The Harbinger Break (5 page)

  
He awoke in a fit–coughing, vomiting and coughing again. His ribs felt broken, everywhere hurt. His chest was on fire, and he coughed.

  
"Cough. Breathe," she said with a man's voice.

  
Regardless, he coughed, choked, and breathed. He vomited more water, and coughed again.

  
"Breathe."

  
He breathed. He tried opening his eyes, but saw only the blurry outline of a person.

  
"Fucking breathe, Sam."

  
His brain screamed, "I'm trying! It's not that easy!"

  
His vision began to clear, the person over him began to take a shape. A shape he recognized immediately.

  
"Pat?"

  
"Yep."

  
"But–w-what?" He coughed, and struggled weakly. Where'd Claire go?

  
"Easy, easy. I'm not trying to kill you–anymore that is. Sorry about that."

  
Sam coughed, eyes wide.

  
"Easy Sam, easy. I made a mistake. But I need your help, and this is neither the time nor the place. We're all in terrible danger. We have to get out of here
now
. Can you stand?"

  
Sam coughed and blinked, he felt like death. "What?"

  
Pat sighed. "They're coming for your balls, man!"

  
Sam sat up. Those were the magic words. "M-my balls!? Why?"

  
"I don't know, man. If they don't want to breed you, they sterilize you I guess."

  
Sam scrambled, and with help from Pat he stood–his almost murderer supporting his weight. He led Sam inside as the hum of distant sirens grew louder by the second.

  
"Get your keys, I'll drive," Pat said, opening the back porch door.

   Slamming the gas, Pat sent the car careening in reverse, and Sam's head flew forward and his ribs screamed in pain. The tires smoldered and screeched as Pat shifted the Honda Civic to drive and smashed the gas once more, careening from the neighborhood. The sirens were wailing now and Sam was certain that they'd be caught at any moment. Suddenly, Pat turned into an empty driveway.

  
"Duck!" he yelled, turning off lights and the car, then shoving Sam's head down. A cruiser screamed by. Peeking out the window, Pat waited until the cop turned the corner before sparking the engine and pulling out, this time driving much slower.

  
They left the neighborhood and entered a busy street. Sam suddenly realized how uncomfortably cold he was. His chest felt crushed underneath an elephant, his lungs were on fire, his shirt and pants were drenched with pool water and God knows what else, and he shivered from the freezing air conditioning. Then he remembered that a couple minutes ago, Pat tried to kill him. Pat turned and noticed the frightened expression on his face.

  
"Don't worry, I'm not going to try to kill you again. I made a mistake, I'm really sorry."

  
"W-what the h-heck, man!"

  
"I thought you might've been an alien."

  
Sam's voice cracked as he spoke. "What? Wait, what? Why?"

  
"Remember when you pissed on me at GenDec?"

  
Sam sighed. "Y-yeah, I guess."

  
"Well, your piss was red then."

  
Sam blinked. "That's not normal? I mean, for a kid?"

  
"Absolutely not."

  
"O-okay." Sam shrugged. "I still don't get it. Assuming you're, excuse my language, insane… n-no offense, why didn't you just finish k-killing me?"

  
"You pissed on me again as I was drowning you. It was yellow. I realized that aside from the red color, I had nothing else to go on. I'm grasping at straws, you have to understand, Sam. The safety of the world is at stake, and apparently I'm the only one who realizes that."

  
Sam turned to see if Pat was joking, but judging by the stern decorum of his almost-assassin's face, he wasn't.

  
"What do you mean?"

  
Pat sighed. "It's heavy. You ready?"

  
"I guess."

  
"Okay. Bear with me and throw away whatever logic you think you have for a moment. I'm certain that the aliens are already here and have been so for quite some time, spying on us."

  
"What? Why?

  
"Think about it, Sam. Why not?"

  
"Um, well, evidence mostly."

  
Pat didn't respond for a while, apparently deep in thought. Sam shifted uncomfortably in his pants. He smelled faintly of urine.

  
"The concept of spying is ingrained in every predators brain, foreign to none," Pat began without warning. "The lion lurks in the tall grass, spying on the antelope, who knows nothing of the lion. The sand shark buries itself, waiting to strike at an unsuspecting ocean dweller. As a species of higher intelligence, we constantly utilize spies and other resources to gather intel on foreign lands. What makes you think that these aliens are any different?"

  
Sam stuttered, barely following. "Well, I mean, I-I don't know."

  
Pat nodded. "Exactly. It's been almost forty years since we learned of their presence. Who knows for how long they've been on Europa? They are likely millennia more technologically advanced than us, yet they haven't attempted any discernible means of contact. But they know of us, so why
wouldn't
they be spying on us? It's what I'd do. And it's what you'd do too."

  
"By disguising themselves as humans?"

