 
# All Men Are Gods

### SHELLEY YOUNG
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are solely fictitious and written from the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or events is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Maduranga of mnsartstudionew

Edited by SF Publishing

www.shelleyfiction.com

Copyright © 2018 by Shelley Young

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

## CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OTHER BOOKS BY SHELLEY YOUNG
CHAPTER 1

Major Michael Manus didn't realize how many places someone could hide inside the psychiatric hospital. Asylums were what they were called in the past, supposed places of protection and shelter for the mentally ill, but were mostly remembered as houses of bedlam and horror. Local newspapers depicted Delta Hospital as such a place after one of its patients escaped, somehow getting beyond all of the hospital's high-tech security. He didn't get far. Just to the house next door where he killed an entire family by tying them to their beds and slitting their throats.

Manus thought bedlam described Delta well. From the moment he stepped through its doors to attend the 4th Annual Psychiatry Conference hosted by the hospital's owner, the renowned Dr. Ezra Janiak, he sensed horror and not once had he felt protected, although armed guards patrolled the large crowds, and hardly a time passed without a guard being in sight.

Delta with all of its walls painted the color of corn and halls that curved, stopping anyone from seeing who else shared the hall with them, and its many locked doors that sat either too closely together or too far apart, and its flat camera lenses that poked out of ceilings and warned at all times he was being watched; Manus constantly sensed something more happening inside Delta other than standard patient treatment. And not just bedlam and horror, but crime, like what the staff did in secret to patients that didn't have a clear mind to fight back. He knew a lot about crime. For eight years he worked secretly for the Pentagon, as an operative for black ops missions out of the Defense Sciences Office. The hospital had come under DSO's radar as the physical address of America's number one threat to national security.

Select doctors attending the conference were given accommodations, in rooms adjacent to the staff that lived on grounds. To his surprise, one of these rooms had been given to him within minutes of his arrival. But no matter where he stood, regardless if it was alone in his room or when he became a part of the crowds, the atmosphere hung thick with depression, darkness and secrets. Like ghosts all three had taken form and had the ability of movement. So present were all three entities that for every attendee, Manus felt certain these ghosts stood with them, moved with them and spoke with them. He could feel all three entities' cold touches, their icy fingers that gave him shivers, and their wintry breath that stayed suspended in the air, but each time he looked out amongst the attendees like he did now, it became obvious that he alone sensed anything. Psychiatrists, psychologists and psychoanalysts smiled with exuberant faces, all of them too rational to conclude that Delta had been purposely built as a complex maze of fourteen floors to hide illegal or macabre activity.

If that wasn't strange enough, DSO had shocked him the most. The target he'd been sent to kill wasn't a man or woman, but a nine year old female child and a patient inside the asylum. He had even shocked himself by accepting the assignment and coming. Kill a kid? Not him. Never him. DSO knew this and still they smuggled him in under the guise of a psychiatrist. Yet, the atmosphere and his heightened sense of alarm didn't frighten him more than feeling like he _belonged_ inside the building at this hour and on this day.

Use this and live another day.

That's what the note said. A nurse handed it to him only seconds ago. After forcing it in his hand, she'd run off and disappeared before he could read the note and look up again.

_Use this and live another day_ had been written on the fold of a Kleenex in a child's handwriting. The note hadn't been signed, but he knew it came from the child he'd been sent to kill.

Pushing his way through a cluster of doctors, nurses and students, he wanted to find the nurse and ask a few questions. The more he pushed the more faces he saw and arms and shoulders that needed to be pushed aside. Finally stopping, he realized there were too many places inside a psychiatric hospital for someone to hide.

That's when he smelled it, the cloying sweetness of a woman's perfume. His nose followed the scent, his eyes espying a tall blonde with spiked hair, wearing a gray suit with a mini skirt. One look at her and he sneezed, hard, and instinctively brought the Kleenex to his nose.

The sneeze blared like a broken horn. Smiling faces stopped talking and turned in his direction. These small actions, he would realize later, had saved his life. The blonde reached inside her purse to fish out a cocktail napkin she'd been saving to use for a similar occasion. As she handed it to him, her eyes froze over Manus's shoulder.

The look on her face told Manus someone behind him was doing something out of the ordinary for it to have gotten the blonde's attention like it did. He took the napkin and slid behind her, then looked up and saw a guy hide his hand behind his back, lower his chin to conceal his face, then slip between several people and disappear.

Now the note made sense, because what he'd witnessed looked closely like a double mission. The guy, he'd gotten away, but Manus had gotten a good enough look to see the guy for what he was, a black ops soldier just like him, except the guy's disguise as a doctor hadn't hidden the guy's true nature. That's why the blonde stopped what she'd been doing and trained her eyes on the guy. Most people sensed danger, except the blonde hadn't been the target. Manus was. The same department Manus worked for had sent someone else inside Delta to do him in.

Manus watched each person he passed, realizing how easily anyone could get closer and kill him. Metal detectors were everywhere and everyone was forced to pass through them. Nearby, guards searched purses and backpacks for weapons. If someone wanted to kill him it would be by poison. Not combat, because killing was easy, but escaping was hard in a setting like this.

Use this and live another day.

In the last three years his number of assignments out of DSO had increased. His thirteen targets had one thing in common—one common thread that connected them together. He had accidentally uncovered that connection, and someone inside DSO must have found out about it, and now Manus's name had been added on DSO's ever-growing kill list.

_The note._ The girl had known what DSO had planned for him. Now he needed to find out if the note had been given to help him or hurt him.

He walked out of the crowd and into the start of a hall, hoping his killer would follow. Die? Not today. He would take this soldier out, but not before getting out of the guy what he needed to know.

Door after door he checked until one pushed open. The strong scent of disinfectant filled a tiled corridor that led closer to the open space of a men's restroom. Only until Manus reached its end could he see urinals and stalls. Standing close to the sinks were the same four guards that had shadowed him over the past three days.

The guards had known he would come at this precise moment. They knew because the child had told them. That's why DSO wanted her dead. There was no other child on God's green Earth like her.
CHAPTER 2

The reports he'd been given were explicit, except no one inside DSO had known who they were truly up against. Despite what DSO knew about the child, after what Manus had witnessed over the past three days, DSO's intel hadn't scratched the surface of all the child was capable of.

The proof stood in front of him.

The guards were armed with Glock 9 mms, extendable batons to aid in kicking his ass, and tasers to render him helpless if that became necessary, and handcuffs that caught the light, and mics pinned to their shoulders to call in backup.

DSO had taken extra measures to get him inside without his cover being blown. No one in the building could have known of a threat unless the child had told them.

But had she told these four guards who he truly was?

Manus doubted it. Waiting for him in a restroom didn't seem the proper way to go about it. Had they been told a dozen guards would have him surrounded, the local police department would have been called in, and reporters and journalists would have stormed the building by foot with backup birds chopping the air to provide live media coverage.

But these guards _were_ waiting for him, so what had the child told them?

She was no ordinary kid. Countless times he'd asked himself in all seriousness if she was even human.

Some people believed extraterrestrials live amongst us. In times past, hearing someone claim they'd been abducted by aliens, he would sum them up as attention seekers. But not anymore. Not since he'd stumbled on a huge government secret.

Not many Americans knew that forty-seven percent of America sat unoccupied and only one percent of the world's surface was occupied by people. It was in one of these uninhabited locations where the government hid their secret, and what Manus now knew about these creatures drove him to drink himself unconscious at night and gave him vivid, tempting thoughts of suicide.

It was the Pentagon's promise of this being his last kill that had given him hope. As soon as he got his last pay, he was done; he was out. A plan had already been hatched to leave everything behind without once looking back, because what he'd uncovered had revealed in his eyes a new truth. Earth would be invaded and when that happened he hoped to be somewhere remote, a place the creatures he knew about wouldn't think to find him.

But what he knew about these creatures didn't mean the child was one of their kinds. If he had to guess, she was a different alien species altogether.

She had a gift—an unusual gift, and each time she exercised it since he'd arrived, he felt less like a soldier and more like one of the patients wasting away between Delta's walls.

For three days he'd been given a menu before he retired to his room. The first morning he'd opened his door to a breakfast tray laden with everything he'd decided to choose once he reached the cafeteria. Lunch hadn't been any different. The chilling thing was he had a taste for blue cheese, but blue cheese hadn't been on the menu. A meaty burger and a salad. When he took his turn in front of the cook, the cook took one look at him, lifted a plate from a back counter and handed it to him: a burger medium well and a salad, both topped with blue cheese.

"She knows your secret," the cook whispered. " _Your_ secret," the cook repeated, as if Manus hadn't heard him the first time. "Don't tell anyone I talked to you. You'll meet her soon." The cook then gestured to help the next person in line; his eyes refusing to look at Manus, a subtle way of saying Manus had been dismissed.

That's how it had been since: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Tricking the child hadn't been possible. He thought of grilled liver and onions, although he hated it. When he reached the front of the line, the cook tried handing Manus a plate of what he'd been thinking about. Before Manus could tell the cook he'd changed his mind, the cook held his gaze and reached a hand toward the back counter.

"How is she—" Manus started to ask, but the cook answered before he could finish, speaking in a whisper as low as his had been.

"Through letters."

The meal he would have asked for had already been prepared. Still, Manus needed to be sure.

"I've changed my mind again. Spaghetti..."

The cook gave him a look someone gave when playing a game of chess. Another plate was lifted and had on top of it the extra meatball Manus had meant to ask for just to be facetious.

"Now I'm supposed to tell you to be careful," the cook whispered.

Manus lifted the plate, turned and collided into a doctor, the plate falling out of his hand and crashing against the floor.

The cook lifted another plate with the same exact meal. "She's not like us," he whispered, then looked away as if ashamed to have said such a thing out loud. Manus could see that the cook wanted to say more _and_ that the cook had known he would drop the plate.

No one was like the child that was for damn sure. An hour earlier Manus had been sitting inside a session. One of the nurses walked up to him, then lowered and whispered in his ear. "Whatever you do, be yourself." She stressed the words 'be yourself,' pausing before she continued in a lower voice. "Being yourself will see you out of your _situation_."

He ran after her to force more out of her. When they faced each other, she spoke before he could.

"She knows things. Lots of things. Even things she shouldn't," the nurse said in a rush. "I was told to tell you what I said, then walk away and count. She told me you and I would face each other by the time I reached four. I just reached four when you pulled my arm." A look came into her eyes, but Manus couldn't place it. "How can she do this?" He saw her struggling to see the answer in his eyes. "It's not normal!" She blurted. "But everything she says— _everything_ —regardless how small, it comes true. I don't know how many people on staff works for her. I always thought it was just me, but then someone started leaving me notes." She gave a quick shake of her head, lowered her chin, then lifted it again. Resolve shone in her eyes. "I'm scheduled to work today. She told me to do what I just did then leave the building if I wanted to live another day."

"Someone's trying to kill you?" he asked.

She shrugged.

The resolve in her eyes turned to cold fear. He could also see that she didn't know the answer, and that she was only going through the motions on the words of the child. That's when he realized the child had power. Not only could the kid persuade people, she could convince them to do what she wanted. Judging from the nurse standing in front of him, she was a woman with a good head on her shoulders, but had gotten freaked by something the kid had said.

