Hello, readers!
Here's a bonus fourth chapter for y'all! It underwent the least amount of changes - mostly just some more meaty scenes plus a little extra - so please don't hesitate to let me know if something's off. The other three chapters I read like two or three times, this one I think I only did like, one extra pass over before publishing it. I hope it all turns out okay, though. I'll have another batch out for you guys next month, and then hopefully but the beginning of November this should be completely revised. That's my goal, anyway!
Also, there's a special guest-star in this chapter heh heh. Let me know if you figure out who it is! I'll give you a hint, they came all the way from New York City!
This chapter has been updated as of 10/1/2017.
~ Crayola
Chapter Twenty-Two
Faces of your Peers
I'd never been inside the town hall. It didn't look like it should be able to house a bunch of people when I looked at it from outside, but the meeting room was full to the brim. Camera crews stood off to the sides with their gear set up, making it hard for people to traverse the theater-style staircases to find a seat. Members of the press were front and center, taking up the first three rows.
To my surprise, there was a great number of citizens occupying those seats. It was less than I'd been expecting but only because I'd thought we'd be outside and the entire town would show up, plus those from other towns—I had kind of let my imagination run away.
It wasn't the first time I'd stood before a crowd. However, my elementary school recitals hadn't quite prepared me for something of this magnitude. That sort of audience had only been parents dragged in to watch their child dance and sing (probably horribly) to support the school and their excited kids.
People weren't the problem. I could handle people. It was the cameras that had me the most nervous and the reason for being there.
The man in charge was standing at the far side of the stage, talking in undertones to the agents assigned to my case. A low murmur occupied the meeting room while they waited for him to start, and the occasional click of a shutter had me staring at my lap.
I was behind the podium, off to the side so people could see me. They'd allowed me to sit there with my parents, and my mom was holding my hand tight enough to hurt. A few men in suits I didn't know were standing at ease behind my family and me as if we needed guards posted nearby. Even the chief of police was at attention with some of his esteemed officers at his side, on the opposite side of the stage from us. Other policemen were threaded throughout the crowd as added protection.
What we needed protection from I had no idea.
Finally, the man that I assumed was Rawlins' and Cooper's superior, approached the stand. He was wearing a decorated uniform and exuded a confidence I wish I felt. He checked to make sure the microphones were on and waited for some of the side chat to end before he started speaking.
"Thank you all for coming," he began. The last few members of the audience quieted to listen. "I am Chris Dixon of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As you all know, not too long ago a tragedy befell the town of Estes Park, Colorado. A small task force had been sent to the Rocky Mountain National Park to investigate what we had thought was a plane that had crashed into the mountain. When that task force never returned, the military got involved."
Immediately the questions started, but Dixon raised his hand and spoke above the crowd. "Please hold all questions until the end."
After a moment, everyone gathered quieted down and Dixon continued with his speech. "Despite the warnings, several students from Estes Park High School went missing the night of the incident, investigating grandiose rumors. A few escaped the park before being captured, but we number the missing casualties at nearly thirty people plus an entire military squad."
The color drained from my face and my fist clenched as I digested this information. I didn't even hear the rest of his speech as I tried to do the math in my head.
Well over thirty people had to have been on that ship.
So many of those drones—what if we didn't—what if they're still—
Of course, it didn't mean that it was the exact number of aliens. I had destroyed a whole room of those eggs, but that meant that there had been people in there that maybe I could have saved. Unless of course there were more eggs than people, which was a distinct possibility . . . .
The Queen sat atop her ovipositor, birthing an egg every few minutes. A drone would come by and carry it off, where it would wait for a victim.
So many more eggs.
How many of those aliens had Wolf and I killed? A dozen, maybe, not counting anything he'd killed during times of our separation. I couldn't remember all of them, and I was sure Brutus had killed a good number of them before we met up, but I wasn't sure the number was that high.
