Defenders (40 page)

The defenders stopped keeping track of us individually a long time ago. They’re impatient with mundane details. We keep things running without being told. They’re happy with that arrangement.

That confirmed Oliver’s experience, and was useful information to be filed away. The defenders were not without their weaknesses.

“I take it you’ve been sent to convince us to agree to this alliance?”

That’s right.

Oliver couldn’t help but laugh. “You send the Luyten who killed Lila’s father to pitch the idea to her, and the one who broke up my marriage to close the deal with me. You guys must be short on talent.”

We need to convince Lila because of her unique position. By extension, we need to convince you as well. Who better to reform your feelings about us than the ones most responsible for forming those impressions in the first place?

“I probably wouldn’t have taken the divorce as hard if you weren’t simultaneously trying to wipe out my entire species.”

That was never our intention. Once you surrendered, we would have stopped.

“Yeah. Things didn’t work out that way, though, so we’ll never know.” Oliver waved toward himself, like a guy in a fistfight offering his opponent a free shot. “Go ahead, then. Convince me.”

Five eased into the Luyten prone position.
Neither of our species needs this entire planet. With your losses, and ours, there are enough resources for everyone. We would accept any reasonable arrangement, whether it be complete segregation or intense intermingling of our two species.

We feel the deaths of our own more acutely than you can imagine. If we’re allowed to live in peace, we’ll go to almost any length to avoid violent conflict with you.

Oliver waited until he was sure Five was finished. “You once warned me that you could be lying at any time. I learned that lesson the hard way.” He thought of Vanessa, let all the bottled-up anger in him come to the surface. “You took pleasure in fucking up my life. Personal pleasure. It had nothing to do with the war. You just wanted to see me suffer.” Oliver stepped closer to Five, stabbed a finger at him. “I treated you with respect. You were my prisoner, but I never treated you like one.”

No, you didn’t. That’s one of the reasons we’re coming to you, and Lila, and Kai.
Five stepped around Oliver, went over to Kai.
I’m sorry for your injuries, my friend.

Kai nodded tightly.

Yes, I used you when you were only a boy. I was desperate. I’m sorry. And I’m still grateful for the help you gave me.

Oliver thought Five was pouring it on a little thick. He could barely reconcile this warm, grateful beast with the slick son of a bitch he’d known back in the day. He suspected he was still a slick son of a bitch, manipulating them the way he’d manipulated both Oliver and Kai years before.

Five turned back to Oliver.
You’re right. I was intentionally cruel to you. I hated you all the more because you treated me well, and made it harder for me to see you as a bug whose life wasn’t worth much. Killing something while simultaneously feeling her pain is truly indescribable. I think it drove us a little mad.

“You’re just bursting with sincerity, aren’t you?” Lila said. “I’m getting all misty-eyed.”

Five made a gurgling noise.
We’re not all in agreement, either. Many of my kind are against this. You’re not sure you can trust us? Imagine if you knew with absolute certainty that nearly all of your potential allies hated and feared you, that they wished you dead. Imagine proposing an alliance with people who, after signing a peace treaty with you, immediately handed you over to monsters to be exterminated.

Oliver swallowed hard. How easy it was to remember all the atrocities the Luyten had committed, but forget the betrayal they’d perpetrated on the Luyten.

He had the urge to clap his hands over his ears and hum. Five’s arguments were compelling, but Oliver didn’t want to be convinced—he wanted to hold on to his certainty that the Luyten couldn’t be trusted.

We can be petty, just like humans. Can’t you allow that we might also share more noble human qualities, like remorse, kindness, integrity? I don’t want to be your enemy. I don’t want to stand by while two billion of your people are killed. I’m ready to fight at your side.

Oliver’s throat tightened. He turned away, took a few steps down the path. “Get out of here. I need to talk to my family.”

Without another word, Five left. None of them spoke until Five was out of sight, although they knew Five could hear them regardless of where he was.

“I think our first step is to confirm defenders are in fact evacuating some densely populated areas,” Oliver said.

