Murmurs, even laughter, rose up in the room.
Remy whispered, “What? That’s not funny.”
I looked at Rylen. He remained very still, his eyes deadly serious. My heart gave a resounding pound that turned into awhompingin my head.
“Aliens, sir?” Texas Harry said with half amusement.
First Sergeant did not crack a smile. He just stared Texas Harry down, as if daring him to take it as a joke.
“Wait,” said Tater. “You’re fucking serious? Excuse my language, sir, but you’re for real?”
“This is not a laughing matter.” His face was so grave. As were the faces of Puppy Nuts and Linette. “You’d all do well to adjust your minds as quickly as possible to this new reality. The Baelese race has wiped out nearly the entire human population, and they plan to use the remaining humans as slaves.”
“What the fuck?” J.D. let out a high-pitched whisper behind me, and I turned to see Sean moved closer to him, though his own face had gone pale enough to hide his freckles.
I looked at Remy with a hand pressed over her mouth and she began to shake violently as her eyes slid to mine.
“It’s okay,” I whispered stupidly. Of course it wasn’t okay. But the assuredness of my voice made her nod, like she was clinging to the mantra.It’s okay, it’s okay . . .
Tater looked past her to me, and our eyes locked in a moment of mutual holy-shitness. He rubbed a hand roughly down his face. Whispered curses of disbelief rose up like a morbid chorus around us, echoing in my still-whompingears.
Oh, my God. I grabbed the side edges of my seat and tried to control my breathing. This had to be a nightmare. I glanced at Rylen again and when he looked back I remembered the haunting he’d experienced last night, how shaken he’d been. And I knew from the steady look in his eyes that this was all true. Every unbelievable word.
“There has to be a mistake, right?” Remy whispered. The mantra must have stopped working, because her breaths were loud now, like she might hyperventilate. I took her hand and we squeezed hard.
“Sir, how do weknowthis?” asked a man in the back.
“Let me tell you all we’ve learned, and then I’ll explain how we learned it.”
Top gave Linette a nod and she typed something into a computer next to her. The screen lit up with a map of the universe.
“Bael,” he explained, “is the equivalent of Earth in a bordering galaxy, but much smaller.” He pointed to a tiny cluster of light. “The Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, like ours, has one sun, but their galaxy is ancient in comparison to ours. Their sun is in the process of expanding from a yellow dwarf to a red giant, meaning rising temperatures that will make their planet uninhabitable. It will eventually engulf their planet’s orbit, and so they seek a new home.”
The entire room gaped, frozen, with rapt attention as each horrifying word was spoken.
“The Baelese are exceedingly intelligent creatures, and Bael is much like Earth in its temperatures and air properties. Their symbiotic relationship between plant and animal mirrors ours, taking in oxygen, giving off carbon dioxide, and vice versa. Their race is highly evolved, having been around millennias longer than ours. We’ve learned that, in their known history, they suffered a meteor shower that wiped out most of their population. The way they came back from it was to unite all survivors under one government, learning one language, which eventually led to one race. We believe that is their plan for Earth.”
I felt like a giant had reached inside me and was crushing my intestines and lungs with a tight fist. Top’s words were scientific. Logical. And yet my mind severely rebelled against it. Not a single person spoke or moved.
“The superior technologies and communications of Bael are unprecedented. They were able to track and find the nearest planet compatible to their beings, and scout us long before we’d invented motor vehicles or begun probing the first layers of our atmosphere. They left their planet in stages, dying and reproducing en route. They abducted a handful of humans in order to study our ways as they continued to orbit our planet and plan. One quarter of their population arrived here on Earth over a hundred years ago in a series of four landings. We believe another batch arrived in rural Nevada shortly before Thanksgiving.”
Dear God, itwastrue. “Yes,” I whispered, then put my free, trembling hand over my mouth. I remembered the woman whose stress I’d treated at her house—the case that was taken over by FBI—she hadn’t been insane. They’d really landed in her field. Was it possible that so much of what we thought was crazy alien lore was true?
The people around me stared at me, but I couldn’t speak.
“More will come this summer,” Top said. “And the rest will arrive every year or two for the next fifty years.”
“This is fucking crazy,” someone whispered with terror from behind me.
My sentiments exactly. Because even if we could somehow miraculously overcome the ones who were here, we were being steadily invaded. It would be an ongoing war. Mine and Remy’s interlocked hands shook with tremors, and her breathing was still audibly loud and fast.
On her other side, Tater muttered, “No. Fuck that.” He pushed his seat back and bent his head forward as he grasped the table, like he might pass out. Remy put her hand on his back. Several people stood and began to pace behind us, grabbing their heads, trying to make sense of the insensible.
Top never stopped to coddle us. “As far as our intelligence, two spacecraft from Bael have been secured during this one hundred years. The one from 1947 in Roswell was originally kept at Nellis Air Force Base, but seeing as how Area 51 became public knowledge and fascination, the entire enterprise was quietly moved up here to Dugway. Much of it was a mystery that our brightest scientists and engineers could not figure out. It wasn’t until the landing in Nevada two months ago that FBI were able to capture one of their males and we began to finally get answers. Unfortunately, by the time we figured out how to make him talk, it was too late. The bombs were dropped.”
They captured one? My brain was going to explode. This man who I respected, who was not prone to jokes, was standing before us talking about UFOs and aliens in that matter-of-fact tone. Aliens!Aliens are real!My brain. My brain. Oh, my God, I felt light headed. I so badly wanted to reject all of this information.
A shuffle of quick footsteps in the back had us all turning to see one of the guys running for the door, followed by his retching sounds in the hall. Remy squeezed my hand and I pulled her chair closer to me. I caught Tater’s gaze over her shoulder and he looked as lost and sick as I felt.
