Charged - Book One (11 page)

“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.”

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.

“So enlighten us,” I said, in an insolent way.

“I’m sure I can answer a lot of questions,” Danel
said, pouring Aaron more coffee.

“How come the device started a count down when I
plugged it in from the outside?” Aaron said.

“It doesn’t matter where it’s activated. We tried to
open the hatch when you arrived, but you plugged it in before we
could. It’s a safety mechanism, to start departure from any
receiving unit,” Danel answered.

This meant there was more than one station.

“Just visiting?” Aaron said, taking a sip of the
coffee. And, as usual, he spoke like a sixty-seven-year-old
professor was stuck in a twenty-seven-year-old body.

“No.”

“WE ARRIVED HERE about five thousand years ago. Your
technology hadn’t evolved to the state it is now… neither had you.
Only twenty thousand of us escaped the storms.” He paused slightly
and his gold eyes pulsed for a second.

“Back on our planet, there were billions of us.”

He touched two squares in the corner of the table and
a square lid silently slid open in the center. A hologram beamed
out from the center of the table and two circles appeared, one
white and orange and one brown. I leaned back instinctively due to
the size of it. The image, which was better than any 3-D movie I’d
ever seen, stretched across the entire table. Surrounding the two
larger circles were fifteen smaller blue circles that radiated a
soft blue light.

He then placed two of his long fingers into the
hologram itself for a moment and the two circles started rotating
around each other, stuck in each other’s gravitational pull. The
fifteen smaller circles were about one-tenth their size and rotated
around them in a funnel-like motion. Every second rotation the
smaller circles at the top would exchange positions with the
circles at the bottom. They would slide up, rotate slowing then
slide back down to their original positions. It reminded me of a
tornado as they moved closer to the planets at the bottom and then
farther away at the top.

“This was Tanjenna, our home and also the name of
this ship. It’s very similar to the binary stars close to your
solar system: two planets with identical species and geological
makeup. We knew the storm would hit Tanjenna about twenty-eight
years in advance. So we built ships that would hopefully take us to
another inhabitable planet. Most of the station’s space was for
food storage, so out of billions, only a few thousand escaped.”

“The storm?” I said.

“The storm was a sun near our planet that had gone
supernova. Not like your sun, which will become a red giant. This
sun was much larger than yours and the shockwaves alone were enough
to crush our entire solar system. If it weren’t for our technology,
we would be extinct.”

The planets didn’t look identical to me. The white
circle was very detailed, with white sections marking the land and
orange and yellow sections marked what I thought to be oceans. It
was surrounded by a pink gas-like vapor, which I assumed was their
atmosphere. But the other planet looked like desert rock, with
little to no water at all.

“When we got here, the atmosphere was somewhat
similar to our own, bearable over time. And the inhabitants were
frail, small, limited mentally and physically… and yet vicious
enough for wars, genocide, cannibalism, suicide and of course the
slow, inevitable destruction of the Earth.”

“Disappointed?”

“To say the least, Mr. Kagen. I’ve had the
opportunity to watch your kind for thousands of years.”

It wasn’t disgust in his voice. It actually sounded
like sadness. I noticed Aaron’s excitement slowly fade as we
watched this thing in front of us sink into its chair, its sighs
full of defeat. I made no excuses for my ancestors. I felt no
instinctive urge to defend my race. Everything he said was true
enough. And my perception of him was altered by the unmistakable
earnestness in his
voice.             

“Over time we helped you evolve, taught you a
language to replace your crude drawings that you can’t even
decipher now. Gave you tools to heal your wounded using only what
was provided in your own elementary surroundings.”