Shrink Wrapped

"Habla Espanol?"

"We tried," the complimenting doctor answered. "She doesn't capiche. Whatever entity you were speaking with is either not present, or keeping mum. Kellie, you say?" he enquired with a raised eyebrow; Kagan nodded. "This kind of dislocation is to be expected following serious trauma. English could be her native language and she might hear it as gibberish. Don't put too much stock in her present confusion, okay?"

"Doctor?" All present reacted to the alarm in the nurse's voice. Kagan looked down to see a ghastly, blackish green liquid oozing from the crotch of Kellie's jeans and from beneath her buttocks. Responding to everyone else's alarm, Kellie rose up, even as Kagan put a hand out to restrain her, and looked between her legs. She screamed and began to thrash wildly and Kagan was unceremoniously elbowed clear and then pushed from the room.

* * *

The interview room-Kagan chose not to think of it as interrogation-was a commandeered family counseling space on the third floor. This was his fourth debriefing that day, of God knew how many to come. Across the wood grained, laminated table were a man and a woman, both in proscribed business wear, both in their thirties, both casually disinterested and condescending at the same time. This pair worked for Homeland Security. Already dissatisfied with his meager, first-hand knowledge were the CIA, the FBI, and for whatever unfathomable reason, the California Bureau of Investigation. Kagan pointed out for the umpteenth time that that they knew more about the situation than he did. The conversation was over an open channel and recorded by every agency and interested party on Earth. Of course, that was the problem.

"I didn't institute the connection," he reminded the woman. "I used the copter's loudspeaker to hail the, uh, visitor, and she found and utilized the C5 frequency."

"That's the frequency you use to communicate with the emergency department while in flight?" Kagan nodded. "To receive instruction and relay visual medical observations?" Kagan nodded again. He had explained this to them twice now. "You're a military pilot. Why didn't you immediately switch to a scrambled communications protocol."

Kagan growled mentally. Tightly, though civilly, he reminded them that both ends of a scrambled communication required hardware, and complex scramble software. "I was speaking to a body floating in the air. I didn't see any radio equipment, agent."

"I see." Which meant she didn't see anything, Kagan thought sourly.

He wondered what kind of problems this would cause his commission. He liked being a reserve officer; it gave him monthly access to the latest military hardware and that beat the crap out of flying rescue choppers everyday. Not that he would ever complain about the privilege, especially after today. He liked saving lives, and he was good at it. But this kind of notoriety could pull down eyebrows in all the wrong places.

"Is she awake?" Kagan asked.

Without looking up, the woman shrugged. Not her concern.

"Have they analyzed the secretions yet?"

The woman shrugged again. She reminded him of a high school vice-principal examining a trouble student's disciplinary file. His file. Her jet black, perfectly cut bob and controlled demeanor contrasted jarringly with his memory of the girl in the emergency room. Crazily tangled hair and half-crazed eyes, she was still remarkably beautiful. Scandinavian-like features: high cheekbones, faultless nose, proud, dimpled chin, flawless skin...the girl looked like a displaced, Hollywood starlet. He put her age at 18 (he believed Marie had told him that, though he couldn't be certain); his 20 year old would fall madly head over heels in love with her. But then, so would any 20 year old.

"Marie told me that reversing the girl's condition required removing herself physically from the girl's body," Kagan reminded her. "I'm guessing, based upon the location of the discharge, that's exactly what happened."

"We don't know that," the woman said disinterestedly. "And it doesn't matter anyway, because the incident is classified. I'm not privy to the information, nor do I want to be. Let's talk about why the visitor contacted you in the first place."

And so it went.

Just after 3 A.M., bleary-eyed and stubble-faced-in the confusion of the previous morning, he had forgotten to use his electric razor and regretted it now-Kagan dropped by the emergency room on his way out. To his surprise, the guards on duty outside Exam Room 15 had orders to allow him entrance. He wondered whose screw-up that was. Slipping quietly inside, he tip-toed to the bed and placed his hand on the protective rail. The girl was asleep, though stirring restlessly, as in a dream. He wondered what that dream would be like, and decided he didn't want to know.

