Walking With Giants (Completed)

Chapter 20

Of course, Kelton got caught in the crossfire again.

This time it was with the Russian navy.

Kelton was a British chemist who also owned an extraterrestrial investigation lab in the north of Russia. Because his experiments were illegal in Britain, the Russians had given Kelton a lab in Russia to continue his work. And now, of course, they wanted him to trap the aliens.

To be honest, Kelton never actually wanted to find an alien or confront one; he just wanted to prove their existence. To try to catch one seemed mad and illogical. But, of course, he had an agreement to keep with the Russians.

Kelton had never seen an alien before that day, so it was still all new and surprising for him.

They had already found their first alien. He was playing hard to get, but he was in handcuffs, courtesy of the Russian navy, and now it was Kelton's job to interrogate him.

He told the guards outside of the solid iron gate to open the door so he could see the alien.

Then he saw it. He was what appeared to be a teenage boy, in a tattered tunic and torn jeans. It was all so surreal. Kelton felt a rush to his head and hoped that he would not be knocked out during the interrogation. The boy was strapped with metal cuffs to a steel stretcher with brakes on the wheels. It scared Kelton, to put it in the simplest terms.

Kelton took one step towards the alien. Two. Suddenly he was peering over the boy in the stretcher and was overcome with powerful emotion. But his urge to communicate with it overcame his urge to run.

"What had he said when you brought him in?" Kelton asked the guards in Russian.

"He started cussing at us in American, and then stopped and stayed silent until we brought him here. And then..." The guard stopped talking.

"And then what?" Kelton asked him, inpatient.

"He started singing," The guard finished nervously.

Even though it seemed silly to the guards, it just added to Kelton's tension. Why would the alien be singing? Nevertheless, cussing in American?

What is this is not an alien? What if it's just... a teenage boy?

"Leave us," he ordered the guards, and they exited and closed the door.

Kelton walked over to the alien and peered over him until the boy opened his eyes. "Are they gone?" He asked in American, which was a bit unusual and caused further suspicion to Kelton that this was not an alien.

"Do you know why you are here?" English felt weird on his tongue because he communicated so much now in Russian.

"You know. So I know."

"So tell me," Kelton responded.

"You and your little army of minion clones are planning to take down all sixty-six of us. Not exactly thoroughly planned out." The boy licked something on the corner of his mouth.

"We had to take action quickly. I hope you understand. But I have reason to believe you are a lost boy. Not... an alien. Am I correct, or is there... something I'm missing?"

"Evidence. You haven't even taken a blood sample from me, or given me an electric shock."

Kelton was a bit startled. That was exactly what I was thinking about doing a few minutes ago.

"Of course it was. What kind of alien would I be if I couldn't read minds?"

"When was I born?" Kelton tested the boy.

"1964 in a small town east of London. Your brother died from food poisoning when he was four and you were seven, and your parents moved to South Vietnam eight years later for a missionary trip and were robbed and murdered by a biker gang. Such a strange occurrence." The boy clicked his tongue in disapproval.

"Wrong. I was born in China and I was an only child."

"Nice try, Kelton. You went to China once when you were thirty-four to scout out evidence for an alien that was supposedly haunting a village. Sadly, there was no alien." The boy looked up at Kelton. "But now you have me, don't you?"

"How about you tell me your name now that you know mine?"

"Fair enough. I'm Ursa." The boy didn't say anything else.

"Not Ursa the Great from Vulcan or something like that?"

"No. Just Ursa."

"Is there something you are not telling me?"

"Well, I'm only here for one reason. I could be out of this stretcher in a second if I wanted to."

"Why don't you?"

"Because I'm hungry. I need something to eat."

Kelton hesitated. It seemed very humble and strange of an extraterrestrial being to ask for something as small as... food. "So if I gave you a sandwich you would leave?"

"Something like that. But, if you won't give me food, I'll just go find some myself."

Kelton searched his lab bag and found a small Tupperware container of chicken in bite-sized pieces. "This will be a true test to see if you are an alien. If you are what you say you are, come over here and get the chicken." Ursa was still strapped to the stretcher, and was peering at the Tupperware container longingly.

"Fine. You've forced me to do this." Ursa's body turned into a torrent of leaves and reformed standing up next to the stretcher. He walked over to Kelton, swiped the container from him, and pried open the lid and shoved the chicken down his throat. "I better leave before you call in reinforcements," He said with his mouth full of chicken. He swallowed. "Goodbye." And, with that, the only evidence of an alien living vanished into the air duct in little tiny leaves.

I'm retiring.