Taken

He spun around, grabbed Pierce’s helmet from the seat beside him and slammed it against his head.

The Humvee veered off the road and crashed into the Porta Potti.

Charlie grabbed Pierce’s pistol and aimed it directly between his eyes. “We’re going back to find our daughter,” he said.

“You don’t have to go anywhere.”

The voice was Allie’s, and Charlie whirled around to find the general now vanished, and in his place, Allie, herself, sitting calmly beside Lisa.

“Allie,” Charlie gasped, “what…”

She seemed to know his question before he asked it. “They wanted to use me to make a ship come down,” she said. “I thought, if I could make them think I’d gone, that I’d been taken, then they’d stop looking for me and everything could just go back to how it was.” Her eyes glistened. “But they were going to take you away, and I couldn’t let them do that.” She shook her head, crying softly. “They’re going to find out and they’re going to come looking for me again.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re going to find you,” Charlie told her.

Lisa drew Allie beneath her arm. “We’re not going to let them get you again, Allie,” she promised.

Allie looked at her mother softly. “I’m scared,” she admitted.

Charlie turned toward Pierce, and saw that he was now in league with them, as aware as they were of the precious cargo they carried. “They’ll be coming,” he said urgently. “We’ve got to go.” He looked up the road, to where a line of Humvees and soldiers now approached, then turned to Allie. “Can you help us?”

Allie nodded and closed her eyes.

Charlie turned back to the road, expecting the Humvees to disappear or be lifted into the sky, but they remained in place, soldiers still in position all around them. He looked at Allie. “Try again,” he said.

Allie closed her eyes more tightly but the Humvees remained unchanged.

“I can’t do it,” Allie said wearily.

Charlie glanced down the road, his eyes searching desperately for some place to hide before they finally settled on the Porta Potti. There, he thought, as he drew Allie beneath his arm.

Chapter Three

A Humvee came down the road and pulled up to where Mary and General Beers stood mutely, staring at the very farmhouse they’d watched rise from its foundations and soar into the night sky only a few hours before. Then Mary glanced over to where Pierce sat alone. She thought a moment, then approached him.

“You helped Allie, didn’t you?” she asked.

Pierce stared straight ahead as if expecting a blow.

“I know you did,” Mary told him quietly. “She knew you could be trusted.”

Pierce looked at her quizzically.

“When I was with her, she told me you were a good guy,” Mary added. She glanced toward where General Beers stood, still talking to the Humvee driver. “I was opposed to this entire mission,” she said, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Taking a little girl, using her for bait. That’s sick.”

Pierce said nothing.

“If you had to help her, it means she couldn’t help her-self,” Mary said. “Because she’s weak.” She looked at him pointedly. “How weak is she, Pierce?”

Pierce lowered his eyes… and she knew. A smile slithered onto her lips. “Thanks,” she said.

She walked back over to Beers, who was still fuming that they’d gotten away, though now she knew they really hadn’t.

While Beers berated the soldier, Mary peered about, silently taking in the bustling scene. They were doing all they could to find evidence, but she knew they would find nothing. Soldiers poured over the grounds, and searched the farmhouse, taking radiation readings and looking for any sign of alien presence. She knew what their final reports would be, and that in the end they’d have to deny a truth she felt compelled to state.

“One of your soldiers sees his mother,” she said to General Beers. “The person he most wanted to see. Another soldier sees bugs crawling all over him. His childhood fear come to life.” She paused and let it all come together in her mind. “What did we all want to see, General? An alien craft taken down by our brilliant technology. What did we fear? That our efforts would fail. That the craft would come and take Allie away. And so Allie gave us all of that. She showed us exactly what we wanted and exactly what we feared.”

General Beers continued to survey the activity, as if blocking the very truth Mary was determined to reveal. “We have soldiers at every access,” he said. “We’ll find them no matter where they are.”

Before Mary could protest, Wakeman came rushing up to them. “1 checked with Fort Ash. We’re getting reports from all over the country. All the implants are falling out.”

“Why?” General Beers asked.

“Because they don’t need these people anymore,” Mary answered confidently. “They have Allie. The product of three generations of selective breeding. Of a genetic experiment of an unparalleled scale. Once they produced her, they sat back and waited for the moment when all that was latent in her became active. When she did what she did here, made us see the craft, all of that. That was her demonstrating. That was when they saw the power they had been waiting to see.”

“This extremely powerful little girl,” General Beers said darkly. “I don’t think I need to point out how important she is to us.”

“And I can help you,” Mary said.

Wakeman glanced at her apprehensively, and she saw how weak he was, how much like her father, a victim of sentiment.

She returned her attention to the general. “I think she’s exhausted most of her power for the moment,” she said. “But she’ll get it back. And when she does, she’ll be unstoppable.”

“How do we stop her?” Beers asked emphatically.

“When I showed her the artifact, that thing my grandfather found at Roswell, she saw something that frightened her deeply.” She gri

“What?” Beers demanded. “What did she see?”

Mary knew the answer, and the answer was life. What she’d seen, she understood now, was all the minefields that are planted in our paths. In childhood there were only a few. Disease. Accidents. In adolescence more were added. Drugs. Sex. Guns. As time went forward, the field grew more littered, the chances of blowing yourself up steadily increasing until there was no ground to stand on. And so at last you saw not just the journey… but its end.

It was that end Allie had seen in the artifact, the whole record of her life and purpose, of everything the “visitors” had done on earth, and finally her own destiny. That was what had frightened her, Mary concluded, that Allie had seen her destiny.

Chapter Four

The artifact lay inside the container, the markings still, as if the metal itself were sleeping.

“It seems to have stopped thinking for a moment,” Wakeman said.

Mary watched the metal, taking in the oddly dormant state into which it had fallen. “My father tried to have it translated,” she said. “So did my grandfather.”

“I didn’t know that,” Wakeman told her. He looked oddly hurt that she had kept it from him. “I thought we trusted each other.”

“Yes, well,” Mary said dryly, then turned to General Beers, who was clearly in no mood for such petty squabbling. “As far as I knew, the artifact never revealed itself to anyone,” she told him. “If it did, my father certainly never mentioned it.”

“Or your grandfather,” Wakeman said huffily.

Mary gave no sign that she heard him. She continued to address herself to the general. “So the question is, how are we going to break its code? The answer is simple. It’s the oldest rule in code-breaking. First, you have to know what they’re trying to say. If this is their permanent record, then it kicked in because it wanted to record what Allie did. Her fantastic power. So the record of what happened at the farmhouse should be on the artifact.”