The barrel of a pistol suddenly pressed itself against my attacker's temple. "Touch not the anointed one, or I shall strike thee down with the weapon of the human cattle."

Golic.

Ippi didn't budge.

The longhair clicked back the hammer of his .44 Magnum. "Put not the Lord to the test!"

Rolling her eyes, Ippi raised her hands in the air, letting the knife drop to the floor.

One of Golic's young converts snatched the weapon away.

"Where's your boyfriend?" I asked the Abreya.

"Bottomiller, you mean?" She let out a barking laugh. "Please! We are not an item!" She snapped her tail like a cat. "The last I saw of that wusu, he was helping those children escape."

She must have noticed my slightly skeptical expression, for her tail snapped again. "Okay, so he's not all bad, but he's still not my boyfriend. I'm not some stupid Christian princess."

"Who is this princess you keep talking about?"

"She's no one," Ippi sighed. "Just someone I thought was my friend, but actually wasn't. The dumb bitch was always asking me to get her feminine products and sex toys because she was too chickenshit and prissy to get them herself. You remind me a lot of her." She stomped away.

"The priestess intercessor humbles herself, and does not avenge the insult done to her, awaiting the time of judgment," Golic said to his followers.

"Iyya Shasharmazorb," the cult replied, bowing to me in worship. Even the children.

"Stop," I said. "You can stop that right now. I needed that devotion on the boat, but that was only because I needed people to fight my enemies. You're really annoying me. Please, worship Jesus and God. They're much worthier, and won't get annoyed at you worshiping them. Thanks for helping me, though."

"Is this a test?" asked one of the worshipers.

"Nay," Golic answered. "She wishes us to understand that she is a mere prophet of Shasharmazorb. She answers to a higher power, as should we."

"Iyya Shasharmazorb," the cultists answered, rising to their feet.

They got back on the floor when they saw Ernie approaching.

"Arise," she told them. "For I too am mortal."

They did not.

"Another test!" one of them said.

She groaned, facing me. "Have you named your two new adoptions yet?"

I stared at the spider thing and the narrow weasel looking baby. "Not...yet. Got any suggestions?"

We ended up naming the spider Matthew and the prickly ermine Mark.

"The book of John came last chronologically," Ernie explained. "Years elapsed between it and the other books. It's appropriate."

I blushed. "You mean, when I have one of my own, I'll have a complete set."

Ernie grinned.

"How are yours doing? I mean, the new ones."

"In cold storage at the Phyxo building, I'm afraid. Larva doesn't hatch in an hour." She raised a little metal watch attached to her arm. "They call this a `baby beeper.' I'll know exactly when my larva is hatched, and maybe even be able to talk to it. Isn't that exciting?"

"It's kinda scary and exciting," I admitted.

The slimy face smiled. "That's exactly how I feel. So much responsibility."

That wasn't exactly what `scary' I meant, but I let her think what she wanted.

Ernie never went anywhere without that old RSV bible. "Do you want to have bible study?"

"Uh, sure," I said.

Mrs. Hannigan, who had been watching us, suddenly spoke up. "Could you do that around the examination table? Ellie's bullet wound needs to be treated before it gets infected."

While Sue stitched me up, we did a study from Galatians. The passage from 1:6-9 cut both ways, a warning to us not to distort the gospel, amidst our growing cult, and a condemnation of others that already made a practice of it.

Golic's people sat around us, listening in rapt attention, like we were gurus, but I doubted their minds were prepared for something so...ordinary, at least not the way it was originally intended.

All the deaths weighed heavily on my heart, so I broached the subject. "I don't like killing people. I feel bad for doing it."

Ernie nodded. "It is a hard thing to do, but a just and moral one if lives are truly at stake. I have slain my own kin for the sake of others I loved and wished to protect."

"Do you ever get over the guilt?"

She sighed. "You're forgiven, but the memories of the killing do not go away. It is a burden that must be endured. It pains me that so much death had to be caused today, but I also understood the need. I do not wish to see any child being abused or murdered. They are precious to me."

The murmurs I heard from Golic's cult indicated that this would soon be dogma, written in stone.

Noting my glum expression, Ernie hugged me. "The Lord forgives you, child."

"I know. It's still..."

She nodded.

When my `doctor' said it was safe, I got up, examining the ship.

Mara the humanoid cat robot sat on the floor next to a control console, with cords plugged into her positronic brain.

Glancing back to make sure Weyland was still out of earshot and holding his nose, I muttered to her, "You were...on planet LV 426, weren't you?"

The robot blinked at me, as if waking from a dream. "Correct. How did you acquire this information?"

Unsure how far I could trust her, I simply said, "A friend told me."

She smiled. "I have always thought of Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik as my daughter."

The android fell silent, band passing with her eyeballs like a television.

