Touched by an Alien (17 page)

And then there was me. I wasn’t Mossad trained. I wasn’t from Planet Dazzling. I was just a marketing manager from Pueblo Caliente, Arizona, who could wield a mean pen.

I caught Reader’s eye. He grinned. “Welcome, fully, to my world.”

WHITE LED US INTO A GOOD-SIZED CONFERENCE
room. Martini and Christopher were already in there, sitting at opposite ends of the long, oval table, glaring at each other. What a fun meeting this was going to be.

The conference table gleamed in an odd way, and I assumed it was alien made or at least influenced. The chairs were all black and looked reasonably comfortable. There was no phone, screen, or whiteboard, though. Just glass panes on each side, so meeting in here would be like meeting in a fishbowl. I couldn’t wait.

I pointedly sat next to Martini, who was at the far end of the room, earning another glare from Christopher. I glared right back and then turned to watch White usher everyone else in.

Several of the Dazzling Sisters filed by and took seats around the table, then Mom, Gower, and Reader came in as well. Mom leaned down and said something privately to Christopher, who nodded, and looked away from me and Martini. Then she came and sat next to me.

“Please try to remain civil,” she said as my personal aside.

I wasn’t thrilled with her choosing to side with my enemy. “Sure, no worries,” I muttered back. “I’m used to him being a total jerk. So, is he the son you’ve always secretly wanted or what?”

“Boy, do we need to talk,” Mom said with a sigh.

More women came in and a few more male agents as well. The conference room was packed. Gower and Reader were across from each other in the middle of the table, but standing with their backs against the glass walls, as were the other male agents. In fact, the only men sitting were Christopher, Martini, and White. I found this yet another interesting tidbit to file away in hopes of it meaning something more later.

“We’ll dispense with the introductions,” White said by way of calling the meeting to order. “Miss Katt’s had a long day, and I don’t want to lose any of her information to delay or fatigue.”

Martini made some motion on the table, and suddenly it was a movie screen, albeit a weird one. It appeared to be showing only one picture, but as I looked down in front of me, I could see the images closer up, as if the screen had adapted just for me. I looked out of the corners of my eyes and could see it was the same for Mom and Martini.

We watched the news report of what had happened. “You know, I’m never buying linen again,” I said to Mom. “I look like I’ve slept in that suit.”

“It’s you. I just figured you had.” My mother, the standup comic.

“Do I really run like that?”

“Yep,” Martini confirmed. “Don’t worry, I think it’s sexy.”

“Thank God. I think I look like a cheetah on drugs.” I looked over to White. “Why are we watching this? This is the fake.”

He nodded. “I wanted you to see what the news media’s shown. It may matter later on.”

“Like when Mephistopheles or one of his pals comes to try to kill me or ask me to join their exclusive club?”

He had the grace to look unhappy. “Yes.”

“Fine. Seen it. It was more exciting in real life.”

White nodded, and the picture changed. This time, it was the real thing. I watched the man sprout wings again, saw the carnage. Only it was worse this way. In real life I’d only seen him kill his wife, and I’d stopped watching that to focus on how to stop
him
. Now, I knew he was stopped, and I was able to see what he’d done. It was sickening, in all the worst ways.

Martini reached under the table, took my hand, and gave it a little squeeze. I squeezed back, harder, and didn’t let go. The benefits of being with an empathic man were starting to look pretty good.

“What can you tell us that we can’t already see?” White asked me.

“I have no idea,” I had to admit, as I scanned everything I hadn’t seen before, which was a lot. “Your cameras really caught everything, more than I saw at the time.”

“Not our cameras,” Christopher corrected. “This is a compilation we made from the variety of amateur shots taken.” He glanced at his father. “At least a dozen different camera phones and a couple of video cameras caught some or all of this. We had to alter them all and then make sure they matched each other.” White didn’t seem impressed one way or the other.

However, in the interest of remaining civil, I decided to be Suzy Supportive. “Nice job. Very smooth, not choppy at all.”

“I’ll let my team know you appreciate their work,” Christopher said, snarl and glare both set to low.

“Panoramic, even.” In fact, I had to figure at least one of the photographers had been there doing something else, because there was a lot of detail far away from the main action. “Someone was really focused on the top of the building, weren’t they?” As I said this, I noticed a movement in the upper level of the courthouse and a flash of color that didn’t fit. “Um, can we do a rewind?”

“Sure,” Martini said and made some different hand motions. “Tell me what you’re looking for.”

As the picture rewound, I saw it again. “There, stop, go forward . . . right there.”

Martini froze the picture, and I pointed to the ninth story. There was something familiar there. “Can this zoom in?” No sooner asked than done. We were now all staring at a window on the ninth floor of the courthouse. There were some people standing at the window, watching the carnage below. Two of them were very close to the glass. And one was wearing a suit that looked very familiar.

We all stared at this image for a few long moments. “What’s the big deal about this window?” Mom asked finally. I assumed she was speaking for the entire room.

Nothing that had happened all day surprised me more than who spoke up. “I see it,” Christopher said, and for the first time all day he didn’t sound angry or nasty—he sounded freaked out. “How can Kitty be down on the street, killing a superbeing, if she’s up in that window, watching the action?”

