Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3 (32 page)

"
Y
ou have to do something
," Will said.

"Oh, really?" Rigley asked. She didn't smile though she wanted to. This man telling her she needed to do something, as if that wasn't apparent to everyone involved in the entire operation. As if she wasn't standing outside with him, looking at a collapsing city covered with pink Sherman. "You think I do?"

"Did you hear what it tried to do yesterday?"

"Did you write it in your report?" she asked. It was her youth, and perhaps her femininity as well, that made him ask these questions. She read everything that came to her, every word, with a detail that her husband said was a bit frightening. Her husband.

That was a funny term, one that she had barely thought about since coming to Bolivia. Three weeks since the miscarriage, a week down here, and the term
her husband
seemed as strange to her as the fact that she nearly had a child.

Don'tthinkaboutthat
, her mind spat out.

And so she didn't.

"I only mean that it's getting more and more bold. That it's trying different things."

"It really controlled the soldier?" Rigley asked.

"I don't know any other way to think about it. He walked up to one of the firefighters and simply unzipped the suit. Then he went back to command and unzipped his own suit, spreading the pink shit inside to all of the guards. I'm lucky to have made it out. The entire command center is overrun with the stuff now. It's trying different things, seeing what might work."

Bolivia's capital would be under construction for years when they finally eradicated this thing. Rigley didn't have any doubt that they would eradicate it, what she needed to understand was how they would do it. The standard methods weren't working, clearly. She probably had another week before real scrutiny began. Two weeks was more than enough time, that's what the suits would think.

"Is the number of men still reducing?"

"Yes, daily. More are waking up dead too, once they're in detention. Autopsy shows that the alien metastasized inside their brain. I don't know why it's happening to some and not others."

"It's running tests," Rigley said, the answer obvious. "Small, strategic tests to see what works and what doesn't."

"Trying things and tests are different, Rigley. Trying things could be simple programming already inside it, as in different parts of Sherman do different things. Test means it's planning. Test means it's communicating."

"And what if it is? Isn't that what this looks like to you? Anytime we get a handle on something, it tries another way. We've been here a week and only cleaned out about ten percent of it, and that was in the first couple of days. It doesn't matter where we go now with the firefighters, they're not making any headway. It's running tests, probably ones we can't even see, trying to find a weakness."

Will didn't say anything, just stood on the small balcony of her office looking out into the ruined distance. The beautiful, ruined distance. Because Sherman was beautiful, in its bright—almost neon—pink.

"So what are you going to do?"

He was putting the entire decision in her hands. This man executed, but he didn't plan. He relied on others to make the plans; his job was to follow through without flaw.

"I need to think about all the options," she said.

"We don't have much time."

She heard the switch in his word choice, the
we
instead of the
you
. They were in this together, he thought, and it was up to her to set the direction.

"I know," she answered, and then turned back into her office.

W
ill closed
the door as he left, leaving Rigley alone.

She was beginning to grow comfortable with
alone
. It wasn't a talkative friend, but it was comforting to a degree. When you were only around Alone, you didn't have to worry about questions, didn't have to worry about looks that said people knew what was going on in your head. Alone didn't look at you, didn't bother you. Her husband hadn't been able to do that during the last two weeks she was in the States. Her husband had done anything but left her alone, had smothered her with…

Love.

That's what it had been, what she couldn't take. It wasn't just the miscarriage that brought her down here; it was all that love, too. She didn't want it anymore, didn't want to be around it, didn't want to even think about it. The love reminded her of the child. The love reminded her of what she had lost, and she just wanted to forget.

Will showed no love. Will showed a commitment to killing off the alien trying to overrun this place. Nothing else mattered to Will, and Rigley wanted nothing else to matter for her as well. It would take time, she understood that, but eventually she would forget about the child; she would let it go. The start had been coming down here, and now the next step was to figure out how she would end this. How she would kill the pink growth intent on taking over their planet.

The first question regarded those infected. From everything she could tell, there had been no infection this large, so there wasn't any precedent with how to deal with it. Should she try to save them or was the danger too great? And if the danger was too great, did she keep them imprisoned for their natural life, or did she decide to cut ties.

To cut ties? Is that the word you just used to describe killing them?

Cutting ties. That was clean, unsoiled. The truth, though, was what her conscience wouldn't let her throw aside, that she meant to murder them. She was talking about ending life, the same as the one inside her had ended. Except this time, it wouldn't be from natural causes; it would be from her hand.

Rigley knew how to stop the actual stuff from spreading, and if she went ahead with this 'cutting ties' business, then that would be an easy decision. She would simply burn the entire city to the ground. Everything, from top to bottom, would either collapse in ash or stand as a burnt, black mass. No one wanted to go that route because it would be a harder sale after.

But if she had no more men to carry out her bidding, then she would have no other choice.

Those were the options, why she had asked Will to leave, so she could consider what to do. Kill all of those men or try to heal them. Kill all of those men or try to find a cure. Kill all of those men or let them live.

M
orena looked
down at the deep hole she saw inside this consciousness. Her own mind had adapted to the visuals, and that was fine. She could barely see the male creature below her, which was what she wanted. Morena didn't think he would try as the girl had, not after what just happened, but the further down she threw him, the harder it would be for him to try and strangle her.

Though it didn't really matter, because she would kill him if needed, just as she had the other. She had other bodies that she could possess now.

She turned back around looking at these new controls in front of her, and then walked to them. The body that had collapsed in front of her was gone, though only in this consciousness; she could still see the physical remains lying on the ground—outside, in reality. That's where she had to go now, back to reality, back to finish this.

