“Okay, let’s start by telling us who you are and what’s going on,” Walter said.
“Let me guess,” Franklin said, “We probably can’t pronounce your name.”
“That is probably the case. You can call me Christy.”
“This conversation is starting on familiar ground,” Walter said.
“If you don’t trust me, I can understand. After your experience with Mike, I wouldn’t blame you.”
“Yeah, it’s all rather confusing, but after the conversation I recorded…” Franklin said.
“What have you been doing here all those years?” Kendra asked.
“Minding my own business and trying to live an uneventful life…and keeping my eye out for others who might be up to no good.”
“Others like Mike and his friend?” Walter asked.
“Exactly. They’re bad news. Let me guess. Mike gave you a story about the other man being the bad guy and how he’s here to stop him, and he probably gave you a bunch of vague information about his planet and his culture.”
“That’s pretty much it.”
“Well, I had a planet and a culture, until they showed up. Now whoever’s left there is enslaved and I can’t go back. They ruined their own planet centuries ago, so now they search the galaxy for other planets that have the resources they need and they simply take over, whether or not there are people there to get in their way. They just roll in and take what they need. In your case, it’s people. The cost to take over this planet would be too high, so they just take people and use them as soldiers in their other wars.”
“That’s rather disturbing. How many have they taken from here?”
“I don’t know, precisely. I’ve managed to stop a few, but there’s no way I can get into their holding facilities to rescue the ones who are already there. They put them in cryostasis until they’re needed, and while they’re out, they’re reprogrammed to fight. They wake them up, ship them out, and deploy them to the war zones. Most of the time, they’re discreet. If a craft is spotted, it’s listed as a UFO sighting and the people who report them are often written off as crazy.”
“So all those crazy alien abduction stories?” Kendra asked.
“A good number are true. Those are often the ones I manage to stop. I’ve gotten a few people out and returned them to their families. The smart ones just keep their mouths shut.”
“What happened to your planet?” Kendra asked.
“They rolled in with troop transports, after bombarding us from orbit for a month. We were not a warlike society, so we had no chance. We had weapons, of course, but not like them, and it was over almost before it started. They blockaded the planet, but I managed to slip out in one of their ships.”
“How did you manage that?”
“One of their pilots wanted to have his way with me. He was drunk and sloppy. I knocked him on the head and took his ship. Other ships were headed back to the larger ships in orbit to pick up more material for the ground troops, and I just followed them off the surface. I slipped around one of the cruisers and jumped straight to hyperspace without even looking where I was headed.”
“Did anyone else make it out?” Franklin asked.
“I met a couple others here. I don’t know if any others escaped. One is living on a ranch in Colorado and another is in a fishing village on the west coast of Ireland. We keep in touch, but we have to be careful.”
“Okay, about the night we met, why were you acting so helpless when that thug took your purse?” Walter asked.
“I guess I owe you an explanation. I saw you get zapped, so I had an idea what was going to happen. Mike was after me, he was drunk, and he missed me and hit you. The beam has different effects on your people than mine. I would have been killed if he had hit me, or incapacitated and turned into…what do you call it…a vegetable. When that man approached, I had an idea what he was up to, so I just stood there and made myself an easy target.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I needed to be sure. I had an idea what had happened to you. It’s happened before, but they managed to remove the person before it became public.”
“How did they manage that?”
“There is a device that can neutralize your powers. It doesn’t always work, but in the other cases the people weren’t affected as strongly as you were and they were able to be killed. You were the first one that developed the way you did, and after that, it was a simple case of them hitting the woman intentionally. After they couldn’t neutralize you, they figured keeping you busy with her would be the next best thing to keep you from messing with their operation.”
“And it would have worked if she hadn’t messed with us,” Kendra said.
“Pretty much. What were you doing anyway?”
“Following Mike. We thought we were being discreet,” Franklin said.
“Okay, here’s what we know so far. Mike pretty much lied to us and he’s actually working with this other dude,” Walter said, “He hit me with that bright light by accident and it gave me these crazy powers, but if he had hit you with the same thing it would have incapacitated you. That makes no sense.”
“It doesn’t make any sense to me either, but our systems are different. I’m already a bit overpowered compared to the average human, so for some reason, the same thing that would take my powers away seems to affect you differently.”
“How about this thing he gave me?” Walter said, holding up the cylinder Mike had given him, “He said it would transfer my powers to another, if the time comes I want to do that.”
“It could work that way, but it’s never been tested. It might do you
