Kaila leaned over the bed, her eyes turning solid black. She leaned over Pia, whose jaw hung open in a frozen scream.

Down inside, Kaila heard herself begging like a lost b.u.t.terfly cast helplessly in the wind, Please don't make me do this, please don't make me do this, and simultaneously, she was transmitting her power to Pia to rise.

She transported Pia up from the bed, then through the wall, heeding the group consciousness of the call back to the field.

They were on the field outside the high school. In the night sky, the triangular ship loomed, about three football fields wide, emitting a white light tinged with blue onto the field.

There were thousands of people packed onto the field. They wore their bathrobes, pajamas, and some were even naked, having been ripped from their beds. Some stood dazed, mesmerized by the lights emanating from the craft; some were on their knees sobbing; many stood and stared at the craft, screaming until they went blind from terror and stumbled and fell.

Kaila heard the screams in the blackness, but she wanted only to finish this. To hear them silenced and let them serve.

The light under the craft brightened to a powerful white beam. Compelled, the people moved beneath the craft. Like a giant vacuum sucking up lint, thousands of people lifted up into the light and into the craft.

Kaila felt the awful power around her but was drawn to obey. Jordyn's eyes were black, and she dimly realized he was like her, his true self submerged to the mission. This was efficient; they all performed as one to accomplish a goal.

The rest of the hive had returned: Viktor, Lucius, Antonia, Echidna, and Toby. All of them with solid black eyes acted mechanically yet efficiently, as a hive should. There was order and method. Kaila knew she had to obey. The mission was everything.

They stepped beneath the craft. The white light pouring down on them had such force and power it was near blinding. She surrendered to the light. It lifted them up.

There were maybe a thousand people in this gigantic sterile white room, larger than the gymnasium-and this mother ship housed many rooms holding thousands more. This was a ma.s.s abduction of the entire town.

The humans moaned and cried. They had been torn from sleep as they stared out from a bad dream, their eyes vacant, their mouths agape with only their subconscious recognizing the horror.

And everywhere scurried the workers, the three-and-a-half foot tall grays. They had large heads, wrinkled foreheads, no hair, huge black wrap-around eyes with no eyelids or eyebrows and leathery gray skin. Three spindly fingers and a thumb. Holes for noses and a slit for a mouth.

Mrs. Bourg held a faraway look in her filmy eyes. "It is time to feed," she said dreamily to the hive, noting the grays leaning over the terrified humans, inhaling their fear.

The hive circulated through the trembling ma.s.ses. Echidna leaned over a man, her shiny black bangs hanging in s.p.a.ce. The man, clad in Hanes drawers, had fallen to his knees, shaking and whimpering. Echidna's black eyes widened as she inhaled, drinking in his fear. Her eyelashes fluttered as she rolled her eyes in ecstasy.

Antonia leaned over Derek Mendoza who wore a t-shirt and boxers. He lay on his side, his knees drawn up to his chest, panting in hyperventilation. Antonia lowered her head, inhaling his fear.

Viktor zapped all over the room, like a red-winged bat, feeding, inhaling the group terror. He paused, making shaking fists, vibrating with a mega surge of acquired energy.

Kaila saw Wade Stoops. He stood, stark naked, staring with unseeing eyes, his lower lip quivering. She went to him, leaned over, and inhaled. He was absolutely terrified.

She breathed in the sweet perfume of his horror. Instantly, she felt more awake, more alive. Now I feed from your pain, she thought. My turn.

It was a rush she'd never experienced. Five gray workers, noting Wade's intense fear, scurried over and surrounded him. They locked eyes with Kaila and she retreated, letting them feed. Like gray vampires, they sucked his emotional force.

Wade sank to his knees as the grays drained him. He finally crumpled to his side, unconscious from horror and the zapping of gray leeches.

Hungry, Kaila leaned over the boy with long hair who sat next to her in English. Philip sat on the floor, his legs crossed, staring. He was so messed up, quaking with fright from this and from earlier seeing several dogs torn up to blood and bone at one of his father's dog fights.

Kaila inhaled, feeling his terror and horror fill her being until she felt she'd grown ten feet and was at the ceiling looking down on these pathetic beings. She was with the G.o.ds, the creator now.

Jordyn was feeding on her English teacher, Mr. Foret. She met his eyes, then Echidna, Toby, Lucius, Viktor, and Antonia. She felt them surging with power and renewal. They were one now.

"The feeding is done," Mrs. Bourg intoned.

Kaila saw Brandy Powell looking like a zombie. A gray worker went to her and telepathically told her, Calm them. Still them.

Brandy walked around the room and put her hand on the humans' arms and shoulders, telling them aloud, "Be still. It will be okay." Strangely, with her touch, they quieted.