I found Shasharmazorb and Estalix at work repairing an air conduit. "Guys, I'm sorry I...delayed you. It's just...I really don't think you understand how dangerous it is in that place. You're not going to be able to waltz in, grab your grandmother and get out."

Shasharmazorb didn't turn from the repairs. "That's why you're going to accompany us. To alert us to the dangers."

"I enjoy a challenge," said Estalix.

"That isn't good enough. There's a reason why your grandmother is still living there and not outside in the world. They know Ss'sik'chtokiwij and their weaknesses. If what Mr. Weyland said is true, then him being hostage isn't going to help anything. He's just a rung on the totem pole."

I had to explain what a totem pole was. They didn't get it.

"Are you familiar with the layout of the island?" Ssunamrozedrah asked.

"Yes." But then I reconsidered. "No. I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know!" she growled, stopping her work. "Either you do or you don't!"

"It's not that simple. Everything looks the same. They kept me in the dark most the time. I only know a couple places really well, and I don't know the first thing about getting to them, or leaving."

Ssunamrozedrah let out a low rumbling growl. "I see. Any suggestions about...approaching this island?"

I shrugged. "Don't use the front door. Don't go to the airport where all the planes and helicopters come in. Other than that, I don't know. Your grandmother is under a hospital. Don't ask me which one, I used a tunnel to get there. Maybe you should just try to find a hospital and land there."

Ssunamrozedrah growled again, but Estalix snapped something back in his own tongue, then, in Ss'sik'chtokiwij, he added, "The one known as Kamara informs me that she has intimate knowledge of the area. The man Eleven appears to know something as well. And plus we have the Weyland and Xavier to provide their insight."

"Sounds like we have a fair bit of intel," I muttered with some disappointment.

Ssunamrozedrah muttered something else to her companion, returning to their work.

Big Bird's Furby body had been plugged into a nearby computer terminal. Her eyes followed me as I walked past. "I was the one who made all the screens in the park showed damaging information about Mr. Mendoza earlier...Did you like the song? It has a deep personal significance for me.

"`There's none so blind as those who will not see, and to those who lack the courage, and think it's dangerous to try, well they just don't know that love eternal will not be denied.' That is a very spiritual lyric, don't you think?"

"Um...sure," I agreed.

"The song also says, `My arms will close around you and protect you with the truth.' If you interpret these statements as being said by God, they appear to be biblical in nature. It is not logical for a human being to state that his or her love is eternal if the duration of their life rarely exceeds seventy or eighty years, so by simple deduction this statement would be a reference to divinity, would it not?"

"I don't know. Maybe you're overthinking it."

"It was an important feature in my near death experience. For that reason alone, it requires extensive analysis."

I shrugged. "Then good luck figuring it out...Anyways, thanks for helping me out."

Big Bird smiled.

I found a small figure in an Equality uniform crying in the corner of the warehouse.

Caitlyn curled in a ball, tears flowing down her cheeks as she gazed at a doll that looked like one of her mothers, labeled `Pat.' The doll had a rounded figure, button nose, black and purple hair, skimpy silver outfit.

"They didn't tell me until now," she sobbed. "It's that fucking Sil person! If you hadn't been so busy chasing that damned woman, my mother would have lived! But no, you couldn't just let her run free! You had to meddle with things, and now Mother's dead!"

I stretched out an arm to console her, but she yelled, "Don't touch me! This is all your fault!"

"How is this my-"

She grabbed me in a fierce grip, punched me, then pressed her face against me as she cried into my chest. "It's not fair! It's not!"

Sobs and incoherent emotional mumbling followed.

I gently stroked her hair, thinking I'd become a mother without first experiencing any sort of full romantic relationship.

Once she'd drenched my clothing with her tears, I heard her muttering, "You've got a bullet hole in your clothes."

"I know."

I held her, allowing her to calm down some more. "Thanks for helping me stop Sil. I know you...didn't like how things turned out, hell, I don't like how it turned out, but I'm glad you helped us finally put an end to all this."

She wiped her eyes, staring up into mine. "You didn't have a choice, did you?"

I shook my head. "They made me do this mission against my will, but I understand why it needed to be done."

"Containment."

"What?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I heard Mr. Weyland saying something about containment."

"How did you get into the sewers like that? When you made your appearance on that platform?"

"There are manholes all over the park. People don't poo on themselves as much as you think."

"How did you find me?"

"It wasn't that hard. You were blowing up everything in the park. There were cameras and stuff. Drones. Plus that fat friend of yours is psychic. He had a hunch you'd be coming that way, and Xavier thought we should try to trap Sil in the sewer. After your friends got kidnapped, I stayed with the team and did what they said."

"How'd you escape the explosion?"

"Your alien friends are fast. Shasharmazorb rushed me up a floor, into some kinda heavy duty locker. I think some of the other people had grappling hooks or something. I know Zack did...will you be my mommy?"

