The Wild Ba’Neesh Chapter Five ©2019 Fay Thompson All Rights Reserved

“I can’t move!” Mick said, his voice low.

“Of course not. The tree has you.” Kiena answered.

He couldn’t see her and her voice was right up against his ear sending sparkly shivers into his nervous system. He wanted to pull away, to brush her off, but only his facial muscles seemed to work, the rest of him almost felt like it wasn’t there at all. He tried to relax, so far the bad guys hadn’t found him. It really was true, no one looked up. Several of them had approached the tree and he’d thought for sure they would find him, but they only looked up a little and then away, talking into their throat coms. They sounded upset and frustrated. He didn’t really want them to find him, not when they sounded angry.

As tired as he felt, it was enough to be able to look down on their search. He was clear now; they were searching for him. He’d watched them find his locator and follow his trail toward the tree and then they simply lost him. He couldn’t figure out exactly why but he guessed Kiena had done something. He worried about that, not knowing what she could do or would do. She seemed so matter of fact when she told him things like the tree having him. What did that mean?

He waited until the searchers were out of earshot before he whispered, “Why can’t I move?”

For a long time she didn’t answer and since he couldn’t see her, it made him think he was actually alone and caught in one of those sleep paralysis moments or something. For sure he was seriously tired so maybe his body had fallen asleep in the crook of the tree, but, he didn’t really believe that.

“The tree is digesting your Vrill.” She finally said.

That made no sense to Mick. “You mean it’s eating me?” He tried to feel upset by the idea but mostly he felt drained, like someone had pulled the plug on his body sucking out all of his energy.

“You know trees have roots, right?” She said.

He would have glared but that took too many muscles. “Yeah?”

“They pass nutrients up and down in cycles both inside the internal and external systems. Right now the tree is passing your Vrill into its roots in order to fail the Vrill trace devices they are using to try to find you.”

That almost made sense, if he knew what Vrill was. And, how did she know what the tree was doing, was she a tree whisperer? She seemed to guess his question, making him think she was inside his head again, a notion that he really didn’t like at all. He was sort of hoping she wasn’t a hallucination as that made him crazy and who could trust crazy.

“Vrill is Soek energy like electricity is an energy favored by humans.” She answered his un-verbalized question.

“You keep saying Soek. I don’t know what that is either. I’m human, okay. H U M A N, human. Got it?”

“If you were human they would have caught you already.” She announced.

He noted she did that a lot, made declarative statements. A know-it-all, show off, loud mouth, arrogant, annoying personality. Why would his brain make up such an obnoxious phantasm?

“Well, I’m human and not this stupid Soek you keep nattering on about.” He answered. “I’m not caught because I removed my locator and hid in a tree and they haven’t looked up.”

“So, explain why the drones haven’t seen you, they are looking down.” She replied sarcastically.

Drones? He couldn’t turn his head only shift his eyes to the sides of his sockets. There, in the far distance he could see something small hovering in the growing light. Drones? Who would bother sending drones after him? Then he thought about the darkened city. Did they really think he was a terrorist? It made the military uniformed enforcers make more sense if she was right. They would see him as a threat. They might shoot him if they did see him. He didn’t like thinking she might have been right all along or that he really was a target of well-trained armed militia types. If that were true, then maybe she was right about the Soek and Vrill things too. He didn’t want to be a non-human, it had been hard enough accepting his real parents had rejected him, even if his adoptive parents had always been nice enough. He could always tell they thought he wasn’t exactly what they had hoped for in a son.

Why weren’t the drones seeing him? His thoughts reverted to her question. He could sort of understand the men not seeing him up the tree trunk because he would be hidden by branches and leaves. But, from above, there was less blocking sight of him, right?

Watching the searchers quickly became boring and his frozen position in the tree made him warm and sleepy. It felt like those times when his game froze and he had to sit and wait feeling bored and stupid. Soon he was out, too tired to even dream.

Hours passed. Elias had managed to identify the boy’s molcom but as yet was struggling to find it, worldwide. He was trying to analyze whether there were other factors inhibiting the triangulation but Tech Ops back in Montana could only offer the unhelpful suggestion that the electronic event had in some way affected the search. They could find the molcoms of other nearby operatives but they couldn’t lock onto the boy. It didn’t make sense.

Jordy kept feeding the Ba’Neesh and was thankful when they chose to nap in the dappled sunlight, totally indifferent to the DireSec operatives who entered the vicinity checking in while everyone waiting for the locals to complete their investigation. They attracted attention, unwelcome attention. It couldn’t go on forever.

