Charged - Book One Read online

  CHAPTER 21

  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.”

  “So you’re saying you’re not going to add anything alien to my body?”

  “Exactly. Your bodies are so much easier to manipulate. You won’t feel a thing.”

  There was a green gas floating around my knee as Jessica kept clicking on the computer screen. I looked over at Jessica’s red eyes and she sensed my fear, or maybe she read my mind.

  “Slow your heart rate please. The light you see around the knee is just the remnants of a frequency that I’m manipulating.”

  I looked at Kye and she smiled at me for a moment, but didn’t speak. She put her right hand on my shoulder and mouthed the words, “it’s okay.”

  “How long before it gets better?” I said, grunting through the pain.

  “About two minutes.”

  Two minutes. I couldn’t believe this either. But then the pain started to subside and I could feel my knee changing, the muscle changing and I looked at Kye in disbelief. She smiled back at me — a big, beautiful smile.

  “So, then what?” I said.

  “For the most part, you will be healed. Oh, and it would be helpful if you could learn how to land when skydiving.”

  CHAPTER 22

  SHE WASN’T LYING. My knee felt like it had never been injured. Even the large, unsightly scars from the last two surgeries disappeared. It was the first time in years I hadn’t limped. The pain was gone completely and I was exhausted from it. I felt like I could sleep for a decade. At first, I limped out of habit and then I slowly put my weight on the leg. I took one step and then another and I felt no pain, not even a mild soreness.

  I was amazed, elated and more suspicious. I thought about how many people in the world needed this technology. Why didn’t they share it? Maybe they were sharing it? Maybe they were sharing it with just a particular group, those that they deemed qualified or deserving. I didn’t know and I wasn’t about to ask. For now, I would be grateful. I would ask later. But I knew something didn’t add up. Just from my career, I could think of five police officers that needed this kind of help, disabled like myself… or like my former self.

  After Jessica was done, she said it was a permanent fix. I believed her, but it didn’t explain why she was helping me. Maybe it was because Kye asked her to. Or maybe it was because they didn’t need a disabled human wandering around their station. Or maybe they just wanted to be able to say that all prisoners were kept alive and healthy in the end.

  My expression said it all and I didn’t care if it did. Not another word was exchanged between us. I know there should have been a thank you or some gratitude expressed from me, but I kept thinking of all the people that really needed this care. After a few minutes, Kye and I headed to a conference room and said nothing as we walked down another long hall in the opposite direction of the medical lab.

  Kye glanced at me as if ashamed. She knew exactly what I was thinking. She gave me a concerned look, as if to say, “it’s okay and this is the way it has to be for us,” meaning they must remain out of sight for as long as possible. I was guessing, but something in my gut said I was pretty close in my assumptions. I could only imagine the chaos that would occur if everyone knew they were here.

  Aaron was in the conference room waiting for us. He looked half awake and was sipping on a large mug of coffee as we entered. I was relieved to see he was fine.

  “You got a personal tour, man?” he said, as I entered.

  “Something like that.”

  Immediately, his eyes were drawn directly to my knee that didn’t fail me as I walked across the room. His face grew into a slight smile, as if to say, “I told you so.”

  The room had two different sizes of chairs in it. It was becoming obvious that they had humans here. I slid one of the smaller chairs down by Aaron and sat next to him. I then rolled up my left pant leg and showed him my knee.

  “Oh my God!”

  “No, it wasn’t God.”

  “With the way you were walking, I figured they had done something, but I didn’t think it would…” he trailed off inspecting my knee closer.

  “Yep,” was all I said. Then I watched as his face turned from amazement to concern. We were on the same page now. If they had this technology, why were people suffering? I raised my brows to see if he would reply to my unspoken question, but he didn’t. He just remained still with a look of concern on his face, sipping his coffee, contemplating.

  I glanced around the room, trying to take everything in. It wasn’t really like a conference room. It was more like the countdown room at NASA. Or, at least, what I envisioned one would be like. The back wall was a giant glass screen showing what appeared to be a map of solar systems or galaxies, none of which resembled ours. The blue lights were very dim and were starting to make my eyes ache from strain. No other yellow lights seemed to be placed in any other rooms besides the suite we had slept in.