I stared at her, feeling a lump rising in my throat. "Those are big shoes to fill...How about I just...be your big sister for now, and see where that leads us."

She grinned. "You're afraid of kissing Brenda, aren't you?"

"I don't kiss other mommies on the lips."

"You'd be a good one." She promptly fell asleep on my chest.

Xavier brought me blankets and a pillow. "I can't thank you enough for stopping my creation. My whole team owes you a debt of gratitude. Would you like to speak to them?"

I nodded.

After carefully wrapping the girl in blankets and propping her head up with the pillow, I took Xavier's phone, greeting my teammates.

The first face greeting me on the screen was Mr. Lennox's. "Heyy! Demolition woman! Nice job stopping Sil!"

"Thanks," I murmured. "How are the kids?"

"They're fine. The ones that got away, at least. They had to do CPR on a few kids they had in those storage containers, but we only lost two. The rest are happy and alive...did you get all the babies?"

`We only lost two,' I thought. `Only.' I swallowed, giving him a nod.

"They're not ripping people's faces off, are they?"

"No, they've been fed."

"So they're okay as long as they eat. That's good to know."

"I'm going to Weyland's island. Do you want to come along?"

Press laughed. "Noo. Thank you, I've had enough of brats and space aliens. I'd rather stick to straightforward bounty hunting from now on."

Laura, however, seemed to have other ideas. She took the phone from him. "I admit the situation was stressful, but extraterrestrial life still fascinates me."

Press sighed. "I guess not all aliens are bad...I'd just rather not run into the ones that are."

"Are you okay?" I asked the woman. "With your injuries, it didn't look like a good idea for you-"

"I'm good. Press had my back. I was below deck most the time anyway...we're going to have a memorial service for Mr. Arden. I was wondering if you wanted to come."

"I...I don't think I can. I mean, there's something I have to take care of first. I don't think we're going to meet again."

She sighed and nodded. "Well, good luck. Hope it turns out in your favor, whatever you're doing."

She stepped out of view, and Rosa appeared on the monitor. "You did good, chica. Those bastards really got what was coming to them."

I glanced at her in discomfort. "So you think the children are in good hands now?"

She nodded. "The best."

I eyed her companion. "And what do you think about all this, Mr. Smithson?"

"I'm just glad all that killing is over. That whole boat made me sick, and it wasn't the sea." He paused. "I also got proposed to."

Rosa squeezed his hand. "He said yes."

"Congratulations."

"We're trying to find her a different line of work," Press said off camera.

Next Zack made an appearance, flashing his teeth. "You did a great job. A couple times I thought you wouldn't make it, but you're a smart girl."

He kept grinning.

The rest of his face vanished, leaving just his pearly whites.

"Show off," Press said.

The repairs took a lot less time than you'd think. It was all those advanced alien devices.

In fact, as I was asking Mrs. Hannigan if she could open a communication channel with Pillow, Ssunamrozedrah announced we were ready to go.

I hoped we could leave someone behind in the relative safety of the warehouse, but everyone wanted to come with.

The core team, of course, consisted of me, Ippi, Kamara, Ssunamrozedrah, Estalix and Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik, with Weyland and possibly Xavier as hostages.

I had everyone that had attached themselves to me, Matthew, Mark, Luke and Caitlyn. Josh was there for Kamara, but I could still kinda tell he still cared for me, if only as a big sister.

Ernie, of course, had her devotees, and Lacethanny, because she's technically family.

Mrs. Hannigan had other business to attend to at the Phyxo building, so she stayed behind, as did Smithson and Rosa, since those two were busy running the world's largest daycare center. Press and Laura, of course, had Arden's funeral plans.

To ensure a solid interface, Mara uploaded her cybernetic consciousness into the computer, allowing Big Bird to use her body for awhile, her Furby shell tucked carefully into one of the storage compartments.

As our ship rose into the air, soaring over the wreck that remained of the Disney barge, I got my first and final look at the tentacled thing that had wrapped itself around the boat.

It was the monster I'd seen in the bottom of the well in Learning Town.

This was no mere theme park robot. I could see the gaping hole where I had stabbed it in the eye.

And then we were gone.

The so-called `spaceship' wasn't really space ready, nor, it seemed, would it ever be. We basically had an invisible VTOL airplane, a fast vehicle that would probably break up like the Columbia the moment you tried to take it through the atmosphere. Still, the speed was impressive. We zoomed past the Mexican Strait In a matter of minutes, soaring above the jungles of South America.

It wasn't hard to get back to the island. Both Weyland and Xavier could locate the coordinates easily enough. The approach was the problem.

The island had the shape of a half moon, with beaches around the outside and oddly deciduous forests and desert wastes covering the rest of the landmass, pockmarked with buildings in little clearings. With the exception of a few helicopters, it seemed harmless from the distance.

