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Federal Detention Facility
Gallup, New Mexico
AS WAS OFTEN THE CASE, Emmogene was the last one in the prison library when it closed down for the evening. The guard gave her a curt nod as she left, and he closed the steel door and locked it behind her. It would be lights out soon, and normally all the prisoners in the women’s wing would be making their way to their cells right about now. Things seemed quieter than usual, though. Emmogene didn’t think she’d lingered that long, but she picked up her pace. She didn’t want to get in trouble for not being in her cell at 2100 hours on the dot.
Her cell was on the second level. Her cellmate, Gretchen, was in the high-risk bloc for an attempted suicide, so Emmogene had the place to herself for a while. She liked it, even if the circumstances weren’t great.
The corridor to the main cellblock was wide and dimly lit. Emmogene didn’t dawdle here; she didn’t know if it was true, but there was a rumor that the cameras in this corridor didn’t work, and she didn’t want to be any place where they couldn’t see her. The crew on cleaning detail for the week was gathered around the janitorial closest, putting their equipment away for the night. One of them, a tall woman with her hair shaved down to fuzz, glared at Emmogene in silence.
Her coverall sleeves were rolled up. She had the Internal Security tattoo on her arm.
Emmogene’s heart dropped into her stomach and she got ready to sprint to the cellblock. As she took her first step, though, a hand clamped around her arm. She whipped her head around to see who had grabbed her—it was Red. Without another word, the woman slugged Emmogene right in the face. She hit her again in the stomach.
Emmogene gasped for air and tried to focus as at least two women dragged her into the cleaning closet. Her eyes were watering and swelling up, and she could barely see. She knocked over an empty mop bucket as they tossed her roughly to the floor. There were three women in the closet with her.
“Please!” Emmogene pleaded. “I’m sorry! I didn’t—”
“Shut up!” Red snarled, cutting her off. She grabbed Emmogene’s arm and showed her alien marking to the others. “She was Section 37, right?”
A woman to Red’s left, a sullen-looking, bespectacled blonde who had tied the top half of her orange jumpsuit around her waist, pushed her glasses up, leaned in, and squinted at Emmogene’s marking. “I think so.” She looked Emmogene in the eye. “What’s your name?”
“E-Emmogene. Emmogene Anderson.”
The stout, muscular woman to Red’s right spoke up. Her voice was so raspy it sounded like she ate cigarettes instead of smoking them. “I think I remember her from when I worked for Section 37. She was a program subject.”
Section 37. Program subject. Emmogene struggled to remember, her mind filled with a torrent of incoherent, disconnected images and sounds. She remembered being strapped to a table, conscious but immobilized, while they drilled into her head. One of the Visitors themselves was personally supervising. It considered her coldly through oversized eyes. Emmogene remembered being run through a series of tests, where she was trying to do . . . something . . . to different people.
Looking up, Emmogene summoned the courage to speak. “Do you know who I am? I don’t . . . I don’t remember.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Red said. “You would have been memory-wiped at the end of the war.”
“But . . . how do you know all this?”
The blonde pointed to the tattoo on her arm. Of course. InSec. They had been the United Earth Alliance’s counterintelligence operatives. They were little more than a criminal gang now, but during the aliens’ reign they had been omnipresent within the UEA, and had enjoyed almost unlimited power.
“What do you want from me?” Emmogene asked, unable to hide the fear in her voice. “Is this because I bumped into you? I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!”
“How did you get yourself captured?” Red asked, ignoring her question.
“I was with a group of refugees in southern Mexico. I’m not sure where, exactly. We moved around a lot. I was with an Earth Storm commando named Anthony Krieg at first, and he took me to a man named Suliman Alvarez.”
The three ex-InSec looked at each other. They seemed to recognize that name.
“There were about twenty of us at first, right after the war ended. Then Anthony and some others left to fight, said they were going to build an insurgency against the Americans. After that it was just Suliman’s people and me. In the end, it was just me.”
“The end?” the blonde asked. “What happened?”
“The Mexican Army raided the farm we were staying on. I don’t know how they knew we were there. Maybe somebody betrayed us. They sent in commandos. Everyone was killed except for me.”
Red raised an eyebrow. “Why didn’t they kill you?”
Emmogene’s expression hardened. “Because Suliman had me locked in a little room in the basement—for my safety, he said. He was worried I’d try to run away. The soldiers probably thought I was a sex slave or something. I didn’t try to fight. They figured out I was American and turned me over to the US government. That was four years ago. I don’t know why they dragged me around and kept me locked up for years after the war ended. They said I was important, but they never told me why.”
“Suliman Alvarez was InSec,” Red said. “He kept you with him because you came from Section 37. A Section 37 asset is to be protected at all costs and never allowed to fall into enemy hands. He should have killed you instead of letting you get taken alive.”
“There were plenty of times I wished he would have,” Emmogene said, bitterly. “The Mexicans didn’t give him a choice.”
“Yeah, well, that puts me in kind of a bad spot, kid. Right now, the Americans don’t know who you really are.”
“I don’t know who I really am!” Emmogene protested. “I barely remember anything from the war! Whatever it is you think I know, I don’t know! They erased my memory!”
“It’s not what you know,” Red said. “It’s what you carry. Sooner or later they’ll figure out that you’re not just another prisoner. When they do, they’ll dissect you, and what you’re carrying will fall into the hands of the US government. This can’t be allowed to happen.”
“What am I carrying?” Emmogene asked, pleading. They were going to kill her. She knew it. They were going to kill her and she had no idea why. “Why do you care? Don’t you get it? The war is over! We lost! The Visitors aren’t coming back! They abandoned us and they’re not coming back!”
“We used to send people who talked like that in for re-education,” Red answered, ice in her voice, “or liquidation, if they couldn’t be re-educated.” She pulled a screwdriver from inside her coverall. The point had been filed into a sharp tip.
