The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“General Yorikame, how bad is the situation in Florida?” I asked.

The uniformed two-star on the vid link grimaced. “Last we heard, the aliens got the group in the Keys, and Dr. Langford’s operation at Florida State is off the grid. It’s not looking good, Alex.”

“Damn. OK, Kondo, I’m sending you a new protocol that my top encryption specialist says should do a better job at hiding communications. Will you be able to disseminate it to the other groups?”

“Can do, Alex. We’ll chat again at...?” He looked at his aide, Lieutenant Cooper.

The lieutenant stepped into the vid pickup. “Ah...timestamp golf six india two, Mr Drummond.”

I tapped it into my terminal. 7:34 am tomorrow. “Got it,” I said.

“Cheyenne Mountain, out.” The vid went blank.

“Fuck that little prick, Tyler,” I swore. Lani’s hands rested on my shoulders, massaging the tense muscles.

“How many more did we lose?” she asked.

“Forty, forty-five maybe,” I said. “That’s more than four hundred world-wide since the failed attack on Fort Hood.” I spun my chair around to face the rest of my “command group,” sitting around the conference table.

“We need to make sure that security is tight,” I said to the room. “We can’t get sloppy, or we’ll be detected.” The six women around the table all looked properly concerned. I took Lani’s hand off my shoulder and guided her around to the chair next to mine. Gathered here were the only other people capable of free thought in the Bay Area, and they were all looking to me for direction.

I let myself mope for a while, wallowing in how bad things were going. My research groups were making great strides in cracking many of the alien puzzles, but I didn’t have the luxury of time any more. The aliens had twigged to the fact that there was an active resistance movement on the planet, after “President” Tyler and his band of a hundred or so idiots had been massacred in Texas.

The techs at Cheyenne Mountain Satellite Command—sight of the old NORAD base—had seen the attack through their access to the few remaining military birds. A squad of ten Sentinels had emerged from the front gates before the hapless militia group even got close to the base. They scythed through the would-be army in a matter of minutes, leaving no one alive. A group of Arbiters had later gone over the battle site, cataloging the people and equipment in the thirty-odd vehicles of Tyler’s expedition.

Within a day, the counterattack had begun. Whatever breadcrumbs had been left on the bodies, had led the aliens to several more groups. The short-wave radios crackled with reports about red-armored demons massacring entire towns, including hundreds of converted drones, just to get to a single Unconverted person. The Chrxjthal had always been an abstract, intellectual threat before, but now they were showing the true ruthlessness of conquerors.

I’d immediately put my operation at Rollins-Chiu into lockdown. We’d stored enough supplies to last for a week or more, and in that time, no one had been allowed to leave the building. I’d stayed up for two days straight, watching the signals from the alien base in Alameda, waiting for an attack that never came. Our local alien overseer—Lani called him Albert the Alien—certainly knew that there was a group of “rebels” in this area, but for some reason he didn’t make any move to attack. After we rode out the next eight-day pulse from the egg-ships, I’d returned the building to normal operations, but with a heightened sense of security hammered into each worker’s normal behavior.

An emergency working group had been set up to look at all of the signals generated by the aliens, from the pulse, to the media codes, to the frequencies used to control the Arbiters and Sentinels. The goal was to find a secure method of communication that was faster and more efficient than the ham radios that the members of The Plan were using. What we’d come up with was a way of disguising signals inside the same embedded codes that the aliens used to control the populace. Now that we understood the system that they used, we were able to piggy-back on it, similar to the antiquated practice of steganography inside digital images.

I’d sent an encoding/decoding device down to L.A. on one of the regular delivery trucks that still ran between California’s two major cities, then radioed my Unconverted contact Lucifer on where to find it. Two days later, we’d made our first vid connection. It turned out that Lucifer was really Jorge Alvarez, an Assistant Medical Examiner for the county. Apparently, the cold storage that the coroner’s office used to preserve dead bodies doubled as a workable Faraday cage.

My next device had gone to Colorado, where sixteen members of Satellite Command had survived deep inside the bunker carved into the heart of Cheyenne Mountain. While the nearby Air Force base had been looted of all its able-bodied airmen, the aliens hadn’t explored the decommissioned NORAD bunkers where NorSatCom’s command group had hidden out. General Yorikame—a small, feisty, second generation Japanese-American—had turned out to be a pure blessing. He was smart, methodical, practical, and full of information on the aliens and their movements. In the last week he’d become the closest thing to a friend and confidant that I’d had since the invasion started.

I turned to my other friend and confidant, the young woman who had been with me longer than anyone. “How are you doing on the Sentinel work-up, Lani? We need to find a way to defend ourselves if Albert finds us.”

“I’ve got a lot of technical specs entered into the database from Anatoly’s monitoring of Mateo, but I’m really not the right person to go through it looking for clues, Alex. We need an engineer for that.”

I sighed. Of course it needed an engineer. And of course the only engineer who could examine the data, and then base his conclusions on more than just technical knowledge was me. Another job to add to the list. I rubbed my tired eyes.

“OK, let me see what you’ve got so far,” I said.

“You don’t have to do that, Amber,” I said.

“Hush, Alex. You know that all of us love doing things for you.” Her firm hands kneaded at the tense muscles in my shoulders, as I sat in my favorite recliner. We’d just finished an incredible dinner made by Lani and Kara, and after a long day of worry at work, it was nice to relax. Especially in a house full of women who thought making me happy was their greatest joy.

Lani came out of the kitchen and handed me a mug of coffee. She sat on my lap and gave me a kiss, then curled up and rested her head against my chest. “So, baby, what’s your plan for tonight?” she asked.

“Plan?” I said. “Um...I really didn’t have one. Why?”

