H.A.L.F.: The Makers Read Online Free PDF Page B

a –”
    “Exactly. So you know that it is quite painful and we can catch only a word here and there. Likely our brains have not evolved the capacity for telepathic communication as they have.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ian said.
    “You didn’t get that awful buzz in your head?” Erika asked.
    “Yeah, I felt that, but I didn’t hear them speak.”
    “Not even inside your head? Like a word was just planted there but you knew it wasn’t your own thought? Like you were hearing a voice in your head?” Erika asked.
    Ian shook his head.
    “Then some of us may be more receptive than others. The point is, what I can tell you is only fragments. I don’t have the whole picture, and the torture of them trying to communicate with me caused me to pass out. I suppose that’s why they brought me back here. To rest maybe, at least until they decide to try again.”
    Erika went to Dr. Randall and knelt beside him. She put her hand on his, and he looked up at her with his tired eyes. “What do you know,” she said. Her voice was softer now. “Why do they want you here?”
    Dr. Randall took a deep breath and let it out. “As far as I can tell, they want me to help them create a hybrid, like 9. I mean Tex.”
    “But why?” asked Erika. Dr. Randall was only confusing her more than helping.
    “That, I do not know. But they want me to recreate my work from A.H.D.N.A. here. That much I know.”
    Ian sat down on the other side of Dr. Randall, folding his legs into a cross-legged position. “But what about Tex? Where did they take him?”
    “I don’t know,” Dr. Randall said. “I didn’t see him with them. I assumed he was with the two of you.” He gave a tired look first to Erika then to Ian. “But it appears that Tex brought them exactly what they wanted. Me.”
    “Do you think he was, I don’t know, working for them?” asked Ian.
    Dr. Randall hunched his shoulders.
    The notion that Tex lured them to a trap made more and more sense in Erika’s mind. He was never our friend. It was all an act to get our help so he could deliver Dr. Randall to them. But it had been so convincing. He seemed to have a crush on me. Was that a lie too?
    “Do you know what they intend to do with us?” Ian asked.
    “I’m sorry, Ian. I do not know. But if they intended for you to walk among them – to explore their planet and be free – then why are you locked in this dark, empty room?”
    Neither Erika nor Ian responded to the question to which they all suspected the answer. There was no use saying the shared conclusion out loud. Voicing the fear only gave it life.
    “I know one thing,” Ian said. “If they don’t feed me soon, I may wring the neck of the next little grey guy I see and find a way to roast him.”
    “Probably tastes like chicken,” Erika joked, though she had no desire to find out.
    Her stomach rolled over with hunger. She took up position beside Dr. Randall, her back pressed against the cold, hard wall. She tried not to think about ice cream and her favorite food, a veggie burrito covered in her mom’s red chile sauce.
    Thinking about her mom made her want to cry. Somehow, a billion miles away, Tina was less like a hot-mess-of-a-worn-out alcoholic and more of a mom than Erika typically considered her. Before Erika’s dad died, Tina had taken care of Erika when she was sick. She’d cooked and taken her to school. She’d talked to her and been there for her. At least most of the time.
    And now, her belly aching from hunger, Erika’s mind focused on memories of family holidays filled with feasts her mom had prepared. Erika clung to those memories now in the dim, dark, cold emptiness that surrounded her. She played them over and over in her mind until she could almost smell roasting chiles and sizzling onions.
    Erika’s lids were heavy again. Why am I so tired? She was about to fall asleep again when the door slid open. Her survival instinct and hatred of confined spaces had her on her