13

The Trans-Resurrection Machine, Part 2

The last explosion was terrible. Clouds of thick, burning smoke started to fill the room and fireball flames began to engulf the place.
"What has happened!" Screeched one of the redshifters. "Fire! Fire! Save the machine! SAVE THE MACHINE!!" He screamed.
"I'll call the others! We can't save the machine by ourselves!" The taller one ran from the room.
"COWARD!!" Cried the other in a rage. Mary could hear all of this behind the door of the device. it woke her from the near hypnotic state she felt the machine was puling her into, and away from the strange visions, or were they shapes she saw in the fluid. 
Shots were fired and then someone opened the device door.
"Mary!" it was Dan.
"Dan! Untie me!" he took put a blade and began cutting the straps.
"Hurry!" Shouted someone. It was Jack.
"You don't know how glad I am to see you guys!" She said. The bonds were difficult to cut through and Dan began unraveling them by hand. When he was done she managed to force her legs out of the straps holding them down and rolled off the door.
"What is that thing?" He asked,
"No time. I'll tell you later!" She said.
"They're coming! More of them. They called for reinforcements. I think I hear sirens too," said Jack. Fire was running up the ceiling like wild fire. The way was blocked. He covered Mary with a long silver cape. He was breathing hard.
"We make a run through the doorway. As you get towards the entrance, leave the cloak behind. Hopefully we'll get out without severe burns. Come on!"
They followed him out. Mary could feel the fire hot against her burning. It was so hot she thought she'd combust into millions of tiny particals. Her scalp was felt as if it would melt off her skull and she brushed her hair frantically as Jack herded them into an old car. The building was burning, like a raging beacon tearing into the night. Jack jumped into the driver's seat and sped off, burning rubber.
"We were lucky. this was a small cell. We caught them off guard!" Said Dan.
'"How on earth did you guys find me?" She asked, wiping sweat from her face.
"The red trail was strong nearly all the way to this neighborhood. I sensed you as they were driving away. I called Jack and he brought the car and we tracked your essence until it dropped off sharply about five blocks south of here. At that point, we investigated the buildings and by happenstance we found this old abandoned one. The redshifters seem to like old abandoned buildings for certain reasons. Old buildings have old memory that they thrive and work from to build their wormholes. People don't seem to pay much attention to them either." Mary turned to look out the rear window. In the distance a flurry of swirling siren lights were gathering at the burning building as they sped away into the night.

. . .

In the tiny, dusty bookshop that was now their headquarters, they sat around a small stool. Mary was frazzled but wiser and more courageous than she'd ever felt. Everyone was gathered around her, Trillion draped a warm sweater around her shoulders. 

"I'm so sorry I got you into this." said Dan. "Maybe we moved too soon-" she frowned at him at first, and then smiled.

"Got me into what? I'm in this along with all of you. We either face them now or they'll face us down later. We have to find out where they're hiding. I'm, glad it happened."

"You are?" Asked Andrew, the bookstore owner, nervously. He chewed his bottom lip and wiped his thick glasses with the corner of his shirt. She nodded vigorously. Everyone began talking at once. Mary felt a self assurance she'd never felt before in her life. She hoped this wasn't some temporary adrenaline wave.

"Listen," she said, putting her hand up. Then she took a long sip of hot coffee and set the paper cup down on the stool in front of her. The others leaned in, falling quiet. 

"I saw something I wasn't supposed to see. Both Dan and I did." She glanced at Dan excitedly.

"What?" Asked Jack. "What they actually look like?"

"Yes, but more than that. They do have these strange, advanced devices, huge machines that they call trans-resurrection devices. They use them to transfer one of their own inside a human so that they can take over the bodies and live here among us." The store owner's eyes widened.
"I was afraid of something kooky like that would be revealed." Trillion gave only the barest hint of dismay but his serene countenance remained.

"So that's how they do it!" Said Jack.

