Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3 (33 page)

M
orena opened
her eyes for the first time in nearly a hundred million years.

Had she forgotten what it felt like to
see
? Yes, she had. For so long she only felt the cold of the universe, darkness surrounding her the same as it did her children while they lay inside the center of this planet.

But that time is over, now, Morena
.

The brief time she spent inhabiting those humans wasn’t seeing; humans have the ability to do no more than react to the external stimuli around them. Now though, with her own eyes open, she finally saw again.

She was Var.

Morena rose from her lying position, the one her body had occupied since leaving Bynimian. She stood up all at once, moving to standing in one continuous motion, as if moved by a board beneath her. The ship’s shell fell down around her, revealing the world that she would adopt.

Directly in front of her stood the man she used to make her way to the ship, his eyes widening as he regained control of his body. His weapon remained on his hip, but he didn’t reach for it. He only stared at Morena, and she looked back at him while her aura returned. The green field whipping around her still caged body, expanding, pressing out on the transparent walls of the ship. She could see the fear in the man, sense that even if he had the mind to pull his gun on her, a deep part of him knew it would do nothing. She could see that he understood his life was over, and that dawning realization spread through the cells of his body, which plead with him to run.

Running would do no good, and Morena could tell he knew it.

The walls around her faded away, just as the outer shell had, and the green aura spread out like some kind of heavenly fog. It reached across and licked the man’s face in front of her, caressing it like a lover’s finger, tasting this world for the first time. Morena had seen his fear before, but now she felt it, moving through her aura the same as her aura moved through this world’s atmosphere.

“Go,” she whispered, her voice traveling to the man’s ears despite the chaos around him.

He turned and ran, fleeing through the woods without looking left or right.

Morena closed her eyes and a smile blossomed on her face, an emotion that she hadn’t known she would ever feel again. Happiness. She could feel them, her children, right beneath her feet, rejoicing because their signal was here. Bullets still rang out around her, but they had no more significance than a soft breeze. She felt them making their way into her aura, but there they evaporated—her aura assimilated them as easily as it had tasted and dispensed with the man's fear.

Morena opened her eyes. First her children, and then Briten.

She stepped forward, out of the ship that had been her home for so long. She had a new home now. She let her aura roam, stretching out as far as it wanted, stretching out much further than she would have allowed it on Bynimian, for here flaunting power didn’t matter. Here, at least right now, there was no other power besides the Var. There was no one to worry about offending. Here, she was all powerful.

The green swept out amongst the trees, tasting everything it came in contact with, and giving Morena a deep understanding of what the people around her thought. Not as deep as she had understood with the two humans—Bryan and Thera—but enough to know that the fight was out of them. That they wanted nothing more to do with these woods or any creature that they came here to find. Because they found her, and they knew it, and all the bullets each one of them fired into that green light disappeared as if they had fired into the sun.

“Run,” she said, and the word traveled through her aura as easily as it did the air. Reaching them and flooding their consciousness. Most froze, the word striking something in them that paralyzed their bodies. Some did break free, running as carelessly as the man that had stood in front of Morena. She gave them their chance, and that was all she would do. She wouldn’t hold back her children so that these men may live. Their time here was over; the time of Bynums had now begun.

R
igley was only
a few feet from passing through the doorway marked Bolivia. She didn’t want to go; she wanted to pass under this red light even less than the one marked “Her.” That room, her daughter, that hadn’t been Rigley’s fault. It took her a while to understand that—years and years—but in the end, she knew it to be true. These things happened in life, and while she had let it destroy a large piece of her, blame could not be placed on her.

It wasn’t your fault
, she told herself.
It wasn’t.

She thought those things as her feet kept moving forward, trying to ward off what came next. Because this room—her daughter’s room—was simply the combined bad luck of millions of cells committing suicide at once. There wasn’t even any blame to divide up. The next room, though? There was a lot of blame to go around, only, there weren’t too many people that could take a serving of it. Just a couple, and no matter how you divvied it out, there was too much for her to consume.

Her feet didn’t seem to care though. Her feet actually seemed like they couldn’t wait to get to the dinner table and have the huge helping of goddamn Fault Pie that awaited Rigley.

Please no. Please, please, please, no
, she thought, wanting to say it aloud, but unable to talk in this place. The words spoken here wouldn’t come from her—no, the words here would only be directed
toward
her. She had made this place, but she didn’t control it. This place was built to shield her from a life that she didn’t want to glimpse, but now that she saw it, it wasn’t going to hide any longer. It would have its way.

Her hand reached out and touched the doorknob; even now, after being in this cold for so long, the metal still chilled her to the bone. Her hand turned the knob, and as soon as the door was opened, it pulled back on its own, revealing blackness on the other side. She could see in the distance another red light shining down from a wall, casting a bloody hue on a stone figure beneath it. That’s where she was heading, to that stone, to that red light, and to a memory she wanted no piece of.

