Author's Note: Sorry for the wait, but exams are starting WAY TOO SOON and I should be thinking about maths and physics rather than teenagers and aliens. It's a short chapter, but more's coming at the end of November.

And if you're still reading this BEASBeth, your enthusiasm is amazing! It's comments like yours that make writing feel 'worth it' (and that goes for all my reviewers). Thanks!

EDIT 12/2015: Revised chapters nine through eleven because I had some free time at work. They're still not perfect, but I did fix some real clunkers. (What were you thinking, three-years-ago me? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?)

The Soldier: Part 2

She had pale skin and a beautiful, open face, and she held a baby in her arms – a few months old, with dark eyes and the thinnest brown hair. She smiled. It was a warm smile, infectious, even through the ghostly light of the projector.

Joe couldn't help smiling a little too. She looked up and said something to the camera, made a face. No sound, but he could imagine her voice. The camera moved closer and suddenly the baby woke up, began to squeal, reaching for his mother's face.

'Go away!' she mouthed, laughing. 'You're scaring him.'

The person behind the camera loved them both very much. You could see it in the way the camera moved, the way it focused on that smile.

She was twenty-four years old.

The projector whirred softly. Joe lay on the floor of his bedroom, leaning on his arms, gazing at the images that danced upon the wall. His face was bathed in that pale, flickering light, keeping the darkness at bay.

After seeing the shadow at the cemetery, Joe had hurried to his bike and ridden straight home. It was something he didn't want to think about. It was something he couldn't really think about, not without getting closer to see what it actually was, and there was no chance of doing that on his own. So, as soon as he got home, he'd found the plastic bag of film reels he kept on the top shelf of his cupboard. He'd been watching them ever since. Not because he was scared – he'd forgotten his fear after coming through the door. But because… remembering was nice. Remembering was all he had.

She leaned against a fence, somewhere in their garden, framed by a tangle of overgrown bushes. Her hair fell freely over her shoulders and the straps of her summer dress. She was answering a question, speaking to the camera. Speaking to his father. She touched one of her earrings absently.

She was twenty-six years old.

The projector buzzed, and suddenly cut out.

Silence. Blackness. Joe frowned, waiting to see if it'd come back on. He leaned over, flicked the switch a few times, but – nothing. He checked his alarm clock, then sighed disappointedly. Screen's dark. Another power failure.

He stared blankly at the wall, lost in memories.

Jack crept down the hallway as quiet as he could, footsteps muffled on the carpet. The house was dark, almost pitch black, except for a sliver of bluish light flickering under the door at the end of the hall.

He stopped before the door and leaned close to the wood. After a second, he heard a soft whirr, barely audible.

He listened for a moment.

Then he stepped back out into the kitchen. He picked up his gun from the dinner table and clipped on his badge.

A minute later, a police car pulled out of the driveway and sped off into the night.

The car swung through the gates of the Lillian Airfield, moon shining brightly overhead. Jack Lamb sat tall behind the wheel, filled with a grim sense of purpose. 'Meet me at the airfield,' Nelec had said. 'Midnight tonight, not a word to anybody else. You'll get your answers.'

In all likelihood, there wouldn't be any answers and he'd be turned around and sent straight home. But he had to take the chance. The only thing you've got to lose is yet another good night's sleep.

The airfield was small, as airfields went, and lay on the outskirts of town. It was entirely used for cargo these days; the processing terminal was a low-roofed building on the eastern side of the taxiway, surrounded by big steel sheds. Two runways were cut into the surrounding field, dim and grey. He drove onto the tarmac. Suspension squeaked. Jack noticed a line of air force trucks parked by the fence, next to a disused set of passenger-boarding steps, and aimed towards them. It certainly felt weird driving along the arrow-straight asphalt without a pair of wings to either side—

FLASH! Suddenly the windscreen was blasted by dazzling white light. He slammed on the brakes, blinded, raised a hand to shield his eyes.

What the hell? A semicircle of jeeps was blocking the taxiway, their headlights pointed straight at him. Silhouetted soldiers knelt on the tarmac, with poses that said, much louder than words: 'I am holding a gun and I am ready to use it.'

Swiftly, the police car rolled to a stop.

