossed it at the creature, which caught it with ease. It then turned around and left. Aaron and I just stood there. We exchanged a glance, but said nothing. After what seemed like forever, the vibrations stopped. Then the humming stopped altogether and we could hear the metal doors opening beyond the garden. A loud thud sounded with each door and grew fainter and fainter. I counted thirteen possible doors.