The local team had searched the area within a half-mile, twice and found exactly nothing. They had discarded DNA trace right up to the exact point where the boy had vanished. Not only had he physically disappeared, his body stopped shedding cells. According to their tech, he was at the point where his trace ended, except, it was a patch of grass between graves and no matter what they used to examine the site, there wasn’t a hidden chamber or tunnel or anything else they could detect to explain the situation.

Elias suggested to Jordy that they might be looking at a new type of tech that projected the boy and even discarded DNA until it was mysteriously shut off. Jordy added that unhappy suggestion to his growing list. Was such a thing even possible? While it was true the Ba’Neesh laying among the graves looked like human females, they shed Ba’Neesh DNA, of that he was certain because WiBo Tech had confirmed it to him on inquiry. Further, how could a holograph project physical trace like a heat signature and radiating biological data? Their systems had picked up all of that. Had someone learned how to teleport? Modern science was close and the Citadel was exploring Vrill potentials but he would have heard about it, right?

Were the boy’s medical files a ringer? That possibility was growing. When the blood on the ground didn’t match up with the bloodwork on record, it posed new questions. It looked like a mule had been used, one made to appear Soek but only after re-testing years after the boy was found. There were simply too many loose ends and watching the Anti-Terrorism Team had become a torture of inactivity. Jordy could answer none of these questions without direct intel.

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Elias brought both of the DireSec floaters as close to the perimeter of the investigation as he could. Both used mechanical cloaking technology that ran on old tech design. The skins of the floaters were embedded with tiny camera/display modules that basically transferred image content from one side of the disk-shaped craft to the opposite side. It allowed the craft to seamlessly blend into any situation with very little distortion. He sat in the smaller floater as the larger was designated for operative transport and technically, he was higher in rank than a DireSec operative. While they waited he used the powerful floater generator to do more intensive analysis.

Eventually, the local team pulled out and their own floater arrived silently to collect them and leave.

Jordy called out to Elias to follow the DireSec team down to ground zero. The Ba’Neesh were already up and moving, easily distancing the operatives. Jordy raced after them.

Elias got the alert that Tule Soc was also closing in on the location fast. It was a race. He placed his floater as close to the retrieval point of the boy’s locator as he could, hoping to collect his own sample of the blood splatter.

The Ba’Neesh arrived first and headed straight toward the point where the boy had vanished. They were flanked by both arriving teams who weren’t at all concerned with being identified by their opposition. In this instance, they shared similar motives. Perisee and Lemista plunged across the boundary and their holographic displays failed. Jordy groaned. He could see the stark shock on all of the non-Soek faces of both his operatives and the Tule Soc.

Eric yelled out, “You brought those creatures here?”

Jordy shrugged, talking to Elias on his external, “Why did their devices fail?”

Elias was scrambling to analyze yet another anomaly. As if drawn by a magnet both teams raced after the fast-moving Ba’Neesh who seemed utterly indifferent to the loss of their camouflage. They were circling a massive, very old oak tree at seventy-five feet or so past the border. Both were looking up with enough fixed intensity to bring out weapons and hurried calls for men to take defensive positions.

Jordy yelled out, “Pull back, pull back.” But, even as he pivoted back toward the boundary he felt something latch onto his feet as if he had just pulled on iron boots. He wasn’t alone. It quickly became clear that the effect was progressive, crawling up the bodies of men and Soek alike to freeze them like statues in the cemetery garden. They were left with movable mouths and eyeballs which became a chorus of loud screams, threats and even some crying.

Jordy, who had only a partial view of the Ba’Neesh, was doubly shocked to realize the weapon, whatever it was, included them. Both of them appeared to be equally well frozen into position. He yelled out, “Elias, stay back.” Hoping his aide would not cross the boundary. Why had it activated for his operatives and not earlier when the local team had crawled all over the same area for hours?

The screaming wakened Mick who watched in captivated semi-horror as a whole new bunch of people were frozen all around the tree. Then he saw them, two females, naked, furry, one with twisted horns and the other with antlers. They were staring up at him and instinctively he knew they saw him. They looked amused, not angry. The men, those yelling, they were mostly angry or worse, frightened and angry.

“They can see me.” He said, pointing with his right hand. Until that exact second he hadn’t realized he was no longer frozen to the tree.

“Of course.” Kiena answered, her tone a bit gloating.

“You did this to them, didn’t you?” Mick stretched, his body an agony of stiffness and poked bruises.

“The tree greeted them.” She answered obliquely. “We should hurry, the Ba’Neesh will figure it out fairly fast.”

