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  That’s just what we need.

  Sidney looked away, staring at the lights swirling in the gray, misty sky outside her hospital window. I accept. Take me away from this façade. Bring me to life.

  She faked a resigned sigh and turned to give Nate the most serious stare she could muster. “When do I leave?”

  Chapter 31

  Annaliese jiggled her leg under the oak table in the chamber as the congressmen nodded their approval at President Hastings’s speech and introductions of the staff heading up the newly formed “Exterrestrial Threat Task Force”.

  “Relax, you’ll be fine,” Kieran whispered, patting her bouncing leg.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You know how I am. I don’t do well in front of big crowds. And this is Congress!”

  “You’ve met most of these people.”

  “Talking to them as your wife at social functions is one thing. Talking to them as the head of a nationwide research team is another.”

  “Finally,” President Hastings boomed into the microphone, “I present Annaliese Kerner Boyce, head of the psychological and neurological research section.”

  Annaliese took another deep breath and approached the lectern as President Hastings gave a summary of her curriculum vitae to the chamber. She smiled at the flashing cameras until he drew to a close of her introduction and waved her forward to speak to the audience.

  “Thank you for appointing me as the head of Psychological and Neurological Research. I’ve spent the past decade of my life devoted to the study of the human mind, and science of living better through technological development.” She discretely tapped the computer on the console to bring up her next page of notes. “You may also know that I came to this study with a personal interest. My father, Carson Kerner, was the first ‘miracle recovery’ patient, which was witnessed by my cousin, Kalea Kerner, who has been in the media twice in the past few months. Soon after these events began, I was approached by another client exhibiting similar symptoms. It was at that time that I realized that this could be impacting many others. As it turns out, there are thousands, if not millions, that have been affected by ‘miracle resurrections’ over the past two months. With the passing of these patients, new observations are coming to light regarding witnesses from around the country that coincide with the timing of the findings just presented to you by Dr. Galen Eckenrod, the representative from the Space Exploration Society and head of the Interstellar branch of our research.” She studied the audience, who stared at her with rapt attention. “I want to thank the members of Congress for their approval of funding for this large-scale study. I promise that your investment in our expertise and research will be beneficial, not just to those affected by this phenomenon, but to all of humanity. I also thank the members of the other committees, along with the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, and the Space Exploration Society, for sharing their current research and observations with the committee members. We’ve lost a golden opportunity with the passing of the ‘miracle cure’ patients, and will act quickly and efficiently with the secondary round of individuals affected by this incident.”

  There was a moment of silence as she stepped back from the podium, followed by applause. Annaliese felt her face flush red as she took her seat next to Kieran. “Well done.”

  She smiled as President Hastings gave closing statements to Congress, noticing that the other members of the study were staring at her. She flushed again, turning her attention back to the closing statements until the meeting formally adjourned, and the room hummed with the sound of people rising from their seats and conversation resonating through the chamber. Kieran shook hands with several members of Congress, trading political banter and congratulations over the formation of the committee.

  “Dr. Boyce?” She turned to see Galen and Dr. Vijay Patel, a tall, dark skinned man with a bright smile. She returned the smile. “Galen! And Dr. Patel, congratulations on your appointment to the Medical Section.”

  “Likewise to you,” Dr. Patel said in his slight Indian accent. “I was wondering, what research you were referring to in your speech?”

  “You didn’t get it?”

  “Get what?” Galen asked.

  Annaliese studied them. “Shortly after the study was commissioned, I received a tremendous amount of data on all the patients that were witnesses to the ‘miracle cures.’” She paused. “I also got the preliminary data on the satellite signals that mimic the brain waves. I was pleasantly surprised at the expediency of the response to share files.”

  Dr. Patel’s brows furrowed. “I haven’t received anything. I was told the information would be compiled after this announcement.”

  “We didn’t send anything out,” Galen said. “We wanted to. We were chomping at the bit to get moving on this, but we were told not to share any data until tonight’s announcement of the committee members and section leaders.”

