Linkage: The Narrows of Time (39 page)

“Should only take a few seconds,” the nurse
said.

The fingers on the woman’s left hand
twitched, then her head turned toward the center. Moments later,
she opened her eyes and looked directly at Kleezebee, who was
leaning over her like a mother hawk ready to feed her young. He
spoke softly to her, “What’s your name?”

“Alicia,” the woman answered with barely more
than a whisper. “Where am I?”

“You’re in a hospital. My name’s Dr.
Kleezebee.”

“Dr. D.L. Kleezebee?” she replied; her words
a little more coherent than before.

“Yes. You’ve heard of me?”

“My handler did. I could hear it thinking
about you. They’ve been searching the galaxy for you.”

Kleezebee lifted one eyebrow and tilted his
head as if he were moderately surprised. Perhaps it was more of a
look of pride, knowing that he was important enough for his enemy
to dedicate years of their lives in the pursuit of him.

“Was anyone else with you?” Lucas asked.

The machinery monitoring her vital signs
suddenly reacted like an angry child, throwing a barrage of chirps
and beeps across the room.

“Julie Ann!” she screamed, trying to sit up.
She thrashed her arms at Kleezebee, hitting him several times in
the face. Kleezebee wrestled with her, trying to deflect the
attack. Two nurses grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back down
to the bed.

Kleezebee stepped back, almost falling from
his crutches, when she started kicking her legs at everyone around
the bed. Lucas gasped when her half-eaten stump whacked him in the
thigh, narrowly missing his groin. The nurses struggled with her
arms, but managed to restrain her long enough for Lucas and
Kleezebee to lash her down, using the leather straps sewn around
the bed frame.

“Let me go,” she cried out, pulling at the
arm straps that kept her subdued. “I have to find my sister.”

“She’s not here,” Kleezebee answered, holding
her right hand with both of his. “You’re the only one we rescued.”
The doctor slid in next to Kleezebee, replacing one of the
nurses.

She turned her head toward the edge of the
pillow, and started crying with anger. A minute later, she stopped
suddenly as if something important just caught her attention. She
opened her eyes, looked back at Kleezebee, and asked, “What planet
am I on?”

“Earth.”

“No, no, no,” she said, looking around
frantically.

“Yes, Earth.”

“How can that be? Its occupied territory,”
she replied with panic in her voice.

Kleezebee smiled softly at her like a bedside
father trying to comfort a terminally ill child. He gently rubbed
the back of her hand with his thumbs. “We’re on a different Earth,
Alicia. You’re safe here.”

She gazed into Kleezebee’s eyes for a few
moments, then lay her head back on the pillow. She stared silently
at the ceiling with a blank expression on her face.

“Can you tell me what happened to you?”
Kleezebee asked.

“My sister and I were walking back to our
village when these creatures appeared out of nowhere, and took us
prisoner.”

“The Krellians?”

“Yeah, Ghost Force warriors armed with
shredder hooks, but we didn’t know who they were at first. We had
only heard stories about them.”

“Then what happened?”

“They took us up to their ship and delivered
us to one of their sentinels who stripped off our clothes.” She
lifted and twisted her torso, revealing a raised scar on her right
shoulder. It was carved into her skin in two sections. The bottom
was an infinity symbol and the top was a pair of broken lines, like
wiggly sevens, only split at the midpoint. “The sentinel made one
of the other humans do this to me with a hot knife. Thankfully,
they only carved into me.”

“How long ago did they abduct you?” Kleezebee
asked.

“I’m not sure, maybe a couple of months.”

“Is that the last time you saw your
sister?”

Alicia nodded. “She and I were split up right
after that. I haven’t seen her since.”

“Why didn’t they brand your sister, too?”

Lucas thought Alicia was going to start
crying again. It was clear she was fighting her emotions.

“She may have been traded to one of the other
factions . . . or worse,” Alicia replied.

“Other factions?”

“There are dozens of them. Some get along
peacefully while others are at war over territory and feeding
grounds. That’s why they brand us.”

“Where was your village?”

“On Colony Twelve.”

Lucas looked at Kleezebee to see if the
professor knew that colony. Kleezebee’s expression indicated that
he didn’t.

