Many of the characters within this story, and the universe they inhabit, are the intellectual property of Jason Katims Productions.

Roswell: Re-Imagined

Written by Horatio Jaxx

Chapter 62: Sunset

It was seven o'clock in the evening when the Roswell Fourteen stopped to rest again. The sun was situated over the western horizon dispensing hues of red, orange and yellow light across its length. The desert landscape was heavily streaked with long shadows that extended away from that bright ball of fire in the sky. The group came to a stop within the envelope of one of these shaded areas. Immediately into their respite all eyes were searching the sky for anything that could be perceived as a danger to them. Within seconds of that study, Kenneth spotted an aircraft.

"I see it," Michael confirmed with a point.

Immediately after that report, all eyes were fixed on the tiny speck that was slowly inching its way across the sky. Kyle produced his binoculars once again and trained them on the object.

"It's another drone," Kyle reported as he continued to follow it with his binoculars.

"Has it spotted us?" Max questioned a second later.

"I think so," Kyle answered without delay. "It looks like it's circling us."

"Okay, we have to go," Michael insisted a second behind Kyle's report. "If we pick up the pace, we should be there in little more than an hour."

"We can't outrun them," Jason insisted in response. "That thing is going to be following us every step of the way."

"We don't have a choice," Michael argued back.

"Jason is right," Max defended. "We can't get away with that drone following us. We have to bring it down."

Michael gave Max a knowing look. All there knew what Max was suggesting and none of them were sure that it could be done.

"You think we can bring it down?" Kyle asked with a look to Max.

"I think we have to try," Max responded with a scan of the group.

Without verbally expressing it, they all agreed to that with their looks. Within seconds of reaching that consensus, the Roswell Fourteen began to merge. All fourteen of them began to silence their minds and blend into the collective consciousness that was forming between them. A few seconds into that effort a new mind came into existence, and it replaced the fourteen separate minds that were there before. Its aura extended out for more than fifty miles in every direction. Their new collective consciousness immediately began to focus its aura about the unmanned aerial vehicle. It was easily within their combined reach, but the distance combined with the structural makeup of the craft was making it difficult for them to physically damage the craft. It took their collective consciousness nearly a minute of intensive concentration to finally rip the flap and aileron off the left wing. The drone spiraled into an uncontrolled rapid dissent. Beastly a minute later it crashed into the desert. Even while the drone was falling, the Roswell Fourteen was moving toward their destination at a hurried pace. They knew that another drone would likely be in the sky above them within a matter of minutes, and they all suspected that manned helicopters would likely be right behind that.

An hour later, the sun was halfway below the horizon when they first heard the distant sounds of aircraft in their vicinity. They could tell by the familiar chopping sound that they were hearing a helicopter, and that they were hearing more than one. They knew that they were minutes away from their destination and this caused them to break out into a run. A few minutes later the sun was gone from sight. All that was left of it was the glow of its presence just below the western horizon. The whole of the landscape around them was bathed in the shadow of the planet.

"Over there," Liz called out with a point to the northwest.

Everyone stopped and looked in the direction of her point. A distant light cold be seen moving just over the top of the desert. Within seconds of that they saw a second light, and then a third, and a fourth. By the time they started running again there were six lights stretched out in a line moving in their direction. Not more than five minutes later the Roswell Fourteen came to a stop. The lights were about two minutes away from being right on top of them. They could see from this distance that the lights were attached to helicopters, and they were being used to illuminate the desert below it. Despite the dire situation, it was not the helicopters that caused them to stop. It was the landscape in front of them that held them in check.

The outcrop that they had been running to loomed in front of them. In appearance it looked like a giant rock that fell out of the sky and stuck into the earth. None of them had any doubts that this was the outcrop they had been looking for. They could feel it whispering, incomprehensibly, into their heads. They were momentarily stunned by the fact that they were in its presence. Despite that they did not know what to do next. After a few seconds of staring at it in silence, they began to make their way up the earthen incline towards the rock face. Max led the way. His mind had become merged with the whispering murmurs emanating from the rock. He knew he was moving, and it felt as if it was not within his power to stop, but he had no desire to do that. The pull of this strange sensation felt like a natural event to him. The fourteen of them moved towards the rock face as though they were in a daze. All of them were unaware that they were beneath the search lights of two helicopters when they reached the rock face.

A few seconds after the searchlights of the two helicopters illuminated the Roswell Fourteen; Max placed his right hand on the rock face. The instant he did that a large patch of the rock transformed into a wall of white light. The height of it at its center was over seven feet. A second after the wall of light appeared Max walked through it without any thought of doing otherwise. Immediately after doing that, the others followed him in, one after the other, one step behind.

For the Roswell Fourteen, the sights, sounds and smells of the world around them dissolved away the instant they stepped into the wall of light. A second after stepping into the light, each of them stepped out of it at separate points of entry along the side walls of a large, narrow, oval room. At the moment of ingress, the room was mostly dark. The white light that served as the doorway for each of them provided most of the illumination. Each of them stood in stunned silence, one step beyond the entryway, gazing upon the space that they had walked into. After several seconds of nothing, Michael took a tentative step forward. At that moment, the door of light behind him transformed into the glass smooth surface that matched the wall about the room. At that same moment the room became illuminated by overhead lights.

