altered lagoon from the vantage point of one of the alien flying creatures. Then, from a mutated snake-headed turtle on the edge of Patrick Air Force Base, she saw hundreds of terrified civilians huddled on the ground behind a thin line of soldiers. Colon stood at the head of the formation looking like a cornered alley cat.
“We don’t intend to kill any more of them, but we can’t let them leave,” Mariella said. “The thoughts of their commander told us that they weren’t engaging us with their most powerful weapons, because of the presence of non-combatants. I hope you can talk to them and buy us more time. The master species will be ready soon.”
How the alien race would make a difference in relations with the military, Moni didn’t know. So she probed Mariella’s mind. They could either initiate direct diplomatic efforts with some help from mental “persuasion” or they could ratchet up the war machine and raze Patrick along with everybody there. They had gained a detailed layout of the base by capturing a soldier’s head and accessing his brain.
“Before you do anything, let me speak with my government,” Moni told the thousands of collective mental listeners. “I don’t think they’ll launch an attack if they understand that we’re the only surviving refugees from your planet. If you let the civilians go, and sign a peace treaty, they might back down. But, in case they won’t listen, you better get ready because the military will go all out.”
Moni figured she’d help them by probing deep into the captive soldier’s brain and looking for signs only a human would understand. The massive worm hosted the collection of brains, which it utilized much like a computer might use spare hard drives or backup servers. The consciousnesses were gone, but the memories and processing power remained. Since they weren’t labeled neatly, Moni skipped between each captive brain and combed through its memories looking for the soldier.
She saw herself topless on the bed with tattooed black hands squeezing her breasts. That familiar deep voice said, “Yeah, girl! Give it to me!” Moni tried pulling out of his head, but Darren wouldn’t let her go. She watched through his eyes as he grabbed her hair, called her a bitch and then smacked her in the eye. The battered woman fell to her knees. Not reaching for the firearm at her side, she buried her face into her hands and pressed them on the kitchen tile as she balled tears. Standing over her, Darren said, “You ain’t leaving me.”
She didn’t leave. Moni had stayed with him for another month-until he cheated again. With his memories now open, she found that he had been fucking around since their third month together and she had caught him only twice.
Darren wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been honest with her.
“Why’d you keep his horrible mind? Why didn’t you erase what he did to me?”
“We could have destroyed his memories, but that wouldn’t erase what happened to you,” Mariella said. “You must remember why you can’t return to the humans. Their nature is violent.”
Meeting her with a steely glare, Mariella no longer resembled a little girl who drew adorable pictures with crayons. Her words sounded so stark when they came directly from her mind, instead of as persuasive thoughts inside Moni’s head. She wondered whether she had been talking to a clever machine the whole time.
“Humans are violent. And your nature is peaceful?” Moni asked. “So many people died so you could have your lagoon.”
“They died out of the necessity for our survival. We didn’t take anyone without reason. Most of them were hostile toward us.”
“For real? I’ll see about that.”
Moni cycled through the brains tethered to the worm until she found the one. Accessing the last memories before the woman had been taken, she saw her wading into the lagoon and grabbing a girl floating face down with her black hair swaying in the emerald green water. “Mariella!” she cried as she rolled her daughter over and gawked at her puffy face. The girl’s eyes didn’t open, but she retched up water and gasped for air. “ Gracias a Dios!”
The woman scooped her limp daughter up in her arms and brought her ashore. She asked the girl how she felt. Mariella shivered and chattered her teeth. Her husband rushed over and asked her what happened in Spanish, which Moni understood from the woman’s perspective. She chastised him for not watching her. In the middle of his apology, Mariella wiggled out of her mother’s arms and knelt by her side pointing at the lagoon. “No, you’ve had enough of that for one day, muchacha,” the woman said. Stubborn little Mariella felt otherwise. She took the woman’s hand and led her to the water’s edge. Her husband followed curiously.
“That’s enough,” the woman said as she stopped and planted her feet. She didn’t know why, but the woman sensed impending danger in the water. The girl clenched down on her hand. When she tried pulling free, Marellia’s grip intensified until a bone in her hand snapped. “Ow! Mariella, what are you doing?”