  “We are waiting for Danel?”

  “Yes,” Aaron said. “He’s the one who woke me up this morning. It was quite shocking, actually. I didn’t react as appropriately as I hoped. At first, I still thought I was dreaming.”

  He was now staring at Kye. I found it amusing that Aaron had suddenly become self-conscious of how he acted and I realized that he’d never seen Kye.

  “Aaron, this is Kye.”

  He nodded his head and looked at me puzzled.

  “You forgot to mention she wasn’t human when you described her at the bar,” he said, immediately noticing her skin and eyes.

  “I didn’t know then.”

  “Gee, how do you miss that?” he said, now blatantly making fun of me.

  I thought she was still beautiful. I didn’t care. She was stunning, just now in a more intergalactic way. Then I stared at her directly for too long; if she could’ve blushed, I think she would have. Kye said nothing. She only smiled, a simple human-like smile and shook her head at us boys.

  I gave Aaron an annoyed frown and was a little embarrassed by his bluntness. I was going to say something apologetic, but Danel walked in.

  His presence was overwhelming, as if he’d grown overnight. I was still not used to the way he looked. He hadn’t changed or mutated from the last time I saw him. I just couldn’t get over the fact that he was nine feet tall. He no longer seemed gelatinous. There was a defined skeletal structure of some kind beneath the grey tissue. I wondered for a moment about how he saw things and whether or not he could see colors at all.

  I almost shivered getting a closer look at him. His mouth was lipless, just a straight line in the middle of his face and he didn’t appear to have a nose, just two small holes below his eyes. Not pretty, not at all.

  “Gentlemen, thank you for the device,” Danel said, as he sat down at the head of the table.

  “Why didn’t you just take it days ago?” I said.

  “We could have. We also could’ve sent a current through the dishes topside with enough amps that would’ve fried your brains in ten seconds. But just like you, we have rules and laws that govern us.”

  I looked at Aaron for his response. He raised his brows for a second, which told me he believed him.

  “I also believe that many amps would make the box inoperable. And it only takes 100 amps to stop the human heart, but it’s interesting that you take it to the extent to fry the human brain.” Aaron said.

  Aaron’s sarcasm was evident, but only to me.

  Danel didn’t respond. He brought out a metal briefcase and opened it.

  It was full of money.

  “We had an agreement,” Danel said.

  “I agreed to nothing.”

  “So those dishes are not really functional, are they?” Aaron said.

  “Actually, they function in many ways. We have ways of converting your solar energy more efficiently than you.”

  It was just more crap that didn’t add up. They didn’t share their healing technology and they apparently also didn’t share other technologies that would help save our planet.
Maybe they were just waiting for us to die out so they could have the planet for themselves. I didn’t care for the money. I cared about why they didn’t help us and why they were here in the first place.

  “So Danel, how does a box with such importance get into the hands of a guy like Richie Stakes?” I said.

  “We were transporting it to a safer location. In transit, one of our coverts was attacked and it accidentally got passed off to Richie,” Kye said.

  “So you killed Richie.” I said.

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Why didn’t you just kill us last night?” I said.

  “Rules, Mr. Kagen. We don’t pull out a gun every time we have a disagreement. That’s what humans do,” Danel said.

  “So Richie didn’t know what the box was? He’s never been here?”

  “No. If he’d made it here, he would still be alive. The box was gone for two weeks before we located it and when we found Richie, he was dead.”

  I didn’t know if I believed him.

  “We’re happy to tell you everything,” Danel said

  “Why?”

  “Let’s just say we know more about you than you do. We’ve been watching one of you for years and we’ve done our research on you, Mr. Kagen, as well. All in all, you have no psychological hiccups on file and we could use more coverts like you.”

  I didn’t hear this as a compliment, though it may have been. It just seemed like a way for him to keep me under his thumb, which was not going to happen.

  “So why not just make another box?”

  “In case you couldn’t tell, I’m not from here and neither is the device. Some of its parts are unavailable.”

  His patronizing tone was starting to irritate me.