Nemesis: Book Five (14 page)

Morena had been ready to go through with it, murdering this planet's inhabitants. She had already killed a number, and even if she didn't know the exact count—it was high. She knew more needed to die, many, many more. That had been on her though, no one else.

Now, Briten told her that she wouldn't be the one carrying this war banner. That the creatures she created would carry it for her, and gladly, without the pensive worry that troubled her mind since she landed here. Junior would be happy to kill these people.
Happy.
And no Bynum in the history of the universe had ever felt that way—not Morena, not Chilras, and no one in between.

Briten was right, though.

If she wanted anyone to live through this, or wanted any of her kind to live, then she had to release Junior.

He would be what Briten no longer could.

The doorknob turned and she listened as he walked inside, closing the door behind him. He didn't pause but walked across the foyer and took a right into the living room where Morena sat. Only when Junior stood in front of Morena did he slow, stopping at the entrance. He bowed his head, looking at the floor.

"Var, do you have a moment?"

Morena didn't move, didn't change her aura from the spot it already occupied—a beautiful tapestry flowing out all around her, having been given free rein while her mind worried through her concerns.

"Yes," she said. Whatever happened here wouldn't be an easy decision for her, and she had no desire to make it easy on Junior, either.

"Thank you," he said, stepping through the entryway. He didn't look up, but kept his eyes lowered. "They're nearly ready."

"Yes," she said. "I saw you out there with them."

"Var, with your permission, it's time to move forward."

"And what does that mean?" Morena asked.

She watched Junior pause, watched fear in him for the first time. He knew what he was asking. Perhaps his conversation with Briten gave him the insight, or perhaps his connection to Morena. More, he knew that she
knew
what he was asking.

"It means, Var, that we shouldn't wait for them to arrive. That we must be the aggressor on this planet."

Silence fell on the room as his words died.

But they didn't truly die, not for either of them. They ricocheted around each of their minds, with each wanting the other to continue speaking.

"They will kill us all, if they can," Junior said. "We, you, have kept them at bay so far, but even Rigley tells us that they're coming, and at a much different level than before."

"And what do you suggest we do?" Morena asked.

"We attack before they can. We kill as many of them as possible, and keep them on the defensive. We overwhelm their cities, starting with one at a time, but as more of us evolve, taking on all of them. We don't stop until there is nothing to threaten you or the rest of us on this planet."

And, out in the open, the plan couldn't be simpler.

Kill them.

"You know, don't you, that you would have been put to death on Bynimian for such talk?"

Junior's aura didn't shrink, and for the first time he looked up to match Morena's eyes.

"Var, with all due respect, we're not on Bynimian any longer. They allowed themselves, allowed their children, to die. Nearly forced you to die."

What could she say? She felt the same. They had tried to kill her, for a slightly different reason, and now all of them were things of the past. Things forgotten by everyone but a few beings on this planet, endless miles away from where they all once lived.

"The longer we wait, Var, the more likely they are to win."

What was she doing, sitting here on this couch, listening to her first born plead with her to keep their species alive? She knew what they had to do, and was she going to tell him no? Was she going to kill all of her children, which if she refused him, she would be doing? Under no circumstances. This entire conversation was a waste of time, nothing else.

"Go ahead, then," Morena said. "Bring us a home."

W
ren looked
at the woman standing in the doorway.

She stared back at him, moving her gaze from him to Bryan.

Wren was becoming accustomed to seeing everyone as insane. Numb to it, really. But still, the woman in the doorway shocked him some. Bryan clearly had a lot going on inside his head, and Wren had been next to him for hours at this point, yet Bryan looked nothing like this woman. Bryan looked positively normal when Wren compared the two.

Her hair was a rat's nest, and he literally expected to see a beetle climb down one of the matted strands as she stood staring at them. Her eyes were dark patches, sitting on a pale face, as if the two things had been assembled by a blind person, unable to match up the different skin tones. Her hands rested at her sides, if shaking could be considered rest. She didn't seem to notice that her hands shook, though—somehow, she seemed to think Wren and Bryan were the abnormal ones.

She didn't say anything and Wren kept quiet, too. Bryan laid on the bed, on his side, looking at her.

Finally, without saying anything, she left the room, closing the door as she did. Wren listened to her footsteps move down the hall.

"What was that?" he said.

Bryan didn't move, even as Wren turned to look at him.

"I don't know," the boy said.

Wren thought that was probably all he would get out of the kid. Bryan wasn't much into talking anymore, and Wren didn't think it had anything to do with Wren's history of alcohol abuse. The kid couldn't take anymore.

Wren, somehow, didn't feel the same despair. He had a tough time remembering what happened once he got out of the car, but knew he almost died. Holes lined his body, small, red indentations; again, he remembered nothing, but felt certain the white wires growing just outside the window to this room were the culprit.

