CASSIE
I was strapped to a steel chair in a room with steel walls no bigger than a one-man prison cell. One of the walls had a small window revealing an observation room filled with a table and several chairs. Had torturing people or aliens become a spectator sport at the agency?
I tried to move but thick steel bracelets circled my wrists, my ankles, and waist. The door opened, and Dad-Ragespawn’s shoes echoed as he crossed the floor. “Contrary to what all your human stories say, we don’t enjoy torturing your kind, but we do what’s necessary.” He slid a long needle into my left upper arm. Pain shot through me but I refused to let him see my agony. Jaw clenching so hard I thought my teeth would shatter, I kept my gaze directly in front of me.
Moving around to my right side, he slid a second needle into that arm. “Almost done.” Pulling another needle from his pocket, he inserted it at an angle across my right knee. When the point of it dug into the cartilage, I couldn’t prevent the whimper from escaping. As he walked around to the other knee, he arched his eyebrows. “I don’t have to do this, dear daughter. All you have to do is answer the questions. Tell me where the spaceship is and tell me about Jason.”
I was more scared than I’d ever been in my life, but the Dad-Ragespawn’s determination to go after Jason made something startlingly clear to me. My feelings for Jason were much deeper than I’d realized. I was willing to die to protect him. I firmed my lips and straightened my shoulders. I wouldn’t give this creature anything about Jason that could hurt him.
“Then we do this the hard way.” He stepped back and checked his handiwork. “These needles will deliver jolts of electricity similar to the way a nerve conduction study is done. Instead of stimulating the nerve, yours will be destroyed.” He waited and when I still didn’t respond, he shrugged and left the room.
I could do this. For Jason.
I wouldn’t—the electricity stung me with the power of ten thousand wasps and a scream tore through my lips. My body surged forward but couldn’t go anywhere because I was held tightly in place. When the electricity ceased, I slumped against my restraints. The skin beneath the metal bands singed and the odor of burning flesh filled the room. The Ragespawn returned and knelt in front of me. Gathering my hair in his hand, he jerked my head back, forcing me to look at him.
“This is a sample of what your father was willing to do to my people. For all his swagger and determination to bring down aliens, he died a coward crying and pleading for his life.”
Every nerve in my body pulsated with pain. I blinked, trying to follow what the creature was saying. “I thought when your kind bit someone they became crazy from the venom.”
“That’s true. Unless we choose to host within the human. Our bodies can fold in on itself and we can enter a human through any opening. A mouth…one of their ears…” He flicked my ear and I jerked my head. “We destroy their brains, their souls, and make their bodies our home. Like putting on a new suit.”
I fought back tears.
“Go ahead and cry. The salt from your tears will make an excellent conductor.”
The pain, the torture, the questions became an endless cycle as the minutes ticked slowly by.
“Where is their spaceship?” he shouted as he turned up the volume on the electricity.
The rhythm of my heart faltered. Unconsciousness tried to claim me but the creature flung water into my face. “There’s no escape for you until you tell me what I want to know. Tell me about Jason’s power.”
He kept repeating the same questions over and over. I still didn’t answer and he backhanded me across the face. “Worthless human!”
A door slammed, and he paused with his hand mid-strike. “A team from the agency.” He looked away from the window and back at me. “How fitting it’ll be to allow the humans to torture one of their own.”
“I’ll tell them the truth about you,” I said.
He shook his head, a small smile playing on his lips. Coming up behind me, he pulled my head back and the sting of a needle pinched the side of my neck. “Alpha-PVP,” he whispered.
Minutes later, my body felt hot all over. My head pounded and my eyes ached.
“Hallucinations and paranoia are common. You’ll experience violent delusions and strength equal to an alien’s. Your pupils will change sizes. No one will believe you’re human.” He left and through the window, I saw him in the conference room. When a handful of other agents joined him, he shook his head sadly and pointed to the room where I was.
Hands were coming up from the floor trying to grab my ankles and drag me below the ground. They wanted to hold me there, trap me below the ground like the earthquakes. I screamed and lunged forward. Drool trickled from one corner of my lips. I tried to form words but filled the room with guttural sounds instead.
“Sam, why don’t you let us handle this?” Two dark-haired agents walked into the room.
My head shook from side to side, making me see double. I tried to speak, to warn them, but couldn’t talk.
“Poor guy. He always said there were aliens here and his own daughter turns out to be one.” He clicked his tongue. “She must have been bitten by one of those Ragespawn creatures.”
“Think they’re still on Earth?” the other one asked. He rubbed his chin. “I thought if they attacked a human it made the human go mad.”
The first agent shrugged. “There’s still a lot we don’t know about them.” He folded his arms and watched me for a minute. “But there’s no doubt in my mind she’s one of them.”
The other one approached me cautiously. “All right, alien. Where’s Jason Taylor? Where’s the spaceship his family is hiding?” His voice was garbled and coming from a hundred different directions.
Water. Drowning me. I gasped, struggling for oxygen. The wavy shadow in front of me hit me with a closed fist. I surged against my restraints. Kill him. Another blow. Wetness trickling from my nose. A harder punch. Pain as my lip split.
“This creature isn’t going to give us anything. We need to kill it before it infects others.”
The shadow had a black object in his hand spitting bursts of fire. The fire dug into my chest. Hot pokers of pain, then nothing.
