Starseed (26 page)

Mrs. Bourg pushed through the hive. “The date is unimportant,” she said, her eyes milky. “You still have much to learn. And there is not much time.” She waved her hand. “Jordyn, take her. The rest of you go. You know what to do.”

In the sky appeared a huge triangular craft. It loomed overhead, five times larger than the width of the high school, blocking the night sky. It emanated a deep vibration that resounded within Kaila’s bones. White lights beamed on the edges of each side while the bottom emitted a cobalt blue.

Let’s go,
Jordyn said to her mind.

He was not himself anymore; he was not aware of her anymore on a personal level. His skin and hair appeared blue beneath the lights of the craft. Vibration rocked every cell in Kaila’s body. They lifted and teleported from the field to outside a house.

“This is Melissa’s house,” Kaila said, dazed.

Then Viktor was next to her. He leaned close, exhaling hot breath. “We need proof of your allegiance,” he said. “You are going to abduct your friends.”

Kaila was unsure of what he asked. She heard buzzing in her ears, knew that space lifted as they traversed to a higher dimension to allow them to pass through third dimensional solids.

Then she, Viktor, and Jordyn walked through Melissa’s bedroom wall.

A seashell night light plugged into the wall emitted a soft glow. Melissa lay in bed on her back with ear buds in her ears. She had fallen asleep listening to late night Coast-to-Coast
AM
radio.

In the dim light, Kaila noted the shadows under Melissa’s eyes. Still, she looked innocent, her dark hair tousled on the pillow, her round cheeks rosy, her chest rising and falling with her breath.

Kaila felt the buzzing, the low-pitched hum.

“Make her think she sees a ghost,” Viktor commanded.

“What?” Kaila asked.

“Stay in fourth dimension,” Viktor said to her mind. “Then all you are is a filmy blur.”

Kaila stood at the edge of Melissa’s bed, Jordyn beside her. Viktor went to the foot of the bed. He grew in stature like a rubber Gumby. He stared down at the sleeping Melissa.

Melissa opened her eyes.

Reading Melissa’s mind, Kaila saw that Melissa perceived Viktor as a transparent ghost with long dark hair and black eyes, leaning over her. The ghost stretched out its hands with long bony fingers, urging her to rise. Melissa gasped.

Viktor flew over the bed as a wisp and thrust his black eyes three inches from Melissa’s. Her scream was choked down her throat. She lay still, paralyzed.

Viktor looked at Kaila, black eyes hard. “Take her,” he said.

“No,” Kaila said, beseeching Jordyn.

“You must,” Jordyn said.

Kaila realized that Jordyn was completely controlled and did not hear, did not heed her fear or concerns.

Simultaneously, she felt a tug, something trying to control her. She felt bowed over as if a gigantic cresting wave yanked her under at the night seashore.

“I won’t do this!” Kaila struggled to protest.

Viktor looked disgusted. He mind-stared the zombie-like Melissa, who lifted from the bed, her body horizontal. Viktor made her feet lower to the floor.

Then they all teleported through the wall, through the night, so fast it was a blur. And in another second, they were back at the field of the high school.

The gigantic craft hung low in the sky. Melissa was deposited on the field in her sky-blue pajamas decorated with puppies.

With mounting horror, Kaila saw that there were hundreds of people being deposited onto the dark field, most in their night clothes, many clutching their heads and screaming.

Viktor pushed his face two inches from Kaila’s, his eyes embers, hypnotic, all knowing, unstoppable. “Now,” he said. “You will abduct Pia.”

Kaila gasped. She looked at Jordyn.

Jordyn stared out into the night, his eyes solid black.

“Rise now,” Viktor said.

They teleported to outside Pia’s house. Crickets chirped in the darkness, but when the three hybrids stepped on the moist leaves, the crickets went silent. An owl hooted in the forest.

Kaila shivered, knowing the night was thick with unseen presences infiltrating the town. Then they traveled through the brick walls of Pia’s house and stood in her bedroom.

Pia lay on her side, a pillow under her leg, her belly showing the slightest bulge in her tank top. She, too, wore ear buds, having fallen asleep listening to late night
AM
talk radio. It was dark; she’d fallen asleep without putting on the night light.

