Page 23 of King from the Sky

“No clue. He said he didn’t really know. But now I’m starting to think he was a plant.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think they traced him to us. The only way they could have done that was to plant a homing device on him. This led them to the Seplika and to us. The Russians have known about the Seplika since my grandfather planted it here. They found his Cylinder Transporter and they caught up with him. They were going to keep him captive to do experiments on him, but he escaped—with the Seplika. They were just starting to learn some of its power and its properties. But they had no idea where he hid it and he was dead before they could torture it out of him.”

“So, they know where we are. We have to get out of the country,” Emily said.

“It is highly unlikely that they can track us now, although we do need to ditch this car at some point. I’m sure it has a tracer on it too.”

“Can’t we just pull over and look for it?”

“We could do that and we could destroy it but that is going to give them the message that something has happened to their men and that they have failed in their mission. We can’t have them knowing that, so when we get closer to civilization we will ditch the car.”

“Ok, sounds like you have thought of everything,” Emily said. She had not meant the remark to sound sarcastic, but she felt it might have come through a little bit that way.

“Oh, I don’t want to fool you that badly. I haven’t thought of everything; I have just learned to anticipate a few things here and there. I’m starting to think that I’ve become too good at this sort of thing.”

Alex smiled at her. She caught the devilish look in his eye and she could not help herself from laughing. The man had smooth skills and his charm was like something she just could not resist. Everything that he did was sexy and she was completely in love with it all.

They had been driving for about an hour when Alex suddenly pulled over. The night outside beckoned at Emily for them to stay inside. The darkness was overwhelming and menacing as Alex shut off the engine of the car. In the pit of her stomach Emily had to wonder what might happen if they were never able to start the car again. They would be stranded in the middle of nowhere. She had no idea how far they were from the nearest town and she had not seen another car for at least twenty miles. It was like they were driving alone on Pluto or something. Somehow they had been stranded in an icy world hidden from view from the Earth they knew. She wondered if she might have seen that in a Twilight Zone episode or something. It certainly felt like they were alone.

“What are we doing?” Emily asked.

“I have the Seplika. I need to try it out.”

“You are going to do that here?”

“Well, I can’t do it in front of people and this is my main reason for coming to Earth initially. So I’m going to do it here. It seems like the best place. I just hope no one comes along right now.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Emily said quietly.

She moaned silently but followed him out of the car and out into the frozen tundra beside them. Alex handed her his iPhone with the flashlight turned on. She held the light for him, shining it at his hands as he sat his bag down on the ground and pulled the Seplika from it.

This was the first time she had seen the coveted object and she was impressed. It was about the size of a small trophy, only it was gold and shaped like a dagger with strange designs and buttons on it. She had never seen anything that even closely resembled it. Even in the small light she was using from the phone it shone so brightly she almost had to close her eyes to hide from the sheen.

Alex held it a few inches above the ground as small legs shot out of the base of it. He sat it down and proceeded to press a few buttons in a very specific sequence. Then he looked up at her and paused for a second before pressing the final button.

Alex stood up and waited.

Emily wanted to reach out and take his hand right then. She wanted to feel some comfort and warmth. This thing had caused them so many problems so far and she blamed it for the fact that she had almost been killed several times in the past twenty-four hours. It was impossible to not feel hatred and disgust for the dreaded thing, but at the same time she was in awe of its majesty and the legend that surrounded it. She couldn’t help but feel that she was in some way standing at the dawn of history here.

After several seconds nothing happened. She glanced at Alex, watched his response. So far he remained emotionless and still. Emily wanted to ask him the question that was building inside of both their minds, but she decided to wait and see what he did. Was the Seplika supposed to be doing something that could be seen? Was it supposed to be doing something global? She really didn’t know and like all things in life the not knowing was the part that killed you.

They waited a few more minutes. Nothing. The silence in the dark was petrifying to Emily and she kept fighting the silence that tried to amplify itself in the cold recesses of her ears. She tried to keep it out, but it wormed its way in anyway. And she swore she could hear monsters or creatures growling and stalking their pray in the cold darkness. She knew that there were untold scores of creatures, even in an icy wasteland like this one that stalked their prey under the cover of darkness where not even their shadows would be visible.

Alex bent down just then and retried it. He punched in the same key strokes on the pad and then pressed the bright red button at the bottom. And waited. They waited again for at least two minutes with no change.

“Shit. It’s not working,” Alex finally said. Emily wondered how long it was going to take him to admit defeat and that they might have needed to try a different approach.

“What? That doesn’t make any sense,” Emily said. It was hard to believe after everything they had been through and the trouble caused trying to get to this thing that now that it was in their possession it was more useless than a paperweight.

“I know. There has to be something that I’m missing. There has to be something that I’m just not getting.”

“Well, we don’t want to wait here too long. If they are tracing us then they are going to wonder why we stopped randomly for several minutes when we are miles from nowhere. You don’t think that might tip them off?”

“I guess you’re right. We should move.”

They hopped back in the warm truck and headed back down the road. The drive was quiet for a while with neither of them saying anything. Alex’s mood seemed to change a bit. Emily could tell he was racking his brain through all of the plausible scenarios as to why the machine was not working. Emily herself had been through everything that she could think of already, but she didn’t offer any solutions. After all, she did not know much about this machine and Alex did.