She looked up and gave me a mischievous smile. “No plans? Well then, I have one. It involves you, and me, and a bed.” She ran a hand down my side and over my thigh.

“Really? That’s your plan?”

“Well I think it’s a good plan. Don’t you think it’s a good plan, Amber?“

“It depends on who’s included in this plan of yours, Lani,” Amber said.

“Hmmm. I hadn’t thought about that. How many people would you like to include in our plan, Alex?”

I chuckled. “Why ask me? It never ends up being my decision anyway.”

“What’s not your decision?” Jill said, as she came in from the hallway.

“Alex thinks that we manipulate who he sleeps with every night,” Amber said.

“Well we do, don’t we?” Jill said. She sat on the couch across from me, and unbuttoned the top three buttons on her blouse, exposing the white lace bra underneath. “Scarlett has the schedule posted in the kitchen, right next to the grocery list.”

“What?” I said. I grabbed the arms of the chair, ready to get up and go see, but the laughter from the three women brought me up short. I settled back into the chair, smiling along with them. “Very funny.”

At that moment, Vivian poked her head around the corner. “Alex, can I talk to you?”

“Hey, beautiful,” I said. “I thought you were at the Neuroscience Center with Erica.”

“Ummm...well, that’s just it.” She looked nervously at the other girls.

“Come in here, Vivian,” I said. “You’re going to have to get used to talking in front of everyone. We don’t have any secrets here.”

She sighed, causing her impressive chest to shift in a very attractive way. “I know. It just takes some getting used to. I’m new to being this...open.” She came into the room and sat on the couch next to Jill. The younger blonde put her arm around Vivian and gave her a squeeze.

“So what happened at the Center?” I asked. “Is anything wrong?”

“No. No. Actually, Erica woke up,” she said.

“Ahh, I get it,” I said. “Is she here?”

Vivian nodded. “She’s upstairs, in the room I’ve been using.”

“How is she?” Lani asked. “I remember waking up after Alex freed me, and it was the most incredible thing ever, but that was because he was right there in front of me. What did she do when he wasn’t there?”

“Well, she’s been asking for him constantly. She wanted to come here right away, and...” She blushed and looked at her folded hands.

“And fuck him,” Amber said.

Vivian looked up nervously, but then she nodded.

“Oh, I know exactly how that feels,” Amber said. “I think we all do. Except you of course.” Vivian blushed again. “Not that it’s a bad thing, you being unconverted, but as one of the lucky ones that Alex freed, I almost feel like I got a better deal.”

“You just don’t know any different, Amber,” I said. “You have a lot of free will, but not about that.”

“Do you want us to take care of it, Vivian?” Lani said. “You knew that having Alex free your daughter meant that she’d be sleeping with him, and I can see how that might be weird for you. But the rest of us are fine with anything that happens between Alex and any woman.”

“No,” Vivian said. “That’s not it at all. I’m not jealous, or freaked out by Alex having sex with all of you. It’s...it’s sort of the opposite.” She twisted her hands in her lap. “I’d really like it if I could join in with you guys sometime. I mean, I love being with Alex, just the two of us, but I want to feel like I belong to the group, that I’m part of this wonderful thing that I see between him and all of you.” She looked back at me. “Does that make sense?”

“Of course it does,” Jill said, squeezing Vivian’s shoulders.

I smiled, and patted Lani’s tight rear. My island girl jumped off my lap, and went over to Vivian. She took the older woman’s hands and pulled her up from the couch, then wrapped her arms around her neck and kissed her boldly on the lips. Vivian’s arms went around Lani’s slim waist, and she kissed her back hard.

After a minute, they broke apart, and a smiling Lani led a stunned looking Vivian over to my chair. With a gentle push, the auburn-haired beauty was steered into my lap. I hugged her to me, grabbing a handful of her soft breast in the process.

“Look, beautiful, you’re already part of the group. You don’t have anything to be nervous or hesitant about. If I didn’t spell it out for you already, then I should have. You’re welcome to join us whenever you want for whatever you want. That’s how we operate around here.” I felt her body relax and sink into my embrace. “If there’s something that makes you uncomfortable, no one is going to judge you for it. I can understand that it might be weird seeing your daughter having sex with us, but if you like, we can keep her out of it when you’re around. She’ll do what I say without complaining.”

Vivian kissed my cheek. “No, Alex, you don’t have to do that. In fact, that’s one of the things that’s been making me nervous. When I asked you to free Erica, it was because I’d been fantasizing about seeing her with you. With all of you. And maybe...with me.” She covered her face with her hands. “God you must think I’m awful. Some kind of pervert like my husband.”

I pried her hands away from her face, and she looked around the room. “No one thinks that, Vivian” I said. “We’ve done a lot of things together that might have been called perverted in the past, but in this new world, I don’t think the same morals apply. Certainly not among all of us.”

Lani laughed. “My morals were skewed even before the aliens,” she said. “I’ll tell you about my family some time.”

Vivian was just starting to relax in my lap, when raised voices came from the hallway. A sexy, very naked Erica burst into the room, followed by Kara and Scarlett.

While the two women called after her, the young, athletic redhead ran straight to my chair, and climbed on top of both me and her mother. “Alex...oh, god, please...I need you so bad, Alex. I can’t stand it any more.” She pushed Vivian out of the way to kiss my face.

I was crushed into the recliner, but in a way that was more pleasant than painful. I got an arm around Erica’s slim waist and stilled her frantic wiggling. Vivian looked shocked as she watched her daughter fumble with my shirt.

“Erica,” I said. “Erica, listen to me. Erica, stop!” Her hands froze in place, but her pale, freckled breasts continued to heave up and down in front of my eyes with her heavy breathing.

“Please, Alex,” she whined. Her eyes were darting back and forth, but she stayed where she was.

