RISE Read online

  Huntsville was also as red-blooded and patriotic as any other city in the United States. There’d been some grumbling when the first of the German scientists had arrived. But as success built upon success, the grumbling slowly began to go quiet, especially when it came to beating the Russians into space. There wasn’t an American alive who didn’t want the U.S. to beat the Russians to the Moon.

  And all of those hopes were pinned on the man who President Eisenhower had named to run NASA: Wernher von Braun.

  And Matilda was about to meet him.

  She smoothed down her blue dress, pressing down the edges of her white collar before running a quick hand over her hair. She’d chosen the blue dress with the white polka dots, but now she was rethinking her choice. Maybe she should’ve gone with something a little more somber. After all, at eighteen, she would be one of the youngest employees at NASA.

  This dress probably makes me look like I’m on my way to an afternoon at the movies.

  She took a breath, pushing away her thoughts. She wasn’t one who was normally bothered by self-doubt. Since the age of three, she’d been telling people what they were doing wrong whenever they did it wrong. It had not endeared her to her teachers … or her parents, for that matter. But her chess teacher had been thrilled, and once it was understood that her brain worked at a much higher level than those around her, she’d been forgiven oversights of decorum … for the most part.

  At the age of seventeen, Matilda had already graduated from college. While she’d been written up in the paper and the town had proudly proclaimed her the new genius on the block, her mother had mourned the fact that she would never find a husband.

  But Matilda worried she would never find a job. Women in the sciences were not common. A woman as young as she was in the sciences? Well, Matilda had never heard of any.

  But both mother and daughter had been elated when Matilda had been invited to apply for a job at the Army base. Matilda because she couldn’t believe that Wernher von Braun had actually extended the invitation to her personally. Her mother’s excitement had a decidedly different angle: She had visions of handsome, muscular soldiers surrounding her daughter day and night. She overheard her mother talking to her father, saying that if Tilda couldn’t find a husband on the Army base, then there was simply no helping her.

  Tilda tried not to let the remarks sting, but being she was still thinking about it weeks later, she supposed she’d failed on that count. She shook her head. This was not the train of thought she should be thinking about right now. She reached up and pulled the bow out of her hair. She shoved it into the pocket of her dress and then smoothed down her hair once again. That was better. Less like a girl out for an afternoon on the town and more of a woman ready to take on whatever task was set in front of her.

  Or at least, that’s what she hoped.

  She reached Room 217 and stopped in front of the door. It was at the end of the hall and looked just like all the other doors on the floor. But Tilda knew this door was different. This door was the door to the future that she’d dreamed of. Taking a breath, she knocked.

  “Come in.” The voice was strong and masculine, with a very heavy Austrian accent.

  Tilda pulled open the door and stepped into the room. There was a desk sitting in front of her that was empty, the door beyond it open.

  “Come on back.”

  Tilda walked past the desk and stood in the open doorway. The man behind the desk looked up with a smile. Blond hair and bright blue eyes looked back at her warmly. The man stood up and walked around the desk, towering over Tilda. “Miss Fairfax, it is a pleasure to meet you.”

  She reached out her hand, feeling automatically at ease in the man’s presence. This was a man who was her intellectual superior. For once in her life, she would not be the smartest one in the room. And more than anything, she was looking forward to learning from him. “Dr. von Braun, it’s a pleasure to meet you as well.”

  The scientist, who had just one month ago created the Mercury-Mercury 3, the rocket that sent the first American astronaut, Alan Shepard, on a suborbital flight on May 5, 1961, the scientist who America had pinned its hopes on getting to the Moon before the Russians, smiled back at her. “Please call me Wernher.”

  He gestured to the corner of the room. She was so focused on von Braun that she hadn’t realized there was someone else in the room. Although as she got her first look at him, she wondered how that was possible.

  He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

  Tall with a muscular build, his cheekbones were sharp under piercing blue eyes. They were so blue she wondered about the lighting or if she was turning into one of those women from the romances her mother read.

  “Matilda Fairfax, I’d like to introduce you to Joseph Watson, my right-hand man. We three are going to accomplish great things together.”

  Chapter Two

  Present Day

  Canso, Nova Scotia

  Nervousness ran along Dr. Maeve Leander’s skin like an electrical current. She knew it was a delayed reaction to everything that had occurred in New Mexico. An image of the Kecksburg charging at her wafted through her mind.

  She cringed, closing her eyes as if she could hide away from the image, but it was just replaced by others: Alvie in the containment unit, about to be loaded onto a train headed to who knew where by Martin Drummond; the large winged creature that attacked the chopper that had nearly taken Maeve, Chris, and a dozen others when they’d burst free from the Archuletta; and finally, Agaren, the large Gray whom Maeve had first seen at Area 51 when he’d caused a distraction allowing Maeve, the triplets, and Alvie to escape detection, and whom they had liberated from Dulce as well.

  Those hours leading up to that fight, and through it, had felt like the longest in Maeve’s life. They had spent the last few hours shifting from cars to planes and back to cars again before coming to a small camp that looked like a deserted summer camp rather than a safe house.