Above her, monitors with squiggly lines and changing numbers catalogued every bodily function. All looked remarkably human to Kagan. What did her blood-work look like, he wondered, and her chem.-panel work-up? Between bouts in the interview rooms, he'd overheard astonished accounts of how absolutely normal she was. Even her reaction to trauma and stress were predictable. X-rays revealed a perfectly human skeletal structure, and far the only contraindicative finding was her lack of an appendix, and a slightly elevated systolic blood pressure reading, but that was hardly indicative. And then of course, everything had to be filtered through the scenario that she had been attacked by a guided missile, and then put back together a thousand feet in the air over San Francisco. In view of his own ordeal that evening, he wondered how the jet fighter pilot was faring. The thought made him shudder.

"Wherever you're from, sweetheart, I hope that son-of-a-bitch responsible for sending you here gets his just rewards." He extended a hand and patted hers as softly as a whisper. "A lot of people here care about you, and most will fight to keep you from suffering at the hands of anyone else. Public opinion is a powerful ally, honey." He stroked her still-tangled hair, wishing he could adopt the poor girl. She felt like his flesh and blood; ridiculous, he knew, but there it was.

Whispered voices sounded outside the exam room door and the privacy curtain slid aside to reveal a US Army captain, who nodded at him curtly. Kagan expected to be summoned out, and given his walking papers, but the captain inclined his head toward Kellie in inquiry. Kagan see-sawed his right hand and shrugged. The captain nodded and snapped off a salute, though saluting indoors was not called for and they were inter-service anyway. Kagan snapped one off in reply, and the captain--a doctor, Kagan saw from his insignia--withdrew and closed the curtain again. Kagan turned back to Kellie.

"Oh, good. You're awake."

Kellie smiled up at him weakly.

"I know you don't understand me and that's okay. I just wanted to let you know you're in safe, responsible hands here. Every doctor on the West Coast has either flown in, or is offering his or her services." Kagan grinned. "On second thought, you'll be lucky to survive the next week, Kiddo."

Kellie smiled again weakly and nodded, though in reaction to his soft tone and reassuring manner, Kagan guessed. Probably she mistook him for a doctor. But then she made a hovering motion with her right hand, and Kagan knew she recognized him as the pilot of the helicopter. He doubted seriously that she recalled his bedside visit that afternoon, not in the mental state she'd been in upon waking, which meant that someone had supplied that information, or she remembered him from...

Kagan's brow suddenly drew down. He cocked his head and raised his eyebrows in silent inquiry. Just perceptively, Kellie shook her head and cut her eyes toward the privacy curtain, and the open doorway beyond. Kagan's eyes widened and his heart skipped into high gear with the sudden adrenalin rush. He turned and deliberately looked toward the door, and then turned back to look at Kellie. This time she nodded.

She understands me, he thought excitedly. Which means that Marie is still around. She's the one who understood English, not Kellie. Was he conversing with her now, he wondered? Reading his expression, if not his thoughts, Kellie shook her head. So it was Kellie in attendance, then. Most likely it was always Kellie that presented when she was conscious, with Marie hovering in the background like a backseat driver, or more likely a co-pilot. A co-pilot with her own set of controls and an intimate knowledge of her aircraft.

Conversationally, loudly, so the others outside would overhear, he said, "My son's a big fan of yours, Kellie. He's been following your approach since he turned three years old and started to understand what people were saying on TV. He's loaded I can't tell you how many hard-drives with your pictures. I thought he'd sink into clinical depression last year when someone filched his laptop and Josh thought he'd lost everything. For someone supposed to be a genius-his words, not mine-he didn't think it necessary to do back-ups. He knows better now, believe me. Luckily, the thief took pity on him and returned the laptop a week later with a note saying he was a huge fan of yours also, and couldn't bear the guilt of robbing a fellow addict. Do you know your face is the most downloaded image on the Internet?"

Though she kept her expression carefully blank, Kagan watched her color and flick her eyes away in embarrassment. He grinned.

"You should have seen the pandemonium here. The day you began to approach, half the state fled for the Rocky Mountains, while half the rest of the country stampeded for the West Coast. We have so much extra weight west of the fault line now that some geologists claimed your landing would crack California in half and send San Francisco straight to the bottom."

He watched her suppress a grin and winked.

