Inheritance (42 page)

Footsteps sounded above.

She tried to roll onto her back but her shoulder got in the way, grinding painfully into the ground. She scooted onto her side as well as she could, using her legs to turn herself, and angled her head toward the ceiling. There were several cracks of light in the middle of the roof. As the footsteps returned, she realized she was seeing floorboards. She must be in a basement somewhere. That explained the odor of mildew and closed-up spaces.

A voice called, “I’m going to check on them.”

“Take the drugs,” someone else said.

A door opened, spilling light into the basement. Reese froze, closing her eyes. The only thing she could think to do was play dead.

The man came down the stairs. Reese heard a click, and then light glowed through her eyelids. He had turned on an overhead bulb. His boots scuffed across the floor and paused. She heard a muffled whimper. Amber.

“You awake yet?” the man said in a low voice. There was a soft thump, and Amber cried out.

Fear lanced white-hot through the lingering haze in Reese’s mind. The man laughed.

“Aliens,” he muttered. “Too bad they don’t all look like you.”

Upstairs a door slammed. The sound of men’s voices floated down the stairs. “Why’s the door open?” someone asked.

“Wilson’s giving them another dose.”

“Aw, shit. I wanted to see them awake.”

“Why?”

Another man laughed. “Why do you think?”

They came down the stairs, their footsteps loud and carefree. Reese held herself as perfectly still as she could, trying to
pretend she was the dirt floor itself. Her heart was beating so loudly she was terrified they would notice her twitching.

A pair of footsteps came closer to her. Paused. A man said, “What about this one? This is the human chick, right?” He grabbed Reese’s shoulder and pulled her onto her back, causing her to land on her wrists and elbows. Pain spiked up her arms and her head spun from the sudden movement. She forced her body to remain limp on the ground even as her upper arms burned from being twisted in a direction they didn’t want to go. “She’s still out,” the man said, sounding disappointed.

“Forget about her. This one’s awake.”

There was a ripping sound, and suddenly Amber screamed, “Don’t touch her! Don’t you fucking touch her!”

A thunk, brutal and hard. Amber made a guttural noise.

“Shut up or we’ll tape you again.”

Sweat broke out on Reese’s skin. She heard the sound of Amber’s ragged breath across the room.

Footsteps shuffled across the dirt. “Maybe she likes to be gagged,” said one man. The others laughed.

Reese concentrated on breathing. They wouldn’t do anything to Amber, would they? Her brain was so foggy that part of her felt as if she must be dreaming this.

“Let’s take a look at you. Just how alien are you?”

A snicker went through the men again. Desperately, Reese tried to figure out how many there were. Three? Four? She opened her eyes a sliver. The basement leaped into view, the overhead light seeming bright as a mini sun. It made her head pound. She winced and then froze, but she soon realized none of the men was looking in her direction at all. They were the
soldiers from the van, and they were all on the other side of the basement standing in front of Amber, their backs to Reese. She couldn’t see Amber clearly, but she did see something move through the men’s legs.

“Nice shoes,” one of the soldiers said.

“Who’s looking at her shoes? You got something you wanna tell us, Carter?” More laughter.

Reese’s gaze darted around the basement, searching frantically for something, anything she could use to get away from this place. She saw David lying in a heap in another corner, face-down and turned away from her. She couldn’t tell if he was awake or not.
David?
she thought, but her head throbbed when she tried to communicate with him. It felt as if a thick, cloaking blanket had been tossed over her mind, muffling her ability to project her thoughts. She couldn’t focus enough to be sure that he had heard her.

Reese looked back at the soldiers. She was afraid to watch but too terrified to look away. The men moved slightly and Amber came into view through a narrow gap between two legs. She was huddled on her side, knees bent, her dress hitched up to her thighs.

“Open up, Blondie,” one of the soldiers said. Reese thought it was Carter.

“Get away from me,” Amber hissed, pushing herself away from them until she struck the wall.

“There’s nowhere for you to go,” Carter said.

“I thought your people were
friendly
,” said another soldier. That got a big laugh.

“Not to assholes,” Amber spit out.

