Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3 (15 page)

Now he knew that she went to her ancestors, the only one to know. Morena didn’t need to say what it meant that she went—he understood that she had never been before, and understood the reasons for that decision. What he needed to understand was what she learned, and what it meant for both of them.

“You already know our choices,” she said, staring at his back, watching the beautiful red surrounding his person. It moved slowly across his body, not excited, not nervous, but trusting in the person behind him, confident in what she would tell him though he couldn’t know what that would be, not for sure. “We either start colonizing or everyone on this planet perishes.”

“And The Council?”

“If they won’t come along, then they’re an enemy to Bynimian the same as a foreign invader would be. They must be dealt with as such.”

“You’re talking about war, Morena,” Briten said, still not turning around. She was amazed at him, even now—
especially
now. His kind, his species, they were adapted to war. Indeed, they were forced long ago to move through the galaxy or face extinction, the same choice Bynimian now faced. Yet, here he was, someone once supposed to rule a people, talking to her about war, cautioning against it.

“We don’t have any other choice,” she said.

He nodded. “We don’t.”

“I’ll visit The Council tomorrow and see if they have made their decision. If it isn’t favorable, then I will have them contained and Judgment passed on them. They won’t have time to mass a counterattack.”

“No,” Briten said, not turning around, not even taking his hands off the balcony’s ledge. “I’ll do it. If things go wrong, you won’t have any culpability.”

N
either of the
two humans Morena possessed had any knowledge of the Ether, and Morena herself knew very little. There wasn’t a lot of time; she felt certain this government Bryan spoke of would return and with reinforcements. The Ether was a last resort, always. It wasn’t somewhere anyone wanted to go; it definitely wasn’t used as a child’s playground on Bynimian. The Ether was dangerous.

Briten was there now, though finding him was impossible. Morena’s only hope was to bring him back from her side of the Ether, not find him in it.

Plus, Morena had to protect herself in this place; she couldn’t worry about Briten, not right now, as selfish as that sounded to her. If she died in this place, Briten would never make it out.

The Ether always lay just beyond the view of reality, or rather, right next to reality—a black curtain separating the two. There were theories about the place, things that scientists on Bynimian tried to speculate on. Of course, some tried to venture over throughout the millennia, but none made it back. Those that crossed over to the place Morena found herself in now, they stayed there. That’s all anyone knew and, eventually, study of the Ether ceased.

That had been millions of years ago, when Morena was still young.

And now she looked into the world that no one dared venture to. It was a mirror image of the world she had just left, the negative of it.

She stood still, taking in the place where her husband now lived. Morena stood in two houses, Bryan’s and Thera’s, and she saw from both his and her eyes. Both of their bodies crossed over at different points—each in their own home just as they had been in reality—but now both places looked eerily similar. The houses were exactly the same as they had been in reality, except now gray shades replaced vibrant colors. The temperature on the other side had been regulated by machines inside the house, but on this side, frigid air caused Morena’s breath to show when it exited her mouth. Silence draped heavy across everything. There were no noises, no movement, just two black and white houses.

The silence cracked wide open at nearly the same time in both houses. In Thera’s, the two people standing next to Thera’s body, and in Bryan’s house, the single person that Morena had brought over. Morena had marched through both houses, and in Thera’s, grabbed both of Thera’s parents. In Bryan’s, she had only been able to get to the mother—the father had been working late. Morena wasn’t going to leave anyone on the other side, in reality. She wouldn’t leave anyone that could say anything about the two kids or the way they had acted during the past few weeks.

Bringing the parents over might have been a mistake, though.

Morena turned to the three people, using both bodies at her disposal, and looked on. She found it odd, how similar their reactions were, though separated by miles. Both women held theirs hands to their mouths, their torsos slightly leaning forward as they pushed air from their lungs. The man in Thera’s house, her father, had wrapped his arms around the woman, but stood with his mouth open, staring with wide eyes. Silent though, thank The Makers.

Morena acted quickly, a hand on each body striking out at the two women, silencing them quickly as they collapsed to the floor unconscious. She reached out again with Thera, pummeling the bridge of her father’s nose, knocking him out so that only Morena was left in the house.

“No!” The two people whose mind she occupied shouted in near unison.

She felt their horror, Bryan and Thera’s, growing, threatening to overtake them both. They were babbling, screaming at her, creating a tumultuous sea of words that mixed together incoherently. She had no time for it; she knew the rumors of this place, knew what the theories all said. Morena could die here, or at least never return to the other side.

She turned from the collapsed bodies, already dismissing them as dead. Not by her hand, but something would show up to claim them, she felt sure of that. She had to protect herself here, if not both the bodies she controlled, then one at least.

Something had changed though; she could feel it. The cold around her seemed to thicken, weighing on her flesh like a layer of ice. Goosebumps rose across her arms and she felt her body start shivering from the cool air. The screams. That’s what had done this, whatever
this
actually was.

