There was nothing like waking up from a faint to make you feel like a real idiot, Riley groaned. She slowly sat up, keeping her eyes closed for the moment until the world around her settled down.
They weren’t in the kitchen anymore and she knew she wasn’t alone. The air smelled unusual: cold, metallic, and something indefinably strange. The acoustics were different too. The sound of someone’s breathing was much more audible now than it had been in Kerry’s loft and there was almost an echo, as if the space were larger and emptier. It was also cold. Not freezing, but reach-for-a-sweater type cool. She shivered and her teeth chattered together, not wholly from the ambient temperature.
The huge room was made of metal. Brownish, dull and unfurnished, it stretched across the same amount of space as a soccer pitch and roughly the same shape. There were neither windows nor doors. The walls were slightly curved, as was the ceiling. There were no rivets or seams: the material had been grown, not fitted together like back home.
Tyon construction.
Riley shivered again. If the purpose of the chamber was to make captives feel insignificant and vulnerable, it was a great success. She looked around for the source of the breathing. Kerry was huddled in a fetal position about halfway down the room and facing away. There was no sign of Peter.
She felt sore all over, as if she’d run a marathon or had the flu. The back of her head ached, especially behind her right ear. She rubbed the sore spot. Funny she didn’t remember hitting her head, but then she’d never fainted before. Maybe you don’t remember anything? Getting to her feet, she headed towards Kerry. She squatted down beside him and touched his shoulder. He startled.
“I didn’t mean to freak you out,” Riley said.
Kerry only swallowed convulsively. He looked like he wanted to talk but the words wouldn’t come. His eyes were wide with fright and something else Riley wasn’t sure of. She gave his shoulder a slight squeeze.
“You said you wanted to see alien stuff,” she said, waving her free hand around expansively. “Well, here you go. It’s totally lame. I haven’t met an alien yet with one iota of style.”
Kerry swallowed again. He licked his lips as his eyes darted around the room. He settled on her face for a moment. “This is an alien ship?” he croaked.
A ship hadn’t occurred to her, but why not? Just because she couldn’t feel any movement didn’t mean they weren’t going somewhere. “I dunno. Might be, might not. I thought it was another one of their bunkers, but you know, you could be right.” She straightened up and a shiver of fear mixed with excitement slithered down her spine. How cool would it be to travel on an alien spacecraft?
“Are they going to kill us?”
Riley shrugged. “I doubt it. Not right away anyway.” She answered his puzzled look before he could give voice to the question. “What would be the purpose of transporting us here just to kill us? They could’ve done that at your place.”
“They killed Normie.”
Riley took a deep shuddering breath. She doubted that the image of Normie’s blank expression facing his shoulder blades would ever leave her brain for as long as she lived.
“What’ll they do to us?”
“I don’t know,” Riley answered truthfully. Who knew what aliens thought? But there were several suspicious ideas darting through Riley’s mind, none of them pleasant.
“But you know these people,” Kerry said. His voice had taken on a distinct whining tone. Riley’s lip curled. Where was the unflappable Aussie she’d met on the Sydney Bridge?
“Look, just because I know a few aliens doesn’t mean I fraternize with the whole universe,” she answered sharply.
She stood up and looked around at the walls. “We need to check this place out. See if there’s a door or something. Get up.”
Without waiting to see if Kerry followed her directive, Riley headed towards the closest wall. She stopped when the wall was within touching distance. Tentatively she reached out a finger and felt the cold, almost slippery material. A slight hum travelled up her hand to her shoulder. She quickly pulled her finger away. Nothing had the same, creepy feeling as the Tyon metal. This stuff was actually alive—not breathing alive, but not inert either. Riley remembered Dean telling her about it and demonstrating the creation of a chair, back at Home Base. She’d felt both fascinated and repelled by the machine oozing brown metal and the final product. Why, she couldn’t say.
She bit her lip. So, was this a spaceship or another bunker? If the former, where were they going? If the latter, where exactly was it located? If the former, could they get off and get back home? If they were underground somewhere then same question, slightly different parameters. Either way it boiled down to escape. Riley blew out a heavy breath and brushed her bangs off her forehead while Kerry shuffled up behind her.
He tapped her on the shoulder. “Have you figured out where we are?”
“Nope.”
“Any idea how we can go home?”
“Nope.”
“We’re in trouble, right?”
