“In Buddhism we are taught that enlightenment is best attained through hardship and struggle,” Wakeman said calmly. “A man will, for example, make himself angry because he seeks the energy of anger.”
The soldier’s head slammed loudly against the glass, but Wakeman remained oddly unconcerned. “We know that our little pals from the stars have found a very deep and very real correlation between thought and energy.” He looked at Eric. “Seven seconds. That’s how long it took for exposure to that thing to completely destroy this young man’s brain.” He tapped the blood-streaked glass of the observation room. “That’s what the implants do. They pull out any thought, any memory, and play it for us to see.”
The soldier collapsed in a crumpled, lifeless mass.
“Of course, these devices can short-circuit in truly fabulous ways,” Wakeman continued. “But that’s a byproduct of what they are.”
“Which is?” Eric asked.
“Tracking devices,” Wakeman answered without hesitation. “Tags. A sort of neurological fingerprint.” He shrugged. “We don’t know how they work exactly. We don’t even know why the glass is keeping us safe.” He took a glass vial from his lab coat and poured a half-dozen tiny implants onto the table. “We found these in a sampling of brain tumor patients we’ve been monitoring for the last couple of years.” Eric stepped away from the table nervously. Wakeman gave a dismissive wave of the hand. “These particular devices are dead.”
“Dead?” Eric asked.
“Like old batteries. They can’t transmit anymore.”
“Why did they stop transmitting?”
“My guess is that they stopped when the ‘lab rat’ was no longer useful to our… visitors.”
Eric studied the dead implants. “What if they come back on?”
Wakeman smiled in a way that struck Eric as unset-tlingly boyish and carefree. “Then we party hardy,” he said.
Chapter Two
Jacob stared out the window as Becky pulled a blouse out of her mother’s closet and held it up to Tom. “Remember this one? Her favorite. She wore it to my graduation. Went all the way to Fort Worth to buy it.”
“You should keep it,” Tom told her.
Becky drew the blouse into her arms as if it were her dead mother. “I’ve been thinking about what the preacher said at Mom’s funeral,” she said. “About how a cruel death makes you wonder about God.”
Jacob turned from the bleak landscape beyond the window, the vast sky that hung above the dry fields. “The ways of God are not the ways of man,” he said. “That’s a distinguishing tenet of modern science.”
“How do you mean?” Tom asked.
“Science is just like religion,” Jacob explained. “Only without the comfort. We tell you there’s a plan, but part of that plan is for you to turn to dust.”
Becky nodded. “Dust,” she repeated, her eyes now on her mother’s blouse. “I just wanted her around to talk to a little longer,” she said as she began to cry.
Tom hugged her gently. “I know,” he said.
Jacob stood up, the grief closing in on
“You okay?” Tom asked quietly.
“Just a little tired.”
“Is it what you did for Mom?”
“I’ll be all right,” Jacob replied. He looked at his brother closely. “You don’t want to believe what happened to me, do you? Or to Mom?”
“No, I don’t want to believe it, Jake,” Tom answered quietly.
“But you always kind of did, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Tom answered. “Kind of ironic. The country’s number one debunker turns out to have a half-alien half-brother.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I want you to come forward.”
Jacob turned away, now watching Carol and Lisa as they strolled along a line of crumbling fence. “I can’t do that.”
“But, Jacob,” Tom argued, “this is something the world has a right to know. You are the proof that it really happened.”
“What do you want me to do, go on TV and bend spoons? It would be a freak show.”
“But after that, people would know.”
“What would they know?” Jacob asked. “Not why they came. Not what they want,” He shrugged. “Besides, I’m not the only one.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t really,” Jacob admitted. “It’s just a feeling I get sometimes. That there’s… someone else.”
“Like you?”
Jacob peered out over the barren land. “They’re playing catch-up. The government. They’re trying to figure out the same things.” He looked at Tom darkly. “Owen Crawford knew about me,” he said. “Maybe he knew about whoever else there is.”
“Jesse Keys,” Wakeman said excitedly, like a prospector who’d just stumbled onto a vein of gold.
Eric stared without enthusiasm at the black and white photograph of a teenaged boy Wakeman displayed on his computer monitor. “One of my father’s many failures,” he said dully.
“Failure?”
“I’d call it that,” Eric said harshly.
“Your father couldn’t have known what would happen when they took out Russell Keys’ implant,” Wakeman noted. “After all he…”
“I don’t want to talk about my father,” Eric interrupted sharply “Tell me about this one. This Jesse Keys.”
“One thing’s for sure about him.”
“Which is?”
“That he mattered to them,” Wakeman answered authoritatively.
“How do you know that?”
“Because they pulled him right through the wall of a bomb shelter in order to take him. They wouldn’t have done that if they hadn’t considered him vital.”
“What do you think it all means?” Eric asked.
“Maybe nothing,” Wakeman admitted. “But it’s clear that some they chew on repeatedly, and some they spit out after one bite. They came for Jesse Keys and they took him. Now that we’re looking more at the genetics, perhaps we’ll figure out what he had that they wouldn’t let us keep.”
“Genetics,” Eric mused. “What have you learned about those brothers in Alaska?”
“My guess is that they were failed attempts at crossbreeding,” Wakeman said. “Like that kid your old man tried to bring back from Texas.” His eyes sparkled suddenly. “You see what they’re doing, don’t you?”
Eric felt a jolt of energy. “What?”
“Everything they can,” Wakeman said, and began typing rapidly, like a man seized by a vision. “This is an FBI ‘aging’ program,” he explained. “Some fugitive has been underground for ten years and they want to make sure they’ll know him if they see him.” He punched the Enter key and waited as the pixels slowly revealed a computer-aged version of Jesse Keys. “I’ll lay you diamonds to doughnuts this Jesse Keys is still alive. If you want to know what’s so important about him, maybe we should ask the man himself.”
The distress call cut in, and Jesse Keys yanked the microphone to his mouth. “Yes?”
“Chief, we got a pileup on Old Cayton Road,” the dispatcher said. “Car full of college kids. Paramedics on the scene.”
“I’m on my way.”
When Jesse reached the site of the collision, the destruction amazed him.
The car had all but disintegrated around the telephone pole. A few other vehicles were strewn about, some involved in the accident, others belonging to motorists who’d stopped at the scene, backing up traffic in both directions.
“What have we got, Bobby?” Jesse asked the first EMS tech he saw.
“Kids coming back from Milton,” Bobby answered breathlessly. “Two boys in the back pretty banged up. Already on their way to County. Girl’s still in the passenger seat. Looks like a spinal. We’re getting her out now.”