Touched by an Alien

leaned my head against his chest. “Just breathe slowly,” he said quietly, while he massaged the back of my neck.
    “What’re you doing?” I mumbled. It felt good, and my stomach and head were clearing.
    “A little trick I know for keeping beautiful agents from passing out on me again.”
    “I’m not an agent.”
    “Yet.” He rubbed a little more, and I felt normal again. “All better?”
    “Yeah.” I pulled away from him a bit. “How is it you know what I’m feeling?”
    “I’d like to say it’s because I’m so in tune with you.” He sighed. “Actually, it is because I’m so in tune with you. I’m empathic. It’s a great trait in a field operative. I’m probably the best empath we have. It’s one of the reasons I got to you first.”
    I considered this. A part of me really felt manipulated. The other part, however, was relieved to not be fainting or throwing up. “So, that’s why you wanted to visit Mr. Nareema?”
    “Yeah. I picked up anxiety, focused toward your apartment and extending toward you. Paranoia really broadcasts well, emotionally speaking. And I wasn’t kidding—he felt better seeing you, but even more so seeing me.”
    “Knowing them, that doesn’t really ring true. You look official.”
    “And I left after telling him everything checked out okay. Trust me, his anxiety dropped enough to fall off my main radar.”
    Nauseated or not, this was interesting. “So, you get emotions from everyone? Doesn’t that get overwhelming fast?”
    “It can.” I raised my eyebrow and he grinned. “Okay, yes, it does. A lot. We have blocks—mental, emotional, and drug-related—that all empaths use to keep the emotional chatter down to a minimum.”
    “But then, how are you useful if your powers are muted?”
    He shrugged. “Our jobs are to spot where a superbeing is likely to form. They don’t attract to low-stress situations for whatever reason. So we only need to monitor high-level emotions. The closer we are to someone, the easier it is to pick up their emotions as well.”
    “So, what if someone’s fighting next door when you’re trying to sleep?”
    He grinned. “Don’t worry. I won’t lose focus when we’re intimate.”
    “Believe me, last thought on my mind.” I had another thought that was well ahead of wondering how Martini stayed in the moment while doing the deed. “Is that why you could control the police at the courthouse?”
    Martini shook his head. “Nope. That’s technology. Ours, not the Ancients’.”
    “You have mind-control technology?” This was disturbing, much more so than discovering that Martini probably already knew I was freaked out by this news.
    “Yes, but it’s not what you think. You’ll get to see how it works either at Home Base or the Science Center. But we need to move it.”
    “Lead on to the bathroom,” I said with a sigh, resigned to another ditz performance.

CHAPTER 9
    GETTING INTO THE MEN’S ROOM wasn’t as tricky as getting out. Martini went in first and waited until the other men left. I found a sign that said the bathroom was temporarily closed for cleaning, which meant no one else was going in. We went to the stall, Martini made some movements in the air, and we were whooshing off again.
    This time I didn’t even attempt to watch or enjoy it. He held me again and I put my face in his neck and tried to pretend I was on a tilt-a-whirl. Of course, I hate the tilt-a-whirl.
    I felt the jolt that meant we were at our destination and opened my eyes as Martini put me down. We were in a doorway of, as I looked around, a small shed that said “Explosives” on it. But the only thing inside the shed was a gate. I looked outside the doorway—lots of buildings looking both dull and oppressive, lots of jeeps, lots of men in uniform, lots of jets.
    “We’re at an air base?”
    “I mean it, marry me. Yes, we’re at the Groom Lake U.S. Air Base. Or, as we call it, Home Base.”
    “Or, as the rest of the world calls it, Area Fifty-One.” I was a comics geek-girl, and, hey, I could recognize the names if not the faces, as it were. After all, Chuckie had been one of my best friends since ninth grade, and anyone nicknamed Conspiracy Chuck clearly lived for UFO stuff. Area 51 had a lot of names, and I knew them all.
    “I think our kids are going to be fantastic,” Martini said, as he started off toward one of the bigger and more oppressive-looking buildings about a quarter mile away. “How many do you want?”
    “I