Track 56

“They Don’t Know”

Present Day

A loud buzz, followed by a bone-jarring jolt, wakes me from a deep sleep.

“Whoa!” Beside me, Hayden grabs my hand. Judging by the startled expression, he just got a rude awakening, too.

My head feels thick and heavy. I look around and see my reflection everywhere. And Hayden’s and Jake’s. Green numbers on the wall count up. I’m in a familiar place.

“What the hell happened?” Jake’s slumped against another wall. His eyes move around dizzily. “Are we in a spaceship?”

“It’s just an elevator in Dad’s building. We’re okay. I think.” I grip onto the cool steel bar running along three sides of the car. My legs are wobbly, but they have just enough strength to support me. Hayden slowly rises along with me.

“But we were in a spaceship, right?” Jake asks. He’s not even attempting to stand. His body looks limp and weak.

“Give me a few minutes to unscramble my brain,” I mumble. The elevator’s inching along at a sloth’s pace. Seems like it’s taking forever to crawl from the ground floor. Seven more floors to go. “I saw you guys in a concrete room. And my mom…my mom was there. At least, I think she was…”

“Yes, she was there,” Hayden says, then gives a troubled frown. “But everything else is foggy.”

Closing my eyes, I try to put myself back in the moment. Images and sounds come at me. They disappear quickly like water down a drain. I force my brain to drag those memories back, but it’s a struggle. “The room we were held in, it seemed so ordinary. Like something you’d find on Earth.”

“Yes!” Jake snaps his fingers. “It had cinderblock walls. They reminded me of my school gym.”

“Maybe we were put in some transition or holding room before being taken to their ship,” I say.

Jake forces a laugh. “What, are the aliens renting a warehouse here? Why would they bother doing that? Can’t they just suck us up into their spaceship with their tractor beams?”

Hayden paces the tiny elevator like a caged leopard. Suddenly, he stops and checks his arm. We all do. We’ve each got a tiny puncture in the crooks of our arms. I’m too out of it to feel a sting.

Anger bristles off of Hayden as he grates out, “We were drugged.”

“Yes.” I stand straighter and squint as if trying to squeeze a memory out. And it works. A stronger vision flashes and fades quickly. A human face. “There was a woman working on me. She had orders to give me a second dose of some formula, but…”

“A woman? You mean an alien?” Jake asks.

“No, definitely a woman. Blond. Close to my mother’s age, or a little younger.” My voice strengthens with conviction. “She’s an abductee, too. Said I had to help her.”

“Another abductee?” Jake asks, using the bar to hoist himself up at last. “What did she want you to do?”

“I don’t remember.” I growl in frustration with myself. I’m so confused. Is it possible that we were taken by aliens that look like humans? Are humans in cahoots with aliens? Can I trust the blond woman? What the fuck is going on? I turn to Hayden. “Did you get out of the room, too?”

“If I could give you a blow-by-blow, I would.” His voice is splintered, raw. He pounds a fist into his palm so hard I could swear I hear a bone crack.

The elevator bell dings. We all stand frozen in place as the doors glide back. A long hallway fitted with blue patterned carpet stretches before us. Deserted except for a few potted plants dotted near the suites’ doors. A fluorescent light at the far end flickers. I put a foot out and carefully test the floor. It’s firm and stable.

Unlike me. I steady myself against Hayden. “My feet are numb.”

“Mine, too.” He slings an arm around me.

I snarl. “They have no right to mess with us like this.”

“No argument from me,” Hayden replies.

“Oh yeah?” says Jake. “And how are we gonna put an end to it? Think about what just happened to us. They took us away in broad daylight, and we were completely powerless.”

Hayden and I exchange glances. Jake’s right, of course. The aliens have proved time and time again that they’re in charge.

“I’m not giving up. They’ve got my mom.”

Up ahead, the glass doors of my dad’s office suite open. Alondra tumbles out, relief carved into her features.

“Where the hell have you been? The power and phones went out, and I’ve been stuck in here forever. These fancy electronic doors don’t work in a blackout. That’s so dangerous!” she signs as I push past her into the office. She’s mad. Fire-breathing-dragon mad. Her gaze falls on Hayden and Jake. They’re disheveled and tired-looking. “Are you all okay? What happened?”

I translate what she says for the guys, then tell her, “We were abducted.”

Alondra gapes, stunned into silence. Her hands stay by her sides.

Muscles burning, I tap my back pocket. They gave my phone back. How considerate. “How long have we been away?”

“More than three hours,” Alondra signs. “My phone went dead and I couldn’t charge it.”

“And you were definitely here the whole time? You weren’t snatched?” Jake asks.

Alondra frowns. She checks her arm for a needle mark. “No, I was here. I’m sure.”

