The Alien Inside Me

Chapter 10: In the Archives

I was back in my office with the girls and I was glad to say that I looked a lot more rested than them. Becca said that Raegov totally tore into her over the whole date thing, Candice said that she was being sassy again and Krayteq edged her the whole night, and from Dawn's subdued tone I could tell that Yrekaw might have been less of a bitch than she initially thought.

The night before (despite the thorough mind fucking), Aryzox and I just got acquainted and watched some of the "human T.V. shows" (as he called them) that he watched back on his planet. To my relief, he turned out to not only not mind the fact that I can't shut up during shows, but also joined in on my sarcastic commentary. He particularly liked comedy shows, but he would say that on their planet comedy was more like veteran humor because most of the natives were warriors.

"So, did we learn anything new last night, gals?" Becca asked between sips of her disgustingly sweet coffee.

"Apparently they are from a planet whose inhabitants are either people seeking refuge and safety or warriors who protect them." I said, wracking my brain to filter out the things I learned about Aryzox and the things I learned about the aliens in general, "And they're vegans."

Dawn rolled her eyes and leaned her hip against my desk, "Well that rules out the possibility of Yrekaw eating me if I annoy him too much."

We all chuckled, but paused when one of our co-workers walked too closely to the door for us to be sure of our privacy.

"Though Krayteq messed me up last night," Candice said turning a little pink, "He's one of those people who gets to talking when they think they have control. So I know now that their planet had ordered them a long time ago to come to Earth in order to provide protection, then a bunch of aliens found their mates and decided to continue returning in order to help aliens who couldn't find their mates elsewhere."

That was sort of the answer to why, but the real questions were still, why here and why were all of us enticed to move here just before they landed? This wasn't a town with a huge planetary diplomatic influence. We all angled towards Dawn to see if she learned anything.

Dawn's face turned a bright red, "I- uh- just learned that their mating habits are kind of... intense and- um- mating is for their entire lifespan."

"Sounds like you had a good time last night, Dawn." Candice grinned evilly, "Nice to see I'm not the only one being put through the ringer in this situation."

"Shut up, idiot." Dawn grumped, looking ready to bolt out of the room.

"Calm down, guys. I think that we should do some digging in the archives, because the internet has given us nothing." I interrupted, knowing my brooding skittish friend may not be able to take anymore teasing.

"Great!" Becca exclaimed, "Dawn and I have some interviews scheduled, but, Daisy and Candice, you guys should go down and have a look before the monsters go to sleep and get sucked back into our brains."

Candice latched onto my arm and smiled, "Come with me, I'll introduce you to my domain."

A few minutes later and I understood why Candice loved it down in the archives so much. There were rotating shelves of old articles and some books that were previously used as references, one light bulb barely lit the entire room, and there must have been a heater around as it was pleasantly warm. Breathing in the scent of old paper and ink, I felt the familiar spark of excitement I always felt when researching anything.

Knowledge was thrilling to me, I couldn't get enough of it. It was part of the reason I was an English major, because my affinity for learning things made me gravitate towards the written word. I smiled into the expansive room, taking note of the desk covered in computer equipment in a corner.

"So, do you have any suggestions for where to start?" Candice asked, sitting down and spinning in her swivel chair.

"The tree lighting ceremonies," I suggested, "That's the time that they come each year. Then we need to look for missing persons reports around that time. I don't believe they would be reported here, since it seems we were enticed here to be used as alien bait, I think that this happened to other people too."

Candice let out a heavy breath, "Well, we better get started. Tony is super relaxed at the beginning of the week, but this might take a long time."

We poured over the archives in the morning, collecting the issues we needed from each shelf and creating stacks based on the time they were written and the relevance of the titles. Then we managed to make it through several stacks, photocopying and marking up any particularly useful information.

Come lunchtime, we were in the lunchroom, explaining our preliminary findings to Dawn and Becca.

"So, we couldn't find any missing persons reports," I began around a bite of salad, "But we did see the population of the town went down significantly after the first two tree lighting ceremonies reported. Then, the population was fairly stable, but we found a gossip column that reported several runaways annually."

"Then, we found that there was a missing report last year, a young man who just recently moved here." Candice continued for me, "The only weird thing, was that there weren't any other new people missing that year, just a few runaways reported in the ad columns."

Dawn rubbed at her neck, "So, that means we were the first large group enticed here, but we weren't the first victims of these nasty parasites."

I nodded, "We think that someone here knows about our paranormal friends and after the first guy was abducted, they figured it would be better to draw in more new people as sacrifices than let the town's new generations dwindle to nothing. Someone like-"

"Hannah Brown." Becca completed, frowning, "She definitely knows about them and knew that she was dangling us like dead chickens in front of crocodiles."We all quieted as we felt the sudden heaviness in our heads, they were back.