“Erica, it’s all right,” I said, pushing her hands away from me. “Everything will be fine, I promise. Lani, can you help her up, please?” With Lani’s help, Erica got out of the chair, and stood in front of me. She didn’t notice the other girls, or her mother, she just watched me like a cat watching a mouse.

Vivian climbed off my lap as well. She looked a bit stunned as she shifted her attention between me and her naked daughter.

“Well, Lani,” Amber said into the silence, “I think Alex’s plan for the night has changed.” Some of the girls laughed, while the others looked confused.

I got out of my chair, and wrapped my arms around Erica. She shivered in my embrace, and pressed her naked body against me. I looked over her shoulder at Lani. “Sorry, baby,” I said.

Lani smiled brightly. “Don’t say you’re sorry, Alex,” she said. “I’m so happy for Erica. It’s wonderful having a new sister. But you should go upstairs with her. She needs you.”

The rest of them were smiling too. All of them except Vivian—she looked worried. I reached under her chin and lifted her head to look at me. “Are you, OK?” I asked.

“Hmmm? Oh, yes, absolutely, Alex. This is what I wanted, remember? I just thought of something though.”

“What’s that?”

“When Erica was sleeping with AJ, she was convinced that she wanted to have his baby, so she reversed her birth control. She’s probably pretty fertile right about now...”

“Yes!” Erica said, twisting in my arms so she could send a hand down to rub my hardening cock through my pants. “Alex, please, you have to get me pregnant! I need to have your baby!”

“Hush, Erica,” I said. “We’ll talk about it. We’ll all talk about it, as a group...eventually” I looked around the room at the six other women. “In the meantime, Scarlett will go see Dr. Li at the Center for something temporary. No babies yet. Lani and I are going to welcome Erica to the family. The rest of you behave.“

Lani’s face lit up at the invitation. She took Erica’s hand, and led the gorgeous redhead toward the stairs.

Vivian stood on her toes to kiss my cheek. “Have fun,” she said.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Kara?”

“No, but I think I should,” she said.

“You really don’t owe him anything,” I said. “You were serving the aliens at the same time, but you have nothing else in common with him. He’s a soldier, a killer, whose body has been modified to survive, while you were plucked off the street, and left to die when your usefulness was gone.” She reached up unconsciously, and rubbed the scar on her forehead.

“I know, Alex, but while we were together as a team, I felt his thoughts, and the pain that the aliens were inflicting on him. There’s a bond between us—at least from my side. I wouldn’t be surprised if the constant pain has driven him completely mad by now, but I need to see if I can get through to him.”

“Well, you said that you can’t read him through his helmet, and we haven’t found a way to remove it, so you won’t have any advantage when you’re in there.”

“What, you don’t think I can handle talking to him without being able to read him?” she asked.

“I didn’t say that. I know you can handle it. Just don’t expect a lot. Like you said, he’s probably crazy by this point. They did so much to his mind, inflicted so much pain, I’m not sure anyone could stay sane.” I wrapped my arms around her small frame and hugged her tight. I knew that the close contact would give her a better read on my emotions, so she could tell that I was being honest with her.

She pressed her face against my chest, and took several deep calming breaths. I looked over her shoulder, through the window of the observation room. On the other side, Mateo Colon, former Army sergeant, now red-armored alien Sentinel, was lying on the floor, surrounded by a reinforced steel box that left only his head exposed. His eyes were covered by the half-helmet that was fused to his skull, so I couldn’t tell if he was awake or not. Beside me, Dr. Li watched a display of his vitals.

“Anatoly,” I said. Dr. Kinslov stepped forward. His short hair, clean-shaven face, and white lab coat made him look much more like a research scientist, and less like a megalomaniacal would-be world conqueror. “Is everything ready?”

“Yes, Alex,” he said. “I haven’t been able to learn as much about the alien technology as I would like, but his restraints can handle more than double the maximum force that his hybrid body can generate. There is no trace of contact with his old master. And the sedatives should have worn off completely. The Sentinel is optimally within the parameters you specified.”

“Fine, Anatoly. Kara?” She stepped back and looked up at me. I gave her my most genuine smile. “Good luck.”

The tiny former Arbiter squared her shoulders and headed for the door to Mateo’s room. Mike and Eddie stepped aside to let her through, then locked it after her. I’d commanded them to release the safeties on their rifles.

“Dr. Goldberg, how is the Sent...how is Mateo responding to the pain blocks?” I asked.

“I believe we’ve diminished his overall level by eighty percent,” the Stanford neurophysiologist said. “The serotonin inhibitors are keeping the brainstem from activating the molecules responsible for pain transmission. Without being able to scan him, though, I can’t tell if the treatment is completely effective.”

I watched Kara approach the metal box in the middle of the next room. Anatoly had built this facility when he was still plotting world domination, expressly for the capture and study of Sentinels. While it didn’t have as many safeguards as I would have installed, it allowed us to monitor and record everything that went on in there.

“Mateo?” I heard Kara’s voice through the ceiling speakers. “Mateo, it’s me. It’s Kara. Do you remember me? I was with you...for a while. I was your Arbiter before...well...before this last one.”

Mateo’s head turned slightly at the sound of her voice. Even with the sensitive microphones, his reply could barely be heard.

“Mateo,” Kara said. I tensed as she stepped closer to the containment box than I would like. “Mateo, talk to me, please. It’s Kara.”

His whispering got louder, but was still indecipherable. Kara brushed her hair back behind her ear and leaned over her former partner.

“Mateo. Please talk to me.”

“You’re dead!” The bound man screamed. The speakers squealed as they adjusted to the change in volume. Mateo’s head twisted from side to side. “You’re dead! Stop it! Stop!”

