Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 43367 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 217(@200wpm)___ 173(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43367 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 217(@200wpm)___ 173(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Trackers—These are GTECHs with the special ability to track the psychic residue of another GTECH or a human female who’s been intimate with another GTECH. If a female possesses this residue, then only that female’s lifebond can shield her from a Tracker.
Windwalking—The ability to fade into the wind, like mist into the air, and invisibly travel far distances at rapid speed.
Prologue
Addie
Eighteen months ago…
It’s still a scorching one hundred-degree Nevada night when I reach my parents’ home for our once-a-month Sunday dinner. Of course, even with my father’s command post nearby, he only makes about half the occasions, but my mother and I still enjoy our time together. Tonight, it’s the three of us though, which I’m looking forward to very much, and we, in fact, have quite a lot to celebrate.
I park in front of the steps that lead to the sprawling porch and exit the car, staring up at my parents’ vast property. It’s a luxurious place worthy of a highly achieved scientist and a general, but it still manages to feel very white picket fence cozy with beautiful flower gardens my mother fiddles in on weekends.
With a bottle of champagne in hand, I head up the wooden steps and don’t bother to ring the bell. This is my second home, after all. I step inside the door, and I’m about to call out when I hear my parents’ voices rise with a rasp of anger in their tones.
“All this grant does is delay Project Zodius. We need to talk to Addie tonight and tell her neither of you are accepting that grant with NASA.”
“You’re trying to rush the research. You can’t do that safely,” my mother pushes back. “The work Addie and I will do with this grant is a necessary step. You have to see that. We’ll get there. Just don’t create a problem to fix a problem.”
“Bullshit,” my father says. “We’re not going to Houston. The work is focused here in Groom Lake. We need to be here. I’ll get you a private investor. I’m close.”
“Don’t do this. You know what this means to me and Addie. And she’s coming here to celebrate what is a prestigious grant with NASA.”
Their voices lower, and I can no longer make out the conversation.
I don’t understand what I’ve just overheard. The work we’re doing with NASA is about alien organisms and their impact on Earth’s atmosphere, but we’re talking microscopic findings, invisible to the human eye. Nothing with direct impact on Groom Lake. Nothing that has any connection to Groom Lake or the military that I know of at all.
There is a sudden echo of silence in the house and I quickly open the door and shut it, to call out, “Hello, hello!”
A few beats later, my mother joins me in the foyer, her blonde hair tied at her nape, which means there’s serious cooking going on. “There she is!” she exclaims. “I made your favorite spaghetti, and your dad keeps sneaking into the sauce.”
And just like that, it’s a “normal” Sunday dinner. My dad rounds the corner and greets me with a hug, and everything on the surface is normal and happy.
But it’s not. I know it’s not. I can’t unhear what I’ve heard. I wouldn’t want to, either. My mom and I need to talk, just not tonight.
“How’s that young man you’re dating?” my father asks after handing me a glass of wine.
“Already over,” I say. “He’s off on another mission, and I’m going to Houston. It’s not magic.”
“He wasn’t good-looking enough for you anyway,” my mother comments. “Polite. But not that cute.”
My father laughs. “I have to agree.”
“Of course you both do. No man will ever be hot enough for me in your eyes. You’re my father and they’re all scared of you. A general’s daughter is not an easy gig.”
“The right man won’t be afraid of me at all, honey. Watch and see.”
It’s about halfway through the meal filled with laughter and smiles that I wonder how many times they were fighting and I never knew. How many times did they fake happiness when my dad was home, just to give me a normal life? Too many, I decide.
And the fakeness of it all is what gets to me.
What is real and what is not?
***
The next morning is my final day in the university research department. My mother and I are scheduled to fly to Houston tomorrow morning for meetings, but we won’t actually head in that direction for the grant work for another month. I figure I’ll talk to her on the plane. As much as I don’t want to walk away from an opportunity to learn and grow at NASA, if we need to stay in Nevada to save my parents’ marriage, I’ll do it. She needs to do it. I mean, if the funding is the same, the resources at Groom Lake are deep. It’s not NASA, but I’ll survive missing that opportunity.