  Dr. Greg Schorn, one of Maeve’s closest friends and former colleague from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, stepped out of one of the SUVs carrying Iggy, the Maldek who had saved his and Norah Tidwell’s life. Greg met her gaze, the moonlight flashing off his glasses. He gave Maeve a tight smile before carrying Iggy into one of the buildings. Norah walked quickly next to them and disappeared into one of the cabins.

  Maeve had looked over the wound, and despite the amount of blood, it was actually pretty shallow. If they kept it clean, Iggy should be all right.

  The triplets were chasing Grace, their black-and-white Labrador retriever mix, in the area in front of the cabins. They had too much energy after being cooped up for too long. Alvie was with them but not joining in. The triplets were Alvie’s clones, created at Area 51 only a year ago. Alvie was twenty-nine years old, but his height of just under four feet made him seem so much younger. He had a disproportionately large head that came to a point at his chin. He had two large black eyes over two holes that served as his nose and a very small mouth.

  And he was gray in color. The triplets looked identical to him except for Snap, the only girl, who had thin wispy white hair.

  Alvie and Maeve had been raised together as brother and sister, although somewhere along the way, her role had shifted to a more maternal one. It was an unusual upbringing, but she could not imagine her life without him.

  And now, she couldn’t think of anything she could do to help him.

  The triplets had been spared most of the danger, but Alvie had been held by Martin for days. And Maeve held no illusions that he was treated well during that time. The burns on his body were evidence of the cruelty he’d been exposed to. Maeve watched Alvie, but for the first time in their lives together, he was keeping his thoughts from her. He had been doing so ever since she’d removed him from the containment unit.

  Maeve tried not to feel hurt, but it wasn’t working. But she knew Alvie had been through a lot. He needed time to process. Alvie was not fully human. He was half human and h
alf gray alien. And all good. Cruelty wasn’t something he was used to. And while he hadn’t shared what had happened, she knew it was cruel. She wasn’t sure what kind of lasting damage Martin Drummond had done to him.

  Maeve wasn’t a violent woman. But she promised herself that Martin would pay for what he had put her family through.

  An arm slipped around her waist. She looked up into Chris Garrigan’s blue eyes. A former Air Force captain, he had been in charge of Alvie’s security at Wright-Patterson. And he was also the reason she, Alvie, and the triplets were still alive. “He’ll be okay. We just need to give him time.”

  Maeve leaned in to Chris, soaking up his warmth. She nodded her head but couldn’t speak past the ball of emotion that suddenly appeared in her throat.

  A throat cleared behind them. Maeve glanced back at the round African American gentleman who stood there. Jasper Jenkins cleared his throat again. “Sorry to interrupt, but I thought you might want to get everyone settled.”

  Maeve glanced back at the triplets and Alvie, then squeezed Chris’s arm. “Let them play a little longer. I’ll go see what the situation is.”

  Chris kissed her cheek. “Okay.”

  Jasper led Maeve into one of the cabins. She braced herself, expecting spiderwebs, rat droppings, and dirt. She was pleasantly surprised. Someone had recently cleaned it. She could still smell the lemon cleaner. There were two bunk beds and two cots, along with a bathroom at the back. A small stack of clothes had been placed on the bunk at the front.

  “This is great. Thanks.” Maeve sank onto the nearest bunk, looking through the clothes. There were pajamas and new sweats for all of them, which was good because they were all desperately in need of a change of clothes.

  “There’s shampoo, soap, and everything else you’ll need in the bathroom. If you need any—”

  Jasper cut off, staring behind her. Maeve looked over her shoulder.

  Agaren stood in the doorway. He was six feet tall, with a large triangular-shaped skull and gray skin tone. His black eyes offered no clue to his thoughts. But the slightest movement of his small chin toward Jasper told Maeve he was communicating with him.

  “Um, yeah, so I’ll leave you two alone?” Jasper looked at Maeve for confirmation.

  Maeve stood. “It’s fine.”

  Agaren stepped into the room and to the side to allow Jasper to pass. Jasper paused in the doorway before heading outside.

  Maeve stood up. “How are you?”

  “Good. It is good to be free. Thank you.”

  It was shocking hearing the words coming out of his mouth. Maeve had assumed that his communication would be telepathic as well. “You speak?”

  Agaren inclined his head. “It took a great deal of time to figure out how to. It is a very rudimentary form of communication, but eventually I was able to master it. Although it is not entirely comfortable.”

  Maeve wanted to be insulted by his interpretation of speech, but the fact that he was correct stopped her. Although humans did believe that they communicated mainly through speech, nonverbal communication was more indicative and communicative of how humans actually felt and what they intended than the spoken word.

  Plus, being Maeve now understood how Alvie and the triplets communicated, she had to admit it was a much more comprehensive way of getting one’s thoughts across. She could feel how Alvie felt when he asked questions that conveyed so much more than just the question itself. She could tell when he asked why if he was curious, scared, excited, or all of the above. With humans, if you just went from the spoken word, all you knew was that they were curious. But really, could just one characteristic describe the motivation for a human’s behavior or questions?

  “I am all right with telepathic communication. I have had a great deal of practice.”

  Yes, you have. Alvie is a remarkable individual.

