An outsider looking through Jason’s invisible cloak would have seen a young man staring open mouthed at this poor, unsuspecting girl. If he could see himself he would not have been very impressed, not cool. It took ages for his legs to start working again, his muscle fibres remembering their job and carrying him forward towards the desk, towards the girl ‘god I hope this is Wolf’s daughter, please let it be her’ he silently prayed to himself.
Her black hair lay in a curtain around her. Every now and then she would flick it over her shoulder until she became impatient enough to pick up a pencil and use it to tie her hair up behind her head. And in that moment, preoccupied with her hair she jerked her head around and stared straight at him.
Jason was gaping like a fish out of water terrified at being discovered, terrified at explaining his presence. That is until he noticed something strange in her expression. She wasn’t looking at him exactly she was looking straight through him. She was responding to something, a shift in energy, a ghost in the room, not sure. The only thing Jason was sure of was those beautiful almond shaped golden brown eyes looking at the exact spot that he was standing in.
He was holding his breath now that he had enough sense to close his mouth, too afraid to move, close enough so that if he did reach out his hand he could touch her.
That’s when the alarm sounded, loud and shrill. He knew that sound was the ‘I can detect foreign alien tech’ alarm, he was about to be in a whole world of trouble if he didn’t move. There was nothing else he could do.
Wolfs daughter had whipped her head around, unsure it seemed of what was happening. With one last look at her, Jason turned and ran as quickly as he could out the door, out of the library, out of the warehouse and kept running until he was on the edge of town. He was too afraid to go back for his car. Too afraid that whoever had responded to that alarm would come looking for him. He couldn’t risk it. Coming here was a stupid, stupid idea, stupid boy.
This little stunt could have led the Palace straight to her or worse, the Library inhabitants straight to him. He knew he had to lay low for the rest of his time out with the humans. A Ute was getting ready to drive out of town, within seconds of it taking off Jason jumped into the empty rear tray, still cloaked, and hitched his ride out of town.
He would come to pick up his car in a couple of days wearing his coloured contact lenses. No cloak, no alien tech. No-one would know he was ever there. He couldn’t stop thinking about this girl as his mind’s eye filled with her every detail. Jason had noticed what she was reading and with a smile knew that he was going to dream about this girl a lot.
Chapter 13
Lily
My dreams that night were filled with laughter punctuated with warm arms, running, fear, giant hairy animals and someone screaming run. I had woken with a start, sitting bolt upright staring into complete darkness. We’re not in Kansas anymore I thought… Unfortunately for me there was no wizard to give me the secret to going home. Fortunately for me my companion had a heart, brain and courage. I guess Dorothy and I were on equal footing considering the plus and minuses.
My back ached a little. Axel had tried to make the stone bench as comfortable for me as he could. A reflection I guess of things to come. “Lily are you ok?” I heard Axel say, concern in his voice. He must have heard me rustling around in my makeshift bed.
“Where are you Axel? Please don’t tell me you’re sleeping on the floor”. I realised his voice had come from somewhere down below.
“Yes”, he replied. “I wanted to stay close in case you needed me”.
“I’m fine” I said. “I’m having trouble sleeping. I don’t suppose you’ve got a stun gun or knock out serum in that back pack of yours”. I just wanted to sleep, an unconscious, dreamless, emotionless sleep, for a very long time.
“I’ll make some tea. I can’t really sleep either”, and with that Axel rose from the very hard and uncomfortable stone floor, switched on his camp lamp and readied himself for tea making. This use to amuse me to no end growing up, every restless, uncomfortable, sickness, angst ridden moment in our lives was always accompanied with some of Axel’s tea. I was hoping this was a sign of some kind of normalcy, not just covering fear and apprehension.
It was not cold in the cave, surprisingly, so fortunately there was no need of a warm fire although I’m pretty sure Axel would never have lit one, smoke and all. There was a warm glow reflected through the crystal panes in the ceiling. It was somewhat comforting as it wrapped us both in its filtered moonlight haze.
“Axel, what is this place?” The tea was also contributing to my warming body. I could already feel the aches dissolving.
“As far as I can tell it’s some kind of an observatory. I found reference to it in an old book in the other library. I’ve been here before, to scout it out in case we ever needed it. I even stored some supplies for us (as he pointed to my makeshift bed). We can’t stay here though Lily. It’s tempting I know but if I found it, you can be sure at some point the Curator will too. We have to be long gone before he does”.
Silence.
There was no sound in this cave, this observatory. I don’t think I had ever experienced no sound before. I couldn’t even hear Axel breathe or sip his tea, just the constant heavy thud of my scared heart beating in my chest.
“Axel, you said the Curator had plans for me. What plans”? OK, I heard that. That was a sigh coming straight from Axel. I braced myself, he was either going to tell me something horrible or try very hard to avoid answering this question.
“Do you really want to know Lily, because if I say it I can’t unsay it and you may prefer not to know”
If I could have seen his expression properly I would have seen the blank face. In the last couple of days Axel’s blank face had been replaced by expressive face and I found that I was now becoming wary of blank face.
