Mine (29 page)

And now they were here.

Good.

E
IGHTY-TWO

Mike

M
IKE SENSED HIS
friends tense as they reached the end of the stairs. Something about this particular spot disturbed them. He didn’t know what it was. Their minds were too complicated by the changes the Reclaimer had made for him to probe without their knowledge.

When Leah turned her light toward the ceiling, however, thoughts of his friends’ mental states disappeared as he felt the presence of the Reclaimer. He steeled himself for the onslaught of her wrath, but quickly realized she wasn’t reaching out directly. She was using a sensor at the dark end of the corridor.

He concentrated on the device and sent it the same disabling code he’d used with the others.

E
IGHTY-THREE

The Reclaimer

T
HE RECLAIMER FELT
the harsh sting of something attacking the sensor. The image wavered and would have quit entirely if she hadn’t quickly taken over direct control. With effort, she repulsed the attack and stabilized the input.

Somehow, one of the creatures had been able to tap into her system. That should have been impossible. Nothing could enter her system without her allowing it there.

The vermin’s intrusion had gone on long enough.

She extended herself forward to take control of the beings’ minds.

E
IGHTY-FOUR

Mike

T
HE RECLAIMER SURGED
into
the sensor and began pushing Mike out. He fought for as long as he could, but soon enough she’d pried him loose.

He knew trying again was out of the question. She would be coming straight at them now.

Using every ounce of energy he had, he created a shield around his friends, hoping it would be enough.

E
IGHTY-FIVE

The Reclaimer

I
N THE NANOSECOND
it took the Reclaimer’s electronic impulses to reach the other end of the hall, an invisible barrier rose to encase the trio.

With rapid-fire jabs, she attempted to break through, but the shield blocked her every move.

She probed and prodded, assessing the shield’s makeup. A surprisingly long 5.82 seconds later, she determined that the creature in the middle was generating the barrier. His strength was impressive. She would have never believed one of these creatures could do what he was doing if she had not seen it for herself.

As impressive as the feat was, however, these creatures were imperfect beasts, so she was confident the shield had a thin spot she could exploit. It took another 4.19 seconds before she finally detected a vulnerable section. It was tiny, not even a quarter millimeter in circumference—much smaller than she had expected.

Carefully, she pushed at the spot, but she’d barely started slipping through when her presence was detected. The creature immediately eliminated the weakness and cut her off.

Though her time inside had lasted but a fraction of a second, she had gained one piece of information so unexpected, it made her retreat all the way back into the Cradle.

The creature/generator was her own Translator.

While that explained how the being had been able to get into her systems, it did nothing to help her understand
how
it could be here, let alone how it had created the barrier. She knew her Translator’s life from the packets it sent. Knew the building it lived in. Knew it could not leave even if it wanted to.

It should not be here.

It
could
not be here.

And yet it was.

The logical answer was that it must have something to do with the two beings accompanying it. Unfortunately there’d been no time to probe them for their identities.

She hastily constructed a program to cull a list of possible creatures from her vast data on the Translator and set it to run.

E
IGHTY-SIX

Leah

“I
’LL LIGHT THE
way. You bring Mike,” Leah said.

She turned, but before she could take a step, Joel said, “Hold it.”

“What is it?”

“He’s not moving.”

She grabbed Mike’s other hand and pulled, but he stayed rooted to the floor.

In the forest, Mike’s refusal to move had been because the Doer was near, so she scanned the edge of the darkness ahead, wondering if it was close again. Maybe just beyond the reach of her light, or…

She shot a look back at the elevator, suddenly sure that whatever had gone up had returned. But nothing was there.

“Mike, I know you can hear me,” she said. “We’ve got to keep moving.”

He tightened his grip on her hand and pulled it closer to his side.

She frowned, and then peeled his fingers back and freed her palm. “Stay with him,” she told Joel. “I’ll take a look ahead.”

Mike’s hand shot out and snagged her shirt.

“Maybe you should wait,” Joel said.

She looked at him, then at Mike. “Maybe you’re right.”

Mike’s grip loosened but he didn’t let go. Waves of stress washed over his face as he counted and counted. Suddenly the numbers stopped and his eyes opened.

“She knows I’m here.” He blinked several times and moved past them into the tunnel. “She knows I’m here! Hurry, hurry, hurry.”

Falling in behind him, they ran down the corridor. When they reached the end, they found a new hall that curved off in both directions. Mike went left so they followed.

They came to a large, thick metal door that would have closed off the entire corridor if it wasn’t already open.

Mike sped around it. “Hurry, hurry.”

On the other side was a short elbow hallway that opened into a room so large, Leah’s light couldn’t reach the ceiling or the other walls.

Mike was already running across it, his echoing footsteps all but lost in the gigantic space.

“Wait for us!” Leah called after him.

But his pace did not lessen, and it took effort on her part to keep him in the far reaches of her light. Clearly, he was faster than he looked.

Then, as if hitting an invisible wall, he stopped dead in his tracks. For a second his whole body seized, and then he tumbled to the ground.

E
IGHTY-SEVEN

The Reclaimer

T
HE RECLAIMER RECEIVED
notifications in rapid succession as the Translator and its companions moved deeper into her fortress. When they neared the transition space outside her inner sanctum, she knew she could ignore the problem no longer.