Grappling for more that could explain why the two of them were standing face to face, he asked, "What department do you work in?"

"I work on the fourteenth floor." She looked at her watch, then hurried off.

A nurse, a cook. From the moment he arrived, the child secretly communicated with him. But why? Although her behavior remained suspicious there was something about the way she operated that gave him moments of déjà vu. That closeness, if that's what he can call it—that feeling he was supposed to be where he was and inside this building constantly moved strongly through his chest, even now with four guards facing him.

Two of the guards slipped behind him, one of them walking down the corridor and closer to the door. The other stood in the entrance of the corridor to block Manus in case Manus thought of escaping.

"You want to give it to us or do you want us to go through the trouble of searching for it?" the tallest guard asked.

All conference attendees were given sticky name tags to wear on their clothing where it can be seen at all times. At the end of the day, the tag could be peeled away like Band-Aids. Distinguished psychiatrists, like the one he was pretending to be, were given two name tags, the sticky one and a plastic badge that pinned. Any doctor wearing two name tags could approach a podium during a session and ask questions. This stopped college students from asking too many questions and disrupting a guest speaker. After Manus had been given his plastic badge, he went to his room and removed the pin off the back, then replaced it with a two inch syringe filled with enough synthetic Tetrodotoxin to cause paralysis in fifteen seconds and death in less than a minute.

He lifted his arms in surrender, gave a smile, and made his voice sound full of surprise, because he'd worn the pin every hour and every minute. Why would the kid only mention it to the staff now? "Why do you want to search me?" he asked.

Coming at him now could mean they've gotten new intel, except their lack of action warned they hadn't discovered that he worked for the Pentagon and had been given a deadly mission.

He looked over his shoulder, because the guard behind him ran out of sight. Voices rose near the restroom door. An altercation took place. Bumps were made against the tiles and were followed by harsh grunts. Seconds later the two guards returned, dragging a man between them.

_Damn_ , _she's good_ , Manus thought. _But how the hell is she doing it?_

He saw why four guards had been assigned to him. The child must have told the staff someone dangerous would attend the conference. The man on the floor could have been his goddamned twin: same height, same hair, and almost same body build. The guy looked as surprised as he did when their eyes met, like they both were looking in a mirror surprised by what looked back at them.

The guards also saw the similarities and realized they could have been shadowing the wrong guy.

She's a genius.

In the last three days Manus hadn't done anything to draw suspicion. The guards remembered this as they tackled the guy, even though the guy was already being pinned to the floor.

"Check him and see if you can find it," the taller guard said.

A guard searched the guy's pockets. The name tag on the guy was the same name the Pentagon had used to smuggle Manus inside the building, Dr. Smith, except the guy on the floor spelled his as Smyth.

Too strange—far too strange. Or was it? A guy that looked like him and had the same name? How could a child be behind this? A child that wasn't allowed to leave the property at any time. This was what he'd been up against, things that made sense and didn't make sense. What made sense was the guy. If the guards believed this was the man they should have been following, they would stop shadowing Manus, making it easy for him to complete his mission. But if the child was behind any of this, why help the man that had been sent to kill her?

Because she knows.

Killing a kid had never set well with him. The Pentagon had given him orders in the past that he didn't agree with, but this... It had been the first time he'd tried to get out of a mission, but they had used his past record against him and hinted at taking his pension and freedom. Still, the child must have known he hadn't convinced himself he could get it done.

"What are you doing? Get off me!" Dr. Smyth struggled against eight hands holding him down and searching his pockets. When that produced nothing, his tote bag that had fallen to the floor was emptied. A fat syringe filled with clear liquid rolled out amongst a scattering of papers and thin bound books.

Dr. Smyth looked surprised. "That's not mine! One of you put that there. Why would I have it in a place like this?"

The guards weren't listening. Handcuffs were pulled out. They had found what they were looking for. A guard's fingers trembled as he placed the syringe in an evidence bag. This told Manus the guards knew the drug they would find could cause immediate death. The three other guards helped Dr. Smyth to his feet. A trickle of blood dripped from his busted lip. Bruises could be seen on his nose and one cheek. The guards hurried out of the restroom, forcing Dr. Smyth to walk like a prisoner between them.

The girl or alien or whatever she was didn't tell the guards who Manus was. Again Manus felt a moment of déjà vu. Not telling the guards or staff that he had come inside the building to kill could only mean the girl was after something from him as well.

The cook told him the girl would meet him soon, but he couldn't imagine that meeting happening here.

The three stalls sat in one corner. He lowered on his heels to make certain no one else was there. He didn't see shoes, but the last stall wasn't empty. Something flat lay on the floor.

He walked to the stall and pushed open its door.

In a child's handwriting, his full name had been written across a manila envelope: _Major Michael Matthew Manus_.

"What are you scared of?"

The question came from behind him and at the entrance of the corridor, the voice so soft and sweet and childlike that he closed his eyes, because he needed to pull himself together before he faced the kid.
CHAPTER 3

"I know your secret." She spoke in a voice too small to carry outside the door. "You thought about doing something before you came, but you didn't tell anyone. The Pentagon chose you to kill me for a reason. I don't know the reason, but I know you've figured it out."

The intel and photo he received from the Pentagon depicted an Asian child, but that wasn't what stood in front of him. Why would someone hide the girl's true identity, especially when the girl was the guest speaker for the last session of the conference? Flyers had even gone out with the same Asian name he'd been given. Manus also wondered what intel the Pentagon had gotten that convinced them the child they wanted dead was a nine year old named Kim Kwon.

"This girl they're telling everyone is you," he began, "she dies?"

The child's face turned grim and a fast nod was given, the look on her face telling him she hadn't wanted to answer that question.

"Tell me something so I know it's really you," he said.

One of her brows became a harsh slant. "Like...what?" she asked in a voice so sweet it made his mouth tighten.

He looked quickly to his left, then quickly at the sinks, because he'd gotten another sense of déjà vu. Where he stood, what he saw, her very voice; somehow he had lived all of these seconds before.

She finally drew closer like a kid facing an older brother. "I told him," she whispered with wide eyes. "The first day they brought me here. I told him and he got scared."

"Who got scared?"

The question unnerved her. Her eyes dropped from his, down to his stomach, then his legs, then lastly at his arms. During those looks, he knew she saw him as a killer, especially when her eyes traveled to the plastic badge and stayed there. She took two rapid steps back, closer to the sinks. Fear came in her eyes, but she didn't run. What he saw wasn't courage, but a kid that could see the future before it happened, at least that's what all of the reports said.

"We didn't say these things in my visions," she said. Her eyes lifted quickly to his then back to the badge. "The future can change. It always changes."

She talked like a kid, but _didn't_ talk like a kid. And didn't act like one either. She knew what he had, so why hadn't she run?

He leaned close and looked her dead in the eye. "Tell me what you know." The threat in his tone caused her to stand more stiffly.

"After you kill me, the Pentagon is going to kill you." She lost some of her composure and tried to blink back tears. Her lips trembled.

Her emotion affected him. He looked away. _After you kill me..._ He knew then he was going to kill her, if only to get his hands on enough money to live off grid.

Reaching for his hand, the child held it gently in hers. "They're going to try again and again. I've been waiting for you for three years. Three years ago I saw this hospital, this restroom, Mr. Smith and Mr. Smyth, and you standing inside the stall like you are now. I saw these things before I was a patient at this hospital."

"How do you do this?"

"I don't know." Sadness shone in her eyes. "The voices...they tell me things when I'm awake... and when I'm sleeping. And I have visions. Lots of visions. I get them _all_ the time. When I do, I fall on the floor and shake, and my eyes feel funny. The doctors say I'm crazy."

What he saw was just a kid—a damn kid and no monster.

Her chin lowered and he hated himself for not encouraging her like she had hinted for him to.

"The voices told me those people want to kill you because you found out about a secret."

He dropped like something heavy crashed down on his head and squashed him to the floor. Fourteen covert domestic missions. Her death promised as the last. To sweeten the deal, DSO promised an early discharge and twelve months of hazardous pay. _...you found out about a secret_.

His past thirteen kills had one thing in common: Blue Trees Mountain. That's where the things lived. He stumbled upon the secret two days before being given the mission to kill the girl.

The girl looked at the corridor, then drew closer and lowered her voice. "When I see a person as much as I've seen you, it's because the voices want to keep that person alive. The guards have Mr. Smyth now. No one is going to follow you around anymore."

"And then what?" He gripped her arms and gave a brutal shake. "If I don't kill you, I lose everything—everything I've worked for _and_ my freedom."

The smile she gave told him it was genuine. Her almost black eyes lit up. Her teeth were visible as she smiled while she spoke. From her behavior, she couldn't see he was seconds from reaching for the badge and plunging its pin in her neck.

"In a week you'll have all the money you'll need," she said. " _And_...you're gonna find that place where you can live alone, but you won't be alone."

As he pondered over what she said, she pulled out of his hold. He only then realized she _had_ known that she stood face to face with Death. Her back was to him. She lowered on all fours and did a crazy sand-crab shuffle to his left while Manus reached low for her on his right. Desperate to grab her, he reached again and searched for her with his eyes, only to see her a few feet away in a spot he didn't think she'd be. Rising to her feet, her bare feet slapped the tile as she hit the corridor and disappeared in a speed that suggested she had run with all her might.

He couldn't follow her. His thoughts kept him immobilized as he rehearsed how she'd gotten away from him, and then he felt foolish that a child had given him the slip, but he also couldn't help realizing if soldiers had the girl's insight, every last one of them would leave a battlefield with their lives.

That's when he remembered the envelope. Its seal hadn't been moistened. He peeked inside and saw paper. Puckering the envelope, he pinched its contents and pulled them out. The first page was a photo that brought him to his knees.

Crawling to the toilet, he gripped it with both hands, then plunged his face close and vomited.
CHAPTER 4

The girl's handwriting was probably on the outside of the envelope, but Manus knew the girl had nothing to do with the photo in his hand, because the photo had come from his apartment. He'd stolen it off his last target and now someone had stolen it from him over the past three days.

But why steal it only to give it back?

A thought that the child could be working with DSO and Manus could barely move, because the photo gave proof of the government's secret, of a conspiracy Manus could no longer ignore. In the photo, what was left of a scientist wearing a lab coat and an Army uniform lay dead on a concrete floor.

The upper parts of the scientist's boots had fused with the mangled, pulpy stumps that were all that was left of his feet. The scientist no longer had hands either. On his stumpy wrists were wounds similar to an explosion, but Manus knew that wasn't how the scientist had died, because a grenade or bomb would have injured the hands, but not separate them completely from the body, and the bomb's shrapnel would have caused injury to the part of the body the explosive was held closest to, but the photo didn't show these types of wounds.

It was the scientist's head that told the true story.

Still attached, perfect straight lines about a quarter of an inch thick, and couldn't have been made by a human or from a human-made machine could be seen throughout the scalp. From the looks of it, the scientist's head had been cubed without a single drop of blood being lost or visible. The cubes didn't fall apart. Despite the many cut lines that had been made, the scientist's face stayed intact. Something or someone had removed the cubes out of the center of the skull where the pituitary gland would have been located, making the scientist look like a victim from a real life horror movie. The cubes that had been removed had been neatly arranged on the floor, perfect squares of bone, brain and veins.

