“Fortunately,” he continued, “the ones who came for me missed all the equipment in that closet upstairs. So I have the technology to grow an entirely new body and switch my consciousness into it. But I need a human blueprint to help me shape it right, get all those little Earth details in place. I need to create the right kind of stomach and intestines, and hair that doesn’t fall out, and a balance system that doesn’t need to spend sleep time upside down. It would also be nice if my heart were in the right place, instead of down by my stomach.”
He stared at my face a minute, then smiled sadly. “I could use Tyler as a blueprint, but Tyler’s my friend. Randi, you’ll have to do.”
I felt cold all over. Brad was going to use me as a human blueprint? What did that mean? Whatever it was, it didn’t sound good.
He grinned, one corner of his mouth higher than the other. “Don’t worry,” he whispered, patting my head again. “It won’t hurt…much.”
I closed my eyes. Brad was planning to hurt me—maybe even kill me—and there was no way I could escape!
“Hey, Brad?” Tyler yelled, still running and jumping on the lawn.
Brad straightened. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.” He leaned forward and flashed the pendant toward Tyler. “You can relax now,” he whispered, and Tyler collapsed in a heap with Alex beside him, both of them tired from all that dancing around.
Brad got up, and I did, too.
Whew! I had told my body to move, I realized. And this time it had listened. Right now I was moving because I decided to.
Brad headed across the porch toward the lawn. Could I make a break for it? I wondered. No way, I realized. Brad could turn and command me at any second. He’d stop me dead in my tracks.
Brad walked one step below me down the steps. That black touch pad on his neck was right in front of me. I couldn’t run, but maybe I could shrink him before he said anything. Then I could stop him from ever ordering me around again!
I reached out to touch the back of his neck.
He whirled and grabbed my hand. He squeezed so hard I could feel my bones grinding together. “Never do that again!” he said. His voice was fierce. His eyes so wide open I could see the whites all around the irises.
Still holding my hand tight, he raised the pendant in his other hand and flashed light at me. “If you ever try to harm me again, you’ll feel like you’re burning up! Burning to death!”
He gave my hand one last good squeeze and then let go.
I felt sick to my stomach. What was I supposed to do now? I was powerless against Brad. Absolutely powerless.
Brad strolled over to where Tyler was and sat down.
“I don’t know,” Tyler said, sitting up and peering at the torn-up place in the lawn. “I thought at first this was going to be big news, but you can’t really tell anything from it.”
He poked the hole in the dirt with his finger. “I know there was a spaceship here last night, but nobody would really believe it just looking at a stupid hole in the ground. I don’t get why I was so excited about it. There’s no real evidence of alien visitors here at all.”
Look right in front of you if you want to see an alien visitor, I wanted to tell Tyler. I opened my mouth…
And started coughing and choking!
I coughed so hard I fell to the ground. I couldn’t stop!
Brad looked down at me. “What’s the matter?” He chuckled. “Alien in your throat?” Then he leaned closer and whispered, “I commanded you not to talk about it, remember? Try and you’ll just hurt yourself.”
I coughed so deep I felt like my lungs were coming up. All right, I thought. I will not talk about this to anyone.
I stopped coughing. But my throat burned and my ribs hurt from the fit I had. Oh, man! Brad could turn my body against me completely! How could I fight against that?
I sleepwalked through the rest of the morning, following Tyler as he checked through the house to see if the space lizards had left anything else behind. As he searched, my mind whirred. I had to figure some way out of this horrible mess!
After lunch Brad lifted his pendant again.
I flinched. What did he want now?
“Everyone but Randi, don’t you feel like taking a nice nap?” Brad asked. “A nice long nap?”
“What a good idea,” Dad said.
Mom yawned. Alex’s eyes drifted shut.
“Go upstairs in your beds where you’ll be comfortable,” Brad commanded. “You’ll have a restful sleep and, when I tell you to, you’ll wake up feeling refreshed.”
“Okay,” Tyler said, blinking.