She added, “I found out later that they had
already invaded Earth, which is why we weren’t warned they were
coming.”

Lucas realized that their E-121 experiment
must have arrived on Kleezebee’s Earth as intended, but the
creatures intercepted it instead of Kleezebee’s people. That would
explain their sudden appearance and their having rift-opening
technology.

“Was anyone else on the ship with you?” the
professor asked.

“Yes, hundreds of women.”

“What about the men?”

She started crying again. “They eat them. We
could hear their screams.”

Lucas’ face went numb.

“Some of the men killed themselves so they
wouldn’t be eaten,” she said through more tears. “The Krellians
prefer to eat their food alive.”

Lucas looked at Kleezebee and said, “I
thought you said he would be safe?”

Kleezebee shook his head gently without
saying anything. Lucas knew the professor’s gesture meant he wanted
him to remain quiet. It wasn’t easy, but Lucas held his tongue.

“Why only the men?” Kleezebee asked her.

“They keep the women as breeders
,
”
Alicia answered, tears streaming down her face.

“Jesus Christ . . . breeders!” Lucas said,
feeling a knot swelling in the pit of his stomach.

Alicia’s voice cracked as she tried to catch
her breath between the waves of emotions pouring out of her. “We’re
kept pregnant so we can provide them with a constant supply of
food. They prefer live children. It’s a delicacy for them.”

Lucas’ clenched his jaw as he stared at the
edge of the bed, wondering how God, if he existed, could allow such
barbarians to exist in the universe. His mind raced with a vision
of Drew lying on a table as the main course, while a swarm of
Krellians pulled at his arms and legs, tearing them off at the
joint as if they were eating a live chicken.

“If there’re no men, how do they keep you
pregnant?” Bruno asked from behind Kleezebee.

“They farm semen from them before they’re—”
she said, stopping mid-sentence. “Those of us who can’t bear
children are used as translators or nannies, or we’re thrown into
the feeding pit with the men.”

Lucas figured that must be what she meant
earlier when she talked about her sister’s fate and said “or
worse.” The fact that the bugs preferred their food alive might
further explain the piles of human remains left behind by the
domes. The humans sucked up in the dome were dead so the creatures
returned the remaining body parts as a waste product.

“Can I ask, what happened to your leg?”
Kleezebee asked.

“Sometimes they run low on food and have to
ration. But that doesn’t always sit well with their Ghost Force
warriors. One of them snuck into our cell and took me and another
woman to a different room down the hall. We both tried to get away
from it, but the creature kept hitting us with its claw . . . Then
it started with her. Every time I close my eyes, I can still see
that girl’s face, screaming for me to help her. She couldn’t have
been more that fifteen. But I was so scared, I couldn’t move. I
just sat there in the corner and covered my ears so I didn’t have
to listen to the sound of her bones crunching,” she said, closing
her eyes while drawing in a deep breath. “Oh my God—the blood—it
was everywhere.”

Lucas couldn’t imagine what this poor girl
had been through—nor did he really want to. He convinced himself
not to dwell on her plight. Pretend it was a dream, he convinced
himself. Not because it was more than any human should ever have to
endure, but rather that his brother was in the hands of these
heinous creatures and he couldn’t afford to be preoccupied with
empathy for her. It would cloud his judgment.

She let out another round of tears before
looking up at Kleezebee. “When it finished with her, it came after
me. I wished I were already dead. I almost passed out when it
started on my leg, but one of their sentinels showed up to stop it.
The sentinel took me to another chamber where it burned my leg to
stop the bleeding. Then I was moved to a room filled with equipment
where my handler put its tentacle in my back.”

Nobody in the room said anything, not for a
good two minutes. Kleezebee unstrapped Alicia from his side of the
bed. Lucas did the same on the other side. She used her hands to
wipe the tears off her checks, then used her forearm as a Kleenex
for the snot running out of her nose. Lucas found a box of tissues
behind him and gave the box to her. She blew her nose and thanked
him.

Kleezebee asked her, “When you were connected
to the creature, do you remember what you said to us?”

“Yes, I remember everything.”

