“Please,” she cried. She reached her almost human-like arms toward me. “Help me,” she said again.
This must have been who they were talking about getting rid of - I thought.
“What’s your name?” I asked her.
“Kay-ani,” she said, putting her arms down.
“You're not from this planet are you? Are you an alien?”
“I'm not an alien. I’m a Rasadian, from the planet Rasad.”
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“My people were given to the evil humans to be tortured and experimented on.” she said.
“What’s your name?” she sat up. She looked frail.
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
Her appearance was almost human. She had teal-blue colored skin. Her hair was dark blue; almost black. Running down the middle of her face, were two vertical lines. They were a bit darker than the color of her skin. She looked like the screaming mother from my dream, but in her case, the paleness of her skin made it clear that she was sick.
She got up slowly from her bed and walked toward the white board in the room. She sat down on a wooden chair and used a marker to draw something on the board. “If you are not going to help me, I understand. But you really should get out of here, it’s dangerous,” she said. “I don’t understand how you could come to a place like this being what you are. You’re free.”
“What do you mean being what I am?”
“That thing in your neck, it’s keeping you from looking like your true self.”
“I don’t know what that is. It just started blinking today,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck where it had been glowing.
“I also had one of those in my neck,” she touched the back of her neck with her left hand. I could see the small scar on the back of her neck above her hospital gown. “A human friend gave one to me. He was trying to protect me from the evil human’s.”
“So you weren’t always a prisoner?” I asked.
She turned to me. Her blue eyes were strange but mesmerizing at the same time. “No. I was living at the Top Secret Institute with my mother and father, and others,” she said. “After their execution, a man arrived one day and rescued me; Joseph. He took me in as his own and protected me. He gave me the human name Kayla. But after a few months of staying with Joseph, they found us and they brought me here,” she paused thinking about it. Then a tear fell down her face. She went back to drawing on the board and finished coloring in the circle.
“You said a man named Joseph saved you?”
She nodded.
I grabbed the other wooden chair from the round table and pulled it up to sit beside her. “I’m here looking for a man, his name is Joseph Williams…was your Joseph's last name Williams?”
“Yes it was.”
“Did he have two daughters named Marley and Naomi?”
“Yes.”
“Yes. Yes! That’s him!” I jumped up from my chair. “Aw man! This is great news! That means you are the blue girl from the picture! You’re Kayla! That means you know what happened to Joseph the night he disappeared!”
The two lines on her face began to darken. She got up, limped to her bed, and laid back down. She curled into a ball and started to cry.
“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to make you cry…” I said.
“He was my friend. He protected me but they took him away,” she wiped her tears. “Oh, The Creator help us!” she said.
“I don’t want to make you any more upset than you already are, but what happened to Joseph the night the T.S.I found you guys? Please, If you can tell me anything at all it would be very helpful.” I said.
She calmed down and sat up, “I’ll start from the beginning. My friend Joseph rescued me a few years ago when I was about ten years of age. His plan was to take me to another place where he was protecting more Rasadians. But because I didn’t want to leave his side after he had saved me from being imprisoned, he decided that he would take me to his home instead. At the time when I was living with Joseph William’s family, I couldn’t really speak English, so I sounded as if I had some sort of lisp. His wife didn’t really agree with me being there at first, but she came around. His two daughters had no clue of what I really was, only his wife did. But they were my family for a while. In order for me to remain safe, he put a device in my neck that allowed me to look human.”
“What happened the night you last saw Joseph?” I asked.
“That night we were at home having dinner. We ate this thing called spaghetti and a sweet food, that his wife called apple pie. She put onions on mine, she knew that it was my favorite,” she said as she smiled. “Joseph told me that after dinner, he was going to take me to the other place where he was hiding more of my people. He said it was no longer safe for me to be in his home. I said goodbye to his family that night, and we left. It was so dark outside. It was a rainy and dark night. I can remember it like it was yesterday. We made a stop at a gas station. I heard their trucks pull up as Joseph was putting fuel in the car. He told me to quickly get down and cover myself with a blanket, so I did. But they checked the car and found me hiding.”
“What happened after you two were captured?” I asked.
“They put me in a small room, and Joseph in another room. I could hear voices from the other room, telling Joseph that he was finished. He pleaded for my life. Asking them to please not hurt me. He begged them to not hurt his daughters and wife and to take him instead. I overheard Dr. Richardson tell a guard to ship Joseph to The Island. Later on, they came into the room where I was being held and asked me some questions. They then removed the device Joseph gave me and put me in prison where the rest of my people were being held. I’ve been here ever since. They just put me in this room a few days ago to run some tests, I think I may be dying.”
Dying? This innocent girl, dying?
“What is and where’s The Island?” I asked her.
“That’s where they send some of us. There they train Rasadians to build weapons and fight in human wars. But some of my people say it’s better to be here than to be locked away there,” she said. “How did you know Joseph Williams? Was he your human friend too?”
“I’ve never met Joseph Williams in person. His daughters, Marley and Naomi are my friends.”
She gasped, “Marley and Naomi?...They were like sisters to me. Are they okay?”
“Naomi is fine, but Marley she’s um…”
“Is she dead?”
“No, she’s just sick.”
“I could sense something around that had been weakening her but I didn’t know what it was, I was only a little girl at the time. But now I know that it was the red jewels causing her to be ill from time to time.
“Red jewels? The ones the T.S.I use in their tools?” I stood up and asked.
She nodded. “It’s a jewel that comes from the planet “I”. Beings that live there called the Conquesters, gave the red jewels to the humans, along with Rasadian slaves, in exchange for blue and yellow jewels that humans mine. Those red jewels from their planet shouldn’t be near humans because it can cause illnesses.”
I heard the door knob turn, so I quickly tried to find somewhere to hide. But before I knew it, they were already in the room. I looked up and it was James, again. I quickly locked the door behind him.
“What is going on?” James frantically asked, “You were in here the whole time? Dude, I couldn’t find yo…”
“Shh,” I interrupted him. “Look,” I pointed at Kay-ani.
“Woah, what is that thing?” he said backing up.
“It’s not a thing. Her name is Kay-ani. Do you remember the picture Joseph Williams had with the blue girl on it?”
“Yeah.”
“Well that’s her! She’s also their so-called cousin Kayla.”
“What!”
“She was the last one to see him before he disappeared.
She told me everything. Joseph was taken to an Island, which I’m pretty sure is the same one we talked about that day while researching. You think you can find the location of the island?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll try.”
“If you can just find where that Island is and tell Naomi, you two can go there. I’ll get her out of here, and if I don’t make it out, you make sure you tell Naomi where their father is located.”
“What? Benjamin, you don’t think that you’re going to do this alone, right?” James asked me. “You can’t just break an alien out of a government facility,” he whispered to me. “It’s impossible.”
“I know. I know. You're right. But if you think about it, we’ve been roaming around here for hours without getting caught. She’s gonna die in here if we don’t help her,” I said.
We both looked at her thinking about how it would be done. She seemed pretty helpless and weak.
“We do it together. You understand?” he said, grabbing me by the shoulder.
“Yeah. Yeah I got you,” I nodded.
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