_But who removed the cubes?_ Manus had often wondered. Had it been the creatures or one of the Army scientists that lived with the creatures in secret?

The head injuries explained the missing hands and feet. The only way Manus could describe the rest of the body is if every ounce of the scientist's blood from the neck down had somehow turned into currents of electricity, and those currents had targeted the hands, feet, legs and chest as a means of escape. A total of seven exit wounds could be seen while the rest of the body lay in superb form. A large burn sat smack center in the chest, as well as one on each thigh, and the only other wounds being where the hands and feet had been.

This is the reason the government kept the existence of the creatures from the public, because knowledge of a deadly species living on American soil would cause panic. After searching DSO's database, Manus stumbled on a classified note that had been given by DSO's director. His judgment of the creatures:

All reports conclude that the species of K-13 are nonthreatening, able to follow verbal commands, and are willingly submissive to authority.

If this was true, who authorized the death of the scientist? What else was happening in Blue Trees that the government didn't want the public to know? Human experiments?

Unable to look at the photo a second time, Manus looked at the next document, another photo. This one he also purposely held down and out of sight after seeing it. Tears dripped from his chin. His teeth stayed clenched. The noises that escaped him were breathy and tremulous.

It's why the envelope had been placed on the floor of the stall. The child had known he would vomit. And something else had become apparent. She didn't only have help inside the hospital; the better part of her help came from the CIA.

For years the CIA used people with psychic abilities. The girl had to be one of their HUMINT sources, but DSO hadn't mentioned this in their reports, which made Manus wonder if DSO knew of this role she played.

Now Manus knew that the girl couldn't have been working with DSO. Someone inside the CIA could pose as a guard and plant a syringe inside a doctor's tote bag. Someone inside the CIA had helped with the content inside the envelope, and if the CIA had helped with its contents, the child had told the CIA about Manus, and they were helping her help him.

The cook came back to mind.

Did the CIA have operatives posing as employees?

But why? The CIA mostly worked overseas missions.

And why were they helping him? Could whatever the child was helping the CIA with persuade them to authorize a domestic mission?

He looked at the second photo again.

In it, his grandfather stood beside a man named Bernard Specter and their Army unit. His grandfather had been young when the photo had been taken, only seventeen—a personal photo taken by someone in their squad before all of them were sent off to war.

His grandfather and Specter had been the luckier ones. Both survived the Invasion of Normandy. When they returned home, Bernard got a job with the CIA and his grandfather met a woman named Claire.

Claire had been pregnant with her fourth child the day her husband kissed her before going off to work. No one had seen his grandfather since. Two months later she gave birth to their only son. She never remarried. The family often wondered what happened to Michael John Manus and why he had never come back home. In a town as small as theirs, someone should have seen him, except all the neighbors claimed the same thing. Michael John Manus hadn't been seen by any of them at all that day. When asked by the police, Claire's daughters had said the same thing. Their father kissed their mother and walked out the front door.

The next page in the envelope made Manus weep hot tears.

The voices whisper his name. He loved oatmeal for breakfast.

Manus leaned against the wall and pressed his hand against it. Until this day, his grandmother secretly made a bowl of oatmeal and placed it on the table, knowing no one would sit down and eat it. When money had been tight inside their home, Claire also made oatmeal for dessert with an extra pinch of sugar and Michael John Manus had never complained.

Pressing his hand to his mouth, Manus gripped it tight and tried to calm his breathing. Specter and his grandfather had lost contact after the war, their friendship born in boot camp long forgotten until now.

He looked again at the letter, knowing it held answers to the questions his family had asked for years.

He whistled on his way to work. He didn't waste money on a car because he'd wanted to save as much money as he could. We can all see the future at times. We all hear voices. The reason everyone hears voices is because all men are gods, living a part of time that's already been lived. Your grandfather listened. I listen. I asked the voices what secret did you find out about, but they never answer.

The girl didn't know the government's secret.

He pressed a fist against his mouth.

Dropping the pages, he gripped the toilet and vomited again, then watched the water swirl after the flush.

The secret he'd stumbled on...

The creatures—the _things_.

All men are gods living a part of time that's already been lived.

Could this be true? Could the future he'd seen in dreams not be stopped?

The girl couldn't be human. Already her reputation reached around the globe. Doctors had flown in from every country because she had been listed as one of the conference's guest speakers. When she'd first been admitted in Delta, doctors believed she suffered from severe psychosis. That all changed when more than one source confirmed that every last one of her dreams and visions came true. That's why DSO wanted her dead. As long as her fame continued to spread, they feared someday she might tell all their secrets if the child ended up in Russia's, China's, Iraq's or Afghanistan's hands.

But the girl said she didn't know their secret about Blue Trees.

"That's fucking it," he said when a new thought occurred to him. "That's fucking it," he said to the closed stall door when he faced it. "That's fucking it," he said louder to the stall wall, then pounded his fist several times against it. "That's fucking it!" he screamed, then reached for his hair and grabbed down to the scalp with his fist.

The _voices_ knew Blue Trees Mountain's secret.

The things were sure to invade someday, and when that day came it would take a child like the girl to help humans survive: a child that at any time could see parts of the past, present and future. A child that could tell survivors where to hide, because when these aliens did come, with the powers they possessed they would rule over Earth's every corner. But with a child like the girl, she could tell humans how to stay ahead of their enemy without getting captured.

"That's fucking why." His voice broke. His face twisted in agony. He balled his fists and held them close to his face. He couldn't see the future, but the secret he'd stumbled on told him what would happen.

Maybe the voices were setting the child up to face _her_ future and that's why they talked to her all the time, even when she slept, maybe because the voices had to be sure the child trusted their words, so when the day did come she wouldn't hesitate?

He slid down the wall. This kid. This poor kid. What she faced in the future, he hoped she had the strength to survive.

His eyes opened. Each time he exhaled he heard his breath hit the air, because he realized why the voices wanted to keep him alive. By living this day he could keep the girl alive. Not kill her, but save her from the Pentagon. That's why Kim Kwon had to die. With Kim Kwon dead, the Pentagon would have no further reason to go after the real child. They wouldn't even know she was still alive.

But if an assassin was after him, and he was supposed to kill the kid, who would pull the trigger on Kim Kwon?

_Damn_.

He rose to his feet.

_Damn. Damn. Damn_.

Only the CIA could convince the Pentagon their target was an Asian child, which meant the CIA had taken on the chore he'd been assigned to do: kill an innocent kid.

He stared at the letter, remembering he still gripped it.

I saw how it happened. The building your grandfather worked at is close to water. There is a lot of cement and a big ugly net that runs down into the ocean between a lot of ships and a long dock. That's where he is. He got to work first. There was no one around to see him fall in and get tangled in the net. The voices said you had to find out about the secret and that you are important to the future of the living and not the dead. That's what they said. The living and not the dead. I don't know what that means. Do you? I know you're going to call Claire.

He reached for his cell phone, then stared down when it vibrated. The call lasted only a minute, each word spoken in code. The Pentagon wanted to know if he'd completed his mission, but that hadn't been the real reason behind the call. The conference had hundreds of people crowded in one area. His killer had lost sight of him. One call and the Pentagon could zero in on Manus's location.

He tore up the photos and letter and buried the pieces deep in a trashcan, then hurried out of the restroom, joining the crowds once more and blended in. He slipped his cell phone inside the tote bag of an older female doctor waiting in line, then clipped another phone from a guy he passed.

Now all he had to do was stay hidden until Kim Kwon took the stage. It would be then the CIA would put what plan they had into motion.

He backtracked to the cafeteria. A door had been left open at the end of a hall. He stood in it and called Claire. Just as Manus hung up, a figure appeared within his peripheral.

A man hesitated, summed Manus up, then averted his gaze and pulled out a cigarette.

_This isn't a coincidence_ , Manus thought, because the man standing not far from him knew everything about the girl. His position inside the hospital gave him access to her file, and allowed him to arrange private meetings with her, and gave him the authority to hire as many guards as he needed for the conference's budget, because the man owned and ran the entire hospital, and was none other than Dr. Ezra Janiak.

Manus didn't hear any voices, but he knew what he had to do. Follow the doctor and keep him in sight without being detected.

Dr. Janiak smoked his cigarette, constantly staring at his watch. When he walked off, several guards surrounded him to walk him back inside.

_Now, why would Dr. Janiak need guards shadowing him at his own conference?_ Manus thought.

Dr. Janiak did all the talking, the guards staying in step with him. Manus heard what he said.

"Maybe I've overreacted, but I took the threat seriously. You can understand that, can't you? This employee seemed bent on killing me the day I let him go, but it doesn't seem like he'll show up. When Kim Kwon takes the stage, I'll give you all a break and retire early to my room."

Some of the guards must have been off-duty cops moonlighting for a few extra bucks, because they'd heard through Janiak's bullshit like Manus had.

Number one, no one hired this many guards to subdue one disgruntled ex-employee, but having these guards shadow him did give Dr. Janiak somewhat of a tight alibi. Number two, only liars refused to name their enemy. When liars used words like 'him' to describe a threat it was because 'him' didn't truly exist. Number three, only liars went out of the way to convince someone they were telling the truth. And number four, someone that was up to something but wasn't good at it always said something that could get them caught. Telling the guards he would no longer need them when Kim Kwon took the stage told Manus it'll be during this time when Janiak would do something he shouldn't be doing and that Janiak hoped no one would be around when he attempted to pull it off.
CHAPTER 5

The session everyone had waited for, for which everyone had traveled to Arizona, was about to begin. Dr. Nzinga had flown from Algeria solely for today's session, and assumed everyone in attendance had come for that reason as well. Other psychiatry conferences boasted advanced scientific research, but only Delta boasted of a child so unique her ever-growing reputation made their conference the most sought out in the world.

Dr. Nzinga couldn't stop looking over his shoulder, or down the corridor, or toward the windows. For days the halls, restrooms and cafeteria stayed crowded. Oftentimes, just to get from one point to another he'd had to turn sideways and press his way through. But where was that crowd now if this session was why the people had come?

The line he stood in had only several dozen attendees in it.

Robyn Evans had flown in from London and stood behind Dr. Nzinga. When she saw his apprehension, hers also heightened. She also noticed the lack of people and asked the staff if she was in the right place. The staff assured she was, but the setting wasn't right. Instead of a continuous hum of voices like she heard the past three days, she heard only a profound hush. Needing to rid a little of her jitters, she leaned closer to Nzinga, lowered her voice and said jokingly, "Are they trying to convince us that this floor is Heaven?"

Dr. Nzinga leaned forward as a small laugh bellowed out of him, because he'd thought the same thing. Everything on this floor sat white: the walls, the floors, the furniture, even the staff wore all white.

Manus joined the line and stood last behind Dr. Evans. He also noticed the lack of people and started to leave, but something inside him told him to stay where he was. "It's the security system they're using," he said, having overheard the comment. "We weren't told to wear white because they wanted us to stand out. Their hidden cameras have motion detectors programmed to focus on color. Those images transmit clearer if they're surrounded by a white background."

Dr. Nzinga studied Manus's eyes, because they looked red from crying.