JASON
The destruction chamber was a nondescript building on the outside, but according to Rick Simon, a house of horrors on the inside.
“Stacy!” Rick cried out as a woman staggered across the parking lot. Her eyes were nearly swollen shut and as she walked, she dragged one of her legs behind her. Close on her heels was the Ragespawn posing as Cassie’s father. Rick leaped from the car and ran toward his wife. Arms outstretched, their fingertips touched. The Ragespawn tackled Rick, sinking his teeth into the side of his neck.
I fired a shot of my power at the Ragespawn but missed. He returned fire, and his energy hit the car behind me with a center strike. The car blew upward several feet, then landed, alarm blaring, upside down on the ground. The Ragespawn fired again, missing my body as I twisted, but catching the sleeve of my T-shirt and burning a hole in the hem. Both hands up, palms out, I fired double shots at the creature. He dodged them, jumped over the car, and ran into the woods behind the building.
“Jason,” Rick gasped, one hand holding the injury on his neck, the other his wife’s hand as she wept into his shoulder. “We’ve both been bitten.”
I dropped to my knees beside him. “I’ll call an ambulance.”
“No.” His gaze met mine, and the truth hung heavy between us. There was nothing doctors could do to fix either of them. “They’ll separate and quarantine us. Study us as we go mad. I don’t want to be a lab rat.”
“Rick—”
“You know what has to be done.” He put both arms around his wife. “There’s no way to save either of us. Please. Let us go out together.”
I placed one of my hands in the air over his heart, and the other in the air over his wife’s heart. Their quiet acceptance and the obvious love they had for each other caused my heart to ache for them.
“I’m sorry.” I released a burst of my power that burned through their skin to their hearts. I bowed my head and exhaled, making a silent vow to track the Ragespawn and avenge their deaths.
Hoping Rick’s fate wasn’t also Cassie’s, I ran inside the building housing the destruction chamber. Systematically running and checking each room, I came up empty until I reached the last one. She was secured to a chair, her head bowed. Blood coated her face, her head, the center of her body. Her lips and eyes were swollen. Rage shook my body from my head to my feet.
Two agents stood nearby and one of them reached for her, his fingers extended. With a cry that reverberated throughout the building, I flung my arms out, palms toward the door of the room holding Cassie prisoner. The energy from my power flung the door inward as if it weighed nothing more than a sheet of paper. The agents turned, hands fumbling for their weapons, shouting alarmed cries of “Alien!” in unison.
Motioning with my arms, I flung both agents against the walls, the sounds of their bones breaking filling the air. I pushed my power harder than I’d ever done before. The room shook and the agents flew through the wall. The twisted steel shredded their bodies as they were blown backward.
Sunshine stretched into the opening, a bright contrast against the darkness in the room.
“I’m here.” I put my palms against the metal cuffs holding her captive, and freed her. She slumped forward into my arms, and I laid her on her back to check her pupils. Starting with her head, I touched her body, absorbing her pain.
I swept my hands down her shoulders, across her abdomen, down to her legs and feet. The fire and sting from the bullets tearing into her body tore into mine, but I kept going until I’d taken every hurt, every injury from her. Then I collapsed beside her as my body worked frantically to heal itself.
“Jason, we have to get out of here. More agents will come.” Latching on to my arm, she tried to drag me to the door but wasn’t strong enough.
Forcing myself to move, I fought through the exhaustion trying to overtake me and let Cassie help me outside. I leaned against the remaining car in the parking lot.
“Your dad—”
“Don’t call him that,” she said as she wept. “He got away. I can’t believe he killed my real dad and he got away with everything.”
“He’ll be back,” I said, looking over at the building. This place had been used to hurt other aliens and innocent humans like Rick Simon’s wife. I’d nearly lost Cassie here. “I can’t let him use this place again.” Pressing my palm against the car door, I used my power to burn through the lock and opened the door. “You’ll have to drive.”
Cassie helped me into the passenger side, and as she walked around to join me, I aimed my palm at the ignition, using a burst of my power to jumpstart the engine. I rolled the window down, and leaned half out of it. “When I tell you to floor it, don’t hesitate.” Holding my hands toward the building, I focused my energy on the electric meter on the side of it. Within seconds it sparked, and then flames raced along the siding. “Go!”
Cassie hit the gas, and the car fishtailed as we left the building behind. “The fire won’t burn the steel.”
“No, but it’ll hit the gas line and blow it up.” We’d reached a stoplight two blocks from the building when the sound of an explosion ripped through the air. Resting my head against the back of the seat, I closed my eyes for a second, knowing better than to fall asleep.
“We can’t go home,” Cassie said. “That’s the first place the dad imposter will look.”
“I know. Get your mom out of here. Sydney, too.”
“What about your family?”
“They know how to protect themselves.” I directed her to a small office complex. “Go in. Pretend you belong, and find a phone. Make your calls.”
She parked in the lot. “What about you?”
“We have to ditch this car. There’s a dealership across the street. I’ll take one of the trade-ins.” Once Cassie was safely inside the offices, I ducked across the street, making sure I walked casually to blend in. I couldn’t bring myself yet to tell Cassie that she’d escaped one death only to end up heading toward another one if I couldn’t stop her world from collapsing.