Starseed (27 page)

“What is this?” she asked.

“Pulverized glandular extracts.”

“Glands. Whose?”

He leaned closer. “Now you know where the millions of missing children go.”

Two inches from her face, she traversed through his eyes into his mind and saw multitudes of caverns inside the earth where children were taken; there were hidden bases under the whole world.

Kaila glimpsed the darkness, the fires, the screams—

“Children are the sweetest,” Viktor said. “Adults are polluted with drugs, alcohol, nicotine, artificial foods. Makes their glands bitter, there’s nowhere near the pure rush you get from an unpolluted endocrine system.”

Viktor rubbed the shiny moist substance over the red hairs on his forearm. He pushed out his chest, opened his small mouth, licking his tongue over red lips.

“You understand now why I was belligerent with the alcohol incident in your home,” he said. “Isn’t this better? Don’t you feel so much clearer and alive?”

While Kaila never felt more clear, energetic, and telepathically open, something inside of her raged. She was aware of the thousands in the rooms watching the screens, having images downloaded into their brains. Images they would not remember in the morning but would when the time was right. Everyone was being programmed.

“Emotions and glands. They,” Viktor pointed to the humans, “are food.”

Kaila saw the millions of hybrids and aliens in fourth dimension, invisible to humans, who stalked prisoner-of-war camps, hospitals, funerals, arguments, murder, and depression, observing and feeding on the outpouring of human emotion.

They fed on physical release and so made pornography prevalent, made women sluts and whores, made any fantasy available, feeding on the human frenzied releases and desperate urges for more, all while hypnotized and asleep.

We are their food.

The implications were staggering—and brilliant. The absolute deception, the veils over them all.

“It’s illusion,” Viktor said, reading Kaila’s mind. “People think that aliens will come to save and enlighten them. We give them a little of that to feed that lie.”

Kaila realized that creatures with more technology would feed, conquer, and be predators, the same as humans did to themselves. Technology hadn’t made humans more advanced. If anything, they were more isolated and colder, crueler.

Her thoughts shattered as she heard a telepathic cry. She had to follow that cry.

In an instant, she was in another room. In this room were hundreds of people lying on metal tables with the gray aliens hovering over them. It looked like a hospital ward.

Kaila heard the scream again and zeroed in on Pia. She lay on her back on a metal table. Restraints held her arms. The gray workers with the large heads and wrap-around black eyes huddled over her.

“It hurts!” Pia cried. “Stop!”

A gray held a tiny fetus in his spindly fingers.

Emotionally connected to Pia, Kaila absorbed her terror, confusion, and pain. She felt sharp pains in her abdomen like the pain was her own.

“Stop!” Kaila shouted to the gray.

The gray swiveled his long thin neck to consider her.

Pia’s emotions had broken through to Kaila, liberating her consciousness. “What are you doing!” Kaila screeched. “Oh my God, what is this?”

The gray took the fetus and submerged it into one of the vertical tubes filled with electric-blue liquid. The fetus, three inches long, floated in the liquid.

“Kaila, stop,” Jordyn said, his eyes black and glassy.

Melissa lay on another table, moaning. The gray beside her held a long metallic needle in its long fingers, about to stick it into her abdomen.

Melissa screamed. Her scream shattered all remaining control over Kaila’s mind.

Kaila shouted for them to stop.

Gray workers surrounded Kaila, staring with huge black eyes. Taller grays appeared. These were not bio-engineered, she knew, and possessed higher intelligence than the smaller grays. She realized that in this society existed a hierarchy with layers of intelligence, control, and command.

They told her that their planet and bodies had been harmed. They planned to populate the Earth with hybrids like her so they could survive.

You are one of us
, they said.
We control this planet. Be of the group, with us, with the mission.

“You will not mind-stare me!” Kaila shouted as the grays surrounded her.

We are in the White House, in the Kremlin, we control the banks, the schools, the churches, mosques and temples. We have infiltrated every area of your world. Nearly every leader or person of importance is a hybrid, implanted or clone. Look at your Hollywood, actors, and musicians. They are illusion, they are us. And humans worship them. As they should. The hybrids serve the mission. Humans serve us. Be with us now, submit, or bow to music, procreation, phones, television, drugs, alcohol, computers, and blindness. You are shown the truth because you are us. But we will not allow subversive behavior. It is not allowed. Choose. Choose now. Be awake or like them, stay asleep.

Seeing Jordyn, with his dead eyes, it struck Kaila what was happening. Why hybrids were created. She, herself, was one of them. All programmed to be hypnotized into texting, computers, music, and television. Not living, not real.

And Jordyn knew it. He had touched her, kissed her. He had felt humanness and lied. The one she thought she loved. What a huge deception!

She flung back her hand and with all her might slapped Jordyn’s face. He staggered, then blinked, but did not rise to consciousness.

Kaila was awake, fully conscious now. And she made a choice. Let Jordyn rot in deadness and hell forever in this betrayal. She felt something stir in her soul, at its deepest level.

How you hurt me,
she thought.
I loved you, believed in you, but you were one huge lie.

Kaila pushed through the grays and ran to Melissa who was screaming as a needle was inserted into her abdomen.

Echidna thrust herself between Kaila and Melissa. “They are doing an implantation to impregnate her. She must carry more hybrids. We will populate this world. You must not intervene.”

“Like hell I won’t!” Kaila shouted. She knocked the gray aside and pulled the needle from Melissa’s abdomen.

