Chapter 10
Whenever I decided I didn't want to do something, I woke up to find it already done.
They must be drugging me in my sleep and bypassing my wishes. It made me angry and I kept that hot core of anger buried in my gut, took it out when I was alone and stoked it.
Once they left me alone just inside the x-ray room, tied to a gurney while the tech went to get another film plate. She left me by the telepho ne and within easy reach. I managed to dial an outside line and Murph‘s cell number but I couldn't get through before she came back and saw the phone off the hook. She hung it up, stared at me and pushed it out of my reach.
"Who are you trying to call, Jade?"
I shrugged. "I was ordering pizza."
"You know, I'll have to report this."
"Why? You're not part of the NSA, are you? You're hospital staff."
"Jade, this isn't a hospital. It's a secure facility on an Air Force Base called Dreamland."
"I'm not in Maryland?"
"No. You were for seven hours until we had you stabilized, and then you were brought here."
"Why'd they lie to me?" I asked miserably. I thought if I could get out of the hospital, I could make it back to Boston and the team.
"It'd take a miracle to escape, Jade. You're underground in a reworked missile complex in the middle of a square 400 miles of nothing. The only way in or out is helicopter, jet or SUVs with four-wheel-drive and long-range gas tanks. Or camels."
"What state?"
"Nevada. Now, just relax. I'm going to take a few pictures of your neck and ribs."
"Do I have a choice?" I said sourly. "What do they think I am? Some kind of Superman?"
"On the contrary, Jadewyn James," said the voice that belong to the Indian colonel. "We don't know what you are at all." He came into the lab and watched as she manipulated me on the cold steel table and took several views of my neck and rib cage. She warned him to stay out or where the lead apron, made sure she covered my crotch with it.
"Stay, there, I want to make sure these are good before I return you. Keep an eye on him, Sir. He's sneaky."
"Smart and sneaky. The switchboard picked up your phone call, Jade. No outgoing calls are put through without clearance. Your dad's former team can't help you."
"What do I you want with me, anyway? All I can do is find things, nothing that special.
And I'm not able to walk through walls or bend light or step from one place to another. I can't speak any languages or see things happen before they do."
"I know you're not psychic or gifted that way, Jadewyn. We're not interested in your little…trick of finding things, although it is a curious talent. No, what interests me more is where you came from."
"What do you mean?" I was puzzled. He stuck his face in mine and stared at my eyes and hair.
"Haven't you looked in a mirror, Jade? You ever see another being with these eyes, your gray hair? I've heard the report of how your mother was found nearly dead and disappeared in an…unearthly manner."
"How? I looked for a report and there wasn't one," I protested.
"There was. Filed under top-secret and buried. One of the clerks sold it on eBay for big bucks. A reporter found it and did a story, we tracked it down. Found your dad. And then you."
"What, you think I'm some kind of extraterrestrial, an alien hybrid? You've had me for weeks! You've seen me bleed, done all kinds of tests on me! I'm human!"
"No," he shook his head slowly, grimly. "You're not. Your DNA is nothing remotely human. You look normal, mostly on the outside. Your organs are all standard and in the right places, your blood is even red and mixes with plasma, but that's as far as it goes. You have 112 chromosomes, not 48, your blood is neither A, B, or O but all three in every combination known.
You have no Rh factor. The most obvious difference is in your hair and your eyes. Do you know you can see in the dark?"
"I've always had good night vision."
"It's more than that, Jade. You survived a fatal car crash, unrestrained; you're recovering faster than a human teenager would."
"What are you going to do to me?" My voice trembled because now I was afraid.
"Cooperate and I can convince them you're more valuable alive and in one piece," he said soberly.
"They'd cut me up?" I was horrified.
"Not necessarily wait until you were dead, either."
"Holy Christ." I was silent digesting that, wondered if I'd have been better off dying with my dad. "What do you want me to do?" I was resigned.
"Whatever I tell you. Whatever the scientists want. I would suggest you make yourself invaluable, so they decide to keep you alive. First, tell me what you remember about your mother."
"Not much. I was two years old, traumatized sitting in her blood next to her dead body."
"Who killed her?"
"Not who, what," I replied, and he jumped at that.
"What? Why what? The report stated no one was there. Just you and the body. Did you see who killed her?"
"Big black things," I was lost in two-year-olds tortured memories. I could remember the hulking dark, menacing shadows that tossed my mother about like spindrift, but not the actual shooting that killed her. Those memories were so bleak I did not want to recall them.
"They looked like gorillas. Arms longer than they should be, powerful. Not quite human."
"They're called Druz," he spoke softly and I looked up, startled. "Druz. My people have legends of them, the Dark Ones. They are sent to kill the Golden Ones. But those are just legends. No one has ever seen one."
"I have. Two of them tried to kidnap me and Murphy in Atlantic City."
"The two agents?"
"They weren't agents," I denied.
"None of mine are missing, nor any FBI agents. So, you might be right. Your own kind are after you, too?"
"I don't know who my kind are," I retorted. "You going to keep me safe from them, too?"
He sneered, "First they have to find you. If they exist." He walked out on that note and left me with the x-ray tech.