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Federal Detention Facility
Gallup, New Mexico
SITTING ALONE, Emmogene Anderson looked down at the alien tattoo on her left forearm. It was a length of script and symbols, embedded into the flesh from just below the elbow to just above the wrist. The only way to remove them was through surgery and medications, she’d read once. It wasn’t just a marking on the skin, it was part of the body. If you just tried to scrape it off it would grow back. It was the mark of the alien collaborator. It was how the Visitors had kept track of the humans who had served them.
Visitors, she thought bitterly. It was the name they had preferred. It sounded nonthreatening. They claimed to have hailed from a star in the constellation of Sagittarius, specifically the Sagittarius Dwarf Irregular Galaxy. Most people simply called them aliens, or the Greys, but they were more formally known as Sagittarians.
It was strange, she thought. The most momentous occurrence in all of human history happened, followed by the bloodiest and costliest war ever. She’d been right there in the middle of it all and yet she could scarcely remember it. Her memory had been wiped by the Visitors at the end of the war, some eight years earlier. She had only broken, fragmented memories of her life before that. Why did her mother take her to the Visitors? What had she done when under their influence? What did they do to her? Emmogene had few answers. Maybe when she got out, she could figure out who she used to be, and why she did the things she’d done.
Getting out was something she’d not thought of very much. She had almost no recollection of being “free”; being a prisoner in one way or another was all she knew. For the first three years after the war ended, she’d been on the run with United Earth Alliance holdouts, people who refused to accept that the Visitors had abandoned them. They rarely stayed in one place for more than a few months, and she was never allowed to leave. After that, she’d been captured, shipped back to the United States, and put on trial.
She frowned and looked at the remains of the food on her tray. What was the point of worrying about all this now? It would be months before she was even eligible for early release. Until then, the only thing she could do was keep her head down and stay out of trouble. She spent most of her free time in the facility’s small library. She expected that by the end of her sentence, she’d have read every single book there.
It was a goal, at least. Books helped fill in the gaps in her memories, let her know what transpired during the years she’d lost. They also provided her with a badly needed distraction from reality. In any case, it was a new month! They usually got a batch of new books in at the beginning of each month. She decided to head to the library and see if they’d gotten anything interesting in. Emmogene stood up, grabbed her tray, and turned to head to the trash cans . . . and immediately crashed into someone. She lost her grip on her tray, as did the woman she’d bumped into. Half-eaten chili-mac splashed up on the poor woman’s face and chest.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!” Emmogene sputtered. The other woman was shorter than her, with a stocky, muscular build, short-cropped red hair. On one forearm she had a length of alien script similar to Emmogene’s. On the other, she had a terrestrial tattoo of an inverted sword behind an eye.
Emmogene knew what that tattoo meant: this woman had been Internal Security. InSec.
“What the fuck!” the woman snarled, wiping her face on her sleeve. Undaunted by their height difference, she reached up, grabbed the collar of Emmogene’s coverall, and pulled her down to eye level. “You need to watch where you’re going, bitch, or . . .” She paused, and looked down at the Sagittarian script on Emmogene’s arm. “You were Section 37.”
“What?” Emmogene asked.
Before the woman could answer, a pair of the guards approached, shouting at the woman to let her go.
“Yeah, yeah,” the woman said, releasing Emmogene. “It was just an accident.”
The female guards weren’t impressed. “Second warning, Red,” one of them said, baton held at the ready. “One more incident out of you and it’s a month in the cooler.”
The woman, Red, glared up at Emmogene before picking up her tray and walking off.
Emmogene, for her part, exhaled heavily as the guards intervened. They wore blue uniforms, with body armor, helmets, and face shields. Each carried a long metal baton and a big canister of OC spray.
“You’re the new girl, right?” the taller one asked. “Just got transferred over from Barstow?” Her voice was rough.
“Y-yes, ma’am,” Emmogene replied. “Anderson, Emmogene, Prisoner ID 21645899.”
“That’s what I thought,” the woman said, with a smirk. “You been here a month and you’re already getting into trouble.”
“I didn’t mean to cause any trouble!”
“You should be more careful. Red’s a vindictive bitch.”
“What?”
“I’d stay away from the places the cameras don’t cover if I were you.”
Emmogene’s eyes were wide. She was trying not to shake. The facility in Barstow, California, had been made up mostly of low-level offenders like her, and there was rarely any trouble. “Okay. Thank you.”
The shorter guard flipped up her visor and glared at Emmogene. “Don’t ever thank us, you fucking traitor.”
“What?”
The guard looked down at the mess on the floor. “Clean that up.”
Without another word, the two guards left Emmogene standing there. Her tray was still on the floor. She’d never felt more alone.