"Where is this `hospital' you speak of?" Ssunamrozedrah asked me.

"You'll have to be more specific," Weyland said. "There's several on the island."

I frowned. "But none that can cure brain cancer, I'm guessing."

"Correct. For now. However, that mechanical shrimp Mrs. Hannigan used could be a game changer."

"Speaking of games, which hospital holds Ernie's grandmother?"

"That would be Core, if the Board hasn't decided to relocate her for tactical exercises."

I narrowed my gaze. "What kind of tactical exercises?"

He didn't answer the question. "I strongly advise against flying over Core. The object scanners are highly sophisticated and the antiaircraft weaponry will pick off this craft in a matter of seconds."

"Our devices make us invisible to radar and other types of scans," Ssunamrozedrah argued.

"You're welcome to try, but don't say I didn't warn you. We've adapted several alien technologies..." He let that last statement hang, pregnant with meaning.

"What would you suggest?"

"Your best bet is to land on the southern tip, along the White Zone, work your way up from Gold to Black. While military units are Geese. Trainees."

I scowled at him. "How can we trust what you say?"

He shrugged. "You can't."

Where's the airport?"

"We have four."

"Is there a `back area' where you don't have an airport?"

"No. There's one for each cardinal direction, with the exception of the White Zone on the southern tip."

"We should try our luck with the Geese," Kamara agreed.

Growling softly, Ssunamrozedrah brought the craft in lower, flitting across a long sandy beach where soldiers jogged past a pair of tanks and a cluster of jeeps with mounted machine guns.

"We're being hailed," Mara's disembodied voice said through the ship's audio system. "All major aircraft frequencies."

The voice of a gruff sounding male broke in. "Black Boar to unidentified craft, you are in violation of our DAMBALLAH airspace. We are aware of your location. Reply with authorization and land at the designated zone. You have five minutes to answer, or we will open fire."

The voice repeated itself.

"Put me through," Weyland said.

I heard a bleep. "The channel is open," Mara said.

Weyland cleared his throat. "This is Gold Horse, authorization D9192680. Pretty wench NA tag `Chinatown.' Request sand trap."

"What does all that mean?" I asked him.

Weyland didn't answer, because he was on the channel, but Eleven took me aside and muttered, "Pretty wench means a new vehicle. New-ish. He just named it the `Chinatown.'"

"And what's the sand trap?"

He glanced nervously at Weyland. "Ground landing in a secure zone. It's unorthodox."

"Copy that, Gold Horse," the voice on the radio answered. "Request denied."

Something very loud and thunderous rocked the ship, throwing debris across the compartment. The floor tilted at an angle as the acrid fumes from burning equipment filled the chamber in big black clouds.

Two children and a tall pair of cult members collapsed to the floor with shrapnel sticking out of their bodies.

"Authorization Delta Niner One Niner 2680!" Weyland barked. "I have clearance from Blue ox! Operation J7T1!"

"Blue Ox is dead," the voice answered coldly. "You have disobeyed protocol, Gold Horse."

On one of the few working monitors, I could see the souped up 88 MM Flaks shelling us from a sand dune.

Giant sparks leapt from equipment, some of it catching on fire.

Estalix grabbed Weyland by the throat, lifting him into the air. "Your value to us as a hostage has been greatly diminished! Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you right now!"

Weyland somehow managed to respond with an amused smirk. "I'd think finding a way to safely land this craft should be your first priority."

Noting how Ssunamrozedrah was already busy at the controls, he growled, "That is being taken care of. It will only take half a second to separate your head from the rest of your body."

In a choking breath, Weyland answered, "This head, that you so eagerly want to detach, contains information of vital importance to your little rescue mission."

"He's right," I said. "Let him go."

With a look of disgust, Estalix dropped him on the floor.

A second after he did this, I heard Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik crying, "Lacethanny! Dear Lord, she has fallen out!"

Golic beat his breast. "Shasharmazorb's beloved daughter! A sign of wrath from our goddess! Bow with your faces to the ground, and pray that this passes us! For if she spares not her own offspring...!"

"Iyya Shasharmazorb, have mercy! Iyya Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik have mercy!" the cultists cried, laying flat before Ernie's feet.

Mark wrapped himself around my neck for protection, Matthew clamping onto my back. Luke clung to my leg, and as those three glommed onto me, Caitlyn pressed close, grabbing my hand. "Mommy, I'm scared."

Instead of correcting her, I just gave her hand a squeeze. "Me too."

Ssunamrozedrah, Estalix and our AI units tried to fight gravity by using secondary thrusters in ways they weren't intended, but we got shelled again, and it only served to add an unpleasant spin to our harrowing descent.

We rammed into something, and I went flying across the room.

