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B.U.D
Chapter 2 - The Truth

Chapter 2 - The Truth

“Go, go, go!” A team of paramedics rushed my brother out of the auditorium, kicking open the fire door and pushing him into the night. Officers in black and blue surrounded me on all sides, futilely trying to comfort me. Nothing they could say would make me feel better. I was a devastated wreck, curled up on stage left, covered in my brother’s blood and my own tears. I wished that they would just go away.

“He’s going to the best hospital in the city,” one of the officers assured me, “it isn’t over yet.”

“He was shot in the head!” I slammed my fist into the floor. “Oh my God, he was shot in the head!” I couldn’t believe it. In the blink of an eye, he was taken from me. My best friend in the whole world was taken from me. All so that I could live. He had saved me from my own father.

I hated my dad for what he had done. He was the epitome of evil – and now he was dead, shot by one of the other concert goers point-blank in the head. Good riddance, I thought. I looked up into the main aisle and saw him there. His disgusting trigger hand had slid out from under the blanket that the cops had draped over his body. It made me nauseous knowing that his blood flowed through me.

The officers cleared an opening for my mother to comfort me. She was surprisingly collected, especially in light of what had happened. She knelt down and put her hand on my head in reassurance. Then she leaned up against my ear, “we need to talk,” she said.

I couldn’t figure out what we needed to talk about. My brother was shot! What part of that required a discussion.

“We will escort you both to the hospital,” the police officers accompanied us out of the building and into the mercury-lit parking lot. They literally had to carry me to our car. My legs were like jelly.

“Can we take my car?” My mom asked the officers.

“Are you okay to drive, mam?”

“I think so,” she said, “I need a moment to be with my son. He is very clearly traumatized after what just happened. Please let me ride alone with him.”

“Of course,” the officers acquiesced to her demands. “We will drive in front of you. Do you know the directions to the hospital?”

“Yes,” my mom hastily locked us into her Tahoe and then patiently watched the officers walk towards their squad cars. When they were far enough out of view, she turned toward me and grabbed me firmly by the shoulders.

“Mom, what’s going on?” I asked her. “We need to hurry up and get to the hospital.”

“Ethan,” she looked me square in the face. Tears erupted from her face in roaring streams, as she pleaded with me. “You need to get out of here.”

“What are you talking about?” I grabbed her arms and tried to calm her down, “Dad is dead, he can’t hurt us anymore. The only place we need to go is the hospital.”

“There isn’t much time,” my mom jammed a small metallic orb into my hand and pushed me off of her. She backed the car up and began tailing the cops towards the hospital. Their bright blue and red lights cleared the traffic out of our way, allowing us to press forward with ease.

“What is this?” I rolled the object around in my hand. It was about the size of a half-dollar and almost as light as air. My brother was shot, my dad was dead, and now my mom was throwing this on me. I didn’t understand what was going on.

“As soon as we get to the hospital, slip away from me and go to 314 N. Golden Spruce Court. The access code is 5677.”

“Mom, please talk to me. I don’t understand –”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Everything will make sense once you get there.” She pulled a small pill from her pocket and handed it to me. “For now, you need to take this.”

“This isn’t some kind of suicide pill or something, right?”

“We don’t have time for this! Please take it.”

Putting blind faith in my mother, I chucked the pill into my mouth and swallowed it down with a half-drunk bottle of water that happened to be in the cupholder. “Oh gross, that tastes horrible,” I said.

A bitter tingling sensation flooded through my body. The very fabric of my existence felt wobbly and woozy as the drug took hold of me. I instantly regretted trusting her. Perhaps it really was a suicide pill.

“Stay strong,” my mom encouraged me, “this next part is going to hurt.”

“Owwwwwwwwww!” I gasped in pain as the skin on my left side began to bubble and curdle. It pulled away from my body in huge chunks, separating from me and splashing onto the center console. “What the hell?” I jumped to the back of my seat, desperately gasping down air as my very molecular structure disintegrated into piles of blood and flesh.

“Chris’s father and I used to use these to hide our relationship from our commanding officer,” her hands trembled as she gripped the steering wheel, “its black-market cloning technology from Minitour Prime, not fun stuff, but it does the job.”

“What?!” I tried to make sense of what she was telling me while also fighting against the pain of my own body’s rapid disintegration. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“I’m an alien,” she told me bluntly, “as are you, and right now you are in grave danger.”

“Of course, I’m in grave danger! My body is turning into liquid!”