  
"Millennia more technologically advanced, Sam. Maybe they've disguised themselves as trees, or dogs, but my gut suspects otherwise. It seems obvious to me that a spy would attempt to get as close to his target as possible, and mimicking a human seems like the best option."

  
"But why hunt them down? Why kill the humans you think are aliens?"

  
Stopping at a red light, Pat turned his heavy gaze to Sam. "Want to know why we don't eat lion? Because the first human to throw a spear at a lion had his head ripped off, and humans settled for easier prey. It might just take the death of one alien to make the rest of them back off."

  
Sam was getting nervous now. Pat seemed to be making a lot of sense for a lunatic.

  
"But, I mean, I guess you have no idea what an alien hiding as a human would be like?"

  
"That's true. But I think aliens have infiltrated a political prerogative of our society, and have been drugging our food. That's a hunch, and I might be wrong and maybe I
am
just going through withdrawal, but it's all I've got right now. I've been asking myself: how many innocent deaths are worth the safety of the planet and the survival of man?"

  
Sam didn't want to know Pat's answer. He asked anyway. "S-so how many?"

  
"I'd say all but a thousand."

  
"'A thousand'?"

  
"People. More or less. The minimum to assure our species survives. Obviously I don't want to kill seven billion people. I want to save as many as I can. But there's no doubt in my mind that if we let the aliens in, they will take
everything
."

  
Sam didn't respond for a while. He was lost in thought, thinking about Pat's lecture. It made a lot of sense. He'd heard about a paranoid man, a co-worker's cousin, who thought he was dying. So one day he paid around a thousand dollars for an MRI of his brain, despite his doctor's contradicting advice that it was unnecessary. And despite the apparent lack of objective evidence, a tumor was discovered, the cousin was operated on, and his life saved. That hunch, that monetary sacrifice saved his life. Human lives instead of money–but was it worth the sacrifice?

  
Sam scratched his head, closed his eyes, and fell asleep for a few minutes. But something nagged at his subconscious, and as he rested he attempted to pinpoint it. Finally, concern erupted and Sam's eyes shot open. Pat had said something else earlier–something much more dire, and personal.

  
"They're coming for my balls?!" Sam shouted, his voice cracking.

  
"No. Or, well, maybe. I just said that to get you moving."

  
Sam frowned. "Y-you're an asshole."

  
"I know. Sorry."

◊   ◊   ◊

  
An excerpt from Jimmy Carter's "Crisis" Speech - 1979:

  
"Good evening. This is a special night for me. Exactly three years ago, on July 15, 1976, I accepted the nomination of my party to run for president of the United States.

  
"I promised you a president who is not isolated from the people, who feels your pain, and who shares your dreams and who draws his strength and his wisdom from you.

  
"During the past three years I've spoken to you on many occasions about national concerns, the energy crisis, reorganizing the government, our nation's economy, and issues of war and especially peace. But over those years the subjects of the speeches, the talks, and the press conferences have become increasingly narrow, focused more and more on what the isolated world of Washington thinks is important. Gradually, you've heard more and more about what the government thinks or what the government should be doing and less and less about our nation's hopes, our dreams, and our vision of the future.

  
"Ten days ago I had planned to speak to you again about a very important subject–energy. For the fifth time I would have described the urgency of the problem and laid out a series of legislative recommendations to the Congress. But as I prepared to speak, a far greater threat arose that not only threatens our nation, but the planet itself. From NASA and through various media outlets, it has been made clear than an imminent threat has arisen in our solar system, and life as we know it has no choice but to change drastically. No longer can we trifle with the concerns of the economy and standard of living. No longer can we delve on topics such as energy and political balance. We must unite, not as a nation, but as a planet, to ensure the survival of our species."

Chapter 2

  
Agent Chris Summers stood in Higgins's backyard, watching apathetically the futile crime-scene procedure take place around him in a blur. He knew there was nothing else to find–there'd been a struggle, Higgins was injured and now likely with Shane. Did they expect Shane to have dropped a clue? Like, "oh he dropped a business card to a hotel in Reno, that must be where he's going!"

  
Never. Whatever Shane had intended to happen likely happened. If Shane wanted Higgins dead, he'd be dead. Summers reasoned that if Shane kept him alive, it was only to torture him, maybe for fun, maybe to get some sort of information, or maybe–

  
Summers scratched his head. Maybe it wasn't torture. Maybe Shane had a change of heart. Judging from how much of his collective bio-substance floated around the pool, Higgins couldn't have escaped by his own means. But he had to be alive, and with Shane, and something had caused a change of heart.

  
He stared at the caution tape in the backyard and felt nostalgia burn. The whispering from deep in his subconscious resounded, a scar from his childhood that plagued him ever since.

  
"I can feel it," his parents’ killer echoed from far away. "So cold."

  
His aunt had made him watch. Told him it'd be good for closure, for his spirit, "The work of the man upstairs," she'd said.