“Get a load of who ‘I’m’ with,” I added, as I tried not to panic and failed utterly, if Martini’s hand squeeze was any indication. The picture zoomed in even more. Now it was easy to see “me” and the man next to me, even though the picture was fuzzy.

“Ronald Yates.” Mom’s voice was like lead.

In a room full of humans, I figured pandemonium would be breaking out right about now. In a room full of aliens, not so much. Everyone was staring at the pictures, studying them. What I found a particular relief was that no one was asking me how I’d managed to be in two places at once.

Christopher spoke again. “Jeff, this’ll take both of us.”

Martini let go of my hand and stood up. “Right.” He walked over to the middle of the table and so did Christopher. They were on the same side as Gower was, so on my right. The women who were sitting in this area got up and moved out of the way. No one was speaking.

The image went back to singular—no longer an image per person, just the entire table filled with this shot of the ninth-story window, with “me” and my buddy, Ronald Yates, framed within it. He had his arm around “my” waist, and I wanted to barf.

Christopher put his hand on my image, palm flat against it. Martini put his on top of Christopher’s. It looked as if they were doing a two-man “go team” move, only their hands stayed in place.

After what seemed like the longest minute of my life, they took their hands away and looked at each other. “It’s not her,” Christopher said.

“Nope. It’s not human, either,” Martini added.

“What the hell is going on?” Mom asked, echoing my thoughts this time.

“And, not that I’m arguing, but how could you tell it wasn’t me?”

Gower was the one to answer. “We’ve each got different talents, things on A-C that aren’t odd or even special, but things that are amazing on Earth. Jeff’s our strongest empath. Christopher’s our strongest imageer.”

“Come again?”

Gower managed a grin. “Someone who can touch a real image and know the person whose image is being touched. Our imageers can manipulate images, too, live or after the image is captured. It’s a common trait on our home planet.”

“The Earth tribes who think pictures take a part of their soul are right, to a degree,” Christopher explained. “The pictures copy the image of the souls and the minds, just as they copy the image of the body.”

“Yeah, if we were still on A-C, Christopher would be an artist,” Martini added.

“It’s an artistic trait?” Mom sounded suspicious.

Christopher shrugged. “On Alpha Centauri. Here it’s a useful trait for what we do.”

“Like wiretapping only different,” I suggested.

He shook his head. “Your mind is amazing. The way it does and doesn’t work, I mean.”

Mom, put her hand on my arm before I could offer up a suitable retort. “Yes, but you’re saying that’s not Kitty’s mind in that image.”

“Right,” Martini said quickly, presumably to prevent me from lunging for Christopher’s throat again. “I can feel the person through Christopher. That’s not a human woman. It’s not an A-C woman, either. I have no idea what that thing is, but it’s not Kitty.”

“I think it’s a machine,” Christopher said. “It doesn’t have a human mind at all. Close, but very different at the same time.”

“And he complains when I say the same thing,” I muttered to Mom.

“Later, please think about this,” Mom whispered back. “I mean, really think about it.” She spoke in a louder tone. “But the big question is, why?”

Everyone was silent. I decided to do some thinking right then, but not about Christopher. “What about the man with whatever is supposed to be me? Is that really Yates?”

“Good question,” Christopher said. I almost fainted. He and Martini did their hand thing again. But this time it was fast. “Oh, yeah, that’s him,” Christopher said, as they snatched their hands away. He sounded repulsed.

“He’s gross?”

“All the superbeings are . . . unpleasant for us,” Gower answered, as I watched women near both Christopher and Martini hand them some sort of hand wipes, which the two of them used as if they were germaphobes who’d just shaken hands with a leper.

“How’d he get from Arizona to New York in time to attack my mother?”

“Private jet would do it,” Reader said. “He wouldn’t even have to use any powers, just get in the Yates private SST and you’re there. He had several hours between the two attacks, after all.”

“SST?” Oh, good, something else I didn’t know.

“Supersonic transport,” Mom translated. “Okay, no argument, he’s got more than one. But again, why?”

Silence. It was nice to think with the aliens—they seemed to think with their minds, not their mouths. Of course, I was a human. But the two other humans in the room were keeping their traps shut, and I decided to follow suit.

Which worked for a while. Problem was, sitting in silence for me means I am no longer thinking about whatever it is I’m supposed to. My mind wandered before the first half a minute, thinking about the entire day, kissing Martini, how I’d discovered my mother was not who I’d thought she was, kissing Martini, how it was sort of shocking the person I had the most relatability to right now was a former top male fashion model, kissing Martini, wondering if Reader and Gower went to clubs or just stayed in, kissing Martini, and wondering if Dad was going to show up soon. None of this got me any closer to anything other than possibly falling into bed with Martini.

I forced myself to think some more. Why me? Really, why me? I wasn’t anything special. Oh, sure, I had a mother who was apparently the queen of antiterrorism, but I wasn’t involved with any of that.

Something inside my brain kicked, very hard. What had Mom said, the
first
thing she’d said, about Yates? Not that he was a monster, not that he was a tycoon, not that he was disgusting. She’d said he was the head of a terrorist organization I’d never heard of. But Mom had heard of it.

So maybe that meant Yates had heard of Mom.