Page 31 of The Alien's Major Dilemma

"Marissa," Cooper called. "Talk to me. Are you injured?"

"I can't tell," she told him. "I can't move."

Cooper shouted something she couldn't understand and the wrap holding her to the chair let go. She checked her movement and everything seemed to be in working order. Her neck and upper back were stiff but seemed to loosen as she flexed.

"I'm good," she called on her way into the control room. "I think we need those video feeds, though."

"Working on it," he grumbled. "There's something out there disrupting my sensors."

"I thought they were hard wired in," she said, taking the seat next to him.

"Thus my concern," he said. "How are you with a rifle?"

"I can hit a target. Pistol, too," Major Ozark said. "You have anything I can use?"

"Panel to the right," he said, his focus on the controls. "Hold your thumb on the green square."

The pounding was getting louder and Marissa worked hard to keep her movements efficient.

She found the green square and pressed her thumb against it. A quick, sharp pain made her draw her hand back with a hiss.

Blood welled up on her thumb just before the panel slid open. She licked it off and reached for one of the rifle shaped devices lined up inside. Cooper turned and took one from her. He lickedhis thumb and pressed it against a slightly rough spot on the side of the weapon and it made the slight whine of something powering on.

He held it up and pointed out the various parts.

"Muzzle, trigger, ammo switch, power lock. You should be able to activate it with the finger it took your biocode from," he said with a nod to the power lock.

Major Ozark ran her thumb over the rough spot and the rifle powered on. Lights appeared on the top of the butt with symbols she almost understood.

"You have power bolts and projectiles," he explained. "Should be full of both. Extra magazines are in the case at the bottom of the cabinet.

Major Ozark checked what she was able then reached for the extra cartridges. She was trying to identify which was which when the pounding stopped.

Sudden silence was never a good sign.

"Shit," Cooper said just before the wall slid open.

Dark shapes appeared in the opening just before the world exploded into light.

With the light came a profound absence of sound and the sensation of floating through time and space. It also brought pain and confusion and a desire for something, anything, to stop the overload on her senses.

Marissa slipped into the cool, calm nothingness that followed with a sense of relief that she knew was going to be short-lived.

When she came to, it felt like the world around her was in chaos. Her eyes created a cascade of colors and scenes out of the darkness that pressed in on her while her ears strained to make sense of any sounds they couldn't really hear.

She was being carried through a dark corridor with her hands bound behind her at the wrists, her legs crossed and tied at theknees and ankles, with everything connected by ropes that were too short running up her back.

She could breathe and her mouth wasn’t covered, so she started with an attempt to control her own breathing while she recited a prayer her grandmother had taught her as a child. It was the first thing she’d ever memorized and it did more to slow her pulse and focus her mind than anything else.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Bless the bed that I lay on…

They were deep underground and she was laying on something being carried by two well-trained people or a machine with really great shock absorbers. She could feel the movement but couldn’t feel the faults in whatever path they were moving along.

There were people talking around her and the language teased at her brain until she almost thought she could understand what they were saying.

Panic that she knew wasn’t hers rolled through her brain and Marissa felt a moment of relief that Cooper was still alive. She understood the panic he felt and she was certain he wasn’t trying to project it at her. She was tempted to hum the song that had started running through her head but she didn’t want whoever was carrying her to realize she was awake and singing to herself. As her pulse slowed, she was able to focus on the movement around her.

Her eyes adjusted slowly and she realized there was some light. Not enough to see anything clearly but enough to get a vague feel for the size of the tunnel they were moving through and the cloaked shapes around her. They were human sized, at least, though the cloaks concealed enough of their forms that she couldn’t tell how close to human shaped they were.

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