  
He'd only been ten. Two years prior, in 1992, he'd come from a friends house to the same caution tape blocking off his house, a crowd of neighbors and bystanders watching, and a police officer advising them to stand back. Summers had rushed forward, tears in his eyes. "That's my house!" he yelled, and the cop turned and called someone over. They'd sat him down, two of them–a man in a jacket and a man in uniform, and put a hand on his shoulder. He remembered that he hadn't understood at first. "A home invasion?"

  
His dad had been an ER physician. Summers could still remember, it seemed like everyone in the hospital wanted to be involved, wanted to bring him back. "Not the boy's father too," they whispered when they thought Summers was out of earshot. Then his aunt came and took him to live with her and her husband. Eight years later he finished high school with a full scholarship to UM, majoring in Criminology. After school he joined the police academy, and six months later he graduated and was hired by the Raleigh Police Department. A few months afterwards he submitted his application to the FBI and two years later he was working in the CID as a field investigator, and for the first time in his life he felt he had control–he didn't hate himself. In fact, he felt cool. Special Agent Chris Summers had a nice ring to it.

  
He shook his head and turned from the crime scene. His footsteps resounded, a hollow echoing, as he walked past the pool and around the back of the house. The pool water chimed behind the sound of his steps and behind the low voices of various investigators, and Summers focused his attention on the pool's soothing rhythm that dissipated to nothing as he approached his car. That was a long time ago–that feeling, that memory. The promotion was flattering at first, his salary had doubled. But the work–well… He wasn't the executioner, but he held the executioner's coattails off bloody floors.

  
Inside his car, he marked on his report that Shane doesn't murder mindlessly, important in his line of work. The court would deal with the punishment for his crimes, but as for the FBE, Shane's genes were still an option. They wanted his genius mind, but they wanted it without the murderer's heart. And now that was still possible.

   Higgins's Honda Civic was spotted near a run-down Motel 6 the next morning, about six miles away. Parking his car an hour after the tip was called in, Summers stepped out into the afternoon sun and glanced around, thinking that if he were a criminal, this is where he would live.

  
It was the perfect place to hide, an area untouched by modern civility. Run-down, drug-dealing, mold-crusted homes and balconies crammed with rotting furniture, stolen goods, drugs, black market paraphernalia, and the sounds of coughing and glass shattering which echoed endlessly through dark alleys.

  
Summers put on his aviators, then checked and holstered his pistol. He pulled on the handle of his car door to ensure it was locked, and then began walking, looking for the silver Honda. In a nearby alleyway, two bums scratched scabs on their arms and licked their dry lips as he walked by.

  
"Hey mama look here, it's the FBE!" the first said, skinny, wearing torn jeans and seemingly missing an eye.

  
The woman, wearing brown sheets covered in white stains, stood as Summers passed by. "Hey bab', you's handsome. Why donchyu come back ova' here? I got some good genes!" she said. He ignored her, and she let out a dry choking laugh.

  
"Ay Mama whatchyu tryin' to do? He don' want nun' that!" the first yelled back.

  
At times like these, Summers hated his promotion. In fact, he always hated his promotion. He considered the morality of his work constantly. The "no cruel and unusual punishment" government asterisk floated like a bubble in the backs of involved minds. The argument was simple: a man's "manhood" verses a man's life. The whispering of his parents’ killer haunted him–in his opinion, taking the former was cruel, but taking the latter, a man's life, was evil. "It's so cold."

  
Summers shuddered. He'd never forgiven his aunt for taking him to see that. It's why he'd accepted his promotion in the first place–he thought he'd be doing good, saving lives. The death penalty was never administered to those the FBE had taken care of. And because heinous crimes of that magnitude always warranted an FBE intervention, sentencing never resulted in capital punishment.

  
The FBE only hired men as field agents, the thought process being that women couldn't objectively determine whether the crime fit the punishment. At least a man could imagine it, and if he was mentally stable, he'd shudder at the thought.

  
Since the implementation of the program, there'd been a significant drop in crime, but still, Summers couldn't help feeling like that executioner with the syringe. He didn't take life, no, but he altered future lives. Innocent lives.

  
A raggedy stumbling man with a harmonica saw Summers approaching. "Oh, hey fella, I wrote a song about the FBE!"

  
He blew into his harmonica once, and then began singing, following Summers as he walked. "The FBE, they'll come for me, they'll stand right in my halls. They'll pay me to fuck some whores, or they'll cut off my balls!"

  
The man smiled, holding out for a tip, but Summers frowned and kept walking. He might've laughed at that before he was the one doing it, back when he was an FBI agent, joking around with his colleagues about the FBE.

  
His new work, filtering the collective human gene pool, was harsh and unforgiving. And it was just going to get harder. He'd heard rumors of new legislation being discussed that would prevent those with IQ's well below the average from having children. "For the advancement of our species," they justified. The nearby aliens were always on the backs of minds, influencing decision making from afar.