“Oooh, she’s got some fire in her,” one soldier said, and then he stepped forward and smacked her. “Shut up.”

“Now, here’s how we’re gonna do this,” said Carter, who was obviously the leader. “Wilson, go upstairs and shut the door.”

“Why?” said Wilson. Reese remembered that he had been the first one down here. “What sorta shit you thinking of pulling? You know Torres ain’t gonna stand for that.”

“Torres ain’t here,” Carter growled. “Go upstairs and shut the door.”

Wilson glared at the other soldier, but Reese saw him make the decision to give in. He was outnumbered. There was one of him and three of them, and if they were all Blue Base soldiers, he had no chance, even if he was one too. He gave the other soldiers a disgusted look and stomped up the stairs.

“Aiiight,” said Carter, clapping his hands together. “Come on, E.T. Let’s see what you got.”

One of the men bent down to grab Amber’s ankle and she kicked him, the heel of her shoe digging into his arm. He grunted in shock and cursed before yanking her shoe off and throwing it out of the way. Reese watched it spin across the floor, black patent leather still shining in the light of the bare bulb. She thought she was going to vomit.

Amber was screaming now, loudly, cursing at them over and over. The men laughed as they pulled off her other shoe and held her legs down.

Reese took a deep breath. She opened her eyes fully, and with a groan, she lurched onto her side and scrambled to her knees. Her muscles were sluggish and she still couldn’t think clearly, but she knew she had to do something. Before she had a chance,
someone came running out of nowhere and rammed into one of the soldiers.

It was David. She heard the thud of his head meeting the hard muscle of the soldier’s body, and the surprised
oof
as the man swayed on his feet.

“What the—”

David rammed himself into another soldier. It was like tossing pebbles at a brick wall, but the soldiers were initially so startled that he at least got them to move away from Amber.

“You awake, chinky?” one of the soldiers snarled. He grabbed David and slammed him against the wall, and Reese felt the impact like a physical blow to her stomach.

The pain seemed to clear her head—and David’s. She became briefly aware of him struggling through the remnants of the sedative to tell her something, but his thoughts slid away before she could grasp them. She saw David’s head lolling against his shoulder, his chest heaving. The soldiers turned in unison to face him. He met Reese’s gaze from across the room and shook his head slightly. She felt him urging her to stay put in a fierce wave of
Don’t move
. Then one of the soldiers punched him in the face. Blood spattered across the dirt floor.

“Maybe the boy just wants his turn,” said Carter.

David launched himself, battered face and all, directly at the soldier. The man caught him as if he was plucking a ball out of the air and threw him against the floor. David made a sound between a yelp and a muffled scream. Reese felt his pain burst through him like an electric shock, and then he went unconscious.

Reese got to her feet just as Amber did. They saw each other across the space of the basement, and at the same time, they both ran at the soldier who had thrown David to the floor. But it was pointless. One of the men grabbed Reese and said, “Look who’s awake.” She cried out against the tape over her mouth as he jerked her arms back. Amber shrieked as another soldier caught her.

The door at the top of the stairs crashed open. A woman’s voice called down, “What the hell is going on down there?”

The man who was holding Reese spun around to face the stairs, bringing her with him. A woman in fatigues came down. She had black hair pulled into a tight bun at the nape of her neck and a scowl on her face that could choke someone twenty feet away.

“The kids are awake,” said the soldier who had punched David.

“Yeah? Did you wake them by beating them up?” the woman asked.

“We were just having some fun,” said the man holding Reese.

“They’re not for your fun,” the woman said coldly. “Do you know what would happen if they got damaged?”

“They’re supposed to heal fast,” said the soldier holding Amber. “We wouldn’t hurt ’em. We were just checking out the alien chick.”

The woman glared at him. “Put them down and drug them up and don’t ever do this again. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” they all said in unison.

Reese was deposited back into her corner. David was dragged
over to another. Amber was taken back to her wall and she slid down to the floor. One of the soldiers opened a case that Reese hadn’t noticed before. He pulled out a hypodermic needle.

She squirmed, moaning against the tape. She didn’t want to be put under again. She didn’t know what the soldiers would do to them while they were unconscious.