“Is my brother’s still alive?” Lucas asked.
She nodded, then reached over and touched his hand. Despite all she
had been through, she still had compassion for Lucas’ situation.
His earlier plan not to become emotionally invested in this woman
was failing. “Are they going to give him back if we hand over the
BioTex?”

“No. They’re planning to invade as soon as
you turn over the stuff they want. They’re never going to pass up
such a rich feeding ground. You have to get everyone out of
here.”

Lucas looked at Kleezebee and then at Bruno,
hoping for some indication of what to do next. Bruno seemed
distracted, standing a few feet away, touching his finger to his
ear. Then Bruno touched his watch and said, “Roger that.”

Bruno walked up to the professor, tapped him
on the shoulder, and whispered something into Kleezebee’s ear.
Kleezebee smiled and said, “Excellent. You know what to do.” Bruno
nodded, then quickly left the infirmary.

“What’s going on?” Lucas asked, figuring the
only course of action was to storm the rift when the creatures
reappeared. Maybe his earlier suggestion wasn’t so idiotic after
all.

Kleezebee didn’t respond. Instead, he asked
Alicia, “If we can get you back on their ship, will you show us
where they’re holding my son?”

“No way. I’m never going back. I’ll kill
myself first.”

“What about your sister? She could still be
on the ship,” Lucas said.

She sighed. Then sat quietly, gently shaking
her head while staring off into space. She might have been
considering his request, or resigning herself to the fact that
Julie Ann was long gone.

“Can you at least draw us a map?” Lucas
asked, hoping the sentinel’s thoughts provided her with access to
the ship’s layout.

She looked at him for a few seconds, than
answered, “Yeah, I think so.”

Lucas ran over to the medical table and
picked up a red pen and clipboard. He turned the medical paperwork
over to check the backside of the paper—it was blank. He hustled
back to the bed and gave her the pen and paper. “Here, draw on
this.”

Chapter
29

Infestation

Lucas handed Alicia’s map to Kleezebee, then
followed the professor back to the elevator and rode with him down
to the surveillance room where they met up with Bruno and
Trevor.

“Sir, we confirmed the data and their ship’s
spatial coordinates,” Bruno reported, handing a report to
Kleezebee.

Kleezebee looked over the paperwork for a
minute, then replied, “Nice work, gentlemen.” He gave the report
back to Bruno, who passed it to Trevor.

“What’s going on, Professor?” Lucas
asked.

“Our scans of the rift provided us with new
data. Looks like I was wrong.”

“About what?”

“It might be possible to open the rift from
this side.”

“So we’re going after Drew?”

Kleezebee nodded. “But we’ll need a plan to
deal with their army.”

Bruno stepped forward and stood at attention.
“Me and my team are ready to go, sir. Just give the order.”

“Me, too,” Lucas said, patting Bruno on the
back. “Trust me, we’ll get Drew back.”

“That would just be a suicide mission, for
all of you.”

“Then so be it,” Lucas replied. “I would
rather die trying than just sit here waiting to be eaten by those
things
.
Shit, give us some frag grenades,
and we’ll take out as many of those fuckers as we can.”

“Look, I want to get Drew back just as much
as you do, but let’s not go off halfcocked. We need to step back
and think this through,” Kleezebee said, walking away with his hand
stroking his gray beard.

Lucas moved to intercept his boss, but Bruno
latched onto his elbow and said, “Give him a few minutes.”

The orange tattoos on Bruno’s forearms danced
as his powerful grip held Lucas in place. When Bruno flexed his
left arm in just the right way, Lucas suddenly realized the
drawings weren’t just random artistry. They were imprecise, but he
reorganized the misshapen head, long stinger tail, and pair of
claws. “Dude, are those tats supposed to be the bugs?”

Bruno nodded. “I wear them as a reminder of
what stranded us here. So we would never forget what we’re up
against.”

Lucas studied the artistry more carefully,
observing something new about the creature’s physical appearance.
Their segmented bodies gave him an idea. “Dr. Kleezebee, is it all
right if I make a quick trip home to Phoenix? There’s something
there that might help.”

The professor turned around and looked at
Lucas, as if he were sizing him up for something. Kleezebee looked
at his watch, and then asked his techs, “Is the jump station still
viable at the hockey arena?”