Don't Label Me! by Arwen Jayne Page B

really thought about it. “I
suppose it was just after I had that injection your geneticist
Jnarn said would protect me from some virus and allow me to pass
through your portal.”
    “ Talk to that inner voice now. Ask him
what he is.”
    Phoenix shrugged her shoulders. No big
deal, wouldn’t hurt to humor Simon. He was a nice enough guy. He
looked after her friend Tyra well and that earned him brownie
points in her miniscule book of male merit. She turned her mind
inwards. Okay subconscious. Can you hear
me?
    Of course.
    Well you heard the question. What are
you?
    Cheeky brat. A Malakim.
    A what?
    What Simon is.
    “ Simon, he says he’s a Malakim like
you, whatever that is.”
    Simon passed her some earplugs and dark
glasses he’d quickly grabbed while she conversed with Trian. “Use
these!”
    Phoenix raised an eyebrow but complied.
Obeying anyone’s commands wasn’t her forte but she put the earplugs
in and donned the glasses just before her world went white as Simon
morphed into blinding light and high frequency sound then morphed
back to looking human again. “We are higher vibrational beings,
that’s all. We came long ago to stop the enemy who was bent on
taking over your planet. We failed and in the process seven of our
kind were imprisoned in stone, in a substance which is that hardest
known in the universe. They couldn’t teleport themselves out of
it.”
    Teleport? He had to be kidding right? As if
reading her thoughts Simon disappeared from in front of her then
tapped her on the shoulder from behind. “Freaking hell!” Why did he
have to go and do that while her film crew were out of the room.
Now that would have been an exclusive.
    “ Maybe sometime in the future but the
world’s not ready for that kind of wholesale show and tell
yet.”
    “ You really can read my mind, can’t
you?”
    “ Obviously.”
    Duh, talk about feeling stupid.
    “ Red, you are certainly not stupid,
just unsure of yourself. Your attempts to prove yourself through
being reactive, aggressively assertive and at times arrogant, are
merely ways to overcompensate for the weakness of your self
esteem.”
    Phoenix winced, damn he was so spot on.
“Sheesh, don’t let the film crew hear you, you’ll give all my
secrets away.”
    Simon decided he’d rattled Phoenix’s cage
enough for one day. He sent a stream of strengthening healing
energy from his heart to hers. “Red, you’re no more or less than
the rest of us. The sooner you realise that the sooner you can be
everything you were meant to be. Now go and do your interview.”
     
    ...
     
    General Polemarch’s grinned as he viewed the
video clip one of his contacts had just sent to his mobile phone,
an interview with Tyra Goodwin. Someone had found a way around
Sakla’s media clampdown. Good on them. Up until the gag order the
media had been lapping up anything they could find about Boswell
and its inhabitants since it had survived a well aimed ‘asteroid’
landing on it. Now the town and its environs existed in a parallel
universe that only those of an appropriate vibratory frequency
could enter. He’d never met Simon’s mate Tyra but he’d heard she’d
won the local election a while back, becoming mayor of the
municipality of Valeton, a remarkably large rural area which
encompassed Boswell as well as a number of other small towns. Now
it looked like she’d been ditched. No doubt Sakla would have set
his cronies onto a few of the councillors to achieve that. At least
the new mayor, Peter Stein, seemed to have her backing. As he
listened to her outline some of how they would manage in Boswell
now they’d been effectively cut off, he made plans to ensure the
new bloke didn’t get rolled as well. Scratching idly through his
desk drawer he found the business card he was looking for. He
picked up the phone. “Snape and Cockshut? Yeah put me through. Hi
Alicia. Its Polemarch here. I have a job for you and your business
partner.
     
    In his office Sakla was watching