Mothership (25 page)

“Tell me what I want to know, or so help me . . .” For the umpteenth time Captain Bob smashes Desi hard across the face. But Desi, who’s currently tied to a chair in the corner of Dr. Marsden’s exam room, isn’t talking. Other Cheerleader is still curled up on the delivery table, tears leaking from her eyes in this way that could probably technically be called crying, although she seems so completely vacant that I’m not sure there’s any emotion behind it at all.

“That baby,” Captain Bob barks, jerking his head toward Other Cheerleader’s little bundle of anti-joy—the one that Britta’s currently holding like it’s a feral raccoon or something—“that
thing
is not Almiri. It’s Jin’Kai. And I want to know why.”

Desi spits blood onto the floor. “M-m-maybe,” he stutters, as Captain Bob brings his ray gun closer to his nose, “maybe
the dad is Jin’Kai. Maybe the girl got here by mistake.”

Captain Bob closes his eyes for a brief second, exasperated, as though he’s never heard such a ridiculous suggestion in his life. He turns to glance at Other Cheerleader. “Who is the father?” he asks.

Other Cheerleader smears what’s left of her mascara across her face and turns to look at Britta, who nods, urging her to respond. “His name was Charlie,” she says, then sniffles. “Charlie Sorley.”

“Well, he’s definitely Almiri,” Cole tells her gently. “You sure it was him?”

“Yeah,” she answers, her eyes unblinking. “Yeah.” Then she sinks her chin to her knees, once again lost in her world of vacant thoughts.

Captain Bob has rounded on Desi again. His face is so close to Desi’s that they’re practically Eskimo kissing. “Every girl here,” he says, “was implanted with an Almiri.” He jabs a finger in Other Cheerleader’s direction. “Including
that
one. So you tell me, and you tell me now. How did this happen? Are there more?”

I gulp.

More?

“Look,” Desi says, trying to push himself away from Bob. Since his chair is flush against the wall, though, this is pretty ineffective. “I told you, I don’t know anything.” Beads of sweat dot his forehead. “I just work maintenance and run the AV—”

There’s a sudden crackling noise, and a burst of light.

And Desi howls.

It takes me a second to realize that he’s been shot. Captain Bob has blasted him with his ray gun. There’s a hole, straight through his right thigh.

Outside, Kate is pounding on the locked door, screaming to be let in. The creature in Britta’s arms wails.

But Desi still isn’t talking.

“Flip off,” he tells the captain, wincing around the words. The hole in his thigh is letting off smoke.

I’ve had my fill of watching Bob pound the bejesus out of Desi, and the smell of burned flesh is threatening to make me ill again, so I try as best I can to focus my attention on Dr. Marsden’s computer. I’m searching for medical records on the girls, or something,
anything
, that might help fill us all in on just what the hell is happening here. I have a rock in the pit of my stomach, located right where the Goober normally kicks me, that makes me think the surprise enemy baby in Britta’s arms may be just the tip of the alien iceberg.

A glance out of the corner of my eye tells me Bob’s got the gun aimed at Desi’s temple now. I suck in my breath as I click through Dr. M’s personal files. My palms are sweaty and my fingers feel twitchy. I click on the suspiciously named PROGRAM 80 X.

“Go ahead and kill me,” Desi tells the captain. There’s a calmness in his voice that wasn’t there before. He almost sounds like he’s smiling. “I won’t tell you dreck.”

Bob puts his gun up. But rather than holstering the weapon, he walks to the door and yanks it open. Kate practically spills into the room, and Bob slams it shut behind her. He grabs her by the arm and presents her to Desi.

“Tell me what you’ve done,” he says, ice in his voice. He points the gun at Kate, who promptly turns a shade of white usually reserved for vanilla yogurt. “Or it won’t be you that I shoot next.”

From the look on Desi’s face, I’d say that Bob’s scare tactic is very clearly working. But when I turn to Cole, he looks just as terrified. That’s when I realize Bob might actually have lost every one of his marbles.