"Are you all right?" Claire asked when she also noticed.

"Sure," he answered.

"Why so much security?" Dr. Nzinga asked, trusting them with this question.

"I didn't expect this much security either," Dr. Evans admitted, then frowned after voicing her suspicion.

Manus studied both doctors. "This girl," he began. "What have the two of you heard about her?"

"I'm sure you believe the reports about her are unbelievable," Dr. Nzinga answered.

Manus looked at Evans's name badge, because he saw from her eyes that she believed the reports. Nzinga wore the same expression.

"He doesn't answer," Nzinga teased and followed it up with a smile. "He's scared to admit that a child this gifted can actually exist."

"I believe the reports," Manus answered. His killer had followed him outside, hiding in the shadows until Dr. Janiak was gone. The fight had been vicious. There were guards everywhere, inside the building and some outside patrolling the lot, yet none of the guards had seen anything. His killer won't be following him anymore. The guy had made a stupid mistake. He had fastened his plunger to his syringe. Manus got a hold of it first, its drug working faster than a gun. Manus even had time to hide the body.

Dr. Nzinga couldn't take his eyes off of Manus or Dr. Evans. "The staff knows things," he whispered, leaning closer. "They know everything I plan to eat before I tell them."

"The cook's been giving you plates of what you would order before you could ask him?" Manus asked.

Nzinga pulled his face back to study Manus better. "How did you know that?"

"Because it's been happening to me," Manus answered.

"Me too," Evans whispered, her eyes looking at both men with growing suspicion and confusion.

Nzinga summed Evans up from foot to head, then did the same to Manus.

"I'm not surprised," Evans whispered when she saw Nzinga's doubt that all three of them could be telling the truth. "I know what this child is."

"I do too," Nzinga assured. "We have a name for her kind in my country."

_What were the odds?_ Manus thought. Before he reached this floor, his grandmother called. It took less than an hour for the sheriff's department to find Michael John's body. That call delayed him reaching this area and became the reason he stood behind two people the child had also communicated with in her own little way.

"I met the child," Manus said, throwing out bait.

Nzinga and Evans drew closer at the same time.

"Is she human?" Evans whispered.

Nzinga's eyes darkened even more as he narrowed them on Manus. "What did she look like?"

Evans stood stiffly as she waited to hear both answers.

Nzinga unconsciously patted a pocket in his suit jacket.

Manus gave an infectious grin. "I was kidding."

They believed him and didn't want to chat anymore. Both faced forward, waiting for their chance to reach the front of the line. Being behind them gave Manus the chance to watch them closely without being noticed. Evans watched the staff, but pretended like she didn't each time one of them looked her way. Nzinga also watched the staff, his hand constantly patting whatever he had hidden in his pocket.

Manus walked inside the room when his turn came, then found an empty seat. There had only been one left, next to Nzinga. Beside Nzinga sat Evans. The three of them sat in the last three chairs closest to the door.

The session started on time. Dr. Janiak and his guards stood amongst a group of staff.

Manus looked up when a pamphlet was held in front of him. Kim Kwon's name appeared on the cover, alongside the psychiatrists and psychologists scheduled to speak after she left the stage.

How was it that no one knew the girl's true identity, except a cook, a nurse and Dr. Janiak?

He noticed Nzinga and Evans diligently studying their pamphlets. He leaned closer. "The girl's name isn't Kim Kwon."

Evans nearly came out of her chair.

"You said you've never seen her," Nzinga whispered.

"I lied," Manus answered. "I can tell when someone isn't being truthful. You both were nervous out in the hall, and you're nervous now. It seems you both have a lot riding on this session."

Nzinga and Evans studied one another with equal suspicion.

Manus could almost feel time was running out and his opportunity closing. "Telling you what you wanted to eat was her way of communicating with you. You were chosen. I want to know why."

"What about you?" Nzinga shot back with dark eyes that promised violence. "Who do you work for?"

"Criminals ask that question," Manus answered. "Why do you keep looking around like you're waiting for a chance to do something you shouldn't?"

Evans kept her eyes on Nzinga, waiting for an answer.

Manus leaned closer to her. "Before you get the wrong idea, I'm not on your side either."

He sat forward because a man had taken the stage.

Evans reached past Nzinga and gripped Manus's arm. "Tell me who you are and I'll tell you who I am."

"An assassin," he answered.

Evans eyed him, stood, then left the room.

Nzinga smiled, but kept his eyes on the stage, the word assassin music in his ear.

Evans's reaction made Manus curious. He stood and headed for the door. Nzinga jumped up and followed him.

Evans stood in the hall. Beverages and pastries sat against a wall. A bottle of water was gripped in her hand, but she hadn't opened it.

Manus reached for it. "You act like I came to kill you."

"They know nothing about me. They sent you to kill her," she said, letting go of the bottle.

He caught it.

"Don't do it," she whispered heatedly. "Don't go back into that room."

The elevator opened behind them.

Manus faced the beverages when guards stepped out and escorted Kim Kwon to the session.

Nzinga also faced the wall and reached for a carafe of coffee. He poured two cups, but his hand shook and splashes of coffee dampened the tablecloth.

Kim Kwon had been dressed like a princess, a white dress with matching ballerina slippers. Her walk suggested she suffered from mental illness, as did her eyes. The way the child constantly looked around it was obvious she hadn't been outside of her usual surroundings in a long time.

Several guards looked where the three of them stood, but didn't react or express concern.

The session door opened. The speaker on the stage ended his introduction. The guards ushered Kim Kwon in on cue.

Nzinga lowered the cups of coffee. "That was _not_ the child." He stared at Manus and Evans with visible disappointment. "The child I seek, I should be able to _feel_ her presence. I should be able to look into her eyes and see she's from another world."

"Another world," Evans repeated, her eyes on Nzinga and accusing. "Psychiatric doctors don't believe in aliens." Turning to Manus, she asked bluntly, "Was that the real child?"

"I have a better question," he answered. "Why would a cook know what any of us planned to eat? How much contact would a cook have with a patient?"

"They have a lot where I come from," Nzinga answered.

"Why is this small group separated from the rest of the crowd?" Evans asked.

Manus lifted cup after cup to see if anything had been written underneath.

"What are you looking for?" Evans asked.

"A clue," he answered, then lowered the cups and faced them. "From the moment I arrived, the child wanted me to know she knew I was here. Breakfast, lunch and dinner she gave clues. In her own way, she communicated with me throughout each day."

Evans looked at Nzinga. "Why do you think we were brought up to attend this session?"

"I don't know," Nzinga answered.

"To separate us from the larger crowd. That's what this is," Manus said.

"Why?" Evans pushed.

"You don't know?" Manus asked. "I know why the girl chose me, but why did she choose the two of you?"

Nzinga lifted his chin proudly as he answered. "I'm no one special. What about you two?"

"Special? No." Evans gave a shake of her head. "But I don't think the real child is human."

"Neither do I," Nzinga said then gave the smile he liked giving. He stared at Manus. "And what do you believe?"

"I don't give a shit about aliens," Manus lied. "The guards didn't follow us out here. That tells me we haven't been detected on their radar. But it's obvious this group has been purposely separated. If I had to guess I would say it's better to murder Kim Kwon with less people inside the room, because it minimizes the risk of people being trampled on while they're trying to escape. If I had to guess, her death is the only one they want to happen. I think they'll also need witnesses, doctors that are experts in their fields and will be believed by the media when they recant what happened. Now, I've told you what I've thought on the matter, so why not both of you tell me why this child has brought us together."

"1952," Evans whispered. "An unidentified aircraft was found in the mountains of Blue Trees."

_She knows about Blue Trees._ Manus couldn't shake the cold chill that ran up his spine.

"The Army sent three units to investigate what had been found," Evans continued. "The first unit was never seen or heard from again. The second unit, only one soldier escaped. His name was Jack Lee Lord. Someone murdered him three years ago. Twelve other former soldiers that had ties to Blue Trees have also been murdered over the past three years." She looked at Manus. "I saw your eyes when you joined our line. She got to you, didn't she? She convinced you that the things she sees are true. Even now you're ready to find her and fight for her. I ask you, did you see her? Is she human? Is what she is, can it explain why she's being hidden inside this asylum?"

Manus stood closer to Evans, then lowered his voice and spoke sternly. "She's a goddamn kid and every bit human." Another lie, because he hadn't liked the look that had come into her eyes. If his suspicions proved true, Evans had come to steal the child. That couldn't be a part of the kid's future, not as long as the CIA provided her protection between Delta's walls.

All three of them stared at the conference door, because it opened. Manus stared at the ceiling and spotted several hidden cameras. Dr. Janiak had stepped out alone, but his behavior indicated the cameras weren't on. So heavy in his thoughts, Janiak hadn't noticed the three of them standing there. Janiak's hands trembled and reached for his mouth. The entire time he walked, he cited a mantra in a low voice. "I have to do it. She has to die. I have to do it." When he called the elevator and the doors didn't open, he repeatedly pressed the call button and smacked his forehead, as if forcing escaping thoughts back into his head.

When the doors opened, he climbed in, then stared down and not out.

"He has to do what exactly?" Evans asked. "That man is on the verge of jumping off the edge. Did I hear him right? Did he say she has to die?" She gripped Manus's arm and lowered her voice. "I know what you came to do, but don't do it. Help me save her."

"I heard the same thing," Manus admitted, his eyes traveling up again at a hidden camera. "A doctor like Janiak wouldn't behave like he had if these cameras are on. He seemed confident no one would see or hear him."

He walked away. Evans and Nzinga stepped in behind him. Recalling the elevator, they stepped inside together. Manus pushed the floor number where most of the sessions had taken place.

Evans hesitated, then stepped out when the elevator opened to crowds of attendees waiting to go through metal detectors. These attendees couldn't have been told the child wouldn't be a guest speaker. Their excitement could be felt from where the three of them stood.

Manus started to take a step, then stopped when he noticed an Asian child dressed in a white dress and ballerina slippers, smiling prettily between three armed guards. This child didn't look like she suffered from mental illness. The sweetest smile stayed frozen on her face as her head turned in the right direction each time a camera clicked.

_An actress_ , Manus wondered, _treating the moment like the red carpet and these people like they'd come out to support her?_

"I don't understand what's going on," Evans whispered when she also noticed the child's behavior.

Manus hurried his steps, because Janiak knew as long as both sessions had a guest speaker, attendees would stay inside the auditorium and conference room.

Dr. Nzinga stepped out, his eyes troubled by what he saw. "Look at them," he pleaded. "None of them know something's wrong."

Manus pulled the two of them closer in a huddle. "Look around you. These people think they're getting ready to attend a session with the girl as the guest speaker."

"You don't think she's in there?" Evans tried to step away because she wanted to take a look for herself.

"Don't you get it?" Manus grabbed her arm. "Janiak knows the true identity of this child. He knows both sessions are taking place at the same time. As long as everyone is down here, no one's watching _him_. He can murder the real child if only a few people know who she truly is."

"And get away with it," Nzinga said, his eyes aghast. "No one will believe they had seen the _wrong_ child."

Evans spoke in a dull voice. "Alien or human, this child knows things happening in my country and around the world."

Manus, still having a hold of her arm, steered her further down the hall.