"He was caught on the 405 with a million others when everyone thought you'd land up north in Golden Gate Park. Then, when you started south to San Francisco, he tried to cut across the median just like everyone else, and got stuck southbound too. His mom finally got me half an hour ago, letting me know he got home." He grinned widely. "He ran out of gas and had to hitch a ride. I understand that was a common occurrence today, people running out of gas." He made a show of removing his wallet from his hip pocket. Flipping it open, he pointed out a group portrait of himself and the family in a protective plastic sleeve. "This is Beth, my beautiful wife, my daughter Jennifer in the blue dress-she's 11 years old, and thinks she's knows the secrets of the universe. That's Josh, with the disgusted look on his face-" Kellie couldn't help but grin at the boy's rolling eyes, so much like her own brother was prone to do. "-and this handsome devil on the end is you know who."

He let her study the picture for a moment, and then put the billfold away. "He about peed himself, my wife said, when he discovered it was me they were talking about on the radio, being the helicopter pilot. He wants to be the first human being to get an autograph from our alien visitor. I told him good luck. The president will have to stand in line for that privilege, I think."

He glanced at the TV mounted to the wall opposite them. The picture was live, but the sound was turned down to a murmur. Someone had activated the captions and white letters on a black background scrolled across the bottom. As usual on a news broadcast, the captions ran well behind the commentator's spoken words. The station was tuned to Fox News, where three men and one woman argued vehemently about the alien visitor. A scarlet-faced, silver-haired man that Kagan recognized but couldn't put a name to pounded the table. A water glass jumped each time he did, reminding Kagan of the movie Jurassic Park. Imagine the pandemonium if their visitor was an intelligent dinosaur, rather than a beautiful young girl, he thought. And then, feeling rather stupid, he realized how Kellie had come to know he flew helicopters. News channels ran clips over and over again, hundreds of times an hour. Everyone in the world, Kellie included, knew his face by now, and what he did for a living. He looked back at her with a feeling of chagrin. Not that it mattered; Marie still had to be there for Kellie to understand his words. He patted her hand.

"I should probably go and let you get some sleep. The inquisition will start tomorrow and you'll need every bit of shut-eye you can manage. I imagine they'll bring in linguistic experts to shove English down your throat like a big old horse pill. Don't choke on it, okay? When you start to get overwhelmed, simply raise your right hand and do this..." Kagan turned outward from the bedside and extended his middle finger with a sharp, upward thrust. "That's the universal sign for, Give me a minute, please?" He grinned, and Kellie crinkled her eyes and grinned right back. He patted her on the hand again, and then held it gently. Then he gestured toward the door with his head, indicating he was about to leave. Kellie nodded and mouthed the words, "Thank you."

Resuming a loud tone he said: "You take care now. I'll come back tomorrow and check on you. I'll bring Josh along if I can. I'm sure his school would happily designate him their scholastic representative and schedule an assembly afterward that not even the hardest stoners would think to skip out. Maybe it'll finally give him a reason to grow up. We'll see."

He winked again and made a deliberate waving gesture with his hand, which Kellie mimicked. He backed away, slid aside the privacy curtain, re-closed it behind himself and joined the guards outside the room. After a long moment, Kellie sighed deeply, yawned with jaw-popping intensity, stretching every muscle in her small frame, and turned as far onto her side as the plethora of IV's and monitoring patches would allow. One-handed-the other was commandeered by the saline-drip IV-she tucked the sheet and the light hospital blanket beneath her chin, sighed again and pretended to fall asleep.

You have some explaining to do, she thought indignantly.

No answer.

I know you're there. I don't speak English and I understood every word he said.

A long pause, and then a reluctant groan. Damn it. I could have blown everything.

Where have you been! Kellie berated. Do you know how despondent I was, thinking you were dead? And then suddenly I understand what the captions on the TV were saying? I only just kept from blowing everything myself with Phil! She mentally tried to kick at her with her foot. Marie laughed.

Forgive me. I couldn't reveal myself earlier when you were distraught and liable to go blurting stuff out where people could hear you. Besides, I was rather preoccupied, you know? It's a nightmare having to withdraw myself from any tissue they happen to want for testing. Do you know how many blood samples they took today? And tissue samples? My God, it's hard to believe you have any flesh left on your body at all. And whatever part of your body they happened to x-ray, I had to vacate completely. Thank God they didn't run an MRI. I don't know what I would have done with an MRI. All that magnetic energy shoving me in one direction and another; I don't think I could have kept from shoving back. She laughed, imagining the damage to the hospital's half-million-dollar machine; smoking coils and fried circuits.

