They split me and my sister up again.

I thought they'd drag me back to my cell, but instead I got taken to a kiddie room with a puzzle piece playmat on the floor, educational toys, shelves full of children's books, and a little kid sized couch.

Helpless against the guards, I sat at a round table and played with a He-Man Castle Grayskull playset, flipping the Jawbridge open, posing Skeletor.

A guy in a gray wool herringbone suit came in with a folder and food. He set a pint carton of milk and a peel lid disposable bowl of Cheerios before me, pulling up a chair. "You were in close contact with the creature, and we weren't sure what toxins it spread to you."

I dug into the cereal, not bothering to look at the guy's face.

"We had to make sure you weren't carrying anything contagious, so we had you under observation for twelve hours."

He was the kind of guy that crossed his legs, probably a shrink. I didn't respond or look at him.

"Henry seems fine. Since you've already been through decontamination, I think it's safe to assume that there isn't a health risk." He slid an 8X10 color photograph across the table, one depicting a strange assemblage of things from my house: An umbrella, Gertie's Speak & Spell, a Fisher Price record player with a saw blade on the turntable. "We found this in the forest. What does it do?"

I swallowed. Before taking our last bike ride together, ET instructed me to load the basket and my backpack with those items. I didn't know what the hell he wanted them for, but knew they were important.

After the first mile, I really wanted to ditch that heavy phonograph.

"Why are you asking me?" I said in between mouthfuls.

"You were with the creature. You saw it put this together."

I knew it was a space phone, but I didn't feel like talking.

"Initially, we thought your friend had reverse engineered the turntable to serve as a wind turbine, using the movements of a tree to spin the saw blade, but the amount of scratch marks from the fork seem to be a little...light for electricity. You get what I'm saying?"

I didn't answer.

A glance upward told me all I needed to know: Brown haired, long nosed, same man that had been hounding me and ET the moment called the cops.

Mr. Keys.

He showed me a picture of the saw blade with the fork tied to the phonograph's center spindle, then a close-up of the scratches. "At any rate, you would have gotten a better charge from cranking it by hand."

I mutely set the bowl aside, playing with the toys.

"We think that the umbrella serves as a parabolic reflector, and the dismantled Speak & Spell seems to be set up for the sending and receiving messages, but we still can't figure out what the turntable is used for. Care to enlighten me?"

I'd seen ET tinkering with the inner parts of the phonograph, but I had no clue what he was doing. You'd need a degree in electronics. "I don't know. I'm just a kid."

The man leaned forward. "A very special kid. You've just been in contact with an intelligence possessing technology far surpassing our own by several decades."

"That doesn't make me a genius."

"It doesn't make you stupid, either...Elliott, where's Michael?"

"What?"

"Your brother. He and his friends ran off into the woods when we captured you. Any idea where he may have gone?"

My heart pounded. They can't find him!

I shrugged with feigned indifference. "He probably went home. The only thing we planned for was helping ET."

"We checked your house already. And his friend's houses. Even your mother doesn't know where to look, and she's worried sick. You must have some idea where he was going."

I had a mental image of him and his friends ditching their bikes and hiding at a nearby lake until the search party went away. They had a favorite little cave, one you could only reach through an underwater passage. They had a stash of supplies, beer, canned oysters, beef jerky, a couple cans of pork and beans.

They started a fire in the little cavern, drying their clothing. A can of beans blew up because they didn't open it before placing it on the flames.

I frowned at my interrogator. "Why do you think I know anything? I was in the back of your van the whole time."

Keys steepled his fingers. "Your brother never said anything to you? Never mentioned any places he might try to hide out?"

"What time is it?" I asked as I dropped the Whiplash action figure through a trapdoor in the little castle.

"Why? Need to be somewhere?"

I opened my mouth to say something, but then a labcoated guy came in, whispering something to the man. The two left the room in a hurry.

I spotted a camera on the ceiling, but I figured I could still sneak a couple items out, something to aid my escape.

In the corner, they had a Discovery Toys Marbleworks kit. I pocketed the marbles, checked around the bookcases for something more useful.

On one shelf, I found an `IALAC' Badge-A-Minit button, and the corresponding `I Am Loveable and Capable' kids book. The book was depressing, but the button could easily be dismantled, exposing the sharp and pointy thing inside.

I tried to take apart a GI Joe vehicle, but it was all bendy or brittle plastic, so I instead worked on a die cast metal car, attempting to pry the tires off its axle.

The room had only one door, but when I bounced a super ball off the roof, I noticed the ceiling panels could be moved.

I quietly set the He-Man stuff on the floor, climbing up on the table.

I couldn't quite reach.

When I tried scaling the bookcase, the doors came open again, and a pair of men in drab green grabbed me, dragging me into a big white padded room where a bunch of serious looking people in labcoats stood behind an observation window, staring at me. The marbles I'd set out on the floor hadn't helped in the slightest.

They strapped me into a chair, attached probes to my head.

"We reviewed the tape," Gertie's `Nice Lady' called from the booth. "You appear to have a glowing personality."

I sunk lower in the chair, staring at her in horror.