“Stay in fourth dimension,” Viktor instructed Kaila’s mind.

The three hybrids stood at the side of Pia’s bed. Kaila frantically wondered what she should do. She should wake Pia. Could she transport her away to safety?

Then, she felt a dullness in her mind and forgot that thought. She heard the calling, felt a tug. The ocean waves crashing to shore dragged her under. She was lost in the undertow.

She had to get to the ship.
A low humming and vibration. It quivered every cell in her mind.

Pia woke. Kaila leapt into her mind. She saw that Pia perceived them as three dark shadow creatures standing beside her bed. Worse, she felt her panic and fear. Still, Kaila stayed subdued, drugged to submission, yet highly alert and aware.

Pia opened her mouth to scream.

But she did not scream. She was paralyzed.

“Take her,” Viktor said.

“No,” Kaila choked.

“You must,” Viktor said.

“Jordyn,” Kaila stammered, “Please stop this.”

Kaila saw Pia perceived Viktor as a filmy, shadowy night creature.

Yes,
Viktor said to Pia with his mind.
We are your worst nightmare.
He inhaled, feeding on her fear.

Then came another lower, deeper vibration. The room weighed with something powerful and unseen. Gray fog filled the room, thick as swamp waters, dark as the farthest reaches of the universe.

A stab of terror pierced Kaila. It was here. And it was here for her. She sensed its red eyes in the fog, knew its unspeakable power, felt its all-seeing thousand eyes probing every cell of her mind.

Take her,
it said in her mind.

Kaila wanted to protest, wanted to fight.

You have sworn allegiance, you are with us. You must do this.
This voice sounded deep and penetrating inside her mind. Kaila forgot who she was. She had no identity. She was part of a whole now. One hive, one mission. She must obey.

Kaila leaned over the bed, her eyes turning solid black. She leaned over Pia, whose jaw hung open in a frozen scream.

Down inside, Kaila heard herself begging like a lost butterfly cast helplessly in the wind,
Please don’t make me do this, please don’t make me do this,
and simultaneously, she was transmitting her power to Pia to rise.

She transported Pia up from the bed, then through the wall, heeding the group consciousness of the call back to the field.

They were on the field outside the high school. In the night sky, the triangular ship loomed, about three football fields wide, emitting a white light tinged with blue onto the field.

There were thousands of people packed onto the field. They wore their bathrobes, pajamas, and some were even naked, having been ripped from their beds. Some stood dazed, mesmerized by the lights emanating from the craft; some were on their knees sobbing; many stood and stared at the craft, screaming until they went blind from terror and stumbled and fell.

Kaila heard the screams in the blackness, but she wanted only to finish this. To hear them silenced and let them serve.

The light under the craft brightened to a powerful white beam. Compelled, the people moved beneath the craft. Like a giant vacuum sucking up lint, thousands of people lifted up into the light and into the craft.

Kaila felt the awful power around her but was drawn to obey. Jordyn’s eyes were black, and she dimly realized he was like her, his true self submerged to the mission. This was efficient; they all performed as one to accomplish a goal.

The rest of the hive had returned: Viktor, Lucius, Antonia, Echidna, and Toby. All of them with solid black eyes acted mechanically yet efficiently, as a hive should. There was order and method. Kaila knew she had to obey. The mission was everything.

They stepped beneath the craft. The white light pouring down on them had such force and power it was near blinding. She surrendered to the light. It lifted them up.

There were maybe a thousand people in this gigantic sterile white room, larger than the gymnasium—and this mother ship housed many rooms holding thousands more. This was a mass abduction of the entire town.

The humans moaned and cried. They had been torn from sleep as they stared out from a bad dream, their eyes vacant, their mouths agape with only their subconscious recognizing the horror.

And everywhere scurried the workers, the three-and-a-half foot tall grays. They had large heads, wrinkled foreheads, no hair, huge black wrap-around eyes with no eyelids or eyebrows and leathery gray skin. Three spindly fingers and a thumb. Holes for noses and a slit for a mouth.

Mrs. Bourg held a faraway look in her filmy eyes. “It is time to feed,” she said dreamily to the hive, noting the grays leaning over the terrified humans, inhaling their fear.

