ENCOUNTER by Hep Aldridge (bill gates books recommendations .txt) 📕

He obliged, and the beam disappeared, leaving a neat circular scar where the bullet hole had been.

O’Reilly looked closer and said, “Couldn’t you have made the scar disappear as well?”

“Oh, yes, easily,” she replied, “but he said he wanted to leave it.”

“He,” O’Reilly asked, “he who?”

“Dimitri, of course,” Jeannie replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

“You were in touch with him while you were removing the bullet?”

“Yes, the whole time. I had to make sure things were going well and help control his discomfort.”

“That’s amazing,” Doc said, “but why leave the scar?”

Jeannie paused before answering, “I’m not really sure. He said something that made no sense, ‘Chicks dig scars’—whatever that means.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Jeannie touched another button on the console, and the blood stopped flowing through the tube connecting Dimitri and me.

She looked at the display in the air over Dimitri and said to Doc, “He has stabilized; you can remove the cuffs from both their arms.”

When Doc had finished, I checked my arm, and there was only the tiniest red dot on it. Not bad, I don’t even need a Band-Aid, I thought.

“So, everything went okay? He’s going to recover?” I asked Jeannie.

“Yes, he will be fine by tomorrow. The projectile missed his vital organs, and I was able to restore the damaged tissue successfully. He will need to stay here for the night but should be fine by morning,” she said as she went about the business of turning things off. The display stayed on over Dimitri’s body, showing vital signs, I guessed. Jeannie reached into it and made an adjustment, and a blue glow covered Dimitri’s body.

“The display will monitor his progress and alert me if there are any problems, and the glow is a stronger version of what you experienced in our bathing facility. It will restore his body and help finalize the healing process. He needs to rest now, and we have much to discuss,” she said.

Doc asked, “I saw the bullet, and then it disappeared; what happened to it?”

“I broke it down to a molecular level and then removed the particles. I was locating the object when the beam was blue. The purple color indicated the particles were being removed. It turned back to blue when the process was complete.”

“That’s amazing. What a revolution to the field of medicine that would be in our world,” Doc said.

“We can talk more of this later,” she said as she left the building.

We walked out of the building just in time to see the cloak being restored over the city. It was like watching the ocean rolling up on the beach and momentarily covering the sand with water, except this little wave continued until it met the canyon end and the top of the platform. As the sunlight was being blocked out, the luminescence reappeared, and the light level remained the same.

We were heading back to our usual meeting place when Jeannie said, “No, let us go here; you need food,” and led us into the eating hall we had previously visited. The long table in the middle of the room once again had numerous dishes, pitchers, and goblets spread out on it. The room had more art on the wall, and the bench was now covered with soft cushions. Against the far wall were five basins of water with towels next to each.

“Please, take time to refresh yourselves,” she said and pointed to the basins. It was then I realized I still had Dimitri’s blood on my hands and immediately began scrubbing them clean. The others followed suit. We all had accumulated dirt, dust, and grit from our recent encounter, and the water was cool and refreshing.

We took our seats at the table; I looked at everyone and shook my head. “I can’t believe a couple of hours ago we were involved in a life or death battle, and now, here we are sitting down to a meal. I mean, it seems surreal—almost like a bad dream.”

“It was a bad dream in real-time, Colt. Luckily, we all managed to wake up from it unscathed, except, of course, for Dimitri,” Doc said. “Thank you, Jeannie; you are truly a lifesaver,” he added and raised his cup in salute. We all did the same and thanked her with sincerity.

She nodded in acceptance and said, “You have provided a great service to me and my race. You saved the Watcher, and for that, I will be eternally grateful.”

She was standing at the end of the table and had not put the hood to her robe back up. Her angular features with the long flowing hair accenting them made her all the more beautiful, I thought. She turned and looked at me and smiled. Oh, hell, I keep forgetting she can read our thoughts. I felt a warmth come over my body as I looked at her, and she laughed—a delightful, light, soft tinkling bell kind of laugh, and I laughed with her. The adrenaline rush of the gun battle and Dimitri’s injury was leaving, and the fact that we had just survived this harrowing event began sinking in. Before long, we were all laughing, releasing our pent-up emotions, and it felt good. The horror of the attack began fading slightly, and the fatigue started setting in as we continued eating.

Joe was the first to ask the question that had been on everyone’s mind. “Jeannie, how were you able to move Dimitri like you did? It looked like a form of teleportation.”

“It was,” she replied. “It required a significant amount of energy to accomplish it. That is why I had to divert the power from the cloak, as you call it. Using the power from it, I was able to move him to our care facility. If my normal power source was active, such drastic action would not have been necessary. I would have had enough energy to move him easily and do much more.”

“So, there are many additional things you could do if you