“Those female creatures are Ba’Neesh?” Mick was more than willing to leave the tree as these frozen security people didn’t look too friendly and he didn’t want to be anywhere near when they unfroze. He could imagine they wouldn’t be happy.

“Of course. Fairly young too.” Kiena remained invisible and her voice sounded close to his ear or even inside Mick’s head, he couldn’t be sure which except it didn’t tingle like when she was a sparkly ball. He credited that as a small favor, likely temporary.

He swung off the last limb and dropped to the grass. He could see that everyone that could see him was staring at him. He felt awkward and what did you say to temporarily frozen people who wanted to get you in ways that were likely unpleasant or even terminal. But, he couldn’t help walking toward the Ba’Neesh pair. They were much better looking in the fur than Kiena was in blue light. He looked them both up and down.

“Got a good look?” Perisee asked.

He jumped back. He hadn’t thought the creature would speak to him.

“You look real.” He said. He forced himself to reach out to touch her although his sense of personal danger rapidly escalated until he could barely manage his right forefinger on her shoulder. She had breasts. Adult female breasts. Uncovered adult female breasts. He blinked rapidly and pulled his hand back.

“Of course I am real.” Perisee snorted. “I see you too young Soek boy. I smell you now. I will taste your blood. I will gore you and drink you and you will scream and I will laugh. You won’t escape me now.”

“I want him, Perisee.” The antlered one interrupted, forcing Mick to shift his rather horrified attention away from the words of the first one. She wanted to gore him? Gross!

“I called him first.” Perisee answered.

“So what. I will get free first and he will be mine until I toss him into the pot to boil his bones.”

“What?” Mick was edging away from both of them. “You are both bat shit crazy.” He said. He wasn’t alone in his thoughts, most of the operatives were having similar reactions.

“We can share him.” Perisee announced triumphantly.

To Mick’s horror, he saw that she was starting to move her head.

“To the Soek stuck outside with the vehicle.” Kiena whispered.

Mick looked around and saw a lone man standing next to something with a very slight outline. Cloaking. This was better than any game he’d yet played. He ran toward the vehicle. It was clear to him that he’d won this first battle. How, he had no clue. But, in a game, when you won a battle you got the hell out of there quick before your opponent could retaliate. Except. He neared an older looking male with an intense expression. The man had several things that might be weapons. Mick needed to up his skills level. He yanked the items away from the obviously furious male. “Sorry.” He said aloud.

He ran toward the lone Soek who also had a weapon out. He whispered to Kiena that the guy wasn’t frozen. She, as expected, didn’t answer.

The man lifted his tube as they approached the tree’s boundary.

Kiena called out, “Assist Soek.”

Mick ran through, waiting for the weapon to deploy. Watching the man with his arm wavering, hearing yells from the frozen telling him to shoot. He reached the man and took the weapon from his hand.

“We gotta leave man, before those Ba’Neesh figure it out.” Mick said.

Elias blinked. He must assist the boy. The boy hadn’t spoken but he’d heard Speech. Of that he was certain and the Vrill was hard and toppy and vastly different from any Vrill he’d ever felt. Before the Ba’Neesh figure it out. That’s what the boy had said.

Everyone else had heard it too, including the Ba’Neesh.

Elias helped Mick into the small floater and watched helplessly as Mick removed all of his personal devices, guided by what intel Elias longed to know.

“Where?” Elias managed to ask, sitting in the centralized driver’s seat. Once programmed the craft could fly itself, or it could be manually piloted.

“Away from here. Oh, and does this floater have weapons? Of course it does. Damage all nearby vehicles to slow down these people when they get free.” Mick said, listening to Kiena. He was a good gamer. It was a simple translation to consider this whole frozen tree defensive thing as a deployed weapon. It was escape time, for real. He was now pretty sure the older man couldn’t hear Kiena directly, except when she did that weird voice thing. He noted she had called him a Soek too. Maybe being a Soek was a thing, like being a half-elf in a game. A species type?

“A preference of direction?” Elias was trying to identify how long the compulsion of the Speech words would last. The cadence and intensity were beyond anything in his experience. Assist. It was a terribly simple word, hard to evade or sneak around in strategy.

“You are some kind of security guy, right? I need to get away from the rest of you, those guys down there, those guys earlier. What is the best evasion technique? I don’t know the rules here.”

It was quite an admission. Elias stored it for later. The kid was bright enough to recognize him as some kind of security. What else? People after him. Asking for help. He couldn’t really be asking for help after evading three top teams by hiding in a tree. Really? Still, he reasoned, he had captured or been captured by the target. Score one for DireSec.

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