Captured (The Prometheus Project Book 2) by Douglas E. Richards Read Free Book Online

morning.”
    “Absolutely not,” snapped their mother immediately. “Under no circumstances am I letting you stay in this city overnight by yourselves.”
    “We’re hardly alone, Mom,” argued Ryan. “Everyone here knows us. And we’ll be protected by the highest level of security on the planet. We’ll be safer here than at home.”
    “Please, Mom,” chimed in Regan. “We could stayhere—in your lab. You have cots in the next room and a refrigerator loaded with food. You and Dad practically live here.”
    Recently their parents had put in a makeshift sink and all four family members now even had spare toothbrushes in the alien building.
    “What experiments is Dr. Meadows planning?” asked their father.
    “He’s gonna study the walkway,” said Ryan.
    The team’s first discovery upon entering the city had been a walkway that was made of a super-springy material that catapulted a person forward in a perfectly controlled fashion, greatly accelerating their pace.
    “He wants to do a bunch of things,” continued Ryan, “like putting sensors on us while we walk on it so he can record exactly what happens. We promised we’d help him.”
    Ben Resnick pursed his lips together in thought. “They do make some good arguments, Amanda,” he said. “And we did forget to tell them we were leaving early tonight. I’m sure Dr. Meadows is counting on their help.”
    “What if we promise to stay with Dr. Meadows the whole time?” pressed Ryan. “Until we’re ready for bed. Then we can just come back here and sleep on the cots. You can wake us up early tomorrow when you get back and we can tell you all about the results.”
    “You told us you didn’t think we needed specialtreatment because we’re kids,” added Regan. “Were you just saying that?”
    Amanda Resnick looked into the eyes of her husband and two children and knew she was beaten. She shook her head. “This is against my better judgment, but I suppose we could try it—just this once.”
    “Thanks, Mom,” said both kids happily.
    “I suppose you want us to bring a change of clothes for you tomorrow morning as well?”
    “That would be great,” said Ryan. “You won’t regret this. You’re the best, Mom.”
    “Sure,” said Mrs. Resnick wryly. “The best. I’m sure I’ll win the mother-of-the-year award for agreeing to let my children spend the night without their parents in an extremely dangerous alien city.”
    Ryan smiled. “It’s not that bad,” he said.
    “Yeah,” added Regan. “It’s a single night. And you’ll be back here for us early in the morning.” She looked at her mother reassuringly. “Really, Mom, just how dangerous could it possibly be?”

C HAPTER 7
Invaded
    R egan awoke, yawned, and rubbed her eyes. She was wearing the same jeans and lavender t-shirt she had worn the night before, and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She was looking forward to telling her parents about the experiments they had conducted with Dr. Meadows the night before. Not only had they learned more about the walkway, but surprisingly, they had learned more about the nanobots as well.
    These tiny robots, which looked like mutant ants with the teeth and attitude of piranha, had become quite a nuisance in the early days. Their incessant repairing of things drove the scientists crazy.
    One of the most time honored strategies for learning how something worked was to take it apart—carefully. If you didn’t know what a television was or how it worked, you could remove a part. If it continued to displaya great picture but you couldn’t change the volume, the part you removed most likely had something to do with volume control. With enough time, care, and patience you could learn quite a lot. Molecular biologists even used this strategy to learn the function of different genes. They knocked out individual genes in mouse embryos and then studied what happened. Did the embryo still grow into a mouse? If it did, were there any changes in