Free Contact by Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant

a word of their bullshit. Maybe they really were the good guys, and maybe they weren’t. But after seeing one man’s brains darken the far wall, it was the kind of claim anyone would be stupid to take on faith.
    “Morgan was right. Your husband was taken into one of the ships,” Cameron said.
    “But how could you possibly know that?” Piper asked.  
    He sighed as if deciding to omit a complicated piece of the story. “I know people who have studied this stuff all their lives. There’s a lab I’ll tell you about later, still very operational. And they have … well … resources .” Cameron looked again at the broad man with the curly hair and bad skin: Dan . “Anyway, you know about the big wave of abductions that came right after the ships arrived, right?”  
    “That was our favorite TV show,” interrupted Trevor’s mother, her wiseass quips still intact after the quarrel. “Except for the part where they fucked up Moscow. That was clearly the network suits interfering with the artistry to please viewers.”
    Cameron turned from Piper. “Heather, right?”  
    “Dickhead, right?” Heather answered.  
    “Mom … ” Trevor said.  
    “We know there were abductions,” Cameron turned to Piper, ignoring Trevor and his mother. “At first, they were just rumors, then they — the people I mentioned — started to receive footage from all over the world from a network of sources. But they never knew for sure about Meyer.”  
    “We figure he’ll be back any minute,” Heather said. “He ran out for some smokes.”  
    Cameron gave Trevor’s mother more of a smiling acknowledgement than she probably deserved then spoke to Piper.  
    “According to our stats, there have been just shy of twenty thousand worldwide abductions. Some of that is government information accessed through leaked channels, some is NASA, again through leaked channels. Plenty is via an informal network of nerds that have managed to keep a primitive version of their own private Internet up and running. But there’s good reason to believe the figures are accurate, down to the person, excepting very recent activity and unreported or unobserved phenomena. But that last bit is hard to say because communications have been spotty at best, and even harder to keep an eye on since we joined Morgan and had to start playing our parts. It’s been weeks since I’ve managed to raise anything reliable about the overall state of the nation.”  
    “‘Raise’?” Piper said.  
    Cameron nodded. “There are still a few open communication frequencies. I can’t take credit for that; Terrence found them.” He tipped his head toward the cool black man still leaning against the wall.  
    “The open frequencies are mostly noise,” Cameron went on, “but we’ve also heard what sounds like military chatter.”  
    “Military!” Trevor didn’t like drawing attention to himself, but the word left him almost involuntarily. He’d forgotten about the military. In movies (even a few of his father’s films, come to think of it), the army always managed to shoot down the big, bad alien ships. The fact that they were still around and scheming felt strangely encouraging.  
    Cameron nodded. “It’s highly encoded. I can’t even guess at the encryption or what they’re saying. Might not even be military. Point is, the specificity of the open frequencies tells us it’s probably intentional. The fact that most frequencies are blocked and only a few are open, I mean.”  
    “‘Blocked’?” said Piper.
    “By the ships,” said Terrence. Trevor looked him over. The man was dressed in fitting jeans, boots, and a black leather vest.  
    “But why would a few channels be open?”  
    “If I had to guess,” said Terrence in his deep, syrupy voice, “it’s to create a bottleneck. A way to force communication into a few channels so they can easily monitor it.”  
    “The government?”  
    “The other guys,” Terrence corrected, pointing up.