What if there were any of them wandering the woods looking for potential hosts to take? What if they're still out there, lost and confused and looking for their Queen?
They could still be so dangerous!
Panic rose like high tide in my chest as my thoughts ran amok and I looked around, trying to find someone to ask, to warn. I hadn't found the chance to explain to anyone how these aliens worked—they wouldn't know to be careful in those woods, wouldn't know how deadly they could be.
Will they be able to function without their queen?
Mom noticed my agitation and leaned down next to me, giving my hand an extra squeeze. "Sweetie what's the matter?" she whispered in my ear.
I shook my head and took a few deep breaths to calm down. If I wanted to, I could have popped a few anxiety pills Ava had prescribed me, but the last thing I wanted was to develop a dependency on a bunch of narcotics to make me feel better. I hadn't even been taking painkillers unless it was so bad I could hardly function.
Though Mom didn't seem convinced, she sat back in her chair all the same.
". . .Nichole Shain is the currently the only survivor from the domestic terrorists' attack. She was discovered by Jamison Mendes when his team went into the woods following a massive explosion they witnessed while sweeping over the park in a helicopter. "
Shit, how much had I missed when I had spaced out? I knew the story, but if this Dixon guy decided to practice his improv and change some of the stories, I wouldn't have any idea.
"If she feels up to it, Nichole will now take your questions. She is still recovering, so we're going to keep it to five questions, and then I will field the rest. Nichole?" Dixon said, lifting his arm in a welcoming gesture and stepping away from the podium.
My blood pressure spiked, but I still gathered my crutches and joined him at the podium. He made room for me but stood close enough to put his hand on my shoulder.
No one had prepared me for this. All I had was some notecards in my pocket and all of the agents' coaching to see me through. I'd thought I would only field questions if any were directed at me, not that the press would be given the chance to bombard me.
After pulling out my cheat notes and spreading them out on the stand—there was only a handful, so they fit well enough—I cleared my throat and leaned toward the microphones.
Fuck, why me, why me? I thought, trying to ignore the hair standing up on my neck.
So many people!
"Hello?" I started, wincing when the speakers screeched loudly with feedback. I pulled away from them a few inches and tried again. "Sorry."
Thankfully, no one started laughing at me.
Hands went up and everyone clamored for my attention at the same time, shouting my name and anything else they thought would work. I scanned the crowd and then picked out a gentle-looking woman who had a pen in her hand. "Uh—y-yes, the lady with the . . . yellow jacket." My own voice bounced around in my skull.
Everyone's hands went down and the red-headed woman I had picked out stood and loudly asked, "Yes, Nichole, I think everyone here wants to know, how did you escape?"
While I tried to remember how I was supposed to respond, my mouth moved up and down. My mind drew a blank and I panicked for a moment while I scanned the cards I'd made up. I took a breath and glanced up at Mr. Dixon, looking for any sort of cue. He merely smiled and gave me a reassuring nod. After finding some help from that and my notes, I answered.
"There was . . . a soldier there, one of the, uh, of the missing ones. His name was, um, Anderson. He talked to me, kept me," I swallowed hard, "calm and . . . told me how we could escape."
Anderson' pained face, the calm in his voice despite the situation, telling me how to escape my bonds. I closed my eyes against the vision and forced down the lump in my throat. The reporters waited for me to continue, and I was glad I had thought to give that man some recognition.
Really, though, I was disguising Wolf.
"He . . . he risked his life helping me and some others to escape but . . . but the others were . . . gunned down, including Anderson."
Wolf, leading me and my friends down those corridors despite knowing they were all dead. Jess panting, doubled over in pain. Once again I clenched my eyes closed and balled my hands into fists. Mr. Dixon gave me a pat, but it didn't help much.
That cop, turning his gun on Michelle and Jason—the sound of his weapon discharging rattles my skull inside my head—
I inhaled sharply and focused my vision on the crowd in front of me, their sympathetic gazes. They were with me on this, not against me. All they wanted was to hear my story. I couldn't give them the real thing, but I could at least give them something to work with.