Kara fell backward in surprise, landing on her butt on the cold concrete. She scrambled to her knees, but stayed well back from the thrashing, screaming figure in the metal box. “Mateo! Listen to me!” she yelled, her clear soprano cutting through the continuous howl of the Sentinel’s rant. “Mateo!”

The restrained soldier stopped his thrashing. His head turned in a more deliberate way, scanning the room. His masked face turned back to Kara. “Where is he? Where’s the Master?” he said. “Where’s my angel? Why isn’t she with me? Why won’t they talk to me?”

I saw an indicator on one of the vid screens shift from green to amber, as the alien super soldier struggled inside his metal prison.

“Mateo, please.” Kara was sobbing now, watching the young man’s face. “I’m here to help you. The Master, and your angel, they were lying to you, Mateo. They lied, and they hurt you, and they made you do awful things. But I’m here to help you. Please...”

“No!” He thrashed even harder inside his restraints. I watched the displays, amazed at the amount of force his altered body was generating. Anatoly didn’t look concerned, but some of the stress indicators on Mateo’s prison were climbing into the red.

“Mike,” I said, “get Kara out of the room. Gently but forcefully.” The former policeman slung his rifle on his back and went through the door.

Mateo was foaming at the mouth. He wasn’t coherent any more, just screaming at random. Kara had her hands over her mouth, and tears streamed down her face. Mike came up behind her, and lifted her off the ground.

“No! Let me stay!” she screamed, kicking at the man holding her. “I can help him!”

As Mike shuffled back to the door holding Kara, Mateo let loose a scream of primal pain. Veins bulged on his rigid neck. The metal box vibrated with the force of his struggles. An alarm sounded at one of the monitors.

“Anatoly,” I shouted, “sedate him, now!”

“We’ve been trying, Alex,” he said. “The drugs we used before aren’t working.”

Mike came through the door with the struggling Kara. He dropped her on her feet, as Eddie closed the door behind them. She tried to get past them, but the larger men wouldn’t budge. Finally she turned to me.

“Alex, let me in! I can help him, I know it.” She stood in front of me, pleading, and I tried to wrap her in my arms. She wasn’t having it though, and pounded at my chest with her small fists. “No! Let me go!”

I had to pin her arms, as I enfolded her in a bear hug. She butted her head against my chest. “I hate you,” she sobbed.

One corner of Mateo’s containment box had broken loose from the floor. It slammed over and over into the concrete as the Sentinel battled against his restraints. The metal top of the box bowed outward from the internal pressure.

I was about to evacuate the air in the room—a draconian safeguard that Anatoly had installed—when suddenly, in mid-scream, Mateo made a throaty, gurgling sound, and went quiet. The containment box stopped moving. More alarms sounded, but they had a different pitch than before, and came from a different terminal.

“We have a problem, sir,” the tech at that screen said. He twisted the display so that Anatoly and I could see it. It was Mateo’s medical data. Something was screwy with the numbers; no one’s blood pressure could be that high, or have their heart beat that fast. I didn’t recognize the other numbers on the screen, but a lot of them blinked an angry red color.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Dr. Li?”

The emergency room doctor came over to look. “It’s hard to tell exactly—his body is so different from a normal person. There’s...hmmm...those neurological readings don’t make sense, unless...you know, if I had to guess, I’d say the subject suffered a traumatic spinal injury,” he said.

“What?” I said. “How?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible, with the amount of force he was exerting against his prison, that he broke his own back,” the doctor said.

Kara stopped struggling in my arms and went limp. She pressed her face against my chest and sobbed.

Anatoly was still examining the display. “Ah, yes. See here? Most likely a break at C5 or C6. I noticed a weakness in the Sentinel armor at that same location. I think it’s a design flaw.”

“What does all of this mean? Steven, answer me,” I said.

“I can’t answer, Alex,” Dr. Li said. “This patient’s physiology has been altered to such a degree that there’s no telling how a spinal injury will affect him.”

“OK, but if he was just a normal person, what would we be talking about?”

“If he was a normal person, depending on the severity of the break and the damage to the spinal cord, he would lose all use of his legs, and some use of his hands. His breathing would be all right, but his bowel and bladder control would be affected. Over time, a walking frame would probably get him on his feet again, but again, that depends on the level of damage.”

“So he’s a paraplegic?” I asked. Both Anatoly and Dr. Li nodded.

“So what do we...” I paused as the overhead speakers crackled.

“K...Kara?” The faint whisper came from the other room. “Kara, where am I?”

Kara squirmed out of my arms and rushed to the door. I waved at Mike, and he opened it to let her through. Once again we were gathered around the monitors, watching the tiny woman approach the red-clad killer.

“I’m here, cariño,” we heard her say.

“General, it’s good to meet you face to face,” I said, as the smaller man approached. In his civilian clothes, he looked very different from the polished military man I was used to seeing on vid. Lieutenant Cooper trotted after him, carrying two hard-shelled cases.

“Alex,” he said, extending his hand. “The pleasure’s mine.”

“One moment, sir.” He stopped short as I held up a black box with a mesh antenna extending from the front. I held it near his head, and checked the gauge. It stayed at zero. The lieutenant and his cases also cleared inspection. “Just scanning for alien frequencies,” I said. “Can’t be too careful.” I shifted the box to my other hand, and shook hands with my newest ally. “Welcome aboard.”

Behind us, a semi backed up to the loading dock of a grey-sided warehouse. Another was pulling into the driveway of the nondescript industrial park just outside Salt Lake City. The February winds whipped at the pant legs of the new arrivals. The temperature was just a couple degrees above freezing, but the skies were clear, and there was no snow on the ground.

“How are your preparations coming?” the general asked.

“We’re set up to brief you inside,” I said.