Slowly, the other members of the Roswell Fourteen took a step forward. All appeared to be mesmerized by the look of the large room that they were in. There were no corners or crevices. The walls curved seamlessly into the ceiling and the floor. Light overhead glowed directly out from the ceiling. The interior of the room had the appearance of a high-tech command and control center. The center of the space was populated with 25 control stations, or what looked to be control stations. The seating was facing the same direction and glass smooth angled desktops were in front of them. No buttons, switches, levers or touch screen controls were visible anywhere. The location of these stations appeared to be positioned to match the oval shape of the room. The front and back end of the oval had one station. The row behind or in front of them had two stations, the row behind or in front of them had three stations, the row behind or in front of them had four stations and the row in the middle had five.

Other than the lights nothing appeared to be operating inside. Despite this appearance, the Roswell Fourteen could still feel the whispering within their heads. The impression of it felt distant, nonsensical and familiar at the same time. After more than a minute of examining the space from afar, they slipped out of their backpacks, set them on the floor and began moving into the interior of the room at a slow and methodical pace. They walked quietly amidst the myriad of stations as though they were in a hypnotic trance. Their movements looked choreograph and synchronized. They said nothing to each other. Each of them was too busy listening to the murmur within their heads. The whispering in their heads in this moment exceeded everything they experienced in the past. Even though they did not know what it was saying, or if it was saying anything at all, they all felt guided by it.

The Roswell Fourteen appeared to be studying the stations as they glided between them. The stations felt familiar somehow to each member of the group. This was true even though they looked completely foreign in appearance. There were no monitors to look at. There were no keyboards or mouses. They slowly moved their fingers atop the back of the chairs and what looked to be touchscreen desktops in front of them as they gazed upon them with amazed expressions. A few minutes into this all fourteen of them came to a stop in front of a chair and behind its touchscreen. Standing behind the center touchscreen, with his attention fixated on the panel in front of him, was Max. Arrayed around him, in identical states of fascination were the other members of the group. After another few seconds of staring, they all, in one simultaneous motion, sat in the chairs behind them as though a hypnotic command had instructed them. The instant they settled into the seats, the chairs lit up and slid forward. A second later the entire room lit up with activity. The walls around them became monitors. The touchscreens in front of them lit up into display panels. A myriad of data streamed across them in writing foreign to any culture on planet earth. Visuals of the landscape around them, and the men and helicopters searching for them in the desert, could be seen. Despite this rush of activity, the Roswell Fourteen were completely unfazed. From the instant that they took their seats they were one with the ship. What was happening within the control center was miniscule by comparison to what was happening inside their heads. For the first time in their existence as humans, the Roswell Fourteen knew who they were, where they came from and what they had to do.

LINE BREAK

United States Air Force Captain Vincent Brewer had been flying his Pave Hawk Helicopter for an hour when he came across the people he was being directed to. After disembarking his compliment of an eight-man security force one-hundred yards back, he steered his helicopter over the area where he was being told the targets would be found. In less than a minute's time, his copilot had found the fourteen civilians with the searchlight. At first it appeared to him that they were trying to hide themselves next to a large rock formation. He assumed that because they were standing so still, and none of them looked up at them. He had just begun verbally directing his security forces towards them when he noticed a light that appeared to be emanating from the location where the targets were standing. He was at first reluctant to believe this was the case. The bright white light of the helicopter's search lamp gave him reason to believe it was a reflection. Under that assumption, he ignored the bright spot while he guided his security force to the target. A few seconds later, he became convinced that something unusual had happened after the targets disappeared into the bright spot, and then the bright spot disappeared behind them.

After devoting more than a minute to trying to reacquire the targets, Captain Brewer reported back to Holloman that the targets had disappeared. That report did not sit well with a General Pittman, a person he had never heard of until now. He came on the line and ordered him to keep searching for the fourteen civilians. Under the General's continuous urging, Captain Brewer, along with five other helicopters spent another fifteen minutes searching in an ever-widening circle for the fourteen civilians. It was not until the end of that time that he had something to report back.

At first it looked like a laser light show rising from the ground. It passed through the earth beneath it like a specter. It took all of thirty seconds for the whole of it to elevate into the air. It was then that Captain Brewer concluded, along everyone else who was there, that they were seeing some kind of translucent craft. The girth of it was large enough to engulf the Astrodome. In appearance it looked like a rigid, enormous, jellyfish. The outline of the craft could only be made out by the glistening lights that appeared to be reflecting off its surface. Everywhere else it was semitransparent. After it came to a hover five-hundred feet up, Captain Brewer awakened from his shock and called it in.

"Holloman, this is Search Patrol One. Do you copy, over?" Captain Brewer announced into his microphone as he continued to stare out the front window of his helicopter with a look of wide-eyed amazement.

"Roger, Search Patrol One. This is Holloman, we copy, over," came the report back through Captain Brewer's headphones.

Captain Brewer hesitated to report. The event occurring outside of his helicopter had him nearly spellbound. After a pause, he began reporting what he was reluctant to believe he was seeing.

"Holloman, we have an unidentified flying object here. I repeat. An unidentified flying object has just … risen out of the ground, over."

Captain Brewer heard no response to his report, and he gave no thought to requesting one. The object looming in front of his helicopter had his full attention. The unidentified craft hovered in midair for thirty plus seconds, and then it began to move. Captain Brewer watched with astonishment, pivoting his helicopter to keep it in front of him. The craft began at a slow pace, but it shortly reached a speed of more than fifty miles per hour. Captain Brewer thought to follow it but abandoned the idea when the craft went completely invisible. After taking a minute to relax and breath, Captain Brewer analyzed the course that the craft was on before it disappeared. Seconds later he came to a startling realization and immediately pressed his transmission button.

"Holloman, be advised, the UFO is on a line for Holloman. I repeat the last known course of the UFO is on a line for your location, over."