Chapter 1

Space.

Black, cold, uninviting.

Myriads of stars shining brightly, the electromagnetic radiation they emit hurling through billions upon billions miles of void.

Earth.

A blue and white ball of warmth and life.

A beacon of hospitality in the hostile universe.

On the dark hemisphere that wasn't currently facing the sun, tiny white lights could be discerned, their artificial brightness trying, in vain, to challenge the stars themselves.

A small, shining something streaked toward one of these light spots.

This something rocketed towards the Earth, and entered the outer layers of the atmosphere.

Most solid objects that have been pulled by Earth's potent gravity over the centuries have burned-out quickly, their fragile structure, made mostly of ice, quickly surrendered to the awesome heat that was generated by the friction with the air particles.

But the something apparently knew nothing about this – it impacted first the outer, then the inner atmospheric layers at great velocities, and it barely slowed down, but wasn't harmed in any way.

Now, cruising freely through the troposphere, it turned itself towards one of the spots of light that it seen from orbit.

Specifically – Chicago.

---

The outskirts of Chicago.

Inside a small, house, in one of the two rooms, there was a double bed.

It was currently half empty, with only one occupant sleeping in it.

The "occupant", Kelley Hombres, turned on her other side, then woke up.

She instinctively reached out with her hand to the other side of the bed, but felt only cold sheets.

Her boyfriend was in England, on a business meeting. She missed him so much, but he would be returning only in three days. In the meanwhile, she will just have to be patient – and study hard. She wanted to be a schoolteacher of literature, and so far she was doing great at university, her grades being among the highest in her class.

Well, she was awake now. Better take a snack and get back to sleep.

She slowly rose out of the bed, yawning. Her long blond hair fell on the pillow as she did.

Sleepily, she made her way to the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator door wide.

There wasn't much food there, but after a careful, thorough search, she found a jar of jam. She quickly made a couple of sandwiches, and started to eat.

She finished both, and went back to the bedroom, already feeling her eyes slowly close.

But when she entered the room, a cool breeze was blowing at her face.

The window was wide open.

She was absolutely sure it was closed during the night. Worried thoughts started to run through her mind.

What if somebody entered her apartment?

What if it was a psychopathic maniac or criminal?

The first thing she did was to close the window. Next, she went for the kitchen, to get a knife. She was going to search the entire house (which was a pretty simple task, as it was very small), and if she found somebody, she would stab him and call the police immediately.

When she was crossing the living room to reach the kitchen, a cold chill passed through her spine, though it was pretty warm inside the house.

She felt as if there's someone behind her…

She froze in fear.

Her rich imagination came to life. It was easy for her to imagine a dark figure, standing behind her with a huge knife, just like in that movie, Scream.

She spun around quickly, but saw nothing. A careful look around still revealed nothing, and she was really getting tired and should go back to sleep. She has to get-up early this morning, if she wants to reach school in time. She simply had to get over this paranoia. But she wasn't sure it was only that.

What if she's really in danger?

Kelley walked over to the light switch and flipped it.

The room remained dark.

She tugged it several times, but without result.

Now, she was really afraid…

Kelley turned back toward the kitchen quickly, and a few seconds later, she was already digging frantically through the forks and spoons in the drawer, searching for a knife, when she suddenly felt it again.

As if something was behind her. Right behind her!

She spun around quickly, and gasped in horror. Her eyes bulged, and she started to scream uncontrollably, as if her throat had a life of its own.

The creature in front of her wasn't a thief, a murderer or a maniac.

It was a 'grey'.

Filled with terror, she could recognize the features of the famous alien from Independence Day, and countless other movies and TV shows. Grey in color, with an unproportionally big head, and huge, dark, evil eyes.

The creature touched her with an alien device in his hand, and she could feel her body go limp.

Her shriek has died out; she involuntarily but slowly slid to the floor.