Jack frowned. He opened the door and stepped out, more confused than anything. He glanced behind him as another two jeeps swung out of the darkness, and a dozen more air force men piled out and raised their weapons.

Then a voice, over a loudspeaker: "Deputy, drop your weapons and put your hands on the car."

Jack didn't move. "I'm here to see Colonel Nelec!" he shouted, squinting into the light. "He told me to meet him here!"

"You're under military arrest. Drop your weapons."

Silence, for a moment. Jack stared into the mouths of a dozen black gun barrels.

"Where's Nelec?" he asked desperately.

"Deputy, I won't tell you again. Drop your weapons."

"WHERE'S NELEC!?"

Colonel Nelec, actually, was less than two hundred feet distant, standing with arms folded next to a clean military hospital bed. Sergeant Overmeyer waited beside him, hands clasped behind his back. The airfield cargo hangar had been converted into a sickbay: ten beds were arranged along the walls, five to a side, separated by clear plastic sheeting. Lights hung from the curved roof. Next to each bed was a small table, holding trays of surgical equipment and bottles of disinfectant.

All of the beds were empty, except one. Its occupant was covered in a clean blue blanket. A heartbeat monitor beeped softly in the background.

"I don't want any more trouble, do you?" Nelec murmured. "Hmm?"

Dr Glen Woodward gazed up at him. Deep, oozing cuts were scratched across his cheeks, his forehead, his nose, and the bandages stuck to his face were soaked through with pus and blood. He looked exhausted. In pain. His wrists were tied to the bedframe with thick leather straps, every breath a labour. His eyes, though, were as fierce as they always had been – the same bright eyes that had scared so many kids at Lillian Middle School.

Sick, scarred, but very much alive.

"We've been going through your belongings, looking for evidence," Nelec said slowly. "What you knew. How you knew it." He paused. "Who else might know."

Woodward's mouth twitched, but he didn't speak. Flies buzzed through the hangar, settling on the dried blood on his face.

Beep… beep… beep…

Nelec leaned down over the bed, until their faces were inches apart. "You know, Glen – I remember you," he began. "I remember you in the lab. And I recall we didn't always see eye to eye, but that… is no excuse for doing what you did here."

Woodward stared.

Nelec smiled. He had a patient, sing-song voice, like he was scolding a petulant child. "So in… the spirit of moving forward and avoiding more trouble, why don't you just tell me where you put your research. And who else knows about it. I know you had someone document the crash that night. Tell me who that was and I will help you. I swear to God on my mother's life, if you help us now we will take care of you."

Across the hangar, Overmeyer filled a syringe with the contents of a bottle. The bottle was small and yellow, the symbol for 'poison' etched into the side.

Beep… beep… beep…

"I've seen… what happens, Mr Nelec… when you take care of people," Woodward said quietly.

"I'm being genuine, doctor."

"No… you aren't. You never are. And something like him doesn't… deserve the likes of you—"

"It is MINE!" Nelec interrupted. "He is MINE. I'm gonna bait him, and catch him."

"You'll try."

Beep… beep… beep…

"He's in me… you know," Woodward said cryptically.

Nelec frowned. "What?"

"…He's in me. As I am in him. So…" He coughed heavily, an air of finality to his words "So… when you see him next, as I'm sure you will… I'll be watching you too."

Sparkling eyes, filled with belief. Nelec leaned back – unsettled, just for a moment.

I'll be watching you too.

He stepped away from the bed and gave Overmeyer a small nod. The syringe was injected into a drip, taped into the doctor's arm.

Beep… beep… beep… beep beep beep beep—

The doctor's body jerked as if a million volts of electricity were suddenly coursing through his veins. Muscles locked, shivered, his head jolting from side to side. Arms wrenched viciously against their restraints. The bed shuddered.

Overmeyer looked on passively. The syringe was still in his hand.

Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep—

Woodward kept shaking, one arm spasming outward and smashing into a table, sending bottles crashing to the ground. A guttural groan escaped his lips, eyes wide, staring, almost entirely black. He struggled, this way and that—

Beeeeeeeeeeeee—

Struggled, and—

—eeeeee—

Struggled, and—

—eeeeee—

…fell still.

—eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Nelec turned away, his teeth gritted, and waited for the doctor to die.