Chapter 5

Ben's first sensation as consciousness began seeping into his brain was the confusing noise around him. Then the pain struck. He felt a very familiar sensation; the sensation of lava pouring through his veins from needles implanted all over him. His brain faintly registered that they must be giving him another energy infusion, right before all of his thoughts were drowned out by an earsplitting scream. It took him a few seconds to even realize that the noise was coming from his mouth. He couldn't control his body. His muscles started jerking of their own accord. He felt his hand hit someone, and they went flying backwards. A metal table was smashed beside him. His bonds broke from the bed he was on, along with chunks of the bed. As his hand jerked out and sent a doctor flailing over his medical equipment, blackness crept into the edge of his eyes... and alas, the pain ended, and he fell into a world of darkness.

Confusion. Madness. Whispers. Echoes. They circled around his head. Joy. Thought. Remorse. They permeated his being. He could feel the chill of fright nearby, and farther away an eagerness... or longing... they were all slipping... slipping away from his mind...

Ben sprang up, busting through the steel restraints that held him to his bed. He grabbed his head, which was aching as if someone had split it open. The confusing emotions... the presences... disappeared from his mind. He wiped sweat from his forehead, and looked around.

Doctors and nurses hovered around him, a concerned and surprised look etched on the majority of their faces. His mind began clearing slowly, and he came to realize that he must be in the infirmary of a Ghaleran base. The surfaces of the walls were way too smooth to be of Earth origin. He also realized that he was not in the same base that had he had been in before, from the coloration and markings on the ceiling. He had to be in one of permanent bases the Ghalerans had built on Earth.

"Where... where... am I?" Ben managed to choke out through an incredibly parched mouth.

A doctor stepped up, a tall Ghaleran. He began speaking in his psychic voice that for some reason sounded more distinct than ever to Ben, and less frightening. "Hello Ben. I am Doctor Vla'por. You are currently in the infirmary of Black Base, the forward base of the Missouri Defense Lines. You were brought here when the Chicago base fell to the Liodammians. You were in horrible shape. The missile that hit you was especially designed to home in on and kill Warriors. Not only did the shrapnel that launched from its explosion tear into your right leg, but it also broke straight through three of your ribs, and collapsed one of your lungs. That shrapnel was baked with radiation that existed in a spectrum that matched that of the energy in your body... so besides shredding your body, about half your strength disappeared. We knew you needed that energy to survive, now that your body had come to rely on it... so we had to give you another full energy infusion. But we also knew that you could not survive it consciously in your condition at the time. So we had to give you an injection of extremely powerful tranquilizers."

"But... "Ben said slightly groggily, "I thought tranquilizers didn't work during the energy infusions?"

"Well, normal tranquilizers don't," Doctor Vla'por responded, "but this one does. It was made to subdue bull elephants. Your chances of living after being injected with even a small amount of it were less than ten percent; and less than five percent of coming out of the coma it would induce. But those odds were still better than the odds of coming out of your condition then. So we took the chance. And in the process, we found something interesting. A month... yes, a month... after we injected you, we discovered you were developing an extremely unusual brainwave pattern. We then went back to some of your old medical documents, and found that you had always had slightly off-normal mental activity. So we did a full neurological scan. It seems that you were using parts of your brain... subconsciously, at least... that no human had ever used before. It seems that making your brain fight for its consciousness brought these differences to the surface, and made them dominant. We still don't fully understand it. But from all of our comparisons... you have a mental strength and power greater than any known human, Liodammian, or Ghaleran. It could explain why your energy- which is controlled by willpower- was so easy for you to manipulate."

Ben looked down at his leg and chest, and explored them for a minute with his hands. "If I was so critically injured," he asked skeptically, "then why the hell do I feel fine?"

"Ah, another reason we injected you with more energy," the doctor responded. "We've discovered in some cases the subconscious of the brain will use the energy we provide it with to form new cells of energy, which it then converts to matter. Extremely quick regeneration, in other words. With you, it worked especially well. So, anyway, after we discovered all this about you, we became understandably curious. Therefore, we ran a DNA scan on you. It may come as a shock to you Ben, but you're not exactly human. Some alien race has to have landed on Earth recently- within the past few thousand years- and bred. It's the only explanation. You're only fifty percent human according to your genetic scans. The other fifty percent is completely... unidentifiable. We've encountered over three hundred and twelve alien races, and yet we don't know what you are."