Mom, Dad, Tyler, and Alex all headed upstairs.
Brad smiled at me. “Okay!” he said cheerfully. “Now we can get to work.”
He led the way upstairs. “Where’s the key to the off-limits closet?” he asked.
I went and got it out of Tyler’s room. Tyler lay on his back on the bed, fast asleep. He was so unconscious, he looked dead—even though I could hear him breathing.
Brad opened the closet, flicked on the light, and went directly to the boxes. He pawed through them all.
“Oh, yeah, perfect,” he said in delighted tones, picking up several multicolored gadgets. “This is terrific! All I need now is to figure out where to set up my workshop.”
He ran from the closet and peered out the windows in Mom and Dad’s room. I followed him. “Is that house next door empty?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Excellent. Come on.”
We went back to the closet. Brad had me hold out my arms. Then he loaded me down with two boxes. He grabbed the third box himself.
I followed him around the back of the house next door. Brad took something out of his pocket and touched the back door with it. The door unlocked itself and opened.
“How did you do that?” I demanded.
“Universal key. It unlocks anything.” Brad held up the gadget. “Life is going to be so good when I get my permanent body.”
I could tell Brad was going to need his “permanent body” soon. His skin seemed to be getting loose and baggy. And kind of gray.
Ugh. Extremely gross, I thought.
Brad crossed the empty kitchen and opened a door. Behind it was a flight of stairs leading down to the basement. He flicked a light switch at the top of the stairs. It didn’t work.
“Guess I’ll have to supply my own power,” he muttered. He set his box down and took another gadget out of his pocket. He tapped it bigger and switched it on. A globe of bright greenish light shone from it.
Wow. This alien stuff is totally amazing, I thought. He set the glowing lamp on his head and trotted down the stairs.
“Come on,” he called. Carrying my two boxes, I followed behind.
The basement stood empty and cold. It smelled like mildew and decay. Brad held his light globe up on the low ceiling and it stuck there.
My eyes took in the basement scene. I could see a dark concrete floor with dust and grease on it. Some of the walls showed exposed two-by-fours and insulation. A huge square furnace stood in a dark corner, and shelves sectioned off another part of the basement.
Brad went to a skinny window and opened it with the universal key. Then he took tiny things out of the boxes and made them bigger. “Air filter,” he said, setting up a weird wire pyramid in one corner.
“Power pack,” he explained, taking another gadget over near the window. He enlarged it, and it grew to the size of a dishwasher. Brad pulled three yellow cords out of it.
“Grow tank,” he muttered, tapping on something else laying on its side. It grew to shoebox size, then trunk size, then refrigerator size or maybe a little bigger.
I moved closer to check it out. I could see through the sides of it—see the shiny wiring laced inside of it. I shuddered. It was kind of like a strange, see-through coffin.
“And—” Brad tapped up a giant pink chair. Dangling from the chair’s back was a drooping powder-blue flower-shaped thing as big as a large pizza.
&
nbsp; Brad smiled at me. Not in a nice way.
He grabbed cords from the power pack and hooked them into the chair and the tank.
He pulled a fat, stretchy pink cord from the back of the chair and hooked it into something on the end of the grow tank.
Then he glanced my way and lifted an eyebrow.
“Have a seat,” he said.
I tried to resist, tried to run back up the stairs and out of that house. But it was no use. Brad was in control.
I whimpered and walked over to the chair. I climbed up into it.
Brad tapped a bunch of colored buttons on the chair. Eight tentacles whipped out from the sides of the chair and wrapped around me, locking my arms and legs down and circling my waist.
The blue flower at the top of the chair’s headrest lowered to touch my head. Its petals—cool, smooth, almost damp—draped over my face and hair. I felt their edges reach down to cover my neck.
Then the petals tightened—smothering me!
I couldn’t see. I could barely breathe. And I could not move!
I gripped the ends of the chair arms, struggling to stay alive.
“Relax,” Brad coached.