Karachi, Shanghai, São Paulo, Jakarta, Calcutta, Tehran, Chicago—

“
All right
,” Oliver said, clenching his eyes shut. He pinched his temples, already sick of hearing that voice in his head. He looked at Lila and Kai. “I’ll find out if it’s true. It’s less risky for me to do it. Let’s meet back here in two days.”

Lila and Kai nodded. Oliver looked off through the woods, toward the spot where Five had disappeared. Was he lingering just out of sight? Was he going to stay within telepathic range of Oliver for the duration? Surely he was; that’s why he’d come. The thought made Oliver queasy.

“So, how are you, Dad?” Kai asked.

Oliver looked at him, thrown by the question. “I’m sorry I don’t get to see you and Lila as often as I’d like. I know it’s not ideal to have to meet like this—”

“No, Dad, it’s not about that. If I was in your position, I’d do the same thing. I’m just asking. How are you?” Kai started to say more, then stopped, folded his arms across his chest. “Isn’t that why we’re fighting them, so we can stay human? Talk to each other about nothing? We’re so boxed in. So blocked off. We don’t talk to each other anymore.” He shook his head sadly. “We’ve gotten so screwed up from all of this.”

Oliver wasn’t sure how to respond. Kai was right, but Oliver didn’t know if he remembered how to talk about nothing, how to relax and just be a family. All he could think to do was give Kai a hug, so that’s what he did. Kai hugged him back, nodded as they separated.

Oliver turned to find Lila waiting, arms open. He held her, blinked back tears, Kai’s words echoing in his mind. He was right, they needed to stay human. As human as they could, anyway.

“I’m okay,” Oliver said as he let go of Lila. “I’m still collecting my comics. DC now. I’m working on a complete run of
Superman
.”

She smiled. “That’s a tough run to complete.”

“How about you?” Oliver asked. “You finding any games to play in? Besides the fiascos with the defenders, I mean.”

As Kai ran through the players in his regular games, Oliver felt relieved to discover he could still have a conversation.

He was standing in the shower, drying himself off, when he heard the sound of a coin dropping into a vending machine. It was the sound his phone made when he had an incoming text message. He dropped the towel and rushed into the living room, dripping wet and cold.

He opened the attachment, scanned the numbers. His heart sank as he read down the columns. Shipments of filet mignon, jumbo shrimp, and leg of lamb coming into Karachi, Shanghai, São Paulo, and the other cities Five had listed had dropped precipitously. They were the foods only defenders could afford, the ones defenders favored. Shipments of those foods to major cities not on Five’s list had actually increased somewhat.

A human inquiring about defender troop movement was a dead human, but there were many ways to determine if a specific population was on the move.

“Oh, Christ,” he said under his breath.

Oliver began typing a quick note of thanks to Alissa Valeri, who’d been a top-notch data hound at the CIA.

The doorbell rang. Almost no one knew he lived there; the door hadn’t rung in a month. He went to the window.

For a moment he didn’t recognize the woman standing at his door, then it registered.

It was Vanessa.

Fingers trembling, Oliver flipped the lock and opened the door. “
Hi.
How did you find me?” She looked older than when he’d last seen her. That had been almost ten years earlier, when he bumped into her at a Nationals game. She was still beautiful. Oliver pulled the door open wider so Vanessa could come in, but she stayed where she was.

“
Will you please get that
thing
out of my head?
” she said.

“What? What thing?”

Vanessa’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t know about it? Honestly?”

“Vanessa, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Vanessa closed her eyes, spoke very slowly. “The alien is trying to convince me to reconcile with you.”

“
What?
Oh, no. You’ve got to be kidding.” It made sense. Five was trying to fix what it had done, to prove his sincerity.

Vanessa was studying him carefully. “You had nothing to do with it? You didn’t ask it to do this?”

“God, no. I wouldn’t inflict that monster on my worst enemy.” He reached out as if to touch Vanessa, but hesitated. “I’m so sorry about this, Vanessa. Believe me, I know what it’s like to have that monster in your head.”

