They brought more tissue to the dining room table, setting it haphazardly on the wood surface. Carol scrounged some disinfectant while Turner searched the kitchen for a sharp knife.

He had searched Jim for telltale marks of alien surgery sparing none of the man’s body in the examination, then Jim had returned the favor. The women had performed a similar examination in the first-floor bathroom, each group hoping to maintain a modicum of privacy. Yet the search had still been humiliating.

Turner tried to place the emotion in the past, but he could not rid himself of the idea that the aliens had done the same thing while deciding on where they would place the artifacts. It was like a rape he could not understand.

He slammed a drawer shut and moved to the next. This was a house. All homes had sharp knives, except this one, he thought irrationally.

Carol entered the kitchen, her face equally red from the inspection, saw his behavior, and walked to a drawer set under the counter next to the stove. Smoothly, she opened the drawer and produced a knife that looked sufficiently sharp.

Nodding thanks, Turner accepted the knife from Carol and tested it against the flesh of his thumb. It was good enough. With a hand to Carol’s back, they returned to the dining room.

“Well?”

Jim held up his arm to display a red mark that Turner had found. None of the women said anything, each simply holding up an arm to display a similar mark. In the silence, the fight outside the house was picking up steam. But the fight was the farthest thing from their minds as they all looked at the knife in Turner’s hand and knew what was coming next.

Sitting at the table, Turner set his left arm on the surface and rotated his forearm until the red welt of the alien surgery was in sight.

Carol sat next to Turner and poured some of the disinfectant on a tissue, then applied it to the mark.

Quickly, while hoping the suddenness of the action would offset the pain, Turner cut the skin of his arm and dug for the device. The pain was near unbearable, but he continued as he blinked his watering eyes.

The knife grated on a hard surface that he knew was not bone. Pushing the knife below the object, he levered it up and popped it out of his arm with a small splash of blood. He snatched the alien device with his numb left hand; he hoped the action would keep the aliens from detecting the device removal. Once they were clear of the house, they would all drop the artifacts and haul ass in the opposite direction.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

That was the plan. If it would fool the aliens, or cause the bastards to attack, was a question he could not answer. They could only hope.

Once again, Carol was proving indispensable. As he calmed from the surgery and regained his composure, she was cleaning the cut and applying a bandage to his arm.

Carol was next. She placed her arm on the table and waited for his attention. Turner looked at the woman and for a moment the respect he felt for her shone on his face, then he set to the task at hand and poised with the knife above the clear white skin of her arm.

“Do it,” she whispered so softly Turner almost missed the words.

He plunged the knife into Carol’s arm and heard her gasp. She remained still as he worked as fast as he could to minimize the pain. The artifact was just below the surface of the muscle in Carol’s arm.

With a twist of the blade, he had it out of her arm and in her hand. Carol’s fingers closed tightly about the strange metal, the blood draining from her fingers in the intensity of her grip.

Setting the knife aside, Turner tenderly placed disinfectant on the wound, then applied a bandage to cover his work.

Wordlessly, he looked at the others as Carol stood and gazed out the window with a worried expression.

One by one, they all came to the table and submitted to Turner’s attention. Perhaps it was the gravity of the situation, or they had reached the point where the human mind grew numb. None of the family cried aloud. They accepted the surgery and the gift of Turner’s probing in a silence punctuated by the occasional groan.

The last to sit at the table was not Marie, as Turner had expected. Rather, it was Jim who seemed the most squeamish at the sight of the surgery and waited until he no longer had a choice.

Sitting at the table, Jim faced Turner with a wan smile, then placed his arm on the wooden surface and waited with lips pressed firmly together.

“Relax the muscles in your arm or this will be hard to do,” Turner advised, while he doused the knife in disinfectant.

Seeing Jim’s discomfort, Carol left her vigil at the window and stood behind the man who could have been her son. Gently, she placed her hands on his shoulders and kneaded the tense muscles.

Turner cut into the arm and probed for the alien tracking device. Like with the others, he found the device right away, nestled in the arm muscle. With a deft assurance, he maneuvered the tip of the knife below the device and pried it up and out of the wound.

Jim cried out inarticulately as his arm jerked and the knife slipped from the wound.

A small black object rose above the table and Turner realized with a surge of panic that it was the device. Dropping the knife, he made a desperate grab for the speck but missed and lost track of the artifact as it fell to the top of the table, then rolled off to land on the floor.

The chair flew to its back with a loud clatter as Turner desperately raced to find the device on the floor. Laying with his head on the floor and scanning for a piece of metal the size of a small pebble, he could see two other people had seen what happened and had joined in the search.

He saw something and reached for it, only to see a small black dot roll across the floor. A hand scooped up the device as Turner rolled to his stomach to give chase.

He climbed from the floor and above the table to see Carol hand the device to Jim. Turner continued to rise until he was standing.

He stared out the window and hoped they had retrieved the device in time.