The hive circulated through the trembling masses. Echidna leaned over a man, her shiny black bangs hanging in space. The man, clad in Hanes drawers, had fallen to his knees, shaking and whimpering. Echidna’s black eyes widened as she inhaled, drinking in his fear. Her eyelashes fluttered as she rolled her eyes in ecstasy.

Antonia leaned over Derek Mendoza who wore a t-shirt and boxers. He lay on his side, his knees drawn up to his chest, panting in hyperventilation. Antonia lowered her head, inhaling his fear.

Viktor zapped all over the room, like a red-winged bat, feeding, inhaling the group terror. He paused, making shaking fists, vibrating with a mega surge of acquired energy.

Kaila saw Wade Stoops. He stood, stark naked, staring with unseeing eyes, his lower lip quivering. She went to him, leaned over, and inhaled. He was absolutely terrified.

She breathed in the sweet perfume of his horror. Instantly, she felt more awake, more alive.
Now I feed from your pain,
she thought.
My turn
.

It was a rush she’d never experienced. Five gray workers, noting Wade’s intense fear, scurried over and surrounded him. They locked eyes with Kaila and she retreated, letting them feed. Like gray vampires, they sucked his emotional force.

Wade sank to his knees as the grays drained him. He finally crumpled to his side, unconscious from horror and the zapping of gray leeches.

Hungry, Kaila leaned over the boy with long hair who sat next to her in English. Philip sat on the floor, his legs crossed, staring. He was so messed up, quaking with fright from this and from earlier seeing several dogs torn up to blood and bone at one of his father’s dog fights.

Kaila inhaled, feeling his terror and horror fill her being until she felt she’d grown ten feet and was at the ceiling looking down on these pathetic beings. She was with the gods, the creator now.

Jordyn was feeding on her English teacher, Mr. Foret. She met his eyes, then Echidna, Toby, Lucius, Viktor, and Antonia. She felt them surging with power and renewal. They were one now.

“The feeding is done,” Mrs. Bourg intoned.

Kaila saw Brandy Powell looking like a zombie. A gray worker went to her and telepathically told her,
Calm them. Still them.

Brandy walked around the room and put her hand on the humans’ arms and shoulders, telling them aloud, “Be still. It will be okay.” Strangely, with her touch, they quieted.

The grays approached Tara Melancon, who appeared in a trance. The grays ordered her telepathically, too, to calm the people. Tara went about the room and told the humans to be quiet, to be still, that it would be okay and over soon if they cooperated. She acted like she’d done this a thousand times before.

Kaila observed with disinterest, feeling like a conqueror. She realized now the ulterior motive of advanced physics training. Each had a part to play. Jordyn at her side stared with large flat eyes.

Where is Douglas Lafarge?
she asked his mind. Kaila sensed the ship moving into space.

In a flash, Viktor was by her side. “We need people to drive our ships,” he said. “We are training millions. Let them drive the ships. When we are at war, the humans die. We will watch behind the scenes with humans killing other humans. We will feed as they die.”

Kaila felt nothing knowing about the coming war, that humans were the pawns.

Then, large screens lowered, like flat-screen televisions in mid-air. The thousands of people saw images on the screens of beautiful forests, azure oceans, wide-winged birds in flight over virgin, snow-tipped mountains.

The people’s mouths opened in awe at the beauty of Earth. The screens showed oil-covered seas, birds with oil-slicked feathers, sewage, factories pluming black smoke into the skies, volcanoes erupting, skies filled with gray ash, the crops dead. And the people wept.

The gray workers mind-stared the people and imparted telepathically that they were ruining their planet. That they would feel inspired to do something about it.

Viktor said, “Mind games. Mind-screens. We will need a planet to live on after most of them are dead and the rest are slaves.”

“Here,” he said, offering Kaila some of the gray-pink moist substance Jordyn had previously offered. He rubbed it on her forearm.

As the substance permeated her skin and entered her bloodstream, Kaila felt a rush that set her heart pounding, her mind skyrocketing with bliss. Her head lolled. This was sweet, powerful. Everything came into sharp focus. She saw the individual red hairs on Viktor’s head, the pores on his nose, the orange hairs of his beard, the buds on his pink tongue.