HASH: Human Alien Species Hybrid (2 page)

“Professor Zara Benita Ahern, of Harvard, working for something called Startech. According to her email, they’ve bought the Institute. Something like that, anyway. She’s Miriam’s boss now.” Em paused for a moment or two. “I don’t think I like her. Or you.”

I sighed. I got this every time I asked how I could disconnect the implant from me. “You’re being childish.”

Em sat down against the wall. “Oh, shut up. You’re just trying to provoke me into telling you all about what Miriam has planned.”

“Do you know what the news from Dr. Stevens is?” There was only one way she could possibly know. “It was on that phone?”

Em smiled to herself, obviously enjoying the moment of power. “Yes, and I’m not telling you, even though…oh, we’re going to love this one.”

I sighed. “You know, there are days when you sound about twelve years old.”

“What do you expect, when I’m stuck here with just you for company? And you’ve been trying to get rid of me again.”

This was what this was really about, of course. She got this way every time I mentioned the possibility of a cure to Dr. Stevens. That was Em through and through: my imaginary friend, my annoying not-quite sister, my invisible helper.
My implant.
Or the mental manifestation caused by it.

It was hard to think, some days, that Em was no more than a silvery organism of metal on my back. “Look, I’m sorry. Now, are you going to tell me this news, or not?”

She stayed silent, at least until I picked up a book and threw it at her. The fact that it passed straight through her and hit the wall didn’t really make a difference.

“Oh, all right. I’ll tell you.” She half-closed her eyes, smiling as she leaned back. “They’ve brought us someone to meet. Someone…special.”

I hated guessing games and Em loved to play them, especially when she had the upper hand and at this very moment, she had the upper hand. She could do one of two things when she received new information floating out in the world of technology: she could review it and retain it without actually sharing the information or she could transfer the information to me.

I wasn’t quite sure how she would do that because she never had, but she’d threatened to fill my head with so much information that I would actually go crazy and Dr. Stevens would have no choice but to move me into the mental facility. Of course, Em only threatened that when she was mad at me.

“Special? What does that mean?”

Em shrugged and smiled.

“Come on, Em. Who am I going to meet? Another scientist?”

She shook her head and that ornery grin stayed on her beautiful face.

“Are we playing
Pictionary
now? Maybe you should act it out and I’ll try to guess whom it is. That would be fun. We haven’t played that in a year.”

Em uncrossed her hands and leaned forward. “No! I’m not going to spoil the surprise.”

“At least tell me
when
I’m going to meet this mystery person.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

I leaned forward, ready to hang on to each word she was going to say. It wasn’t very often that I got to meet someone new, so I wanted to be ready for the moment.

The doorknob moved and Em, now behind me, whispered in my ear. “Now!”

My stomach instantly tied in knots and I glanced back at her with narrowed eyes. I quickly regained my composure, stood up straight and waited for the door to open.

Two scientists guided me down through the Institute’s corridors, Em following in my wake, looking almost annoyingly excited at the thought of wherever we were going. She still hadn’t said where that was, or who it was we were going to meet.

The scientists hadn’t said anything either. I vaguely recognized one of them as one of Dr. Stevens’ researchers. The other had a logo with the word “Startech” on his lab coat, suggesting that he had something to do with Professor Ahern’s people.

The researcher was on one side of me and the Startech guy on the other. They were both too close for comfort, considering I wasn’t used to strangers. I noticed the Startech guy look over my head and address the researcher.

“I can’t believe you transported her without restraints.”

Her? Without restraints? What was I, some kind of animal?

“Jade’s no trouble, are you, Jade?” The researcher nudged me to talk, as if I didn’t understand his English.

I shrugged, uncertain what he wanted me to say or how to act. After all, two guys were walking me down the Institute’s hallways without even telling me where we were going. And if it weren’t for Em, I wouldn’t even know about the special person I was going to meet.

The researcher gave us an embarrassed grin. “Anyway, that’s not how we work here. She’s harmless.”

“I can tell she’s harmless, but what about that deformity on her back?”

“The implant?”

“If that’s what you want to call it, but it’s really not an implant, now is it? It’s more like an alien is using her body as a host.”

