It was like suddenly coming awake in the middle of a bad dream. The tension still wracked his muscles, and the sweat made him feel sticky. He could smell his own fear. It made Turner want to vomit.

He raised his bowed head and tried to remember what he had been doing before he blacked out. It had to be the blow to his head that caused him to collapse in the chair. He could not remember sitting. He could remember... nothing.

The other man, Cooper, yes that was his name, was scratching his head like a man trying to solve a puzzle as he looked at the computer screens. Turner wondered how he could have forgotten Cooper’s name.

“Boss,” Cooper looked at him with raised eyebrows, “what the hell are we doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Turner admitted, putting a hand to his head, and feeling for the bump he knew must be there, hidden amid dried blood. His mind was sharp and there was no pain from the wound. He had memories of difficult thinking with a dull throbbing ache. His hand detected nothing beyond a minor amount of blood.

“How’s your head?” Cooper saw what Turner was doing.

“It’s gone,” looked up. “The cut is gone. So is the swelling.”

“No, no.” Shaking his head, Cooper reached up and felt Turner’s head. “I distinctly remember you coming into the room and landing on top of me with blood all over the place.”

“There’s blood on the floor.” Turner bent and placed his hand on the stain while brushing away Cooper’s search with the other hand. “And bandages.” He pointed to the wrapping tossed casually in a corner.

“Aliens.” Cooper turned to his computers to call up data.

Yes, aliens. There had been a mission to make an abduction, no, to fake an abduction of a family. Turner moved to the computers and watched the screens.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

There were people in the house, mostly women, gathered in the rooms downstairs. They were milling about the rooms in confusion. Whatever had happened to Turner and Cooper had happened to the family.

“Check for missing time.”

“Doing it.” Cooper shook his head. “According to this, we’ve had four episodes of missing time, the last one being the worst at ten minutes.”

“Yeah, it’s coming back to me.” Turner sat in a chair and tapped a screen. “Pull up the tapes from fifteen minutes ago. A spaceship landed in the gully, then our outside security force went offline.”

“Right,” Cooper nodded as he tapped more keys. “The Doc went out to see what happened to the guys, then the actors came back from the woods with a wounded man.”

The computerized recording started. They watched as the men arrived at the house supporting Bob Harris. The people in the house gathered guns and loaded the weapons. Three men stepped outside, then the screen flared to a fuzzy picture while the women were moving to the windows to watch their men.

“Fast forward to the next picture.”

The fuzzy picture remained ten recorded minutes, then the picture resumed with the women in the living room of the house.

“We didn’t fire the EMP charge.”

“Missing time equals alien presence.” Turner thought aloud. “The men go outside to defend the family, then they disappear and we get hit with an extended amount of missing time. The aliens were in the house.”

“Yeah, they had to be.” Cooper motioned to the screen. “Bob Harris is missing.”

“So, they came into the house and took Bob, then messed with our memories.” Turner concluded.

“We’re missing something.” Cooper touched Turner’s head. “They came in here and fixed you. Why would they do that? And why wouldn’t they disable the computers while they were in here?”

“Maybe they hoped we wouldn’t notice the changes.” Standing, he felt no dizziness. Turner walked to the door and searched for any signs of forced entry.

“Then answer this,” Cooper faced his leader. “If they hit the house with some kind of forget ray, then why did we have those other bouts of missing time?”

The memories were all coming back to Turner, chief among them, the decision to abandon the project and get the civilians out of the house.

“They used the ray to make us forget they had actors, so they must have used it to make us forget other important pieces of information.” He looked at Cooper. “Start searching and while you’re at it, see if the people downstairs know their men are gone.”

“Now you’re talking.” Cooper set to work with a purpose.