Banished To Earth, Book Two King Davin (45)

Chapter 53

         “That is preposterous, but logical, since that is all they have. They know. But that is not empathy.”

       “Yeah,” said Davin as they walked up to Tucker’s door. “They exploit our suffering.”

       “You are suffering?” Pry asked, her eyes softened when she looked up at him.

       “I’m selfish, so yeah, I’m suffering. I miss my new family, too. I want them. I miss the smile on your face every time Nikki hugged you.  I miss my friend.”

    “Trudy?” Pry asked, “Yes, she was, I mean is, a true friend. The way she accepted me. I could not have asked for a sweeter surprise.”

   “And Beth, how can she explain to Nikki when we never return? The waiting, the daily disappointment is bound to make her grow bitter, warped. I promised to keep them safe. But the only way to save Nikki from a terrible future is going to get them killed. And we don’t know how long they can live inside the barrier- another problem; I’ll just have to shelve.” Pry sighed in agreement when he tapped on the white door panel. ‘Tucker’s Room’ was spelled out at the top, in black letters. Simple and efficient, bland but effective.

     Davin and Pry were fully dressed in their Hunter attire, including their weapons. Davin, of course, had changed out of his pajamas into more appropriate clothing and suggested Pry do the same.  

     The door panel vanished, revealing Tucker. Silhouette was sitting behind him on his bed. “What?” she asked, noticing their raised eyebrows. “This place is creepy; I didn’t want to be alone.” He and Silhouette were also dressed in their Hunter attire.

      “Of course,” Pry replied as they followed Tucker inside the typically cramped motel-like room. “We did not think…”

    “Your love life is the last thing on my mind,” Davin cut in as Silhouette stood up and smoothed her impression from Tucker’s blanket.

    “They didn’t invite you to my ‘resurrection’?”

     “No, they didn’t,” Tucker said, waving his hand at the back wall to reveal a live shot of Earth. “In fact, we had no idea you were even here until Rebecca told us.”

    “Yeah, she left us when she was satisfied my resurrection would stick.”

     “She’s terrified,” Pry injected, “she hides it well, but her life is not hers. Her entire demeanor changed when she spoke of the Urgis.”

     “Not just her life,” Silhouette said, stepping up to view the portal. “They have our minds too; I can feel them sitting in the back of my head, watching, listening, judging. I hate it.”

    “Yeah,” Tucker added. “I feel them too, floating around the edges of my mind, like a swarm of gnats.”

     “Well,” Davin said, taking Pry’s hand as they sat on the bed. “Sometimes it’s good to be clueless.”

    “Talkin’ about Trudy’s oak?” Silhouette asked, not bothering to turn away from Earth. “How are we supposed to find it?”

     Tucker shrugged, “At least we don’t have to refuse. Who knows what they might do if we did.”

     “Kill Rebecca, and who knows how many more,” Pry quickly added. “They have millions of hostages. That is their only value.”

        “Fev said we were free to roam around the ship,” Davin said, “guessing that includes you two as well.”

     “Yeah, bear walls, stainless steel floors and endless corkscrew hallways, can’t wait.” Silhouette said, still fixated on Earth, “You do know they’re not about to let us see anything; they don’t want us to see. But it beats hanging around in this motel room all day, or night or whatever it is.”

    “No sunrise in space.” Tucker quipped. He stepped up beside Silhouette. “But man, what a view. Yeah sure, let's go for a walk, and pretend we have the run of the place.” He pressed his right hand on Earth as he spoke.

     “We’ll find her Tuck…” The words caught in Silhouette’s throat. “No, no, we, we can’t, can we? We don’t dare even look, do we? 

 Tucker smiled down at her. “No. They are lost, and we can’t find them; and if we do. They kill them. Why would they not?”

   No one said anything else for a while, struggling to find solace in silence. They filed out of Tucker’s room and headed up the incline, not knowing what to say next. No hope, no words.

    A short time later, they found a massive arch-shaped opening at the end of the hallway. It was the same archway Chase and his mother found decades earlier.

    “Something smells good, ” Silhouette said as they entered.

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      “Food,” said Davin, “always a nice bribe. But I must admit. I’m hungry.”

    “They know you are.” Said Tucker. “Least they can cook. Sure smells like they can.”

      “Honey baked ham, fried chicken,” Silhouette said, sniffing the air. “Bread, buttery, fresh baked. Come on, let's eat. They’ve already poisoned our mind; don’t think they’d bother with anything else.”

    Pry smiled and took Davin’s hand, and they started their long walk to the dining area.

      After stuffing themselves with ham, potato salad, collards, sweet peas, fried chicken, sweet tea and biscuits, they pushed away from the curved buffet table and shared the same thought.

   “I’ve had this before,” Tucker said, patting his tight stomach. “There’s a million ways to make potato salad; theirs taste exactly like my mother’s used to taste.”

       “They’re sending another message,” Davin grunted. “They know us, just that well, that deeply.

    “I’d forgotten how much I loved her potato salad. But they remembered.”

      “Well, my Mom couldn’t boil water,” Silhouette snapped, “but it was still way better than it should have been. That kinda freaks me out. Sorry, Pry, no horney men for you to…” Her voice trailed off as their stares shut her down. “Sorry I joke when I’m scared.”

   “You are scared?” Pry asked, leaning toward her. “I do not think I have ever heard you say that.”

     “Well, they won.” Silhouette stood up. “We’re beat, trapped. So yeah, I’m scared. This room is way too big.” She looked for a ceiling they could never quite see. “Okay, we’re shook, intimidated. Satisfied?”  Anger and fear swelled her eyes as they tried again to focus on a ceiling that was too high to see, assuming it was even there.

