Alien Invasion 04 Annihilation (12 page)

He waited for it, arms braced, secure at least that the coming shock wouldn’t steer them into a ditch.

Then he saw a sequence of images, somehow superimposed over his natural vision. It wasn’t like a movie, or a projection. It wasn’t even precisely sight. He could see the images; he could describe the colors and what he watched happen within them. But there was more. The experience was closer to memory, like an intrusion of something he couldn’t forget if he’d tried.
 

The Apex, now almost complete.
 

An ornate chest, like something drawn by ancient artisans in his father’s old books.
 

Hands — Cameron’s own; he could read their scars like a map — setting the ornate plate with the spiral pattern into a flat circle on the chest.

The Apex somehow shifting.
Changing
. The image dug its claws into Cameron, tightening his grip on the wheel. He could feel the blue pyramid’s energy in his bones. He wanted to clench as if receiving a long, hot electric shock.
 

He saw a house. His own feet walking the hallways.
 

A tall man. The viceroy. But in the vision he wore a mask, like something from a Day of the Dead parade.

A flash of light. Maybe an explosion. In the vision, Cameron felt something break. Something come undone, become nothing at all.
 

He saw a small girl, a few years old but with wisdom in her deep, fathomless blue eyes. She had a single finger pressed to her lips, telling Cameron to keep the secret.

Then someone was snapping in his ear, over and over. At first, he thought it was part of the vision — something he felt sure was being sent to him deliberately like a siren song. Then he realized it was Charlie, displaying his usual lack of tact.
 

Cameron blinked up. It was dark. The passenger seat, where Piper had been sitting three seconds earlier, was empty. Charlie sat in it. Cameron pushed away a strange sense of unreality, sure that Charlie was about to sit on her.
 

But then the tall man was in the seat, staring blankly at him. The world beyond was dark except for twin cones of light from the RV’s front.
 

“I thought you didn’t trust the autodrive,” Charlie said like a challenge.
 

“I only turned it on for a second.”
 

But that second had lasted longer than Cameron thought.
 

“Where is Piper?”

“Asleep.”
 

“But she was just … ” He let the sentence hang, knowing Charlie wasn’t socially adept enough to care. Obviously Piper wasn’t “just” anything. It had been light outside when he’d last seen her. Which had been less than ten seconds ago.
 

“There’s a problem,” Charlie said.
 

“Okay. What’s the problem?”
 

“Andreus sent out a drone. I wouldn’t have allowed it if I’d known.”
 

Cameron almost laughed. The idea of Charlie forbidding Nathan Andreus from doing anything was ridiculous.
 

“It works off a stored map, independent of satellite guidance. But without GPS, he says it could only ballpark, based on our believed position. So he programmed it to go high, spot from a distance, then zero in on the Heaven’s Veil lights. It was then supposed to fly lower, make a sweep, and return. There’s a homing signal it finds on this end when it gets close.”
 

“Okay,” Cameron said, still trying to shake the cobwebs from his vision — his strange certainty that he could do what he was proposing, based on intel from a little girl he’d never met and wasn’t entirely sure even existed. The dreamlike state was hard to shed. He’d apparently been steeping in it for much longer than the few seconds he’d imagined.
 

“So what was the problem?” Cameron asked.
 

“There
were
no lights at Heaven’s Veil.”
 

Cameron took his hands from the wheel, surrendering the farce of driving. If they took a wayward road to the wrong place, armageddon’s edge would have to wait for them elsewhere.
 

“The network failure?”
 

Charlie gave a small nod. “And perhaps I’m overstating. There were some lights, but it’s clear they’re conserving power. I can see some small dots of civilization on the footage. But it’s just a few floods. Most of the city is black. Except for the Apex.”
 

“What about the Apex?”
 

“We’ve never seen it at night. There was never a reason to. But with the rest of the city’s lights off, it’s clear that something is happening inside. And outside.”

“Outside?”
 

Charlie fished a tablet from his shoulder bag. Cameron hadn’t noticed the bag, despite Charlie’s carrying it inside. Testament to how odd Charlie could be.
 

Charlie glanced at the wheel, saw it making minute steering adjustments on its own, then held the tablet so Cameron could see it. He started an already paused video and saw a shaky, green-tinted overhead shot of a city in the dark, most of its buildings unlit. The camera swooped higher, and Cameron could see the Apex, not just glowing blue but
pulsing
azure. There was a line protruding from the Apex’s top, like a string hooked high in the sky above.
 

“What’s this?”
 

“That’s what bothers me. This is an infrared shot, so I doubt this is visible to the naked eye — or it’s very faint if it is. But that’s not all of it. Look.”
 

Charlie skipped ahead. The drone was now flying over the area beyond the fence, where the artists had created their enormous stone carvings of Divinity’s various forms. Hulks of rock in the desert were difficult to see in the dark, but Cameron made them out with effort simply because of their size. They were
so
huge that the Astrals had clearly placed the source stones in place for the artists to carve. There were no high-rise cranes in Heaven’s Veil, as far as satellite footage had shown. Just buildings and fence and monoliths connected by narrow bands of light like the one streaming from the Apex’s top.
 

“Are those the statues outside the city?” Cameron asked.
 

“Yes.”
 

“What are these lines between them?”
 