Her feet crossed the barrier and she felt them picking up speed, as if they couldn’t goddamn wait to get to the figure that her mind had carved over years and years. She knew what it was; how could she not? She had created it. She had made this whole place, and then she shut it away.

She ran and the stone structure grew in size as she neared it, the red light streaming down to the floor, piercing the black with a menacing glow.

And then, after so many years of hiding, she stood before the single stone structure. There might be more in this room—always, there could be more hiding from her—but for now, she needed to see nothing else. This one figure, standing twelve or fifteen feet high, as large as a Greek God, was more than enough. She looked up at it, her eyes naturally finding its own. They were dark things, almost caverns inside the rock face surrounding them. Those eyes, now—in this room—they were dead, but they had once lived. They had once begged. They had once looked out, flesh instead of stone, and asked the same thing that all creatures do when death is upon them:
Just one more day. Please. Just give me one more day?

The left hand of the sculpture was at its side and the right faced outward, in a halt gesture. She remembered that hand, saw it clear, as if she had been transported back in time twenty years. Now the hand looked massive, like the man was trying to stop some other giant, but when it occurred all those years ago, the hand had been a normal size. The skin a deep tan instead of craggy stone.

Rigley remembered it all. Every bit of it. She could lock it away in these labyrinths of her mind, but she had known she would come to it one day.

And here she was, with tears running down her face, and a stone sculpture cast in red light begging her not to…

Say it. You fucking say it because you did it and you don’t get to ignore it anymore
.

Kill him.

He had begged, and through his begging, they all had begged. They all had wanted to live, for just another day, please, if she didn’t mind.

There were no more days though, not for the man holding his hand out, nor any of his friends.

T
he phone rang
, and for all intents and purposes, God was on the other end of it. Rigley knew what the call was about without even answering; she had known the call would come. At noon, two weeks from her last conversation with the man, he now beckoned for her again, and she had no choice but to go. Even now, sitting here, looking at the clanging, black phone, she had waited too long. Too many rings. She didn’t know the man on the other end of the line, not outside of two brief conversations—the one where she first met Will, and then one that occurred two weeks ago when he asked for an update on the status of her operation—but she understood that when he spoke, he meant every word. She felt as if his words might be chosen long before they left his mouth, carefully selected in a way that would cause whatever conversation he participated in to follow the path he laid out for it. Words selected that carefully could not be ignored.

“Hello?” she said, picking up the phone.

“Hi, Rigley,” the voice said. “How are you?”

The coolness of it moved from her ear, to her brain, and down to her heart—where its beat quickened. He sounded like some well-bred man calling his mother, as if certain protocols should be followed during every interaction, regardless of the surrounding situation.

“I’m doing well,” she said, and out of fear—perhaps—continued, “and you?”

“Rigley, if I were any better, I’d be twins,” the cheery voice said. “I’m only hoping you have some good news for me, some news that might make me actually burst into two separate people. What say you?”

What say you?
A phrase she wasn’t used to, a phrase that made light of a very, very serious predicament. A phrase that shouldn’t be thrown around when they were talking about an alien invasion—and that’s what this was, without any doubt. Yet, he said it, sounding as if a smile the size of a blimp had spread across his face.

“We’re at a crossroads, I believe, sir.”

“Go on.”

“The methods we're currently utilizing are not pushing back the infection—”

“Sherman,” the voice said, interrupting her. “Isn’t that what you’re calling it?”

“It’s the name the soldiers have given to it, yes.”

“Soldiers?” he asked, the word lingering across the line like some kind of ghost that didn’t want to leave. “We don’t have soldiers out there, do we, Rigley? I felt certain that these men were of a different class, something more resembling a mercenary force?”

“Yes, sir. Of course, you’re right. My apologies.”

“No need to apologize. Let’s continue,” he said.

“The infection, Sherman, is still spreading, but in a way that we can’t detect until it’s too late. Our detection comes when it attempts to spread to people. The firefighters, I wouldn’t call them useless quite yet; they may be losing or gaining a few percentage points each day, but it’s at a standstill for the most part.”

“I think I might call that useless, especially given that this extraterrestrial species is trying to colonize our planet.”

Rigley said nothing back into the phone. That’s where they stood, at a standstill, and he could pick apart her words for the whole conversation, but it didn’t change her answer.

“So, Rigley, what do you plan to do?”

“I…” She paused, gathering her thoughts in a way that she thought the man on the line might never have had to do. “I see two real options, sir. Continue on as we are while simultaneously fine tuning our detection methods. The other option is a scorched earth policy.”

“Describe the scorched earth policy to me.”