Leaning against the podium, I willed the tears not to fall. It didn't work, but I could still speak.
"I . . . in my hurry to escape, I . . .didn't watch my step and fell down a rocky incline. But, uh, I managed to crawl away, to hide . . . until Mendes found me." My body was trembling, as was my voice, but the cards were seeing me through. "I recognized his . . . his uniform and . . . I uh, I don't remember much after that. Not—not until I was in the hospital."
Searing pain exploding in my legs as I landed. Wolf leaning over me, marking me with the blood of the aliens we had killed together. The tears were falling a sob was lodged in my throat. I wiped away the moisture and averted my gaze.
Hopefully, I hadn't given enough information for them to scrutinize the story too much.
When no one else immediately jumped into asking another question, I realized they were waiting for me to say more. The redhead was already sitting. I looked around, caught my breath, and then leaned forward to speak again. "Oh, um, n-next question."
This time, I picked out a cute guy from the front row. He stepped up to ask his question, his hand raised slightly. "Why were you and your friends in the forest that night?"
Good, an easy question I don't have to lie to answer. Why couldn't it have started like this?
"We . . . thought there was an alien spaceship," I muttered in shame. "So we went to investigate and maybe . . . uh, find some aliens."
Chuckling rippled through the crowd and I ducked my head, glowering at the cards in front of me. A heat flushed across my cheeks. If they only knew that it had been aliens. Maybe then they wouldn't be laughing at me.
"Next question," I snapped.
They all clamored for my attention and I pointed blindly at a man in the middle. He caught my attention because he was probably six and a half feet tall and about as thin as I was. "You, uh, with the black hair and . . . green shirt."
He stood straighter and held his hand up. "Did you manage to overhear anything about another attack? Maybe where they were planning to hit next?"
The question caught me off guard and I floundered for an answer. A strangled noise came from my throat instead of words, and I looked around for someone to tell me how to respond, what to say. Dixon came to my aid a few seconds later, gently moving me aside so he could speak.
"Nichole is not at liberty to disclose that information. Please be assured that we are taking every precaution we can to ensure this doesn't happen again. Next question please."
Dixon stepped aside and motioned for me to continue. I shot him an appreciative nod and scanned the crowd for someone else to pick. I finally settled on a lady in an obnoxious pink overcoat. She pushed aside a few people and looked up, almost smug, to me.
"Why did they capture you?"
Taken aback, I scrambled to have her clarify. "I don't understand—"
"Was it because you stumbled upon their hideout? Were they going to use you all as leverage until their demands were met? What did they do to you while they had you?"
My throat closed and I felt the tears stinging my eyes, creating a pressure behind my eyes. Suddenly defensive, I answered her in the same rapid-fire manner of her questioning. "I don't know! They had us tied up in the dark and they didn't speak, they just—they took us away, one by one. I don't know what they wanted or why they were doing it, or what happened to those people when they were taken away!"
Once again, Dixon was taking control and pushed against me to speak into the microphones. "Alright alright, there will be no badgering her. Last question! You in the front, from Nine News."
I took a few deep breaths and hastily tried to erase my tears. The blonde lady Dixon had called on had a pen poised over a pocket notepad and she shouted her question to me. "How did you feel when you were picked up by the authorities?"
They were going to kill him, or capture him. The one person who had protected me. He was ready to fight over me, though I wasn't sure why. But I couldn't let them hurt him, or let him hurt them.
"Relieved," I lied. "I was going to go home and see my family again. I just—"
Emotion overwhelmed me and I started to cry despite myself. "I just wish that—that I could have gotten my friends out, too. I tried—tried so hard but—but I couldn't." My voice was thick and my throat almost sealed shut around the words. "I . . . I can't apologize enough to—to the families—to my friends—I'm so . . . I'm so sorry . . . ."