The grays approached Tara Melancon, who appeared in a trance. The grays ordered her telepathically, too, to calm the people. Tara went about the room and told the humans to be quiet, to be still, that it would be okay and over soon if they cooperated. She acted like she'd done this a thousand times before.

Kaila observed with disinterest, feeling like a conqueror. She realized now the ulterior motive of advanced physics training. Each had a part to play. Jordyn at her side stared with large flat eyes.

Where is Douglas Lafarge? she asked his mind. Kaila sensed the ship moving into s.p.a.ce.

In a flash, Viktor was by her side. "We need people to drive our ships," he said. "We are training millions. Let them drive the ships. When we are at war, the humans die. We will watch behind the scenes with humans killing other humans. We will feed as they die."

Kaila felt nothing knowing about the coming war, that humans were the p.a.w.ns.

Then, large screens lowered, like flat-screen televisions in mid-air. The thousands of people saw images on the screens of beautiful forests, azure oceans, wide-winged birds in flight over virgin, snow-tipped mountains.

The people's mouths opened in awe at the beauty of Earth. The screens showed oil-covered seas, birds with oil-slicked feathers, sewage, factories pluming black smoke into the skies, volcanoes erupting, skies filled with gray ash, the crops dead. And the people wept.

The gray workers mind-stared the people and imparted telepathically that they were ruining their planet. That they would feel inspired to do something about it.

Viktor said, "Mind games. Mind-screens. We will need a planet to live on after most of them are dead and the rest are slaves."

"Here," he said, offering Kaila some of the gray-pink moist substance Jordyn had previously offered. He rubbed it on her forearm.

As the substance permeated her skin and entered her bloodstream, Kaila felt a rush that set her heart pounding, her mind skyrocketing with bliss. Her head lolled. This was sweet, powerful. Everything came into sharp focus. She saw the individual red hairs on Viktor's head, the pores on his nose, the orange hairs of his beard, the buds on his pink tongue.

"What is this?" she asked.

"Pulverized glandular extracts."

"Glands. Whose?"

He leaned closer. "Now you know where the millions of missing children go."

Two inches from her face, she traversed through his eyes into his mind and saw mult.i.tudes of caverns inside the earth where children were taken; there were hidden bases under the whole world.

Kaila glimpsed the darkness, the fires, the screams- "Children are the sweetest," Viktor said. "Adults are polluted with drugs, alcohol, nicotine, artificial foods. Makes their glands bitter, there's nowhere near the pure rush you get from an unpolluted endocrine system."

Viktor rubbed the shiny moist substance over the red hairs on his forearm. He pushed out his chest, opened his small mouth, licking his tongue over red lips.

"You understand now why I was belligerent with the alcohol incident in your home," he said. "Isn't this better? Don't you feel so much clearer and alive?"

While Kaila never felt more clear, energetic, and telepathically open, something inside of her raged. She was aware of the thousands in the rooms watching the screens, having images downloaded into their brains. Images they would not remember in the morning but would when the time was right. Everyone was being programmed.

"Emotions and glands. They," Viktor pointed to the humans, "are food."

Kaila saw the millions of hybrids and aliens in fourth dimension, invisible to humans, who stalked prisoner-of-war camps, hospitals, funerals, arguments, murder, and depression, observing and feeding on the outpouring of human emotion.

They fed on physical release and so made p.o.r.nography prevalent, made women s.l.u.ts and wh.o.r.es, made any fantasy available, feeding on the human frenzied releases and desperate urges for more, all while hypnotized and asleep.

We are their food.

The implications were staggering-and brilliant. The absolute deception, the veils over them all.

"It's illusion," Viktor said, reading Kaila's mind. "People think that aliens will come to save and enlighten them. We give them a little of that to feed that lie."

Kaila realized that creatures with more technology would feed, conquer, and be predators, the same as humans did to themselves. Technology hadn't made humans more advanced. If anything, they were more isolated and colder, crueler.

Her thoughts shattered as she heard a telepathic cry. She had to follow that cry.

In an instant, she was in another room. In this room were hundreds of people lying on metal tables with the gray aliens hovering over them. It looked like a hospital ward.

Kaila heard the scream again and zeroed in on Pia. She lay on her back on a metal table. Restraints held her arms. The gray workers with the large heads and wrap-around black eyes huddled over her.

"It hurts!" Pia cried. "Stop!"

A gray held a tiny fetus in his spindly fingers.

Emotionally connected to Pia, Kaila absorbed her terror, confusion, and pain. She felt sharp pains in her abdomen like the pain was her own.

"Stop!" Kaila shouted to the gray.

The gray swiveled his long thin neck to consider her.