"But that's not all. There are, I think, quite a few of these machines but they are very old contraptions. It suggests they've used them for a very long time. It reminded me of a Rube- Goldberg machine. Anyway, they have this program from what I heard, called the Settling, Seeding and Expansion. There seems to be a hierarchy too. I heard something about a High Sentinel among them."

"High Sentinel?" Asked Trillion. "Troubling."
"Why?"
"She oversees punishment for wayward, incompetent and rebellious hanyar attached to the Expansion project. She has never revealed herself to humans, so far as I know. And she's not the only one. Perhaps they've changed something in the structure of the plan." 

"Yes." They all looked at Trillion
"What do you mean?" Asked Dan.
"All I mean is that things are changing. It's been a long time since I've kept in touch with their more secret activities. High Sentinels are vestiges of the older hanyar societies."

"Tell us more about the machine. How does it work?" asked Dan.

"I'm not sure on the exact nature of how it works. Only that they strap you on a bed on the other side of the machine door and close you inside and you are lowered into a huge tub of fluid with electrical currents flowing through it. I don't know what sort of fluid they use or what substance it is. It was frightening and not just because of what it would have done to me but because of the energy I could feel from it. it was overwhelmingly hostile, the energies coming from it. The very instrument they use to destroy us. More scary than any weapon they might use," she said. They listened with rapt attention.

"I felt it too," said Dan.

"What did you see, Dan?" She asked. They all turned to him.

"I entered part way through what I can only describe as an inactive wormhole. That's why I'm still alive, and through the other side I saw a vault of some. I saw a trans-resurrection machine, Mary! Inside the vault. It looked similar from the other one. I had no idea what that strange looking thing was at the time but it was another one of those devices! I'm sure of it!"

"Did you see anything else?" Asked Trillion.

"Yes. I noticed an odd symbol of a planet with out-sized rings. I wonder if that is where they came from?"

"Not likely," said Mary.

"Why do you say that?" Asked Trillion

"Because they come from subspace. They are subspace beings."

"Subspace! You aren't -" said Jack.

"Oh yes," said Mary firmly. "They said so."

"You heard them say all this?"

"They were going to kill me so they felt free to talk." Trillion folded his arms and leaned against the wall.

"My people the hanyar come from another place in the universe humans have never seen and can't imagine, somewhere on the other side of a singularity, somewhere near a planet with rings for from this solar system. They want to live in this world and in this dimension. But most want to take it over. They desire the kind of life that humans call life, to taste, touch and see and experience things the way you do.They want everything you have. They are dissatisfied with where they've gone as a species and wish to take over this world and take over your bodies as well."
"But if they only want to live as we do, why do they have to destroy us?"
"A people with a hostile, militaristic bent see things through a very limited scope. There is no room for others different from them and there is no room for others when those others have what they desire. We have countless examples of hostile human cultures that have eradicated others when it was unnecessary to do so. Greed and selfishness are the only excuses they need," said Trillion.

"You're right. And they know that some of us can detect them now," said Mary. Trillion sighed heavily.

"Yes. Once they thought they'd destroyed all sensitives, but they didn't. I and my co-workers have helped protect sensitives from them. I once thought we could find and protect all of them. We couldn't."
"You say, 'we' Trillion when you are one of them," said Mary gently.
"I know. I have been here for so long and so invloved with helping humans that I no longer feel as if I'm hanyar any longer."

"That's because in a way, you are one of us now. or at least I think so," said Mary. 
"I think our powers are growing and becoming clearer," said Dan. "I could sense you, Mary, your emotions, your fear, when they took you away."
"Yeah. We could almost track you because of that," said Jack.

"This will only help us all as things grow darker," said Trillion. "As for the plan, so far, you all managed to destroy one small alien base. That's important."

"It was two-"

"Actually just one. The wormhole you saw and were nearly pulled in through Dan was not destroyed. They can't be destroyed by fire. The building was burned but the wormhole remains, mostly likely they collapsed it and moved it to another location."