Kellie didn't see the humor. I've been sane for eight hours now and you couldn't give me a little hint, a tickle, a poke in the side that said: Hey Kellie, I'm still alive? In her frustration she had begun crying; Marie adjusted her hormone levels and eased a soothing blanket over her nerves. Thanks, she muttered belligerently. But you should let me cry. They probably expect me to cry.

You can cry after we talk.

Kellie signed. I'm so glad you're alive.

I'm glad I'm alive too.

Kellie tightened the blankets under her chin and drew as close as possible into a fetal position. What happened? she asked. What was that...stuff that came out of me?

I bit of me that I sacrificed along with a smidgen of the nanos, which I have banned from the injury site. I can't have you completing your recuperation in this hospital bed overnight. I'm afraid you'll always have a nasty scar on your back and shoulder where the topical layers couldn't regenerate. It'll be painful too, but that I can help with. I'm currently counteracting the medicines and painkillers they gave you and directing your recuperation myself. I am thankful for the saline and glucose solutions they've given you though. It's about time you got some nourishment into your body. How poignant that it took being admitted to a hospital to get you hydrated again. She laughed. You deserve the catheter you have in. Fitting punishment, wouldn't you say?

Kellie was not amused.

So, what's next? Obviously, I'm not shrinking. Do I get to stay here then?

For as long as you like, Marie agreed.

That brought a beautiful smile to Kellie's face. I don't understand. I thought as long as you were here...? Did Grove lie to us?

Marie mentally shook her head. He was mistaken, actually. My composition is enormously more complex than he had any reason to belief. My abilities confound even me, and that's saying a lot, as I'm only slowly discovering. If the humans had any idea what a treasure trove you are, they'd lock you away in the bottom of a mountain somewhere and dissect you down to your-my-very atoms. She sighed. The only ability I don't seem to have so far is the one to reverse the original process. For the time being, it looks like you're stuck here, kiddo.

Here could be worse, Kelly admitted. She brightened. Josh Kagan is cute, don't you think? I like his smile. Does it bother you that he wears glasses?

Not at all, Marie admitted. She grinned, thinking how she liked the father a whole lot better though. Too bad he was married. She mentally cleared her throat. Sorry about Grove.

Grove had been with Kellie every step of the way, including the long painful beginning before Marie. So despite logic, which dictated she curse the very ground he strode upon, Kellie would grieve his loss, for a while. She wondered if his plans to follow after her had panned out. She would never know, she guessed. She hoped he fared as well with a final choice of planet as she had. And enjoyed the company as much as she did Marie.

With a happy sign, she snuggled into the covers and drifted easily off to sleep.

EPILOG

At 11:30 P.M. exactly, the front and rear doors of Phillip Grove's three story colonial home burst inward and black clad SWAT team members swarmed in with weapons raised and fingers positioned just outside the finger-guards, as prescribed by the training manuals. With precision borne of hundreds of hours of training the team dispersed throughout the house, two men to the room, declaring each as "Clear!" in loud clear voices. Within minutes the entire premises, all 14 rooms were secure. One after the other the team members secured their weapon and stripped off the black ski mask over their faces. Every man looked disgusted.

"Command, the house is secure. No Grove, no girl."

"Damn it!" came back angrily over the radio link. "We're coming in." A moment later, three sharply dressed federal agents swept in through the front door and took control of the crime scene. "Any sign of the girl?" the agent in charge asked.

The SWAT team leader shook his head. "No obvious ones, anyway. I need to extract my men right away, to preserve any evidence."

Gritting his teeth, and with flared nostrils, the agent in charge nodded. His subordinate, the man on his left raised a transmitter and notified the CSI team leader to stand by. They would do a thorough sweep of the house, looking for evidence. The fact that Grove's late model sedan sat in the driveway and both front and back doors evidenced broken security chains, left a bad taste in the agent's mouth. A mouth already fouled by the knowledge that Kellie Orlansky had been missing 62 hours now, well beyond the 24 hours best thought of as the "Retrieval Zone." Statistics dictated they would almost certainly find her dead, if at all.