She walked to a window in both houses, the screams inside her head relegated to a deep hole in her shared consciousness. She could still hear them, but they were muffled, like someone trying to scream through a pile of pillows. The outside world looked just like the inside of the houses, similar to reality, but everything slightly off. Everything a black and white mixture. The street lamps that had burned on the other side didn’t burn here. Morena watched as a car moved down Thera’s street, slowly, seeing that no one was inside. The car turned left at a stop sign, pulled onto another road and disappeared from Morena’s vision. No one had been in it, no one driving around like Morena had done and seen in Bryan’s world.

The creature stepped outside of the house from across the street. It opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, but didn’t bother closing the door behind it. Morena quickly glanced to other houses in the neighborhood, seeing that many of the front doors stood open as well. Her eyes flashed back to the creature as it remained on the porch, staring directly across the street to Morena’s house.

She stepped back away from the window, not taking Thera’s eyes off the creature.

It was a shadow, a shade. Arms and legs like her own, but somehow longer. They seemed to stretch grotesquely long, yet at the same time, the creature wasn’t tall. Its eyes were stark white, and while Morena could see through the rest of its body, like looking through a tube of dark gas, its eyes were bright and without pupils. She couldn’t tell what it saw, only that it was staring at the house she stood in.

From Bryan’s vantage point, she watched as two of those same creatures walked down the street, about four feet apart from each other. They too stared at his house, seeming to have heard and recognized the screams. Seeming to have pinpointed where they came from.

No one’s come back from here,
Morena thought, staring at the things outside her windows.

You’re a Var. They will bow to you as everything else.

Morena took another step away from the windows.

T
he spawn knew
nothing of its mother’s travels and tribulations, and if it had known, it wouldn’t have cared. If its mother died, there would be serious ramifications, but what use could that information be to it? Its objective wouldn’t change.

Which was to reach this planet’s core.

It felt warmth now, a mile deep into the Earth’s crust. There was most definitely warmth here, though the spawn couldn’t quite detect if it would be enough yet. The spawn wouldn’t know whether the heat would suffice until it actually reached the inner ring of this place. The tiny seeds that made up the spawn continued their digging downward, slow, but steady, no amount of iron-ore they ran into able to alter their pace. On and on they dug, content in the chase. Knowing that when they reached the end goal, their lives would end and a whole host of new life would begin.

“
I
don’t understand
why they’re asking us to meet them out here. Why wouldn’t they just ask us to meet them at a police station? Why here?” Julie asked. Scared didn’t begin to describe her emotional state. Scared was something children felt at night; Julie had reached a state bordering on hysteria, and now, sitting out here in her car on the same field where this whole mess started was almost too much.

“I guess because this is where we saw it,” Michael said, his voice low, not quite a whisper but close.

She knew that made sense, but she didn’t like it. She didn’t like being out here in the dark, her car lights shining down across the field that they all drank beer at just a week or so ago. She didn’t ever want to come to this fucking spot again. She hated it. She hated that Bryan had come out here with Michael, that he probably had come out here again by himself, and that whatever they saw…

But she couldn’t finish that sentence. Because to finish it would open a world that she didn’t want to go into, a world she didn’t believe was possible, a world that would wreck everything she knew. She didn’t know why Bryan was missing, didn’t know why he had acted so different, but there had to be another reason besides this field. There had to be. Only, those thoughts didn’t change her hate for this place, or her fear of it.

“When did they say they would be here?” she asked as she leaned forward and turned up the heat.

“Twenty minutes.”

“How long has it been?”

“Fifteen.”

She folded her arms together at her chest, trying to ward off the cold that wanted to sneak inside the car. She had called her parents twenty times on the way over, but each time the phone wasn’t able to make a connection; it didn’t even ring, just said to
please try your call again later
. Michael didn’t try to call his dad and she didn’t mention it to him, though she was getting closer to it. Somehow she felt that if at least one of their parents knew, things would be okay, even more so than if the police knew. Their parents wouldn’t let anything bad happen to them; that was their entire job, protecting their kids, and yet none of them had told a single one of their parents.

Julie didn’t look over at Michael, though she wanted to. She had spent the past year trying to distance herself from him, trying to distance Bryan from him, and yet he sat in this car as if none of that ever happened. She understood the stress he felt, the fear—obviously—but she wasn’t sure she could have done the same if the situations were reversed. It wasn’t that she completely regretted what she’d done over the past year, only that…she appreciated him putting it aside, at least for right now. She needed someone to be around right now, someone that was just as worried.