“Are you sure about this?” the blonde asked, pushing her glasses up again. “They might hang you.”
“Maybe,” Red replied. “I’m going to die in here one way or another. This will be seen as just another act of violence from an unstable prisoner. They won’t question it. They probably won’t even bother with an autopsy. It needs to be done.”
“Please don’t do this,” Emmogene begged. “Please. I won’t tell anyone. I don’t know anything. Please.”
Red’s expression softened, if only slightly. “Sorry, kid. It’s nothing personal.” The softness was gone in an instant. She looked at the other two. “Get out of here, go find the guards. Tell them I’m going crazy. Act like you were trying to stop me.”
“Understood,” the blonde said.
“For the Future,” the raspy woman croaked. It’s something the alien loyalists always used to say. Everything they did was to build a better future.
“For the Future,” Red agreed. The other two women left the janitorial closet, leaving Emmogene alone with her murderer. “I’ll be quick,” the former InSec operative said. “It’s best if you don’t struggle.”
Emmogene tried to say something, but lost the thought before the words got out of her mouth. She felt the oddest buzzing in the back of her head. Even in the face of her impending death, it was so strange as to be distracting. What’s happening to me? Red stepped forward. Stop it! Leave me alone!
Red took another step forward, stopped, and stood up straight. Her eyes were wide but her pupils were pinpricks. In one smooth motion, she raised the improvised shiv and plunged it into her own left eye, burying it to the handle. She stood there for just a moment, twitching. Her other eye rolled back and she collapsed to the floor.
Emmogene screamed.
EMMOGENE WAS AFRAID. The riot alarm was blaring throughout the prison. Back against a concrete-block wall, she surveyed the carnage in front of her and tried to comprehend what she was seeing. Her other two assailants had come running back when they heard her scream. They saw their comrade dead on a floor, her shiv buried to the handle in her eye socket, and they immediately attacked Emmogene. At least, they tried to. The buzzing in the back of Emmogene’s head got louder, and as she covered her face and head, about to be beaten to death, her attackers had stopped. It was like they were entranced, unaware of their surroundings. A few moments after that, a pair of guards came rushing in, batons drawn. They charged into the cleaning closet and saw the body. One of them raised her baton to strike Emmogene, but the blonde woman had thrown herself in the way.
Now? Now both of those guards were on the floor, having been savagely attacked. Red’s two compatriots were down as well—one had been bludgeoned by the guards while the other had some sort of seizure and collapsed after the fight. A riot squad was stacked outside the door, bearing shields and shotguns. They were ordering Emmogene to come out or they would have to shoot her. She was pressed into the corner, and they couldn’t see her from where they were, but it was only a matter of time before they came in, and then they would probably kill her.
Emmogene was struggling to hold back tears. How had this happened? Why did Red kill herself? Why did the other two ex-InSec prisoners suddenly attack the guards to protect her? Her head hurt. The buzzing in the back of her skull had subsided, leaving only a headache and some dizziness. Images flashed through her mind, pieces of memories long suppressed. She remembered standing in a room, wearing scrubs, with wires connected to her head. There were bright lights above; the glare from the lights obscured the men observing her. She could only see their silhouettes, black and ominous. A couple of the silhouettes weren’t human; the features were too gaunt, the heads too large and oblong. Commands were issued to her over a loudspeaker, but she couldn’t quite make the words out.
A man was let into the room. He was young and fit, and wore the black uniform of Internal Security. The voice blared over the speaker once more, but this time Emmogene could remember what it said: “Now, you must kill her.” The man looked up at the people observing them, then back at Emmogene. He charged.
“Emmogene!”
Hearing her name snapped her out of the flashback. Emmogene was once again in the cleaning closet, backed into a corner, waiting to be shot. Her breath was ragged. She was confused. The alarm had ceased.
“Emmogene Anderson?” Someone from outside was calling her name. It was much calmer than the others had been. “I’m going to come to the door. I just want to talk to you.”
“I didn’t kill them!” Emmogene pleaded. “I don’t know what’s happening!”
“I believe you,” the man said, appearing in the doorway. He held his hands up in a nonthreatening manner. “I’m just trying to figure out what transpired.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Doctor Grayson,” he said, calmly. He was fifty or so, and was dressed in the same blue coverall that the guards wore, but had on a white coat over it. He didn’t have any armor, weapons, or a helmet. Black-framed glasses adorned his face, and his hair was gray. “I’m the facility psychiatrist.”
“I’m not crazy!” Emmogene insisted, in a manner that definitely sounded crazy. “I don’t know what’s happening!”
“Neither do I,” Dr. Grayson said. “But, if you’ll come with me, perhaps we can find out. I need to run a few tests.”
“You’re going to dissect me!”
“We don’t dissect people at this facility, Emmogene,” he answered. His voice was calming. “I’m a doctor, not a butcher. No one is going to hurt you. However, wouldn’t you agree that you seem to be a danger to others, and perhaps even yourself?”
That did sound reasonable.
“I can’t help you if you try to stay backed into that corner like a spider,” the doctor continued. “If you don’t come with me, those men out there are going to come in here and get you, and nobody wants that.” He stepped closer. “I read your file. I know you were in alien custody for quite some time, and that you were subjected to a memory wipe. We’ve seen this before in other people they have experimented on. Do you think they did something to you?”
The silhouettes of men and aliens observing her flashed before her eyes. She nodded, tears streaming down her face. “I’m scared.”
Dr. Grayson leaned forward and extended a hand, reaching over the pile of bodies on the closet floor. “I know. Come with me, Emmogene. Please. I want to help you.”
Emmogene looked at him, then down at the injured and dead, then back up at the doctor. She took his hand.