I’d love to end this here, but I can’t. Because if you’re watching this, it means something bad has happened. It means the worst has happened and they came back for you. I wish I could tell you who “they” are, but I can’t. But I know they’re out there. A few times I thought I could feel them, a mother’s intuition. I don’t believe they ever totally let go or gave up. Wherever it was you came from, they haven’t forgotten you. And I know they’ll be back.
If you’re watching this, know that it brings me great joy even though it almost surely means your father and I are gone. But your viewing this means you’re still alive and now you know everything I do, hopefully enough to help you survive against the ones who have come for you. I don’t want to stop talking, don’t want these to be my last words to you. You were the light of our lives from the day the fates brought you to us. We knew, your father and I, we needed to protect you, not just raise you as our own. All things come with a purpose and plan. The Chinese believe happiness lies in plugging gaps, having no great chasms into which our lives might plunge. Saving you filled our greatest gap but we knew the day would come when someone would come for you, someone from Laboratory Z or the parties from whom we kept you hidden. Our questions stopped there. You were a gift willed to us by fate and we chose to leave it at that.
There’s one more thing you need to know. When you were just starting to speak, sometimes your words came out in an indecipherable language. Your father and I thought it was just jibberish at first, but at night we’d hear you mumbling in your sleep. Your native language, Alex, language of the world from which you came. You must’ve recalled it somehow. You’d only mumble in the midst of a terrible dream and we thought you might be suffering from night terrors. Then the dreams and the mumbling passed, and we let it go, trying not to wonder what you had seen and experienced before you came to us.
But now we all know those terrors are real, and they won’t only come at night.
58
THE CHRYSALIS
“TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED during that follow-up CT scan,” Sam said, after the screen froze on An Chin’s sad expression.
“It was crazy,” Alex said, when he’d finished the tale of bursting bulbs and fried circuits. “It felt like, I don’t know, like I was making it happen.”
Sam shrugged, all this a bit beyond even her.
“What do you think it was?” Alex more demanded than asked.
“I … don’t know.”
“I thought you knew everything.”
“Something magnetic.”
“Huh?”
“A CT scan uses electromagnetic waves. Picture what happens when you stick something covered in tinfoil into a microwave.”
“Sparks, like miniature lightning,” Alex offered. “Come to think of it, yeah, that pretty much describes what happened in the exam room. Only, I wasn’t covered in tinfoil.”
“You wouldn’t have to be, if there was something inside you.”
“Inside me? Like what?”
Sam shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“Guess.”
“I can’t. We’re in uncharted territory here.”
“Then answer me this: Why didn’t the same thing happen during the first scan?”
”I can’t. More uncharted territory.”
“Connected maybe to that shadow Dr. Payne spotted in the first scan?”
Sam shrugged again.
Alex shook his head. “You’d make a lousy football player.”
“How’s that?”
“You’re afraid to take a chance.”
“I thought you just wanted me to take a guess.”
“So go ahead.”
Sam looked around her. “Later. When we get somewhere else.”
Alex returned his attention to the screen and clicked on the next file, containing the results from Dr. Chu’s tests the recorded image of his mother had referred to. “I want to print this first.”
59
THE SIGNAL
“WE’RE PREPARED TO MOVE, sir,” Rathman had told Langston Marsh, through the Bluetooth device clipped to his ear. “We have the situation contained.”
“You have a positive identification?”
“Yes, sir,” Rathman responded, perhaps more surely than he should have. “And my men are in position both front and rear, all exits covered.”
“What’s the boy doing in there?”
“He’s on a computer. The girl’s next to him.”
“We’ve got more on him, Colonel. He was admitted to California Pacific Medical Center two nights ago now after suffering a football injury believed to be a concussion.”
Rathman was nodding to himself impatiently, wishing Marsh would get to the point. “This would be the hospital where a doctor was found dead around the same time the boy fled the premises.”
“We must assume that he’s dangerous. You should proceed with caution.”
“Understood.”
“And we need this one alive, Colonel.”
“Also understood, sir.”
“Then see it done.”
“Yes, sir. Prepare to move on my signal,” Rathman said into the throat mic connecting him to his men.
60
THE MEN AT THE DOOR
ALEX COLLECTED THE PAGES from the printer, the medical tests compiled by Dr. Chu all those years ago filling a few scant pages. But his mind was back at his house, confronting the drone things and ash man who’d killed his parents.
We are your family. We have our orders. You must come with us, Alex.
I’m not going anywhere with you.