I sucked in a gasping amount of air and slowed my pace.

“It’s okay, Jade,” Em said in my ear. “Let them talk. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

I reached my right hand to my left shoulder and ran my fingertips over the cold metal. Maybe they were right. Maybe Em was trying to take over my body somehow. A film of tears coated my eyes, but I quickly pushed them away and continued to walk down the endless corridors with the two men.

The scientist led the way down a path of hallways where I had never been. A runner of fluorescent lights on the ceiling lighted the white corridors. Occasionally, we passed through doors to offices or labs, and signs pointing the way to particular parts of the Institute.

There were people, too—people who mostly stepped back when they saw me. I was used to that. Sometimes, it felt kind of like an honor, having the right of way everywhere, but more often, I knew it had more to do with them just not wanting Em to make a grab for their phone or their pager. It was probably just as well that she couldn’t stray far from me, or who knew what kind of trouble she might cause?

I knew the way to Dr. Stevens’ office, to the small medical bay, the recreation room and the Institute’s gymnasium. I’d been to a few more of the labs over the years, too, as they tried different things to understand better what had happened to me. Today’s route was different. Up above the doorway, there was a sign that read “Outdoor Assimilation”—I had never seen that before.

“Where are we going?”

“Don’t tell her.” Em was practically next to the scientists as she said it, but they gave no sign of hearing her. “You’ll spoil the surprise.”

“Sorry, Jade. Professor Ahern said she doesn’t want to risk influencing your reaction.”

“Professor Ahern is the boss here now,” Em supplied from beside me. “It looks like, from her email, that Startech bought the Institute. I didn’t know you could do that, did you? Just buy a whole research program like that.”

If Em was back to chattering again, it probably meant she’d forgiven me for wanting to get rid of her. That was one thing with Em: she never seemed to stay angry with me for very long.

Although she still didn’t tell me where we were going.

When we stopped in front of a door that read the same thing as before—“Outdoor Assimilation”—my heart began to pound hard against my chest. Em must have felt my anticipation because I heard her giggle from behind me.

The scientist slid a card in a slot and then pounded at a keypad. A loud unlocking sound thunked and echoed before the sliding doors opened into a small room where Dr. Stevens and Professor Ahern waited, along with six other individuals in white suits.

“What’s going on?” I whispered to Dr. Stevens, concerned. At that moment, she was my only friend, beside Em, in the room.

“We have a surprise for you.”

“I don’t want it.” I backed up and my shoulder blades hit the closed door.

Dr. Stevens reached out her hand.

Professor Ahern pushed down Dr. Stevens’ hand. “Oh, this is ridiculous.” She looked at me. “Don’t you know by now that you don’t have any choices here? You’ll do what we say and get your ass—”

“Enough!” Dr. Stevens stepped in front of Professor Ahern with her back facing me and they had a brief stare down. After a few seconds, she turned around with that comforting smile that I had become accustomed to. “Jade, I’m here and I won’t let anything hurt you. Do you trust me?”

I nodded.

“I will be right in this room and once you’re in there, if you feel like you have to leave, just say my name and I will get you out of there quickly.”

I nodded again.

Em leaned next to me. “You really are being a baby. This is a good surprise, not a bad one. And Miriam is bending over backward for you. She could have lost her job after what she told the professor.”

“Shut up, Em,” I snarled.

When the doors leading into the next room opened, a waft of a strange smell smacked me in the face.

“My readings tell me that the smell you smell is fresh air,” Em said from behind me.

I tilted my head but didn’t say anything to Em. Once we were inside, the door closed and the light came on. Not just any light. It felt like the sun beaming down on my face. When I glanced around, I saw trees on either side with chirping birds perched on their branches.
Real birds.

In a distance, I saw a car with three heads inside the vehicle. It reminded me of the car in my dreams—the car that I was in the night of the accident. I glanced around and tried to take everything in…the sounds and smells…they were all so familiar, yet I had not been outside since the accident.

Em seemed as mesmerized as I was and she was staring intently at a rock on the ground. Greenery surrounded us. I ran my fingertips over a tree leaf and leaned over to smell its scent.