Fortunately for all of us, Desi immediately loses what little resolve he had. The poor schlub begins to squeal.

“All right! All right! Please, just . . . put that away.” His words are spilling over one another in his rush to be heard. When Bob lowers the gun, Desi lets out a long breath. Then, his voice slow and deliberate, he starts to talk.

“We perfected a new procedure,” he begins. “One that allows for the very rapid development and birthing of our young.” He sounds less like a maniacal evil mastermind spilling his diabolical plans to the heroes, and more like a five-year-old explaining to his parents how he broke their favorite lamp. I’m only half-listening to Desi’s speech as I open up the file on the doctor’s computer.
It’s not as bad as you think it is,
I tell myself.
It can’t be.
“A Jin’Kai embryo, genetically pre-engineered to adapt instantly to a human host,” Desi continues, “can go from inception to full term in thirteen to sixteen days.” From the delivery table Other Cheerleader moans softly.

The file I open is a lot of medical gobbledygook that’s hard to make out. But the phrases “genetically engineered,” “accelerated development,” and “re-fertilization window” make me think that this is indeed where I want to be searching.

“At this stage in the research, however,” Desi says, his voice halting every few words as he swallows, “the embryos develop so rapidly that they need an environment already prepared to nourish a much older fetus. So they are inserted into a host that is already to term.”

In front of me on the lap-pad is a chart, tracking each of the girls in the school over the period of their pregnancy, along with the obligatory corresponding lists of vitals and test results. The information gathered from each and every “checkup” with Dr. Marsden.

“You son of a bitch,”
Bob says in a haunted whisper. “You swapped out our offspring for your own.”

My stomach flips as the Goober kicks me again.
It can’t be true. I won’t let it be.
A link along the side of the document reads
80 X A
, and I click on it.

“A human female whose body was already housing a Klahnia,” Desi says. “Can you think of an environment more suitable to handle a Jin’Kai child?”

On the lap-pad in front of me, another file pops open.

“What’s a Klahnia?” Ramona asks softly.

But Desi ignores her. “Our genetic code is not so different from yours, even after thousands of years and billions of miles of separation. These girls were known to be incubating Almiri offspring, so—”

“So why not kill two birds with one stone?” Cole’s voice is so harsh, so jagged and fragile, that it jolts me. “Propagate your own kind and—”

I look up from the lap-pad just in time to see Desi’s eyes dart to Kate, still tangled with Bob’s ray gun, but she’s staring
at her feet. “Rid ourselves of an enemy,” Desi finishes for Cole. “Yes.”

Without warning Captain Bob releases Kate from his grip, and as she slumps against the wall with tears in her eyes, he smashes Desi across the face with the butt of his gun.

“How many?”
he shouts, his voice as hard as steel. Blood flows from Desi’s broken nose. “How many of these girls have you tampered with? How many of our children have you murdered?”

I’m frantically scanning the second file now. It’s another list of all the girls, except this one has only a single box next to each name. The heading at the top reads
Implementation
.

“A handful,” Desi whimpers in reply. Even from the corner of my eye I can see the blood pooling in his mouth, staining his teeth. “The pregnancy needed to be nearly full-term before we could safely implant the new embryos, so only the girls who were approaching nine months have been processed.”

Three names. Only three names on the new list have a check in their box. The first two are Britta and Other Cheerleader, both of whom were due to pop any day.

“Nine months,” Bob says to Cole. “That explains why they were trying to save those two from the pool when we arrived. They’d already undergone this barbaric process.” Bob grabs Desi by the collar. “Were there more?”

“Wait.” Cole’s face goes taut as he takes in the news, and from across the room I hear Britta wail.

“No,” she whimpers.
“No.”
Cole tries to console her, but she shoves him away.

I tune them out. I have to. Because there’s a third name on the list with a check beside it.