Again, I had to obey him. I relaxed. Completely. After a couple minutes I realized I could breathe just fine.
“Good,” Brad said. Moments later the flower lifted off my face, and the chair’s tentacles released me.
“We’re all set,” he said, “except for the shopping list. Let’s go back to your house.”
I followed him back. Of course.
Brad took Mom’s magnetic grocery notepad from the refrigerator and grabbed a pencil. We sat at the kitchen table. Brad thought for a minute, wrote something.
Then he scratched his head with the point of the pencil.
I gasped in horror, watching him as—Splat! A huge clump of his hair and scalp fell to the table.
I felt something sour rising in the back of my throat. A piece of Brad’s head lay on the kitchen table.
His body was literally falling to pieces! I realized.
“Uuuugh,” I moaned before I could stop myself. I slapped my hand over my mouth to keep myself from throwing up.
Brad glared at me with narrowed eyes.
“I guess we’ll have to work faster than I thought,” he muttered. He picked up the piece of scalp and tossed it in the garbage pail. I squeezed my eyes shut. Bile rose in my throat again. I swallowed hard.
“I’ll need cell samples from everyone in your family,” Brad continued, “so I can put together a basic gene map and…” He stopped and glanced up at me. “Never mind. Go do something for half an hour. I’ll find you later.”
I took a shower and changed my clothes. I had just finished drying my hair when Brad walked into my room.
“I loaded your family’s cell samples into the grow tank while you were changing,” Brad said. “Now there are a few other things we’ll need.” He took out a pad and paper and began scribbling a shopping list.
“Lots and lots of ground beef. Springwater, fourteen liters. Nothing but the best for my body. Trace elements. Where can I get cobalt, copper, iodine, manganese, and zinc?”
“Vitamins?” I suggested.
He made a note. “Vitamins. And twelve pounds of bananas,” he muttered. Then he crossed the hall to my parents’ room. He grabbed Mom’s wallet.
“There’s not enough cash here,” he reported. He fished out my mom’s debit card. “Do you know the PIN number for this?”
“What?” I felt totally outraged. How could he steal money from Mom without even thinking twice?
“I don’t know Mom’s number,” I lied.
Brad frowned. “I’ll figure something out,” he said. He fished my mom’s car keys out of her bag.
“You can’t drive our car!” I yelled. “No. No way!”
A couple of minutes later we were driving to the supermarket.
Brad made a left turn. As he did, a strip of skin peeled off his forearm. It hung down, looking ugly, brown, rotten.
I stared at it. Nausea welled up in my stomach again.
“Nuts,” he said, noticing his arm.
He pressed the skin back against the raw spot. It stuck. Sort of.
“I need a better shirt,” he said. He glanced at mine. I was just wearing a tank top.
I crawled into the back of the station wagon and rummaged around until I came up with a paint-splashed work shirt of Dad’s. At least it had long sleeves.
Brad grunted and put it on.
In the air-conditioned store he stuck Mom’s debit card in the ATM and did something with his universal key. Twenty seconds later the machine spat a bunch of money at him.
We went shopping.
We had to use two carts. And we had to make several trips.
He bought eighty pounds of ground meat in those Family Packs that they have, and stew meat, too. He even got some bones from the butcher. Looking at all that red meat, thinking about what Brad wanted to do with it, well, it didn’t help my nausea.
Dozens of eggs. Twelve pounds of bananas. Sixteen bottles of vitamins, cartons and cartons of salt. And so many gallon jugs of mountain spring water my arms wanted to fall out by the time we’d loaded them into the car.
After we left the supermarket, we went to a nursery. Brad bought a bunch of fertilizer, which really stunk up the car.
Then we went back to the vacant house. He made me carry the supplies down to the basement all by myself.
Brad opened the top of the grow tank and started dumping all that stuff in.
For a while I felt like we were throwing together a really weird protein drink.
When we’d completely loaded up the tank and he had locked down the lid, he said, “Now for the fun part. Go sit in that chair again.”