“Just tell, like ripping off a band aid”
Axel took a moment, I guess he was gathering his thoughts. I wonder, what is the best way to tell a scary story.
“When you first came to the Library” he started, “the Curator took some of your blood. Obviously the colour of your eyes told us you had the ancestor base pair but we didn’t know to what extent. I mean”…he sounded nervous. I‘ve never heard Axel sound nervous, what else are the days ahead going to reveal about him.
“There are variations of our DNA out there now. There is the original source Travellers, the experimental hybrids and various generational offspring of both. The Curator wanted to know what you were exactly. The results of your blood test were unexpected…stunning actually. You had evidence of human DNA in your genes so at first hybrid is what we thought. We continued testing though, the Curator wanted to know how far back your human DNA went because you didn’t have the typical hybrid phenotype I’ve told you about before”. He paused a little unsure maybe as to how to continue, or was he waiting for me to catch up.
“Do you remember what genetic junk is Lily?” Yes I nodded, we only understood the function of a small percentage of our DNA, the rest is thought to be useless, ergo junk. I always thought this was a little conceited on sciences part. You know, just because we don’t know what is does doesn’t mean it’s not doing anything.
“Well you don’t have any. A certain amount is normal, in humans and Travellers. You don’t have any. In fact, our theory as to why you don’t have any is this extra component to your blood that we have never seen before”.
Pause to catch up.
“I’m following Axel, please tell me”.
“We’ve talked about nanites before in our science-tech lessons.” It was between a comment and a question.
‘Yes, I remember. Microscopic artificial components added to the human body to repair damage…unless they take over human consciousness”. I got the reprimanding stare from him. He knew what I was thinking of and again the stare very loudly admonished me
for watching too much TV.
“These components in your blood are biological in origin. They do however act like artificial nanites cleaning up the junk and repairing your body and probably allowing you to function as clearly and concisely as you do. That’s one of the reasons you don’t stay sick or hurt for long. Do you understand how unexpectedly amazing this is? We identified something new in the alien/human DNA. It could have arisen from an evolutionary process, a mutation we’re not sure but it was big news”.
Thankfully he paused because I was breathing in very short breaths now as dizziness was starting to overwhelm me. Axel as stoic as always filled up my now empty cup with tea.
“Do you want me to stop Lily, we can finish this later”. I was actually a little stunned at how fragile Axel thought I was or at least was in this instant. Maybe I looked fragile as I had laid my head between my knees trying to stave off hyperventilation. It worked at least, that and a good swig of the happy juice.
“No, you started now. Tell me everything you know.”
“OK…There’s a place called the Palace, I told you about this yesterday. I also told you that the Curator always had aspirations of moving there some day. They wanted him to look after the archive halls, much to his displeasure so he spent time looking for ways out. You were his way out. He tried to harvest your cells, grow them in tissue culture. Problem was he could never find the right media combination to support the growth of these live nanites – that’s what the Curator called them. He was very frustrated. I believe his plan was to grow the live nanites in culture and take them to the Palace. He would have been heralded a hero, prodigal son returns home, you get what I mean (as I nod absently). Live nanite growth however was not supported outside your body, these components in your blood did not survive in artificial conditions. He had to come up with another way”. Pause again, except this one was different. I had the very distinct feeling that he really didn’t want to say the next part out loud.
“Please Axel” I begged. “Just tell me”.
“Last year I overheard a conversation the Curator was having on the phone. He was talking to someone about egg harvesting procedures, how to stimulate ovaries, how to collect eggs. Keep in mind that I only heard his side of the conversation but it was enough to start me snooping, my instincts were alarmed and I knew he was trying to find another way to grow your nanites artificially. I formed a theory over the next couple of months. I’m pretty sure I had guessed what he was planning”. Whoever put that lead balloon in my stomach can come and remove it now, anytime. It’s making me feel sick.
I did not like where this was going.
“The only other way the curator could have any success in harvesting the live nanites was to harvest your eggs, freeze them and take them to the Palace for further culturing. They have technology that may have more success with the original DNA”. I didn’t realise I had started to shake until Axel wrapped a blanket around me.
“I’m going to continue Lily, we’re nearly at the end of this particular story”. I couldn’t control the shakes. They were coming from somewhere deep inside, some primitive area that was finely attuned to a physical threat, hell to an emotional threat. I could hear Axel speaking, I understood what he was saying, it all sounded so distant though as if I was hearing a story on the radio.
“It was around this time I had started putting an escape plan in motion. I kept a close eye on him, any evidence that he was going to go on with this plan and we were leaving. As it turns out you beat him to it by finding that book, dreaming that dream’. Oh God that dream, I’d nearly forgotten about it. I can’t ask about that yet. I can’t hear any more about aliens right now.
“I checked the lab when he left the other day. We had three vials of your blood frozen, they were all gone Lily. I checked the cameras. The Curator has taken them. Best guess, he’s taken them to the Palace and he’ll be bringing Palace guards back with him. The Palace is going to come after you Lily. They’re going to want to know where you came from and how you work. That’s why we have to disappear.”
