The Foreigner (The Mindbender Series Book 5)

Book summary

As Joseph navigates dangerous loyalties and growing attachments, betrayal threatens to unravel carefully laid plans. Dr. Nicholson closes in on the mysterious Miss Belle, driven by an insatiable desire for power, while a relentless shadow stalks Claudia, pushing her toward a perilous deal. In THE FOREIGNER, sacrifices and trust are put to the ultimate test.

Excerpt from The Foreigner (The Mindbender Series Book 5)

Awaken

The before…

Quentin

“Quentin—Q...”

She had given me that endearing name, Q…

“Quentin…Wake up, my love. Wake up!”

“Pet-tricia, you’re alive?”

She smiled the way I recalled her doing before the illness took her. The long flowing locks of dark hair draped down the sides of her elegant emerald gown. My goddess.

She stood outside on the balcony, admiring the scenery of our great planet, my last image of her. Beyond, the sun vanished over the horizon, revealing a pair of moons that began glowing boldly in the night sky.

It was a romantic vision.

The mind played games with my heart; I couldn’t distinguish what was real from what was beyond.

I felt hands on my face.

Pet-tricia?

“It worked… I’m here because of you,” her voice whispered. What was real?

She lay ill on the bed. I was on the other side. She was unrecognizable.

“She has very little time left,” the doctor said to me. He was an older man wearing a long dark coat, the patch on his uniform identifying him as a medical professional. Older citizens around his age were dying. However, we didn’t know the extent of the illness. Who knew it would be the last time I would see him again.

“Best to say your goodbyes before…”

The only other person around was my brother. I turned to him; he looked distant, unable to offer anything. What could he say?

I tugged at unseen bonds. She was there dying; then, she was gone. What was I seeing? A vision? A dream?

“It worked…” her voice said again. This time, I knew what she meant.

“The crystals are the answer, Quentin; they brought me back to you,” she whispered, standing, looking back at me from the balcony. The image of her standing there burned into my mind forever, and now she had returned to me. I couldn’t figure out whether I was looking at a vision or memory of her one last time. I didn’t care.

“Pet-tricia, you’re really here!” I rushed to her side.

She smiled and wrapped her arms around me. I was home again, looking at that same landscape of our planet.

“It can be like this again,” she said to me as I caressed the side of her face. She was as real as the sky above. She was here!

“You can have me. Just like you promised.” She pulled away, shaking a finger back.

“First, you have to free me. First, you have to-”

A thunderous roar erupted above us; the sky darkened and became grey. Pet-tricia slowly moved away from me. Before I could step towards her, Pet-tricia leaned over the balcony and let herself fall.

I rushed over, but she had gone down before I could grab her. First, you must, her voice silently continued, let go.

“Just let go…” another voice whispered. It was his voice. He was behind me when I turned.

Above, the angry heavens roared. He grabbed at me, as I fought his grip, his voice was in my head, Let go, Quentin. She’s gone…

I closed my eyes, hoping to shut out my brother’s voice.

“What’s happening?” I muttered. I felt his hand release me, and I dropped to the floor, afraid to open my eyes again.

“Quentin, say you’ll never leave me…” a voice said. It was her, Pet-tricia. My eyes slowly opened; my lips trembled. I was shaking.

Pet-tricia was standing there looking back, her emerald eyes innocently staring over. Her image transformed into my brother’s face. I shuddered back against the rails of the balcony.

Say you’ll never leave me, he hissed. Help me!_ He pleaded. Help me end this. Please, you owe me, brother. You owe me…. He reached over, stretching a hand out towards me. He was on the ground crawling towards me, a tar-like substance covered part of his body and ran on part of his face. I shut my eyes close as a shudder raced up my skin.

I heard her voice now. “I don’t ever want to lose you. Say you’ll never leave me. Say you’ll conquer death just to free me….”

“Pet-tricia,” I whispered, scared to open my eyes and see him there instead. I wanted my wife.

“She’s gone; she is dead, Quentin.” Sammael’s voice said. I sat there holding my head in my hands. Shaking my head, “No, no!”

“Say it! Promise me,” my wife begged from beyond.

“Pet-tricia?” I screamed, confused. My lips trembling and my body shaking as his voice continued to speak.

“QUENTIN!” he yelled.

“No! No!” I cried.

A voice above us muffled my brother’s cries. Alien life forms have been detected. Alien life forms have been detected in the proximity of sector 10. Possible containment breach!

I didn’t understand. The voice grew louder, and with it, his cries.

“Alien life forms detected in holding facility sector 10… WARNING… possible contamination… Emergency Evacuation is in effect… WARNING! EMERGENCY evacuation is in effect….”

What awakened me first was not the sounds of my own breath, or the knowledge that I was still alive. It was beyond the sounds above, and the various voices and alarms wailing that I heard within moments of realizing I was among the living. It was the sound of an alarm going off in the distance.