Whatever happened out there, it didn't matter now because he saw his son when they entered this house and as long as both Michael and he were alive, what else could he ask for? As long as Michael was here, then Wren could keep going. Hell, he didn't really even care what happened to him out there; it had no bearing on what happened now. He was alive, Michael was alive, and so onward and upward, or whatever other phrase meant he would get his son back.

He didn't bother asking Bryan to tell him what happened; he wouldn't get a whole lot out of the boy.

Yet, Bryan was here, the same as Wren. He left his family, his girlfriend, as well as the rest of the world.

"Why?" Wren said, not realizing the question was out of his mouth until it reached his own ears.

He didn't try to take it back, though, but turned away from the door and to Bryan. His skin ached as he turned, the remnants from whatever happened to him before waking up here.

"Why are you here?" he said, now facing Bryan. "I was too grateful you said the things you did back at that motel room to question anything, but why did you come?" Wren looked at him, wanting to guard his words, but also wanting to let Bryan know what he saw. "Something happened to you and you're not the same person, so I guess I don't understand what you're going to get out of this."

Bryan looked at him for a solid minute before speaking.

"I've got to get to Thera."

"Thera?"

"I told her I'd come back."

"What do you mean?" Wren said. "She's dead, Bryan."

"I know, and she's alone, with the only burial being what that alien gave her."

Wren leaned forward on his chair, placing his elbows on his knees. He looked down at the holes in his hands, tiny red dots as if he had a rash of some sort. "Bryan, Michael is still alive. You're still alive. Your family and girlfriend are all alive. But you're living for a dead person."

"And how much different is that from the rest of your life?"

Wren stared at his hands, completely stunned. Silence draped the room like a dark cloud moving over a dead field. Wren could say nothing, no words existed to change the truth that Bryan spoke. Wren lived for the dead, unable to shake Linda's passing.

"It doesn't matter, Wren," Bryan said after a few minutes. "I'm going to Thera, but I think I might have a way to save Michael first. I just need to find a way to talk to him, to tell him something."

T
he world ceased existing
for Kenneth Marks.

The past week resembled a tornado, with no peace for anyone in its path. Destruction, confusion, and death left in its wake.

Now, though, inside his cage, he arrived at the tornado's eye. Nothing disturbed him, despite the whipping winds tossing everything on the outside of his cell with such ease.

Kenneth Marks had retreated into his head. His eyes remained open, but he saw nothing in front of him. He hadn't gone this deep into himself for a long time, as it hadn't been necessary. Magic happened inside Kenneth Marks when he allowed himself to pull away from the world and focus only on the internal. Magic that changed reality.

They would be back soon, the President and the rest of his lackeys. They would want an answer to their problem, but Kenneth Marks hadn't been able to figure one out yet. Speaking to Will and then the President interrupting him, all of it took away from where his energy should be spent. They were attacking now, he knew that, using all the men they could find to spray down the strands reaching out across the country. It wouldn't work, and Marks now focused on figuring out what would.

On figuring out the answer to the question that they would ask when they arrived.

The cold was right. Knox had done a bang up job figuring that out, only his delivery method had been wrong. They simply couldn't hope to spray down the entire area with weapons laughably primitive to the creature they fought.

The cold, they needed it.

But they needed a different delivery mechanism.

On the outside, in the world Kenneth Marks had abandoned, he looked like a meditating monk. His legs were crossed, his back straight, his eyes open, his breathing shallow. The inside of his head matched the outside—a calm permeated everything, a deep ocean that had never been disturbed by so much as a drop of rain.

The delivery mechanism needed to not be dependent on humans. Because if Morena killed the humans, then the cold stopped. What Kenneth Marks needed was something that wouldn't stop, because it was propelled by …

Not by itself, again, it could be stopped.

But something propelled by the alien species. The alien needed to bring its own death, and all Marks needed to do was give it a push in that direction.

The storm raged around him, hitting everyone outside of Kenneth Marks' cage with the rage of a thousand suns, but in that moment, Kenneth Marks had never felt more at peace.

Because he reached truth. Perhaps the Buddha felt the same, when he finally reached enlightenment. It didn't matter if God himself stepped down from his throne and told Kenneth Marks that his plan was wrong; that would only mean God was wrong.

His mind kept following the path now laid out before him.

A cancer.

That's what this species needed. Humanity had been treating the alien as the cancer, trying to fight off the expanding reach of the foreign tumor. The alien needed to think of humans as the cancer, as something growing inside her and her kind. The only way to kill it was for them to kill themselves.

Put the cold inside it.

Infect it.

And then the President needed to put no one in harm's way. He could think Kenneth Marks was making him a hero.

Kenneth Marks finally did something that a monk wouldn't have done. Kenneth Marks started smiling.

* * *

"
H
ow long's
he been like that?"

"Hard to tell time in here, but I would imagine at least an hour," Will said.

Knox looked at Marks, a wide smile on the man's face, but other than that nothing else showed life besides the slow rising and falling of his chest.

"He's just been sitting there with his legs crossed?"

"Yeah," Will said. "He went under awhile ago and hasn't come back out."