  “That’s strange,” Annaliese said. “I got a data dump the day after the funding was approved last week. It was so much data that my computer nearly crashed. I had to have memory added to it. The source code came from the national database servers.”

  “I wonder if it’s a satellite thing,” Galen said. “The interference with the signals dropped for a short period last week. There have been slightly longer glitches in interference, and we’ve had sporadic comments about data being released and transferred to external sources without being sent.” He took his phone out of his pocket, tapping at it. “I’ll have Avery look into that for you.”

  Annaliese sighed. No wonder there was silence after her speech. If it wasn’t sent out to everybody on the study, then where did it come from? And better yet, why did she get it when nobody else did? “I thought it went out to everybody. It looked like it did from my end. I’ll have my IT people look at it again.” She pulled her phone out of her red blazer pocket. “I had everything backed up to a secure partition of my cloud backup. I’m sending you the access link and password to the files. You need this. It’s imperative to this study. I’m still working my way through everything, but I can already tell that this data will be the foundation we’ll build our research on, at least from the mental health end of the study.”

  “I appreciate that,” Dr. Patel said. “I want to make sure we all start out on the same page. If what I’ve seen is any indication, we need to act quickly if we hope to understand this phenomenon.”

  “We certainly do,” Galen said. “It keeps growing, and it’s important that we know what we’re dealing with before it’s too late.”

  “Too late for what?” Dr. Patel asked.

  Galen paused, looking around the chamber. “Too late for anything to save us from whatever’s coming.”

  Chapter 32

  “I looked like a fool!” Annaliese took a long drink of her red wine at the kitchen table three hours later.

  “No you didn’t,” Kalea said, sitting across the table from her in blue penguin pajamas and nursing her own glass of wine. “I thought your talk was the best. Nobody publicly contradicted you, and you shared the data after your speech. It was a win-win for everybody.”

  “She’s right,” Kieran loosened his tie. “They have the research now, so you’re all on the same footing and can take off running with this.”

  “It’s embarrassing,” Annaliese said. “I thought everybody got that data! In fact, I called Avery the day after I got it and thanked him. He didn’t say a word about it not going out.”

  “He probably took your word for it and assumed that Galen sent it to you,” Kalea said. “Isn’t

  Galen his boss?”

  Annaliese nodded. “His direct supervisor.” She put her head in her hands. “I hope I didn’t turn everybody on these committees against me. They may think I showed them up, and sabotage me so they can make themselves look better.”

  Kalea laughed. “This isn’t graduate school! Come on, Annaliese. They’re professionals, and they want to figure this out too. Remember
that you’re all working together. How can somebody on another committee show you up when they aren’t qualified to process any data that falls under psychological and neurological research?”

  “That’s a good point,” Kieran said, “and it’s exactly why we arranged the sections in a specialized and segregated fashion. It’s to eliminate the element of competition so the best of each field can do what they do best, and work together toward a common goal of understanding this problem.” He stood and hugged Annaliese. “Don’t worry about it. You did great, and you’re going to keep doing great, like you always do.”

  “You’re right,” Annaliese said. “This is a complex issue, and it’s going to take all of us to work it out.”

  “Then maybe it’s for the best that this happened,” Kalea said. “Now they all have the data, and you’ve established trust and cooperation right from the start.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s going to be fine.” Kieran said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to retire for the evening. I agreed to help Senator Klienman with his ‘war bill’ at an eight o’clock breakfast meeting.”

  “War bill?” Kalea asked.

  Kieran nodded. “He helped me get support for this, and now I owe him a favor. He wants to build up our nuclear weapons in preparation of the imminent threat from the Communist and Eastern Sectors.”

  “Are you serious?” Annaliese asked. “They really want to go to war, don’t they?”

  “If things haven’t scaled back by now, then I believe it’s inevitable. It’s a matter of when, and the growing sentiment is the sooner, the better.”

  Kalea snickered. “Just what we need. A world at war with an alien threat imminent.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?” Annaliese snickered back.