The numbness in my feet fades, and pain sets in. My whole body aches. It’s like every cell of my body has been expanded and shrunk and expanded again. I force myself to focus. “I’m sorry about you getting locked in here. That’s not supposed to happen, believe me.”

The glass entrance door whooshes open. “What are you all doing here?”

We whirl around as one.

“Aunt Carole!”

“I got an alert about a blackout.” She strides in. Her beehive hair isn’t as high as it usually is. The fingernails on one hand are painted a bright yellow. The other hand is naked. “I was in the middle of a mani.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say in a wobbly voice. “Everything’s under control.”

With narrowed eyes, she looks at Jake and Alondra. Both are trembling. “Is it?”

“Okay, no.” I glance at the others. “Should I tell her?”

They nod with varying degrees of apprehension. Hayden holds his temples, his skin growing red and sweaty.

Taking a deep, deep breath, I sit Aunt Carole down and tell her everything. About the aliens, about the abductions, about seeing Mom locked in a room with us. Hayden is largely silent, either rocking on the balls of his feet or pacing from one corner of the room to the other.

When I finally stop talking and signing, Aunt Carole stares at each of us, her expression a mix of shock, awe, and terror.

“Are you okay?” I wave a hand in front of her eyes. She doesn’t blink. For the first time in history, Carole Roekiem is speechless. With good reason. I hold my breath and wait for her to react.

“UFOs…are real?” mumbles Carole at last. “Aliens…are real?”

“Yes!” we exclaim in unison.

A wide grin spreads across Carole’s features. “Aliens are real. I knew it. Didn’t I tell you guys? Didn’t I show you those videos?”

“Yep, you did!” I say, relieved. I counted on her being a believer in tabloid stories and dodgy UFO footage to start with. Carole doesn’t seem to need much more proof. What evidence could we give her, really?

Her grin is short-lived. “Wait a minute, kids. Aliens. Are. Real. And they’re coming after all of you?”

“Yes, that is the downside,” Jake says flatly.

“Understatement of the millennium,” I sign, without a drop of humor.

Carole frowns, confused. “And you want me to stop them? It’s one thing to believe, but…I’m an old lady. I can’t even fire a slingshot, let alone a laser gun.”

“We’re not asking you to go into battle against aliens.” Gently, I touch her arm. “We don’t know how to stop them. Yet.”

Carole eyeballs the entrance. “What about Nina? She didn’t come back with you. Do you think she’s okay?”

“No, I don’t know where she is now.” I don’t want to say out loud that I have no idea if she’s okay. My stomach tightens at the thought of her all by herself. Then light bulbs ping inside my head. “Wait a second. If Mom was there with us three, that must mean she’s also an abductee!”

Pressing her yellow-painted fingers to her chest, Aunt Carole looks faint. Her eyelids flutter rapidly. “That’s not possible. In all the years I’ve known her and talked about UFOs, she’s never said she even believed in aliens.”

“But Cassidy didn’t know about her abductions,” Alondra signs. “It’s possible her mother had no idea, either.”

“Goodness, how can you even forget something so big?” Aunt Carole says.

“There are ways,” Hayden says. His mouth flattens as he jabs his phone’s keyboard. “The human mind is adept at suppressing painful subjects.”

There’s something about hearing the word suppressing that forms a knot in my stomach.

“Who are you texting, Hayden? The cops?” I sign.

“I’m thinking that’s a good idea. Maybe they can check CCTV footage,” Alondra signs. “There are cameras everywhere, right?”

“Right.” Hayden looks up sharply, then taps on his phone so fast that I’m sure he’s breaking the world record for texting.

“First we have to convince them we’ve been kidnapped at all, let alone by aliens,” Jake says. He scrolls through his phone and frowns. “I can’t find any posts about any UFO landing today. You’d think there’d be thousands already.”

“I’m not contacting the police. This has to be handled another way.” Hayden reads an incoming message, and his features turn to granite. He pockets his phone and continues pacing.

The knot in my stomach tightens. “Hayden, you’re going to wear a groove in the carpet. Talk to me. Is there something going on with your family unit?”

“You could say that.” Hayden turns. His eyes are full of conflict. He grimaces as his phone buzzes again, but he doesn’t answer it. “I’ve just received orders. We have to move.”

“You can’t. You just moved in,” I protest. Hayden puts a palm to his head. “Oh. Wait. Is there a sinkhole in your neighborhood now?”

“No. It’s more like a black hole,” Hayden mutters. He pulls out the phone and reads the message again as if to make sure he’d read it right the first time.

Jake’s eyes are wide and wild. “We’re dealing with sinkholes now? As well as aliens? What the fuck?”

I give him a rundown about the rumors, all the while keeping my eye on Hayden. He looks like his whole world is crashing down on him. “But you’re sure the orders are because of sinkholes, right, Hayden?”

Grasping my hand, he says, “I need to talk to you. Alone.”