"Do you think he can hear us?"

Knox didn't look over at Will. He couldn't take his eyes off the man in the cage, the smile that seemed to be plastered on by some workman. Marks didn't look human; he looked like a statue, something made by an artist who planned on giving people nightmares for years after viewing his creation.

"I would imagine so," Will said. "I don't know what he's doing, but at least some part of him is here with us."

Knox nodded and pulled himself away from Marks. He hadn't come here for him. He came for Will.

The attack was underway, with the alien's perimeter being met everywhere it spread, and of course the cold was working again. No one rushed out of the white desert to attack the men carrying what amounted to ice throwers.

No, they were all left alone to kill the alien as they wished.

And Knox didn't like that, at all. They were making too many inroads into the alien's world for it not to care, and the fact that it didn't scared the General. The ease with which they moved inside made him think that their plan wouldn't work, instead of the opposite—that the plan worked perfectly.

Some in the President's new cabinet thought that things were going swimmingly.

Knox came to this two person prison because he knew what came next. Marks would be let loose, just as soon as they realized that this didn't work. And Knox could do nothing about it. He didn't have a single argument more powerful than the man killed the fucking President, and based on that alone, he shouldn't be allowed out of a cell, ever.

That argument wouldn't work anymore, not in a few more hours.

"They're going to let him out," Knox said.

"Is it not working, the offensive?"

Knox sighed. "It is, too well. We haven't seen a single bit of resistance from anything. It's as if she just packed up and went home."

Will looked to Marks. "So you think she's doing something else, and that when she does appear, everything you've been up to won't matter at all."

"Pretty much."

"You can't let him out," Will said, still watching the newly minted monk. "He's not on your side. Whatever he tells you, or them, it's all a lie."

"I don't have a choice in the matter, Will."

"You've got to make them believe it, then. If you let him out, whatever small amount of control we have right now, it's gone. He's trying to
become
it. It's so ludicrous my stomach clenches every time I think about it."

"That's why I came," Knox said.

Will looked back. "You want me to kill him?"

Knox had thought about it, a lot. About him killing Marks, about Will killing Marks, about a fucking accident killing Marks. He couldn't make himself do it. He didn't respect Marks' mind as so much as he feared it, but that didn't mean to kill something so revolutionary was a good move. Knox was frightened, because what if they
did
need him and he was no more?

He remembered an argument made for another man, a few years ago. Matthew Brand. They kept him alive, suspended like some kind of science fiction movie. They thought his mind too great to simply kill it, but when he woke …

Still, they
might
need Marks.

"No," Knox said finally.

"Then what else?" Will said.

"Can you kill the alien?"

Will laughed. "No. No possible way."

"Will you try, though?"

* * *

H
is legs felt
weak and he couldn't remember if he had ever sat so long, in such a position. Perhaps when he was younger, but for Will, all those years blurred together long ago. And then, his legs didn't have fifty years or so on them, which they did now. He was in great shape when he met the alien, but now he didn't know if he could run a mile.

It doesn't matter
, he thought.
This is the last mission, isn't it? Nothing to prepare for after this.

His cage door still stood open, though Knox was gone.

Will was disavowed. No one would ever condone his escape, nor the mission Knox just gave him. If he was caught two minutes from now, they would simply shoot him, probably on their way to release Marks.

How is this the world we created?

The question felt like something asked by God. It came from somewhere, not of Will's mind, yet there it resided like the sun in the sky, unable to be dismissed. He hadn't ever asked the question before, not in all the years he'd been doing his dirt. The world was as it was, and he only moved through it the best he could.

He looked at Marks, still sitting in his cage, his eyes still staring straight ahead, the smile remaining.

Will wasn't moving through this anymore, trying to make his way. If he had ever thought that to be true, all he had to do was look at the serial killer monk before him and realize that such a belief led to men like this. Someone should have stopped Marks long ago, through prison or death, it didn't matter. Decisions had already been made for Marks, though. Will couldn't kill him, though he desperately wanted to. He couldn't because of Knox, because in the end, Marks' death would fall on him. That one decision would have far reaching, probably deadly, effects for everyone on this planet. The die was cast, though, as the saying went.

Will would go the other way, then.

He would kill the alien, or do his best. If the alien no longer existed, then no one on this world would have any need for Kenneth Marks.

Will stepped forward to Marks' cage, putting a hand up to the criss-crossing bars.

"You hearing this?" he said, nearly the same question that Marks asked him earlier.

Marks gave no reply.

Will wanted to say something, words that would relay all the rage he felt, the terror and hate, too. What could he say to this thing, though? Even if Marks could hear him, anything Will said would be wasted. And hadn't he wasted enough time on Marks, ever since Rigley brought him into his life, preaching fear, fire, and brimstone?

Get on with it
, he thought.

And so he did.

Will turned from the two cages and walked out of the room housing them. He traveled through the bunker, moving upwards until he found the sun staring down on the world.