Tucker rose and walked over to her, reaching out to her when she spoke.

      “Don’t tell me everything is going to be okay.” She said, turning away from him, “It’s not. I’ve been here before, helpless, trapped, too weak, too small to save myself. “You can’t save me. You can’t save us. You can’t even save yourself.”

   “So why bother?” Tucker demanded. “It’s all we got, Silhouette. All we need is one way out. Just one!”

 “Oh, is that all! They’re raping our brains right now,” She yelled, “and we can’t stop them. There is no way out.” A human-sized portion of the back wall vanished the moment she said ‘out’. “Cute, really cute.” She said through a sneer when she saw it.

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    “Don’t know if that’s an invitation or a reminder,” said Davin.

    “Both,” Pry said as she rose with Davin and turned toward the opening.

  “They are herding us,” Tucker said as he and Silhouette followed Davin and Pry.

    “With the Urgis, everything is manipulation,” Davin groaned as they walked.

       It took a while to get there. They could have flown, but it didn’t occur to them. They were just that distracted, and in no hurry to see how completely outmatched they were.

      Soft white light emanated from every square inch of the pale-yellow walls; the same light filled the doorway. Davin stepped through first.

         A collective ahhhh, rippled through the group the moment they crossed the threshold, lost their footing and floated inside.  The Urgis had reasserted control. The floor vanished as the doorway became a gentle vacuum, sucking them in and spewing them out over a sea of human-sized transparent capsules. Each of them floated ten feet apart.

       Loosely linked by the room’s invisible current of directed gravity. It gently carried them toward the heart of Earth’s helpless, utterly trapped survivors. Twisting and rolling, they soon realized struggling was a waste of energy. Davin managed to clasp Pry’s hand. Tucker, however, let Silhouette drift on her own. Not that it mattered; they were all headed to the same place anyway, right where the Urgis wanted them.

   “They’re open!” Pry exclaimed as she ‘swam’ over to the nearest tube, gently caressed it and looked inside. A handsome young black-haired man, fully clothed in white terry-cloth pajamas, was smiling up at her. His dark brown eyes looked straight into hers.  “Can you hear me?” He only smiled. Davin huddled next to her. “He can’t hear you or see you. I think he’s dreaming.”

   Tucker and Silhouette sidled up to them, eager to see. “How do you sleep with your eyes open?”

   “I don’t know,” Sil said, “but he’s sure doin’ it.” Raising her head, she beheld a vast vista of glass tubes, endless rows, shoulder to shoulder, head to toe, layer upon who knows how many layers. “Well, here’s your millions.”

    “Message received.” Davin's tone was glum. Releasing Pry, he made his way to another tube and another smiling sleeper; a beautiful young woman, golden hair, creamy skin, modestly dressed in a long white nightgown.

       “Tuck,” he said, pointing to another tube off to his right. “Check that one out.”

      Jerking a bit too quickly, he bumped it out of place; it wobbled back, tethered by unseen forces. “Another handsome twenty something man,” Tucker mused aloud as he drew closer. “Silhouette, look around and tell me what you see.”

     Cursing as she fought against the gravity field. She finally made her way to several different tubes.  “Huh? Is Yours’s as nice looking as mine?  I bet not.” She looked up, smiling. It slowly flattened into a scowl. “Oh, this doesn’t feel right.”

   “No, it doesn’t.” Davin said, “Not sure what this means.”

    “The Urgis don’t like old, ugly people.” Silhouette quipped. “I mean it kinda looks that way.”

     Pry’s face grew troubled. “Surely they did not save only the young and attractive.” Davin put his arm around her tiny waist.

   “They saved us.” His words tumbled out like marbles from a sack, marbles of guilt. He let them roll about the air, as they tried to absorb exactly what that meant.

    “Another experiment?” Pry asked.

   “Or something worse.” He answered as he pulled away from her and let his body drift up through a dozen layers of what may not be people after all. Emerging from the capsule sea, he rose higher until he could take in the enormity of where he was, and what the Urgis had done.

    It was easy to mistake the immense room for the open sky, just as it was easy to accept all these all too perfect people as nothing more than Earth’s survivors.

     They had fashioned Chase from genetic materials gathered from Mable and who knows how many others. Did that make him less human? That is why he killed himself- killed by a question.

      So, what if they could make people! One thing Davin was not about to do was call the Urgis God. He determined not to let them convince him otherwise. But isn’t that exactly what they wanted, to be appreciated as what? Gods? Never!

    Omnipresence.  Godhood, the Urgis were fixated on it. They were already, very nearly God-like in their abilities.  They truly believed Trudy’s oak would make them Gods. Davin would never let them have it. This they knew. This they had planned for…

   The others soon joined him. Turns out floating in a sea of wide-eyed, smiling sleepers was too creepy to bear for long.

  “What do you think it means?” Pry’s voice was childlike in its smallness.

    “Rebecca.” Davin stated bluntly, “We need to speak to her.”

    “She does seem to be their mouthpiece,” Tucker replied. “Now, how do we get outta here?”

   “We wait,” Davin said as Pry’s hair gathered over his shoulders when she drew near. “This is their show. Don’t see a way out.”

     Silhouette scanned the sky-like room. “That’s right, rub it in, Davin.” As before, the moment she spoke, the Urgis obliged them. Like dead leaves caught up in a breeze, they found themselves gliding over the ocean of what, they hoped, were still people, toward yet another opening far ahead.

    This time they didn’t bother to struggle; they simply rode the breeze until another arch-shaped opening swallowed them and dropped them on their feet.