She recalled the servant she’d sent to the building in the land above, then projected her consciousness toward the Translator. She expected to have problems with his shield again, but he had separated from the others and it was spread thin now, making it easier for her to penetrate.

As soon as she was inside, she clamped down on its mind.

::HALT!

Its forward momentum stopped and it crumbled to the ground like the delicate being it was. She probed it, trying to extract all its information so she could learn what had brought it here, but even in its restrained state, the Translator was able to project a limited shield around its thoughts and memories.

Again, the Reclaimer was baffled. The Translator had never shown any signs of being able to do anything so intricate and powerful before.

She squeezed harder.

::RELENT! TRANSMIT! MINE!

E
IGHTY-EIGHT

Leah

A
N ELECTRIC PULSE
shot through the room, forcing Leah and Joel to double over, twenty feet shy of reaching Mike.

::RELENT! TRANSMIT! MINE!

Leah looked around, trying to locate the speaker.

::RELENT!

Her gaze whipped back to Mike. The voice was inside his head, she realized. But it wasn’t his voice.

As she started toward him again, Joel grabbed her arm. “There’s something out there.”

“It’s her.”

“The Reclaimer?”

“Yes, now let me go.”

He hesitated, and then did as she requested.

Leah raced ahead until she was only a couple of yards from Mike, set her feet, and shouted with both her mind and voice, “Leave him alone!”

The only response was the Reclaimer repeating,
::RELENT! TRANSMIT! MINE!

Leah tried again, but there was no sign her words were getting through. She wasn’t strong enough. Not on her own, anyway.

She looked back at Joel. He had followed her and was standing a few feet away. She thrust out her hand. “Help me!”

He grabbed it. “What’s going on?”’

Before she responded, she heard the Reclaimer issue its orders again, and she could feel Mike weakening. To Joel she said, “Don’t let go!”

She closed her eyes and worked her way into the part of Joel’s mind she’d used to track him down in Mexico. It would’ve been better if the wall he’d built to keep her out was completely gone, but there was no time to deal with that now. She linked herself to him as best she could and refocused on Mike.

::RELENT! TRANSMIT! MINE!”

“Leave him alone!” Leah shouted.

The ball of energy that had been surrounding Mike retracted as if it had been smacked by a club. It didn’t disappear completely, though. Leah could sense it nearby, immensely powerful, like nothing she’d felt before. And yet there was something intimately familiar about it.

The one who made us.

The end and the beginning.

She could feel the force surge forward to attack Mike again.

“No!” she yelled as she projected herself at it.

E
IGHTY-NINE

The Reclaimer

T
HE RECLAIMER’S CONNECTION
to the Translator terminated the moment her emergency
protocols kicked in. These had been triggered by the surprise intrusion of one of the Translator’s companions. According to her earlier risk calculations, the chance of that occurring was only 0.000181%.

She extended forward, intending to dive into the creatures’ minds to find out how, twice now, they had overpowered her.

“No!” With the creature’s shout came a pulse of energy that pushed the Reclaimer all the way back down the hall.

This was unprecedented. The Reclaimer had no data showing this species had anything close to this ability. Quite the contrary. Her information confirmed they were weak, petty animals undeserving of the atmosphere they breathed.

Unless…

Had the Translator been falsifying the information packets all along? That would account for the discrepancies.

Such a betrayal would set her program back years.

She conducted a rapid calculation. Though the majority of the information the Translator had sent her was probably legitimate, there was now an 84.3338% likelihood that false data was mixed among it.

She ran an analysis of all her potential responses. When the program finished, there was only one course of action that made sense. She had to assume the data was corrupt and would need to be discarded.

A more reliable Translator would have to be found, and a whole new data set—
accurate
data set—obtained. Schedules would need to be revised, and the day of reclamation she had thought was so close must be postponed for several more years.

Decision made, she turned her attention to devising a way of dealing with her former Translator and its vermin friends.

N
INETY

Joel

“I
GOT YOU,”
Joel said as he grabbed Leah and kept her from collapsing.

She blinked, disoriented, and then looked at him. “It was the Reclaimer.”

“Yeah, I kind of got that.”

Through the mental connection she’d made with Joel, he’d been able to witness the exchange. It had been like listening to a radio from another room—understandable, but distorted and distant.

“Is she still here?” he asked.

“No.”

“Did you…uh…” He wasn’t sure what word to use. Kill? Destroy? Defeat?

She seemed to know what he meant, though, because she shook her head. “Mike?” she asked.

With a steadying arm around her, Joel helped her over to where Mike lay curled up on the ground.

They knelt beside him.

“Mike, can you hear me?” Leah asked. “Are you all right?”

“You still with us, buddy?” Joel threw in.

For a moment, there was no response, then came a whispered, “Still…with you.”

Grinning, Joel slipped a hand under Mike’s shoulder, said, “Let’s get you up,” and carefully hauled him to his feet. He then glanced at Leah. She looked better but nowhere near a hundred percent. “We need to get you two out of here.”

“No. We can’t leave. We have to—”

“Whatever the hell that thing is, she’s more powerful than us. At the very least we need to rethink our strategy. And it would be better to do that
any
place else.”

They stared at each other for several seconds before she reluctantly nodded.

Joel put his free arm around her and started half walking-half carrying her and Mike back the way they’d come. Leah tried to keep her light pointed in front of them but she was exhausted, and every few feet Joel had to nudge her to lift it again.