I led him up the steps to the warehouse office. Inside, Param and Stephan were setting up a row of terminals inside the largest room. Lani, Kara, and Jill were huddled in a corner, looking at a pad display. Vivian had a bag open on the center table, and was stacking rifles and ammunition in neat rows.

“Gather round everyone,” I called out. After introductions were out of the way, I turned to Lani. “Anything from Alistair?”

“Not a peep,” she said.

“Alistair?” Cooper said.

“Think of it as a code name for the local alien,” I told him. “We got tired of always saying ‘the alien,’ and I don’t think anyone but a converted person can say Chrxjthal correctly.” The general chuckled and nodded.

“So,” I said, “we’ve tracked Alistair to Camp Williams, which was a National Guard facility before the invasion. We’ve noticed that the aliens like to set up shop in police or military installations.” Param brought up an overhead view of Salt Lake City. “You can see the base here, south of the city. Our tracker puts the origin of the alien signals in one of the administration buildings.” A second vid showed the camp, with one of the central buildings outlined in red.

“Is the alien living inside, then?” Kondo asked.

“No idea,” I said. “All we know is that the signals that Alistair uses to control his helpers come from that building. His physical body could be anywhere.”

“If the aliens even have bodies,” Anatoly chimed in from behind the group. We all turned to look at him. “The picture that was shown on the vid broadcasts was a fake. I did an analysis of the physiology of that bipedal creature, the one that supposedly met the American President, and the thickness of the appendages was all wrong.”

“So we have no idea what they look like?” The general knew Dr. Kinslov from earlier contact through The Plan, so no explanation of his intelligence was necessary.

“No,” Anatoly said. “Not until we confront the one here; the one you call Alistair. Although I would wager that if they do have corporeal bodies, that they have four digits at the end of each limb. ‘Fingers’ as you might think of them.”

“Excuse me, Dr. Kinslov, but how could you possibly know that?” asked Lieutenant Cooper.

“Ah, well the majority of their measurements use a base eight number system, just like ours use base ten,” he said, holding up both hands and waggling all ten digits.

I had to laugh. “Anatoly’s probably right,” I said. “Their codes are octal based as well. I just considered it a natural extension of binary, but it could be that they count by eights.” I looked around the small group. “All right then,” I said, raising my fist into the air. “Death to the eight-fingered bastards!” That got a laugh from those around me, and blank stares from the rest of the warehouse.

I gathered everyone around the main vid. “You all know why we chose this alien,” I said. “Equal distance from our two bases, but far enough that we can retreat into our own territory to escape reprisals. Plus, Alistair here is probably the most isolated of the aliens on this side of the Rockies, meaning longer response time from his neighbors.”

“We think,” said Lani.

I nodded. “Correct. We have no idea what kind of transportation the aliens use. No one has seen any sub-orbital ships, other than the eight-day metallic eggs, and we’re pretty convinced that those are unmanned...unaliened...whatever you want to say. As to our tactical plan, I’ll turn that over to General Yorikami...”

I tripped over a rock as I crossed the open ground between the NCO Club and the first in a long row of barracks buildings. The modern combat helmet I was wearing took some getting used to. I recovered and followed the other three men in my team as we crossed into the eastern end of Camp Williams. The inside of the visor was similar to the D-glasses that I was so familiar with, and I blinked up an overhead view showing our various groups moving into position. The countdown timer in the corner of my vision showed seventeen minutes.

I remembered my first attempt at assaulting a building when Mike, Eddie and I went after Todd in his mountain hideaway. I had to shake my head at how ridiculous this was, me playing soldier again. But the same reason kept popping up—there was no one else to do it. At least this time I had other Unconverted with me. The Air Force satellite personnel might not be Navy SEAL caliber, but they had enough training to be dangerous.

The team frog-hopped from cover to cover between the barracks buildings, until we reached the last one in the row. Across a road, and a medium-sized parking lot, was the administration building where we hoped to find the alien. Two airmen went inside the barracks while the rest of us covered the second group coming up from behind. Anatoly looked ridiculous in a military helmet, but I have to admit that Vivian looked quite good. She had one of her husband’s assault rifles slung across her back as she came up with the support group. Stephan, also with a slung rifle, and two converted techs brought up the rear, lugging boxes of equipment.

Inside the barracks building, the crew set up their gear. First up was the signal scrambler to hopefully mask our transmissions. Directional antennas pointed through open windows at the admin building, and a picture of the interior slowly built on the collapsable vid screen.

“General, are you getting our feed?” I asked over the comm.

“Affirmative, Schooner. We see it. Note that we are delayed by four mikes, waiting on Echo. Say again, tee plus four.”

“Got it,” I said. Comm traffic was going to be a weird pidgin of military and civilian on this operation. The general had wanted call signs and protocols, but I had argued against it because there was no time to train all of my people. Still, he used the call sign “Schooner” for me at every opportunity. Probably just to prove a point—he was a general after all.

Team Echo was the crew that was tasked with taking out the local Sentinel. Kara was on that team, and I wondered what had caused the delay.

“Alex, you must look at this,” Anatoly said. I moved over to the display. Thermal and EM tracking painted a pretty clear picture of the admin building. “See here?” He pointed at a hot spot. “Transmission terminus. If you track it back, you come to here.” The room was listed as the armory, and the reinforced walls didn’t allow for any thermal data.

“Do you think that’s where Alistair lives?” I asked.

The Russian shrugged. “Either there, or in one of these other rooms.” He pointed at places where fainter lines of energy radiated out from the armory. “Alistair would not need to be right next to the signal generator in order to send or receive transmissions.”

“General, what do you think?” I asked over the comm.

“You’ll have to go with your best guess, Schooner. Looks like no way to tell. We should—”

“Alex? It’s Lani. I mean...well I don’t have a code name, but I’ve been listening in...”