I hit a wall, and for a moment it felt like riding one of those spinning amusement park rides where you stuck to a wall as the floor dropped out, Caitlyn's weight pressing down on my chest like a barbell set.

I saw nothing but a disorienting blur. We rolled over and over, bumped and banged into objects, other passengers.

I flew backwards, and my skull knocked against a big square object, causing me to lose consciousness.

I had a strange dream. Mom and dad had somehow cut the back of their heads open and put little dioramas inside them. Dad had a bird cage with little dolls and furniture inside. Somehow the two were alive and walking around, even with their skulls cut open like that.

Dad's was all decorated and open for viewing, but mom's only had a triangle cut out, so she was holding up a drill so she could open the areas she'd outlined with a marker.

"Nurse! She's waking up!" I heard a voice saying.

"Oh thank God!"

Mom?

I snapped my eyelids open.

I lay in a hospital ward, in one of those wheeled automatic patient beds.

I had an IV pump hooked up to my arm, my index finger stuck in a pulse oximeter, and I could feel sticky heart monitors for the EKG pulling at my skin beneath the thin hospital shift I wore. I had probes on my head, too. For the EEG.

I took one look at the figure in the padded seat next to my bed and burst into tears. "Mom? Is that really you?"

Narrow faced, long blonde hair, angular nose, laugh lines around the corners of her eyes. Aqua colored hospital scrubs with a Trainee badge. I wiped away the tears trickling down my cheeks.

She smiled at me. "Yes, dear. It's really me."

"But I saw those men shoot you in the head! How are you alive?"

She gave me a frightened stare. "What men?"

"I saw a group of men bring you into Learning Town. They shot you in the head!"

She looked at me like I were crazy. "Did you...dream about that?"

I shook my head, wondering if I were crazy. "No, mama. I saw it."

"Do I look dead to you?" she asked.

Another tear rolled down my cheek. "No..."

Mom held my hand. "You had a nightmare, sweetie. That's all it was."

"What...happened?" I stammered.

She took a deep breath. "Well. You were out in that park late at night, climbing a rock wall, and you fell and hit your head. It's a lucky thing your little black friend called the ambulance when she did. You could have died."

I sat up and grabbed her, crying all over her scrubs as I pressed her close.

I looked at the front and back of her head, felt and touched them.

No bullet hole.

No bird cage.

"Oh thank you God, thank you Jesus," I whimpered. "Mom, I love you. I'm sorry I ever disobeyed or said anything mean to you, ever. I love you, mom. Please don't die for real."

"Can I get a hug too?"

When I saw the owner of the voice, my eyes became so blurry with tears that I couldn't see.

I wiped my eyes, scarcely believing what my vision told me.

Portly figure, neatly trimmed beard and mustache, mouse brown hair, balding on top, round sausage-like nose.

Since I had a tube stuck in my arm, I just spread my arms and called to him until he hugged me. I cried again.

When he let go, I looked down at my body and did a double take. I was a little girl again. I'd been too carried away in the moment to notice before, but my hands and arms had shrank, my chest and hips flattened. "How long was I out?"

Mom squeezed my hand. "Oh honey! It's been a month! You've been in a coma all this time! We thought you'd never wake up!"

A chill ran down my back.

A month gone from my life. All that time in bed.

I even had a catheter and a pan for number two. The bag had actually filled to the quarter mark.

People had placed cards and flowers on the little dressers next to my bed, mostly relatives, like grandma, who I didn't even know was alive, but I also saw cards from Josh, Kamara and Lacy.

The one from Josh was a corny store bought one, something forgettable about a skier. He wrote only a line on the bottom. "Get better soon! P.S. I hope you like toffee."

I looked behind the card and found one of those toffee cans that usually contain springloaded snakes. I rolled my eyes and didn't touch it, but Dad did.

Fake flowers popped out of it. That made me smile a little.

Kamara's card had an essay about all the reasons we were such good friends. None of it had to do with military stuff, which was very touching. She'd brought me one of those Build-A-Bear things with a cast on its leg and a bandage around its head.

And then there was Lacy's: "You're a good friend. Keep fighting and get better. I love you. Hugs and kisses. XOXO."

That made me cringe a little, but I decided to take it at face value.

"I heard you liked the movie E.T.," the card continued. "So I brought you some geraniums."

She was right. I did like the movie, and the flowers were nice.

As I smelled one of them, I asked myself, Is that why I dreamed about aliens?

A nurse rapped politely on the open door. "May I come in?"

She reminded me of Mrs. Hannigan, but with red hair and wasn't nearly as bony. Her name: Becky Anderson.

I got shown X-rays of my body after the fall. No hidden exoskeleton. There had been some mild fractures, but they had healed during my coma.

She removed the probes, and I got dressed in some street clothes mom brought along. The shirt was stripy (yuck) but I wore it anyway.

