Alien Invasion 04 Annihilation (40 page)

Raj moved toward the disk set atop the altar. Heather pushed him back. In the azure flashes, he watched her smile.

“Get out of my way.”
 

“No way. We’re finally alone. I’ve been looking forward to this for two years.”
 

Again, something seemed to move behind the stone altar in the room’s center. Raj tried to steal another look, but Heather spun him again. This time, she was against the wall.
 

“I surrender,” she said.
 

He tried to shake her away. She held fast. The feet were coming closer, their echo through the stone corridors making them sound closer than they were, coming nearer still.
 

“Come on, Raj. You knocked up my daughter. Don’t you want to find out where Lila learned all she knows? Hit me with your licorice stick.”
 

Raj pushed Heather away. She held him tight, holding his hands. The blue flash came. Vanished. Came again. They were wrapped in black between flashes. During the blue interludes, he could see her face, as obnoxiously hectoring as always.
 

Raj pushed. This time, Heather gripped much, much harder. She’d been playing, but she had more in her than he’d have suspected now that she was trying. The light went out, and Heather dragged him back. It came on, and he found her staring hard into his eyes, almost through his head. He became aware of the chamber’s silence. Other than the slow trod of approaching Astral feet, there was nothing at all.
 

The lights went out. The lights came on.
 

“Fuck me, Raj. Come on. Prove that you’re a man.”

“Get away from me, Heather.”
 

She gripped Raj’s crotch. Too hard. He cringed.
 

“Sorry. I like it rough. I figured you liked it rough, too. Like linear algebra.”
 

He pushed again. This time, Heather pushed back so hard that his skull struck stone, bringing a dull throb of pain. Something skittered past in the shadows, like a rat.
 

“I’m not leaving until you teach me the secrets of your spicy recipe.”
 

“What the hell are you — ”

“Come on, Raj.” Her eyes flicked away from him, toward the room’s center, and a small smile touched the corners of her lips. She stepped back. “Fuck me like you fucked humanity.”
 

He stared hard. Heather didn’t flinch. Her sarcastic smile widened.
 

“Fuck me like you fucked Meyer. Like you tried to fuck Piper, before she and Cameron fucked you right back.” Heather moved back to the stone altar, leaned against it like a diva. She made her voice throaty, like gravel. “Oh, Raj. Fuck me like Terrence and Christopher and Lila have been fucking you for years.”
 

Raj’s eyebrows drew together. He was getting déjà vu. How many times had Heather messed with him over the years? He knew a distraction when he saw it. The last time, she’d been trying to let Terrence into the network center to plant the virus. But he’d seen through her then and could see through her now. He’d been led here under decidedly strange circumstances, but maybe this was why: to catch Heather trying to pull more of her usual bullshit.
 

He yanked her hard, and she staggered away from the altar.
 

The thing had stopped moving. Stopped grinding. Stopped turning.
 

And the stone disk, whatever it had been, was gone.

Raj heard sound from the far corridor: footsteps, running. Decidedly human, in a rush, getting away.
 

He scampered to follow whoever was escaping, but Heather was holding him back. With much,
much
more force than he would ever have thought possible.

Raj jerked his shoulder to free himself, but after one failed attempt, the footsteps from the other corridor finally arrived. He looked up, still held fast by Heather’s grip, and watched dozens of Titans spill into the chamber.
 

“Oh, thank God,” Raj said, puffing his chest as best he could with Heather pinning his arm. “I need to talk to whichever of you is in charge.”
 

The lead Titan looked at Raj for one semi-puzzled second. A few final wisps of the earlier fog seemed to have followed them into the chamber and was circling their waists like a stink. The Titan exhaled, and some of the stuff seemed to puff out like smoke from a cigarette. The big white man was somehow different than Raj had seen Titans before. His eyes were lit with emotion, almost like a human.
 

The Titan put a strong hand on Raj’s free shoulder and pushed him aside without any effort. The blue flashing overhead began to throb, its tempo and intensity increasing as something continued to come undone.
 

“I’ve located Cameron Bannister and several of his cohorts and — ”
 

Raj stopped when the Titan looked down onto the stone altar. He touched the empty space where the stone disk had been. He looked up, and Raj saw disappointment. Irritation. Maybe anger. He inhaled. Exhaled. A stubborn tendril of black smoke went in and out with every breath.
 

Raj backed away. Toward the far passage. Still, Heather held his arm.
 

“You’re wasting your time,” Raj said, almost laughing at the absurdity. “After all, they’re only Titans.”
 

Heather smiled wider.

One of the white beings moved to block each of the passageways. Then there was a guttural sound like a Reptar’s purr, even though there were none in the room.
 

Raj tried again to flee, suddenly becoming decidedly nervous.
 

“Fuck me,” Heather whispered, holding him fast, “like you fucked Trevor.”

CHAPTER 81

“Five minutes,” Nathan said. “Then we go.”
 

Coffey looked around. The courtyard was empty. The Titans had either dispersed into the city when the fog had been subsuming them, or they’d all — every single one of them — entered the Apex. Their absence was eerie. Not one of the waiting soldiers was calm. All were fiddling, watching the sky, looking up at the four motherships and the still-circling shuttles. The black fog had entirely vanished to reveal a perfectly powder-blue Colorado sky. The Apex was throbbing in the now-intense daylight like a bomb, an electric hum now audible beneath every cycle.
 

“We should go now. While we can.”
 

Nathan shook his head. “It led us here.”
 

“Not directly.”
 

“Maybe it was allowing time. Letting the Titans have what they needed to clear the square and go … ” Nathan trailed off. There was no obvious place to end that sentence.
 