  Kieran shrugged. “I better rest up so I can switch my strategy from alien threats to human ones.” He kissed Annaliese and patted Kalea on the shoulders. “Good night, ladies. Sleep well.”

  “I’ll be right up,” Annaliese finished her wine and took the glass to the dishwasher. She shook her head as she heard Kieran mount the stairs. “I can’t believe he’s going to their side on this war mess.”

  “That’s politics,” Kalea drained the last of her wine and put her glass in the dishwasher. “You’re worried that you stuck your foot in your mouth tonight, aren’t you?”

  Annaliese shrugged as she closed and started the dishwasher. “I wonder why I’m the only one who got it, and where it came from. Galen said the satellites are doing strange things again.”

  “Try to relax. It established you as a leader, and that’s always good, especially with these big ego political types.”

  Annaliese sighed. “I bet you don’t see stuff like this with your company.”

  “It’s different,” Kalea stared out the small window over the kitchen sink. “It’s simpler. But then again, it’s smaller. Everything here is bigger. It reaches so much further. It’s unbelievable what kinds of systems you have set up in your political centers; how far you can reach.”

  Annaliese smiled. “The smallest thing can create the biggest waves. Just look at us. This started with Dad sitting up in a hospital bed and grabbing your broken foot, and now look at where we are.”

  “Now look at where we are,” Kalea repeated. “Heading up a national study. Who would have thought it would lead to this?”

  Annaliese watched Kalea staring out the window vacantly. “Hey,” she said, hugging her cousin, “don’t worry. We’ll figure this out. I know it’s too late for some, but maybe it’s not too late for everybody. Who knows? We may save the world yet, and I’ll have you to thank for it.”

  “Yes,” Kalea returned the hug and stared at the distant lights swirling in the sky, “we may save the world yet.”

  Chapter 33

  “The last one died yesterday,” Dr. Patel said softly, as the meeting of the section heads opened in a chilly conference room in the U.S. Capitol on a cold morning in mid-December.

  “What last one?” Galen filled his coffee mug from the large pot in the corner of the room.

  “The last ‘miracle recovery’ witness that attacked people. He died last night.” Dr. Patel turned to Annaliese. “It was the one that fired shots in the high school auditorium where your cousin was speaking in September.”

  “Dale Zeigler?” Annaliese asked. “I’m sorry to hear that. Did he ever regain consciousness?”

  “No,” Dr. Patel said. “We never got anything out of him, and we can’t figure out why he was in a coma, either. From the looks of his vital signs, he should have been awake, alert, and fully recovered and functional.”

  “He stayed in a coma for three months?” Mandy Jasper, the head of the physics section, asked, her brown ponytail falling over her shoulder next to curious blue eyes.

  Dr. Patel nodded. “Just like the others, but he held on longer. I talked to his wife this morning to ask for an autopsy, but she refused.” He paused. “In fact, she signed a cremation order and he’s already being processed.”

  “That fast?” Annaliese asked. “I thought it took at least two days to get everything in order for that.”

  “That’s another curious thing about this,” Galen said. “Have you noticed how quickly these bodies are being processed for burial? I know cremation is the norm, but Annaliese is right. The bodies for the miracle cure survivors and these witnesses that committed acts of violence are cremated and buried within forty-eight hours, and all of them had private burials.”

  “That’s not uncommon,” Dr. Patel said. “It’s best for public health and safety to get the remains prepared and buried as quickly as possible, and aren’t there psychological reasons why we’ve dispensed with viewings and having bodies at the final services over the past decade?”

  Annaliese nodded. “People are uncomfortable with human remains. Plus, there are those public health concerns.”

  “But five of them requested burials, and all of their bodies wound up cremated instead,” Mandy said. “I’ve been looking into that. Annaliese, your mother’s case with the funeral director is one reported case out of four in the nation for what they refer to as ‘unintended cremations’. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but five bodies spontaneously combusting in a freezer? That’s not right.”

  Annaliese’s brow furrowed. “There were other cases?”