  
Searching the area for the Honda to no avail, he decided to call it after about an hour–no sign of the car or its drivers. Even the motel clerk had no idea whom Summers was talking about. He called the bureau, and then decided to return to base and reevaluate his approach to Patches Shane.

   Back at his motel room, Summers logged into the net and queried 'Claire Waltz' from his conversation with Higgins. He found the one he was looking for, and the face of a beautiful blonde in her late twenties stared back at him from his screen. She  currently resided in New York. It was a three hour flight from Jacksonville, and after a quick word with Barnes, the Raleigh FBE chief, he packed up a few things and made for the airport.

◊   ◊   ◊

   Claire Waltz worked marketing and sales at Precision Efficiency Advancements, and the running gag around the office was that she was the princess of the PEA, alluding to the old fairy tale. The company sold specialized software that tracked the efficiency and profitability of a company's workforce, minimizing excess spending. The company itself monitored these findings, and every few months they sent their clients a detailed analysis of their spendings, and where cuts could be made.

  
In a penthouse suite on the 70th floor, blue label flowed as profits expanded, and Claire sat at the top of it all, meeting with CEOs and CFOs multiple times a week–courting them, taking them out to lunch, a laugh, a touch of the hand, a fluttering of eye-lashes. "Oh yes, the software" she'd say with a laugh. "I'd almost forgotten. Oh no, it doesn't matter to me–I'm having a wonderful time."

  
She was good. Not as much cajoling and outright manipulation as she was simply charming, knowledgeable and beautiful, and she earned PEA millions.

  
Her paycheck was considerably more than the paycheck of PEA's CEO, a secret he shared with no one. She was a (if not 'the') main factor for the company's success, and losing her would be cataclysmic for business.

  
But she could leave at any time–in fact, she could retire and throw money at anything she desired and still remain well-off for the rest of her life. But she loved her work, so she kept at it. She knew she intimidated all but the men too dumb to be afraid.

◊   ◊   ◊

   Summers adjusted his aviators and knocked on the door of Claire Waltz's two story estate, where she lived alone in a community that simply referring to as expensive would be a gross understatement. He put his fingers in his pockets and rubbed the outer fabric of his pants with his thumbs as he waited, studying the row of tulips that lined her front pathway.

  
After a moment she answered the door, wearing nothing but a silk bathrobe. She had brunette hair, as opposed to blonde from her picture in the government database, and looked stunning. He glanced up and his brow narrowed–who answers their door in a bathrobe? She took one look at him and his badge and her curiosity turned to a smug grin.

  
"About time. I'm flattered, but tell the FBE no thanks."

  
His eyes became slits as he studied her smug expression. "It's not about that, Ms Waltz."

  
"Call me Claire, agent…?"

  
"Agent Summers, and I'm–"

  
"–Charmed" she said, holding out a hand.

  
Summers paused, then took his hand from his pocket and grasped it. "Yeah. Likewise. Ms Waltz, I'm here regarding–"

  
"–I said Claire, Mr Summers."

  
Summers stopped. This is not how he envisioned this going. She was messing up his routine.

  
"Claire. Sure." He took off his aviators, folded them, and put them in his front pocket. "I'm here regarding Pat Shane."

  
The smug grin fell from her face. "Patches…"

  
"You know his full name?"

  
"Of course. I was the only one who called him that. Did you know his mother named him after a guinea pig she had as a child?" She smiled, covering her lips with the back of her hand.

  
"No, I wasn't aware of that. May I come in?"

  
"Sure, Mr Summers, please do," she replied. "Where are my manners?"

  
Her facade almost had him blushing, if for only a second, and he coughed lightly.

  
She turned and he followed, looking anywhere but at her. He noted her marble floors, high ceiling, leopard print rug, and eco cotton sofas that were arranged as if she'd ordered the room as-is, directly from a high-class style magazine. Her white walls were covered in hideous modern art showcasing the naked human form, framed in what looked like bronze. It reeked of confidence.

  
She turned and smiled at him. "You approve, agent?"

  
He nodded, almost hating her. "Sure. You've clearly done well for yourself miss–I mean, Claire."

  
She chuckled. "You flatter me, Mr Summers."

  
She led him over to the sofa, and offered him tea. He declined.

  
"I won't take no for an answer, Mr Summers. It's quite expensive, and delicious, if I do say so myself."

  
"It's really–"

  
"–Fabulous, I'll be right back–it'll only take a minute."

  
She walked off, strutting and dripping with pomp. He knew she wanted him to look, playing cat and mouse with her body. And if he looked–game over, check mate. He shook his head. Sorry lady, he thought–but this ain't my first rodeo. He took out his notepad and jotted down the bit about Shane's mother naming him after her childhood pet.