Those were the woman’s last words. Without understanding why, she knelt down and stuck her head into the lagoon. Scrambling for air, she pushed against the ground and kicked her legs through the dirt. A tiny yet firm hand on the back of her neck wouldn’t let her reach the surface. She felt her husband’s strong hand grip her around the waist. She latched onto him and nearly left the water. A second later, he fell in with her. She saw her husband’s bushy eyebrows and cheeks beside her in the lagoon as they were drowned by their young daughter. The purple mist fogged the water. Her memories ceased.
They had murdered a family. First they crushed the blossoming mind of a little girl and then they baited her parents into the lagoon by posing as their precious child. They had conned everyone, including Moni.
Mariella wasn’t a person. She was a vessel they had used for luring unsuspecting people into their possession. Sure, they hadn’t beheaded Moni, and plugged her brain into the worm, but she had helped them much more by being so susceptible to their manipulation. As Moni gathered information from the thousands of minds around her, it became so obvious. No adult could function as a mute, and still monitor the human response to the invasion. A little girl would draw less suspicion, yet she needed a guardian that she could speak through. Moni had fiercely shielded Mariella from questioning, and aided their ruse to make the Lagoon Watcher the focus of the investigation. By tapping into her mind, and the heads of those around her, the aliens had a player in the other team’s huddle.
They had identified the witnesses and killed them. They staged Mariella’s kidnapping with the gator, so they could kill the two people who pursued her. They led Mrs. Mint into the forest, so they could exact revenge on her for not protecting their prized host. Their sea turtle knocked Professor Swartzman out of his boat, and drowned him in acid because he had learned too much. They would have killed Aaron too, if he hadn’t escaped. And they knew full well that building their bubble over the lagoon would ignite a massacre, and trap the people on the beachside.
“You selected their fate,” Mariella said. “When you decided that your father must die so you could live safely, you demonstrated the moral choice for us. We can’t live safely on this planet without the barrier protecting us, and housing our world’s atmosphere.”
When Mariella’s words wouldn’t unveil all, Moni delved into the alien bio-machine’s thoughts. Moni’s lesson hadn’t just extended to safeguarding their species. It meant killing when confronted. They had learned by studying Moni’s past about how colonizing humans exploited the weaknesses of others. Yet, humans would shrink from a dominating show of force.
“Is that what you have in store for us once the master species breaks free from their fish bowl? You’ll pound us until we’re so terrified that we won’t go near you?” Moni scowled at Mariella, whose shrugging pixie face didn’t look so cute any more. She wondered how many times an apparently innocent glace like that with some mental “suggestions” thrown in had influenced Moni into doing horrible things. Officer Harrison and DCF Agent Roberts died because she had left them to the gator. She had shot four police officers with the girl in her arms. Detective Sneed, who had been right all along, damn him, died at her hands. She had murdered the finest officer she had ever known-the man who would have stopped the massacre if it weren’t for her. Racist or not, he saved lives. She destroyed them.
Obviously detecting her thoughts as well, Mariella seized Moni’s hands and squeezed them tight enough to grind her bones into dust. Not anymore. She was one of them now. Moni had equal strength. Her mind no longer bowed. She wiggled one hand free and drew her pistol from her ankle holster. The acidic water hadn’t devoured the weapon yet, so she knew it could do the job at close range.
“We brought you into this world because we trusted you. You rescued us. We love you, mommy.” Mariella’s eyes sparkled with a violet hue as she emitted the words into Moni’s head. “We know how painful and disorientating it is to become a hybrid species. That’s why we always erase the consciousness. We kept you because you chose to value us over your own kind, and even your own life. You belong here with us.”
Mariella rested a gentle hand against Moni’s cheek as their eyes locked. She had seen such joy on the girl’s face when she rode that horse at the ranch. She had seemed so human. Moni thought she could rescue this girl like she had wished someone could have saved her from her abusive childhood. In some perverse way, she had