“Yup.” Riley turned and faced Kerry. There was better colour in his cheeks and his eyes didn’t have the haunted, I-am-so-screwed look they had a few minutes ago. Good. “’Kay, here’s the deal. We’re being held by aliens. Not the ones I know and hang with, but other ones. I have no idea if they’re the enemy or on our side but I’m guessing enemies. I don’t know if we’re orbiting Earth or heading out into the universe at the speed of light or if we’re still on Earth but hidden somewhere in one of their secret bases. If we’re on a spaceship, we’re screwed, because I have no idea how to pilot a ship back. So start praying that we’re only underground somewhere and will be able to find the exit.”
Kerry nodded. “I can navigate celestially but have no idea about warp drive.”
Riley resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “This is not TV. It’s real. I know this is difficult to get your head around. Trust me, it took me a few minutes to get with the program the first time too.”
“Any interstellar vessel will have some type of lightspeed drive,” Kerry said as if he hadn’t really heard her. “It stands to reason. Galactic distances are huge. Travel has to occur at light speed or higher to make it viable.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Riley turned back to the wall. “Main thing for now is figuring out where we are. Then, how to get out.”
“Okay,” Kerry agreed.
There was an awkward silence. Riley tapped her foot. “So you want me to puzzle this out,” she said. “You’re just along for the ride.”
She felt his shrug. “You’re the one who knows aliens. I just watch TV. I’ll watch and learn.”
“Yeah, you do that.” Mildly annoyed, Riley began to walk along the wall, peering closely for any sign of a seam. Darius would wave his orb at the wall and doors would appear, she remembered. She pulled her new orb from her pocket with relief. For a second she’d worried that the Councilor and his cronies had taken it away from her, but strangely they hadn’t. Either they didn’t care she had one, because it wouldn’t work against them, or they hadn’t noticed. But how would aliens who could diagnose brain hemorrhage with the palm of their hands miss an orb if it were important? She gave her head a shake. Too many questions.
She searched the entire room without finding a sign of a door, with Kerry trailing behind her like a hulking wraith. He was now humming off key and drumming his fingers on his leg as he stood at her side as she came to a halt. Ignoring him, Riley reviewed her findings. No entrance or exit. No air vents. No bathroom—which was shortly going to be a serious worry—and no food or water. Waving her orb had not made a bit of difference. Standing still and concentrating, difficult with an aching head, hadn’t accomplished anything either. Riley hadn’t been able to sense anyone’s thoughts or emotions and there would have been something if there were other captives or aliens outside the walls.
Yelling wasn’t going to do any good either. If there was a way of monitoring them inside the room, Riley hadn’t seen it. Her only conclusion was that the room was a storage facility, currently only storing them, and their captors would eventually come to either let them out or gloat over their imprisonment. Hopefully. Being left to die alone and of starvation didn’t even warrant thinking about.
Pursing her lips with annoyance, Riley leaned against the wall and slid down until she was in a sitting position. Kerry squatted down beside her.
“Well?”
“We’re trapped,” Riley sighed.
“No exit?”
“None. No intercom either. I doubt anyone will hear us if we start yelling, but if you want to, go ahead.”
“And your orb thingy. Can you send a message to Blondie?” Kerry asked.
Riley scowled. “It’s not a phone.”
“Yeah, right. But you did before. On the bridge. Remember?”
Riley was about to give a scathing reply but she bit her tongue. Kerry was right. Sure, the orb wasn’t a phone per se, but she could use it to communicate if someone was waiting for her signal and could reply. Would a signal get through the Tyon defense system at Home Base? Were orbs limited by distance?
Riley sucked her teeth. She pulled out her orb and held it in front of her eyes. There was only one way to know for sure. Closing her eyes, she tried to concentrate on sending a message to Anna without feeling like a complete idiot. Anna, help us. She pushed all the other thoughts out of her head, one by one: the coolness of the chamber, the fear they were in enemy hands, the worry about their future. The orb seemed heavier than normal and a distinct warmth was flowing upwards from her palm into her arm and shoulder. She tightened her fingers around it. Anna, talk to me. She felt as if she was falling slowly into herself, that the orb was tugging her ever so gently. She resisted the pull. She’d never felt that before. The orb pulled more strongly. Riley resisted. With a sudden panic she cut off the connection, dropping her orb back into her pocket and standing up so quickly she nearly barrelled into Kerry.
“I can’t do it,” she muttered.
“Why not?”
“Just can’t, okay?” Riley snapped. Her face was flushed and an odd prickling along her skin had started.
“Why not?” Kerry asked.
“Cause someone’s watching me,” she said. Only with the words out did she realize that was exactly the feeling she’d had. She gave a slight shiver.
