"Speci-Men" - Part Five

 

Part Five

            Geoff was beyond excited to be involved in this super-secret mission. He pretended to be his favorite movie hero, James Bond, and his dad to be like his sidekick – though he didn’t recall Bond ever having one. The night would’ve been even cooler if he was allowed to peek inside Miya’s awesome spaceship. He briefly pried himself away from his lookout position to get another glimpse at it, but he was met with the disconcerting sight of Miya lying face-down down on the floor outside of her ship.

            “Daddy, lookit!” He alerted his father.

            “Geoff, stay focused – we’re supposed to…” Richard intended to turn for only a second to mind his son, but in following his gaze, he also saw the inert Miya. Sands was nowhere to be seen, which was only more unusual. Chambers and his son rushed to her aid, and as they had done so, Miya’s ship made some bizarre sounds before it suddenly vanished from thin air.

            “What was that?!” They heard what had to be the night security guard.

            “I dunno – let’s check it out.” The other guard on duty suggested.

            Richard and Geoff heard their footsteps hastily coming their way. “Quick! Let’s get out of sight!” The senior Chambers instructed the junior, gesturing to a nearby storage closet for them all to hide in. They worked together to carry Miya in with them.

            Once inside, Richard shut the door, enclosing the three of them in the dark, cramped space. They heard the guards outside, searching through the area and hypothesizing where the loud noises came from. Richard’s anxiety skyrocketed the entire time, silently praying that the guards wouldn’t bother looking into the closet and seeing him, Geoff, and Miya in there.

            In that moment, Miya regained consciousness.

            As soon as she was able to get over the grogginess from being cataleptic for more than a few minutes, she was a little unsettled by the darkness around her. “Oh, no! I’m blind!” She exclaimed, prompting Richard to muffle her shouting by placing his hand over her mouth.

            “Shh!” He shushed her. “It’s O.K. You’re not blind. You’re just inside a closet.”

            “Mmmph mmfph muh moset!” She muffled underneath his hand.

            Richard moved it away. “What did you say?”

            “I said, why are we inside a closet?” Miya asked, receiving her answer not a second thereafter when she heard the guards moving around outside. “Ah, I see.”

            They heard the guards outside depart, abandoning their search.

            After waiting a few extra minutes, they clambered out of the closet.

            “Sands has my TARDIS,” Miya urgently informed. “Not only that, it turns out that he’s been a Promethean the whole time.”

            “A what?!” Richard grimaced.

            “A goblin with pointy ears and grey skin, Daddy,” Geoff described.

            Miya was touched that the junior Chambers remembered her description. “That’s right,” she confirmed. “More specifically, it’s an alien race that Derek Sands apparently is a member of.”

            Richard doubled over, wheezing. “I don’t believe it. My boss is an alien!”

            Miya could see how this news overloaded his anxiety. Much as she wanted to comfort him, there was no time. “Rich, I know this news is a lot to take in, but we need to get back to Sands Corp right now. In the company database, I found out the Sands Corp building itself is an emitter that will wipe out all life on this planet at the single press of a button – which I can only figure to be in Derek’s office. Can you take us there?”

            Richard could hardly respond, unable to calm his nerves.

            That was until he felt Miya’s steady hand rest on his shoulder. One look at her kind, beautiful reassuring face and his anxiety melted away. Standing upright, he took a breath and told her, “I can.”

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            Returning to the Sands Corp building, Miya and Geoff followed Richard into the elevator and all the way up to the topmost floor, which was reserved solely for Derek Sands’ office. The waiting area – a quaint room with blue marbled floors, a ceiling, and walls and a leather couch – adjacent to the office was empty. Usually, the secretary – Mr. Caden – sat at his desk, assisting the CEO from there at all times. But, after hours, he was at his living quarters on the twentieth floor.

            This allowed them clear access to Sands’ office; however, there was a problem.

            “The door can only be opened by the executive passkey, and Sands had the only one,” Richard said.

            “We don’t need it.” Miya stepped towards the scanner to the left of the blue, chrome double doors that led into Sands’ office. With the tap of her left sonic cuff, she bypassed the automatic lock that opened the doors.

            Sands’ office looked like any ordinary CEO’s office. It was roomy, had a breathtaking view of New York from behind his desk, kept a bar with the most expensive alcoholic beverages, and had shelves that stored various artifacts, most of which were all Promethean in origin. Among the artifacts Richard saw there was an alien handgun very high tech in design but looked to function as any normal handgun with a trigger.

            Curiously, Richard grabbed it from the shelf. Reacting to his touch, the handgun suddenly transformed in his hand. Its alien design shifted to a more familiar semi-automatic, which was his preferred choice. Did this thing just read my mind and changed itself into the gun I would’ve wanted it to be?

            “Over here!” Miya called, prompting Richard to pocket the gun away into his lab coat. He joined Geoff and Miya at Sands’ desk, which didn’t have very many items sitting on it, like a desktop computer or even a coffee cup. There was only a control panel with a network of keys, each and every one labeled in the language of the Prometheans.

            Seeing it made Richard’s head ache. “What does it all do?”

            “I dunno,” Miya admitted. “But, if I were to put money on one of these keys leading us right to Sands, I’d go with this one.” Taking a massive risk, she randomly pressed one of the keys.

