Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3 (42 page)

Not a fucking thing.

Even sober he was a shitty father.

And where are you, dear Linda, to tell me no? That I’ve done the best I could under the circumstances?

She was silent, of course. Just like Michael. Because this is what happened when you trade your life for the ability to forget. You end up on a couch with a son who might be dead and a wife who already was. You end up in silence, because you have no one.

“Please,” he said, looking down at Michael, his eyes beginning to water. Yesterday he moved with purpose. Yesterday he was intent on staying sober and finding his son. Yesterday there was hope. Now he held his son, and hope fluttered away like some beautiful butterfly that Wren shouldn’t have possessed anyway. “Please come back,” he said as the tears broke over his eyelids.

He held his son and he cried.

For his son.

For himself.

M
orena looked
at the little girl.

Her parents lay on the ground, but the little girl stood right in front of Morena. Her eyes were hazel, her hair brown, and she looked absolutely terrified. Morena hadn’t decided if she would kill the parents yet, only that they needed to be dealt with while she observed the girl. She had seen what these creatures looked like from inside them, but never seen one up close, never observed it from outside.

Morena had to make a decision and soon, whether or not these creatures would be allowed to live next to Bynums. To kill an entire species wasn’t something she was ready to do, not quite yet. The little girl’s eyes were wide and tears streamed out of them, though Morena’s aura kept her from fleeing. Morena studied the skin, understanding much of what happened evolutionarily for this girl to end up like this. They would continue to evolve, Morena thought, they might even reach a Stage Three. Currently, they were in a dangerous stage though—one in which their intelligence far outstripped their morality. If a species didn’t die in Stage One, they almost certainly did in Stage Two. In Stage One, the environment killed. In Stage Two, the species killed itself.

Still, there was hope here. Morena couldn’t, with any clear conscience, say that they definitely needed to die. Which was tough, because it took the decision out of her hands. If she looked at this young child—studied it, following the evolution of her physical features with the combined information from Morena’s time inside her hosts—she couldn’t say they were done. That they would kill themselves regardless of what she did; if so, then wiping them out would be an easy choice.

Now, though, the choice rested in their hands. It depended on whether they fought her, on whether they tried to stop her species’ spread.

Morena floated backward, releasing the little girl from her hold. The girl fell back, all of her force trying to run away finally unleashed by Morena. She hovered over the street as the girl, crying, picked herself up and rushed to her father, who lay on the ground behind her. Morena let go of the parents as she turned around, climbing in height as she floated higher and higher over the street.

Perhaps the show she gave them a little bit ago would let humanity know that they should cease whatever ideas they had of stopping her. She didn’t think so, at all, but it was still a nice thought. None had entered her domain yet—she would know the moment they did.

Something was here though. Something she didn’t understand. She hoped when she stopped to look at the little girl that what she felt would disappear, that perhaps using her mind for some other task might either reveal what she was feeling, or let her realize it didn’t exist.

Neither happened.

Instead, Morena felt
it
again as she rose into the air.

Was it Briten?

No, that wasn’t possible. He hadn’t crossed over from the Ether. And if he did, he would have found her. Did something else cross over? Something when she came back from the Ether, escaping with her?

She didn’t think so because she didn’t feel it then. This came
after
the birth. She closed her eyes, blocking out the world around her.
It
was here, in this place, though she couldn’t figure out where. She understood every animal and plant that moved inside this town, all of the information relayed to her as if it was part of her. Except for this, and it felt like neither animal nor plant. It felt…

Like a Bynum.

It felt like another from her planet walked Earth and that just wasn’t possible. Her planet was dead, as were her people. Even the children now coalescing felt different than this new being.

That’s what is feels like…
A young Bynum, someone barely out of the womb, barely having formed from its aura.
It can’t be.

Still, hope sprang up in her. Longing.

Because whether or not it was impossible, she still felt it the same as she did her children. And if she felt it, then maybe there was something. Maybe something came with them on the ship, and maybe it was awakening now. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Find it
, she thought.
Find whatever it is and then you’ll know.

H
e knocked
on Will’s door twice and then put his hand back down to his side. Kenneth Marks wasn’t smiling and wouldn’t use one during this conversation.