“Your molecular chemistry should begin to re-stabilize any moment now. As soon as it does, you will need to switch clothes with your clone so that the police don’t catch on to what we are doing. You left one of your school gym uniforms in back, you will have to change into that.”

Sure enough, just as my mother had said, my body began to return to its normal shape and composition. As my pain subsided, I unlatched my seatbelt and slid over the center console where my pool of flesh and blood was forming into a replica of me.

At that moment I began to piece everything together. That book that my mom was writing was not a memoir about a fictional character at all, it was a book about her. Which meant that I really was an alien, or a human-alien hybrid more accurately. I couldn’t believe what was happening. In an instant my life was being uprooted, my very being was being questioned.

“Chris is going to survive,” my mom told me as I undressed, “he is even more of an alien then you. Chris’s father is from the Andromeda Galaxy as am I. Simple projectile weaponry like that won’t do much to him.”

“Why do I have to run away?” I asked my mom as I slipped into my gym clothes, tossing my blood-stained outfit into the front seat.

“Everything you need to know is at the address I gave you.” My mom gave me a final sendoff, “You have two years to get stronger, by then your clone will no longer be able to hold its form, and you will have to return.”

“Don’t worry,” the mound of flesh solidified into my figure, and turned towards me, “I will make sure that nobody knows that you are gone,” it said to me in a perfect imitation of my own voice.

“We’re approaching the hospital now,” my mom said as she entered a downtown parking garage. We pulled into a parking spot and then she turned around and motioned me close to her. “Whatever happens, know that I love you.” She gave me a kiss on the forehead before exiting the vehicle with my clone, and that was it. She was gone.

Unsure of my place in the universe, I laid on the floor of our SUV and let all the events of the last hour sink in. My piano recital had turned out to be much more eventful than I ever could have imagined, and not in a good way.

## ##

Walking barefoot across the cement hardscape I weaved between alleys and buildings as I made my way towards the address that my mom had told me – 314 N. Golden Spruce Court. My clone had taken all my possessions minus my gym uniform and my phone. I almost certainly looked like I was high on drugs or mentally unstable to any passerby’s who saw me, especially when you consider that I still had my brother’s dried blood in my hair and on my face.

I hopped over piles of broken glass and cut through abandoned industrial areas as I crept towards a decrepit old warehouse district on the city’s southern flank. It was a long and tiresome journey, but surprisingly easy. I was a quick runner, and although running without shoes or socks felt a little strange, it wasn’t all that different from running with some of the minimalist ultra-light running shoes that I had used in the past.

After a couple of hours, I had made it to the 300 block of Golden Spruce Court. There was nothing ‘golden’ about this street. Rusted tin can warehouses and burnt out factories littered the area. Where in the world did mom send me? I wondered.

By now it was completely dark, but using the streetlights and bonfires as my guide I was able to sneak along the edge of the street until I found the address. A small shack sized warehouse sat in a field of muck in front of me. I walked to the front of the structure and used the flashlight app on my phone to look for the keypad that my mother had told me about, but there was nothing. In fact, there wasn’t even a front door to this building. I had to walk into it through a rusted out hole in the wall.

I carefully walked into the hollowed-out building and looked around. Thankfully there was nobody inside, I had half expected a strung-out old hobo to jump down from a rafter and split me in half.

“There’s nothing in here.” I plopped my ass onto the floor and stared up at the decaying ceiling. “I don’t get this.” I shined my flashlight all around the room, but there was nothing. Just a few primitive tools and some crumpled old beer cans, no keypad, and no answers.

I reached into the pocket of my shorts and pulled out the strange metallic orb that my mother had given me. Was I supposed to do something with it?

I touched it against the floor, against the walls, against anything that I could think of – even the beer cans. Nothing happened.

“I wish I had Fluffy right now,” I collapsed again in frustration.

I stared up at the ceiling and wondered what I would do next. I couldn’t go home anymore, and I had no money or possessions. I was essentially homeless. I might have to go into the wilderness and put my scout skills to the test, or maybe I would have sneak away to a place where nobody knew me and start my life over. I had worked so hard to keep my grades up and get into the Air Force Academy. This sucks, I thought.

That’s when it dawned on me. The ceiling was getting smaller and smaller, shrinking to the size of a small rectangle.

“Is this thing an elevator.” I sat up and looked around.

Sure enough my surroundings were changing. I was no longer surrounded by a dilapidated old warehouse, no, I was in an underground high-tech chamber – and in the middle of the room was a spaceship.

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