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.Maybe we’ll see something you didn’t.”“To the base?” I asked in bewilderment.That place had always appeared to be anathema to my aunt; she never even wanted to go out to have drinks at the Enchantment Resort, which was located the next canyon over from the spot that housed the alien base.“What do you think you’ll find?”“We don’t know,” Martin said grimly.“But there’s only one way to find out.”* * *The four of us went in their SUV, a blocky Mercedes all-terrain vehicle that I knew had to have cost them in the low six figures.Even after all these years, I still hadn’t quite figured out my aunt and uncle’s finances.True, Martin was still getting residual payments from his stint on Paranormality, but that shouldn’t have been enough on its own to support their lifestyle.Although Martin had been exiled here, the same way Gabriel had, it was clear they weren’t completely cut off.Maybe the Nords kept funneling money to them out of guilt or something.Anyway, the Mercedes forged on past the trailhead where I’d parked two nights earlier, absorbing all the shocks from the rutted earth and the various rocks strewn everywhere as if we were driving over freshly laid asphalt.Logan and I sat in the back seat, not speaking.I desperately wanted to hold his hand, but worried that even such a minor public display of affection as that might attract too much attention.So I sat stiffly next to him, one hand gripping the safety harness I wore while the other clutched my jean-clad knee, until even the Mercedes couldn’t go any farther, and we had to come to a halt.We all climbed down out of the SUV, and Martin went around to the back to fetch a flashlight from the toolbox he kept in the cargo compartment.The snow had mostly melted, except for patches here and there in the shadows of juniper trees and manzanita bushes, or next to the occasional large rock.It had made the ground muddy and treacherous, though, and I was glad I had on my sturdy hiking boots.Logan had switched out of his lace-ups and into the footwear he’d brought with him from the base, so he was more or less good to go as well.All right, maybe “good to go” wasn’t the best way to describe it.His jaw grew tighter and tighter as we approached the hidden entrance to the base, the one we’d come through a few days earlier.I could tell he’d never expected that he would have to return here, and he wasn’t liking it one bit.Not that I could blame him.I didn’t want to be here, no matter what secrets the place might still hold.But going along with Kirsten and Martin on this venture seemed infinitely preferable to having them head over to my parents’ house to reveal a few home truths about the “IT guy” I’d brought to Christmas dinner, so I slogged along after them, not speaking until we were almost at our destination.“Up there,” I said, pointing to the metal door that was the side entrance to the base.Because the day was still gray and cloudy, the door was even harder to see than usual.“Got it,” Martin responded, striding up the hill with such ease that I found myself huffing and puffing to keep up, even though ordinarily I would’ve said I was in very good shape.But then, while I had some alien DNA running through my veins, I wasn’t a completely different kind of being the way Martin was.Most of the time I could ignore it, because he was just my Uncle Martin, and he looked pretty much like everyone else.Well, everyone else who’d been a male model in his youth, I supposed.Logan didn’t seem to have any trouble keeping up, either, and because both my aunt and uncle were focused on what lay ahead of them and weren’t looking back at us, he reached out and took me by the hand, steadying me as we made the ascent, which seemed worse than it had been only the day before yesterday.Maybe it was.The terrain felt as if it had shifted slightly, as if the melting snow had moved some of the larger rocks around.Eventually, though, we all made it to the door more or less unscathed.Logan let go of my hand, but not before Aunt Kirsten seemed to notice.Again I saw that flicker in her eyes, but whether it was disapproval or worry or something else entirely, I wasn’t sure.In the meantime, Martin had grasped the round handle in his gloved hands and began to turn it.The door opened into the hillside, and he pulled the flashlight from his coat pocket and switched it on.We followed him into the dark tunnel, Kirsten behind him, with me behind her and Logan taking up the rear.It seemed natural for us to fall into position like that, although I was willing to go out in front to lead the way if necessary.Oddly, though, Martin seemed to know where he was going, guiding us from the tunnel and into the stairwell.He paused there, asking, “How many levels down?”“Five,” I replied.“But — it seems like you already know where you’re going.” The sentence ended with the slightest of upward inflections, a question that wasn’t entirely a question.“Not really,” he said as we began our descent, our footsteps clanging off the metal stairs.“I’ve gotten flashes of this base from Lance’s thoughts and memories, and Paul’s and Persephone’s as well.I’ve never been here in person, though.”I wondered if those “flashes” had been freely shared, or whether he’d gone in and cherry-picked the information he thought was valuable.It seemed kind of rude to me, but then, he’d first met them in an official capacity, in his cover as a Man in Black.No one back then had realized he was something even more exotic than an agent of a government organization that wasn’t even supposed to exist.“And I saw some of it when Grayson…well, when Lance did the remote viewing to watch his mission, and we all linked together to tap into it,” Kirsten added.“Not all of it, of course.” She glanced around, then shook her head.“I would have expected to see more damage.”“There was a good deal of damage after the reactor was destroyed, but that was on the opposite side of the base,” Logan said [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]