Lisa’s scream split the air, “Allie! Allie!”
Charlie and Nina darted from the kitchen to where Lisa lay furiously rubbing her eyes.
“I can’t see!” she cried.
“I’m right here in front of you,” Charlie told her. “With Nina.”
Nina slapped Lisa hard, and suddenly the room was visible, Charlie and Nina’s faces hanging like moons above her.
“I don’t know what happened,” she said, staring around. “It was like I was somewhere else, and wherever I was, I couldn’t see a thing. There was something covering my eyes.”
Charlie took her in his arms.
“Are you okay,” Lisa asked. “I mean your…”
“It’s completely healed,” Charlie told her, thinking now of Allie, of the miracle she had so clearly performed. “Twelve hours ago there was a bullet in my lung. I should be dead.”
Lisa looked at Charlie pointedly. “She stopped time, Charlie. Allie stopped time for two hours. She was trying to keep us safe.”
“I know.”
Nina shook her head. “I should have been closer to her at the soccer field,” she said mournfully. “I should have…”
“No,” Lisa said. “I should have known something was… happening. We always had this connection, Allie and me, we always…” She stopped and looked at Charlie. “Where is she, Charlie?” she pleaded. “Where’s my little girl?”
From behind the observation glass, Mary watched as Allie sat alone in the adjoining room, the helmet securely on her head. Wakeman stood beside Mary, his eyes on the little girl.
“She knows we’re in here,” Mary said. “She knows we’re watching her.”
Wakeman nodded. “We haven’t had a chance to talk, Mary.”
Mary held her gaze on Allie. “What do you want to talk about?”
Wakeman opened the door of the room and ushered Mary out into the corridor. “Your father,” he said.
“The craft,” Mary said coldly. “The bodies. He lost them.”
“He couldn’t have stopped what happened,” Wakeman told her.
“He could have tried,” Mary said. She stared Wakeman directly in the eyes.
Wakeman nodded.
“You think I have no remorse, right?” Mary asked him.
“I think you did what you had to do,” Wakeman said.
She could see how deeply he loved her. “Really?”
“Really,” Wakeman said. He leaned in to kiss her, then saw General Beers striding down the corridor.
“You’ve got the girl?” Beers asked.
“Yes,” Mary answered.
The general stepped inside the observation room and stared through the glass to where Allie sat alone, the helmet still on her head.
“You really believe that thing you put on her head is blocking a signal?” General Beers asked.
“Right now they’re in their ship scratching their little gray heads and wondering where in the world their little girl could be,” Wakeman said lightly. “Believe me, the minute we take that shield off, here they come.”
“And you’re confident we can take them down?” Beers asked.
“Wherever they come from,” Wakeman answered. “The minute they enter our time and space, our reality, they are confronted by the laws of our physics. Remember, in 1947, in Roswell, New Mexico, a ship came down when it collided with the Mogul spy balloon. Just a balloon, but it brought down their ship.”
General Beers was clearly satisfied. He motioned Mary and Wakeman to follow him, then led them out of the building.
“You’ve done a fine job,” he said to them. “We will always be indebted to you.”
Mary saw an odd glint in the general’s eyes. “Always?” she asked.
General Beers’ face stiffened. “That’s right.”
“You mean…?”
“I mean you’ve done your part, Ms. Crawford,” the general interrupted. “The little girl is part of a military operation now.”
“A military operation?” Mary shot back angrily. “General, for three generations my family has been preparing for this day. I’ve given my career, no, my whole life over to this.”
The general smiled thinly. “And don’t think we don’t appreciate it,” he said. He looked over Mary’s shoulder, where several trucks were moving toward them. “You’re benched. Go sit down.”
“In a matter of days, we may be able to step inside one of their craft,” Mary protested. “We may be able to meet these… beings. Do you honestly think I’m going to stand by while you take that opportunity from me?”
“You don’t really have a choice,” the general said confidently. He nodded as the truck came to a halt and several soldiers piled out of the back, arms at the ready. “Except for a few clean-up details. Like that doctor in Seattle. And the little girl’s parents.”
“We have people for that,” Mary said.
General Beers’ features hardened. “Don’t think I don’t know what happened to your father,” he said threateningly. Then, with a flourish, he wheeled around to face Wakeman. “You can ride with me, Doctor,” he said.
Wakeman didn’t move. “Ride with you?”
“We need your expertise,” the general explained.
Wakeman looked helplessly at Mary, then back to General Beers.
“I’m not giving you a choice here, Doctor,” Beers told him as the soldiers came forward, surrounding them. “Now let’s get the girl,” he added. “As you can see, her transport is ready.” The general turned his back to Mary. “Just how powerful is this little girl, Doctor?”
“She has demonstrated powers beyond anything we imagined,” Wakeman replied. “She’s capable of manipulating time. She has amazing abilities to screen… to project images from our minds.”
The general looked at him doubtfully.
“She made an entire group of people see something that wasn’t there at all,” Wakeman said. “That’s how powerful she is.”
Mary stepped away as the soldiers entered the building, the general in the lead, Wakeman at his side. She waited in the bright light until they emerged again, Allie with them now, the shield still in place on her head. Within minutes she was gone, and in the wake of her leaving Mary felt a terrible heaviness descend upon her, everything she’d worked for gone, vanished the way the craft had vanished and the bodies had vanished, the way everything had vanished but…
She whirled around, walked quickly to her office, opened the safe and took it out, a small metal artifact, oddly marked, which, as it rested in her hand, suddenly began to glow.
Chapter Two
Allie sat on the bed of the farmhouse where they’d taken her. She could feel the metal helmet, but during the long drive through miles and miles of farmland she’d learned to balance its weight, which was part of the way you had to live, she supposed, dealing with burdens that came out of nowhere and gave no sign of going away.
A nurse had hooked a tube to her arm, and the little pinch of the needle still ached slightly.