“That’s OK, Lani,” I said. “What do you need?”

“See that room in the basement? About ten meters west of the transmitter?” I nodded, and Stephan highlighted the room on our vid.

“I see it. What about it, Lani?”

“Well, you remember how I talked to Professor Espinoza at Stanford, about how likely it was that aliens would be able to live in our atmosphere? I put it in my notes. He said it would be almost impossible to have two planets with the same mix of gasses in the air, and that any alien would need some help breathing, if they even use breathing as part of their metabolism.”

“I remember, Lani. Tell me what you see.”

“Well, I would think that for moving around, they’d probably have equipment, kind of like we have scuba gear for moving underwater, but then, if you wanted to be comfortable, and not always wear a mask and carry a tank, you’d build some kind of—”

“Habitat!” I finished for her. “Great job, baby. I see it now.”

“Oh, OK. Good. Well, uh...over and out then. I mean...stay safe, baby!”

I chucked to myself. “Did you get that, General? Anatoly?”

“Negative, Schooner,” Kondo said. “Clarify please.”

“Just like Lani said, if Alistair didn’t want to spend his days strapped into a breathing machine, he would build a friendly habitat where he could move around freely. See the room that Lani pointed out? It shows a different index of refraction than the other rooms in the basement. I’d say that that room isn’t filled with regular air.”

“Copy, Schooner. Designating that room as the primary tango for your assault. We go in thirteen minutes. I repeat, one-three mikes.”

“Copy that, General,” I said. “We’ll be ready.”

My headset crackled with voices as I followed two airmen through the rear door of what we hoped was the alien’s home. I could see why they call it “the fog of war”: everything seemed to be happening at once. Echo team had caused a disruption in a different part of Salt Lake City, and then used a combination of signal jammers, electric shock nets, and old fashioned bullets to take out the pair of alien helpers. Once they were neutralized, we hit the administration building. Lieutenant Cooper took the front, and I took the rear.

“Front lobby clear,” I heard Cooper say over the comm.

I scanned the left corridor over the sights on my rifle. “Clear,” I called out to my fellows. My bulky pack banged into the wall as I tried to turn around.

“Fire in the hole!” Cooper’s shout came through the hallways of the building rather than over the comm. The helmet muffled the noise, but I felt the brief concussion of an explosion. That charge should have destroyed the business end of the transmitter—the “antenna”—hopefully cutting Alistair’s communications. We knew that the signals emanating from this building were used to control its minions, but had no idea if they were also the means of talking to others of its own kind. Anatoly theorized that it would have a separate way of talking to the rest of the alien horde, in which case, we needed to hurry before reinforcements arrived.

My two teammates opened the door to the stairwell. The leader, a brunette Chief Master Sergeant named Callie, covered the stairs leading up, while short, stocky Senior Airman Salvatore led the way down. I followed him, aiming high over his shoulder like I’d been taught, with Callie bringing up the rear. At the bottom, Sal opened the door, and I went through first, turning left. Callie came through behind me and turned right. The hallway was dark, lit only by an orange glow coming from around the corner on the west end. That was the direction we needed to go, so once Sal joined us, the two airmen moved west, while I covered their “six.”

Adrenaline pumped through me like it was spraying through a firehose. My heartbeat hammered in my ears. If we had planned everything correctly, we were about to see the first representative of an actual, god damned alien race. We were also going to strike the first real blow of the Human Revolution. As we approached the corner, all I could think is that we better not fuck this up.

Chief Callie stopped at the edge, and we pressed against the wall behind her. She snaked the head of a wirecam around the corner, and I blinked up the feed in my helmet display. The room we’d tagged as Alistair’s bedroom was five meters down, on the right. Just in front of it was another door that led to a storeroom, according to our floorplan. The small viewing window in that door was the source of the orange light spilling down the hallway.

We backed up a couple paces, and put our heads together.

“Looks like that first room is occupied,” Callie whispered. “Do we need to clear it?”

“I think so,” I said. “We have no idea what’s waiting for us. I’d rather be cautious, and not allow anything to get behind us.”

The building shook as another explosive charge went off upstairs. This one was probably to breach the armory, where the bulk of the transmitter was located. I’d turned off most of the babble in my comm, so I hadn’t heard the warning.

“All right,” Callie said, “We take the first room, then move to our tango. I’ll open. Sal, you’re point. Alex, you follow. I’ll stay in the hall to cover.”

Gun raised, she led the way around the corner. We hugged the wall until she reached the first door. She tried to peek inside, and I saw her helmet visor darken from the intensity of the light shining through the window. She shook her head briefly, then reached for the doorknob. Sal held up three fingers on his free hand, then ticked them down. Two. One.

Callie yanked back on the door, and Sal moved inside. I followed on his heels. My visor dimmed as it reacted to the light inside. Sal had gone right, and as usual, I was left. I swung the barrel of my rifle around the room, looking for any movement. Not seeing any, I twisted right, until I overlapped Sal’s field of fire, then back left again.

“Clear,” Sal said.

“Clear,” I repeated. I stepped deeper into the room and looked around, training my helmet cam over every corner of the room to record what we found.

Along the left wall—the one shared by Alistair’s room next door—eight boxes were laid out in a row. About a meter in length, and about half that in height and width, every one of them had a collection of wires and tubes running to them. The lines ran up to the ceiling, and along the floor in a seemingly random pattern. Thick wires on the floor all trailed over to the source of the room’s light; a tall, egg-shaped object that dominated the right half of the room. About two meters tall and a meter wide, the top third radiated with an intense orange glow. The bottom two thirds was a solid, shiny material that might have been metal or plastic. The eight cables from the boxes all ran into a circular hole in the side.

While I stared at the glowing egg, Sal had moved over to the boxes.