Kerry turned and looked around at their huge metallic prison and rubbed his hand over his face as if he was just waking up from an unpleasant dream. “We’re screwed then.”
“Looks like,” Riley replied with a sigh.
“Usually the good guys have an ace up their sleeve.”
“Yeah. Usually. On TV.” Riley gave a ghost of a grin. “In case you haven’t noticed, this is real life which tends to suck.”
“What do we do?”
“Wait.” Riley shrugged. What else was there to do? “Hope they remember we’re human and need food and water and bathrooms and stuff.” Suddenly she wished she hadn’t mentioned bathrooms.
“Wish I had a towel,” said Kerry. “You know, for travelling through the universe.” He gave her a sly look.
Riley couldn’t help but grin back. That book had been a favourite of hers too. “If anyone threatens to read poetry at us, run.”
They both laughed weakly for a moment until the weight of their situation smothered all good feelings.
“You know,” Kerry said slowly, “I’ve read about this sort of thing.”
“What?”
“Being captured by aliens.”
“Kerry, I hate to break it to you, but anything you read was speculative fiction, not a how-to manual. Not too many people have actually been captured by aliens. And those claiming they’ve been probed are probably all off their medications.”
“Yeah, right. I know that,” Kerry continued, a gleam in his eyes flickering into life, “but lots of stories have been written about hypothetical situations. At least one of those should reflect what’s happening to us, fairly closely.”
Enthusiasm was flooding his expression. Riley nearly snorted out loud with the ridiculousness of it. But, and this was the sobering thought, they had nothing else to fall back on and it was a lot better for both of them if Kerry was in fighting form, not the stunned zombie of half an hour ago.
“Okay, spill,” said Riley, smothering the need to roll her eyes. She knew very well when the crunch came, she’d be in charge, making the decisions. “What’s your plan?”
“Well, we fake an injury, call for help and overpower the guards when they come in,” Kerry said. “Or, we manufacture a weapon out of your orb thingy and overpower the guards when they come in. Or,” his eyes were starting to gleam, “you make a play for one of them and I overpower them when they’re totally distracted.”
He could use a slap across the face, Riley thought as she turned away.
“Or we negotiate,” he said.
Riley turned back. “Negotiate for what?”
“Dunno. What’ve we got?”
Riley frowned. Good question. “Intimate knowledge of how Earth is run. How to blend in, where the power resides, that sort of stuff.”
“Great,” Kerry enthused. He rubbed his hands together. “Plus you know stuff about the other aliens. Maybe these guys don’t know anything about them. We could trade knowledge for freedom.”
Riley was already shaking her head. “Darius told me the Intergalactic Council actually created the Tyon Collective to do their secret work. Darius and Anna work for the Collective. I’m just along for the ride.” Her forehead creased as she thought out loud. “But maybe the Council doesn’t know very much about the Others. We do. We might just be able to sell that info if we’re smart.”
“Who are these Others?”
“Pan-dimensional bad asses with no sense of humour,” Riley replied. “The main one we dealt with was called Rhozan. A seriously scary dude who can possess people like that.” She snapped her fingers. “He’s out for the usual world domination and destruction. Alec kicked his metaphorical butt.”
“Cool,” Kerry said. “Who’s Alec?”
Riley looked down at her shoes and scuffed the toe along the metallic floor. “Just this guy who was travelling with me and Darius.”
“The one who’s crazy about you but you don’t feel the same way?”
Riley pulled a face. Someday she was going to have to learn not to blush. “No.”
“So how’d Alec do it? Kick Rhozan’s butt, I mean.”
“That’s the thing,” Riley sighed. “We don’t know how he did it. He doesn’t know how he did it. Alec just…,” Riley floundered for a moment, “he just, I mean he’s, like, I don’t know. Super powerful with this Tyon power stuff. Using the orb. He can do it better than anyone.”
“Better than Blondie?”
“She’s trained. Alec isn’t. But yeah, Darius figures that Alec is the strongest Potential ever. Stronger than him, and Darius was the strongest the Collective had ever found.”
“Which makes him dangerous to someone, right?”
From stunned to super acute, Kerry made some pretty astounding leaps and was remarkably dead-on where he landed. “Yep, exactly. So right now, Alec is hidden where hopefully no one can find him.”
“Do you know where he is?” Kerry leaned up against the wall. He immediately backed away and gave it an odd sideways look.
“Nope. No one does. That’s the point. Oh, and the metal is alive.”
Kerry grimaced. “Really?”
Before Riley could answer, a familiar voice spoke loudly beside them. “You are prisoners of the Intergalactic Council. Prepare to transfer.”