Before I could collapse, Dixon grabbed me by the arms and another person took my crutches. I was led back to my seat where I dropped. Mom was quick to embrace me.
"You did great, baby—you did great," my mom cooed in my ear, sniffing.
When I didn't respond, she didn't force me to. On the stage, Dixon was fielding more questions from the press. Mom held me tight and Dad put his arm around the back of my chair to show his own support while I tried to collect myself and keep my sobbing quiet.
Never again—nothing like this ever again.
*:・゚✧
Late in the afternoon, someone came knocking at my bedroom door. I had holed myself up in my room to pout, watching the TV that my dad had hauled upstairs for me. I'd so far been successful at avoiding all of the news channels and sticking to mindless cartoons. I didn't want to watch any kind of program that made me think.
"Come in." I pulled the sheet up to my waist to hide the fact that I wasn't wearing pants.
When Kristie stepped passed the threshold, it came as a surprise to me. Usually, it was just Mom coming in to check up on me. Make sure I was still eating. "Oh . . . Kristie . . . what's up?"
She closed the door behind her. "Our school is closed until next week."
Kristie moved away from the door and leaned against the wall, her eyes narrowed slightly. This usually meant I was about to be given the third degree for something, but what she had to be upset with me about was beyond my knowledge.
"I know it wasn't terrorists." She spat the word out like a bad taste.
Her sharp tongue was nothing new to me, so I ignored it. "What do you mean?"
"Allison and I were there, Nichole. Remember?" she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Maybe not with you, but we showed up and were in that park—we heard the screaming, and they definitely weren't human. I want to know the truth."
I looked away from her and huffed. "I can't begin to imagine what you heard, but I already told everyone what happened."
She said, "You know what Allison thinks?"
"No," I snapped back. "How could I know?"
Great, now the bickering starts.
To her credit, there was only the normal amount of venom to her words. Things hadn't quite started escalating like they usually did. "Those men you have to talk to—all the hush hush secret bullshit—those noises we heard—she thinks it was aliens."
Despite myself, I couldn't muster any conviction in my rebuttal. "Don't be ridiculous."
Her gaze sharpened like a cat with its prey in sight.
"So it is!"
With a scoff, I started to say, "You're being stupid—"
However, Kristie cut me off. "You have to tell the people at school! Allison and I have been trying to tell everyone, but they all think we're crazy. You could tell everyone the truth and they'd have to stop making fun of us!" she demanded, striding across the room like she was about to challenge me.
"Kristie, I already told everyone what happened. I don't want to talk about it anymore, or ever." Why wouldn't she just drop it? I couldn't imagine what they were thinking trying to tell everyone that: surely the government had spoken to them. The only thing I could think was that they figured Kristie and her friend were just harmlessly spouting an unfounded rumor.
It would look more suspicious if they tried to shut my sister and her friend up. Whatever the case, I was going to be grilled about it the next time I saw the agents.
My sister threw her hands up and I flinched, fisting the blankets around me in a tight grip. "Watch it, Kristie," I warned, keeping my gaze level with her collarbones. She could berate me all she wanted, but if she were to try and get physical with me, I didn't know what I'd do.
What I did know was that she wasn't going to like it.
Ignoring my warning, she hissed, "Why are you lying? Tell me what happened!"
I said nothing.
"I'm your sister! You can at least tell me."
"Drop it!" I snarled at last. Even though I was only arguing with my sister, my body was still trying to decide if I should fight or flee. It was all I could do to keep from flinging anything I could reach at Kristie to make her go away. "I don't want to talk about it, I don't even want to think about it! Just leave me alone and stop telling people ridiculous shit before you get yourselves, or me, into some real trouble! Okay?"
Briefly, rage burned in Kristie's eyes. My body tensed in preparation to fend off an incoming tantrum, but she stormed out of my room in a huff, slamming the door behind her. The frames on my wall shook from the force of it.