  “Yes, he is. I care a great deal about him.”

  And he you.

  There was a link between Alvie and the alien in front of her. Unlike Alvie, Agaren was pure Gray. He’d been captured by Martin decades ago and held all that time. Yet he had approved when she had protected Alvie over him. She looked him right in the eyes. “Who is he?”

  Agaren did not feign ignorance at what she was truly asking. He is the key to humanity’s peace or their destruction. I fear now that recent events have pushed your fate closer to annihilation.

  Maeve struggled to hold back the shiver his words elicited. “Why?”

  I am part of a council. Our job is to monitor Earth and its development. You are a very young planet. Only a few billion years old. Yet your species has been invasive. You have overtaken all of your resources, using them to the brink of depletion. You have destroyed large swaths of your own population. Your aggressive ways concern the Council and have for centuries.

  Maeve knew what he said was true. When Homo sapiens became the dominant hominid on the planet, they had destroyed much along their way. Australia had been teeming with giant animals before humans stepped foot on its shores. Two thousand years later, all those large beautiful beasts had disappeared. The same phenomenon was observed in Madagascar.

  In fact, there had been three waves of extinction tied to human behavior. The first wave of extinctions was caused by the spread of foragers. The second wave accompanied the spread of farmers. And the third wave has proven the deadliest to the planet, caused by pollution spewing into the environment at an unprecedented rate.

  Experts estimated that at humankind’s current rate of resources consumption, we’d kill off between 200 and 2,000 animal species annually and that climate change would result in between 10 and 20% reductions in global production of food in the next five to twenty-five years, not to mention the coastal areas that would become flooded and areas of the world that, due to the heat, would be completely uninhabitable for humans. So Maeve could not argue that the Council had no right to be concerned.

  I must return to the Council and explain about my absence. They will know what I have experienced, what I have seen. There is no way to keep it from them, and I would not want to anyway. Truth is always the way forward, but I fear it will push them away from humanity.

  “What happens then, if they are pushed away from humanity?”

  They may decide that humans no longer deserve to be protected. That they are an invasive species that needs to be, at the very least, contained, at worst, removed.

  “Removed?”

  It has happened before. But you and Alvie, the other humans who have risked much to protect him and his clones, you are the hope. I will stress this with the Council.

  “And if they don’t take your word for it?”

  There have been twenty-three hominids on this planet. Homo sapiens will fall like the others.

  Maeve sucked in a breath.

  The door opened, and the triplets rushed into the room. They sprinted for the nearest bed, clambered on, and began to jump with happy squeals.

  Agaren watched them, his head tilted to the side, before walking over to them. The triplets all went still, looking up at him with their small mouths hanging open.

  Agaren took his pointer finger and pressed it gently to the middle of each of their foreheads. Snap, Crackle, and Pop all smiled and closed their eyes. Pop opened his eyes first and reached up for Agaren. The slight widening of Agaren’s eyes indicated his surprise at the motion. After a moment’s hesitation, he reached out his arms.

  That was all the encouragement Pop needed. He hopped into them. For a moment, Agaren stumbled back before his arms closed around him. And then a smile formed on his face as well.

  Alvie appeared in the doorway. Agaren stared at him, and the hair on Maeve’s arms stood on end. She knew they were having a conversation. Maeve said nothing, just watched in silence. Then Alvie broke the contact. He walked over to Maeve and took her hand, which gave Maeve the distinct impression that he had just picked a side.

  Maeve prayed that for his own sake it was the right one.

  Chapt
er Three

  Seattle, Washington

  A soft rain fell against the hood of Martin’s white BMW X6. It had rained every day since he’d been back in Seattle. After that first night and the visit from Tatiana and Dietrich, he’d thought about leaving. But he knew that wherever he went, they would follow. There was no getting away from them.

  There never had been.

  He pulled into a parking spot in front of the old warehouse. It been erected in 1973 as a furniture manufacturing building before it had finally gone bust in the late 1990s. It had sat empty and abandoned for nearly twenty years before Martin purchased it and had it refurbished. It was one of two dozen hubs he’d created across the country.

  The one in New Mexico had been the largest. Losing that base stung, but they had all the data. He supposed that was the most important part. And the destruction of the base had also offered some new data. Creatures that they had had locked away for years had suddenly come to life. A few had escaped the facility, but most had been killed.

  Martin sat in his car, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. The creature he truly wanted had not been killed in the explosion. No, the one they called Alvie had been rescued. Damn you, Tilda.

  He had honestly thought she was dead. Matilda Watson was good. He would give her that much. And being he’d thought she was dead for years, his new goal was to make sure she lived up to that belief.

  But it wasn’t the sudden appearance of Tilda that weighed on his mind. No, it was the resurrection of Joseph. Seeing him at the train station had been like seeing a ghost. He hadn’t aged a day. Which could mean only one thing …

  He stepped out of the car and hurried into the warehouse. He pulled open the old door, noting the cobwebs in the corner of it. He hurried through the old factory’s reception area. Plastic chairs served as a waiting area for former clients while an old linoleum desk stood directly across from the main doors. The sign for Hanley’s Furniture was still displayed behind it. Another door led into the old warehouse.