            Anything could have happened.

            The entire building could’ve imploded.

            They all could’ve teleported to a different dimension.

            Or they could’ve been vaporized, along with the rest of the planet.

            Thankfully, it was none of the above. Miya’s fortune blessed them with a secret passage, hidden behind one of the shelves that split apart horizontally. “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” She clapped her hands with approval. Wasting no time, she darted through the secret passage, with Richard and Geoff following close behind.

            The passage led them to a stairwell that went straight up to the rooftop.

            The high-altitude winds whipped at Miya’s long golden locks, with quite a few strands blocking her vision. “Dang it!” She griped. “All this hair’s really making me miss being bald!” Struggling to comb the wild strands from her line of sight, she heard Geoff suddenly cry out.

            “GEOFFREY!!” She also heard Richard yelp.

            Miya straightened her hair just in time to see Derek Sands holding little Geoff hostage near her Type-X TARDIS, with a Promethean dagger at the boy’s throat. “Let him go, Derek!” She demanded. “That lil’ fella’s done nothing to you!”

            “This isn’t a matter of what they’ve done to me, Time Lord,” Sands refuted. “It’s a matter of what I’m going to do to them.”

            “You’re gonna erase an entire reality that you created!” Miya disdainfully reviewed. “That’s how you end an ‘experiment’?!”

            “A failed experiment!” Sands hissed. “I tried to create a flawless utopia, removing the one variable that always holds back human production: the female sex.”

            Miya scowled in disgust. “You really believe that?!”

            “Their compassion and empathy block the natural flow of evolution,” Sands argued. “You’ve seen how much the men of this world were able to achieve without their influence, until you arrived and tainted everything!”

            “You’re blamin’ me for your experiment’s failure?!” Miya could hardly comprehend the hubris of this one Promethean. “How ‘bout givin’ the poor guys another chance! Yeah, this world’s got idiots like Stanson, but it also has wonderful men like this one right here.” She gestured to Richard, who stood petrified with fear in the presence of the alien Sands. “All they need is the right man to steer them in the right direction of progress – and I believe that man to be Rich.”

            “Chambers?” Sands scoffed. “You’re willing to gamble the future of this realm on this weakling?”

            “I am, and he’s not a weakling,” Miya defended. “He’s more human than you look right now.”

            Sands grinned. “You know something? I’ll see you and raise you, as the humans say. I’ll bet Richard Chambers won’t so much as lift a finger, as I slit his son’s throat!”

            Miya’s eyes flared, watching helplessly as Sands was about to commit the deed.

            BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

            Before the dagger could have sliced Geoffrey’s throat open, Sands was shot four times – three to the chest and one to the head. Purple blood sprayed out of his chest and blue grey matter exploded from the back of his skull. The dagger fell out of his hand before Sands himself collapsed, dead.

            Miya could hardly believe how fast it all happened.

            There Richard stood with the smoking gun in his hand and a hardened expression on his face.

            Definitely not a weakling.

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            Miya spent another few weeks in the Man World to curiously observe, from the safety of her TARDIS, the events that would transpire from Sands’ true identity exposed to the world. Of course, she left the duty of the exposure to Richard, who would be the one to contact National Security, as well as the President and Vice President Stanson. Questions were asked about Miya and her whereabouts, but Richard played dumb.

            The news that their entire society was fabricated by an alien shook the world.

            There were conflicting opinions on Sands Corp and the technology that the company provided for their entire way of life, with some opting to forgo using it and taking up more luddite lifestyles. Those who continued to rely on the tech received good news when the President promoted Richard Chambers as the new CEO of Sands Corp, renamed to Chambers Enterprises. This promotion was done in honor of Richard’s bravery in uncovering the alien conspiracy.

            None of it felt right to Richard, who consulted his reservations with Miya in her TARDIS, which took up residence in Richard’s new office for those last few weeks. “You’re the real hero, not me,” he told her.

            “You pulled the trigger that saved your son, Rich,” Miya rationalized.

            Geoff had joined them in the TARDIS, tempted to play with the control console the entire time he was there. Richard had to pull him away from it several times as he talked with Miya. “I know that,” he acknowledged. “I…I just never wanted all this responsibility. Last month, I was just a nobody researcher in the sublevels. Now, I’m head of the entire company! Half of the world’s expecting me to help usher them into a future that I know nothing about!”

            “Hey, hey, you’re gonna do just fine, man,” Miya soothed him with a calm demeanor and a warm smile. “With the Promethean tech Sands left, you have everything you need to create something better for your fellow men…something to start a legacy you could be proud of.”

            Her encouraging words were welcoming.

            “You’re leaving now, aren’t you?” Richard inferred.

            Miya smiled and nodded. “I am,” she tearfully confirmed. “And I’m gonna miss you guys.”

            Geoff clung to her hip, also crying. “Don’t go,” he begged.

            “Oh, honey.” Miya knelt to embrace him. “I have to. I’ve caused enough trouble to this mixed-up world of yours. But you always remember me and listen to your daddy, O.K.? Fathers know best, and their kids know better.” She gave little Geoffrey a peck on the cheek.

            He and his father exited afterwards and watched Miya depart in the TARDIS, the ship itself blinking in and out of sight until it finally faded out of existence.

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