Once she was gone, I picked up one of the extra pillows Mom had found for me and tossed it at the door. The loss of back support had me sinking against the headboard, but I didn't care.
How ridiculous it was for me to think that everything was okay. I'd talked to the press and said all of the lies they wanted me to. Jess' mom had even visited an hour after the conference to give me a message. I hadn't spoken to her directly, too afraid to face her, but Mom had said she'd only had kind words to say. I wasn't sure if it was true or if Mom was just telling me that because it was what I needed to hear, but it had made me feel better none the less.
For a few hours, I felt like a weight had been lifted off my chest. All I had to do was survive the interrogation the Men in Black had for me, and then it was smooth sailing. The therapist would help me through the trauma and I could go on living.
Semi-normally.
Wolf wasn't going to come back, I already knew that. How would he find me even if he wanted to? Even if he did come back, he wouldn't want me anymore anyway. Not with how broken I was.
Maybe I'd even start to fit back in at school. I only had a year left after this, I could survive that long and find a job somewhere, go to college maybe. Leave this horrible place behind forever. Maybe I'd have a shot at a normal life.
That was a long time coming, though. My sister was going to laud this over me for who knew how long. She had a tendency to hold grudges.
Another knock pulled me from my thoughts and I lifted my head. "What?"
My mom peeked her head in the door and peered around, making me feel guilty for the way I'd answered the door. "Is everything okay? I heard your door slam," she said.
I nodded and relaxed. "It was just Kristie."
Mom opened the door further and took a step inside. "And what did your sister want?"
"I don't know," I lied. "Can you hand me that pillow please?"
The pillow in question was still slumped against the door. Mom leaned down and picked it up with one hand. "Don't worry about your sister, she's still just a little shaken up, probably with how close she was to . . . ," she trailed off and motioned for me to move so she could place the pillow.
"Yeah, sure." I did as she indicated and shifted until I was comfortable.
She flitted about my room like a hummingbird for a few minutes, straightening up my knickknacks and picking up stray clothes. Even though I was just observing, it made me tired.
"Mom."
Her response was a distracting hum. She barely even glanced over her shoulder at me.
Sighing, I rubbed my eyes. "Mom, I'm sorry I snapped at you earlier."
"That's alright, sweetie," she said, picking up my laundry hamper. She tucked it against her hip and finally turned to face me. "We're all under a lot of stress and you went through so much. Did you want to come down and watch TV in the living room with everyone?"
I shook my head and glanced away from her. "No, I just want to be alone for a while."
She nodded and walked over to give me a kiss on the forehead. "Just holler if you need me, okay? Tomorrow while you're in therapy I'll go pick you up a new cell phone."
"Sure. Thanks, Mom." Therapy. Right.
"You're welcome sweetie." She stood in the doorway a moment longer, just to be sure I didn't think of something last minute, and then closed up as she left. I stared at the spot she'd disappeared for a heartbeat and then turned my gaze to the window—
—and wondered where I could have been right now instead of in my room.
How far away from everything I could be if only I'd been allowed to stay with Wolf and Brutus. What I'd be doing instead of wilting in my bed, wondering when my sister was going to corner me next or what I was going to do when I went back to school.
Maybe I'd be dealing with Wolf's jibes and jabs. That would be better than any bullshit conference. Hell, even being slapped around while he attempted to coach me would have been preferable to Agent Rawlins and Cooper interrogating me like I'd done something wrong. I mean, I might have a little bit, but still.
None of that mattered, though, because I was stuck in my room.
I was waiting for the next moment my sister would work up the nerve to demand answers. I was stuck dancing around the entire issue when my brother was around, not knowing whether or not I could tell him even the government-sanctioned story.
Stuck with the nightmares.
The stares.
Trying to pretend I was alright. That I hadn't viciously attacked my mother with a fork because a noise had startled me.
Eyes closed, I forced myself to focus on Spongebob's inane giggle.
You're not fine now, but you will be, I promised myself.