"I guess we gave the bastard the opening salvo then," said Jack. They all grinned.

"You did and I'm proud but don't be too confident. I think you all should lay low for a little while. I'm sure they're looking for the cause of this problem. It wouldn't be the first time humans have detected and ruined their plans," said Trillion. "In the confusion of two important places being targeted they'll be worried that they can't detect you. Yet."

"Then this should be a tactic we use again? Attack and lay low?" Asked Jack. Trillion nodded.

"If we use guerrilla-style tactics it needs to be when we have more power on our side. This time was a fluke. It won't happen again this easily. We've got to hone this down. But I have an idea," said Dan.

"And what's that?" Asked Mary.

"Some techniques I learned from Trillion. We need to have another meeting next week here. We need to be able to sense and know for certainty where the other places are, the other machines, and take them all out. And also," he said grabbing a piece of paper with a red marker and drawing a symbol on it and showing it to the others. "We need to find out what this means." It was the symbol of the ringed planet. Mary saw the little bookstore owner shift nervously in his seat.
"I can't imagine why a bank vault would have a sign like that and I don't know of any logos of companies with that particular symbol." 
"Let me see the symbol up close," said Jack, reaching for the slip of paper. "Maybe I can do some research on it after we leave here tonight."
"Research? How?" Asked Mary.
"Trillion said they've been here for a long time, right? There must be something out there that can shed some light on this. I have some interesting underground connections. Maybe they can turn up something?"
"Just be careful that you aren't asking one of The Others in disguise. I know that you guys can detect them now, but there just may be a few that are much harder to detect in the traditional way. That's what I'm trying to work out now. Besides that, remember, some red-shifters may be human. Only part human because of trans-resurrection or because they have no human feeling for others." This made Mary perk up.
"Hey, I can handle this," said Jack, grinning.
"I know you can. Just. . .be careful," warned Trillion.
"If I may, Jack, I have something to show you that you might find very interesting. I'd like to show you before you leave here tonight." Andrew turned to Dan. "Dan, do you remember the old book I showed you?" Dan's eyes got wide.
"Oh, yes!" Andrew glanced at Mary.
"Mary, you'll want to see this too, so stay awhile longer." They were all buzzing with even more excitement now. It seemed things were coalescing around some important paths to answers.

Mary rubbed her hair absently.As fearful as she was, she felt something awakening in her. She'd nearly crossed the threshold into a kind of death. She was able to study the inside of that threshold before being rescued. The experience left her wanting to know what the symbols and the other. . .things she'd seen in the pool, were.She would go home and ponder what she saw to make sense of it. There had to be a pattern here. Perhaps if they could decipher the pattern, they could defeat The Others. The symbols and characters had to mean something. Perhaps they were directions on how to build one? What if they could build one? It seemed crazy to even imagine such things. But she'd faced death and lived. They all did. She felt bonded to them more than she had before. And brave, an emotion she had never experienced before. She smiled.

"What is it, Mary?" Asked Dan. She shook her head.
"Nothing. I'm just ready for what's coming. I'm ready to fight."
"So we all are," said Jack.
"Dan, I'd like to study the hotspot map you created at your place again," she said. Andrew turned to Trillion.
"What are you going to do until the next meeting?"
"I have other sensitives that I've rescued out of the darkness, to train."

Andrew pressed his hands against his knees, bewildered. He had a hotspot of ragtag avengers assembling under his own roof. How long before they got found out? And what would happen to them all? He feared to think on it but he'd had some inkling of what he was getting himself into when he forged an alliance with the mysterious Trillion. Being near such special people helped him to feel he was adding something important to the cause. And he was. In fact, there was one thing he and Trillion were keeping in store for later that would be sorely needed one day. What did I get myself into? he thought, fiddling around in his apron pocket for the old skeleton key.
"Before I get the book, anybody for more bad coffee?"