She didn’t have anything else to say to him, though she wanted to speak. The silence wasn’t awkward, necessarily, just that she wanted some kind of connection with the person sitting next to her…but they had spoken of everything. She knew the last time he heard from Thera and he knew the last time she heard from Bryan. The only thing left was something she didn’t want to delve into, but it was probably important that they talked about it before the cops showed up. Julie didn’t consider herself a criminal mastermind by any stretch, but she wanted to at least understand what Michael might tell them when they arrived.

“What do you think happened?” she said quietly, scared of his answer the same way she was scared to finish her earlier thought.

Michael didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “I think whatever was out there got inside him.”

“That’s impossible, Michael,” Julie whispered.

“Maybe it used to be, but I didn’t think it was possible to see what I did. That orb out there, Julie, it shouldn’t have existed. But it did. And he shouldn’t have walked down to it like it was a magnet, but he did.”

Julie didn’t turn to look at him; she was too frightened. She heard the seriousness in his voice, heard how much he believed what he was saying, and she didn’t want to see that belief. Hearing it was one thing, but if she saw it, then she might be convinced.

Lights flashed through the back of the car and both turned around to see three black SUVs pulling up. One pulled to the left of her car, one to the right, and one parked right behind it.

They were surrounded.

M
ichael sat
next to Julie in the back of the SUV. He wasn’t handcuffed but the moment he stepped into the vehicle, he understood these weren’t police. Perhaps he knew it as soon as he saw the SUV pull up instead of a police cruiser.

Julie wasn’t saying anything, and Michael thought she would cry soon. She had to know that the two people sitting in the front seat of the SUV weren’t with any local government. Cops weren’t always fat, but there was normally a certain softness to them. These men possessed none of that. Even the older one’s jaw line looked like he might have never drank a soda in his entire life.

“Michael Hems and Julie Lean?” The man in the driver’s seat, the older one, said. Michael didn’t answer because who the hell else would be sitting out here at this time of night? “I could make up a bunch of bullshit about being with the GBI, like I’ve told the rest of this town, but I think things have gone too far for that.” The man looked over to the person in the passenger’s seat, the look meaning something though Michael didn’t know what.

“They’re clean,” Passenger Seat said, not looking over at Driver.

“We’re not the police,” Driver said. “When you called nine-one-one, you spoke to one of my people. They routed you to me. I’m here because of what happened to your friends, or at least one of them. Thera?”

“What happened to her?” Michael blurted out. He knew she was MIA, but that didn’t mean anything had happened. It didn’t mean anything at all, and he’d been telling himself that since he first tried to contact her without success. She was okay; she had to be.

“She’s infected.”

“Not Thera. She wasn’t there with us. She didn’t go to the site until after whatever landed was already gone.” Michael vaguely understood he was rambling, but he couldn’t help it. He knew something happened to Bryan, but Thera…she hadn’t gone there. She hadn’t wanted to. She was responsible. Too smart. She was okay; Bryan was the one in trouble.

“Maybe she didn’t go, but she’s still been infected.”

Silence fell across the car for a few seconds and then Michael heard Julie begin crying. He didn’t reach over to her, didn’t try to comfort her, because his own mind was frozen. Not the cold that he felt against his father when they argued, but locking him up so that he couldn’t process what he was hearing.

“I’m going to ask you two this once, and after that, there are going to be consequences if you’re not up front with me. What did you see out there?”

Michael heard the words, was looking at the man in the rearview mirror, but couldn’t speak. He wanted to, truly, but his mouth refused to open and his vocal chords refused to vibrate. Julie may have been crying, but Michael’s body refused to do anything but breathe.

Driver looked over to Passenger. Michael watched as Passenger, almost leisurely, turned around and propped himself up on the seat, then reared back and slapped Michael’s face.

His head snapped backwards. He felt the sting on his left cheek, bright like the morning sun. The pain brought him back from his paralysis and he heard Julie scream, beginning to cry harder.
These aren’t cops
, he thought.
You don’t have time to turn into a child here. These people will hurt you and they’ll hurt Julie too.

He didn’t say anything to Julie as he straightened himself up. Didn’t reach up to his face, though the pain burned. He found Driver’s eyes again, Passenger having turned back around as if he’d only handed Michael a drink from a drive-thru window.

“You good?” Driver asked.

Michael nodded. Julie’s sobs were loud next to him, but he didn’t dare look over to her. He wasn’t going to take his eyes off either of these men; they were too dangerous.

“Michael, I’m going to need you to quiet her down or else my friend is going to. I can’t handle all that noise right now.” Driver dropped his eyes from the mirror and looked out the front window.

Michael didn’t need anymore instruction; it was clear what the man meant. He reached his hand over and found Julie’s, still not looking away from the front of the vehicle. He listened as she tried to stifle her crying, obviously knowing what would happen if she didn’t get it under control. Michael felt her hand on his, gripping it hard.

“Good. Now, do you remember what I asked you?” Driver said, looking back in the rearview.