“Were there more?”

Elvan Nara.

I’ve been processed.

I feel the floor give way beneath me.
It’s not mine. The baby’s not mine. And it’s not Cole’s, either.
I don’t even realize I’m shaking until I feel Cole’s warm hand, steady on my shoulder. “You find something, Elvs?” he says. He peers at the lap-pad in front of me. There’s a strain in his voice, and I can tell he’s trying to push down whatever emotions are cropping up over the news that Britta’s baby is no longer his. To hear about mine now right on top of that . . .

Without stopping to think I snap closed the second file and hide the link. “Just run-of-the-mill patient files,” I tell him, trying to sound as calm as possible. I know he’ll find out sooner or later. I know I have to tell him. But not now, not like this. Maybe I can hold off just a little while.

“Hey, uh, Desi’s bleeding pretty bad,” I say. Kate must be over her initial shock sooner than I am, because she moves to tend to Desi’s wound with supplies she seems to have rummaged up from a drawer somewhere.

Bob stops her. “He bleeds until I get answers.”

Cole takes out his phone and syncs it with Dr. Marsden’s computer.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“There could be useful info in these files about what the Jin’Kai have been up to,” he replies. “You never know. They might want to look at them back at headquarters.” I shake my
head. Great, Cole, pick
now
to become smart and sensible.

“So why even come to Earth?” Ramona asks Desi. “I mean, if you guys all came from the same planet on the other side of the galaxy, why come all the way here just to mess with one another? What, your planet didn’t have an ample supply of gullible teenage girls to schbadoink?”

Desi’s gaze turns from Captain Bob, still threatening him with that ray gun, to Ramona. “I see your fearless leaders haven’t told you everything,” he says, wincing a little at the pain in his leg.

Bob releases Desi with a shove and takes a step back, glowering.

“What haven’t we been told?” Ramona presses.

“The Jin’Kai arrived on Earth fifty-one years ago,” Desi says, his breath worried and uneven as he speaks, “because Horon-4 could no longer sustain us.”

Next to me Cole’s phone has finished syncing. He slips it into his back pocket without even bothering to flip through the files, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

“Horon-4,” Ramona says with a snort. She sounds like she’s reading the description for some bad sci-fi flick. “That’s the planet all you goons are from originally?”

“No,” Desi replies. “Horon-4 was the Jin’Kai’s fifth colony. Earth will be the sixth, the next in line to present a fresh crop of hosts for our young.”

“First off,” Ramona snaps, “I am not a crop. Second, why did you need fresh hosts?”

I’ve been only half-listening to this conversation, but I tune back in when I feel Cole’s body go tense beside me.

“You okay?” I ask him, which is sort of funny, considering I’m the one who just discovered I have an evil-alien-swap baby inside me.

But Cole doesn’t answer. He’s staring at me, an odd expression on his face. It looks almost like . . . guilt?

“Elvs,” he says softly. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

I look at him curiously, but he doesn’t get a chance to say anything else before Desi starts speaking again.

“The physical resources required of the body in order to nourish a Jin’Kai through its fetal development are enormous. Once the child has come to term, the womb cannot support another fetus, Jin’Kai or otherwise.”

At that, Britta shrieks. “You mean, we’re gonna be
barren
? Having one of your monster babies means I can’t have any babies of my own?” Britta’s eyes are red and blotchy. From the table Other Cheerleader moans again.

Desi shakes his head slowly. “I’m afraid that you will indeed be unable to have any more children,” he confirms.

My heart drops into my stomach. I will never be a mother. I will never have a family. I will never—

“Of course, that’s true of all of the girls here,” Desi continues. “The gestation of an Almiri fetus results in the same condition.”

And that’s it, right there—the worst piece of information I’ve gotten today. Not that Cole isn’t human. Not that the baby
I’m carrying isn’t mine. It’s not even that evil alien freakazoids have swapped Cole’s baby for one of their own.