I’d tried the chair before, and it hadn’t been so bad, I told myself. I sighed and climbed into it. Brad made it wrap me up in tentacles and flower petals again, and I leaned back and relaxed. Yes. Now that I wasn’t afraid of the chair anymore, it actually was comfortable.
But then Brad turned it on.
For real.
A horrible surge jolted through my body.
With that big flower petal across my mouth, I couldn’t even scream. The petals heated up around my head. It felt like little needles were jabbing into my brain.
Every one of the tentacles that held me tight heated up, too. Energy pulsed and thrummed from them, spreading all through me.
I jerked around, tried to turn my head or free my arms and legs, but the chair held me too tight. No matter how much I struggled, I couldn’t escape.
“Okay! That’s enough for today,” Brad said cheerfully from behind me.
The chair stopped thrumming and cooled off. Then the tentacles and the flower let go of me.
I sat there. No way could I move. I felt like I’d been run over by a steamroller.
“Hey, come take a look,” Brad said. He leaned over the grow tank.
My body couldn’t resist Brad’s order. I got to my feet and stumbled over to where Brad stood. I kind of fell against the tank.
It was full of murky brown liquid and dim light. I could just make out, floating in the center, a vaguely human shape.
Brad patted my head. “Good job. Let’s go home!”
Easy for him to say.
I did my best to follow him, but I fell twice just trying to get up the basement stairs.
He came back and helped me up. He put his arm around my shoulders and helped me walk all the way to the other house. “I must have left you in the chair a little too long,” he muttered. “Gotta watch that tomorrow.”
Tomorrow?
What did he mean, tomorrow? I couldn’t do that again! I wouldn’t. I had to find a way out of this!
“In the meantime you’ve got to get your strength up!” Brad told me. “I bet you’re hungry!” He helped me to a kitchen chair, then ran upstairs.
I heard him talking to the rest of my family, and pretty soon they all came downstairs, bl
inking but looking happy and well rested. Mom started making a big dinner. Brad, Tyler, and Alex watched TV, and Dad went out to get the paper.
Mom made lots of all my favorite foods. I thought I was too tired to eat, until Brad said, “Go on, Randi. Eat up!”
I moved my fork from my plate to my mouth. I could barely taste the food, I was eating so fast.
“Had enough?” he asked.
My stomach hurt it was so full of food. “Uh-huh,” I said, my mouth stuffed with lasagna.
“You can stop now.”
For a minute I felt grateful to him.
Tyler stared from me to Brad and back. “Brad, you’re being so weird. Why do you care how much Randi eats?”
“I don’t want her to get sick,” Brad told my twin. “I care about her.”
“Awww.” A goofy look crossed Tyler’s face.
I so wanted to tell him the truth—tell him Brad only cared about having me as a human blueprint! But I also didn’t want to fall on the floor in one of those painful coughing fits! I decided to keep my mouth shut—for now.
After dinner Brad wished me a very special good night. “Sleep well,” he whispered from the doorway after I’d brushed my teeth and crawled into bed. “Rest up. Get strong! Sweet dreams.”
The next day I wondered if it hadn’t all been a dream. I got up and felt a hundred percent better than I had when I went to bed. Everybody was cheerful. Brad acted friendly.
He still wore Tyler’s baseball cap, and he had on a long-sleeved shirt instead of his rugby shirt, something stretchy of Tyler’s, and shorts. He also still wore that pendant.
Not a dream, I realized. Definitely not a dream. After breakfast Brad commanded me and Tyler to race around chasing a ball with him.
“I got it! I got it!” Brad yelled to us. He tripped on a rock and fell.
When he stood up, he left some of his leg behind.
I gasped and pointed to the long red-brown strip of skin dangling from his leg.
Brad glanced around. Tyler had his back to us, and Alex was looking the other way, too.
Brad ran inside. He came back a little later wearing jeans and gloves.
After lunch he made my family take another nap. And Brad and I went back to the basement in the vacant house.