“And to think, this isn’t even the surprise.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

“But this is so beautiful. I remember these. We had these trees in our front yard when I was a child. From one of them, my father had tied up an old tire and I used it as a swing.”

I hadn’t looked at Em because I was, for the first time since I was a kid, looking up into the sky and smelling this new world around me. Or so I thought.

“The trees and grass are real, but we’re in a room, Jade, one that’s made to look like outside.”

My heart sank, but I managed not to say anything and admire what was real.

Em stood in front of me and pointed. “There, Jade.”

The simulated wreckage of the spaceship still buried in the dirt was the first thing that caught my attention and the second thing was
him.

I wanted to run and scream and beg Dr. Stevens to let me out, but Em’s wide eyes were begging me to stay. Curiosity had taken hold of my every movement. After all, Dr. Stevens did say that she wouldn’t put me in any danger. I believed her.

Em and I both stood as perfectly still as he was and we all stared at each other. Em’s voice was dreamy, lost in lust even when she whispered, “He’s even better than I thought he’d be.”

“What is he?”

“One of us.” Em moved forward, pushing me to do the same thing and follow closely behind her.

The male subject was wearing white sweats like me. He was much taller than I was, maybe by an entire foot, and his hair was dark and touched his shoulders. Like mine, his body was every bit as honed by a scientifically designed exercise regimen.

His angular, almost odd-looking features were handsome, but the glints of metal were visible over his bare forearms. The same metal that I had down my spine. I was mystified, scared even.

He was studying us as much as we were studying him. I watched his eyes move from me to Em and that alone shocked me. No one had been able to see Em my entire life, but me.

He stood near the wreckage of the ship. In this area though, the car wasn’t a crushed tin can of metal—instead, it was intact with the people inside. I knew they were fake, which fell in line with what Em had said about the whole setup being fake.

“He’s pretty,” Em said, glancing back at me.

His brown eyes were hollow, the way mine were. An emptiness that seemed almost haunting. “Who are you?” It didn’t even sound like my voice when I asked.

“Aric.” His voice was strong and direct. He stood with his feet slightly apart, his shoulders back and that metal gleaming from his forearms.

“Where’d you come from?”

“I live here.”

“You live in here?”

He shook his head and slightly grinned. “I live in the Institute. Do you live here, too?”

I nodded, my heart beating faster than it ever had.

“What about you?” He directed his attention to Em.

“I’m stuck to her.” She glanced back at me. “So I’ve lived here with her for sixteen years.”

“Do you know why we’re here?” I asked.

“I do, I do!” Em raised her hand.

“You know why we’re here?” I hated that she kept things from me.

“Yep.” She moved closer to Aric, and I followed her. “I read in Professor Ahern’s emails that Aric is an alien subject in the program and he was found at this wreckage,” she pointed toward the model spaceship, “alive.”

Aric stepped forward and closed the gap a bit more. He squinted his eyes. “You’re the girl, the one who wouldn’t stop screaming.”

When he said it, I remembered. An instant from childhood that I’d thought was buried, back with all the rest of the days after the crash, full of hospital beds and tests.

The scientists had put me in with a strange boy not much older than I had been, metal shining on his skin just like the woman who had hurt me. He’d been so fiercely terrifying that I had practically screamed the building down. I’d screamed until they’d pulled me out of there, scared that he was doing something awful to me.

I’d never seen him again. Until now.

“That was you?” I looked at him closer. It could have been him, yet there was something about the innocence in his eyes that didn’t seem so terrifying. He didn’t seem normal, exactly, but he also didn’t seem like something to run screaming from. On my own, without Em’s coaxing, I took a step toward him.

What was I doing? He was still one of them. He belonged to that woman who hurt me, who gave me this implant, which was the cause of me living in a white-walled institution.

“Oh, ignore Jade.” Em moved closer to Aric, walking around him as though wanting to get a good look at him from every angle. “She doesn’t have any manners. Plus, she’s scared of you because you look like the people who put me into her. Well, you would, obviously, since they were your parents.”

“Em.”

“What? I’m just trying to make conversation. I mean, I bet that if the two of you tried, you could find all kinds of things to talk about. Being trapped in scientific research facilities, being experimented on, being orphans…”