The woman told me a bunch of stuff, medicines and whatnot, but it was mostly for my parents' benefit. The nurse did some tests on me, unhooked my feeding tubes, allowed me to try standing.

I felt dizzy. Disoriented. My legs shook, and it took me awhile to find my balance. It was the atrophy, you know. Eventually I re-established equilibrium.

The woman urged me to sit down after a few practice walks, then, since I was hungry, mom and dad pushed my wheelchair down to the cafeteria, and we had dinner together, meatloaf and mashed potatoes and corn. It was the best meal I'd tasted in a long time. I scoured the entire tray clean, then gobbled down some chocolate pudding and drank a pint of chocolate milk.

As I ate, I asked mom and dad about DAMBALLAH.

"I'm not sure, baby," Dad said. "Could you explain to me what DAMBALLAH is?"

I told him about Weyland and the government project, about Learning Town and all the military tests. The two stared at me, taking it all in.

Dad whistled. "You've got some imagination, kid!"

"No kidding!" Mom agreed. "That sounds like something straight out of one of those science fiction novels!"

"She always did do well in creative writing," Dad muttered. "Too bad there isn't a future for that."

"Don't crush her hopes, George. Who knows? She might wind up being the next Mary Higgins Clark."

I scratched my head. "So...none of that ever happened. There's no secret military base on the other side of that park."

Dad laughed. "The only thing over there is a quarry they're tearing down to put in an office building."

He must have noticed my skeptical look, for then he added, "Once they let you out of here, I'll drive you past it so you can get a good look. I promise you, there's no secret army base or little green men."

"Mom, are you sure you're not a...clone? Like me?"

She chuckled. "Dear, maybe you shouldn't watch so many movies."

"I'm sorry, mom. It's just...that...nightmare. It was so real!"

"Honey," said Dad. "Sometimes a dream is just a dream."

"Still, I notice I don't quite look like you or mom. Was I adopted?"

He grinned. "Such silly questions! Of course you're not adopted! I don't know where you're getting this from!"

"I...just noticed it...that's all. It seemed...strange."

"You should see pictures of your aunt Thelma," Mom said. "You look just like her."

Dad nodded. "You definitely take after your mother's side."

Based on what I understood about recessive genes, I accepted that explanation. "So I'm definitely not a clone."

"You're being ridiculous."

I tried to make that claw thing shoot out of my mouth. Several times, in fact, but nothing happened. I sighed in relief.

"What are you doing?" Dad asked.

I shrugged. "I don't know."

I didn't want to go back to the ward, but Becky said I had to.

Since I felt a little stronger now, Becky let me practice walking down the hospital corridor. I leaned on the rails when I tired out.

I returned to bed, watched TV.

They were playing The Wizard of Oz with the sound off, that scene where Dorothy gets hit in the head with a window frame and sees the wicked witch flying through the tornado on her broomstick.

I felt kind of stupid watching it, thinking about how I, like Dorothy, had constructed some elaborate world in my unconscious mind and woke up to find myself in a rather ordinary world.

Still, I was happy that I dreamed the whole thing. Everything looked better, felt better, tasted better, knowing I'd never have to deal with that nightmare ever again.

Dad changed the channel, and I sat through that episode of the Partridge Family where Danny steals a yo-yo from a toy store and gets blamed for something else as he's having an attack of conscience.

"Saying sorry doesn't always make things better," the shopkeep said.

As I watched this, I began to worry about the dead body hidden in my parents' basement. If it really happened, how would I ask about it without making them suspicious?

For that matter, how could I sneak down and check if a body existed there? It's not like they often asked me to go into the basement for stuff.

I somehow fell asleep, but my worries didn't go away, even then.

I dreamed about mom trying to hide a human sized garbage bag in our front yard with her bare hands and tongue depressors.

Mom liked to cut corners, making Band-Aids with tape and cotton balls, using mugs instead of measuring cups in the kitchen, a tablespoon if a teaspoon couldn't be found.

It would take forever for her to bury that body, and I didn't see a shovel anywhere. I wondered if she dug this way intentionally.

Did Dad threaten her into burying the body, and she wanted him to get caught? If so, she seemed to be trying damn hard to get the job done, in that impossibly backwards and inefficient way. Her way.

I watched her dig like this for awhile, refusing to help when she asked, because I knew of better ways to go about it.

"I don't have a shovel," I kept saying.

When a cop came walking by the house, mom stood up, made an animal howling noise, and dropped dead.

I tried to cry, but couldn't.

I had the keys to the house, so I rushed inside, locking the deadbolt.

Dad rushed up to the porch, banging on the door. Apparently, he didn't have the key.

He looked drunk and angry, and the cop was coming, so I hid behind the door, waiting for him to be taken away.

The noises subsided.

When I peeked out the window, I saw myself with a shovel, digging three holes to dispose of three human sized plastic bags.