The woman took the needle from the soldier and came over to Reese, squatting beside her. She had brown skin and full lips and dark eyes that seemed to burn with a frightening fever. “Shut up,” she said. And then she plunged the needle into Reese’s shoulder.

Voices trickled through the floorboards. Reese tried
to listen but her brain wouldn’t focus.

“… handoff was supposed to happen yesterday,” a man said.

“What’s the delay?” a different man asked.

“We’re waiting for Randall to make up her mind,” said the first person.

“That’s what happens when the president’s a woman. Can’t make up her fucking mind.”

“Shut up,” said a woman’s voice. A thud.

“Jesus, Torres.”

Reese blinked in the dark. She was facing the center of the basement. The slivers of light that shone through the floorboards above weren’t enough to cut the gloom, but they gave her an idea of where she was.

“They should be awake again.” The voice came from a woman, but it wasn’t the woman who had come downstairs before.

“We’ll go down and check.” That was the woman from before. It had to be Torres.

“You want me to go?” Reese thought the man speaking was Wilson.

“No,” said Torres. “You stay up here and keep an eye on the boys. I don’t want them near the kids again. Griffin and I will go.”

The door opened and Reese lay still, her pulse speeding up as Torres and Griffin came downstairs. Reese heard a clunk as a box was set on the ground. The needles. A couple more thumps sounded like plastic bottles. Reese heard the women walk away from her; they were checking on Amber or David first.

“They must have really clocked him,” Griffin said. “His face is still bruised and he’s still out.”

“We don’t know how fast they heal,” Torres said.

“I should examine him. You can’t just give a kid a concussion and then dope him up and expect him to be okay.”

“Go ahead. I’ll check the others.”

Reese listened to Torres walk across the basement. She heard a moan from Amber. “This one’s almost up,” Torres said. Her footsteps came over to Reese, and a moment later Reese felt the woman nudge her shoulder. “How about you?”

Reese held still for a moment, trying to stretch her consciousness toward Torres. But the woman was barely touching her, and Reese’s brain was still so fuzzy from the drugs that all she got was a vague sensation of hardness, like a shell. She opened her eyes. Torres was looking directly at her.

“I knew you were awake,” Torres said. “Dinnertime.” She
pulled Reese up to a seated position as easily as if Reese weighed nothing. “I’m gonna take off the tape, but if you make any noise, I’ll put it right back on. Understand?”

Reese nodded, and Torres ripped off the tape. Reese let out a short cry of pain. Torres considered Reese.

“I’m gonna cut your hands free so you can feed yourself. You aren’t gonna do anything else.”

Reese shook her head. Her lips were cracked and dry. “Water?”

“I got that too.” Torres turned Reese around. Reese heard the flick of a pocketknife, and then the plastic bindings were gone.

Her arms ached as she brought her hands in front of herself. Torres opened a water bottle and held it up to Reese’s mouth. She reached for it with numb hands, trying to hold it in place. The liquid sloshed over her chin but it was the best thing she had ever tasted in her entire life. She sucked at the bottle greedily, swallowing as much as she could. When she was finished, her hands were tingling, the blood surging into her fingers.

Torres unwrapped an energy bar and handed it to her. “Eat up,” she said, and then went across the room to Amber.

Reese ate the bar. It tasted like plastic coated with peanut butter, but she wasn’t about to complain. Even though it smelled disgusting, her stomach still growled. Torres had left the water bottle with her, and when she was finished inhaling the energy bar she picked it up and drank the last few drops, holding her head back to drain it. The food and water pushed away some of the fog in her mind, and she watched as Torres gave Amber the same treatment. David was still being examined by Griffin and hadn’t moved.

Torres glanced across the basement at Reese. “You finished?”

“Yeah,” Reese said hoarsely.

Amber’s face was in shadow but she said, “Reese? Are you okay?”

“Shut up,” Torres said almost automatically. “Eat your dinner.”

“I’m fine,” Reese said anyway.

Torres crossed the room in a flash, leaning over her. “I said no talking.” Torres pulled a plastic strip from a receptacle on her belt. “Hold up your hands.”