“I stopped the Fed who was following me.”
“You killed him?”
“No. Not quite. I bought us some time. You need to get out of here and get Vidar out of here.”
“What happened?”
“They swabbed me when I got into work today. I didn’t know what they were testing for and I didn’t figure it out until I saw the black plates following me. Our cover’s blown.”
“How are we going to move this seven foot alien?”
“I don’t know, but I know you need to get out of here, Minerva. You’re not safe.”
“I can’t leave him!” She wailed.
I wanted to call out to her then, to urge her to protect John, to promise her that everything would be alright and she should run and save herself. All I could do was lie and listen to her panicked responses and John’s ineffective attempts to convince her.
“Damn it, Minnie. I don’t have time to argue with you.”
“Fine. I’ll leave.”
Minnie opened the door and screamed. I heard the boots and then the guns.
“Quick, get her!”
“Leave her alone!” John yelled.
I heard a gun make contact with flesh.Minerva.I couldn’t have helped her even if I wanted to. I was too deeply comatose and not close enough to waking up that I could do anything differently. John must have swung at the intruder because the man hit him again.
Minnie screamed and then I heard a thud. She was quiet. My implant could sense that she was unconscious. Adrenaline rushed through John’s veins. He was amped up on rage, anger, and a desire to protect her. And then it happened. A sharp needle entered my arm and the blood in my veins slowed even further.
They weren’t taking any chances and their drug slowed me down so much that even my implant went dark as my metabolic activity slowed to nearly nothing.
When my awareness returned, I was still comatose, but definitely no longer in John’s home. Minerva was gone. Johnwas gone. I was alone in the dark. I remained that way for a long time. All I had to do was wait until I awakened.
The next 24 hours were immensely painful. I was tranquilized regularly and the new scientists injected chemicals into my veins. I couldn’t get a clear read on their biometric data from my implant. They were drugged, possibly, given relaxants so that despite their lack of training, they wouldn’t lose control while handling a big, terrifying alien giant. Good. If they were calm, it would be easier for me to handle once I woke up.
As each chemical they injected me with burned through my veins, I drew closer to my awakening and prepared for my escape. My first step would be to find out where I was. The next step would be to figure out where they’d taken Minerva. She couldn’t have gotten far.
Unlike the last time, my awakening began slowly. I could wriggle my toes. I was careful not to wriggle them around the young, male scientist who had just injected pure hydro sulfuric acid into my veins. They marveled that their attempts to poison me had no effect. (Another trait of Polluxians, too uninteresting to anyone other than an exobiologist to really explain.)
When I awakened completely, I was ready. I closed my eyes and flexed my muscles, bursting out of my binds instantly. I sat up as I heard the alarms going off. I closed my eyes and teleported out of the room. I landed on my bottom in the middle of thick pine forests. This landscape was utterly different to the ones surrounding Minerva’s last location. Cloaked only in a hospital gown, I was equally vulnerable to the first time I’d teleported from one of earth’s best government facilities. Again, I wasn’t more than five miles away.
The air was pungent with herbivore manure and as I stumbled toward the sound of their primitive metal boxes hurtling down asphalt, I recognized that I was quite some distance away from my first holding cell. And I still had no cluewhere Minerva might be. Or that friend of hers. He’d tried to protect both of us and in the end, he may very well have been punished for it. I resented the thought of being responsible for the loss of another life. That wasn’t who I was.
I had never been a killer until I’d set foot on this planet, far too beautiful for it to be the site of so much terror. I slipped out of the shadow of the trees to catch a glimpse of a green sign at the edge of the asphalt.
“KEENE, NH. U.S. GOVERNMENT TAX OFFICE →”
I gleaned that this “tax office” was likely the holding cell where I’d been held. When we’d done our research, I’d learned the secret facilities in the country were often disguised with benign titles, the kind that could slip past conscious awareness.
I was in another part of the country entirely from before. I tried to recollect the map I’d memorized as I continued my awakening. New Hampshire. How close was that to Minerva, I wondered? I was still foggy as I awakened, and still needed to get my bearings, not to mention some clothing and sustenance.
I waited until nightfall. As Minerva had correctly pointed out before, my best chance at going unnoticed was to travel at night. The air was thick with the scent of evergreens and manure. As I walked through the trees along the highway, I could hear the individual cars rushing by, the thousands of birds in the trees and even the delighted scuttle of insects in the earth and rotten logs beneath my feet.
My biometric data indicated the earthling’s experiments had weakened me. I wasn’t one to succumb to weakness and let it control me. I could find the strength within to press onward. That was a part of why I’d been selected for this mission — resilience.
After the sun went down I emerged at the edge of the highway and waited. If I couldn’t find an opportunity, I’d have to create one. Cars zoomed past, none of them stopping or slowingdown as I stood just outside the thicket of trees. I moved quickly along the edge, running nearly as fast as the cars for around twenty minutes. I hadn’t had good food in days, so my energy stores were limited.