“Jesus Fucking Christ! Sir!”

I turned quickly, my gun coming back up. Callie jumped through the open door, also looking for a threat. Sal had his gun pointed at the first box in the row, and the chief and I moved up behind him.

It was hard to imagine that the object in the box was once a human. Under the clear cover, a torso was floating in a thick orange liquid. Both arms and legs had been surgically amputated, allowing for the small size of the box. From the shape of the chest I would say this was once a man, but it looked like his genitals had been amputated as well; several tubes ran into his pelvis through a smooth covering of skin.

As bizarre as the body looked, the head was even more grotesque. The man’s scalp had been peeled down to cover his eyes, and the entire top of his skull had been removed, exposing his brain. A web of wires ran to dozens of points on the grey, lumpy surface.

Sal backed up a couple steps, and vomited against a wall. The chief moved down the line of boxes, checking each one.

“Look here,” she called out. “There are women too.” She pointed down at the fifth box in the line.

The torso inside was smaller, with a narrow waist. Unlike the males, this woman’s body had no damage to her genitals, or her small breasts. Tubes ran into her vagina and anus, and a circular metal mesh covered her nipples. Her brain was also exposed like the men.

“What the fuck’s going on here, Alex,” Callie said. Her eyes were wild as she stared down at the mutilated body.

“I have no idea, Chief,” I said. I clicked my comm over. “General, are you receiving this?”

“Affirmative, Schooner.” His voice sounded strained. “Stand by for Dr. Kinslov.”

“Alex? It’s Anatoly. Can you confirm for me that there are four men and four women in those devices?”

I did a quick survey. “Yes, Anatoly. Four and four. What do you think they’re doing here?”

“Well, if they are still alive, I believe they are transformers of a sort, taking signals from the alien, either electronic or telepathic, and converting it into human brain patterns. If they are dead, then I have no idea of their purpose.”

“Alex, have you reached your primary?” the general said. “Baker team is about to blow the transmitter. I’m sending them to you when they’re done.”

“Fine, Kondo. We’re moving to our target now. Send Cooper when—” The room shook as another explosion rocked the building. The lieutenant must have destroyed whatever was in the armory room.

“Let’s go, Chief,” I said. “Sal, pull your shit together and let’s go get the fucker who did this.”

The stocky airman was still retching in the corner. “Yes, sir,” he said, straightening up, and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Ready to...” His eyes went wide as he looked over my shoulder.

I spun around, trying to bring my gun up. Callie turned also, then screamed and fired a three round burst at the wall.

Behind the eight boxes with the torsos, the entire wall had gone transparent. Staring at us through the clear barrier was an honest-to-god, motherfucking alien.

There’s so much vid footage of Chrxjthal corpses in the archives now, that it’s difficult to understand the shock of seeing a live extraterrestrial for the first time. This wasn’t a recording, or a computer generated image from a scifi vid. The creature on the other side of that panel was a member of an invading alien race—a being that had travelled across the stars to conquer our world.

At its highest point, the alien was only chest high to me. It had a squat, solid-looking body that was vaguely egg shaped. There were four limbs; two shorter back “legs” and two longer front “arms,” vaguely cylindrical, and with no visible joints. They tapered from wider near the body, to thinner at the ends. The creature was standing on all fours when I first saw it, its stance reminding me of a gorilla, with the head held up higher than the rear by the longer front arms.

It was dressed, if you could call it that, in a pinkish-grey material that clashed horribly with its blue-grey skin.

The “head” of the alien was a round mass—again vaguely egg-shaped—sitting on top of the torso, with nothing in between that could be called a neck. The entire surface of this top bulge was covered in triangular, fleshy protrusions. Think of it like taking wedges of clay, each about a centimeter thick and about five centimeters on a side, and sticking them, row upon row, on the surface of a balloon. Of course, later study revealed the purpose of those bumps—a cross between a sensor array, and a radiator to cool the alien’s “blood”—but at the time they reminded me of something like an artichoke, or maybe one of those succulent plants that people grow in pots.

A diamond of four flat circles in the middle of the head broke up the pattern of bulges, which made it the closest thing I could figure to a face. It turned those circles toward the chief, as her bullets scarred the surface of the wall.

I lifted my weapon as well, and fired on full automatic. The 50-round clip of 6.33mm beryllium copper-tipped bullets chewed divots out of the wall, but did not penetrate all the way through. The damaged areas turned milky white, hiding the creature from view, and I stepped to the side so I could see it through an unharmed section.

It was sitting back on its haunches, using its short rear limbs to spin its body on its axis. One arm extended out to its side, and I noticed that Anatoly had been correct about these creatures having four fingers. I ejected my magazine, and reached for another from my vest. Callie and Sal were doing the same, after firing their clips at the wall. The alien picked up something from a low table, and I watched it place the object over its “eyes.”

Instantly, every nerve in my body was on fire. My limbs spasmed, and I dropped the magazine to the ground as I went to my knees. Beside me, Sal did the same. Beyond him, Callie was still standing, but she was clawing at her clothes. My head was near one of the boxes, and inside, the male torso twisted and spasmed in the orange gel. I must have been screaming, but I couldn’t hear anything—all of my senses were overloaded by the pain surging through me.

Moving my arms was like trying to swim through mud, while each bend of an elbow or twist of a wrist shoved new needles of agony into my flesh. I managed to hit the buckle on my chest, and my bulky pack fell away, to land on the floor beside me. I let myself drop to the side, and rolled over on my back. Each movement seemed to take an hour, and I was certain that I was going to see a blue-grey creature appear above me at any second, to finish me off.

Fumbling for the pack with my left hand, I reached for the chinstrap of my helmet with the right. I felt a brief instant of cool on my scalp, as the helmet fell away and the air in the room chilled the sweat in my hair. I rolled again, to my side, wrapping my body around my pack while I pulled at the fasteners.