Coffey looked at him, sparing Nathan the irritation of voicing the same thought. She looked up at the Apex.

“Shouldn’t we go inside?”
 

Nathan shook his head. At least some of the Titans had gone inside; he’d seen their white hides retreating into the shafts. The plan had been to somehow destroy the thing — that’s what Meyer Dempsey had implied last night, though he’d never specifically said it. At the time, his suggestion had seemed obvious: Go to the fence, let your people in, then go to the Apex and destroy it before it can make whatever broadcast it’s about to make. When he’d run into Heather Hawthorne, who’d come his way to breach the fence, the coincidence had seemed even thicker, and Nathan had become even more certain that this was his mission — again, as endorsed by the viceroy.
 

But Dempsey never mentioned the blackout. Or the strange dark fog. It was as if he’d had no idea after all. He’d implied that Nathan had his support. But how? Why? The details were missing. Nathan was used to following his gut, but now it said nothing. They were the opposite of trapped. Nobody was around to intervene, as if nothing mattered. And maybe, judging by what he was seeing, the Apex was having its fits just fine without him. Unless this was the buildup to broadcast that he was supposed to stop? There wasn’t any obvious answer.
 

He looked around. The area remained soundless and empty.
 

“Fine. We go in.”
 

A thrashing, wailing noise screamed from inside the Apex. To Nathan, it sounded like a man drawn and quartered — a phenomenon, interestingly enough, that he’d witnessed.
 

The sounds of running, rushing feet followed the screams.
 

Coffey’s hand settled on his shoulder. He looked over to see her profile, eyes wide, staring at something to their rear.
 

When he turned again, Nathan saw a pair of shuttles hovering inches from the ground behind them. Waiting. Silently floating like giant ball bearings.
 

CHAPTER 82

Cameron entered the harsh daylight at a run then skidded to a stop as he found the two silver shuttles greeting him like a dour welcoming committee. His arms went wide as he paused, heart pounding. He could hear the Titans and Reptars coming up the passage behind him. The sensations were so overwhelming, he barely saw Andreus even though he was practically standing in Cameron’s way.
 

“What?” Andreus demanded. “What’s going on?”
 

“We have to run!
Go!”

The shuttles moved forward. Pinching them in. Narrowing the small space between the small contingent of soldiers who, Cameron was amused to see, had brought black motorcycles. Every one of them looked terrified and useless. All eyes wide.
 

Instead of running, Cameron backed up. He heard the comings behind him and stepped forward again. There was only one reachable way into the Apex — the huge, open-mouthed, downward-sloping tunnel behind him. Cameron could hear the Reptars purring. The patient plodding of Titan feet. He didn’t know if they were the same Astrals who’d entered the room as he’d been leaving with the stone key — that he’d seen, peeking around the corner, when they’d entered to surround Heather and Raj. After that, Cameron hadn’t hesitated. Maybe running made him a coward, but there were no heroes in that situation. Survivors ran. They’d learned that lesson at Cottonwood.
 

Behind Andreus, Jeanine Coffey attempted to flank right. The shuttle followed, barring her way. A tall man on the other side tried to go around, but the second in the pair moved to intercept.
 

“Run through them. Run past them.”
 

Coffey threw Cameron a loathsome look. But he’d had enough. Cameron had watched his father die; he’d watched kids die; he’d just run away from another two deaths because he’d wanted to live — and, if he wanted to give himself a tiny slice of credit, to keep the stone key whole and hidden. But what good would it do now? Staying alive was exhausting. The emotions hard to endure. Piper was probably dead. Same for Terrence, Christopher, Lila, and everyone else. Only Clara was for-sure alive; Cameron could feel her. Could sense her searching his mind, optimistic like stupid kids were as they turned their backs on the world’s truths. She would find Thor’s Hammer for him. But a fat load of good it would do anyone, now that he was about to die. Again.
 

“Do it!”
Cameron shouted at the shuttles.
 

Andreus turned to look at him sideways. So did Coffey. So did all of the others — who retreated toward the group’s mushy middle, where they might be safe as Cameron drew the spheres’ fire.
 

“DO IT!”
Cameron repeated, stepping forward.
 

The shuttles didn’t move. And Cameron didn’t skirt. He walked right up to them and, knowing how irrational, stupid, and end-of-his-rope ridiculous he was being, shoved the one on the left like he’d push a stubborn person. The chrome-seeming skin was slick without being oily. It didn’t budge, and Cameron’s hands slipped across its surface, nearly slamming his chin and chest into its belly.
 

“Do it! Do it, you motherfuckers!” He turned, now seeing the shapes of Titans marching up the tunnel from behind.
“You want to kill us, just fucking kill us!”
He grabbed his satchel with both hands, feeling like the heavy thing was covered with blood: his father’s, Trevor’s, Danika’s, Ivan’s, and countless others. Cameron had been spared so the useless disk could survive. He wanted to pull it out now and smash it. To surrender in the loudest possible way. To show them he was
through
, that they could take their victory over Earth and shove it up their alien asses.
 

The giant chrome shuttle dropped three inches to the stone ground, leaving a crack.

Cameron stepped back.
 

It began to roll. Not naturally downhill, which would have been backward. But forward, with purpose.
 

Toward the Apex. Toward the tunnel’s mouth and into its guts.
 

The second shuttle rose a dozen feet into the air, shaking in a way that Cameron had never seen, as if it was trying to tell them something.
 

Then, as the Andreus soldiers scampered back, the first shuttle rolled down the passage, toward the approaching Astrals, down the pyramid’s gaping throat.