Season of Strangers Read Online Free PDF

as they had done before, strip her naked, use their cold metal projectiles to invade her body. Until now she hadn’t remembered.
    Help me! she silently screamed, thrashing like an animal caught in a trap, yet her body never moved on the bed. Julie, where are you? But maybe her sister was also ensnared, caught as readily as she. Fresh terror speared through her. She remembered the pain of before, the humiliation she had felt, and prayed it wouldn’t happen again. Prayed that if it did, she would be able to endure it.
    The shuffling continued outside. They were coming, just as she had feared. When the door slowly opened and she saw them, her mouth formed a stark O of terror and the bile rose in her throat.
    Seconds passed. She blinked and they appeared all around her, lining the sides of the bed. Her terror inched deeper, long thin tentacles reaching down into her belly. Circles of blackness whirled, clouding the edges of her mind, carrying her toward the safety of unconsciousness. Finally the darkness overtook her, freeing her from the fear, sealing her mind from what was to come. Laura welcomed the descent into oblivion.
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    A deep blue glow resonated up from the floor of the examining room, lighting the rounded girders along the curving walls behind his back. A bank of diodes, dials and gauges spread across the console down at one end, and air hissed through vents in a pulsing rhythm that matched the bleeps of the heart being monitored on the glowing blue screen.
    Val Zarkazian stared down at the subjects lying on the table. Their scanty night clothes had been removed, and the younger woman had already been examined.
    It was the second woman, the one with the dark red hair, who had brought him out from behind the monitors of his research laboratory down the hall.
    He surveyed the nude figure tossing restlessly on the stark blue surface of the table, her small hands clenched so tightly the muscles in her forearms quivered. A tongue block had been inserted, but not before she had bitten into her bottom lip, leaving a slight trace of blood.
    He studied her with the same objectivity he had used on a dozen subjects before, noting the woman was smaller than average but well-developed, and in healthy physical condition. She was a normal female, except that she was far more resistant to any sort of mental intrusion than most of the larger male specimens who had been brought in for study.
    The woman shifted restlessly on the table, fighting the tests with the same fierce determination she had shown on her visit several weeks ago.
    He glanced down at a short thin figure in dark blue protective covering, one of the lab technicians, who stood beside the table studying the subject with puzzlement and concern. Behind him, just outside the door, several soldiers milled about, members of the team who had brought the women aboard.
    They were troubled by her reaction and rightly so. The first time the study had been done, she had resisted so strongly they thought they were going to lose her.
    This time they had done only cursory testing, nothing intrusive into the body, and only the mental scanning that could be done without a probe. He looked at the monitor at the end of the table. The subject, a healthy female in her twenty-eighth year, had suffered normal childhood diseases—what was known here as measles, mumps and chicken pox; a broken wrist at the age of eight; minor scars and healed abrasions.
    Her vital signs were strong, but just as before, they had begun to shut down the moment they started their assessment of the brain.
    A row of symbols came across the glowing blue screen. Is it happening again? The message came from the viewing area where senior officers and staff watched the proceedings.
    He confirmed it was so and watched the corresponding symbols pop up on the screen. The last similar case had occurred six months ago, an artist taken from the hills outside Santa Fe. Over the years, there had been quite a number,