“We went out there—”

“In those woods?” Driver interrupted.

“Yeah. We saw it come down and then we went out there the next night. Bryan and I.”

“What did you see?”

“Something…” And there was only one word Michael could think of to describe what he saw. He didn’t want it to be true, but nothing else described it accurately. “Beautiful. It was a big circle, a globe of some kind. Except it was perfect. Perfectly smooth, perfectly white. It glowed.” He stopped, seeing it again in his mind. Seeing the way it got brighter with each of Bryan’s steps. Seeing his fear rise as he watched his friend walk to it like some kind of deranged lover.

“What happened?”

“Bryan, he was pulled to it. He started walking into that ash and I called for him, but he wouldn’t answer. I had to go get him, and when I got to him, he wasn’t there. Like, physically, he was, but nothing behind his eyes.”

“Did he come out of it?” Driver asked.

“Yes.”

“Did he go back out there?”

“We don’t know.”

Driver looked back over to Passenger again.

“Alright, we’re going to the other car,” Passenger said, opening his door and stepping out. He went to Julie’s door and opened it—when she didn’t move, he pulled her out.

N
ow Will had
to deal with Rigley. He couldn’t put it off anymore, not with two people infected and both of them missing. Rigley was losing it and he didn’t think anyone else knew that besides him. Certainly not her superiors; Will wondered if any of them even knew what was happening down here. If they did, she wouldn’t be in charge any longer—not if they knew what Will knew.

And she wasn’t going to like what he was about to tell her. That kid in the back might have just sealed all of their fates; Will knew that the Thera girl had been infected, but now this kid was saying she wasn’t even around it. So it could spread, and there were two people already infected. Hell, just thinking about it out loud made him understand how hopeless this all was. He thought Rigley read the writing on the wall, too, and that’s why she was cracking. This thing landed on her watch; she hadn’t reported it up, and now whatever landed was missing. She wasn’t thinking she would die, like Will, but she saw her career as over. If they didn’t contain it. And now he was about to tell her it most definitely wasn’t contained.

He sighed, looking down at his phone, and dialed. There wasn’t any use thinking about it. He needed to get this over with.

“You got it?” she asked.

Will paused for a second, wondering if he’d ever heard her this frazzled? What happened to her, the rattlesnake he used to know? “No. We found it and when we came back, it was gone.”

“What the fuck do you mean when you came back? What the fuck do you mean gone? Why would you come back?”

“It’s inside a teenage girl. I couldn’t shoot her dead at her doorstep without knowing for sure. I had to wait on confirmation. So I pulled down the road a bit, waited, and when I came back, the house was completely empty.”

Rigley laughed, high, a bit manic. “Empty? So where did they go? To Chili’s for dinner?”

“There’s more,” he said. “We found the girl’s friends. She’s not Patient Zero. Their other friend was, and somehow it spread to this girl.”

“And where’s Patient Zero?”

“Gone.”

“Jesus-Fucking-Christ, Will. Where are the two friends?” Rigley asked.

“We have them.”

“And I’m sure they’re not infected are they? You’re down there capturing US citizens and letting the real trouble disappear; is that about right?”

It was all out there, completely. He couldn’t tell her to fuck off, couldn’t tell her she wasn’t right—because she was. “Have you told anybody?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” Rigley asked, giving Will all the answer that he needed. She knew what he meant, and the fact that she asked him about it showed she was stalling, perhaps trying to come up with an answer. He didn’t respond, he just waited. “No, I haven’t, because I thought you would be able to handle this,” she finished. “And you can’t. It’s over, isn’t it?”

Will heard the last sentence, the defeat, but yet a bit of relief too. Rigley was ready to let this go, because then she could stop worrying, if it ended. There was no reason to struggle, trying to hold up a building that had already collapsed. And was it over? She wasn’t telling him anymore, but asking, simply, if there was anything else he could do. She was giving him control because she wouldn’t make the decision. Did he think it was? Were they going to lay this entire town to waste? Explode a neutron bomb above the city, leaving all the structures intact, but the place a ghost town?

And if they did that, Will would be here too.

“Will?” Rigley said. He heard her, but didn’t answer, didn’t break his thoughts.

Rigley might not survive with a job, but whoever took over would make sure that those down here didn’t survive at all. The Bolivia strategy wouldn’t be used here, where they dropped in a bunch of firefighters and killed the infection before pulling everyone out. If Will couldn’t find this thing, no one else would. Once Rigley’s superiors heard what happened, they would make sure that anyone alive down here was dead. They wouldn’t risk anyone leaving and spreading this, not when they knew nothing about it, not when they couldn’t even find it.

Was it over? Will looked out his window to the car sitting in the middle of the three SUVs. Seconds of silence passed between them as he thought, trying to keep his own feelings out of it, trying to consider the truth.