Nzinga had been watching the crowd, then noticed Manus and Evans were walking. He started to run to catch up, but the fear of drawing attention caused him to walk casually. As he walked, he patted the pocket in his suit jacket.

Evans yanked her arm back when she saw she was being led inside a men's restroom. Nzinga pushed the small of her back, urging her quickly inside.

"A guard is coming," he whispered.

Manus closed the door, then locked it.

Seconds passed but no one tried to enter.

"This is where she met me." Manus led them further inside the restroom, then pointed his finger. "She stood right at that stall. Don't worry about the guard. I think someone is trying to make this easy for me."

"Are you going to do it?" Anger smoldered in Nzinga's eyes.

_What's your story, Nzinga?_ Manus asked himself. Nzinga had just proven he was in the building for a reason no one else knew, and it had something to do with the girl, just like Evans had come to do something she hadn't wanted anyone to know about.

"A guard nodded at me as we were leaving the conference room," Evans said.

Nzinga thumbed over his shoulder. "It's him out there now. That's why I pushed you inside. I saw when he nodded. I didn't understand it."

"When you want someone to do something for you, you give them a gift," Manus said. "That's what she gave me, and I'm sure that's what she gave anyone else that's helping her. Shit!" He said suddenly. " _My_ secret."

_She knows_ your _secret._ The cook had even repeated it twice. Blue Trees Mountain wasn't Manus's secret. That secret belonged to the government. Manus's secret had to do with going off grid. Why hadn't he seen it this way before now?

The CIA worked overseas missions. If they were inside the hospital, no one would suspect a thing, making it hard for their cover to be blown. If the cook worked for the CIA, the CIA had to know that Janiak had become unstable and the child's safety had become jeopardized.

You'll have all the money you'll need...

The child had said he wouldn't be alone in the future. Could that mean in the future she saw he had taken her with him?

_No_ , he thought, but wasn't convinced, because why else would the CIA help him? If a staff member took her, they would be hunted. Manus taking her and no one may never know it'd been him.

But why would a guard nod at Evans?

_Can I pull off getting the child out of Delta?_ Manus thought.

Could that be the reason the CIA made plans to kill another child, as a distraction for him to escape?

The voices wanted the girl to live. Manus realized that he wanted the girl to live.

"I need to get her out of here," he said.

Instead of Evans and Nzinga looking at him with suspicion, their eyes hardened on him, giving more evidence that they had come to the conference to pull off their own secret missions.

Manus had no time to worry about their intentions. He walked closer to the urinals, but his eyes didn't see them. He didn't have a gun. How could he get the child out of a building teeming with armed guards?

"What are you thinking of doing?" Nzinga asked suddenly, as if he'd come to a decision and was offering help.

Evans had taken her eyes off of Manus and stared at an open stall, then lowered on her heels and stared at something that sat just inside the door.

Manus whirled around, saw where she was looking, then also lowered and saw what she had. Walking to the stall, three ear buds lay scattered like buttons off a shirt. He picked them up, stared at them, then at Evans and Nzinga. "There are three of us. The girl must have known the three of us would work together."

Evans readily grabbed one of the buds. "When I arrived in my room the first time, I found a note written in a child's handwriting on the toilet paper. It said help me and I'll help you."

"You were given a room on the grounds?" Manus asked.

Evans nodded.

"Me, too." Nzinga stared at Manus. "I didn't get any note, though, but a guard whispered in my ear at the property gate before I registered. He asked me what I came to conference for. I got the feeling he knew the reason."

"Why did you come?" Manus asked.

"None of your business," Nzinga answered.

"Okay, why us?" Evans asked. "Hundreds of people are here. Why choose us?" Her mounting suspicion could be heard in her tone.

Nzinga reached for an ear bud and pushed it in his ear.

Evans and Manus followed suit.

A child's sweet voice whispered softly. "Six minutes after six. You should be listening. Please come find me, Michael. I'll be dead soon. I can tell you what to do. Stay together. Leave the bathroom now. Walk past the guard toward the auditorium."

Manus removed his ear bud. "I need to know if the two of you are going to go through with this all the way."

Nzinga and Evans eyed one another. Nzinga's eyes darkened as he nodded firmly. Evans blew out a breath. This wasn't what she came for. She had no idea what would be expected of her.

"I'm in," she finally said, but her tone held no confidence.

Manus led the way.

The last of the attendees waited to pass through metal detectors.

Manus got behind the last person. Evans stood behind him. Nzinga took up the rear. As the three of them walked through the detector, alarms went off.

Two guards approached. Wands materialized and buzzed each time they reached a shoulder. Evans started to walk away. Manus whispered in her ear. "Trust me. She's seen this would happen. I think it's going to work."

Attendees looked back at them with questioning eyes, then went inside the auditorium's open doors.

The guard that waited outside the restroom finally stepped forward and took charge. Behind him were four guards Manus hadn't seen before.

"Take them down to security," the lead guard said.

As they were led away, the ear buds stayed silent.

Nzinga thought they'd been caught, then noticed a guard press the fourteenth floor after stepping inside the elevator.

Manus stared at the lit up number. _The 14th floor_. The same floor the nurse from the session said she worked.

Evans leaned against the wall, her eyes on the guards. Not one of them looked in her direction. Their eyes instead stayed on the floor. Why weren't they saying anything? It was obvious someone had sent them to help. No hospital would keep their security office on the highest floor. But if the guards were helping why not whisper some kind of instruction?

It was then she noticed one of them wearing an ear bud. A longer look and she saw all four were wearing them.

The doors opened. A guard held out his arm to stop the doors from closing.

"You're on your own," he whispered as Manus walked out first.

Nzinga and Evans looked back, but the doors closed, the guards on their way back to one of the lower floors.

When Nzinga turned around, a familiar scene told him that the fourteenth floor of Delta Hospital housed the criminally insane. He slid a hand inside his pocket and kept it there.

"What do you have?" Manus asked.

Nzinga slowly fixed his eyes on Manus. "I came prepared. Let them try and stop me. I'm not leaving until I've had a moment with this child face to face."

"You're no doctor," Manus accused.

"I am," Nzinga answered. "But I'm also something else."

An empty lobby sat outside two heavy doors. Signs warned visitors to turn away from this area and return to the lobby. A call button rested on a nearby wall.

Manus looked up at a camera in the ceiling. "No guards have come out to question us. Someone must have turned off the security cameras."

He walked closer to the wall and pressed the call button. All of them looked up when a buzzer rang loudly behind the doors. Evans pressed a hand gently against Manus's arm, then faced the door. They had waited more than a minute, but no one had come out. Reaching inside her suit pocket, she pulled out an employee identification card.

Manus slid his eyes toward Nzinga.

Nzinga stared at Evans with arched eyebrows.

"Trust her," the child said softly.

Evans heard the transmission and froze, her arm suspended in the air with the badge reaching toward the wall.

Manus stared at Evans and smiled, because it occurred to him that Evans shouldn't know anything about Blue Trees Mountain. She wasn't even American. For her to know about it meant she had investigated the event. Only journalists could find answers no one wanted them to. Journalists were also used to wearing disguises. Evans had brought two disguises, one as a psychiatric doctor and another as an employee.

_I love this kid_ , Manus thought. Alien or not, he liked her balls and how she was just like the voices that spoke, setting up the future so things happened as she saw they would. She'd known no one would open the door. Twice Manus had considered shaking Nzinga and Evans. Now it would be Evans that got him inside to save the kid.

How could the child have known about three strangers: a soldier, a journalist from another country, and an African doctor? It was another reason DSO wanted the child dead. According to their reports, she could name streets in cities she'd never visited. She could stand outside a building and describe what sat inside. She supposedly told the president everything that happened the day he'd been born. An alien being, but also a gift. It could explain why the CIA had sent in reinforcements.

Evans's fingers trembled as she swiped the badge, then punched in a sequence of numbers. Manus saw this as further proof that Evans had come prepared to leave this building with the child in her possession. The CIA had to know about Evans and Nzinga, especially if they led them to this floor, but something the child had told them must have made them confident Manus could pull things off.

"Shit!" Evans whispered when the panel beeped and blinked in warning.

"Take your time," Manus whispered. "No one's watching. I think Dr. Janiak has seen to that."

Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, Evans fixed her eyes on the panel again and did the same thing she'd done before, except this time admittance was granted. A mechanism inside the wall unlocked. The doors whispered open.

All three of them stepped through it.

Closed doors lined empty hallways that branched in three different directions.

"Right," the child whispered.

All three of them turned right.

Evans quickened her pace to keep Manus's stride. "How are we going to find her? They'll be nurses and doctors that will know we aren't supposed to be here."

"You have ID," he answered. "It's gotten us this far. Maybe it'll get us farther."

She pulled him to a stop and whispered heatedly. "I'm a journalist who writes articles about confirmed unexplained sightings. Confirmed," she repeated, punctuating the word. "My current article took a new direction when I found out about Blue Trees. In 1952 Britain _also_ discovered something that our government has covered up. Not a ship, but something else. I came to see the girl. I need to know what she knows about these findings."

"Okay, you're a journalist." Manus looked at Nzinga. "I need to know who you are before we go any further."

Nzinga stared at Manus, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a very aged leather pouch. It sat fat in his hand with whatever had been stuffed inside it. "Sleeping dust."

"Who do you plan on putting to sleep?" Evans asked.

"It doesn't make you _sleep_ ," Nzinga corrected, then stuffed the pouch back into his pocket and patted it. "One pinch and neither of you will be a problem for me."

"A witch doctor?" For minutes Manus had wondered if Nzinga had been something far worse than that.

"Hurry," the sweet voice said.

Manus pulled his eyes off of Nzinga and started walking again. The corridor led north, then turned east. Two doors sat closed in the distance.

"Hurry," the child said again.

Quickening his steps, Manus glanced up at the ceiling to see if hidden cameras were in them. That's when the doors in front of him opened. A housekeeper wielded a utility cart overstocked with supplies. He realized that's why the child had told them to hurry. The doors had almost closed before Manus could reach them.

Evans held up her ID when the housekeeper took a moment to study each of their name tags.

Again Nzinga brought up the rear. Pinching a finger inside his pocket, he brought dust to his mouth and blew it in the housekeeper's face.

The woman fell back on one heel, then against the wall. Her hands reached for her throat as she tumbled face down beside her cart.

Manus gave Evans the door to hold, then adjusted the cart to hide the woman's body from view of the camera just in case. Nzinga hadn't broken his stride, walking through the doors like the chief physician making his daily rounds.

Manus looked back after hearing a noise.

The woman inched across the floor like a serpent, her eyes bloodshot and her housekeeping dress riding above her thighs as she slithered to escape.

"What kind of sleep is that?" Manus asked.

"A spiritual one," Nzinga answered. "She would have told someone she saw us. Now she won't remember. From this moment on, she lives in the spirit world."

They entered a patient ward, taking two guards by surprise. Room doors sat open along a hall. Manus didn't see any nurses moving about and only patients with troubled faces, walking aimlessly, some of them making strange noises, all of them visibly agitated.

Nzinga pulled a bamboo flute out of his pocket, turned it sideways, then pressed his thumb against the end of it. Darts flew out, striking the guards in the face. While their knees unlocked, he hurried closer, pinched dust from his pocket and blew it up the guards' noses.

