Her mother would never speak of what happened in Argentum, repeatedly stating it was for her family’s safety. All Kate had to go on was the government investigators’ report, which concluded that those damn Researchers had William all along, using her mother’s fears to exploit their beliefs. They just used her, and it cost her father his political future.
Her kind, sweet mother, duped into something that ruined their family. Kate loved her mother, but could never forgive her for that.
And because of it, because of that denial, the painful rift between her and her family, she was now one of the most powerful women in Congress. Kate’s responses—now so familiar that they were practically a campaign slogan—to questions about her mother’s belief in extraterrestrial life, became her catch phrase. I’m not here for the sideshow.
Her conservative constituents had eaten it up. She’d barely won the election, refusing to ask her father to campaign for her. She’d restored the family’s good name. The townhouse in Georgetown, the most influential committees, the praise on feminist blogs and accolades from women’s groups.
All built on a lie.
The doors to the elevator finally opened, and she began to step out, when one of the agents stopped her. The panel began to flash a vibrant red, and he swiped his security badge. The light turned green. “Sets off an alarm in the hallway if you don’t,” he said.
He motioned down a dimly lit corridor.
“Are y’all opposed to light?” she asked.
The agents gave no response. She assumed the slip of her accent must have also grated on their nerves. One of her favorite techniques was to come off folksy, and when her opponents thought it equaled a lesser intelligence, she could slide on in with a “bless your heart,” and then promptly dismantle them with fifteen years of debate and forensic training and a Stanford undergrad education.
Seeing Agent Flynn Hallow standing at the end of the hall, she readied all her sparring skills.
“A child is down here?” she demanded.
“A necessary evil, so to speak, Senator.”
“That’s not acceptable. If you have anything else down here, including a damn spaceship, you need to tell me.”
“We keep all those in New Mexico.”
“While I’m not in a joking mood, I see that you do a have a sense of humor.”
“Do I?” Flynn said.
Stand back, she wanted to warn her escorts. “Let’s you and I have a talk.”
Flynn nodded for the agents to step away from the door where he had been waiting. Kate went to stand directly before him.
“I’ve read the SSA files on my mother. I know much of it is missing, as are portions of my nephew’s file. I know you’re keeping a lot from me. But realize that I’ve been reading legislation all my adult life, so I know to look in the footnotes. And in a small subsection, your name is briefly mentioned as being at the substation in Argentum where my mother and her friend Roxy were held all those years ago.”
She then cocked her head. “Of the very few things my mother ever told me about that town, she described a man who looked a lot like you, smelled of cigarettes, who ultimately ordered her assassination, which she and her friend were barely able to avoid. That means you tried to have the wife of a then-sitting US senator killed. I wonder what the head of the FBI would think about that.”
Flynn didn’t flinch. “What makes you think he doesn’t know?”
He did wince, though, when she leaned in closer. “The only reason I don’t have your ass thrown in a federal prison is that for the moment, I need to know what you’re hiding from me. I am tired of being lied to. I have the ears of the most powerful people in this country. And they will all know what you’ve done. Every single action taken by this agency. If there is indeed a child down here, I am taking him. I will get my mother and bring them both safely to my home—”
“After you meet the boy behind this door, I think you’ll change your mind about that.”
“Don’t you dare to suggest what I will and won’t do. I want the entire file on my family. And the fact that all this time, you had one of the abducted here—a child, no less—underground, and neglected to mention it… that was a huge mistake on you and your director’s part.”
“He isn’t my director. My director left eight months ago, after dedicating his entire life to this work, only to be suddenly replaced by someone unfamiliar—”
“I’m not interested in your office politics.”
“You should be. Director Wolve is not who you think—”
“I don’t care who the hell he is, as long as I am provided what I need. Do we understand each other?”
“I understand that for longer than you’ve been alive, we’ve been trying to protect the population of this planet from a threat that no one could fathom. So if you’re insulted that you don’t know everything yet—that’s your problem. I have no interest in coddling you. People are dying, Senator.”
He pulled out his phone, holding up the array of news alerts covering his screen. “It’s increasing by the hour. Hurricanes forming off the coast of Brazil and across the Atlantic, just off Sierra Leone. Miles and miles of grassfires in Lesotho in Southern Africa. In Nadym—Northern Russia—a fourth of the population is sick and dying. On the borders of every major population. And many more will keep dying until the SSA worldwide can contain every single one of the abducted, and they are nearly impossible to find. So when the one behind this door was discovered, we had—and have—no intention of letting him go.”
Kate held her position. “I think you’re aware that if it weren’t for my involvement, which is why you came to me in the first place, that you wouldn’t have the swell of funding you’re now receiving, nor the increased military moving in on New Orleans, California, and North Dakota. So when I say I need to know everything, what I mean to say is the president needs to know. Are we clear now?”
“You know the risk you take even going in there?”
“I do.”
“I’m not sure of that.” He put his hands on his hips. “He can convince you to strangle your own throat. It’s why we don’t dare to keep anyone down here longer than it takes to bring him meals.”
“I’ve read his file.”
“But, as you’ve deduced, the files you’ve received don’t contain all the mountains of information we’ve collected. You’ve just read the summary.”
“In two hours, I have to give a full report in the Oval Office. Thus, I need to talk to him. So I can explain to the president why he needs to be worried about the lightning that hit the earth last year and left behind that boy.”
“For Christ sake, don’t use that terminology,” Flynn scowled. “It’s outdated. See, that’s the problem, why I should have been in charge of all the reports—”
“If it wasn’t lightning, what was it? And please make it concise, I am running out of time.”
“It’s some kind of transportation. Our satellites picked up distinct lights coming from storms a year ago. They must have some kind of technology that masks their ships, but the light they use to abduct and transport is visible to us. It’s always been referred to as lightning because it happens so fast. But we were waiting. We’ve been waiting for fifteen years. The first round of light was followed by another about a day later, also during a storm. Once again, four reports of this light at the same time, on the corners of every major population. We knew they’d first been abducted, then returned.”
“And you got to this boy—Ryan—because he was returned close to DC?”
“Rural Maryland, actually. Just so happens there’s a government-owned property with a lot of security cameras that recorded the flashes. When the second light came, we were ready and sent out teams into the woods. It didn’t take them long to find the boy, just standing outside in the wet trees.”