Find a word that reflects how you feel, this will ground you- that was a lesson Axel had taught me a long time ago. Numb. In a couple of days I went from being a happy teenager living a pretty sweet life in a library aspiring to become an archival conservationist and instead I’ve turned into an alien oddity everyone wants to poke needles into. A cliché, I had become a friggin cliché I think to myself while Axel pours me yet another cup of tea.
Jason
Jason has an inexplicable acute sense of timing. He arrived at the warehouse cloaked Library just as a car had pulled away from the curb. Luckily he was paying attention because he noticed the pretty blacked haired girl of his adventure last year sitting in the front passenger seat. He didn’t hesitate he turned the steering wheel and followed. If she was heading in a certain direction than so was he, he was determined.
Something wasn’t right though he knew that, although whoever was driving the car wasn’t drawing any attention to themselves by speeding or breaking even a left hand turning law, he felt the need for the car’s occupants to leave, very quickly. He followed them at a distance. He silently thanked the stars for the amount of traffic on the road, enough to keep his pursuit disguised. Jason had quickly scanned this car for alien tech as they all left the Library and couldn’t detect anything other than trace elements, it was very faint but it was definitely there.
They weren’t cloaking themselves, this suggested that they were trying to avoid identification by any Travellers in the area. Good idea, Jason in turn turned off all his alien tech. These thoughts brought his awareness back to the ache coming from his left arm. That’s where the trackers were inserted in all Palace inhabitants.
What the Palace didn’t know is that since learning Wolf’s story Jason had been working on a device that would neutralise the tracker. He couldn’t afford the Palace following him straight to his intended target. It was nearly a year on completion and Jason had tested it on a child in the cafeteria one lunch time. He simply walked up to the boy, accidentally fell into him and pressed the device into his arm emitting a silent put powerful sonic pulse directed to the area of tracker insertion.
It worked, within half an hour the Palace guards were on the terrified child and eventually explaining it all away as a technical malfunction. By this time the tracker had started to degrade and seep toxins into the boy’s blood stream. Not deadly, not yet at least. The tracker had to be removed immediately, left inside the muscle for a long period and death by toxic poisoning was a very real possibility. Luckily the leak had been detected in the boy and the device removed. A child’s life on his hands is not something Jason was ready or willing to live with. He never tried an experiment of this kind again. The fact that he had tried it in the first place meant he had been at the Palace for far too long.
An hour after Jason had left the Palace he had pulled into a motel. Jason placed the sonic device on his arm and boom, tracker disabled. Cutting open his arm and extracting the tracker wasn’t as easy or as glamorous. It was bloody and painful and nauseating. He couldn’t use pain killers, not if he was going to get back behind the wheel and get to Wolf’s daughter as soon as possible, so he endured the pain ever increasing as he used a device to stitch up his arm, the only relief coming from a topical anaesthetic his nimble fingers found in the Palace infirmary.
Jason took all of the bandages, blood soaked cloth and plastic covers to the bathroom and burnt all traces of his blood. He did not want to be found on this road, on this path at this time. Jason used his watch to scan the room for any DNA he may have missed, a lot was found but none was his. With his arm bandaged Jason took a deep breath reminding himself to stop for a very strong coffee to go, he jumped back into his car and resumed his journey to Wolf’s daughter. He had no plan as to what he was going to do once he found her which was fine. Winging it was much more his style anyway.
br /> It was night time when Jason finally saw the black Ford he was following turn onto a dirt track. He decided to slow down considerably, now was not the time to be detected. Clues to their destination would be evident without him having to stay too close now, he would find them eventually. By now he had decided that this was indeed Wolf’s daughter.
He remembered Wolf describing a tall blond man picking up his daughter from the library steps and indeed, from the small glimpses Jason had of the cars inhabitants, the driver did have blond hair. His instincts were screaming that this was the right girl and he had to keep on this trail.
After a fifteen minute head start, Jason turned onto the dirt track. It hadn’t been used in a while so it was easy to follow the tyre tracks. Eventually the driving path came to a stop and all Jason could see in front of him was a wall of rock, moss and vines. Curious, the tyre tracks stopped, there was evidence of someone trekking through the brush and then nothing, every track disappeared. So Jason took a chance, he turned on his magic watch and the alert light flashed immediately.
The senses on his watch identified a cloaked car. Risky but ingenious, he also detected some kind of motion beyond the rock face although he knew getting closer would risk identification. So he used his magic cloak and cloaked himself and the car and waited. He figured if they’re going to run, they’re going to do it by car so he positioned his car some distance behind theirs and waited.
Chapter 14
The Beast
The pack leader had never trusted the humans. Of course most of this distrust was inherent, the rest of it just came from shear hatred of them. The humans didn’t know how closely some of the pack animals in the pens watched them, learnt from them. They understood how dangerous these humans were not just from instinctive intelligence, they had seen the things these humans could do and that was what the pack leader was watching now. Not just watching, participating in.