Morena flowed back out to those in the woods, moving into their bodies, filling them like water does a glass.

She didn't want to spread anymore. She didn't want to try to take over the forest. She wanted to end this, wanted to bring her children to this world, to begin the next step.

The men she controlled moved out from their hiding places, their fingers tapping triggers as quickly as Morena could make them. She cared about accuracy, but more, she cared about cover. That's what she needed here, cover for what she wanted to do.

She watched as men fell in front of her, and as she was pushed from their bodies, as bullets ended their lives and severed her connection with them. She cut off all her senses that would deliver pain to her, ignoring it the same as she had Bryan's torn fingernail when she first arrived. Bullets rang out into the dying sunlight, and Morena felt that was right. These humans giving their last, great effort, as darkness fell.

Morena stood with the body closest to the black circle of ash. She didn't need to use this body's eyes, because she had more than enough pairs moving through the forest to tell her where danger might come from. No matter what she did here, no matter how much cover these assassins provided, there would still be a chance an errant bullet caught her in the head, pushing her back to square one. There were more bodies to use, but she could already tell she was losing the war. The cover they provided by standing up and firing at everything they saw put them at too great of risk, and they were dropping rapidly.

She needed to make it with this body.

She walked, not bothering to bend down, not stooping at all—even in this moment of such crucial importance, she wouldn't degrade herself or her place in this universe by trying to sneak up to the birth of her children.

The bullets rang out around her, but Morena stared only ahead, towards the center. Her shoes touched the black ash, and she didn't stop. She could tell people were beginning to look, beginning to wonder what this single man was doing out in the middle of a war zone, no gun drawn, no cover.

Morena could feel it. She could feel
her
body, not these hosts she used. She had forgotten what it felt like, forgot the power that rested inside the body granted her by The Makers. A few feet away, and then she would be home, back in herself. And all these bullets, all this danger to her, her children, and her husband, would fall away.

She stopped walking, her hands at her sides, and lowered her eyes to the ground, seeing the ash she had left when she landed. She closed her eyes and turned her palms so that they faced the center of the circle.

Everything else ceased to exist around her. She stopped controlling the men she had spread to, quit paying any attention to the consciousness she shared with so many. She focused on her ship that had brought her across the universe to this place, that still held her and her husband's body. The ship that all these men wanted, but couldn't see, the ship that was hidden.

She breathed out, using the lungs of this frail human body, and in front of her light crackled, popping like a million lightning bugs, all of them contained in some invisible globe.

W
ill ran
despite the bullets flying through the woods. He knew where he was heading and while he didn't know exactly what was happening, he knew none of it was good. He knew that whatever was going on here shouldn't have happened, not under any directive he gave, and he couldn't get in touch with a single goddamn person.

So he ran, his gun drawn, his lungs not yet reaching their capacity to deliver oxygen to his muscles. He didn't look for those he had come with, not for Andrew or Rigley. He needed to see what was ahead of him, not behind, needed to know if whatever was happening could be stopped.

Will saw the men standing, saw their guns all at eye level, both pistols and rifles. A man turned to him, hearing the noise Will and his troop made, the man's gun still up. Will paused for only a second, planting his feet, and put a bullet through the top of the man's skull—it exploding in a horrendous mess of red and gray. Will's feet moved automatically, forward, his eyes looking at everything he possibly could, ready to lay the next man low that turned a gun to him.

Someone stood inside the ring of trees.

Someone not holding a gun high.

Someone inside the ash.

"There! There!" he shouted, pointing with his left hand as his right hand, the one holding the gun, pumped up and down with his moving feet.

The sparks came to life like static in a dark room, just in front of the infection. Lightning in a controlled environment, flashing in and out of existence at a speed Will couldn't understand. It kept flashing, but more and more of the light staying on, not disappearing.

Will began to see what it was forming. The shape the kids had told him about. The white orb.

Oh, Dear God
, he thought as he reached the edge of the forest's ring.

He raised his gun, unsure exactly what to shoot. At the last second, his eyes focused on the head of the infection. A shot rang out into the forest, lost in the midst of the other bullets, but the most important that had been fired that day.

B
ryan looked on
, seeing through Morena's eyes. Silent now, no longer screaming because he understood that something radically important was about to happen. Knew where Morena was, out there in the ash, out there where she had come from. Knew that she wanted something, that whatever she came for was near.

He watched the tiny jewels of light in front of her, felt the peace in her mind despite the insanity boiling over around her. Men dying everywhere—indeed, death resting over this place like a dense fog, ready to take anyone that stood up and stuck their head into its sticky embrace. Morena was…

Happy.

Happier than at anytime Bryan had seen her before.

And he knew what it was, why they were out here, what all of this was about. It came to him like enlightenment to The Buddha. This was her homecoming.

He heard a bullet flash just around Morena's ear, felt the warm air as it split through the molecules around her head. He could tell she didn't feel it, wasn't aware how close she was to death.

The lightning was done, and before Morena, rested an orb so perfect that God himself must have designed it. The beauty, still, even after everything, drew Bryan's eyes as if they were moths and it a giant light.

It shimmered, and then shivered, a ripple moving from the top all the way to the bottom where it sat on the ash remains of the forest.

It opened from the top, the white, glowing material fading and falling away, revealing the inside of the orb.

Bryan ceased thinking as his mind tumbled into the star before him, barely able to comprehend its beauty.