He heard Will put his face to the peephole and then listened as the locks on the other side turned in the door.

Will didn’t crack the door, but opened it all the way. He understood how the power structure worked but he didn’t look at Kenneth Marks as any kind of physical threat.

“What’s up?” Will said.

“May I come in?”

Will turned around and walked back into the hotel room. Kenneth Marks followed, walking slower than Will, but watching the man’s movements in front of him.

“A bit late for a social stop,” Will said, lying down in bed, picking up the remote but not bothering to mute the television. The screen cast blue light across the bed, the only light in the room. Kenneth Marks stood just outside of it, still, looking at the television but listening to Will’s breath moving in and out of his nose.

“Very true.”

“So what are you here for?”

“Are you thinking of leaving, Will?” he said.

“It’s crossed my mind.”

“More than once.”

“More than once,” Will said.

“You’re not contaminated.”

Will looked at him, no smile on his face, just the blue from the television and the sternness that grew out of the garden of knowledge, right where the knowledge of death was planted. “That doesn’t mean you’re not going to kill me.”

Kenneth Marks nodded and stepped out from the black shroud of the hallway. He walked in front of the television and to the drapes, pulling them back the same as he had in his room.

“The lights are going out,” he said, seeing Will’s reflection in the window. The city was half black already. When he looked down into the street, he saw the military vehicles and troops, walking people into huge caravans. They cut the lights from each area they evacuated, trying to force anyone from staying inside and hiding. Half the city still shone and the other half looked as dark as the hallway Kenneth Marks just exited.

“So they are,” Will said, his eyes not finding Kenneth Marks’ in the window, but looking out onto the city.

“If I wanted you dead, Will, you would be dead right now.”

Neither of them said anything. Another building went dark in front of them. They were far enough up to not hear any of the sounds from below.

“And if you’re thinking of leaving, when I want you dead, it won’t matter where you go.”

He turned around and Will’s eyes found his for the first time.

“To be honest, I don’t care if you live or die, Will. As long as you play along with me during this operation. If you do what I ask, when it’s over, you can go wherever you want, do whatever you want.”

Will didn’t nod, didn’t move at all.

“What I want is simple. I want you to go back inside Grayson and I want you to make contact with it.”

Will laughed and Kenneth Marks saw the glee touch his eyes. “Didn’t you just say we made contact? I saw exactly what that contact looked like too. If that’s what playing along means, I’ll take my chances on the run.”

“What you saw was an armed force meeting a much more powerful armed force. I’m not talking about you going in there armed, or with aggressive tendencies. I’m talking about diplomacy.”

“I’m not a diplomat.”

“Not for the United States government, no,” Kenneth Marks said. “For me though? That you could be.”

“For you?”

“Yes. I have some questions I would like answered, and if you go in there, and you ask them, and you survive, you have your freedom. I know you won’t give me any America Home of the Free nonsense either, because we both know that you’re not free. That you haven’t been free for a long time, and that you’ve finally met your slave master.”

Will stood up and walked to the television, standing in front of it and facing it so that the blue light lit him up like a Christmas bulb. “So basically, you’ll kill me if I don’t go in there and try to talk to it.”

“Not basically. Exactly.”

“What are you doing with Rigley?” Will said.

Kenneth Marks was quiet for a second, not thrown off exactly, but perhaps having misjudged this man in the slightest way. He registered the question and moved on.

“I’m going to allow her to do what she should have done in the beginning.”

“That’s not what you’re doing.”

The only piece of Kenneth Marks that moved was his chest as it slightly filled with, and then emptied, oxygen. “I’m going to give her a choice similar to yours, both of them for my own purposes.”

Thirty seconds passed in silence, the only change in the room being the television screen flipping through different commercials.

“What do you want me to ask?” Will said.

W
ill knocked
on Rigley’s door at four in the morning.

He had to knock five times before she finally opened it, but he would have knocked all night if that’s what it took. He was leaving tomorrow morning—in just a few hours—to head back to Grayson, and this might be the last conversation he ever had with someone he knew. He might never have another chance to speak with someone who knew his fucking name, and if he had to wake Rigley to get that, then fine.