I awoke in a cold sweat. To my great relief, I was still in the hospital. Mom and Dad sat in chairs next to my bed, staring at the television.

The sound was off, but I could see it had something to do with the Disney barge. It was a fictional movie on the Syfy Network.

The weirdest thing I'd ever seen. It looked exactly like security footage of me from the park, but whenever I saw the face of the woman in the Minnie costume, it was some actress that didn't look anything like me, and all the backgrounds looked fake. In fact, all images of Disney characters had been replaced by strange bastardized versions of themselves, like a vampire bat with red button pants, and my replacement fought a cyborg version of Captain Hook. "What is this!"

"It's Marvel's new action movie," Dad said. "`Debbie Dreadnought and the Vaults of Mortimer'. The cable networks have been playing it nonstop. It's no wonder you dreamed about it."

I stared at the screen, watching as `Debbie' zoomed down Mickey's Speedway in a GTO, firing at Captain Hook, who held a pair of children captive in the back seat of a Ferrari. You could tell the close up shots had been filmed in a studio, with a movie projector backdrop.

Debbie also had a sword, with which she fought Hook on top of their speeding cars, kind of like they did in that one scene from The Matrix.

Mom turned the TV off. "You've absorbed too much of that already. Tomorrow, we'll have your feet planted solidly in the real world. You're going back to school."

"School?" I stammered.

Mom nodded. "You've missed a whole month's worth of study. You'll be in sixth grade forever!"

She dug out a geometry textbook and a syllabus. "I think you should start on this. The teacher had some suggestions."

And so I studied that, then social studies and English. I drifted off halfway through an assigned reading of Huck Finn.

I dreamed I went to a courthouse to serve as a witness for a murder, perhaps the same one from the other dream. Dad grumpily stood in the line for Small Claims as I wandered around, trying to find the correct place to meet with the attorney.

As I wandered down a marble hallway, my Afexun chip warned me that the police were after me, so I ran down a street, into the fake neighborhoods outside Learning Town.

I broke into one of the houses, and found Smithson in the basement, beating someone to death with a baseball bat, knocking them down a hole in the floor. I helped him clean up the blood.

He wasted all his bleach on the basement floor, using none on the mess upstairs. Someone was sure to uncover his secret with Luminol, so I searched the house for another bottle.

The cops came and arrested him as I was looking, so I ran away. I was his accomplice, after all.

I stopped a block down, but found no one chasing me. As long as I didn't go back to my parents' house, I figured I'd be safe. No one tried to contact me or anything.

Still, my conscience bothered me, so I tried to find my way back to the courthouse, and got lost.

Dad shook me awake. "Sweetie, it's time to go."

I groaned and rubbed my eyes. "Go to where?"

"We're going home, honey."

My stomach did a flip flop. What would I find when I came back there?

I took a wheelchair to the hospital's front entrance, but felt okay with walking out to my parents' car.

"We would take you straight to school," Mom said. "But Nurse Becky said you might need a little more rest and practice walking first."

The place beyond the fence at that park actually was a quarry. We drove all around it, but didn't see anything weird, just some big yellow excavators moving rocks into dump trucks. Of course, Weyland had said that there were many hospitals on the island.

Still, what I was seeing and experiencing seemed more real than the ordeal I had just been through. More realistic, at the very least.

My house was more or less the same as I remembered.

Well, actually less. The furniture wasn't nearly as nice as I remembered. In fact, the place seemed kinda run down. But the floor plan was the same, things had the same color, stood in the exact same places.

The couch sagged and had rips in the arms. The small chandelier above the dining room table was absent, the support piece dangling useless wires. We used a floor lamp instead.

You could see the attic through holes in the ceiling, and the ugly green carpet had bald patches.

"What happened to this place?" I asked as I stepped inside. "I remember it being...nicer."

"You were out for a long time," Dad said. "You know how a place can seem smaller when you grow a little and go back to it?"

I thought about that dream about me cocooning and growing into a full sized woman. "...Maybe you're right."

I glanced at the decorations on the walls, the kitten calendars, grandma's framed painting, old Christmas cards held up by thumbtacks.

"Can I see a picture of Aunt Thelma?" I asked.

Mom shook her head. "I'd love to, but it's lost in my bedroom somewhere."

It had been cold outside, the interior not much warmer. I rubbed my arms. "I thought we had central heating."

"The furnace isn't working," Dad said. "Unfortunately, we can't afford to replace it right now. We've been using a kerosene heater."

"We'll plug in an electric for your room," Mom said. "And there's an electric blanket. There should be some sweatshirts in the closet you can wear."

I watched to check the basement, but this wasn't a good time. "All right, mom." I paused. "I'll see what I can find."

The stairs appeared to be poorly cobbled together, and they creaked when you climbed them. When I reached the top of the stairs, a rat got frightened and darted into my parents' bedroom.

