going on and on about it.” A tear spilled down one of his cheeks. “Lisa, I’m the reason they chose you.”
Her own eyes filled with moisture. “You didn’t know what they were.”
“I know. But I have to make this right. And I’m going to.” His watch beeped. He glanced at it. “Time’s up. I have to go.” Releasing her hands, he wrapped her in a tight hug. “I’ll come for you as soon as I can.”
He rose and strode to the door. Removing a plastic card from his pocket, he touched it to a tiny metal square beneath the knob. A beep sounded. Brad eased the door open an inch and peered outside.
With a last look back, he eased out into the hallway and shut the door behind him.
She stared at the door, her mind racing.
The baby in her belly began to squirm and kick.
Lisa cringed, her imagination conjuring horrible images of what might be inside her, and burst into tears.
Taelon stared, unseeing, at the bright lights above him.
Something was different. Pain remained a constant companion. The torture continued. But the butchers were distracted. They did not taunt him today. They made no malicious comments. They did not humiliate him. They made no vows to finally elicit a scream.
They did not speak to him at all. Nor did they speak of him, though such did not still their scalpels.
Their merciless eyes practically glowed with anticipation.
Something was going to happen, something they would relish.
“Any day now.”
“Any hour by the looks of her.”
“…pains coming closer together…”
Whatever it was did not involve him. For once.
Some other poor soul then. He knew there were others. More victims. More subjects for these animals’ degenerate experiments.
“…fever rising…”
“…will probably kill her.”
“Who cares? She’s dead either way once we get it out of her.”
Get what out of her? An organ? Her heart?
He hoped they weren’t talking about the woman whose mind he had briefly touched upon. Or the children.
His abhorrence of these Earthlings had trebled when they referenced a large new group of victims and he’d felt the presence of two children, so young they barely spoke.
One—a little girl—had touched his mind briefly. She was crying for her mommy and daddy, whom he suspected were among the new group brought in.
“I’m more interested in the vampires.”
A flurry of excited comments erupted.
Taelon didn’t know what a vampire was. But the butchers were so distracted by them that they were slipping. They were late dosing him with their foul serum, the one that kept him immobile and clouded his mind enough to hinder his gifts.
Perhaps they had forgotten entirely. They seemed to be in a rush to finish so they could hurry off and inspect their new victims.
His mind began to clear, though blood loss and the severity of his wounds continued to weaken him.
Despair inundated him. Not his. Someone else’s.
Distancing himself from the pain, he focused on the fear and hopelessness and tentatively tested his powers. Since the butchers hadn’t taken the time to attach wires to his head today, the vengeful idiots leaning over him would remain unaware of his search.
There. It was her—the female he’d spoken with telepathically. Somewhere in this building she wept.
A scalpel stole another slice of his flesh.
He focused harder on the Earth woman.
This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real, she chanted over and over again, every word rife with fear and denial.
I, too, wish it were not real, he murmured.
The chanting ended abruptly.
There is no need to fear me. I mean you no harm. I am a prisoner here, like you, he reminded her. Pain carried to him over the link he formed with her. Why do you weep?
She hesitated, then confided bleakly, There’s a monster inside me.
Aware of the physical pain that battered her, centering around her stomach, he assumed she meant the butchers were performing one of their favored exploratory surgeries on her. He had lost count of the number of times they had opened him up so they could see if he could regrow an organ, or how this system or that reacted to the poisons with which they injected him. He could never determine the purpose of the latter. Were they testing the poisons on him in an attempt to find a biological weapon to use against his people if they ever came for him? Or were they simply satisfying morbid curiosity?
If it was the former, no poison would protect them. His people didn’t have to set foot on the planet to annihilate every Earthling it supported.
The