Pia's emotions had broken through to Kaila, liberating her consciousness. "What are you doing!" Kaila screeched. "Oh my G.o.d, what is this?"

The gray took the fetus and submerged it into one of the vertical tubes filled with electric-blue liquid. The fetus, three inches long, floated in the liquid.

"Kaila, stop," Jordyn said, his eyes black and gla.s.sy.

Melissa lay on another table, moaning. The gray beside her held a long metallic needle in its long fingers, about to stick it into her abdomen.

Melissa screamed. Her scream shattered all remaining control over Kaila's mind.

Kaila shouted for them to stop.

Gray workers surrounded Kaila, staring with huge black eyes. Taller grays appeared. These were not bio-engineered, she knew, and possessed higher intelligence than the smaller grays. She realized that in this society existed a hierarchy with layers of intelligence, control, and command.

They told her that their planet and bodies had been harmed. They planned to populate the Earth with hybrids like her so they could survive.

You are one of us, they said. We control this planet. Be of the group, with us, with the mission.

"You will not mind-stare me!" Kaila shouted as the grays surrounded her.

We are in the White House, in the Kremlin, we control the banks, the schools, the churches, mosques and temples. We have infiltrated every area of your world. Nearly every leader or person of importance is a hybrid, implanted or clone. Look at your Hollywood, actors, and musicians. They are illusion, they are us. And humans worship them. As they should. The hybrids serve the mission. Humans serve us. Be with us now, submit, or bow to music, procreation, phones, television, drugs, alcohol, computers, and blindness. You are shown the truth because you are us. But we will not allow subversive behavior. It is not allowed. Choose. Choose now. Be awake or like them, stay asleep.

Seeing Jordyn, with his dead eyes, it struck Kaila what was happening. Why hybrids were created. She, herself, was one of them. All programmed to be hypnotized into texting, computers, music, and television. Not living, not real.

And Jordyn knew it. He had touched her, kissed her. He had felt humanness and lied. The one she thought she loved. What a huge deception!

She flung back her hand and with all her might slapped Jordyn's face. He staggered, then blinked, but did not rise to consciousness.

Kaila was awake, fully conscious now. And she made a choice. Let Jordyn rot in deadness and h.e.l.l forever in this betrayal. She felt something stir in her soul, at its deepest level.

How you hurt me, she thought. I loved you, believed in you, but you were one huge lie.

Kaila pushed through the grays and ran to Melissa who was screaming as a needle was inserted into her abdomen.

Echidna thrust herself between Kaila and Melissa. "They are doing an implantation to impregnate her. She must carry more hybrids. We will populate this world. You must not intervene."

"Like h.e.l.l I won't!" Kaila shouted. She knocked the gray aside and pulled the needle from Melissa's abdomen.

"You son of a b.i.t.c.h b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" Kaila screamed, now fully understanding Pia's pregnancy. They abducted and implanted the pregnancy in their bellies, then later re-abducted and stole the fetus.

Fully enraged, Kaila wrapped her hands around a gray's thin leathery throat, but Jordyn grabbed her. "Kaila, stop, they're coming now."

"I don't give a s.h.i.t," Kaila said, dimly aware of a rising unseen power filling the room.

Jordyn yanked her wrist, dragging her away. She jerked free, spun around.

"You betrayed me. You acted as if you liked me and all you wanted was to use me for-this!"

As she stared into his black eyes, she realized that she utterly hated and wanted to destroy him as they were destroying her friends and humans.

"I hate you!" She went blind with rage and pummeled his chest and face with her fists.

The thickness in the room intensified. The thousand eyes invaded her mind, penetrating every cell of her brain. She couldn't stand upright anymore. She felt the floor give out and become vapor.

She heard them trying to control her but all she heard were the screams in her mind. I hate you! You betrayed me. I will never ever be with you or any of your kind ever again! I turn my back on you and all you stand for. And if I can, I will kill you and all of your kind.

And then, everything went black.

Chapter 13.

Kaila woke up in her bed. It was morning. The damask curtains were open and sunlight streamed onto the floor. She had no idea what day or year it was. She jumped out of bed.

Lucy and Woofy lay on the floor. When they saw Kaila, they slunk away. The dogs pawed at the door, trying to get out.

In the unsettling silence, Kaila switched on her computer. Looked at the date. She covered her tiny mouth with her long fingers. It was November. She'd lost over a month. She realized she'd been going through patterns of normal routine with school and her family, barely remembered, but the alien learning remained.

Kaila rushed to the bathroom, peered at herself in the mirror. Her long blond hair was wild, untamed. Her skin was pale, ghoulish. Her blue eyes were dead. She hated the alien staring back at her.