"He's no longer needed," the sweet voice said.

Manus had drawn the same conclusion. More dust had been pinched. Evans tried to fall back. Dust went up her nostrils. Snakes weren't in her spirit world. After giving a high-pitched screech, she raced across the floor on all fours in her linen pants suit.

_Help me and I'll help you,_ Manus remembered. Twice he'd seen when Evans almost hadn't gone through with her secret plan. The child telling Evans those words convinced her to follow them through. But he could see now that the message had been for him.

The child used the future she saw to her advantage. A witch doctor had come with a weapon. The child hadn't told the staff this or Nzinga would have been watched as closely as Manus had been.

But Evans, the child had to have already seen Evans being sent to the spirit world.

Nzinga had meant to go for Manus next, but Evans's behavior made the already frantic patients manic. A female patient ran to Nzinga, screaming about the tragic death of her sister, and how Nzinga had been the one that had taken her sister's life. She spat on him and yelled, then curved her spine in an awkward arch, her eyes revealing the strain of a psychotic mind. Nzinga blew his dust, but the woman was already in her own spirit world. Enraged by his dust, she pummeled with her fists. Nzinga had no choice but turn his back on Manus when other patients drew closer, joining the woman's assault.

Manus threw a punch when something leapt up and attached itself to his back with the strength of a full-grown gorilla.

A woman screamed near his ear, "Call the police!" then laughed as if the police didn't frighten her.

He tossed the weight off of him and saw that his attacker was Evans. Her arms flapped like a gorilla, raining blows against his legs, vicious blows meant to bring him down.

Around him, patients ran with fury. A nurse's station was in the process of being destroyed.

Evans's eyes were bloodshot. Spit dribbled and dampened her blouse. Teeth were bared to bite chunks out of him. This was no longer a woman advancing her career, but an animal from the wild. He gave one vicious kick. She rolled flat on her back, banged her head against the linoleum and became still.

"Behind you," the sweet voice said.

As if he and the child were one, Manus threw back the pointy part of his elbow into the throat of one of the guards. The guard had attacked him from behind, his techniques also similar to a gorilla. Manus felt the guard's voice box pop like rubber bands when his elbow connected with it.

The guard gripped his neck, no emotion showing on his face as he fell back to escape being punched again. A patient fell with the guard, kicking and stomping and kicking and stomping like the patient had no plans of ever stopping. After the guard's head bounced off the floor several times, the guard lay senseless and the patient saw no further need to attack.

Bare feet slapped against the floor. Gurgles, growls and hums spilled from the mouths of the demented.

"Don't turn around. Stand still," the sweet voice said.

A strange smell made Manus's eyes water. Dust flew over his shoulder and hit the floor like sand. A patient had gotten to Nzinga's dust and had tossed the entire bag.

An elbow dug into Manus's spine. The sole of a shoe kicked the back of his leg. The patients saw him as the last person they could assault.

"Fall face down."

Manus dropped onto his hands, then lay flat.

"Close your eyes."

His eyes closed seconds before bad breath warmed his face and two hundred pounds pressed hard into his back. Fingernails that hadn't been clipped in years dug into his shoulders as the face stayed close to his, trying to decide if something more should be done.

A taser crackled, its victim releasing a hard to listen to belly-felt groan.

The weight rolled off of Manus and he opened his eyes, looking to his right. The patients rushed the door, beating against it to escape the ward.

"Let them out," the sweet voice said.

Evans's fake ID had fallen nearby. Manus grabbed it and was already on his feet before the child had told him to, pushing his way closer to the door and swiping the badge. One of the patients entered a numeric code. The doors pushed open.

When Manus turned, he saw it had been Nzinga that had gotten tasered. Nzinga lay severely wounded, his bag of dust emptied on his face. His mouth stayed open in a bellow of laughter, but no sounds came out. His fingernails gouged underneath his eyes as if to peel away every inch of skin.

The second guard had also been attacked. The chair he'd been beaten with lay abandoned on its side near a wall.

Manus removed the guard's pistol, thankful the patients hadn't thought to arm themselves.

The kind of silence he heard in his ear indicated that the child had turned off her transmitter.

The nurse's station sat unattended.

Manus walked behind it.

A nurse lay behind the desk. A needle stuck out of her rear like a thermostat out of a roast. Manus knelt beside her. Clammy skin. No pulse. Drugs weren't easily accessible on wards like these and were kept under a lock and key. He doubted a patient could be responsible for the death. The guards on the other hand... A dead nurse couldn't testify in court. Killing the patients hadn't been necessary. Who would believe anything they said?

Like he thought, the security cameras had been turned off.

Leaving the nurse's station, he found another nurse laying face down just inside a patient's room. A noose made from a sheet hung from her neck. Three more nurses lay inside a storage room. From the looks of them they had been beaten until they had no breath left. Three different kill methods could convince a D.A. that patients were responsible for these deaths, but if the guards were responsible why had they played a part in Janiak's plan?

Other rooms he came to sat empty. The sweet voice no longer spoke. The ear bud had gone dead.

Where was Janiak?

Manus ran if only to see the mission carried out, then slid on his shoes and ran back to an empty room. Three buttons lay on its floor. He walked closer and saw they were buttons and not ear buds.

Was this a clue?

A bed sat unmade, but didn't look rumpled. He went to the closet and flung it open. By law, children weren't to be housed in an adult ward, but small clothes hung off hangers, some with Asian decorations. There were other things that suggested this room belonged to Kim Kwon. Manus started to step out of the closet, but noticed a book lying on top of a low shelf. Manus opened it.

This book belongs to Ericka Elise Martin.

October 1st, 2013

He flipped through the pages and saw pieces of paper hidden here and there. On other pages, Ericka had written things she'd seen in her visions. Manus flicked back to front and studied the date, because it was today's date.

_Think_ , he told himself, knowing it was some kind of clue.

Where could they have taken her where she'd been able to talk without anyone knowing?

_The 14th floor_. The nurse worked this floor. Ericka Martin and Kim Kwon lived on this floor and inside this ward.

_10-01-13_.

Did it mean anything?

He hurried to the door and saw the room number didn't match.

At the end of the hall another set of doors looked like they led out of the ward. The child had to have led him here for another reason than learning her name.

10-01-13.

He started back to the nurse's station, then slid to a stop. A map of the floor sat framed against the wall. The room numbers stopped at twelve, but there was an extra room with no number or name given to it.

"Talk to me," he said and ran.

He couldn't have been too late. The child saw him coming and already knew everything he'd do.

He slowed when he saw room fourteen-twelve. No other room sat beside it. Outside it sat the double doors. He spun around. Where was the unmarked room he'd seen on the map?

Pushing through the double doors, he found himself inside of a small hall with five closed doors on his left, all of them labeled: linen, supplies, housekeeping, medical, respiratory. He ran to his right, because a different kind of door sat in this area. Glass ran down the center of it and Janiak stood on its other side, lowering a tray laden with glass bottles. A shattered transmitter lay nearby. Janiak gave a quick look at the watch on his wrist.

The girl lay on a bed, her eyes on the door. Her limbs were restrained. An I.V. dripped in one arm.

Janiak lifted a syringe off the tray, filling it with a drug from a vial. His movements were erratic. He looked at his watch one last time.

Manus aimed the pistol.

The shot shattered the glass.

Janiak dropped the syringe and vial, then lifted his hands with large eyes to see where the shot had come from. Seeing Manus with a pistol aimed at him, he lost his composure and sobbed.

"She has to die! She isn't human! The things she tells me and the guards. The things we've seen. They haunt us in our sleep."

"What things?" Manus demanded. "What things!" He screamed when Janiak took too long to answer.

"She dreamt once that she's a princess of the aliens." Janiak looked ready to topple over, his shoulders becoming deeply slouched. "The first day she came, she told me my wife would die." His eyes showed hope that what he said next would be believed. "My wife _did_ die. Cancer, the doctor said. We got the diagnosis the same day the child told me we would." And then his voice reached a manic pitch. "How do we know the child didn't cause the cancer!" No longer caring that Manus held a pistol, he reached for a new syringe.

Manus squeezed off a second round.

Janiak's brains spattered against the wall.

Manus reached through broken glass, opened the door and stepped inside what appeared to be a larger storage room that had been converted into a smaller patient room. Janiak lay slumped between the bed and bedside table, his eyes open but not seeing.

The child's eyes were no longer open. Two I.V. bags hung over the bed. The small one had just run out. The second sat halfway filled.

The girl felt cold and lay limp as he lifted her in his arms. Not the girl. He would never call her that again. Ericka. Her name was Ericka.

Her hospital gown fell away from her shoulder. She had written inside it.

disappear

There was something he had to do first. He didn't find any personal clothing that belonged to Ericka and only a few toys positioned neatly on a dresser.

He went back to Kim's room and grabbed the book, because when the police arrived he didn't want them remembering Ericka's name. Then he stopped at the nurse's station to follow up on a suspicion. The staff listed Kim Kwon as the occupant in room fourteen-ten. No patient had been listed in the room without a number.
CHAPTER 6

The floor sat quiet because the dead couldn't speak.

Nzinga's dust, after turning its victims into animals, made them comatose while they drew their last breaths. All four of them lay still, no parts of them moving, their facial expressions frozen with their last thoughts.

When he reached the ward's doors, a patient stood inside it, rocking back and forth, too afraid to get closer to dead bodies that lay on the floor.

Manus walked past this patient, then looked over his shoulder when the door closed behind him and the patient hurried past him and disappeared down the hall.

The utility cart sat where Manus last saw it. The housekeeper it belonged to lay dead farther down the hall. Her arms and hands were held close to her body and her legs together, making how she laid more consistent with the form of a snake. Manus knew he didn't have a lot of time. The guards that brought him to this floor hadn't come back. If they had any sense they would stay clear of the area.

Lowering the child into the cart's trash bin, he covered her up with towels heavily soiled with disinfectant and dirt.

When he reached the end of the ward, the patients he had released sat on the floor or stood around, most of them happy to be out of their usual confinements, while others looked anxious to get back to where everything was familiar.

Leaving the cart, he aimed the pistol and made his way closer to the door that blocked them all in. A panel sat on the wall. Even if he went looking for Evans's badge, he didn't know the code that would get them all on the other side.

One of the patients walked nervously around another, his fingertips pulling apart and beating together like a monkey on a chain beating cymbals for coins. "Do it again, James. Let us out, please. Can you do that, James? You know how to get us out. I don't want to go back, James. Look outside, James. You want to go outside, James, because I want to go outside, James? I want to get on a bus, James. Something outside is waiting for me, James. I need to find the bus. Something outside is waiting for me, James. Something outside is waiting for me, James. Something outside is waiting for me, James."

It didn't look to Manus like any of the patients were capable of having a clear moment of sanity.

"Let us out, James," Manus chimed in. "I want to go outside, James. Something outside is waiting for me, James. You know how to get us out." It had been James that had gotten them out of the ward.

The nervous patient beat his fingertips faster together, the tone of his voice reaching a higher octave. "I need to find the bus, James!"

"Outside!" Manus screamed when he noticed other patients getting antsy. He remembered how all of them fed off each other and wanted to stir them up even more. "We want to go outside, James! We want to go outside, James! We want to go outside, James!"