“Fire bomb the entire city at once. It’ll level much of the infrastructure, but we can guarantee ninety-five percent of the species will be destroyed.”

“And the men?” The voice asked.

He didn’t miss anything. The easy part was firebombing the city. The easy part was dropping hell from the sky onto an alien species, leveling everything to the ground. That wasn’t what this man wanted to hear about though, and that in itself was odd. He wanted to hear of the men, of the part that neither Rigley nor Will really wanted to talk about. He wanted to talk about the hard part.

“There are two options for them as well. We continue to monitor the men after the city’s destruction, until we are positive they are either infected or not. The other option is that we eradicate them in order to ensure there is no secondary infection.”

A long silence spread over the line, and from there to Rigley’s flesh, where goosebumps rose across her skin.

“In your professional opinion, Rigley, what do you think is the best option? The option that is going to keep the most people safe?”

“Elimination of anything possibly infected, sir.”

“Very well, Rigley. If that’s what you think is best, make it happen.”

W
ill stood next to Rigley
. He didn’t say anything and neither did she.

There wasn’t much to talk about, as far as she was concerned. Her face felt like she had gone through some kind of plastic surgery the previous night, as if her eyes and mouth had lost the ability to show any emotion at all. Right now, she had to be granite, or even diamond. She couldn’t show Will a moment of what she was feeling, and she didn’t think he would show her a moment of whatever went on inside him either.

This action would create an unscalable wall between them, and Rigley was beginning to feel that it might create one between her and the rest of the world too. Who else made a decision like this? Who else would ever have such a choice? And that was the thing, wasn’t it? The voice on the other end of the phone, a voice that she couldn’t name, had made Rigley feel like the choice was hers, and at the same time, made her feel that she had no choice at all.

“What’s the ETA?” Will said.

“I think five minutes, now.”

She hadn’t told him what came next, what came after the planes flew through the area dropping death from the sky. She couldn’t bring herself to tell anyone. Not yet.

Soon though,
a part of her said.
Soon you’ll have to tell him.

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” she asked.

Will was quiet for a few seconds and Rigley hated it. She wanted to talk to him right now, talk to him in a way that she hadn’t the rest of the time they had been here. She wanted human interaction before this happened, and every second he took not speaking brought what was coming a second closer.

It doesn’t matter if he talks from now until the sun darkens forever; it won’t stop anything.

“No,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “I don’t think anyone has seen what is about to happen outside of a major war.”

She hadn’t thought of that; during this entire time, she hadn’t thought that decisions like this had been made before. She wasn’t the first and she wouldn’t be the last. People had to die so that others could go on living. And all in all, everyone died anyway, so why sit here and fret about it?

Why not kill yourself then, right now, if that’s the truth?

Rigley stood in silence next to Will as she waited for some part of her to answer the question. There had to be an answer, even if she didn’t know it consciously, because if there wasn’t one—if the question’s underlying accusation was right—

You won’t kill yourself because you have more time to live. So do these people. That’s the difference. You carried life inside you a few weeks ago, and now you’re going to end it. Not just one, though. You’re going to end life for a lot of people. And they all would have a lot longer to live, if you let them.

She might have gone on thinking like that forever, had the jet engines not cracked through the air like bullwhips. The sound brought her back though, brought her back to Will and the balcony they stood on. She had tried to avoid this option because the cover-up would be much tougher. Rebuilding a city was much different than remodeling one, and after this…

“Rubbleized,” Will said and Rigley looked over to him with wide eyes.

“What?” she said.

“That’s what we’re about to do here. Rubbleize this place. Rocks and stone are all that’ll remain.”

Rigley looked at him for a second longer; he didn’t appear to see any of the inner turmoil tossing around in her.

That’s because he doesn’t know. Not yet. Even he hasn’t seen the culmination of what you’ve set in motion.

The jets streaked over their heads, breaking the sound barrier and causing Rigley to jump though she knew they were near.

And then it rained.

It rained missiles and bombs and weapons that Rigley didn’t know names for. They all fell from the sky as if Ares himself had opened up the clouds.

The visuals came first and then the noise.

Orange fire sprang from the rain, and it grabbed onto anything it could, clinging like some horrible holocaust victim as they’re pulled from their family, desperately trying to hold onto anything that could keep them alive.

Rigley had no words for what she saw.

She watched as buildings collapsed, huge towers that fell like they were made of sand. She couldn’t see the Sherman beneath the fire, but she heard it shrieking, even from a mile away—safe from the bombs that she sent. Shrieking for life, for mercy, to be allowed to
live
. That’s all it wanted, that’s what those shrieks said: just let it
live
.

No
, she told it.

And the fire ripped away in front of her, consuming everything it touched without any idea of the word mercy.