She gave Oliver a sarcastic smile. “You’ll be happy to know it takes full responsibility for the misunderstanding between us.”

Even her indirect reference to his tragic blunder made him cringe. What an idiot he’d been back then. “Well, that’s big of him.”

“Can you get it to leave me alone? I’m going to jump off a bridge if it doesn’t stop.”

Oliver heaved a big sigh. “I’ll try. He has to be within telepathic range to hear me, and he has to be willing to speak to me. Although lately, the latter’s been less of a challenge than it used to be.”

“So you’ve been in touch with it recently?”

Oliver kicked himself for letting that information slip. He’d been a CIA bureau chief, for God’s sake. “Five contacted me, yes.”

“What did it want? To reminisce about the good old days?” A touch of bitterness leaked into her tone. She swept her long black hair, now infused with strands of white, out of her face in a gesture that was painfully familiar.

The smart thing would be to latch on to Vanessa’s suggestion, laugh it off, but Oliver couldn’t bring himself to tell her an outright lie. “If you really want to know, ask me again in six months and I’ll tell you.” One way or another, it would be safe to tell her in six months. By then the secret would be out. Because, Oliver realized, if he had a say in this, they were going to go through with it. Not because Five’s little gesture of remorse had moved him in the slightest; it was the cold, hard data in that email message that convinced him. If they did nothing, 80 percent of the world’s population would die. If they acted, they put the final 20 percent at risk, but at least everyone had a fighting chance. If the Luyten double-crossed them, so be it. They’d beaten the Luyten once; they could do it again.

Vanessa had said something. Oliver had been so lost in thought he’d missed it. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I said, I’m sorry to bother you.” She glanced over her shoulder. For a moment Oliver wondered if someone was waiting in the car for her—a husband or boyfriend—but he couldn’t see the street from his door. “I would have called, but the Luyten refused to give me your number. Although this was probably too sensitive to talk about on the phone anyway.”

“You’re probably right.” He wanted to ask if she
was
married, or seeing someone. He knew that she and her second husband (whose name Oliver had forgotten—all he remembered was, it wasn’t Paul) had divorced six or seven years earlier. Fifteen years ago, he would have been stupid enough to ask that sort of question. Not now, though.

He held out his hand, and Vanessa took it. “It was good seeing you, Vanessa. I’ll get Five to leave you alone. I promise”

“Thank you. It was good to see you, too.”

She turned. Oliver closed the door and went to the window to watch her climb the steps. For a moment the terrible sadness returned, the hollowing loneliness that had tormented him after their divorce. He turned his thoughts to the work ahead, and the pain receded.

Kai pointed into the woods. “Look at that.”

Lila spun, scanned the terrain. She didn’t see anything through the lattice of bare branches, nothing moving on the floor of fallen brown and orange leaves.

“Higher.”

She followed his pointing finger up into the trees, and spotted it: a huge woodpecker perched on a dead tree, poking at it with her long beak.

“A pileated woodpecker,” Kai said. “They’re rare.”

She was about to ask where Kai the city boy had learned about woodpeckers when she spotted Oliver heading toward them, head down, hands in his pockets. Lila tried to read his face for a hint of what he might have found out, but Oliver always looked worried.

“Not good news,” he said as he reached them. “Defenders are definitely clearing out of the cities Five gave us, and not out of others. I think the Luyten are telling the truth.”

He looked at Lila. She knew what he was going to say, and she didn’t want to hear it.

“I think we have to accept their offer.”

Lila cursed, turned away.

“I wish I was more confident we can trust them. I’m not at all confident about that, but, honestly? I think it’s our only chance.”

She didn’t want to agree to this.
She
would be the one who would actually hand the Luyten the power to wipe them out; it would all be on her shoulders.

“What other choice do we have, Lila?” Oliver asked. “Do nothing, while the defenders gas two billion people, quite possibly including your family?” Lila looked up at him. “They wouldn’t kill
you
, because you’re too valuable, but I could picture them whisking you off to Easter Island just before they gas the entire D.C. area.”