Abduction

It was supposed to be a simple rescue mission. Private Gale was captured during a routine maintenance check in the desert. His entire platoon was caught off guard by some unseen assailant. A distress call was sent out and received by a Sergeant Leary driving through the desert on an unrelated mission. The matter-of-factly Lieutenant Serling was put in charge of the group of shoulders chosen to lead. His superiors insisted that Leary be brought along for the mission.

“There were screams. Well, there was a single scream,” Leary explained, “Assuming he’s the only survivor as this tape indicates, I think it’s a safe bet to say that it’s Gale screaming.”

“The screaming isn’t on these tapes,” Serling pointed out.

“Yes, I know. I heard the screams over the radio, and that’s what prompted me to start recording.”

“Do we know what we’re looking for, exactly?” asked Serling.

“Just Gale, and whoever captured him.”

“Well seeing as how all we have to go on are some bloodcurdling screams and mentions of a cryptic light on a recording, that doesn’t give us much of a lead.”

It was a small band of soldiers. Serling would have liked a larger group given what little is known about the enemy. They were searching for an invisible enemy and praying that their fallen colleague was still alive.

“If you ask me,” Leary added, “it sounds a lot like aliens abducted him.”

“Are you kidding me?” Serling scoffed.

“Well stranger things have happened in the desert. I wouldn’t put it beyond the realm of possibility.”

Before Serling could reply with another scoff, a bright light silently burst in the sky instantly killing all soldiers except Serling and Gale in a maelstrom of fire. They looked at each other, saturated in terror and another bright light exploded above them.

Serling woke up, bound by a humming light. He was in some sort of cell adjacent to Leary’s who for some reason was not tied down. A man in the cell across from him looked familiar. It was Gale. He may have been immobilized as the same light shone on him. But he was unconscious, so it was difficult to tell. He was still breathing. Serling could see his chest rising and falling softly. There were no apparent bruises on Gale’s body from what Serling could see.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Leary whispered to Serling, “That’s not Gale.”

“What?” Serling asked, shocked. “Then who is it?”

“It has to be aliens. We’re in their ship. We don’t have anything close to this kind of technology, and we’re the military.” Serling was still skeptical.

“Why are you free, Leary?”

“Who knows? It could be some awful experiment. I saw strange creatures emerge from that door over there,” Leary pointed to an ominous metal door that seemed to lead to thin air. “They placed Gale there, like a dummy or something. Almost as if he’s bait.”

“You saw the aliens?”

“I didn’t see their faces. But they were tall and lanky. They spoke some strange, awful language. For all we know, that could be a Gale robot, or a Gale clone or something. We have to kill him.”

“Kill him? We spent all this time trying to rescue him. I’ll be damned if we kill him instead.”

“It’s not really him, sir. The real Gale might be dead, might have been dead this whole time. Whatever that is over there, was obviously used to lure us to that particular spot in the desert where they abducted us.”

“Why go through the trouble of making another Gale?”

“That’s what I can’t figure out. But all I know is that if they went through the trouble of baiting us into the middle of nowhere, who know what will happen if we try and rescue that impostor.”

“Calm down, sergeant, let me think,” Serling was dead silent for a full minute. “Leary, you’re going to have to figure out a way to get me free from this contraption before we can do anything. We’re going to get out of this spaceship one way or another.”

Leary attempted to wriggle his way out of his cell just as Serling struggled to break free. No alarm was set off but an eerie hiss filled the room with a thick, choking gas. Leary managed to break free but a tall, lanky figure appeared from nowhere to drag him away. Serling attempted to break free to help, but the gas sapped his strength with lightning quickness. Eventually, Serling didn’t have enough strength to keep his eyes open.

Just before he was completely out, he saw Gale awaken. Gale stepped down effortlessly from the humming light. Leary can be heard screaming in pain. It was a continuous scream that seized Serling by the gut. He could not see what was being down Leary, but he could most definitely hear it being reflected in the man’s scream. Even more horrifying than the scream was how abruptly it ended.

Serling awoke, not knowing how much time had passed between bouts of consciousness. His body ached as he tried to move. It was almost as if his muscles had forgotten how to operate. The room shook furiously in the Lieutenant’s vertigo. The aliens had caught Leary trying to escape, but paid no attention to Gale.

“Gale’s an imposter,” Serling reasoned to himself, “I can’t trust him.”

The humming light around him abruptly turned off dropping Serling to the cold, unfeeling floor. Slowly, Serling got to his feet and saw a pipe on the floor. He grabbed it and felt the weight in his hands. It would make a good weapon.

A hole carved itself into the partition of the cell, forming a geometrically perfect door. Gale walked through it and Serling did not hesitate when swinging the heavy pipe at his head. A dull, sickening crack vibrated the pipe as Gale’s body collapsed onto the floor. Serling walked out of the cell and saw the large, ominous door was open.

The light that was shining through it was the familiar warmth of the sunlight. He walked out the door and breathed the pure desert air. His eyes were closed to feel the warmth of the sun, but he couldn’t see his attacker approach him. All it took was one shot to the back of the head and Serling was eliminated. The soldier that carried out the dirty deed walked back into the “ship.” He went into the back room where tall, lanky costumes stood in the closet.

Sergeant Leary sat at a monitor watching the events unfold on a recording. He took copious notes on a clipboard and entered them into a computer.

“Serling is taken cared of, sir” the soldier informed Leary.

“Good, the study was a complete success.”

“I’m not sure I agree with the way you test out our new equipment, sergeant.”

“We weren’t testing the equipment,” Leary replied, “We were testing the resolve of these fellow soldiers.”

“But we killed them.”

“We only killed Serling. He killed Gale. We set them both free. Had they left together, we would have no choice but to let them go.”

“He was trying to secure his own survival. You can’t blame a man for doing that.”

“As Benjamin Franklin once said, ‘Those who are willing to sacrifice their freedoms for security, deserve neither.’” And with that, Leary turned off the monitor and declared the experiment officially over.