Patients covered their ears and rocked. Another sobbed and beat his hand flat against the wall. The female patient that started the attack on Nzinga made an ugly, deranged face that gave a wide display of broken teeth. "James killed my sister!"

James forced himself to his feet in a rush. Rocking sideways and covering his ears, he yelled. "Patricia! Dr. Toth told you already many times that I didn't kill your sister. I killed mine!"

The look on Patricia's face didn't alter as she gave this some consideration. When she saw James start to relax, she screamed, "You're my brother! So... So... You killed our sister!"

"Not your sister, Patricia. Mine!"

"James killed my sister!" Patricia taunted.

"We want to go outside, James!" Manus chanted.

"I need to find the bus, James! Something outside is waiting for me, James!"

Patients rushed James to attack.

James's fingers shook more than Evans's had as he faced the panel. "I'm trying to remember the codes," he pleaded. "Please. Give me a moment. I beg you!"

Manus kept chatting when he noticed James only concentrated when he felt deathly afraid.

The last code was punched. The doors gave a whisper. A dozen deranged patients ran closely together to reach the elevator, including James.

Manus hurried back for the cart, pushing it fast between the doors before they closed. As soon as the patients reached any of the floors below, all hell would break loose. Needing to separate himself from them, Manus pushed the cart to the end of the hall and saw the service elevator.

_Damn!_ A panel hung on the wall. He looked down and noticed several IDs half hidden under a towel on top of the cart. He tried one after another until the right one worked.

On the first floor, the doors opened wide. Fewer guards were in this area, only about a dozen.

A single guard approached, holding out his hand for Manus's work badge.

"Why aren't you in uniform?" the guard asked.

Manus handed him the remaining IDs, not sure which he should use since neither had a picture or gave hints at what they were used for.

The guard handed one back, scanning the other on the oversized electronic wristband he wore.

"They called me in for an extra shift," Manus rattled. "They didn't care what I was wearing, as long as I could get here right away and help out."

"This card belongs to Esmeralda Gomez," the guard said, eyeing him.

"It's her shift I'm covering."

The guard stared down at Manus's shoes. High-end Doc Marten loafers weren't typically what a lowly paid housekeeper wore.

The guard studied them then lifted a radio to his mouth.

"I have a housekeeper with a temporary ID. The name on it is Esmeralda Gomez."

A belch of static ended the transmission.

Manus kept his eyes on six more guards as they drew closer.

A female voice answered.

"Give me a moment while I check her status."

Another voice transmitted. Manus recognized it as the guard that led them up to the fourteenth floor.

"Esmeralda Gomez left early today. Another temp has taken her place. White male, five-feet-nine, dark brown hair, brown eyes, wearing Doc Martens. I sent him to the cafeteria to help out for the afternoon rush."

"I didn't get all of that," the guard lied. "What did you say his name was?" He turned down the volume and held the radio to his ear making it so only he heard the reply.

The guard held Manus's gaze while waiting for an answer, then buckled at the knee when patients rushed out of the elevator, attacking every guard they came in contact with. Fingernails scratched. Punches were thrown. A taser crackled. Bared teeth tried to bite.

Manus pushed the cart, knowing the guards had their hands full.

A patient with familiar bad breath ran in front of him. The demented man recognized him, smiled, then said, "James let us out," before running off and getting tackled a few feet away.

Manus kept a straight path to the cafeteria and to the counter where the cook had stood every day for three days. No one stood there now. The cafeteria sat empty, waiting for the session to end and attendees to come pouring in.

A white paper sack sat on top of the sneeze guard. Manus grabbed the bag in passing, not sure if it'd been meant for him.

A female cafeteria worker stepped from behind a door.

"I'm taking my lunch break," Manus announced. "Where can I leave my cart?"

"Um..." She averted her gaze in the direction he should go. "Take that corridor. You'll see a closet next to the break room."

Guards sat and stood inside the break room, sipping coffee alongside employees that had taken this moment to have a bite before the cafeteria got busy again.

Manus wheeled the cart inside the closet. Three more carts lined one wall. Mops resting inside of empty buckets sat near the door. He peeked inside the white bag. A gate badge sat on top of a sweating Styrofoam box.

A smile stretched across Manus's face. He couldn't carry the girl in his arms without being stopped. No suitcase was lying about. The answer made him laugh.

Minutes later he walked inside the break room with his lunch in one hand and a trash bag slung over his shoulder stuffed with towels and a nine-year-old child. Against the wall sat a door that led outside.

The child had outsmarted them all. Every last one of them. She could have gotten him to come after her sooner, but how would he have gotten her outside? She could have brought him, Nzinga and Evans to the ward sooner, but Janiak had to give her the medicine. Only sleeping like she was could her body fold like it had and for the trash bag to keep still.

He sat the lunch on a table that had an empty spot.

"You must be a temp," an employee eating tuna salad said. "You can't bring trash in here. Take it back out to one of the chutes down the hall. Drop it in there."

A few guards looked in his direction.

The woman stopped eating and stared down at Manus's leg. "Your bag's leaking. Hurry before you make a mess. Through that door." She pointed to the door he'd been headed for. "You'll have to walk the long way around, through the parking lot."

He pulled the bag in front of him. Fluid dripped from a hole in the bottom.

The child's bladder had released, and if he didn't know any better Ericka had known it would three years before it happened.
CHAPTER 7

The murders at Delta Hospital made the news.

Manus sat at the foot of the bed of a hotel room several cities away, watching the latest coverage.

The white bag he'd taken hadn't been left for him. The guy it belonged to had come inside the break room after stepping out of the men's room. The guy saw the bag, recognized it, looked inside, then grabbed it and walked away, not noticing his gate badge missing.

Manus had watched the guy before he'd gotten the chance to make it outside.

The hospital had gone on lock-down. No one stopped him from reaching the car he had planted in the lot. The property's front entrance had too much activity. He'd driven to the back of the lot and found the employee entrance. One guard stood near it and said nothing when he saw Manus had a badge.

Had everything happened the way it should have or had Ericka orchestrated it all?

He looked over his shoulder and saw she had finally awakened.

Standing to his feet, he walked to the head of the bed where she lay, then reached for the blanket.

"Don't touch _meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee_!"

The pitch of her scream—its high soprano shrill—coupled with the dead-calm look in her eyes made his heart race strong enough to escape his chest. When the word 'me' went on longer than he thought anyone humanly capable, he gripped her shoulders to shake her quiet, but yanked his hands back when her mouth parted into a wide, black hollow and her eyes rolled into the back of her head.

Her screaming stopped, but her chest gave jerks each time she sucked at air.

"Ericka?" Reaching a hand to feel her forehead, her skin felt far too cold. His second touch and the bed shivered as her small body trembled out of control. Not knowing what he could do, his hands stayed hovered above her. "Ericka?"

The shaking lasted only about a minute, and then her eyes rolled out of her skull and trained on him.

"T-t-t-turn the TV off," she stammered while gasping for breath. "And d-d-don't touch me, okay?"

Manus watched as her eyes swam toward the television.

A female news anchor stood center screen with a microphone in hand and Delta Hospital in the backdrop. The same moment Ericka fixed her eyes on the news anchor, Ericka's eyes blinked like a cyborg with a facial electrical short.

Manus kept watching her as he made his way to the armoire against the wall. Reaching for the remote, he took his time turning off the television. The same moment the screen clicked black, Ericka sucked in air until her chest could be seen rising underneath the blanket.

"What are you?" he whispered, reminding himself that he still had a weapon, and envisioning something macabre happening with her between the sheets.

Lying in front of him appeared to be an unassuming kid from an ordinary background, but her behavior could be seen as otherwise.

Manus took three rushing steps closer to the table near the room's door, gripped the pistol on top of it, then aimed it at the bed. "What you got going on under that blanket, Ericka?" She couldn't stop shaking. The blankets wouldn't stop trembling. "Your legs... Why do they keep shaking like that? If I yank back those covers, what am I going to see?"

Blowing out each breath then sucking more in, sweat dotted her forehead as she locked her eyes on his.

"I'm a freak."

"A freak?" He tossed the words back at her. "Are you human?" He dropped the hand with the gun, then reached for his scalp with his other while thinking about the question he just asked, because over the past days Ericka had been the only one he trusted.

"I can't watch TV sometimes or touch people," she explained. "Because I see things that happened or will happen or when that person is going to die."

He stared at the TV. "You saw something about the anchor?"

"Her husband beats her up. One of her sons do too. She wears makeup to cover the bruises. People do lots of bad things when no one's lookin'."

He studied the brown hue of her skin and the almost black tint of her eyes. "And when I touched you?"

"Your father's arm bringing down his belt," she answered. "You running between the dresser and the wall. You liked hiding there. You're good at hiding. And your mother... She's pulling your daddy's shirt and it's ripping 'cause she's trying to get him off of you..."

"Shut up!" Surprised that he yelled and at the emotion he felt, he calmed down, then aimed the pistol again. No one could have told her these things because no one knew; he and his mother had seen to that. "For you to know something like that you can't be human."

Sadness shone from her eyes. "My father says I'm not, but mama says he's just jokin'."

"So how do you see things—hear things?"

"When I see things, it's like I'm there when it happens. I don't just see what's going on. I can move."

"Move?"

"I can turn around. And notice things. Like clocks on the wall and pictures on top of tables. Stuff like that. When I have visions, I can sometimes hear what people are thinking of saying even if they don't, like when your daddy used to beat you and you wanted to say, 'Stop beating me, you pig.'"

His voice lowered. "I did think that, but I've never told anybody, so you can see how strange it is that you would know that?"

"She would have died anyway—the lady." Gripping the blankets, she drew them closer. Still groggy from the medicine, she lay against the pillows and closed her eyes. Every now and then her legs shook. "I dreamed about her lots of times. The dust always got her. Wasn't nothing no one could do about it. My head hurts. I'm cold."

Manus realized only then that Janiak must have given her something more than the I.V. fluids. Something he had injected in her line, and it was not only still working, but making her ill and causing the tremors he saw.

"I have to get you to a hospital." He lowered the pistol back onto the table and drew closer to her.

She gave a weak shake of her head. "You can't do that."

"Why not?"

She closed her eyes and kept silent.

"Ericka, I need to know how this works," he pleaded. "Am I _not_ supposed to take you to the hospital? We can't stay here. You're sick and there are men that are going to want to know where I am pretty soon. As long as you're with me, I'm not exactly sure where to go."

Her fingers released the blanket, then gripped it tighter. Her lips shivered like someone freezing in snow. "I'm not going to remember you." She spoke in a small voice. "Or my dream. Dr. Jay gave me something through a needle that's going to make me forget a lot of things. But I'm not scared. I'm going home to my parents."

"They find us here?"

"They find me and take me away."

"And you want that to happen?"

"I wanna see my mama."

"Okay, Ericka, but can you tell me what do you know about Blue Trees?"

She studied his face. "I've never see a blue tree. Do it have blue leaves?" Sweat trickled down her forehead.

Seeing the sweat and he realized she shouldn't be sweating as cold as she felt.

"Ericka, I'm taking you to the hospital. The drugs Dr. Janiak gave you... I thought they were only to make you sleep, but I see now they are making you very – _very_ – sick."