A voice, a female voice; no doubt a computer voice from the recollection of what a normal voice would sound like.

I detected warmth all around me. I gasped, alive for the first time. A new sense of awareness rushed through my veins and body, awakening every feeling, every sense of who I was.

I was alive! Air rushed into my nose and mouth. The gap in memories washed over me as a gasp of fading oxygen faintly choked from my throat.

I felt faint, like the energy had been drained out of me. Was it the sleep of hibernation creating the weakness? If so, how long had I been out? And, where was I? Were we still in space, lost in an endless sea of bright burning stars looking for a home? The ship had been designed to detect life on other planets. Had the ship’s sensors awakened us? I didn’t feel that was what had occurred.

When I tried to open my eyes, the light burned. My keen senses were assaulted by my surroundings. I hadn’t opened my eyes in a long time.

I gasped. The air was growing faint all around. I reached out and felt glass at the tips of my fingers. Unable to see clearly, I hit my palms against the wall before suffocating in my struggle.

Suddenly, a loud cracking sound snapped all around me. At once, I fell forward and felt the cold marble floor beneath me as I hit the ground.

Almost immediately a shrieking pierced the inside of my head, voices of unseen persons merged into my mind. Strange places of cities I didn’t know flashed within my head. What was happening to me? The shrieking ripped into my brain, bringing with it a gut-wrenching pain. I grabbed at my head, trying to control the sounds that wanted to consume my mind all at once. And I fought to take control of what wanted to rip open my skull with sound. Successfully concentrating on what I wanted to find, the person I was seeking. Pet-tricia, I gasped, and the voices and visions of strange cities, along with the sounds, became faint, and it was only her face I saw within my mind now. I had blocked everything else.

I groaned, trying hard to open my eyes, but the light all around me was burning. What little I saw was a room I didn’t recognize. I fought to keep my eyes open until they adjusted to the lights. Still, it burned, and my vision was blurry and painful.

“Pet-tricia?” my voice was hoarse and unfamiliar to me.

“Pet-tricia, where are you?” I called out again.

There was no one around to respond to my pleas. Even though I felt her near, I couldn’t believe it was her. Could she and I be reunited, even in death?

My fingers felt numb, just as my body. Like a newborn, I struggled to find my feet beneath me. Victoriously, I stood.

My eyes wandered around the room, fighting against the light. Beneath my feet, I found broken glass. Behind me, there was a large metal platform; upon it sat a tube canister made out of metal and glass. Palm imprints were clearly visible from the other side of the glass. Everything pointed to the fact that I had been inside that container.

We had defeated death; we had survived, but as I looked around, it seemed I was the lone survivor of this voyage. I couldn’t answer the questions that came along with that revelation yet.

Above me, the feminine computer voice had not stopped warning of contamination of unknown dangers detected, nor did the alarm wailing all around me stop for any moment as I gathered my thoughts and took in the world that I had entered.

Where was I?

There were no answers among the room, which resembled a large holding facility. It was a laboratory for some sort of experiment, I guessed. I was no stranger to the equipment: test tubes, freezers, incubators, samples of some unknown liquid, some foreign biological matter. I realized that I had been that foreign substance held within that containment unit behind me.

I was the experiment.

As I pondered this theory, the walls came alive. Overhead, the pipes exploded violently; steam and vapor erupted, tossing debris in every direction. Unknown samples began to spill from their test tube prisons.

This place, which I had come to know for a brief moment, was coming apart piece by piece and trying to bury its secrets—namely me—with it.

Above, the metal pipes came apart. The nuts and bolts that kept them together flew away. Still weak, I found the strength to race away from the falling walls and bursting pipes. I ventured into the unknown, despite falling beams that threatened to take me out.

Beneath me, the floor was crumbling like sand. Each step I took seemed it would be my last if I made a single mistake. I managed to grab a hold of the wiring that had come away from the ceiling. As I pulled myself up, a large pipe came crashing down, knocking me back into the open gap in the floor.

All I could hear were my own screams as I waited to hit the ground below. When nothing happened, I opened my eyes and found myself floating like a feather in the air!

How? My body rose up higher and higher. The rest of the ceiling came away, opening a large hole where the clear blue sky was visible.

I stopped looking at my newfound power with awe and curiosity. The sounds all around me pierced through my eardrums like shards of glass. The noise tore through my skull. The chemistry of my body had changed so much that I was such a foreign thing.

I looked up, cleared a path for myself, and removed the remaining debris with a single wave of my hand. Could I bend time with the waves of my mind? Bend it with a single thought?

I rose through the gap in the ceiling and into the sky. Above me, others ascended. I couldn’t see their faces, but I could sense them. They all wore the same uniform, the uniform of our fathers. The colors of our ranks were displayed on our shoulders. Their airborne bodies carried females. I followed curiously.

We had escaped the collapse of our once great world to end up on the ruins of an ice land. We were prisoners of unknown creatures, but now, we were free.