Chapter 24: Empathy

The next day Grace woke to the sound of boots scrunching past on the path. She slipped her robe on and got to the window in time to see Cyan and Emerald being taken along past her cottage towards the interrogation building. They looked tiny and scared, next to the burly soldiers, in orange overalls that were far too big, with the sleeves and legs rolled up. She had breakfast and her shower, before settling on the bed to watch for the aliens being brought back. But when they were, at almost lunchtime, they were each slung over a soldier’s shoulder, unconscious! Their heads lolled and their arms dangled haplessly down the beefy backs. The soldiers carried them into their cottage and reappeared without them.

Grace tried to keep herself busy and not get cross, or any more scared than she was already. She moved a few things around and wiped some nooks and crannies. She had a good probe around the cottage, thinking about prison escapes, loose floorboards, tunnels, and focused things like that; but the floor was made of big timber sheets that all seemed to be connected together, and the walls and roof were too solid to get through without a big hammer or a drill or something. The little building looked neglected, but obviously it had been built to be a kind of prison, for somebody.

In the evening there was the scrunching sound again, and her door was being opened. It was the first soldier, who’d dragged her. He didn’t come in, but threw an orange bundle onto the bed. “Put those on,” he said, and turned round.

Grace opened out the overalls. They were indeed made of a rough fabric, and too big. At least that probably meant she was expected to keep her underwear on and her tee. She took them into the bathroom to change, rolled up the legs and sleeves, and went out.

She went through the open front door and took the soldier’s left hand in her right, in case it might remind him of a daughter perhaps, or a niece or something; but he pulled his hand away and gripped her upper arm, hardly looking at her. He dragged her along to the big hut again, like a non-person.

“Here you are,” said Xenia, as though Grace had kept everyone waiting.

“Hello,” said Grace. She took in the doctor and Boris.

The door opened, and it was the other soldier dragging her mum in!

“Mum!” Grace ran to her as the soldiers let go.

“Grace!” Her mother embraced her. For a moment Grace felt a massive relief wash over her, before remembering she was supposed to be saving her mum, instead of the other way round.

“You see, Zara?” Xenia strode over and prised them apart. “I said it would be a nice surprise. Now all you need to do to keep it nice is stop bullshitting me about how you hardly know anything.”

“I’m a payload engineer,” replied Zara with a quaver, “I don’t know about genetics.”

“You know what’s in the spaceship though.”

“Only in the simplest terms.”

“And where the spaceship is, exactly. I mean, within a few yards.”

“It crashed into the lake, as I told you.”

“Told me rather quickly, then you went all vague, before you copped out like your freaky little friends and fainted. Well now you can start telling the truth - or watch your little girl drown.”

While Grace was trying to take in the awful words Xenia grabbed her and hauled her over to the operating-type table. Grace saw her mother’s horrified expression for a moment, before everything went black, as a bag was pulled over her head. By Boris. She sensed her mother gasping and struggling futilely with the huge Xenia.

Next thing Grace was tossed high into the air. She flailed blindly for a terrified second, until Boris caught her and lowered her onto the table with a snigger. There was no point fighting, physically. She lay there while Boris strapped her down, telling herself Xenia wouldn’t really kill her: this was America, and anyway once Xenia had killed her her mum definitely wouldn’t tell them anything.

There was the sound of water splashing in a bowl, then a few seconds later the heavy, wet cloth landed on her face. The table tipped and a drop began to run up her nose. With her head strapped down she couldn’t do anything except blow it out, but at least she could draw a breath through her mouth.

“Sit down,” Xenia told her mum. A plastic chair squeaked.

“So this lake,” the interrogation began. “Exactly where did the spaceship go in?”

“In the middle.”

Splash. Water landed on the cloth. Grace tried to breath in slowly, but some water still came with it. She coughed it out. She couldn’t help it. After she’d coughed out the air in her lungs she had to suck in another breath, and that was full of water. She struggled desperately for some agonised seconds, until the water had drained through the cloth and a breath came that was mostly air.

“Exactly in the middle?” she heard Xenia say. “In an L-shaped lake?”

“How can you behave like that?” her mum protested.

“Answer the questions then she won’t be hurt. You’re going to eventually, so you’re just hurting her for nothing.”

“It’s not me who’s hurting her, don’t try that trick on me.”

“If you argue I’ll pour more water. Answer the question.”

“Alright. Yes exactly in the middle, it’s the deepest part. It can still be the middle in both planes, even if it’s L-shaped. You didn’t need to torture her.”

“Describe the spaceship: colour, size, shape.”

“It’s a cylinder, about ... I don’t know, I didn’t see it. Not that big. They didn’t move around a lot they slept. I think it’s gold or brown.”

“How did they get out?”

“There was a lander capsule, that floated.”

“Why didn’t the spaceship float?”

“The magnetron drive is heavy.”

Grace lay helplessly while the questioning continued. All the time she was dreading Xenia not believing something, but apparently she was satisfied with the explanations of how the aliens had picked out her mum for being their own size and so on and so on. Then after a while the subject changed: