HASH: Human Alien Species Hybrid

Chapter Four

I woke with a scream, sitting up in my bed, staring around at the white-walled box of a room around me. My room. My bed. My dressing table. The small chair and stack of books that my tutor had asked me to read were right where I had left them.

The two-way glass off the far wall, darkened and reflective, was still there and still, after a dream like the one I always had, was comforting. I was in the Institute and I was safe. At least, that’s what I tried to tell my rapidly beating heart.

I stood, using the surface of the wall to brace myself. I lifted my pajama shirt and revealed my back and midriff and then I turned to see if it was still there. I used the reflective two-way glass to check the metal implant, the way I always did when I woke from my reoccurring nightmare. By now, it was no more than a habit. Maybe I’d hoped that it would simply be gone one day. But it never was. It was as much a part of me as my own spine and it had wrapped itself around my spine from the inside out, making my body its comfortable home.

“I don’t know why you’re doing that, Jade. You know it’s there.”

I didn’t look at Em for a moment, wanting to make sure, not even answering until I had used the glass to look at the lines of silvery metal radiating down my spine. It looked like someone had taken a kind of large metal starfish and welded it to the skin of my back, so that the uppermost tendrils just showed on my neck and draped slightly down my shoulders while the lowest reached all the way to the base of my spine. A silvery starburst gift from that woman the night of the crash and I couldn’t get rid of it, even if I wanted to.

This morning, Em’s voice was more irritating than comforting. Sometimes, she got on my nerves more than she should have. As I stared at the metal on my back, I could hear her in the corner throwing a fit about me ignoring her.

“Oh, please tell me that you’re not doing the whole ‘not talking to me’ thing again. We’re nineteen, not kids.” Em sighed, irritated.

I finally turned and narrowed my eyes at Em. Emerald. It had seemed like such a great joke at the time. She looked almost exactly the way I did. Nineteen, blonde hair, with the chiseled athleticism that came, in my case, from doctors’ exercise and dietary regimen. And those eyes. Those startling green eyes were so much greener than any normal eyes had a right to be.

We were both dressed in identical white sweatpants and t-shirts. There were a few differences, of course. There was no sign of the implant on Em, and her hair was almost boyishly short while mine hung in a braid almost to my waist. Oh, and she wasn’t real. There was always that.

I decided to respond to her last statement. “If I’m not a kid, then aren’t I a little old for imaginary friends?”

“Imaginary? As if, Jade. I’m as much alive as you are even if no one else can hear or see me.”

“Says you.”

“Says you, too, when you start talking about what’s beyond these walls. Aren’t I the one that you confide in? I’m pretty real then, aren’t I?”

I hated when she did that. She used moments when we actually connected against me. It was cruel and always left me at a loss for words. “You have your moments.”

“Hang on a minute. Remember the time when you were curled up in a ball in that corner and you were wailing about—”

“Okay! Okay! You made your point.”

Em put her finger to her lips. “Shh, not so loud. You wouldn’t want to wake up the doctors, would you?”

“They’re watching anyway.” I looked out at the glass. Someone was always watching. They had been since I was a little girl. Since they brought me here and worked so hard to save my life after the accident. I could remember men in military uniforms, then doctors in white coats. What scared me then was a natural part of my life now.

“Of course they are.” Em walked up to the glass, knocking on it. Her fingers didn’t make a sound against the window, but they didn’t go through, either. “I was just trying to make you feel better. I wonder if some of them still think you’re just cuckoo?”

“Cuckoo? Really, Em? Where do you come up with these words?”

“Mad then. Remember when you had half the staff scared to come into your room because you were arguing with,” Em opened her hands and opened her arms, “the air.”

I sighed and plopped down on my cot. So much for trying to make me feel better. I shook my head. “There are days when I still wonder. I mean, I’m still getting the dreams. I’m still seeing you.”

Em pouted and went to sit down on the other side of the cot. Her body didn’t make an indentation and she slid toward the wall so she could lean her back against it. There were days when she was like an annoying elder sister, and there were days when she was like an annoying child. There were very few days when she wasn’t annoying.

“Well, you’re awake now,” she said. “Read something to me.”

I shook my head. “Read it yourself.”

Em reached down, her hand passing through the topmost of the stack of books. “Very funny. Come on, Jade. What else is there to do here? I’m bored. It’s not like I sleep.”

Bored. Em was always bored. Always restless. Even now, she had stood from the cot and paced the room, stopping at each of the walls and pressing her hands flat, like she might be able to slip through them like a ghost, if she tried hard enough. Yet, she never ventured far from me, even when we were out in the Institute, going through the scientists’ endless tests.

“Ah, here we go.” Em stood in front of the door, locked from the outside. From in my room, it didn’t look like a door, but rather another section of the wall. It had always been like that. There were times when it bothered me, but not many. After all, I had everything I needed here, and the doctors were mostly just trying to protect me.

“Here we go…what?” I asked.

“You’ll see.”

“I hate when you do that.”

“Oh, Jade, loosen up and try to have some fun. You have visitors.”

Em had an ability to know when someone was close to the door. She had warned me on several occasions when I wasn’t reading or doing something they had asked me to do. I don’t know why she warned me when surveillance was on me around the clock.