He carefully peeled back the blanket and saw human legs and arms. Her head lolled against his chest as he lifted her in his arms. This time she didn't tremble from his touch. From the looks of her, she had no more strength to react the way she normally would have.

"They're coming for you." Her eyes opened, peered at him, then closed again. "Keep my journal. My dream..."

A door slammed in the parking lot. Manus laid Ericka back down then hurried to the curtains and peeked out from behind them. A car engine started in front of his room door. A man sat behind the steering wheel. As the car backed out, Manus looked out at the road. In the distance, a caravan raced toward the hotel with their lights flashing.

"Black stuff is in the sky," she began softly behind him. "Blue light pokes down and hits the ground and then...and then buildings everywhere in the world catch on fire. People everywhere scream. They're in the streets, lots of them, running and pushing. They run into fields, and forests, and jungles, and jump down into sewers, and into rivers and lakes." The tone of her voice and he knew she saw these things now. "The ocean is tall and crashes over cities. And people's pets are running, but they don't know where to go. TVs don't work. All of them are black all around the world. Cell phones don't work either. None of them. I've never seen a submarine, but I know that's what they are in my dream. The machines inside them turn black. They sink. The people in them scream, but they're under water and no one can hear them. They sink for a long time, into a part of the ocean that's so black I get scared every time I dream about it. Delta Hospital falls. The people inside are thrown out of windows like birds that can fly, but the people don't fly. They fall down on the street and break up like glass."

He dropped the curtains, faced her, and spoke emphatically. "How do we stop it! How do we kill them, Ericka?"

"Rob the bank." She spoke like someone winded. "You get married. You have children, first a girl and then a boy."

He rushed to the bed and lowered so she could look him in the eye. "Ericka, how do we stop your _dream_ from happening?"

"We can't because it's already been lived."

"But if you can see the future, you can see a way out of this."

"You live in the ground." Her eyes closed but she kept talking. "That's where you _hide_." A smile was given, but not for long. "Everyone has to hide in the ground. If they don't, the things will find them and..."

She coughed and sputtered. Phlegm rattled inside her chest. He leaned closer and watched as her pupils dilate unequal in size, something he'd seen only once before when a soldier's brain had swelled after a head injury.

"The drugs, Ericka..." He fell back a step.

Her legs swung off the bed. A part of the blankets fell to the floor. She gripped painfully at her stomach and stumbled inside the bathroom like any kid did when they were deathly ill, but what Manus wondered was how had she been able to walk with her pupils like they were.

Taking his time, he crossed the room and pulled back the curtains. The caravan raced past the hotel and entered the lot of the hotel next door. When he reached the bathroom door, he found Ericka sitting on the toilet with her knees together, the gown hanging off one shoulder, the tip of her toes barely reaching the floor, her head leaning to one side, her eyes closed, her mouth parted, and her body abnormally still.

Daring to get closer, he touched a hand to her forehead, then her arms and hand and found that her body temperature felt the same as someone that had been pronounced dead.

"Ericka?"

She didn't move.

"Ericka?" He gave her a shake. She slumped slightly to one side with her chin hanging down and her hair concealing her face. Neither her shoulders nor her chest rose or fell. He checked for a pulse and felt nothing. He got down on one knee and placed his ear against her heart and stayed this way for more than a minute, then finally stood when he realized he wasn't going to hear anything either.

He turned back for the room and, after taken several steps, he thought to look back one last time only to almost lose his balance and his hands reaching for the wall.

Ericka sat upright with her eyes open and locked on him.

This time he didn't ask if she was human, and neither did he try and slow down his racing heart.

"What are you thinking about, Ericka?"

"I was just dreaming that I was dying," she answered.

Even from where he stood he could see that her pupils had dilated more over the past minute. He couldn't stop himself from pointing at her eyes, but he did stop himself from telling her that she might already be dead. Instead, he said, "You are aware that your dreams and the things you see come true, right, Ericka?"

She wore her sad expression and gave a quick nod.

Manus decided not to press the issue. Was she human? He didn't know, but if she could cheat death the things in Blue Trees Mountain weren't going to see her coming.

Sirens blared from the street. The caravan must have realized their mistake and had turned around to enter the right parking lot.

Manus could see that Ericka was too weak to get off of the toilet. "You said you're not going to remember me or your dream after today. But I hope you remember this one thing. I think you're going to be their _worst_ nightmare, Ericka. I think something has seen to it that you were chosen to give them all hell."

After going through the bathroom window, once Manus's feet hit the ground he ran, keeping low and out of sight from the rental office, knowing he was leaving her in good hands.
CHAPTER 8

Inside her journal, she left notes she knew he'd read, although not once did she mention him by name. The notes were detailed – very detailed – on how he robbed a bank.

_'You leave the house at 5 in the morning,'_ was how it began.

A cop gives you a speeding ticket after you pass a big truck....

She had written much more after that part, but he had focused on remembering only the parts he needed to.

You change your mind. You don't want to go where you're going. You drive until you reach the town of Black Rock. The bank is on the left. The clock inside says 10:01 when you walk in. Thirteen people will be inside. You already knew the numbers meant something. 10-01-13.

Your wife is the teller wearing the pink blouse and black skirt. As soon as you see her, shoot the guard.

It had taken DSO two days to contact him, and after they told him what they had to say he understood their need to wait forty-eight hours, because that's all the time they needed to wipe his existence from their computer files. He'd been captured on Delta's surveillance cameras near the cafeteria the evening of the murders. Investigators in Arizona had him listed as a person of interest in the death of Kim Kwon. He'd gotten orders to return to the Pentagon and get debriefed, but again Ericka had been right. DSO would never stop, because he knew too much. After his dishonorable discharge, and his forfeiture of pay and after they told him they would offer him no assistance with the detectives in Arizona, they would come after him the very moment they thought no one was looking. That's when he realized he would have robbed a bank even if Ericka hadn't told him he would, because banks had plenty of money and he needed to get his hands on a lot of money if he wanted to stay alive.

The morning of his scheduled appointment at the Pentagon, he climbed behind the steering wheel of his car, then sat until exactly five a.m. Only then did he start the engine and pull out of the driveway.

For miles he waited for a cop to pull him over. It happened in Fredericksburg. The cop made him get out of the car. As Manus climbed out, his cell phone dropped and shattered. Angry he'd broken it, he stomped it, then kicked it off the road. The cop ordered him to pick it up.

"You're a long way from home." The cop handed his license back. "You're here on a visit?"

"I'm heading to the Pentagon. I have business there."

The cop stared at the broken phone. "Too bad you can't call and tell anyone you're gonna be late. There's an accident up the way."

Manus climbed back inside his car and watched as the cop pulled off the shoulder and drove in the opposite direction. That's when Manus saw the road. It sat unpaved, an open invitation beckoning him to disappear.

The road led to a major highway, then the interstate. He drove onto it and kept driving for hours. He saw the first sign mentioning Black Rock at 9:33. He reached the town's only exit at 9:57 and drove into its small parking lot at 10:00. He walked through the front doors with his pistol cocked and loaded. A clock on the wall read 10:01.

The first teller wore a pink blouse and a black skirt. Her gun was smaller than his. Eileen Hayes worked at the bank and decided to rob it that morning herself. The lone guard inside the bank, a man she knew, was trying to force her to shoot him or surrender.

Manus shot the guard. After that the staff and visitors inside the bank did everything he told them, including locking themselves inside the vault like Ericka said they would.

"What are you doing?" Eileen complained when he went through a lunch sack sitting on a desk and fished out a bottle of water.

"I'm shot," the guard said, rolling onto his side. "I'm diabetic. Call an ambulance."

_You give the guard a bottle of water, an apple and a sandwich_ , _because you don't want him to die._

Manus carried three duffel bags stuffed with cash out to his car. Eileen realized her bag was too heavy to carry. She also left her purse and cell phone behind. It wasn't like they wouldn't know she'd been involved after the cops questioned the witnesses.

She ran outside and jumped into the passenger seat of Manus's car. "I couldn't carry my bag. I'm going with you."

Manus had wondered what had taken her so long and had started to go back in for her, but she'd come out on her own and was now leaving with him because it weighed as the best option if she wanted to evade arrest.

Sitting close to the door and not fully trusting him, Eileen kept her eyes on him, then spoke nervously. "I'll marry you if you share that money with me."

The smile she gave afterward wasn't seducing; it was earnest. Manus looked at her a long time, not truly believing his luck, because Eileen wasn't just a pretty face. Just looking at her and he knew she could live off grid, keep secrets and treat a lifestyle on the run like a well earned career. The more he looked at her, the more he saw the two of them making a daughter and a son.

"I used to work for the government." He took his eyes off her and watched the road. "Grab those papers off the back seat."

Eileen watched him a moment, saw the papers he mentioned, then reached for them. She started reading before he told her to. When she finished and looked up, she reached for the door and held on to it with one hand. "That sign on the road back there is mentioned in these notes. You wrote I would see it when I finished reading and I did."

"I didn't write those letters. You believe in aliens?"

Him switching the conversation as suddenly as he did caused Eileen to sit farther away from him and unable to take her eyes off of him.

"Not out there," he clarified, then gave a nudge with his chin up toward the sky. "But here. On American soil. They came in 1952. We've been hiding them..."

"Hiding them where?"

_Blue Trees_ , he wanted to answer, but knew better. Evans mentioned Blue Trees in front of Nzinga, and then both of them entered the spirit world before drawing their last breaths. Thirteen men had been murdered because of what they knew about it.

Ericka had seen apocalypse take place in the near future, and for some reason fate wanted that future to happen, even though the future Ericka saw had been of people dying, running, hiding and trying to survive as the world as everyone knew it came to an end.

***Download your copy of **THE BABISIAN BOX** to learn the secrets of Blue Trees Mountain, and what humanity will face in an unforeseen apocalyptic world, or pick up the entire series. THE BATTLE OF EIGLEXX 4-BOOK BOXED SET is available on all e-Readers.***

The Babisian Box (book 1 in the series)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shelley Young is a wife, mother and grandmother. From an early age she wanted to become an author, but put her dreams on hold to focus on her family. While working first as a nurse and later as a Customer Service Representative, she spent her spare time writing stories she believed the world would love. Her debut novel, The Blood Feud, became a bestseller and earned her radio and magazine interviews. She is the author of other bestsellers, and now as a full-time novelist has devoted her time writing as many bestselling suspense-thrillers, mysteries, historicals and sci-fi books as possible. She currently resides in California with her husband and can be contacted on her website www.shelleyfiction.com
OTHER BOOKS BY SHELLEY YOUNG

Find all of Shelley Young's books at www.shelleyfiction.com.

Visit my website to read free chapters and discover the latest news and free giveaways.

Sci-Fi Series:

All Men Are Gods (Novella)

The Babisian Box (Full-Length)

The Rise of the Eiglexx (Full-Length)

The Birth of a Corsai (Full-Length)

The EWA 8: Domination Terminated (Full-Length)

Dominants & Mortals (Full-Length)

Thrillers, Mystery and Historical Fiction:

The Blood Feud

The Blood Tie

The Blood Trail

Plain Dealing

The Rain House

The Forbidden Lily

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## One Last Thing

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