Read an Excerpt:
The door opened.
I sat up and reached for the light.
“Don’t,” a familiar voice said. “They don’t know I’m here and I want to keep it that way.”
“Who doesn’t know you’re here?” I asked as panic swept across me. “Who are you and what do you want?”
“It’s me, Meridia. It’s Julio.” The older man appeared in the light reflecting from the TV. He looked every gray-hair of his age, but there was something about his eyes that weren’t right. His entire visage seemed worn and weathered beyond his fifty-nine years. He continued toward my bed with sweat dripping from his short, gray curls. “We have to get out of here. They want to use us.”
“Use us for what?” I asked.
“Don’t you hear them talking? They want to suck the information out of our brains. They’re going to attach us to machines that will take the wormhole knowledge out of us, then use that information to build bigger weapons. They won’t rest until they’ve brought the rest of the world to their knees.”
Oh boy. I jumped out of bed and hurried toward him to grab his arms. “Calm down, Julio. These people don’t want to hurt us. They want our knowledge, so it would hurt them to hurt us.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. His gaze pleading. “You’re wrong. I’ve seen the machines. They do it round after round after round. You had your first tests today, didn’t you?”
“Julio it was just—”
He tore away from me. “Don’t you get it? The wormhole is ours. We created it. It belongs to us. Not them.”
This wasn’t the same Julio Ferrera I knew. A fusion physicist who was already on his way to greatness even before he joined the astronaut program, he was our Chief of Scientific Research and an accomplished Air Force Major. This guy in front of me was a lunatic who needed more care than they could ever hope to give him here. Seeing my friend and colleague like this wrenched my heart. I wanted to hug the fear out of him but knew it wouldn’t make any difference. He needed more help than I could give him.
“Relax, okay?” I started toward the small desk where there was a phone. “I’m going to call someone to help you. Maybe they can give you something to help you sleep.”
Julio tackled me to the floor. “You have to listen to me, damn it! Listen! They’ve hidden away more Americans than just us, so they can experiment on them more. Some of them are still up there on the Bridgeway just waiting at the beck and call. Leave them frozen until they’re needed.”
I squirmed away from him enough to grab the leg of a small side table. I smashed it across his upper back and head. Dazed, his grip loosened. I wiggled my legs out from underneath him, but he charged again, grabbing the back of my nightshirt. Threads tore as he dragged me down again. This time, he clawed his way on top of me and got his hands around my throat. He squeezed hard like he wanted to snap my neck in half, yelling for me to listen to him. I punched and clawed at his arms, fighting and kicking. Anything to free myself as a burning sensation heated up my lungs.
“You’re one of them!” He shouted, his eyes crazed. “They got to you. You can’t tell them anything—I won’t let you!”
My bedroom door slammed open. Several people ran into my bedroom and wrestled him off me. I rolled onto my side and grabbed my neck, struggling to suck air into my writhing lungs.
The orderlies threw Julio on my bed where a man wearing a pair of black slacks sedated him. Dr. Tommen knelt on the floor next to me, but I waved him away. I didn’t want anyone touching me. For all I knew, they did this to him.
Sounds like a great read.
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