Kelley tried to do something, crawl away, hit the alien, anything… but she was incapable of moving a muscle.

She was completely paralyzed!

She screamed silently at her body to move, to do something before this horrible creature takes her away and abducts her, but to no avail.

Now, she could discern movement behind the grey alien.

More of his kind were moving about the apartment, examining her VCR and any other electronics they could put their tiny hands on.

Another alien suddenly joined the first one in the kitchen. She watched, as if she wasn't participating, how both lifted her paralyzed body from the floor, and dragged her to the living room.

Although her body wouldn't obey her, she has not lost the ability to feel the touch of the cold, moist alien hands on her skin.

Tears were starting to form in the corners of her eyes.

Where were they taking her? Are they going to experiment on her, just like in the movies? She felt like a little girl, whose imaginative monsters suddenly came to life and claimed her to themselves.

As she was being dragged to outside the house, she looked up, toward the skies. The stars were shining very brightly tonight, and the skies were completely clear. Not a single cloud interrupted the majesty of the stars above her. Then, she lowered her gaze as far as she could go without moving her head.

She saw a real flying saucer sitting on the edge of the road which passed near the house, its silvery side only 20 feet from the house wall.

There was a door in the craft's side, and it was opened wide.

The dark opening was threatening – it was as if the inanimate craft itself was mocking her, hiding the vile examination equipment and other, more horrible things from her view, inside.

When they were already close to the door and ready to enter, she was screaming without sound to the aliens, to have pity on her. But the aliens remained as threatening as they were, continuing to carry her right towards the saucer.

She watched the dark doorway as they got closer and closer. There was movement inside… something was moving there… Then, for a fraction of a second, she caught something that has thrown her into a completely new cycle of fear and horror.

A pair of gleaming red eyes.

The alien who was lifting her legs have already disappeared into the unnatural darkness, and her feet started to enter too… When she heard a loud BANG, and felt her upper body being dropped to the floor. The second alien released her!

She was now lying on her back, a quarter of her body inside the alien craft.

Her head was ringing from the impact with the ground when the alien dropped her. Fortunately, the greys were short, and not very strong, so they were carrying her at a height of mere inches above the ground. Her head was merely scratched, but it still hurt.

She could now hear sounds of guns firing, and unnatural screams – it were probably the aliens – filled the air.

Suddenly, there was a series of bright flashes of green light, which reflected from the silvery surface of the alien UFO.

The loud gunfire receded a bit, only to return again at full power, this time even closer to Kelley.

More screams and more green flashes followed.

A pair of grey aliens rushed out of the UFO, jumping over her motionless body as they passed. Kelley had noticed they were holding silvery-blue rifles in their hands.

Just what the hell was going on here?

Suddenly, Kelley felt in horror a cold grip on her ankles. She was being dragged into the craft!

But just then, the green flashes and gunfire sounds stopped, and she felt a grip on her arms too.

On contrast with the alien hands, these hands were warm, but pretty rough – as if they were covered in gloves.

Then, the sound of automatic fire mere feet behind her deafened her, leaving her ears ringing loudly, and her head spinning.

Somebody was standing right behind her, firing at the doorway, the bullets streaking and entering the dark innards of the UFO.

The cold hands at her ankles let her go, as she was dragged farther from the craft, by the man with gloves on his hands.

She could now discern in the darkness of night a trio of dark shapes (human shapes!) entering the dark doorway of the alien vessel with black rifles in their hands.

She wanted to scream, she wanted to warn them not to go in there, but she still couldn't move. They were entering the domain of the aliens, hell itself!!

She couldn't think logically after all that she had been through.

After a few minutes (they sure seemed longer to Kelley…), the three soldiers emerged from the craft.

"UFO secured, sir!" she heard one of them addressing the person who dragged her from the UFO, and who was standing beside her, guarding her. She couldn't see him though – he was standing out of her limited field of view.

"Excellent" the man replied, "You all did well".