  Mandy tapped her computer to check her notes. “The first was Peter Burke, a fifty-year-old pancreatic cancer patient in Charlotte, North Carolina. The second was Valerie Higgins, an Alzheimer’s patient in Alexandria, Virginia. The third and fourth have sealed the files, because they’re taking it through State courts in Arkansas and Massachusetts, so I only see that cases are pending, and can’t get identifying details. Of the ones I can access files for, all of them were ‘miracle cure’ patients.”

  “So two cases are in criminal court, and one is going through licensing Board action,” Dr. Patel said. “What about the other two for Mr. Burke and Ms. Higgins?”

  Mandy studied her notes. “They don’t show cases pending. The funeral homes self-reported those cases, but there are no cases pending with the state funeral boards or in the courts. In fact, the families signed the cremation orders after the fact. I know that in Peter’s case, the family preferred cremation because they said his body was so worn out by the ravages of going through cancer twice that they couldn’t imagine not cremating him. They went public with that shortly after his death, because the media caught wind of it. In Valerie’s case, the order was signed by a grandniece. I guess she didn’t have the emotional energy to deal with it, given that it was her second loss.”

  “Her second loss?”

  “Her sister was the witness to that cure, and she was shot in a standoff with police at her home two months ago. It was a dispute with a neighbor that turned violent.”

  Annaliese sighed. “That means we have no bodies or full autopsy scans to study for energy or radiation signatures on the ‘miracle cure’ patients, or these witnesses that w
ent into comas after committing acts of violence.”

  Mandy leaned back. “I have nothing with that subset to work with. All I have are the witnesses that are still alive.”

  “Which means we have nothing to correlate the ‘miracle cure’ patients to the ‘secondary patients’ that are still alive,” Dr. Patel said.

  “And as normal as normal gets, except for the ones that committed these random acts of violence and are now dead. All of them had a mental or psychological disorder. Most were schizophrenic or had bipolar disorder,” Annaliese tapped her finger on her computer, causing the screen with her notes and information to swirl. “I have psychological profiles on a little over five thousand people across the United States and Canada that were witnesses to these ‘miracle cures’ and are still alive, but I’m sure that’s not all of them. In fact, it’s probably a small percentage. We can’t trust that everybody that witnessed these healings stepped forward for evaluation.”

  “There’s still a stigma around psychiatric care,” Dr. Patel said, “but my findings agree with what you’ve found.” He tapped his computer, bringing up a graphic on the projector at the foot of the table. “Here’s what we know. All of the people witnessed a ‘miracle cure’ during the first two weeks of August this year. The common factors are that they were all healed of minor illnesses, ailments, or wounds when the patient grabbed them at the precise area where they were wounded. They’ve all demonstrated slightly heightened abilities, and they all had what I refer to as a ‘breakdown’ approximately eight weeks after they were cured.”

  “What do you mean by ‘heightened abilities’ and ‘breakdown’?” Galen asked.

  “By ‘heightened abilities,’ I mean the ability to do things that aren’t humanly possible,” Dr. Patel said. He waved a hand at Annaliese. “Her cousin conducted electricity when she subdued Mr. Zeigler. There were others that said they were able to do it: touching a car battery and getting it to start, or blowing out fuses when they touched an outlet or wire. Some patients can see inside peoples’ bodies and tell them if they were ill and injured, like a human X-Ray machine. In a few of these cases, they can heal people to a limited degree. A nurse in Portland, Oregon, healed a patient with pneumonia last week, while taking their blood pressure. Some can touch a computer, download data directly to their brain, and transfer it to other computers or systems. Some can see or hear messages by telephone, e-mail, or messaging and make them play through radios, cell phones, and smartwatches. Some can repair structures. A construction worker in Hartford, Connecticut repaired a fracture in a support beam on a worksite two weeks ago. And a landscape architect touched a tree out here on the Capitol grounds after a lightning strike in October, and the tree came back to life.” He shrugged. “It sounds astounding and it is unusual, but they can only do it to a limited capacity. It’s leveled out since their ‘breakdown’, but I’m not sure if it’s because they have a greater control of the ability, or if the ability is gone.”