Chapter Fourteen
I felt so angry at myself. I saw no point trying to pretend to hold the keys to saving the world. Who was I anyway? I was just a mere chef from San Francisco. If the world was indeed coming to an end, so be it. I resolved to give the silly rocks back to Eel and leave earth's seven billion lives including mine in the hands of fate. I pulled my phone from my denims and sent Eel a message.
Where are you? I want to give you the rocks
I waited staring at the phone blue screen for almost a minute before he replied.
Nevada, Area 51
Okay. I'll be there in a sec.
Closing my eyes, I envisioned the Nevada desert, the closed off area, its underground military base, and smacked the rocks together.
In an instant, I found myself in a dark sealed cement chamber with florescent tubes lighting the bunker from high up a diagonally shaped concrete ceiling. The chamber smelt of aviation fuel.
I heard male voices come towards me sending me scampering behind a pile of paper boxes.
Two men dressed in white overcoats followed by two armed uniformed guards walked past me. They seemed to be in a hurry. I heard a message sound pop. Reaching in my denims, I retrieved my phone,
Come to sector four
Where is it?
Last door on your right
I took a deep breath, emerged from my hideout, and walked nervously towards the end of the long corridor. The steel door opened up to a very large area. In it were more than a dozen aircrafts or flying drone prototypes being built, or welded together. There was a flurry of activity inside this sector that hardly anyone noticed my entrance. Everyone, I noticed, wore white lab coats and had their faces covered under protective respirators and cartridges. Luckily, I spotted these hanging by the wall a few meters away. I hushed grabbing a lab coat and respirator before someone spotted me. I had to find Eel. He had to be somewhere close. A few doors opened letting in more masked faces and closed behind others. One of these doors leads to Eel, I reasoned. I couldn’t ask anyone or I just might raise suspicion. Then I heard a voice, a clear voice, in my head.
'Third door to your twelve o'clock.'
Startled, I thought everyone else heard it but glancing around, no one seemed to have heard anything and everyone seemed to be going on with their work unbothered.
'Ds, it's called Electromagnetic communication or telepathic communication.' Eel's voice said in my head, 'come, I am waiting.'
I briskly walked to the unmarked door on my right and disappeared into a dark narrow tunnel. Removing the respirator, I saw a light coming from the extreme end of the corridor in a tiny reinforced square shaped glass window. As I got closer to the glass, a pungent scent chocked my nostrils and eyes. It smelt like tar.
'Hey you!' a loud husky male voice bellowed startling me. 'Stop right there!'
I froze, my heart pounding. Slowly, I turned round and in the distance behind me, four or five rifle infra-red lights were aimed directly at me.
'Reality is a hologram DS,' I heard Eels voice whisper into my head.
'Back away from that door!' the voice commanded, 'and put your hands where I can see them!'
'With those rocks,' Eel said 'you can see and do all things, move faster than the speed of light, defy gravity, defeat an entire army, just trust in that reality. Why do you think you are able to communicate with me right now? Nothing can stop you. You are limitless, boundless.'
I narrowed my eyesight directing my gaze at the men in the dark. Suddenly, they all became visible as daylight. They were six in number, two men crouched on the left, three on the right and one man standing in the middle, their commander. Even more remarkable, I was able to see and count their heart beats, read their thoughts. Their minds were already made up. Shoot to kill, and their commander already was planning the kind of report to give his commanding officer. He also hoped he'd get a promotion as a result.
I clenched my fists and approached them.
'Step in at your own peril.' Eel said as I stepped into the small stuffy cell. 'DS,' He said, our eyes meeting, 'see what your species have done to me.' His eyes looked sorrowful and his lips pursed. He was naked; a dozen or so cuts were marked all over his chest, torso and thighs. His hands and legs were fastened by steel clamps to a wall.
'So, what did you do to those men out there?' He asked trying to smile. Black hairs hang loose over his sweaty face. I ignored the question.
'Let's get out of here.' I said placing the three rocks in his palm. 'Only you can save mankind from Xuryae.' I said.
'They are of no value at all.' He said. 'We reasoned humans needed something to believe in, humans always attach great importance to something or someone in order to act, so we invented this myth about these tiny useless rocks right from the days of the Nabataeans, to Hitler and now you DS.'
'So why then did you ask I bring them to you?' I quizzed angrily.
'You still don’t get it DS.' He answered sharply. 'I wasn’t seeking these rocks. No. I was seeking you. You alone can free me from these shackles, but first, I had to show you the past and future of both our species and now that you know the truth, the choice is yours, to free me or leave me here and watch this world plunge into the abyss after Xuryxe takes the sun.'
'But you don’t believe me.' He said staring fixedly at me.
'When you left us in the Nazi camp,' I answered in reply. 'I thought you had double crossed us. But, you intentionally left me these rocks. That’s when I knew I could count on you Eel. I know you are an alien but, you also are family, a Snow. My dad once told me, he never ever saw his father, my granddad. He said his mother told him granddad died in a secret government experiment. That, when she wrote to him saying she was pregnant, he'd written back saying if the child were a boy, she name him Douglas after him and at the end of the letter, it said, 'he or his son after him might save the world.'
'That was because,' Eel said interrupting 'I already had begun the procedure of swapping blood with the alien at this facility when Sara conceived your dad.' He said staring at me intently. 'My child, your father, I knew, he too would carry alien DNA and so do you DS.'
Those words hit me hard.
'You, my grandson,' Eel went on, 'are part Roti, a hybrid. I have been in this shit hole all these decades waiting for this day.'
'You must be kidding me' I said surprised by his statement.
'You were able to hear my voice in your head weren’t you?' He asked. 'Move from one location to another telepathically too. Why do you think you were able to disarm six well trained armed men in that corridor in one sweep? Why do think you’ve always struggled to fit into your community and at school?'
What Eel was saying was a bit too much to take in because indeed, I had floored those men in the corridor with my bare hands. My childhoodtoo had been anything but normal.
Growing up, I had struggled to fit in with the other kids, in school and even at home. I had been called a freak and had no friends. When my parents died, I'd dropped out of school opting to stay home and play video games in my solitude.
'What then with these rocks?' I asked puzzled.
'We will find some other use for them when the time is right.' he said, 'but I need to get out of these chains, been here long enough.'
I stared intently at the steel clamps holding Eel. To my surprise, the steel shackles begin to melt off his hands and legs. I had freed him.
An overwhelming horror bedazzled the scientists and engineers in sector four as the now dressed up Eel and I cut them down with lightning speed as we made our way to his probe parked in the center of the facility. I heard sirens belt throughout Area 51 as we blasted through the roof out into the sky inside the shuttle.
'Where to now?' I asked feeling a twinge of excitement at my new found abilities.
'Washington DC.'