I put on a lavender colored sweatshirt and a striped orange and brown sweater, then searched my room for the doll and other items I'd taken from the scene of that car accident that happened when this whole thing started.

The Raggedy Anne doll had been propped up on my blankets. I examined it carefully, but could find no openings or odd lumps indicating hidden objects anywhere.

"I washed it while you were gone," Mom said from the doorway. "I should have brought it to the hospital, I forgot how much you love that thing."

I kept staring at the doll. "I picked this off the ground, from that wreck where the girl died. Did you sew it up or something?"

Mom gave me a weird look. "I got that from the thrift store. You were ten, and we couldn't afford to get you a better Christmas gift than a bunch of old stuffed animals...Did they have the television playing the whole time you were in that coma?"

We had stopped for breakfast at a donut shop on the way home. Her comment made the food shift uncomfortably in my stomach. "You're a nurse."

"Nurse in training. I'm not yet established."

"What about dad?" I said. "He's a scientist, right?"

"And he created you in a lab," Mom said with a laugh. "Sorry, honey. It's not true. He only works for JE Dunn."

I paled. "Did...my trip to the hospital...hurt you? Financially, I mean?"

She hugged me. "That's nothing for you to worry about, sweetie."

After that, I was a good little girl, studying all the stuff I could to please them, as long as they remained alive, for as long as possible.

Mom, who had worked late at the hospital, and spent the morning taking care of me a and bringing me home, immediately went to bed, and was `dead to the world,' and dad pretty much spent the day drinking beer and watching TV, wrestling and boring old westerns.

I waited for Dad to go to the bathroom, then slipped down into the garage.

I thought we had a washing machine, but that too appeared to be something I'd dreamt up. My parents shared one car, and home building materials, bicycles and broken furniture filled the garage, so you couldn't actually park there.

I opened the basement door.

A narrow crudely built staircase fashioned out of poured concrete and cinder blocks led down into a crawl space, a place with concrete walls, a dirt floor, and only a man sized space to move around between the water heaters and the wall.

I remembered dragging Eight through there with much difficulty. I had to bend beneath the water pipes to dig the hole. The dirt was a pale tan color, coated with a thick layer of dust. The rats had dug out little niches in the soil along the walls, networking with the crawl spaces and basements of other houses. I couldn't see a back wall, anything to indicate where the house ended. It seemed like you could crawl into there and get lost in the darkness.

I saw no sign of a body. The soil seemed undisturbed, like I had never dug there.

It made sense. If I didn't have an exoskeleton or claw thing in my mouth, I also probably couldn't kill and bury a two hundred pound man.

But the dream had felt so real! The guilt! I worried about it so long! I went through so much on account of it!

If there wasn't a real body down there, what was my unconscious mind trying to tell me with such terrible imagery?

It was dark. I couldn't see a thing in the shadowy recesses. My mind conjured up zombie burglars and giant dog sized rats foaming with rabies, Satanic foes that crawled out of the pits of hell.

I hurried back out.

I played outside for awhile by myself. When I came back in, mom was awake and had lunch prepared for me. We had hot dogs.

"Well, Ellie," Mom said. "Tomorrow your father will be driving you to school, and you can see all of your friends again. How does that sound?"

"It sounds great," I agreed. "So...how was work?"

She told me about how she and two other nurses had to turn a morbidly obese woman to prevent bed sores, a patient in another ward that was a transvestite and she had to put monitors on his hairy chest.

Also, another nurse who she worked with went over her head and reported an infraction to an upper level supervisor without even telling mom what she did wrong. "Say a prayer for me. My days of having a job may be numbered."

I went to my room, read Nancy Drew, did some homework. We couldn't afford internet.

For dinner, Mom made us a bland casserole of rice, tuna, mushroom soup and carrots. it still tasted a lot better than a lot of things I'd eaten in my dream. Anyways, it wasn't like I could cook better.

Since I hadn't been to school or anything, we didn't have much to talk about. Dad told me about a great aunt of his that got accidentally dragged behind a horse until her eye came out, and someone put it in funny, so she always had a lazy eye. I guess my accident reminded him of that somehow.

Night fell. I got put to bed.

As the darkness of night deepened, long after mother had tucked me into bed, I noticed movement in the shadows of my closet.

At first, I thought I was merely seeing things, as your eyes tend to play tricks on you when you stare at doorknobs and other objects too long. After all, I couldn't sleep, and my eyes had been wandering all over the place.

But then the shadow gained definition, and my closet door actually slid aside, revealing a large glistening black shape.

An eyeless insect thing with a long mosquito beak, and feather-like plates running up and down its body.

I stared, mouth hanging open as the giant beast leaned over the foot of my bed, letting out a guttural purr.

I glanced nervously in the direction of the bedroom door.

"Mom?"