"You can talk. I know you can," Red Hair said. "Of course, there's always the possibility that you don't speak English, but somehow I think you do." He changed the bloody bandage on Micah's arm, then pulled off his gloves and tossed them in a wastebasket. "Well, we've got lots of time." He laughed as he jerked a spatulate thumb at the skeleton in the corner. "He was stubborn, too."
Red Hair checked the IV bag at the head of the table, then nodded. The solution dripped steadily into Micah's arm.
Red Hair patted the plastic bag. "You won't be giving us any trouble," he said conversationally. "Mac invented this concoction. Keeps guys like you as helpless as newborn babes, but still allows us to see how you react to different stimuli." He chuckled softly. "Yeah, we know all about those death-ray eyes of yours. We've been studying your kind for years. Kind of funny, when you think about it. People on earth running around worrying about being abducted and studied by aliens when we've been studying you guys for years."
Red Hair walked slowly around the table, his gaze narrowed.
Micah clenched his jaw, hating the way the man looked at him, studying him as though he were no more than a bug under a microscope.
"The similarities between your people and ours are amazing, but it's the differences that intrigue me," Red Hair murmured softly, and then he looked at Micah and grinned. "Better get some rest, space man. You're gonna need it."
And with that cryptic warning, Red Hair switched off the overhead light, went into the adjoining room, and shut the door.
Left alone at last, Micah closed his eyes, wishing he could banish the pain that throbbed in his chest, his arm. If only he could think clearly! If only he wasn't so weak, so dizzy.
Rousing himself, he tugged at the bindings on his hands and feet, but he was too weak to do more than pull at them a few times, too dazed to think clearly, too heavily drugged to be able to concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds.
He shivered as the room grew colder. Closing his eyes, he surrendered to the darkness that hovered around him. His last conscious thought was that he'd never see Lainey again...
Lainey's apprehension grew with the passing of each hour. Three times, she'd walked past the old building where they'd taken Micah. Once, she had crept up to a window, hoping to get a glimpse of Micah, but the windows had been blacked out from the inside. Now, sitting in the car, her gaze riveted on the building, she wondered what to do next.
She thought of calling the police, but somehow that didn't seem like a smart move. What could she say? Three men have kidnapped my boyfriend, who just happens to be from another planet? They'd either laugh, or lock her up in a rubber room. And even if they believed her, Micah probably wouldn't be any better off in the hands of the police, who would, no doubt, turn him over to the Air Force or the CIA or whoever it was who handled alien invaders.
Damn, she thought, this was like something out of that TV show,The X-Files . She just wished Agents Mulder and Scully were there with her. They'd know what to do. She wished she did.
Closing her eyes, she tried to contact Micah, but she encountered only a vague sense of emptiness. Did that mean he was dead? There was no way to tell what they were doing to him in there.
She remembered the headlines she'd read in some of the more sensational tabloids in the last year:
GOVERNMENT COVERUPS DISCLOSED.
SPACESHIP KEPT UNDER WRAPS INSECRETDESERT
LABORATORY.
AUTOPSY REVEALS STRANGE ALIEN PHYSIOLOGY.
She shivered as she imagined Micah being examined by a battery of doctors, subjected to a variety of inhumane tests. But surely, if these men were connected to the government, or SETI, they would have taken Micah somewhere besides what seemed to be an abandoned building. If these men were on the up and up, there would be men in uniform, some kind of security.
With a sigh of exasperation, she snuggled deeper into her coat, her gaze fixed on the building.
Twenty minutes later, she saw two men get in a car and drive away.
It was now or never.
Resolutely, she opened the trunk, took out the tire iron, and made her way toward the building, hoping, praying, that there had only been three men inside.