He didn’t have to though. She opened the door, the same darkness that was in his room hiding in hers as well. She held the door open with her left hand, a cigarette in her right, the smoke trailing up to the ceiling.

“You got a smoking room?” Will said.

She turned around without smiling, the door slowly closing behind her, but Will caught it and walked in.

“What do you want?” she said. She went to a chair in the corner of the room. The television was on, but muted, shining out across an empty, made bed.

“He’s insane, Rigley.”

She didn’t say anything, just folded her legs up in the chair so that her knees pressed against her chest.

“He’s sending me back in. Alone. No army. No weapons. He called me his personal diplomat. You know no one above is sanctioning anything like this, at all.”

“So?” she said, wrapping her arms around her knees and bringing the cigarette to her lips for a deep drag.

“He’s what this has been about for you, isn’t he? Your slow fall, it’s all been because of him, huh?”

Will watched her stare listlessly into the space before her, her mouth not moving at all.

“He’ll kill you,” Will said. “Or have you kill yourself, or whatever else he can think up. And I don’t get this, how you can just sit here and let it happen?”

Rigley smiled, looking to him. “Oh, you don’t get it? Are you not going back into Grayson?”

He sat down on the bed. “I am.”

She chuckled and looked back to the carpet.

“That’s not what I mean, though,” he said. “I’m going, but I’m not…broken by him. We’re both going to do what he wants us to, because he’ll kill us if we don’t, but there’s a difference between you and me.”

“What’s that difference?”

“He doesn’t own me. I could leave. I could try to run. I’m making my decision to go back in there because it’s the greatest likelihood of me living through this. You’re thinking is nothing like that. He owns you, Rigley.”

Her smiled faded, leaving her staring at the floor like a robot whose power had been disconnected. Will looked at her for thirty seconds or so before standing up, deciding that the entire conversation was pointless.

“You’re naive,” Rigley said, not moving her eyes. “You think he doesn’t own you, or your mind, or whatever the fuck you’ve decided separates us?” She shook her head. “He owns you, you just don’t know it. Your little resistance inside your head, the one where you think you are standing up to him, isn’t even miniscule. It doesn’t exist, Will. You’re going where he wants and you’re doing what he wants, and you’ll continue to until he’s done with you. Then he’ll kill you, the same as me, and then you’ll realize that your mental resistance never fucking existed.”

“What happened to you?”

She looked at him then, a fire as bright as the cigarette in her hand lighting her eyes.

“You, Will. You did. Because now I’m going to have to do it again. He’s going to make me do it here, except even more will die.”

“Do you hate me, Rigley? For Bolivia?”

She said nothing.

“I’m not sorry. I was never sorry about it and I won’t ever be. It was necessary. It made you a better leader, whether you realize it or not.”

“Do I look like a leader to you?” she said.

Stunned, perhaps for the first time since he arrived in Grayson. The answer stared them both in the face. Was she right? Could this all be traced back to him, her whole destruction? He had made her kill that man a long time ago, and neither of them ever spoke of it again. Rigley went on to fame and fortune inside their small world, both of them working together almost perfectly. Until now. Had she been holding on to this, after everything both of them had done since Bolivia? Their life was murder, or at least that’s what Will had accepted.

And yet, what Rigley would need to do next had already broken her.

Because she hadn’t actually killed since Bolivia. Will, and others, did it for her.

“What did you think this was?” he asked. “I don’t understand. We kill so that others can live. What we did in Bolivia was necessary, no matter how much I hated it at the time. You know what murder is because you’ve done it; did you think you would never have to again?”

“You murder because you don’t understand life. I do. Because I’ve had it inside me. You, you’ve never held it and you’ve never fathered it, so you can’t appreciate it.”

Rigley looked back at the floor, away from Will. Maybe she was as crazy as Marks. Ten plus years and she had been dreading this day, and she cast all the blame on Will. For making her shoot that single man before she gassed the rest of them. Will had come here hoping…maybe just for some connection, but he saw that Rigley was too far past that. She had gone deep inside her own head, to some dark place that maybe he helped create, but one that she wouldn’t find her way out of.

“Good luck, Rigley. I hope you find yourself again, before it’s too late.”

Rigley flicked her cigarette and the ash drifted to the floor, like a ghost finally realizing it needed to die.