Split

In the wee hours of the night, a man was awoken suddenly by the ringing of the telephone near his bed. He sat up, ready to rip whoever was on the other end a new one.

“This better be good,” he barked into the receiver.

“General. Apologies for interrupting your sleep,” said the voice on the phone. “But you’re going to want to get up for this.”

A few hours later, The General was walking through the doors of a local hospital in Nome, Alaska. He had been on his anniversary trip in a nice, beachfront villa in Spain, but when you’re The General, military jets are always at your disposal. Especially for something as big as this.

Inside the hospital was pure chaos. The doctor who had been on the other end of the phone call rushed over to him but was cut off by a lady in her mid-forties with a short haircut and a business suit.

“Doctor, calling in the military for a child abuse case is highly irregular, and I won’t have this interfering with my case.”

“Mrs. Holland, please,” replied the doctor. “You’ll have to have patience. New information has, ahem, come to light regarding the child. She can’t leave the hospital.”

The social worker tried to get in the way of The General, but he walked by as if she meant next to nothing. Offended, she pulled out her cell phone and walked briskly out of the waiting area.

“Please, come this way.” The doctor led The General through the maze of nurses rushing around, patients waiting to be seen, and visitors waiting to hear news of their loved ones. With his trained eye, The General noticed a reporter slinking around, but as of now it didn’t look like he was causing too much of a stir. He knew that would change soon. There were already too many civilians, too many people who knew too much.

At least the doctor had the good sense to put security at the entrance to the wing where the patient was being held. As they walked through the double doors, the commotion ceased and the doctor began briefing The General on all that had happened in the last 48 hours.

The patient, an 8 year old girl, had been brought in with lacerations all over her body. There appeared to be cuts, thousands of cuts all over her body. Immediately child services was called in for a routine welfare check.

The girls mother was insistent that the cuts had been caused by the sun, that the girl was allergic to the sun. She was hysterical, and they had to give her a shot to calm her down while they waited on the proper authorities to arrive. She was originally locked in an adjacent room until she could be taken into custody, but the doctor wasn’t sure what to do with her now.

“It appears that the mother is telling the truth. Well, in a way. We have discovered that the girl does have what appears to be an allergy, although not to the sun, but to the heat. The girl was outside in the afternoon when the temperature reached 71 degrees, and her skin began to rip apart,” the doctor explained. "The last time the temperature reached over 70 degrees here in Nome was the summer the girl was born, 8 years ago.”

“Hence why the allergy didn’t present itself for the first years of the child’s life. But still, I doubt I flew halfway across the world for a mere medical anomaly,” stated The General. He was still irritated about being yanked from his bed in the middle of the night on the first vacation he’d been able to take in over a decade. Careers were going to end if this was all over an allergic reaction.

“No sir, no, it’s much more than that. I did some additional tests, and I don’t really have an explanation for the results.”

The doctor went on to tell The General about the mother of the child. She is somewhat of a loony person, well known in the community for her conspiracy theories and talks of aliens. In fact, the year before her daughter was born, she had come into the hospital claiming to have been abducted by aliens. Nobody believed her. She has held onto the same story all these years, which hasn’t made her many friends.

And why the first thought was child abuse. She must be a drunk, the nurses thought.

The General put his hands to his temples. “Doctor, as much as I enjoy a good alien story, please get to the point. The mother’s delusions can wait.”

“But that’s the thing,” replied the doctor. “I no longer believe they are delusions. I ran some tests on the child’s skin cells, and, well. They don’t appear to be entirely human.”

“Show me.”

The pair looked in on the child, who was now sleeping in a cool room, covered in bandages. They then walked a little ways further down the hall to the lab. Here, the doctor led The General to the table with the samples and an apparatus that looked like a microscope, but much larger.

“If you look, the cells are normal, if a little enlarged. But when you apply heat,” and here the doctor switched on the plate the sample was sitting on, “the cells begin to split apart. You can see that one half of the split still looks normal, like a human cell should look. But the other half of the split is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“Alien,” breathed The General.

The General’s mind was running on overdrive as the doctor introduced him to the girl, Anora Jones. He knew that they had to move her quickly.

He had already placed a call to his pilot, and as soon as he got the signal, he asked the doctor to take them out the back entrance closest to the helicopter pad. The General, the doctor, Anora, and her mom had just made it out the door when they were accosted once again by Mrs. Holland, the social worker.

“I was called in on a child abuse case and I cannot allow her to leave with her suspected abuser!”

“Ma’am, this is no longer a county issue, but a military one. Now step aside,” replied The General, and he moved to go around her. Before they could, though, the reporter that was slinking around earlier rushed up with a portable heater and pointed it directly at Anora’s arm.

Her skin began to crackle and tear, and as the group looked on in horror, Anora’s arm split at the elbow into 2 arms. One was her normal, human arm, but the other was a sickly grey thing with 3 long, knobby protrusions where human fingers should have been.

The General slammed the reporter to the ground. Mrs. Holland screamed. Anora’s mom grabbed Anora, pushed her behind her, and began yelling that they weren’t going with anyone.

“Your daughter’s condition must have been leaked. If the reporter knew to blast her with heat, he already knew too much,” stated The General in a calming voice. “The only way I can protect you and your daughter is if you both come with me. Now.”

He shot a withering look at the doctor. “You, too.”

“I want guarantees. That you won’t harm her,” Ms. Jones stood her ground.

“Get in the chopper or I can’t guarantee a thing.”

A crowd of nurses and orderlies was beginning to form. Ms. Jones looked back at her daughter and was surprised to see that her arm had come together and looked normal again. Anora’s eyes were wide as she looked from her arm to her mom, to the growing number of people gawking at her like she was a freak.

Ms. Jones hugged her terrified daughter close.

“Let’s go. The General will save us.” She didn’t know if she was trying to convince herself or Anora, but she had made her decision. The four of them ran to the waiting helicopter and strapped in.

When they were safely in the air away from prying eyes, ears, and cell phone cameras, The General made a call.

“Get a spin team on the ground in Nome as soon as possible. It’s already been leaked, so cover and twist it before it gets out of control.”

He hung up and went to talk to the pilot.

“There’s been a change of plans. We are going to Nevada. Area 51. And you’d better crank up your air conditioning.”