Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller by Brandon Ellis (easy to read books for adults list txt) 📕

on Starship Atlantis. A small, round window was atop the door, too tall for her to see through, even on her tiptoes.

He slid a card down the control panel, then typed in a code. The door slid open.

The man held her by the collar and bent down on one knee, a strong minty smell coming off his breath. He had an accent. A really bad, fake accent and all she could see were his eyes. The rest of his face and body was covered in a black jumpsuit, a military vest wrapped around his back and chest. “You’ll be safe in here. Be nice to the people inside. They are doctors and may need to poke and prod you, but they will not harm you. Do you understand, Claudia?”

Claudia nodded, her innocent eyes betraying her doubt.

“Don’t do anything that your dad wouldn’t want you to do in there, Claudia. Okay? Be a nice little girl. These are your dad’s people. They won’t harm a hair on your head.”

She nodded again and the man stood, tapped on her back a couple of times to push her forward and through the entrance into a large room filled with rusty walls. To the right, Claudia could hear some commotion and movement, but they were out of view.

“Claudia, go.”

She held her ground.

The man nudged her forward. “Get going, Miss.”

She didn’t budge, shaking her head, adamant. There was something about this room that creeped her out, that caused goose bumps to rise.

“I’m sorry, but I have to do this.” He picked her up and walked through the entrance, taking a sharp right and set her on the ground.

Claudia gasped. “Sissy!”

Her sister sat in a chair surrounded by several men and women in white, scrunched in by monitors that spouted numbers and graphs across the screens.

“Claudia?” Her sister bounded out of the chair, her small legs taking her across the storage room into the arms of her overjoyed sister.

The man who brought Claudia into the room exited, the heavy door clanging behind him, but Claudia didn’t care anymore, didn’t care about her fear she’d felt upon first glimpsing this room. She was safe now and with Rose, her sister, just like her father told her she’d be. She wanted to tell Rose that everything was going to be fine and that she would protect her, that their dad would protect them from now on. But she didn’t. To Claudia’s mind, her sister was too young to understand.

“Girls,” said a woman. “I’m Dr. Andrea Cross. Can you come over here for a second?” She held up a rubber knee hammer, a device just about every child had seen during a doctor visit or two. “Your dad wants us to check your reflexes.”

The girls unclasped from each other and walked over to the doctor.

Andrea gestured to her assistant. “My friend here will work on you, Rose. So, please sit back down and relax.” She motioned toward a chair with restraints, the chair Rose was sitting on before Claudia entered the room.

“And Claudia, you sit here.” She patted a similar chair a few feet away. It, too, had restraints.

Claudia sat down, touching her knee. She never liked the feeling of that rubber hammer thing, causing her lower leg to twitch. It was weird.

“We’re going to have to strap you in, girls.” Andrea buckled Claudia in at the waist, then tied her arms, and bound her head against the back of the chair.

Claudia did her best to locate her sister. This wasn’t normal. She’d never been seat belted in during a doctor’s visit, especially around the head.

She moved a few inches, but the restraints held Claudia in place. She could see her sister’s feet. “Are you okay, Rose?”

“I’m okay,” Rose said.

Rose’s patent-leather Mary-Jane’s bounced back and forth, telling Claudia her sister was fine. And that most likely this entire scenario was fine...was normal...just something she’d never experienced before? She had to be an adult and fearless. She had to grow up.

“How are you doing, Claudia?” Andrea questioned.

“I’m fine.”

“Excellent. Now, just look at this thing right here.” Andrea pulled a long, black gadget, the size and shape of a pencil, from her coat pocket. A man handed her a long cord attached to a monitor. Andrea looked it over and fit it into the bottom of her gadget, clicking the cord in place. She slid her hand up the gadget and twisted the top. A red-light glowed. “Do you remember what we did to your mommy?”

Claudia didn’t know what she meant by we or any other word in Andrea’s question. In fact, she didn’t see this Andrea lady in the room when her mom was killed. There was no we about it. It was only one person who killed her mom and he had minty breath.

She held her breath and stiffened. The guy who escorted her here had minty breath.

“Sit still,” said Andrea. “This will only hurt for a second.” She moved the red light closer to Claudia’s eyes.

A strong heat hit Andrea between the eyes, then a zap went through her forehead and to her brain. Her body and chest lifted off of the chair, her arms and hands went rigid, her fingers outstretched. She convulsed, her eyes widening, saliva frothing at her mouth.

She screamed. Her little sister let out a blood-curdling yell. She went to reach over, to hold her sister’s hand, to do anything to comfort her. Her arm was stuck, her legs wouldn’t kick, and her body wasn’t cooperating. She was writhing, out of control.

Memories came flooding to the surface. Her mom playing with her at home in the sand box in their backyard, years before her father became the president of the United States. They gathered sand in their shovels and filled up several beach buckets, laughing at each other, playing around like loving mothers and daughters do.

The memory left, evaporating, disconnecting from her brain. Gone forever. She attempted to bring the memory back up only to realize she didn’t even know what memory she was