“Either they’re being projected by the carvings themselves, or the Apex is projecting them. I think it’s the latter. See how this line, between this statue and this one, is broken? There’s a church steeple here — ” Charlie paused and scrolled the shot back to show what he meant, “that would, if it’s projected from the Apex, be in the way. But again, all infrared. People probably don’t know it’s there because they don’t see the city from above, in the dark, at night.”
 

Cameron felt a chill. Seen from far enough back, the pattern was obvious. The sculptures, with dull-green lines between them, formed an enormous spiral.
 

“What do you think it is?”
 

“It’s a Fibonacci spiral. Like the one in a nautilus. Or the spiral of a galaxy.”

“But why?”
 

“I don’t know. It might be a landing pad, like a runway. It might be a marker. Or it might be a call for help.”
 

“Help?”

“Not as in
Save us
. But it might mean Give us a hand.
Assist
us.’”
 

“Why would they need assistance?”

“Because they’ve encountered a problem they can’t solve. It’s the same thing we’d do. We’d call someone who would know better.”
 

Cameron touched the tablet’s screen then the line at the top of the Apex. Like something coming into it. Or something going out.
 

“There’s no way to be sure when this happened. Not without my equipment, and not without talking to others around the world.”
 

“Why would you need to talk to others?”
 

“This might be happening at the other capitals, too.”
 

Cameron thought of the visions he’d been receiving — that he’d been
given
, more accurately. The missives that felt half like informational bulletins and half like calls from a little girl asking him to come and play. They were new, too. Just another thing that seemed to have changed since Cottonwood, since they’d kicked the hornet’s nest.
 

“If you had to guess, Charlie,” Cameron said, “what do you think this means?”
 

“That I hope you’re right. And that either way, the clock is ticking.”

CHAPTER 20

Lila crossed the dark lawn to Heather’s house, feeling unsure. Clara’s hand was in hers. It was late for the girl, but not too late. She slept erratically, in fits. Sometimes, she was down for fifteen hours out of twenty-four. Sometimes, she barely slept at all. She wasn’t tired now. And there was no way, with six playmates on the way, that she could calm herself to sleep a wink.

“Mommy,” she said. “Look.”
 

Lila looked toward the Apex, where Clara was pointing. The thing was making its eerie blue pulse, though the tempo seemed faster. With city power off, the thing seemed ominous.
 

“It’s like a flashlight beam,” Clara said.
 

Lila looked over again. It wasn’t like a flashlight at all. It was like a nightlight, making sure that no one in the city could sleep.
 

“You’re sure she’s in here?” Lila said instead of answering.
 

“Not there.” Clara pointed at Heather’s small house, then her finger swung toward Terrence’s. His place was dark. Terrence was back, all right, but Raj was keeping him under lock and key and on a rather tight leash. “There,” Clara finished.
 

“That’s Mr. Terrence’s house, Sweetie.”
 

Clara broke Lila’s grip, skipping across the partially lit lawn toward the tiny home. The house had lights, but they were only as needed, giving the place a spooky, half-dead feel. The grounds were worse. There were outward-facing security lights, but in here, between main building and the row of guest houses, it was mostly long shadow. The air was warm. Watching Clara skip between long shafts of dark and light gave Lila a chill she couldn’t articulate.
 

Clara climbed the porch steps. Then, without knocking, she went inside. The place was nothing but darkness. She tried to cut into the gloom with the small flashlight she’d found on Raj’s nightstand, but the thing was barely fit for a keychain, too dim to reveal more than the doorknob.

Lila stood on the lawn, feeling the silence before crossing to the porch herself.
 

“Clara? Come on out, honey.”
 

But there was no answer.
 

“Clara?”
 

The door was still open. Lila entered, fighting dread, and batted at the wall for a switch. She flicked it, but nothing happened.
 

Too close, someone said, “Power’s out.”
 

Lila jumped. She turned her light and found herself feet from her mother, with Clara perched happily on her lap.
 

“Mom! What are you doing in here!?”
In the dark. Alone. Sitting in Terrence’s chair, saying nothing even when I shouted.
The hairs on the back of Lila’s neck rippled in a wave.

“I thought he might go to visit me in my place. So I came here instead.”
 

“Who?”
 

“Your father.”
 

“That’s not funny.”
 

The flashlight’s beam lit Heather’s face. Clara, on her lap, seemed overly content, but Heather was neither welcoming the girl nor pushing her away. It was as if she had yet to notice her.

“Seriously, Mom.”
 

“I didn’t know where else to go. I didn’t know where we were going when your dad and I ran away, but he always had a way of knowing what to do and where to go. I trusted him. Believed him. Without him, I’m a loose end.”

“You’re just sitting in the dark.”
 

“The power is out.”
 

“There’s power in the house, and plenty of extra bedrooms.”
 

“But he’s there.”
 

“Who?”
 

“Meyer.”
 

Lila wanted to shout. This wasn’t fair. She shouldn’t have to deal with her father’s death and her mom’s mockery in the same day. Or with her losing her shit. Again.
 

She met Heather’s eyes, unsure how to respond. They were here because Clara insisted: If she wasn’t allowed to see Grandpa anymore, she wanted to see Grandma. Why not? Lila wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight anyway. It seemed that Heather wouldn’t, either.
 

“I don’t like you joking about it,” Lila said.