I thought about things to say, but all of it made me sound like a freak. I bit my tongue.

"Henry had a scratch on his leg, and now it's gone. On the cameras, we saw a light coming from your person. Care to explain?"

"I smuggled a flashlight," I muttered. "As for the cuts, maybe you just gave him really good bananas."

"Nice try. We checked your clothing when you came in. There would have been only one way for you to sneak something like that in here, and we didn't see you walking funny."

"You were dragging me the whole time...And I...have an iron constitution."

Of course they had to check my pockets then. Lucky for me, that meant undoing my restraints.

When a soldier reached into my pocket, the sharp from the badge stuck him in the hand.

The moment he stared at his bloody hand, I punched him in the crotch, ripping the probes off my head.

I wasn't a total idiot. The door had been cracked a little. I actually made it into the open.

I didn't plan for the guy waiting for me in the hallway. He pinned my arms behind my back, dragging me to the door.

Something rumbled like a bulldozer. The power went out.

My captor got distracted, loosening his grip just enough for me to escape his arms.

I ran blindly in the dark, off in some random direction.

My chest glowed. For a moment, I covered my heart, but then let it shine so I could see where I was going.

I was okay until the backup lights came on.

I bumped into the guy that had made all that mess in the break room earlier. "Hey, what's the rush? Got someplace to be?"

"I got lost looking for the bathroom."

The man gave me a skeptical smirk. "Right. In that case, I'll show you to the facilities." He dragged me back the way I came.

The something rumbled again, and the emergency lights flickered out. Dust rained from the ceiling.

I was still glowing, so the man didn't let go. I think his radio had warned him. The emergency lights returned.

As the man carried me further down the hallway, a door swung open, and the "Lonely black lady" from the secretary pool sprayed the soldier in the eyes with a can of mace.

Although army guys and police have eye spraying like that as part of their training, the lady followed it up by hitting him in sensitive areas and sweeping his legs out from under him.

"C'mon," she hissed. "Let's get you out of here."

"Who are you?"

She shushed me, leading Gertie out of a closet.

My sister stared. "You're glowing."

"I know. They're not going to let me leave."

The woman glanced back and forth down the hallway. "We'll just see about that!"

More rumbling and dirt raining from the ceiling. "What's that? Is someone bombing us?"

She laughed. "Honey, that's the fault line. Didn't you watch the news?"

"Why are you helping us?"

"I'm not just a secretary, I'm a mother. I see a child in danger, I try to help them. I don't care what color you are, kids is kids."

The woman knew her way around the place. In a few minutes, we neared something resembling an exit, a long hallway, with rows of doors on both sides, and a fire exit at its end.

The woman fished a set of keys out of her pocket, apparently to unlock the alarm box.

Before we could reach the metal door, the air rang with the sounds of guns being cocked and chambered, people shouting "Freeze!"

I looked back. We'd been surrounded by army guys, each pointing pistols at us.

One man barked out his orders in clipped militaristic fashion, like he bit the words off rather than talking. "Make one move toward that exit and we can and will open fire! Do we have an understanding?"

"Sir yes sir!" the woman answered in a shrilly voice, slowly raising her hands in the air.

"Step back from the children and place your hands over your head!"

"Why? So you can kill me?"

They didn't deny it. "I repeat! Step back from the children with your hands on your head! I will not ask again!" For some reason, the situation made me think of an angry chihuahua guarding its turf.

I thought they'd start shooting, but then the whole building shook, a big jagged fissure cracking the walls and the floor. The red backup lights went out.

The door exploded, and something like lightning flashed through the doorway.

A cold fog rolled in, the hallway filling with brilliant light.

A robed angelic figure strode into the building.

As it came closer, I saw that it wasn't an angel, but a saucer man from one of those UFO abduction stories. Big head, almond shaped eyes, silver suit.

My chest glowed as it waved to me.

"They came for me!" I cried. "ET really went home and sent his friends back for me!"

The alien motioned frantically in the direction of the glowing light. I noticed it adjusted its head a little after each nod.

"Sugar," the woman hissed in my ear. "Let's go while the gettin's good. Your father's in the Jeep."

I stared. "What?"

For a moment, I thought I dreamed the whole thing, you know, because of the highly unusual events being paired with dialog that didn't make sense. But then the alien picked up Gertie, making a mad, un-alien dash to the light. My companion grabbed my hand, rushing me after him.

Seconds later, the guards opened fire.

We burst out into a parking lot illuminated by a bunch of phosphor flares and big battery powered flood lamps, bolting to the door of an army Jeep.

The alien's head came off, and my brother's curly haired one emerged, scowling at a leg wound that dripped blood on his silver pants. Wincing a little, he popped the door, jumping in the vehicle with my sister in tow.

And there he was, square jawed, thick limbed, a bit paunched around the middle, clad in army fatigues, his black hair tucked under an army cap.

He gave the secretary a wink. "Hey, baby. Nice job back there."

She hurried to the driver's side. "Tell me that when we're out of this place."

I gawked at the figure in camo. "Dad?"

The man clicked his teeth at me. "Hey kid." He mussed my hair. "It's been a long time!"