“You son of a bitch bastards!” Kaila screamed, now fully understanding Pia’s pregnancy. They abducted and implanted the pregnancy in their bellies, then later re-abducted and stole the fetus.

Fully enraged, Kaila wrapped her hands around a gray’s thin leathery throat, but Jordyn grabbed her. “Kaila, stop, they’re coming now.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Kaila said, dimly aware of a rising unseen power filling the room.

Jordyn yanked her wrist, dragging her away. She jerked free, spun around.

“You betrayed me. You acted as if you liked me and all you wanted was to use me for—this!”

As she stared into his black eyes, she realized that she utterly hated and wanted to destroy him as they were destroying her friends and humans.

“I hate you!” She went blind with rage and pummeled his chest and face with her fists.

The thickness in the room intensified. The thousand eyes invaded her mind, penetrating every cell of her brain. She couldn’t stand upright anymore. She felt the floor give out and become vapor.

She heard them trying to control her but all she heard were the screams in her mind.
I hate you! You betrayed me. I will never ever be with you or any of your kind ever again! I turn my back on you and all you stand for. And if I can, I will kill you and all of your kind.

And then, everything went black.

But she was half human too. She had a choice about how to live her life. Perhaps that’s what Priscilla Snowden meant when she talked of free will. Free will to choose. Our thoughts, our words, our actions, our relationships . . .

Kaila blow-dried her hair, put on an old t-shirt and jeans.
Who gives a shit about prep or dork or poser or any of that moron high school shit?
She could be whomever she wanted. But now, the only certainty was what she did
not
want to be.

Kaila wrapped her head in the black plastic, put on the wig. She would use every resource to block them forever and completely. They would come for her, she knew.

And what could she do about Pia and Melissa? She knew why they were so afraid, so tired. And worse, what would continue to happen if she did nothing.

Who could she talk to? Who could she go to for help?

The whole thing was staggering. She was but one being. What could she do? There were millions of them . . . and everyone here on earth was asleep and programmed to mock and deride anything to do with aliens . . . yet the culture adored vampires.

Stupid fools, they didn’t know that the real vampires were here, feeding on them while they romanticized some horseshit about the undead. Idiots! A twinge of guilt nagged, for she had fed from humans, viewed them as prey.

Kaila sat at her desk, put her head in her hands, thinking of Jordyn. She had believed in him. She had loved him. Her throat tightened; her ribs constricted. She couldn’t breathe. Where was her purse? By her bed as usual. She retrieved her inhaler and inhaled a puff as hot tears burned.

She thought how Jordyn felt when they danced and he held her—stop! Don’t think that. She thought of his flat, unseeing eyes, when he was under their control. Kaila shivered, recalling how she, herself, had been under control. She had been consumed, becoming part of the group consciousness of the hive. To fulfill the mission.

But she hadn’t known what the mission was—Jordyn did. She recalled the terror of the people, their cries, the fetuses floating in blue water.

Lucy scratched at the door.

As Kaila’s vision blurred, she went to the dogs.
Don’t be afraid
, she said with her mind. Lucy looked at her with concern and fear. She knelt and petted Lucy and Woofy.

“I’m sorry,” she said, crying.

She buried her head in their fur, weeping softly, massaging their ears. The dogs responded, licking her face, wagging their tails in delight, knowing instinctively that the human Kaila had finally come home.

When Kaila came downstairs, she saw her family seated at the breakfast table. The odor of bacon and coffee filled the kitchen. She had never been more grateful to see her mother, Mike, and Nan.

“What’s up with you?” Mike asked. Kaila wondered exactly what he referred to. “You’ve come back to Earth and taken off that silver suit, I see. That suit was getting old, I agree. Lee, pass me another biscuit.”

“What day is it?” Kaila asked.

“It’s Saturday,” her mother said. “Are you feeling all right? You are pale.”

“Are you teaching yoga this morning?” Kaila asked.

“Sure,” Lee said, layering butter and strawberry jam on her biscuit. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Um,” Kaila said. “I’m gonna do the class with you, and then after that I’d like to have a talk with you all.”

She would tell her mother and Nan everything. They had to know, for their protection and for what would come. And also, she would ask to take Melissa and Pia in at night so she could protect them. Though she could not protect the world, she could at least protect her friends and family. The best way was the truth. She could not hide under a plastic lie anymore.

Paw Paw lay in his recliner. One look, and she knew. He was dying. Kaila ran to him.

He looked like a bald skeleton with dark eyes. The latest round of chemotherapy and radiation must have stunned his body into collapse.

Remorse flooded Kaila. She’d been a zombie indoctrinated by the stupid hive teachings while her own grandfather lay at home dying. Every muscle in her body tensed—they could have healed him but didn’t. Their mission was more important. Kaila wanted to simultaneously bomb them off the planet and collapse crying at her stupidity.

“I’m afraid,” Paw Paw said to Kaila, as he sat up in his recliner. “This time next week, I won’t be able to get up.”

“Of course you will.” Kaila knelt before him. Her thoughts raced. Could she heal him? She lifted her gaze to the ceiling, trying to glimpse far beyond into the universe. Her eyes opened wide.

“What are you doing?” Paw Paw murmured.

Kaila stared her black eyes at her grandfather.

“Rest, Paw Paw.” He went still. She looked toward the kitchen and froze Nan, Mike, and her mother. Then she stood straight as a soldier, stared at her grandfather and concentrated.