She put her hands up. Took a breath. A real breath. She was breathing air. Had been for the past minute, and she understood that once again she was back inside her body.
A second figure in an identical space suit and carrying a flashlight stepped forward. The light blinded her. She tried to speak but felt faint.
“Jenna?” she managed before collapsing.
One of the spacemen rushed to her side and held her, preventing her from falling.
Dizzy. More hands were on her and soon she was being helped onto a gurney, where more spacemen in yellow strapped her down. She was too weak to fight them.
The air tasted hot, and a pungent smell stung her nose. She now realized the robot body hadn’t been able to smell or taste.
The spacemen were pushing the gurney past light stands and through a dilapidated hallway. It was nighttime and she was back inside the Bumbleberry restaurant. But soon they were wheeling her into a rippling plastic corridor with even more bright lights.
“What are you doing with me?”
The spaceman who had prevented her collapse remained next to her. “You’re safe for now, Carmen.”
“What do you mean safe? Where’s my sister?”
“She was with you inside the sphere?”
Carmen was about to answer but then tried to remember. What had happened just before she had stepped into the body of a robot on board a spaceship?
She had been attacked. Grabbed by a robot that had emerged from the sphere as they had explored the ruins of the restaurant. Everything had gone blank, and then the nightmare with her mom, with Peter, their fight.
And then there was the mystery voice on the opposite end of the red cone of light that had accused her of stealing the thing.
The spacemen stopped the gurney inside a white tent. Judging by the machines she saw, the room was half hospital room, half mad scientist’s laboratory. Her straps came off. Someone rolled up her sleeve and checked her blood pressure. Another spaceman flashed a light in her eyes. Her mouth was swabbed, her skin and fingernails scraped, and a scissor-wielding assailant snipped a lock of her hair. The personnel came and went through a flap to a neighboring tent.
Carmen shivered. Gooseflesh rose on her arms. Unseen fans were blowing cold air through several ducts. A spaceman sat her up on the gurney and checked her with an icy stethoscope.
Through it all, one of the men who had helped her from the sphere remained nearby. He held a tablet and swiped a few times at a screen before slipping it into an oversized bib pouch. His handgun was strapped to a thigh holster.
The crowd of spacemen finally thinned, with only two remaining who were writing numbers on a whiteboard labeled “C. Vincent.”
“Well congratulations, you’re not radioactive,” the man with the gun said. “I’m Agent Barrett. I was trying to reach you.”
Carmen nodded. Her jaw trembled. She couldn’t tell whether it was the chill or her nerves. On his lapel was a tiny camera. The lens stared at her and she had no doubt everything inside the tent was being recorded.
He took a blanket from the foot of the gurney and wrapped it around her. “How are you feeling?”
“I…don’t know. Jenna…”
“In time. Tell me about what happened?”
“Am I sick?”
“We’re taking every precaution. But so far, no, there’s no indication you were exposed to anything toxic. What do you know about that sphere?”
“I don’t know anything about it. I came here looking for my sister. Something attacked us. I need to know if Jenna’s okay. Is she here?”
He pulled up a stool and sat awkwardly, the billowy suit making him appear off balance. “You’ll have to be patient while we conduct our investigation. I’ll need more information from you about what happened. Then I can share what we know.”
“What do you mean? Just tell me if she’s okay.”
“Calm down.”
She pushed one of the spacemen away who was trying to clamp a sensor on her forefinger. “Don’t tell me to calm down. Am I under arrest? Just let me know if you have Jenna.”
“Look, Carmen, your sister is inside the sphere. It’s open. She’s connected to something and we don’t understand what it is yet. But you have some of the smartest people in the country working on it. You’ve just been through trauma. I’m here to help.”
“Let me go to her. Maybe I can figure something out.”
“Out of the question.”
She swung her legs off the gurney. “Take me there. Let me at least see her.”
“Lie back down. That’s not a request. We know nothing about what’s on board the sphere. We don’t know if you’ve been infected with something. And we don’t know how your mother managed to contact you and Jenna to summon you here. You came here hours ago. I need you to tell me everything you can about what happened since then.”
Carmen fought to control herself. Knew that screaming at the fed or the other spacemen or trying to rush the door would only result in them strapping her back down or maybe even sedating her. But there was something about Agent Barrett’s tone that set her on edge. She’d had her share of run-ins with local police, usually unwarranted traffic stops with a side helping of intimidation.
Agent Barrett wanted information from her and was going to do anything to get it, including lying or using Jenna against her.
But the tent and the spacemen and all the machines let her know he was more than a pushy cop. He was a federal agent with Homeland Security. The tent and all the people inside of it had to be part of his or some other agency, be it Department of Defense, CDC, Army, Navy, or the Men in Black.