My hearing came back online, and from behind me I heard Sal making wet, gurgling sounds, and Callie keening a high-pitched whine. My legs jerked uncontrollably, and I was pretty sure I’d bitten my tongue.

I wanted to scream with joy as the pack came open, but either my throat wasn’t producing any sound, or I was already screaming and just couldn’t tell the difference. I couldn’t see clearly—my eyes constantly shifted in and out of focus—but I managed to turn the sphere the right way, and push my head through the circular opening.

As the iris of the Arbiter’s helmet closed around my neck, the tension in all of my muscles relaxed at the same time. I sprawled on the floor like a marionette whose strings had been cut. The pain bled away, leaving me panting, but almost immediately I realized my mistake—I hadn’t connected the air mask. Shit. The seal around my neck wouldn’t let in any air, and we hadn’t discovered the mechanism inside the helmet that allowed the wearer to breathe.

No time to waste. The exterior cameras blinked on, but I didn’t have any sound. I rolled up to my knees and looked around. Sal was lying next to me, eerily still. I put my hand on his chest, but couldn’t feel anything. Callie was leaning against the wall, naked. She had a glazed look on her face as she mechanically shoved four fingers in between her spread legs. She pulled at one of her nipples, ignoring the blood that leaked down her breast from where she’d rubbed herself raw.

Through the clear barrier, the alien sat like a statue. It still had the strange device in front of its face. Inside the body-boxes, the eight humans twisted and thrashed in their orange gel.

Somehow, Alistair had tapped into its equipment, and was broadcasting the same signals that it used for Arbiters and Sentinels: overwhelming pain for the men, overwhelming pleasure for the women. I had no idea what the range was, or if the rest of the attacking groups were feeling what Callie and Sal were going through. What I did know is that we were in trouble if I couldn’t get it to stop.

The guns hadn’t been totally effective, but it looked like they had weakened the barrier between this room and the alien. There was no guarantee that our explosive charge would work, but I had no idea what protection the other walls had—if I attacked the door in the hallway like we’d originally planned, I might find it even more formidable than this inside barrier.

I’d already used up whatever oxygen was in the helmet cavity, and every breath felt like I was drowning. It was now or never.

I struggled to roll Sal onto his side, then found the charge in his pack. Prying the cylindrical switch from the holder on the side armed the explosive, and I turned the dial to its deadman setting. Standing up made my head spin, but I managed to climb onto one of the body-boxes. Underneath me, a woman’s torso was writhing in its orange prison. I slapped the charge against the wall, on top of the most damaged area I could reach. The capillaries on the surface of the package burst, releasing the adhesive that held it in place.

Sliding back to the ground, I rummaged in my pack again, then stumbled to where the Air Force Chief lay, half-conscious, her head bobbing aimlessly. My vision blackened as I grabbed her wrist and dragged her naked body across the concrete floor. When we got to the hallway, I pressed down on the switch, setting the trigger. Now, even if I suffocated in the helmet, the bomb would go off.

I was surprised that I was still on my feet when I reached the corner—I honestly didn’t think I had that much determination. My mind was drifting, mostly to Lani, and the other women who had come into my life. I didn’t want to leave them. I also didn’t want to die just yet.

Callie’s legs caught on the corner of the hallway, and the resistance knocked me off balance. I lost my grip on her wrist, and I fell to the ground, cracking the blue Arbiter’s helmet on the floor. There was something I needed to do, but I couldn’t remember what it was...something about the thing I was holding in my hand...something with hooks...

“There hasn’t been any reaction from the aliens yet,” General Yorikame said. “Nothing that we’ve been able to detect at least.”

“Either Alistair was on his own, or they just don’t care if Salt Lake City goes without an overseer,” Jill said. She was sitting on a plush sidechair, watching the General on the jury-rigged vid screen. “I wonder what that means?”

“We’ll worry about alien strategy when we get home,” Lani said, draping her leg over mine, and putting her hand on my chest. “Alex almost died, and I don’t want him doing anything alien related until he’s better.”

The General smiled indulgently at her, as I laid back on the sinfully soft bed. The luxury ski resort in Park City made a good hiding place—lots of people coming in and out as their normal behavior dictated their annual ski vacations. It was isolated, but only an hour away from the site of our semi-successful adventure at Camp Williams.

General Yorikame was directing the group of workers who were excavating the remains of the alien habitat. Anatoly was half way back to the Bay Area by now, on a truck carrying the the remains of the Sentinel and Arbiter, plus whatever organics we’d been able to recover from the demolished basement. He’d grumbled about having to separate bits of alien flesh from human, but the scientific gleam in his eye was almost as bright as when I’d worked with him years ago.

“How are my troops?” Yorikame asked.

Vivian was sitting on the edge of the bed, and she answered for us. “The loss of Lieutenant Cooper’s leg, combined with his internal injuries, means he’s still touch and go. The other two on his team are recovering down the hall. Chief Martin is the one that worries me. Her injuries weren’t critical, but she was closest to the alien for the longest amount of time. She won’t respond to anyone or anything around her. Kara, our former Arbiter, is with her, to see if she can—”

The frowning face of the General blinked off from the screen, as the entire building shook. I had a flashback to the basement, when the ceiling had come down on me, and scrambled out of bed, tearing my IV tube out of my arm.

A roar came from outside, and the windows shook behind their curtains. Sounds of breaking glass followed, along with a few screams.

“Is anyone hurt?” I asked. No one answered, but they all shook their heads.

After the noise had died down, we moved to the windows. To the west, over the mountains that separated Park City from Salt Lake City, an angry black mushroom cloud rose into the clear winter sky.