“So which is it?” he asks, and I see an opening to plead the case to avoid more torture. The thought of being waterboarded is terrifying. In essence, it’s drowning on land. And if at all possible, I’d like to keep my fingernails and teeth intact, along with whatever appendages they might want to slice from my body.
“Which answer do you want?” I ask. “See, that’s the problem with torture. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. True or not. So—No, I’m not. Yes, I am. The choice is yours.”
He purses his lips. I can see he wants to say something, but he’s choosing his words carefully. Out of nowhere, he laughs. Not with the side splitting laugh of someone recoiling from a joke, but with a laugh that suggests something cunning has unfolded.
“They were right,” he says. “You really do weave magic with words.”
I don’t know who ‘they’ are, and I really don’t want to find out, so I change the subject, wanting to keep him off balance.
“You didn’t find anything, did you?” I say. Being cocky seems to be working, so I run with it, finding myself relaxing as it becomes apparent these guys are ill-prepared to deal with a bonafide extraterrestrial like me. I thought Uncle Sam would have run these kinds of scenarios dozens of times. I guess they never thought first contact would actually ever happen. The more courage I muster, the better, so I guess. “You ran Mark’s body through an MRI and found nothing, right?”
I hope Sharon’s correct about anything shy of an electron scanning microscope coming up empty. The blank stare suggests I’m correct.
“How did you know about the trap?” he asks, employing my tactic and shifting the subject on me. Cat and mouse.
Oh, that’s interesting. This guy doesn’t realize I didn’t know they’d set a trap for us inside the police station, but now I do. Makes sense. They must have followed us from there to the cemetery.
I bluff.
“In the morgue? You’d be surprised what we know.”
We. That was a bit of subterfuge. I suspect my ability to bluff and pretend to be an alien is all that’s keeping me alive. If they couldn’t find anything unusual about Mark’s body, they might just believe I’m one of them. If that tidbit of misinformation keeps me alive, it’s a feint I’m happy to pursue.
“How does it work?” he asks, pulling a banana out of the bag.
I can’t help but laugh.
“Do you realize how silly you look?” I ask. “Oh, please. Tell me someone’s videoing this. Seriously, this is like an episode of Get Smart.”
I turn to each side, but I’m not really looking for a camera. I’m trying to get a better idea of where I am. There’s a single bed behind me. The blanket is plain and the mattress is stiff, giving the bed a box-like appearance. Could be fake? Maybe? Perhaps this is one of those double bluffs and I’m actually on a movie set or something. There’s a window. Snowflakes fall outside. The dim outline of another building is just visible through the falling snow. My jacket is lying on the floor, but I try not to let him see how bitterly cold I am.
“What do they say?” I ask. “When you appear behind closed doors before a senate appropriations committee. What do they say when you tell them there are aliens talking to bananas?”
“Answer the damn question,” he says, apparently about to hit me with the banana.
“You ran me through an MRI as well, didn’t you? While I was unconscious. Didn’t find anything out of the ordinary, right?”
Not that he would in my case, but I’m not telling him that.
I’m curious. The sound system they used to torture me is portable. There’s no television in the room, no bedside clock. No radio. No power cables. And the lights aren’t just off. The bulbs have been removed from their sockets, making it dim. Night is falling. They caught me early in the afternoon. Assuming it’s still the same day, we must be a couple hours north in upstate New York.
My interrogator notices my eyes drifting around the room.
“It won’t work,” he says. “We’re miles from any tech you can manipulate. No power lines. No phone lines. No wifi.”
I nod knowingly, at least I hope he thinks it’s a knowing nod.
“And no heating,” I say, watching as a fine mist forms on my breath. How the fuck am I going to get out of here?
“Why are you doing this?” he asks.
“Me?” I ask, incredulous. “Why the fuck are you doing this? I mean, seriously. Have you considered the possibility we could scorch the entire goddamn planet if we wanted to?”
Hey, I like talking big. Funny thing is, if they caught Sharon or Mark, I doubt they’d ever say anything that provocative. As aliens go, they’re too nice. They need to add a little more Independence Day to their repertoire.
The officer has a good poker face, but the guards don’t. They shift slightly, uneasy at what they’re hearing. They’ve bought my story.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“You wouldn’t understand,” I reply, which I’m pretty sure is true on several levels. Lie, you idiot. Lie.
“Where are you from?”
“The stars,” is all I say. Hell, apart from Orion the Hunter, and Taurus the Bull, I don’t know the names of any of the stars. Actually, they’re constellations, not individual stars. So, nope. None. I try to recall the name of the star Sharon pointed out from the bus, but I’ve got nothing. I could make something up, but then I’d need to remember that name going forward. At a guess, saying something like The Big Dipper probably isn’t going to sound scientific enough to convince him, so I stick with stars in general. Lies tend to unwind once specifics emerge, so it’s in my best interests to be cagey. Besides, there’s an air of mystique in being deliberately vague.
“Which one?” he asks.
My ears are still ringing, which is incredibly annoying.
“One?” I reply, visibly catching him off guard. That was fun. I liked that.
“Why are you here? What do you want from us?”
Hell, I don’t know. Sharon’s told me a little bit about their motivation, but even I don’t know who they are or what they want in the long run.
“Take me to your leader,” I say. Corny as hell, I know, and I struggle to keep a straight face, but it’s a genuine point, I think. “What? You think I’m going to divulge anything to you? If you want answers, I want to talk to someone in charge before you fuck this up and me and my homeboys torch the Continental U.S.”
Please don’t call my bluff. Please don’t.
Action Man, the supposedly All American Hero sitting before me with his chiseled jaw and high cheekbones, doesn’t blink. He’d be great at poker.
He gets up, saying, “That’s the way it’s going to be, huh?”
“That’s the only way it can be,” I say, hedging my bets on the fact this is some off-the-books black site. They’ve taken me off-grid for a reason—they haven’t taken me to a military base. They’re trying to keep this on the down-low. That tells me someone is extremely nervous about kidnapping unconfirmed extraterrestrial beings, as well they should. Given the way I’m being treated, with the caution one has when approaching a caged lion, unsure whether the bars will hold, I’m thinking shooting Mark was an accident. These guys know they’re out of their league. They’re scared. They’re making shit up as they go. I guess the prize of capturing an alien and catapulting American technology thousands of years ahead of everyone else on the planet is a little too tempting.
“Don’t fuck this up,” I say sternly, reiterating my previous point and pretending I’m the one in charge.