He must be the commander, thought Kelley. She was still in a complete state of shock, but she was starting to feel the effects of the alien paralyzing device dissipate.

"How many casualties we have?" asked the same commander who Kelley could not see.

"Santiago and Dean are out, sir. Demler is barely alive – he got a plasma bolt straight in the leg. It looks bad. He lost enough blood already, and Lee says that if we're not taking off right now, he won't make it home, sir. Anyway, it looks that with half of his right leg blown up from under him, he's out of commission for good" The soldier concluded.

Though Kelley hasn't heard most of his words due to the ringing in her ears, she understood from his tone of speech that the casualties were pretty bad.

"And how many we nailed today?" The commander asked again.

"Well, sir, there were 3 Sectoids in the apartment, with two additional ones guarding the house from the outside. There were three Sectoids in the UFO, two of them ran out to reinforce their buddies when we showed up, leaving one Sectoid and a Reaper inside"

"A Reaper?" the commander asked, surprised. "With a Sectoid task force?" But he was apparently just pondering to himself, addressing no one in particular.

Kelley pondered about it. Sectoids… The greys… But she had no clue how a Reaper could look though. Such a creature was not covered in any science fiction movie she ever seen.

Then, she heard the commander talking again.

"Hmmm… what should I do with her…" he was apparently addressing Kelley.

"Perhaps we should call corporal Lee, sir. He would know how to treat her"

"Don't tell me what to do, private! I was talking to myself, not to you!" the commander was clearly upset.

They called this Lee, whoever he was, and Kelley saw an Asian young man running to their direction.

"What's this?" he asked as soon as he was leaning over her.

"Paralyzed… she was apparently their abduction target…" the commander growled quietly.

Lee leaned over Kelley and started to examine her eyes with a small flashlight.

"Well, she's fully awake. She was hearing your conversation the whole time, sir" Lee chuckled.

The other soldier near Kelley wore a surprised look on his face, and was looking straight at her, curious.

A funny situation, but Kelley was hardly in the mood for any laughs.

"Well, the effects of the alien stunning device should dissipate in… oh…. About half an hour or so. But I could speed up the process" Lee said. He then pulled out a squirt, filled it with a brownish liquid and injected it into her arm.

The effect was immediate.

She was starting to feel as if her body was taken out from a fridge, and put under the warmth of the sun in a desert. The numb parts of here body were quickly starting to come back to life.

After merely two minutes, she was up on her feet with tear in her eyes. What she had experienced tonight was horror beyond imagination. She didn't had any clue why she was spared, while other people around the world were abducted and experimented upon (she now fully believed the stories).

But she was very thankful, and said that much to the commander.

The commander, a black man in his forties, looked upon her, and suddenly brought his rifle to bear on her.

She recoiled in shock.

"If you ever mention this night and what happened here to anybody, we will have to return and finish you off!" the commander growled. "You mention this to no one! You chat about this with no one! N-o o-n-e! Do you understand me!?!"

"Yes… yes sir…" she managed to murmur.

She felt completely and totally miserable.

"Very good!" he barked. "Soldiers!!! We're outta here!"

The other soldiers started to run to the length of the road, disappearing behind the sharp turn a 100 meters from the house.

Corporal Lee and the other soldier nearby, the private-with-no-name, gazed upon her meaningfully, reminding her not to forget the commander's words, then went running with the rest of the soldiers.

The commander turned to go with them but stopped.

"One more thing. A recovery team is going to be here in 5 minutes, taking the alien craft and bodies. By then you should be sitting quietly in your room, making no noise. Understand?" he waited a bit, saw her nod, and took of running.

Less than a minute after he disappeared behind the turn, a loud roar was heard from a distance, and she saw an airplane, unlike anything she seen before (though not as alien as the UFO) taking off vertically and rocketing somewhere to west, leaving her behind, shaking violently in the cold air of an early Chicago morning.